Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Sailing and Seas Jan 08

We have been surrounded by 10000's of tiny round blobs of algae the last few weeks. Hard to photograph but looks amazing, like a sea of tapioca...


Pete has spent the last few month stressing and spending far too much time in the office/ not sleeping as he was landed with organising the InterSchools regatta. Unlike the usual committee he had none of the contacts etc so we were trawling arounf HK quite often finding the right companies to make stuff we needed. Rather than tiny tacky looking cups which looked like they were made out of foil, we decided on lead crystal electroplated trophies which were etched to show off the amazing colours.
The same company made tiny triangular flags too. Pete also convinced the board that printed souvenir towels were a useful free gift (a lot of companies sponsor this event by printing up sailing shirts etc for it, and 1 did the towels).



Each school can enter as many teams as it wants. There are 6 (or more if they want to swap in different kids on each race) per team, sailing in pairs. Luckily/ sadly 1 school did not enter this year which meant it was a far shorter list to let every team sail against every other team. This is maybe because it was Carolyn's school, the lady I did the frog on, and she was absent due to a rather nasty holiday. She & her 2 teenage sons & hubby & a sailing mate took their beautiful new yacht over to the Phillipines and were sailing it back when their mast ripped off in high winds & waves. From what we can gather, motoring on with the bilge pumps keeping them afloat, they eventually radioed for help as they were running low on petrol and water. They were too far from either land mass for helicopters, but to tankers passing by started searching. One eventually found them and started winching them onboard, I imagine a terrifying sight as those tankers are usually at least 7 stories high just to the deck level! In the process her husband got hurt, but she & the boat boy were left till last. In the storm their yacht was about to be crushed by the tanker so they leapt aboard, and he was immediately sucked towards the giant 11 meter high propeller. She later found his chewed up life jacket and thought he was dead. The crew lost her in the waves, and as it was such a massive tanker it took them over an hour to turn round and go back. By then she had floated off into the distance, her jacket was sinking and she thought she was going to die. Then, amazingly, she found the boat boy and they started slowly drowning together. At the last minute they were found after the crew spotted a cannister containing the families valuables floating near her. They were saved, but when taking off her husband's storm gear, discovered he was badly injured with blood spurting everywhere, so he spent a long time in hospital. Thats the 3rd story of disaster on the HK -Phillipnes sail I have heard, Tim and Pete were EXTREMELY lucky...


So, anyway, there were less teams than usual sailing. We have had unseasonably cold & wet weather, so Pete moved the catering section which is usually down on the main hard standing up to the middle floor where there are some indoor areas. he also put the DJ/ PA system there.
I was handing out the towels, shirts, water etc to the teams as they arrived up there, and after the briefing (by an Olympic sailing judge no less) off they went.
They were sailing in pairs on wee Topaz boats, starting near our boat, heading towards Deep Water Bay, then back down to Middle Island and finishing opposite our boat which was the official 'finish boat' and had been tied at both ends.
I warned the ladies doing the final scores about the noisy ship's cat, but when I went over Domino had not surfaced. I soon realised every time she got nosey enough to come up and meow, a race would finish (2 every 10 or so minutes) and the winner of each race got a blast from an air horn as they crossed the finish line. So she was NOT impressed! Pus it was freezing - I gave the ladies duvets to wrap up in. They did say it was the best finish boat ever for comfort (loo etc!) and refused to swap to the start boat when asked! I stayed to take pics for Peter.



HK Sea School, which I think is generally for the not-so-clever kids, usually won every race, often taking 1st, 2nd and 3rd with their 3 teams. But I think they also have to go sailing nearly every day which most of the other schools only do once a week, if that! It was funny, they looked almost military, in matching logo-d wetsuits and waterproofs, but they had the tiniest kids...



To keep those waiting onshore amused, Pete & co had planned a 'Top Gear' style 'Stig' race in a Laser boat. They called it the Bowne Blaster after the main sponsor (no blasting though, no wind!).
We gave up on finding 4 motorbike helmets so in the end Pete and his predeccessor Richard were each to set the times to beat. (Richard did Petes job for a few years a while back then quit to try and get into the Olympics sailing with his mate - sadly they were just knocked out so he is back and looking for a job, so works for Pete just now). The lady I was on the finish boat was really pleased as Pete picked one of her son's as his team mate - as she correctly guessed her son was useful as he was so light- and their time of 10 minutes (there was no wind all weekend!) was unbeaten. Apart from by rowing coach Johnny whose 3 minute record was later disqualified b the Olympic Judge Ronnie 'the Kraken' MaCracken as he was using illegal propulsion (ie not a sail!).



I can't believe they kept eating ice cream AND running around barefoot in shorts, but I suppose all the rugby etc games warmed them up!
We were kept busy delivering hot drinks to the volunteers, but messyist was the swapovers.
They soon realised sailing 12 boats to the dock and back every race tripled the time it took to swap teams, so they started ferrying the kids out and swapping them onto the boats from the ribs.

Entertainment also came from a portuguese (?) tanker using the same radio channel as us for a while...


Richard did the commentating which was fabulous, even interviewing different schools and kids,
whilst the DJ was Kevin who is the Sailing Coach for Aberdeen Yacht Club. The finale was the top pair from each school team racing right around Middle Island, with a continuous feedback for the spectators who didn't fit into the following ribs by mobile phone over the PA.


The Sea School won, and the prizes were liked though one did drop and crack his straight away! Still, a big relief for Peter now its over.......and he can catch up on his proper work!


But I think the luckiest was the moth that I spotted on a riser of the ramp leading up from the docks as we arrived in the morning. I meant to go and move it but it survived 48 kids thumping up and down the ramp every 15 minutes all day!
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Jan 08 - Back to work!

The next few days we were mainly fixing & decorating the new boat. Pete was sulking as Middle Island was all being scraped and repainted too so he couldn’t avoid fumes!
I gave up on finding funky handles and bodged my own.
Pete & Brian managed to remove the massive useless TV
(very like that kids TV show with the useless brothers- whats it called? To me, to you, that pair).
They finally got the old termite-eaten sliding door out but we can’t get a new one in without deconstructing the boat. Poor Brian removed the wall panel again to fix the mess the door had made, then screwed it back on to realise he’d lost the cat. After he had crawled through the bilges, engines etc searching for her and even checked overboard, she finally deigned a few small mews. And of course was screwed into the wall panel which had to come off AGAIN. Pest she is sometimes.

Brian took us for dinner in Stanley 1 night, and we ended up at a traditional banqueting hall. The table are always round with straight backed no-armed chairs, and Chinese families can pack a huge number around them. We hadn’t a clue what half the stuff was and the manager was a bit concerned about what we had ordered.
We didn’t know why until it turned up – duck for 1 was a whole duck and had us all stuffed! The bubbling pot thing with the side dish of veggies we liked until a horrified waitress came over to show us how we should be cooking the veg in the bubbling sauces, etc.
Another night we went to the lovely tapas place above the Stanley maritime museum which is in a historic building they moved brick by brick from another site. I had that Wagu (?) beef they are always on about which was ‘nice’ but not worth the hype/ price.
They had a BRILLIANT Philippino band doing Spanish-styled songs. They had done most of our faves by the time we were asked to pick one, so Pete got them to do “felis navidas’ which is sort of our song from the 1st Christmas we had together in Belize/ Mexico. I asked for Hotel California as I always recall how that quiet dweeby Army sailing instructor could cut dead a riot in the bar at Cottage colony by pulling out his guitar and singing that. So Pete is inspired to learn it – one of our entertainments in HK (as we have only the dvd player at night) is for him to play & me to sing and we run out of stuff we both want to learn quite fast!

Then one morning Pete woke up at about 6 and went off. I dozed to be woken up by a very worried cat and weird bumping noises.

He’d moved the new boat and tied it up to the cat, so I could start moving onboard! Which I began to do, dragging stuff over with the cat experimentally leaping back and forth from boat to boat.
When I started sorting out the new bedroom she came over with me and it all went ominously quiet. When I realised I went looking, and found her in the new kitchen with a small unfledged baby bird in her mouth.
I don’t know who was in greater shock! I rescued it and sat it in an open box with water in the catamaran (it died and got a burial at sea). Any suggestions? Maybe a black kite dropped it – think they often grab each others meal?At any rate the cats chitterings at birds in rigging has taken on a new level of desparation now she knows there are mall eadible ones she can actually taste....

Saturday I got booked for a bodypainting gig a couple of days later. I wasn’t happy as that wasn’t enough time to order the paint colours they wanted from the UK. I pointed out that plain matt coloured bodies look rubbish unless its white or black, metallic is better, but they did not book me early enough to arrange it all properly. I also didn’t have an accurate colour chart from the strange photos they sent of what they wanted – all they had done was photoshop scenes (a woman in a bikini in a bath, with a red layer put over it, a man in an office in a suit, all made to look silver etc). I asked the agent for actual samples but that didn’t happen so I had to go as close as I could from my laptop printout which I TOLD him was probably totally different from theirs. I knew paints I could get in HK were not good stuff – safe, yes, but horrible to use and rubbish at staying on. Plus in the end I could not get enough to do a whole body AND clothes in each colour…..despite myself ( and all the other body painters, I expect) complaining, the shop only keeps 1 or 2 of each in stock! They wanted 4 models to match 4 new cameras being launched on the Star ferry Pier. We pointed out it was freezing and they couldn’t expect models to stand in just paint & bikinis for several hours. They emailed pics of an all in one shiny lycra gimp suit which made me pee myself, but luckily decided on leotards with short legs in the end. These had to be made to measure and did not arrive from China till Tuesday. 2 of them I coated with bodypaint that night, which was very streaky and not the same colour as it would be on skin. Oh dear...

The lovely NZ guy was on time, but his leotard hung off him like a sack despite his bulging muscles, so he agreed to wear his underwear (we had to sew up a ripped seam) and let us paint him all over. (I had 3 assistants who had never done body painting beofre but were keen to try). I started turning him silver, and handed him over to an assistant when she arrived. Sadly I was not able to get enough of the good silver mixer & powder, so said to do his body with that and his clothes with the cake paint I had to hope the difference did not show too much. I told him he could paint his own crotch area if he liked (he preferred that)
but what I didn’t get a chance to check, as time was so short, was how she did the rest of him. Not up to the standard I like, it was very streaky, and as he had obviously had time to concentrate on his ‘bits’ and she had to rush over the rest of him, his crotch looked like a silver codpiece with the rest of his underwear having far less paint on it. Ooh dear!


Then the 2 female dancers turned up and we began painting them – their leotards fit and were the red and blue I had done the night before. The last male, who was actually a fashion model, was very late and had no underwear on when he arrived. I got the girls to start painting him black from the waist up and Zani’s assistant ran out to buy black underwear as soon as the shops opened. Worst was that as I suspected it wasn’t red at all but a sort of burgundy colour the camera was, our girl clashed beautifully.
The blue paint was awful and continually rubbed off around the seams and joints. 10 minutes before launch the client said he wanted the JVC logo painted on and I reused unless THEY made a small stencil (which they did and I used).
So not exactly smooth gig!


Our models had to pose on a big stage for 30 minutes – weird, no cameras or anything, just the JVC logo in the background – the press were a bit bemused!
They were hustled off, zipped round the back and set up along a balcony lined up along the waterfront with all the cameras and gadgets. Without the promised heaters!
( I got a bit worried a couple of them were warming up with free drinks when they weren't on show!).After a stage show with 4 more models (a wee girl in a blue wetsuit with the waterproof casing for the camera, a guy in a black suit, a poser in a burgundy ball dress and a young woman in a silver dress so short her knickers showed whenever she had to use her hands to pose the camera and let go of her hem) strutted a bit then they dropped the curtain to reveal the cameras along the balcony.
We were given lunch, then I had to repair the paintwork This was repeated later for the VIPs.
Hmmm. Strange. I had to spend a while cleaning off the multicoloured fingerprints all over their beautiful white loos! Still, the client was very pleased with the men, a least, and we did the best we could at short notice....


Oh and the pro photos from the body I did in the UK last summer finally arrived. Must adjust the colours, seem a bit pale...

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Monday, February 04, 2008

Christmas Day, Hogmany, New year Day, 2007

I worked right over Christmas.


Christmas Eve I was painting until late in a totally empty Soho (bit pointless!). The morning we opened our prezzies on board though I know I have a few more to find that various people posted/ I brought back with me - they will turn up as we move I expect! Thank you all, btw.


The day itself was quite funny – I had to paint at the Football Club (next to Happy Valley Race course) all day. Getting there, despite my worries, was easy – deserted streets but loads of empty taxis!

I have done a few parties in their function rooms before but hadn’t realised how large their site was. I was on the 3rd (?) floor landing, between the corridor that led to their main café (and a huge buffet around the massive swimming pool), and their posher restaurant. As it was a gig I was doing for Zani I couldn’t hand out my card, which was a pain as people kept asking for my number, and his assistant would just give them a scrap of paper with his number scribbled on which I think looks awful! But then again a lot of people knew me from other events of the newspaper.


So, all morning I was decorating kids outside their main restaurant, dribbling at the smell of 100’s of pre-ordered Christmas dinners which were being collected in big cardboard hampers by members who had pre-ordered them, as well as getting whiffs of the stuff being eaten next door to me. Pete & Sue climbed over the Hong Kong ridge and then met Clemet somewhere. When I got my lunch break, I hid my gear in the store room I was told to and had Clement (on my mobile) direct the taxi driver to a small café in Wan Chai where he had taken Pete & Sue. I climbed put of the taxi, still in full Xmas fairy face, dress & wings, to a packed street with a huge queue waiting to get into the café or to collect food orders from it. The only spare seat in the tiny place was beside Clement, luckily. But I got a chorus of ‘WAAAAH!s’ (local version of ‘OOOh!) and a round of applause from the queue & café as I came in. Which had me blushing under my paint but was very sweet! And there was lots of surreptitious photo taking of me as we ate the awful strong milky ‘tea’ they like and lovely hot egg tarts. Clement teaching Pete to order in cantonese amused them as well...


Then we walked to a Mexican for our very late ‘lunch’. It was freaky as even along the main roads the crowds were sparse and you could actually see PAVEMENT around yourself – most unusual! The Mexican did lovely but HUGE portions and the best lime sodas I have had in ages. We liked the bubbling stuff in big carved lava pots they did! Pete liked the ‘ladies’ loitering outside all the ‘dance clubs’ along that street too…
I had to dive into a taxi and head back to my second shift at the Football Club. They had put me in a deserted corridor behind the café this time, which was annoying, as people couldn’t find me; I had to trawl the tables for customers quite a lot! At the end the café manager said we could help ourselves, so we raided the massive buffet they were packing away. I DID manage to get a bit of turkey & cranberry, but no potatoes were in sight. The others were diving into all sorts of sushi and cooked fish but I wanted traditional! I did manage to find Christmas pud too and was stuffed. Of course this was at about 10pm so not great for my sugar levels! There were lots of taxis again – I love HK when it’s as easy to get around as that!

Sue left a couple of days later, and Brian arrived. I was still painting most days for the Tourist Board, including several up at the Peak Tower.
I mentioned to the tourism staff they they could do with checking out their sites – a couple of days running I was in a mall in east Kowloon, which seemed to sell mainly posh suitcases. So it was not exactly brimming with children.
- this is the only child we met there in 2 days! Or customers of any description. I ended up getting the management to let me decorate the hands of all the wistful mall ‘info’ ladies who had been gazing sadly from their booths after 1 manager said not they could NOT have their faces done.
The second day all the tourism staff decided they wanted full faces
and we hung around outside the mall entrance like some sort of face painted tong wanting to mug passers by….


Pete’s cousin Tom arrived the same day as Brian – he’s been teaching English in China for years but now has swapped to Korea. he needed shoes (Korea having even less choice for big feet than HK) so he & Brian hit the shops whilst Peter & I worked. We had a look at all the events on for Hogmany. There were to be fireworks & a piper at Petes main club but you had to book & pay for it.
There were loads of very pricey 'special' nights on in dance clubs. There were special public dance displays
, but to tell the truth nothing grabbed us and most needed us to have posh clothes, lots of money and a tolerance for huge crowds and loud noises. So, New Years Eve when I finished painting, they were waiting in a bar on the same road as the Mexican we went to for Xmas day dinner. Which had a large open front above the street where they were admiring the view.
Of the same dance club ladies…… but the music was great, it was just so nice to hear normal old rock etc hits, my fave! I hate they way they always get converted into mandarin/ Cantonese and then warbled by some drippy Chinese female singer, which is how most western sings get played here.


So, we had pub food, beers (for them) and nice views (for them)
until it got VERY cold and Brian was dancing with my granny shopping trolley full of kit.
As we had dozens of bottles of the cheap rum Pete & Tim bought in the Phillippines onboard, I managed to sped over a tenner on cola and chocolate (quite a feat in HK) to take back to the boat. We huddled out of the wind but then I went off for a snooze, and the 3 boys decided to crash the party being held at Middle Island. That was in full swing until the small hours, but the cat & I huddled under our sleeping bags until they came back a bit the worse for wear. We stuck Tom in the kitchen hull, and Brian, being used to boats (Tom isn’t) had the honour of the first nights sleep on Naughty Boy.

The next morning as I was getting into my fairy dress, there was a splat and a sodden ships cat leapt down into the cabin looking like a bit of dead rat and started washing herself in a vain attempt to dry off.
When I yelled, a very surprised Pete said he’d just been drinking a cup of tea in the other cockpit when the cat had zoomed past him, SWIMMING along the side of the hull, nipped round to the back of the hull and dolphin-leaped out of the water and scurried away. He said she looked as if she knew exactly what she was doing. We asked the coxuns who run the ferryboat all day, and they said yes she does it a lot. They don’t have/ know cats so they thought she fell in for fun, it was a normal thing! So I am feeling very guilty as she doesn’t, and it isn’t and thank goodness she must have only done it when the wind and current were slow enough to let her get on the back of the boat! We took her over to have a look at the new boat in Pingu that evening, and though she didn’t like the ride she was soon exploring under the floors…luckily she came out again!
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