Last months in Hong Kong

So poor mum had to amuse herself most of her holiday, only seeing me the day she was leaving! Clement's next 'inducting us into Chinese culture' meal outing was overdue, so he escorted all 3 of us to a nearby Dim Dun cafe and we nibbled a huge and shockingly cheap assortment - most were yummy. But they didn't do my faves, the crispy coated turnip ones that look like cockroaches. Mum loved it I think, and got off to her plane OK.

Dim sun in hong kong
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.

Traditinal hong kong Dim Sum Clement took us to
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.

Oh incase I have never said it - all HK cafes etc, you order (either at a booth or to a waitress) and your order slip is left on your table with an illegible total, to be added to if you ask for anything else. Either its all delivered to you or you go and collect it; utensils are either in an end drawer under your table or you collect them. And you get up with your slip to pay at the end. Works well, no hanging about!

Its really monsoon/ typhoon season now, hot and steamy and horrible. I stayed indoors in our new room unless I had a medical appointment or work.

We had a special advisory interview to discuss Downs Syndrome testing, and opted for the detailed scan (something to do with measuring the babie's neck as an indicator of the condition) first. Very uncomfortable experience, with a public Doctor who spent the whole time muttering in Cantonese and jiggling my belly painfully to try to get the baby to turn the way she wanted it to. A week later the results came in as negative, thank goodness.

We had another visit to the nice private Doc as he actually talks to us like we have a brain, AND gives you pics of the scans. Pete had me convinced it was a girl (I had names sorted and everything) as it was so big and mobile, and this time it was old enough to try to see its 'bits' in the scan. Nothing, nothing, nothing (legs tightly crossed) when all of a sudden it did a star jump, and all 3 of us went- ' WAH!' (traditional local sound of surprise). Definitely NOT a girl! The Doc also did what he called a 4D scan which created a lumpy brown moving image, far harder to work out whats what in, compared to the X-ray like moving ultrasounds. Made the baby look like a deformed ear wax sculpture rather than a flea drawn by Geiger...

4D baby scan. Looked a bit like a flithy ear canal when seen moving 'live'
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.

The next non-birthday booking I had was at the opening morning of the massive new Arts Centre for the Canadian International School over by Aberdeen. Typically a black rainstorm started over breakfast, and at once half the transport shuts down and everyone mobs the few taxis braving it. Rats. Pete & I staked out different sides and streets. I was a drowned one, frozen and dripping by the time we managed to get one an hour later!!! He paddled off to work in his flipflops, shorts and huge brolly, whilst i shivered and dripped in the taxi in traffic jams. I'd been told I had to paint 6 girls as marble statues, white (as had white dresses) to be the 6 muses posed int he entrance of the new school building with other student's artwork. I'd said, fine, 1 hour each should be more than enough to do limbs & faces. Only to arrive really late, soaked, and to find they were women not girls so a LOT bigger! I ended up getting them to paint the white base on each other, and spending as much time as I could doing the fiddlier faces and all the marbling effects.

Marble muse statue model for the Canadian International School's Arts centre launch Body painting by cats- creations.co.uk
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.

Marble muse statue model for the Canadian International School's Arts centre launch Body painting by cats- creations.co.uk
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.

As I had said might happen, chinese kids in school bands and dragon/ lion dancing teams kept coming in screaming, or asked what the ghosts were for, as white is a dead colour in their culture. Oh well! And the muse of electronics, clutching a computer mouse (?) was a new one on me - don't recall her in the myths I used to read!

Marble muse statue model for the Canadian International School's Arts centre launch Body painting by cats- creations.co.uk
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.

Still they looked good, but I had no time to take any decent pics as the event started earlier than expected so I had to rush away before they stopped me using the lifts to haul my kit out (lift noise interfered with the main stage sound). I wasn't going to haul it all up 18 flights of stairs! So I only took a quick snap of one side of the 100's of traditional congratulation flower bouquets lining the entrance as I left.

Some of the floral tributes usual in HK when a new thing opens - this was the Canadian school's new arts centre
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.

A fun day was the RHKYC's Middle Island (where we moor/ Pete mainly used to work) Big Day Out. They wanted a marine biologist to do a lesson on rockpooling and I got hired as thtas part of what I used to teach in Dorest. Hmm....all the rockpools here are tiny, precarious places on the mainland side, and all are scoured clean of anything alive (and therefore edible) all day every day by locals. After a few days searching I said best bet would be if I collected anything remotely interesting to do a show & tell with, then let all the kids loose on the island (nice beach and some life under rocks/ on the docks) with a worksheet I made, full of related quizzes & colouring. I also made sure I knew EXACTLY what the poisonous stinging cone shells looked like! Had a fright when i turned up a big bunch of cowries but they are safe.

Cowries in an HK rockpool
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.

Queue an uncomfy morning of trying not to heave (still getting sickness!) whenever I leant over to look for stuff! I whipped a couple of bailing pots out of some of the clubs dinghys to put things in, and had a heavy book on top of each as they were expert escapologists. But I had a surprisingly respectable haul - a nice big urchin (locals can't collect them off the club dock), assorted molluscs and hermit crabs. And the prize, a very aggressive swimming crab (lacking the warning red eyes of the UK's Velvet Swimmers but just as leary). He easily did the old pencil-snapping trick and needed a metal spoon and a length of perspex to let me turn him over to show how to sex crabs.

Just as strong & aggressive as the Uk's velvet swimmers! Swimming crab I was teaching kids with at RHKYc's Middle Island Big Day out.
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.

The rest of the day the critters sat on a table beside me as I face painted (finally the club hired me for that!!!) so I could answer questions on them and stop excessive pencil snapping. What was very annoying as all the parents wanted to know if they could hire me/ why i hadn't been used by the club before, and I had to say we were leaving in a month! And of course the GM turned up to watch a a kid asked for an impossible face I'd never done/ heard of and bodged a bit...

This was closely followed y the clubs annual staff party. Its all paid for by the members, starting with weeks of karaoke competitions torturing Petes office, as the finalists are chosen to perform at the banquet. All chinese staff start playing a majhong tournament with free booze around lunchtime, so are very merry by 7pm when the rest of us turned up at the banquet venue.

Petes RHKYC staff dinner -he & johnny won the ping pong roll skill challenge
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.

it was supposed to be fancy dress but like last year, the few staff who tried changed into their outfits just before the fashion 'show'. Pete refused to even wear a colourful tshirt of mine; I had a fairly flower power top on but felt to ill to poaint myself like I had meant to. But the new GM turned up in full hippy kit and wig, brilliant! So all of us gweilos (basically most of the management) settled into the 2 last tables left free for us, and the food started. Its the old 1 course every 20 mins, where each course = 1 mouthful. With pints of what Pete had thought was beer but turned out to be fizzy wine! Not that i drank anything exept water. The entertainments went on throughout - the singers, egged on by pissed napkin waving colleagues, and raffles and games. Our table (with no help from us) won the guess the total of all these products game. Then Pete, Johhny and Fleur won the roll-the ping-pong-ball down strings and drop into score pots game too!

Petes RHKYC staff dinner -he & johnny won the ping pong roll skill challenge
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.

They gave that money prize back so a staff team could win it (spurious excuse being they had seen the game being devised and so had practiced beforehand). Also several managers won stuff and money in the raffles but returned them too, which was nice.

It took several hours to get though the courses - we boycotted the sharks fin soup but most were lovely.

1 of about 60 tiny courses at Petes staff dinner - he got all the fish fins!
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.

That week, after 1 of my million doctors visits, there was another rainstorm so I couldn't get a taxi back home. Despite extreme care and my grippiest rubber soled shoes, I took a flyer on the pavement as I walked home. Scared the life out of me but apart from scraped hands and arms (it was more a rapid ungraceful slide then a flat out fall) it seemed OK. So that scared me into staying indoors unless Pete was around to go out with me, as the streets were nearly always soaking. Poor thing - he'd get back from work late & tired & I'd make him walk me round the block a few times. If nothing else we spotted some interesting shops - dog bootees or nail varnish for your cat, anyone???

Hong Kong petshop cat sulking below boxes of dog bootees
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.

I kid you not 0 cat & dog nail varnish on sale in hong kong
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.

A couple of weeks later, Clement, some other instructors and a couple of members Pete had taught to sail invited us for a farewell banquet at the HK Cricket Club. We'd managed the starters - jellyfish, etc (not my favourite but passable - cold crunchy jelly). All very exciting for me after weeks of hospital food and months of nothing but porridge, tuna sarnies and mash for tea! Anyway, just as the really yummy stuff started arriving, I had to rush to the loo. Luckily 1 of the lades came to see if I was OK & I asked her to get Pete so we were rushed off to A&E.

Welcome topiary, Hong Kong Cricket Club. Petes leaving dinner strike 1 before I was rushed to A&E
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.

I got seen immediately which was good as it was really scarey, and they could still hear the babies heartbeat so after a while sent me home saying there wasn't much they could do, but I should just stay in bed and come in for an emergency scan the next day. Petes friends were lovely - they turned up at A&E with doggy bags of the meal (unfortunately just after we'd left!) and met Pete outside our hotel to give him those, some music CDs for the baby and a traditional chinese baby present. It made me cry when he ought it up - really sweet, a tiny silver expanding wire bracelet with little bells on it. You put it on babies ankle or wrist, like a rattle.

The emergency scan on Monday couldn't find anything, but said my placenta had jumped to the right place - before the tail of it was low and covering the escape route. as 3 days is a bit fast to move it that much, I wondered if maybe the tail end had ripped off or something. My respect for the public Doctors fell even lower, as despite giving them the letters from the private Doc, his scans, telling them AND the nurses(the student Docs and nurses were having panics trying to find the babies heartbeat when I was in the wards as with it being in the slightly larger right hand uterus, it wasn't near where it should have been), they had no idea I had 2 uterii! I was NOT impressed, considering all the scans and me mentioning it....So I was discharged with 'missed miscarriage' on my notes and told to stay in bed.

More big typhoons - one night, Pete (checking the HK Observatory website every few hours as he had to keep an eye on things incase he needed to cancel sailing lessons the next day) recorded 1300 air-to-ground lightning strikes in 1 HOUR!! One of Petes adult students was laughing her head off as some took the tip off a church steeple outside her shop, and she was convinced there was a terrified sinner in the middle of confessing when it happened!

Sat June 7th there was a HUGE Black-coded rainstorm, that started in the wee hours with rattling thunder that shook buildings more than the earthquake which had devastated China a few weeks back. Then the rains started. Pete got to lie in all day as he had to cancel everything - in a Black code, public transport stops, business's don't open, school kids are kept wherever they are, if its at home or at school, etc. The news was shocking - taxis being pushed backwards down streets by the force of the water, people trying to wade from their cars and ending up swimming, sewers and drains blowing their covers and erupting as 2 story geysers....all this in the city centre! Most of the villages mum and I visited last year were cut off with landlsides and lost all power and water. Mad.

By evening it had died off, and we ventured out to see huge potholes had suddenly appeared in our road, and the chandeleir shops on the corner were all flooded. Pete decided to come with me to my evening booking - face painting 6 ladies for an 'Out of This world' Ball. Their husbands were all going as Men In Black (suits & sunglasses) but the ladies had different coloured ball dresses and wanted alien faces and shoulders to match. This mainly turned into beautiful nothings in co-ordinating colours, with a bit of shimmery scaley effect (sponged through punchinella) to give an alien skin background, and a few stars and loads of glitter. I didn't realise they wanted me to do their fake lashes too - fiddly things, hate them. But they looked fab and off they went.

Alien ball ladies face & body painting by www.cats-creations.co.uk
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.

Alien ball ladies face & body painting by www.cats-creations.co.uk
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.

The thing that we saw on the way home from the taxi that really brought the force of the rainfall to life, was a row of garages. Not many people in HK have the space or money for cars, let alone space in their flat block to store them, so you often see small single rows of garages along quieter roads. This road was curling around the contours of the Peak Mountain about 1/2 way down (as in higher than the 50 storey tower blocks in Central). Somehow the water had filled the garages to their roofs, and as we passed, water was gushing out of one as a crew from Porsche winched out a Porsche soft top with water gushing from all its doors. There was a team and van from Ferarri waiting their turn too! Wow!...

Alien ball ladies face & body painting by www.cats-creations.co.uk
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.

My last kids party was sweet, held in the ice rink of the Aberdeen Marina Club - that place has a block with whole floors devoted to kids - 1 was all motor sports, from remte control cars to mini-go-karts, etc....

Fire AND Ice skating rink? Don't they cancel each other out? Party I was painting at in Aberdeen, Hong Kong
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.

Petes bunch had another go at giving him a leaving do but it was the evening after the last kids party and he forgot to tell me, so I'd gone to bed. Sounds just as well - he loved it (beer was involved this time) but said it was in the oldest banquet house in HK, very very noisy with locals, etc.

Petes leaving dinner Strike 2 (I didn't go to this 1 so Pete bought me back a 'nice' doggy bag) ie a chicken head.
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.

He was kind enough to bring me back a doggy bag of the chicken but nearly got a slap when I saw the perfectly dissected chicken head included!

Amazing old dragon tiled building surviving between naff ones in a Hong Kong street
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.

We had our 1st & last hi-res scan at the public hospital, to see if they could spot any deformities etc in the babies organs which are likely due to my high sugars.(I quite like the name Finlay even tho cousin Johnny just named his wee one Finn!). All seems OK, we counted the proper fingers & toes (tho that doesn't mean they will all be right - could be fused etc). Pete decided baby looked more like a roast chicken now, tho at the length of a hand maybe its more like the wee song birds we got fed with grandad's school boys in France when I was a kid. What surprised me was the doctor describing the poor wee lads tackle as 'looking like a Christmas tree'. !!!!