Tuesday, July 10, 2007

May 2007 - Ocean Park and Inside HK Hospitals

OK so its been a while since I did this for assorted reasons!



Um, I dyed my hair all over for the 1st time. Mainly as Mr Tact Wilkins my so called husband has made several comments since I came to HK about how much grey/ white I have. This from the guy who doesn’t notice new glasses, coloured contact lenses, multi-coloured hair dye stripes, etc, on me…… As usual the colours I fancied I can’t get as I’m too dark haired. And there was no way I could explain to the poor girl In Aberdeen what colour slices were (the 3 hidden stripes I used to have) and her English speaking manager was really worried when she called him over in a panic. GREAT head & neck massage when she washed it though! So know I have to watch it as I tend to leak a bit of henna-pink-purple onto white head towels and our pillows are changing colour…..

Pete & Domino onboard. Awww
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.



We had Petes mum Sue for a week or so on her way back to the UK from NZ, and we continued to have the amazingly clear skies and hot weather I had been sweating through for the last few weeks. (As she left last month the storm that kept us awake stayed for a day, and Pete was upset to spot a tiny duckling being swept past his sailing class by the wind – he couldn’t spot it so we think it had it, as it was heading alone out to sea….). I had been complaining about the engine on Pingu – its been getting so stiff I could hardly steer it, and was only clamped on at one side. Anyway, after dinner & a shower at Middle Island, Pete was steering us back to the boat when there was a sudden loud ‘clunk’. We couldn’t see anything broken or something we had hit, so continued on. We usually ‘dock’ between the 2 back ends of the hull, so Pete slows down as he steers in and I grab the back edge of the deck to stop us completely so we can tie on. BUT as we approached & I reached up, Pete suddenly seemed to rev the engine and we roared towards the deck at high speed. Sure I’d break my arms I ducked and covered and so did Sue, praying the joists and wires under the decking wouldn’t decapitate us. Luckily Pete caught a rope and the metal dinghy hoist and managed to stop us JUST in time. It turned out the clunk was the steering/ speed ‘arm’ that juts out of the outboard engine snapping off – it had stayed in place until Pete twisted it to stop! So that’s the end of that I think.


I wasn’t around with Sue that much – typically it was the 1st busy week in ages for me! First of all I had a booking at the HK Country Club, an exclusive place at the edge of Deep Water Bay. Great, I thought – no need for a taxi, Pete can drop me off by boat as we moor opposite it! So, as our dinghy Pingu was engineless, he stuffed Sue & I into life jackets and whizzed me and my kit over from Middle Island (where I had changed into a fairy) on one of the big safety boats.

Luckily he had phoned ahead and a gardener came down to unlock the gate for us. But he didn’t help me lug my gear up all the stairs to the garden! Pete couldn’t stay as there were recorded warnings about his boat being on their jetty blaring out from Ocean Park. The party was great, I stayed inside as my paints would have melted in the heat & humidity where the kids were playing. I had to include the photo of the last wee girl I painted. As usual, ALL the others wanted to be butterflies, fairies and princess’s. This one insisted on a dinosaur, despite her mums wishes. Her expression when she saw the mirror was a classic – she did smile afterwards but it made me laugh my backside off when I downloaded the camera! To my surprise, instead of collecting me in Pingu (Pete & his mum went to get a new outboard engine while I was working), I suddenly spotted Pete bringing the entire catamaran over the bay. And he was sailing it not using the engine! So we had a nice relaxing sail back, with the cat either going scatty trying to hide/ stalk the black kites circling above us (depending on how far away they were) or snuggling on laps.





I had an interview with the heads (Linz has an OBE I see from her card!) of the HK Youth Arts Foundation, the charity/ company who used me to win the Rugby 7s Face Painting bid. It was really odd – I had no idea what they wanted to see – they just said ‘show us what you can do’! So I put together a short selection of photos on my laptop – from jobs I have had, hobbies, courses I did, etc. Everything I showed them they were saying, yes, we can sell this!

They help huge companies do their corporate social responsibility ‘aren’t –we nice- and good for the community’ thing, by bringing drama & art to locals, as its an area seriously lacking in schools and HK as a whole. (This saves the companies spending a fortune with a PR firm, as YAF also do massive adverts, brochures, etc). This can be by just sponsoring projects (with up to 800,000 young people a year!). For 1 project they used the companies budget to bus school kids out to Kadoorie Farm (a big nature reserve/ education centre I want to see) and flew out a UK artist who trained with Andrew Goldsworthy (my favourite artist – takes natural objects to make gorgeous photos of ephemeral art) to join them. A professional photographer captured the work in HUGE photos, a proper exhibition, the corporate calendar and postcards, as well as then being kept at the company HQ. A bit of a step up from the Wild Art Days I used to run on or nature reserve or in schools gardens/ car-parks for the Suffolk Wildlife Trust!!!

They also do ‘Art in the Office’. Companies say what they want to decorate their walls, or a park or a calendar, or things can be suggested to them. They decide how much they want to spend, if they want to also be involved, if they want young children or special needs to make it, and YAF organises it all. Again it gives chances for fun and new skills to local kids. Sponsors can join ‘Art Angels’ too, staff volunteering to help special needs and underprivileged kids at one off or regular events.

Anyway, I left YAF with instructions to come up with projects that could be offered to companies, that ran for 1 day, several time a year, or several time a year over 3 years – they have a waiting list of people wanting to give them money I think!!!! Basically I was asked how busy I wanted to be…. I got home to find an email waiting from the director, asking if I knew how to make dream-catchers. I replied, yes, and sent a photo of the intricate ones I make as christening gifts, and the simple ones we made with kids on a Native American Activity Day at my old reserve. Wendy immediately replied – could I write a teacher information pack on them, source materials for them in Sham Shui Po (where all those 1000s of fabric/ bead/ metal/ ribbon sample shops are) and then head a project helping 20,000 kids make them? Ulp. I was overjoyed if we got funding for a project with 2000 kids at S. W. Trust! Anyway we met again a few days later; its for the Charity Orbis (help treat/ prevent eye disease in poor nations) – I forget which company is funding it, but for the last 4 years, they send out these packs to all HK schools. The end result of the pack is always an eye-themed object; 1 year it was decorated eye shaped Perspex shapes, another year they all did spin paintings on paper plates that looked a bit like iris’s. Every kid that joins in pays a token amount to the charity fund; the company provides most of the materials (even paying YAF to build plate-spinning machines!) as well as the training etc. And at the end a professional event artist or whatever you call them sets up a display in the middle of one of HKs top MASSIVE posh shopping cntres. All with ‘sponsored by’ on it of course. Anyway this year it will be me teaching the teachers and all that……..! I’m really hoping I can come up with projects they fancy, as they are all lovely. And the office fridge had chocolates in it!



I painted at the 1st Fair Trade fair in HK, in church hall near St Johns Catherdal. Lovley, I spent more on Fair Trade jewellery than I made. Good to see its all getting started here though, not seen a lot and recycling is a joke!

Wednesday we finally gave in and went to Ocean Park – our main view on the catamaran is of its cable car and hot air ballon ride! I ended up buying a season ticket as it’s the same as 2 visits – an I love jellyfish so thought I’d be back!
We skirted the themed stalls (Disney style tat and games) and got in a tiny round cable car which soared up over the edge of deep water bay and along the side of the mountain. Hot but pretty, if hazy – and we could see our boat!
The jellyfish displays were stunning – not as scientific as UK Sea Life Centres, or as informative, but WOW. As I always dreamt of after seeing the jellyfish breeding tanks in Weymouth, they turned all their displays into living lava lamps.

Coloured lights or UV shone into each tank, making the creatures look even weirder than ever. Some had shifts in colour and mirrors reflecting them so it was like being in a freaky blizzard. Stunning!
Funnily the posh ‘café’ we had lunch in (getting a discount with my season pass!) offered jelly fish on the menu – imported to the park, culls ot yesterdays casualties?



The shark tunnel was fairly cool, and that whole exhibit actually had a few bits of educational information, but the baby dogfish embryos, dissected out of their egg ‘purses’ and happily developing in artificial see-through egg sacs were amazing! The much vaunted reef display was a bit of a disappointment but probably only as I have sent he real thing so often, in Belize, etc. The main tank is 3 STORIES deep, and surrounded by smaller tanks set into the walls. So you have a massive circular deep round tank in front of you, with 100s of species of smaller reef fish (separated form the really big predators by a barrier with holes in it) and the rarer stuff at your back. I finally saw a live (if captive) sea dragon, and the garden eels were just too comical and odd to be real! But the main reef tank….they were all oohing and ahhing at the amazing coral.
Which was blatently cast in concrete and spray painted in neon colours. As were the anemones – though the small wall tanks had some real ones. Its such a shame, the rest was stunning – being down on the bottom storey watching an 80 year old grouper the size of a small boat circle 3 floors above you was freaky!


We then went on a wander and tried the log flume, and found the spot where the photo of Pete and his siblings as kids on their way to/ from living In Papua New Guinea was taken on his 1st visit about 22 years ago!
Then we walked miles in scorchingly hot sun to the oddly American-themed sea lion feeding display, then squeezed onto the back of the last row of seats in the dolphin amphitheatre. Not something I agree with but it was shaded and allegedly entertainment! Usual stuff, jumping, pushing their trainer through the water, etc.
We headed home totally exhausted having onl seen a tiny segment of the park – no ideas where the birds & butterflies displays are! We ate at the main club so Sue could leave her cases at the baggage claim.

Friday morning IU dropped Pete & Sue off onshore about 5am so she could catch her plane. Back on the boat I started feeling really odd, and lay down in the shade until I started throwing up. I spent the rest of the day with 1 end glued to the loo and the other t a bucket, with the cat being very annoyed as she was having to keep me company INSIDE the hot boat instead of on the marginally cooler and far more interesting deck. Pete slept on the other hull that night, but as I was still unable to keep even water down/ in, and my sugars were going mad, I agreed to go to A&E around 10 the next day. We reasoned that even if we could find a doctor they probably send me to a diabetic specialist at the hospital anyway, and frankly I couldn’t stay away from a bathroom for the time it would take to register with a doctor! I felt so crap when we got to A&E they gave me a wheelchair, but after a while I asked for a bed, as I just wanted to lie on the floor. And they kept giving me thick clear plastic bags to throw up in which was odd and a bit messy. By the time they put my 1st drip into my left elbow I was a bit out of it, and typically totally forgot to mention Pete was with me as they whisked me off to an acute care ward just after he left looking for his lunch! Later I kept mumbling “Sin saang….” (Mr/ husband) to the nurses who just ignored me. By the time he caught up I had been put into a pair of checked pyjamas that only reached my knees much to the nurses horror. They chucked him out and he came back at visiting time to find me still throwing up but being put on the old ‘nil by mouth’ regime. In Cantonese. At this point I realised I probably wasn’t going to get out in a day and had Pete cancel all my facepaint bookings.
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Tuesday, May 01, 2007

End of April Diary

Well, what can I say....


I went to the library the other morning, as I got the dinghy to shore with Pete, then we jumped on a minibus to Causeway Bay. He went to work, I ended up watching a queue 3 blocks long waiting to get into the main library. Amazing - 4 people at least wide, ropes and poles and security guards and everything! Don't ever recall having to do that in the UK - or expecting to see that! And the ones for the students wanting to use the desks in the study room was even longer AND they can only get it if they book in, for a set length of time. I imagine many have small or noisy or packed flats......


Anyway a 'red' rainstorm (not the most severe code, the middle of 3 - only over 50mm rain/ hour) had started by the time I wanted to leave, so I ended up wandering around the library shop. They have some really nice stuff in there - all seemingly souveneirs (is it on the tourist trail then?) but interesting. I bought a huge sheet of tiny 3D ' masks', some of which I recognise form when I was researching oriental opera. Some I hope to practice & offer as new designs.

Chinese opera mask stickers
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.



It had stopped raining as I left and I did have to laugh at the 'wet floor' warning cones put out - they'd been inches deep when I was watching from inside! For such a wet city you'd think they'd use less dangerously slippery surfaces than the marble and smooth tiling that abounds. Hordes of housekeepers were already out sweeping puddles into drains and mopping madly.
It was as I reached street level (the library is several floors up on its own plaza) that I noticed how MUCH rain hits at once - even modern drainage can't cope. Most of the crossings were flooded, and many business men had taken off their socks & shoes, rolled up their trousers, and were wading determinedly to work. (YUK). The chandelier shops in that area had had their cleaners doing a King Canute thing and trying to hold back the flood tide with mops, and were almost sand-bagging their doorways.
I had on flip-flops and 3/4 length trousers, so I wasn't much better off but at least had a surface between me and the new river beds! Saying that twice I lost a shoe and had to splash after it as it floated off. Its hard to see in my photos (using the all weather mini cam!!), but several of the puddles were over my shins heading for my knees. And I'm not exactly the shortest person around here! There was a lot of co-ordinated crowd movements along the pavements, as in; stopping, waiting and then - run - to avoid being splashed by vehicles passing huge kerb puddles. I got into the Yacht club and washed me & my shoes & trousers in the showers. After a towel dry and a bit of hair-dryer heat my clothes were actually dryer than when I was outside at least! And I had used my brolley...

Funniest was, after lunch we went back to the boat (Pete was teaching at Middle Island there in the afternoon so dropped me off as he changed). The cat came hurtling out to meet us, howling in outrage as usual, and when I picked her up her tummy was so fat & tight I told her she was turning into a piglet. It was only when I went over to the kitchen cockpit I realised why! The rain was so strong it had actually flooded in despite the big biminy tent stretched over everything. And had filled her litter tray! There was a tiny peak of sodden litter rising out of the trays' 'lake', with a tiny poo poked out the top like a palm tree! I couldn't stop laughing and as soon as I gave her dry litter she scrambled in and performed lots!

Coming back on Monday night was totally different - a lovely, calm (though full of mosquitos!!!) night, when it all looks really pretty. The Outward Bound group seem to be keeping their huge 'traditional junk' in Deep Water Bay, and most nights they put up their fake sails and turn on their fairy lights.

It looks gorgeous but my mini cam can't cope with night shots, especially as were were scooting home on Pingu, so I'll need to try again with my good camera at some point. I must look up about phosphorescence, actually, I have forgotten the details. Some nights it glows neon off the dinghy wake. And as we are now flushing the loo with sea-water (to save fresh water) I feel quite guilty to see these sparkling blue lights in the pan!


Domino is half rat, its official. Not only did she rapidly chew the end off my phone charger, 1 night she reduced a wire stretched along the end of the bed to small 2 inch sections. Luckily it wasn't live, or important (we THINK it may have been for the already defunct speakers), but we keep finding small jabbing sharp bit everywhere now. Then there was the arguements over who hadn't been replacing the loo roll when it ran out. Luckily I then found a wad (slightly nibbled) of it hidden amongst the towels in the loo area shelf where she likes to sit. Only after changing the bed sheets did I find the rest - she had been stealing lengths of loo roll and stuffing it down the side of the bed foam so she could dig and scrabble at it and reduce it to confetti............


And she goes totally mental for bits of cooked chestnuts! Not that she can chew them as they get stuck in her teeth, but she growls and scrabbles at the bag (fresh OR vacuum packed - aside from the gross red beans, chestnuts make up the majority of traditional sweet-based baking etc here) or the nut untl small bits break off. Oh and she loves sultanas. Odd creature. She terrified me on Tuesday by continually attacking 1 of the biminy ties I hadn't tied off - of course it only flapped, on the edge of the starboard roof, whenever there was a strong breeze. She would leap at it and as it was so choppy (Tuesday was a bank holiday so there were waves made by many annoying people on jet-skis, wake-boarding in the bay, and - how dare they- on & using the boats which are usually deserted that we moor amongst) that often there were splashes so I kept thinking she had gone overboard again. That evening when Pete got back, she realised she could actually get ON TOP of the biminy and run around clawing ripples in it. I think she thinks its a huge duvet cover, but bang goes any cover it gives her from the black kites if she keeps doing it in daylight!


The papers are talking about issuing warning codes for the pollution too, like they do in Vancouver. On the worst days there government workers are asked to walk to work or work from home, and asthma etc sufferers are warned off. Here they want to ban 'old' light-bulbs, though a lot of locals already use them due to the reduction in electricity bills they cause. Plus the air here is apparently off the scales used in Europe etc, so a 'good' day here would be the worst ever in the UK! Still no real sign of anyone kicking the Pearl Delta factory owners into gear, the main culprits. Did I say they will shut down those same factories before & during the Bejing Olympics though? If they can close them totally for that long, why not do something to reduce pollution but still keep them in production??


Oh, another 1 is all the things Bejing is introducing to 'train' its inhabitants for the Olympic trade. The 11th of every month is now 'queuing day', as it looks like 2 people standing in line (-um, ok!). They have to queue nicely for things all day rather than using their elbows to pile in (not a huge problem in HK due to colonial pasts). They even have queuing 'practice lines' which police can round up passers-by into! The other 1 I heard was when they started introducing toll booths on the new roads built for the olympics; they were all ready to start but weren't due to be manned until next week. A taxi passing through the empty toll gate screeched to a halt to avoid a policeman who leapt out and stopped him. His fascinated passenger then watched as the driver was ordered to go back and pay. When he pointed out to the police that there was no-one in the booth, no other way to pay, and that the toll wasn't opening until next week, he was told that IF there was a booth there, he HAD to stop and pay. So he reversed back , rolled down his window, and under police instruction, took out his wallet, pretended to remove money from it, which he then handed to the imaginary booth attendant. He was about to set off when the policeman reminded him to collect his imaginary change. Only when he did pick up invisible coins were they allowed to go on their way......


Read a FANTASTIC story in the national paper. Apparently a website in Japan had been selling expensive pedigree poodles to rich people there. One client, an actress, was being interviewed on TV and mentioned she had just got a new pet. She complained she couldn't get it to eat its dog food, sit, or bark, and when asked produced photos. The stunned TV host turned to her and said, "But that's not a poodle its a SHEEP." It seems another dopey customer only found out she'd been duped when she took her 'poodle' to be groomed. The beautician complained she COULDN't trim its claws as it didn't have any, it had hooves.........
You really do wonder about some people, don't you? Fair enough maybe they are city bred, but every kid sees books/ cartoons with farm animals in at SOME point!

What else. I got sent to 2 different physio's by the hospital, to do with my arm. 1 of them worked in a therapy room that reminded me of my pre-O'levels design & technology rooms.
It was all wooden work benches with old metal G clamps and fixed saws..... I'm hoping for physical therapy/ exercises rather than removing limbs! Still, my wrist is finally improving after 2 months, so they think it was ripped tendons or something. I'm still supposed to wear my splinty thing but apart from making locals extremely helpful & polite when I'm am out in town, its a pain in the backside. I found a wing from what I'm pretty sure is a lychee lantern bug on the steps down to the ferry skiff on my way home. As discarded wings usually mean a big spider has flicked them off to get at a juicy bug body, I didn't search for the rest of it too hard! but they are amazing bugs - Pete saw a tree (famous for it) coated in them when he was living on the other side of Lamma.


I was looking out for a copy of the nail decorating magazine I promised I would send to Gran Fin's housekeeper/ friend, as her daughter is into nail art. Finally got 1 and OMG the extreme designs are MAD. Admittedly there are loads of more normal, pretty ones (if very detailed, elaborate and on freakishly long false nails). But have a look - HOW can you do anything with pompoms, large rings or stars stuck to the end of your fingers?

Going to the loo, putting in contacts or even glasses must be dangerous, let along nose picking (a VERY popular habit out here). Why would you want replicas of SUSHI stuck on your hands?? Weirdest of all is definitely the ones painted to look like sores, scratches and - YUK - as if the nails had been ripped out. Um........no.


I have been trying to get some new faces done for a bunch of competitions I am in - am still trying to think of 1 for the convention/ face painter of the year this November - 'Wild in the Jungle' is the theme. I have had a few tries at painting myself onboard. As the only chair near a work surface is the funny swing out stool at the 'chart' area (which can't be fixed in place and lurches unexpectedly) I was not doing me best. Added to that were waves and a small cat who was desperate to 1) drink the paint-filled water, 2) eat my (expensive) brushes, 30 steal and shred my sponges, 4) sniff and stand in all my paints.
Some of the colours are not coping well with the heat & humidity & have gone a bit gloopy. I went to get clean water and returned to find multi-coloured paw prints over the entire starboard hull - work-tops, loo, books, floor.......luckily she had settled down on the end of the bed and tried to lick off her culpability before ruining my new sheets....


I had a lovely if financially useless booking on Thursday. A pupil from the school I did a Mardi Gras fair at rang up asking if I could decorate her & her fellow dancers for a cultural fair. I quite fancied it and hoped for some new pics for the competitions/ magazines, so agreed at a rate they could afford (bet they conned me!). As it was raining/ we had nowhere except her house or the boat to work, I went round to her flat at South Horizons. It is a 'garden city' development on the west coast of Ap Lei Chau, the tiny island attached to Aberdeen by a bridge that our old ferry from Lamma would cruise by on its way in. There are about 16 towers with beautiful landscaping, pools, plants, playgrounds and a swimming pool etc, at their base. I was shown into her flat by their helper - the smallest flat of any I have visited so far, but lovely - and waited until the girls arrived from school. They were doing an Indian dance and had on gorgeous saris - shades of Gordy & Ishi's wedding!
They (well, the resident mum!) just wanted small things by their eyes to match their clothes AND each other, which I did. 2 of the girls also wanted tattoos on their tummies. Luckily I have a brilliant new thing, a waterproof cosmetic glue I paint on free hand. They stood around until it dried and went clear, and then lay back on the sofa so I could apply cosmetic glitter. It lasts at least a week and is fairly stunning!


My new rainbow dyed T-shirts and bags for face-painting arrived, I'm really looking forward to wearing them!


Even if they do look a bit hippy - colourful and cooler by far than my tight black ones! Love the sparkly writing - got the lettering (face painter and my website, or face painting fairy, etc) larger on the back, and lower down so it won't be hidden by my wings. Sammy & I are going to do a weekend in a stunning old house in gorgeous woodlands with the people who made my green wings, Fairylove.com. I saw their website years ago, when the creator still worked out of a magical looking house in the New Zealand rainforest, and they inspired me to make my own wings. But I had such a good time with them/ loved their stuff so much, that when I finally met them at Latitude festival last year, I bought some. Sounds a bit happy clappy some of it, but you get to dress up and be mad all weekend, make your own wings and have an amazing fairy photoshoot too! So, I thought, well - its around my birthday...? Never growing up! If anyone else fancies doing it too, do say!

Chinese opera mask stickers
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.




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Sunday, April 22, 2007

April Diary

We finally have a permanent mooring - close to Middle Island nearer the northern Deep Water Bay end. It's a bit annoying in some ways as we are out of sight of the wee ferry skiff (so I have to rely on Pete collecting me in our dinghy at lunch etc), but that does mean we don't hear it buzzing around as much. Plus the screaming birds/ barking dogs are further off! It's a lot rougher though, whether from waves coming in the now very close gap between the Ocean Park spit and Middle Island, or the speeding jet-skiers and wake-boarders, I don't know. There is a reciprocal arrangement between RHKYC and the Aberdeen Yacht Club, whose small outpost we are now parked in front of, so allegedly IF I can spot/ flag down their taxi-boat, I can get a lift to Aberdeen. Might try that next laundry day! Annoyingly as we are further form the mainland I don't get such good internet reception - 2 bars if I'm lucky! And as we are only moored at the nose, we swing about with the winds, tide and invisible forces constantly, so keep getting totally out of range. Pete has cleverly (but not with Apples permission or sense of 'white' minimilism) cut my Macbook laptop power cord and converted it to fit to a 7v charger. Great, no more noisy intermittent power converters, I can plug into the boat battery points!


Typically, as soon as we got the mooring right beside Pete work, Pete got moved at work! So, Pete starts his new job officially on Monday, and has been told he can't be in shirts and flipflops (let alone bare feet) at the HQ. Luckily his cheap leather posh shoes he bought for a night out will do - they are sort of heel-less slip-ons, but look good. Work keep him supplied in a range of RHKYC/ whatever race has just started/ sponsored polo shirts, so its just trousers I have to sort. And a belt. I noticed today he's lost his again and was wearing a nice neon orange bit of cord, oh dear.
The pay isn't actually much better really, but he reckons he will like it, having suddenly decided he would like a bit more to do, and planning to keep in as much teaching as he can. But he has a much bigger desk space (oooh) thats all his own, in an office with just other sailing office people in it - and the big boss is his neighbour! Think I may go in/ meet him after work fairly often as the food is nicer there (bigger range), it has AC and comfy chair rooms, you get free towels in the shower, and it has a pool and small gym. Shame we decided not to moor there really, but it smelt like an open sewer and the light pollution kept me awake - I could read in bed at night with no lights on in the hull! I'm miffed with him though as the fancy dress theme for their next staff party is 'jeans'. Perfect, thought I, a chance to paint jeans or a denim shirt on him (there are prizes and there is no way he will even enter the karaoke or Mahjong competitions), but he absolutely refuses. I'd ask the rest of his office as its something I want to try/ add to my portfolio, but really, no-one else has as fit a body as he does so I doubt they'd be up for it!

One night we were lying in bed watching a DVD on our mini player (its sort of like a small laptop that only plays films - we can borrow dvds from the big club library or buy Video CDs for a few pounds in town) when a light lit up the night sky above us. Pete leapt up as he recognised it as an SOS flare going off. He thought it was just so someone could see something but as he brought his head back in the hatch and we settled down again, another went. He saw which boat it came from, moored accross the bay, and as 2 flares that colour are the international sign for help/ danger/ SOS etc, he went zooming off in our dinghy to see if they were OK. I lost sight of him in the gloom and started worrying that if they WERE sinking or whatever, he had no phone and I didn't know which boat it was! Luckily he came back after about 10 minutes - the idiot man onboard just wanted a lift to shore! Pete said the guy and the pretty oriental woman with him nearly knocked him over in their struggle to get on Pingu, and were acting very oddly - he thought maybe they were drunk. Anyway, when he returned he realised the guy hadn't phoned the police or whatever to tell them it wasn't an emergency. Queue our scramble on radio/ phone trying to contact the right people. Eventually we got put through to the police and Pete explained what had happened and that they didn't need to call out the coastguard, it wasn't an emergency. Thanks from them, and we hung up. They then called us back to clarify the situation with someone who spoke better english. Pete repeated. The next 2 returned calls they kept trying to clarify where the man was. At this point Pete started using words I have never heard him use to describe his action - as in obscure english (things like 'jaunt' and - which made things worse, so I kept poking him and trying to dictate in simple English. By the 7th call we had got them to understand the bloke had gone, but by then 2 police boats had turned up at the abandoned yacht and were circling its moorings searching with big spotlights. Queue another hour of calls from them, trying to work out where WE were in relation to them, before a police cutter 'found' us (they had been searching north of the ABC club outpost instead of east, where we were flashing our lights, waving torches and yelling at them). The officer came onboard and had to write down our statements!!! We got the feeling the boat guy was in trouble - still not clear why he didn't just ring the yacht Club and ask them for the ferry number or to send it! Anyway, the next day Pete got 3 more calls from the police, anoyther from the Yacht Clubs big boatyard boss, and then 1 from his sailing boss. We later heard the man in question was insisting he was on his boat 'alone'. And isn't married to an Oriental girl! Whoops! the fallout so far (apart from the police etc giving him a smacked wrist I should hope) is that the ferryman now annoys us by shining a massive spotlight around the moorings every so often when its dark, incase there is anyone wanting a lift!

The other day, we were walking down the 200 steps to get the ferry skiff accross to Pete Middle Island club (where we leave our dinghy to get back to the Shiralee) when I herad the WEIRDEST noises. Sort of someone blowing over a bottle (NOT a bittern you wildlife trust lot!) crossed with an organ and a bit of cartoon sounds. All in sort of harmonised but slightly staggered tones. Turns out its the frogs! Like no frog I ever heard before - very Jim Henson, should be gracing an animated puppet film! Very alien really - bit 'close encounters'! The ciccadas are starting agan too, not as musical as in Belize, far more raucus and grating. Hoping it will be quieter on the boat than where Pete lived last spring, as sometimes I couldn't actually make out what he was saying when he phoned me due to the racket coming from the bugs around his flat! And I found a wing from one of the lychee lantern bugs - dying to photograph them, they look stunning! Nasty thing is twice now we have spotted cockroaches flying out of nowhere and landing on the boat so hoping we always catch them in the act and no other iffy bugs get in that way. Urrgh flying spiders, there's a nightmare.


What else..Domino the kitten is literally coming on in leaps and bounds. After a few forays with her bravery encouraged by us being out there, at night, charging from one cockpit to the next, she now leaps around the mast, hanging off bits of rope and attacking the cords which dangle happily just for her. She has a major (worrying and annoyingly noisy) fetish for making plastic bags rustle, preferably by piling into them and then chewing them into submission. I have worries of her OD-ing on them like those poor turtles who think plastic bags are squid, and me being lynched by the SPCA vet after a post mortem on her bulging bag-filled tummy.
Her tail is odd and actually coils like a piglets when she stretches. Luckily it it also gives her far more entertainment than any cat we have ever had - she spends hours chasing it. What this says about her mental state/ ability I don't know but she really is surprised by its behaviour and winds Pete up by scrabbling round in circles on the duvet after it whenever it wakes her up at night. Yesterday we were reading in bed and she was charging up and down the cabin (she hurdles the high foot-partitions either side of the bathroom area as if she's a derby horse). Next thing the mozzy net fitted into the open hatch above our heads collapsed in on us (as it does - is a collapsible wooden dowling thing I am trying to redesign & replace as winds dump it onto us painfully). My squeak was answered triumphantly from above us and her wee alien-eyed head peered down, trying to gauge if she could jump in. This is now her favourite game, escaping out the cockpit hatch, scampering around the roof and terrifying me until she climbs in. She hasn't quite figured out how to get back in the cockpits when the mozzy netting is hanging in them though - she can push out of it easily but gets tangled in in trying to push in and just chews it until someone rescues her, which won't be doing much for its resistance to bugs! And she does squeaky wee whiney meows whenever we disturb her or she wakes up, as well as yowling frantically as us for no apparent reason (What's that you say? There's a boy fallen down the well, Lassy??) which is another thing I haven't met before. Fun though & we have only had her 2 weeks!


On a scarier note, I was reading on deck one morning and Domino was playing Starburst (old Super Choice game - run off from me to 1 point, kill it, charge back to me, head off to another target, etc) wen she suddenly froze at a new noise. One of the massive Black Kites (those birds of prey that replace seabirds here) had spotted her and started circling overhead and crying to a few others. I suppose she is about the size of a juicy rat, so tempting!!!! I'm making doubly sure that when we leave her during daylight she is shut in one of the cabins - pretty certain they don't hunt at night! Saying that after shutting the storm cover into the kitchen hatch and leaving her while Pete took me to Middle Island to have lunch with him & his course (kids), I got back, opened it up and couldn't find her. By the time I gave up, hoping she was hiding in there or REALLY asleep, and went over to the loo side, she was sat happily in that hull hatch chirping at me. I can only hope she managed to climb up and squeeze out the air gap - the other option is she has found the flaps that are air vents at the far ends of the hull, crawled out them and decided not to venture off the footwell there into the water, jumped up onto the solar panelled bit of of the hull, climbed up that, into the cockpit then crossed to the other hull as usual.


We have had a brief but welcome cold snap, after our first 'normal' hot day which left the cat & I panting in any shade we could find onboard. After a week of jumpers, blankets, kitten scrabbling to get inside jackets and hot tea the mozzies were back out in force tonight so I expect thats the end of it.Pete took down some vital sail ropes and put the biminy (tent thing) up on deck, really high - its great!!! But then of course the winds returned so its been taken down again until summer truly rrives and all winds stop till winter.

I have become addicted to fresh pineapple. Just as well as most of the fruit isn't great or tastes hideous (see the jackfruit/ ugly fruit Christmas experience). The stalls here sell it peeled in a sort of spiral fashion, so you can either slice off an eat or just take it like a massive messy corn on the cob and munch it. Gorgeous! Ugly fruit is back in season - you can smell it as soon as you reach built up aes, it reeks even in the open air stalls. Annoyed as after 2 attempts including maps and asking locals, we still haven't found the alleged supermarket in Repulse Bay. We spent 2 hours looking for it on the street listed today, and gave up to find the only place you can eat around there is a Pizza Hut! P reckons that is beacuse all the poeple who can afford to live around there either eat in with their own family chef or eat out in posh Central HK places - and their staff either eat in or wouldn't afford to eat out locally!


One of Petes junior instructors is the son of the family who own a massive farm/ garden centre just near Aberdeen Tunnel (prime residential land!) which may be useful. In our quest to be green & survive the end of the world (? - thought it was only me who had read all the Apocalyptic sci-fi))we are thinking of getting a few ducks and growing some veg on board. I loved the ducklings we had in Suffolk, they returned to hand feed eve when re-released to the wild - I bet domesticated species would be even tamer. AND they lay longer than chickens AND could swim around the boat. A fresh supply of lettuce is needed - we are really low on veg & green intake, as we don't have a fridge, most is horrible or we aren't sure how to cook/ eat it from the shops, and what we do recognise is imported from the EU or USA (Bad - air miles). I think we are planning to end up a cross between Costner's boat in Waterworld and a sort of non-breeding Ark.


Don't know what I have done to my left wrist - for a change it's not Carpel Tunnel in my right! I did land on my left heavily one night 2 weeks ago when the steps detached as I was climbing out of the bed hull, but it only started hurting during the rugby 7's. Doesn't feel at all like carped tunnel, must find a doctor!I got sent to A&E by Pete the week after the rugby - we can't find a doctor locally now, and I hadn't slept a few nights as my wrist hurt when I lay down/ he mived/ I moved/ the cat sneezed...... Turns out I have a sprained wrist & a dislocated thumb. A&E was amazing - very quick & quiet despite signs warning it could take hours minimum! I was registered, triaged, seen, X-rayed, fixed and given painkillers in under an hour for less then HKD$100. The nice doctor popped my thumb back (luckily I don't think his amazing english was up to what I said then) and gave me a sling to go with the elasticated copped wrist bandage I already had. I got home and Domino went mental for the cotton triangular sling - dragged it off and 'killed' it for over an hour. Maybe some hospital smell is on it she likes. I can't get it back she growled and hauled it into the small end of the hull I can't reach! Unimpressed as I lost the painkillers on my trip home! I went back again 2 weeks later as its no better - another round of X-rays and I'm being sent to the specialist next week.But this time I have 3 types of pain-klillers, whee! At the mo I have a very fetching hard pink holey thing the nurses in the occupational therapy unit molded to my hand & arm with thermoplastic for me. I feel a bit like a female dalek. Pete's been sweet and luckily all my bookings were at the weekend when he was off to help me carry & set up, or this week the only party I did was at his club. the Bankers Club hosted a 4th birthday for a mainly chinese crowd of 50 kids and their parents - myself and Ben the clown (been at a party with hime before) being the only Brit/ europeans. I nearly went mad as all but 4 of the kids only wanted hand art - used to horrible paints which don't wash off - and thats SO time consuming, fiddly and BORING for me. Especially with dads making unhelpful comments, like 'ask for Buzz Lightyear'. They have NO idea.........And the market on Sunday was a bit dead - plus BILING and I didn't realise I had scorched the back of my neck, ouch. Even with my DIY umbrella shade (brollies here are all silver coated fabric inside to stop rays too) my paints melted.


Latest news is Domino took a swim while Pete & his mum (stopped over for a day on her way to NZ) were on deck. Wierdest noises ever, and she nearly pulled herself onto the dinghy before Pete fished her out.
Awww! Her ears were so flat back she looked as if we'd snipped them off! Still, with a bit of help from me & a towel she was clean & dry within an hour. We'd expected he to cower indoors for a few days but she was running around on deck as soon as she was fluffy again. Can only hope she learnt her lesson (saves me doing the aversion therapy thing!) and wonder what tempted her over the edge...........We now have a small floating panel trailing off 1 hull in the hope she can get on that if the dinghy isn't there.

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