Thursday, October 19, 2006

7th Letter - Storms, Spiders & Giant bugs

I'm fed up of living out of my (giant) suitcase, and the final straw was pulling on a skirt this morning that I had left on the top of it (clean) and finding a gecko poo on it. Not that bothered as they are mouse sized poos, but it was annoying! Cheeky creatures. So time to get storeage sorted.

After not much luck in local chains, I finally found an IKEA in Central. Its odd, lots of posh/ big places seem to have their stores UNDER posh hotels, as Ikea does.......no sign on the street, either! Despite not having the usual ware-house sized shop as in the UK, it was just as disorientating and still seemed huge. The local expats were all wrong, as it had 1 f flat white sheet (can't use white as I so often drip blood when I inject!) and everything else was fitted sheets as the rest of HK's bedding shops sell! I could cry - I usually hate sheets, but its all we can stand just now in this heat, as I have to be wrapped in something or I can't sleep. Bet by the time Mum/ Petes sis visit it will be duvet/ blanket weather so its not even worth getting them to ship me some out......oh well! But I did get a nice light mesh covered zip-up drawer unit (can carry it up that hill AND it will help keep geckos out but let air in so clothes don't go mouldier). Had lovely evening putting it together and sorting our clothes......Pete typically had stuffed all his gear, smart, casual, wetsuit/ sailing gear and all, in his suitcase when he moved and only really used the top layer. So everything I pulled out from under there was sandy AND mouldy - not that he hopefully put in wet wetsuits, but even his books/ passport went mouldy in the humidity! So another trip to the laundrettes is due, I think. Nice that you just drop it all off & collect it clean & dry (unlike most blokes I knew at Uni we actually washed ours ourselves rather than use the service wash option), but I swear they boil it all up, I have never seen clothes fade so fast before!

Rain has been making everything VERY damp - its great, like the big Belize storms sweeping in, but less nice to be out in. Apparently there are different colour-coded warnings (and for typhoons) - while I was safely holed up with the de-humidifer/ AC on this weekend, Pete was trapped in a classroom with 20 sulking kids as they weren't allowed to sail in a Red Rain warning- 50mm of rain/ hour. The Red rainstorm missed his Middle Island, but even the edge of it was enough.
Poor Pete had to try to get them interested in theory stuff for several hours, ick....and then had to try to get them to bail out their filled-up boats which took most half an hour! It is noisy enough to wake us up with a jump during the night when it starts, but the sudden thunder claps are worse! It started pouring as I left for the ferry on Monday, luckily I saw and took the (7-11 - classy!) golf brolly & big tough Teva sandals on, as I could see the torrent rushing down towards the flat on our gently sloping path. The actual 99 steps were submerged & I was getting paranoid, paddling down the invisible steps, as there are lots of nice government signs up about the risk of landslips there. Though really I was more concerned with the possibility of those giant evil path-side spiders getting washed loose and grabbing onto my ankles as they passed by. Thankfully the pot-bellied pig someone keeps half-way up the steps is set back a little so the tide of rain scouring out his smelly pen was heading down through the brush rather than the path.

One good thing was that getting soaked took all the creases out of my clothes as we don't have an iron......or an ironing board, although I have seen cute ones the size of a flattened fore-arm which is all most locals use! But I was cold all day, drawback of AC's. Wierdest was in the city/ shops - nearly all are marble or granite or tile floored, very slippery when wet. So lots of little astroturf rugs appeared, or shop people mopping madly behind every customer entering as if the wet shoes were an ice-curling competition being viewed in reverse. Lots of entrances had sprouted funny metal poles with curved tops like the ones you tie wire or plastic onto to pen in livestock or edge a showring, with plastic strips hung on the tips. I finally realised they were plastic brolly tube bags, to slip over your soggy umbrella so you don't drip in the elevators etc. They even do different sizes for folding, golf, kids ones......wow!


I know I have been quite shocked by the lack of H& Safety in some areas, but we got a very educational film on the bus TV yesterday - how to fix and maintain a public lift properly - a nice little man in his white safety gear, with all this massive jaws-of-life type equipment to hold the doors open, properly placed signs to warn the public not to come in, how to access the control wires & everything. Without sound of course. Not the sort of thing you want shown in the UK, educating the vandals on how to do SERIOUS lift damage! Today they were showing a couple building some sort of computer to watch TV & music through. Lovely and simple - slow pan past a huge pile of computer electronic boards, casings, plugs etc, a swift shot of the bloke grinning with a huge handful of multi-coloured electronic wires, a smile from the vacant girl, mad activity as he slotted everything together, and VOILA, a showgirl 'look at what we have for you today' hand gesture from the adoring girl and another slow shot of the fantastic now working electronic thing. Either the locals are REALLY good at lip-reading and picking up new skills rapidly, or the buses at certain times are full of workers (in mufti obviously) in those industries.

The public mini buses have a big red electronic sign showing how fast the driver is going, that beeps & flashes if they go over the speed limit. Not sure if the double deckers do, I never sit near the front to notice. What I do notice from them is the "how many road accidents in HK this year" sign as we enter the Aberdeen tunnel that cuts through the mountains towards Central and the North coast of HK. I'm hoping it has an extra '0' in by mistake - last years total was 180006!!!! Petes already seen several sports cars crash whilst waiting for buses, and every time there is little sympathy from locals. There are noticeably NO old banger as in the UK - if its a private car, its either a huge shiny people mover (most now dwarf the minibuses) or a sports car. (Even taxis are fairly flash, and at certain times they all pile into garages to get cleaned up....... I also found they charge you extra for having suitcases in the boot, so if they fit, take them inside with you to cut costs!). My stop for my language school is just past all the posh car shops (all built in the ground floors of skyscrapers) - they even do kiddy sized working Porsches. Oh and for Gee/ Michelle - I nearly had my foot run over by a REALLY COOL car last week. Apologies (can hear you swearing) as I have no idea what it was, but get this, I DID notice it was totally made of carbon fibre! But not a convertible/ open like your old one, Gee.


Does anyone know if giant centipedes are VERY poisonous? I seem to remember they are, and at least cause swollen ankles/ legs. I finally saw a half-squashed one at the steps today, twitching at the rear as its squashed head was being eaten by ants. They are big, it looked like a 4 inch long hot dog with lots of crabs middle legs stuck in it. Pete saw one chopping apart a frog - totally dismembered it in a few minutes he said! The islanders squash them as soon as they see them which I take it means they are not friendly. The millipedes so far are smaller than Kate J's friends & the ones in Africa, but I don't know if they get bigger here. Talking of sausages, Pete got all excited as he found what he thought was german/ italian style garlic sausage and bought a load home. Sadly it seems it was made out of fish paste and squid, not quite as nice, so we have it mouldering in the fridge. But I LOVE seaweed snacks - basically flat bubbly green strips of the same stuff the shredded seaweed UK chinese takeaways give you - and they are quite healthy!

Yummy salty seaweed snack
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.



Pet shops here are a bit traumatic - lots of kittens/ puppies in tiny wire or plastic cages stacked on each other. I have no idea if they get let into bigger spaces to play or not - I hope so. But there are LOADS of stores with pet gear etc, their ownwers certainly spend enough once they have them! Fish pets are massively popular too, we had a great time gawping at and poking (we thought one of the terrapins was drowning - turned out it was just depressed) all sorts of sealife. Lots of funky bright fish, guppies and things a bit like green spotted cowfish/ box fish.....I hope to ID them, pretty!
But also EDIBLE fish from baby-fry size up, that you can rear yourself until you eat them - Petes dream of aquaponics may happen! (And the other way round too - saw a fishmongers with what I'm sure were parrot fish leaping out of their box into the lobster tank next door). Again I'm not sure if they were legally caught/ sold. Saw my first bloke taking his caged songbird for a walk today, happily gabbling at it as he wandered around. A lot of stall holders have their birds with them, and Pete got quite attched to the talking parrots (no idea what they were saying tho) in a bird shop...I was more impressed by the ultra fluffy, far cheaper and shorter-living funny coloured hamsters!

Love Trina/ Catx

PS . Urrgh worst nightmare nearly happened! Pete was late for work today as there was a yellow rain warning up ( I couldn't sleep all night, the rain was so loud) and he couldn't see to walk down in the rain so got a later ferry. By the time I was ready to go it said 'red warning' on the internet, meaning I should listen to local& TV radio for instructions. As I had tried several times to get Pete to explain what I should do & he forgot we don't have TV/ radio, I was a bit panicked, especially as he still hadn't reached his office so I presumed was holed up in a typhoon shelter or drowned or something. I was resigned to a day off school but then he rang & said I COULD still go. I dashed out in short rain-break, to spot a big curled twiggy looking thing shaped like one of those octopus head massagers (sort of a stiff octpus/ hand shape)in the middle of the steps near the top. Then it twitched & i saw the spots on it - it WAS a big half drowned spider!!!!!! Pegged it down the rest of the steps to find I was the only one waiting for the ferry, the other 20+ locals had stayed at home.......hmm. Not a great trip, the plastic boat sides were down to stop rain blowing in but the canvas roof leaked like mad and it was very rough. (Well, for me it was!). Freezing as no Lochie to gallantly attempt to keep me warm as in Mombasa boats! Called Pete at the other end to say I didn't like living on the island as i often start/ finish my days seasick, and I wasn't using the stairs during rainstorms again unless I was wearing waders. He says its all in my head. And that our ferry was the only one that kept going during red storms or higher as it didn't have insurance anyway!!!!!! And then a neighbour told me something went wrong with the spiders this year, there are usually 100s, everywhere, and this year they are really rare. Oh my gods.................
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No 6- Cantonese Lessons & Food; House Geckos

I started learning Cantonese last Tuesday, which means I get the 11.45 ferry, grab lunch before or after the double decker (buses are the same make/ colour as UK but shorter with skinnier seats - we keep whacking our heads on the ceilings at the back) trip to Wan Chai. I usually sit in the 'language lab' -a few chairs against a wall shelf with tape-players on it - and try to remember what we learned. Then lessons 2-4 pm, with 4 others who have all either grown up in HK or lived here for years, then I have another go at the tapes or wander around Wan Chai until I get the bus back from under the dreaded immigration tower (they rang - Pete forgot to put in most of the bits he needed to prove he can support me so another delay on my visa!) to meet Pete with take-away for the 6.45 ferry home if we are lucky, or dinner if we aren't. Bit of a scare on Thursday night, as on the last ferry home Pete realised what he thought was 50 dollars was only 20, so not enough to pay for us home and back to HK the next morning. No shops, banks etc on Lamma Island where we live, no other ferries..spent a while searching pockets, couch etc and scraped together shrapnel for 1 ticket and 1 dollar 60 cents short of the second. As they knew him better he left with the short lot first- apparently dumped the lot in the guys hand (he collects half way accross the channel) ready to beg not to be chucked overboard/ let them keep his watch till he came back with cash, etc, but the collector didn't even check it! My problem was having no cash for food at lunch/ no food in the house, but I remembered that the Oyster card we charge up to use on transport is accepted for stuff in 7-11 corner shops. I got shouted at though - she kept yelling 'CASH!!!" and I kept saying "NO CASH!!!" until the 3rd time I emptied my purse to show her no cash, after which she let me beep through my oyster card. Think I got an awkward lady, Pete said he never has a problem using his for snacks!


Cantonese - its really hard! Our teacher is called BoBo (!) and we sit in a tiny room with a big oval dining table and a whiteboard in the Learning Centre. The first day (and now) we were all totally missing some of the noises she made - a lot of the verbs etc have an 'mmm' sound added in front of them to change from positive to negative, and we didn't notice her saying them at all. Everyone except me either grew up here or has lived here for over 7 years so have heard a bit more. I think its shocking they never learnt before(shows you can survive without it if you stick to the posher areas though)- everyone on the scary full-on crash course in the room next door is doing it ALL in a month for business reasons! Lots of things, when written in pinyin (western lettering - we don't have time to learn all the oriental symbols, takes a lifetime) bear no resemblance whatever to the pronounciation - it took 3 days for one lady to realise the CD they gave us with our book actually WAS repeating the book vocabulary, she was convinced it was the wrong one/ mandarin instead! Every 50 mins a wee guy chimes a bell & you can pile into the tiny corridor corner for drinks & snacks & chats - 30p a go. Huge range of teas which no-one can identify (apart from Liptons yellow label, powdered with sugar & milk added already, yik). It's annoying, I do OK answering/ reading etc but the minute she does vocabulary checks I go blank unless its something we learnt several days ago thats had time to sink in. So we struggle through managing a bit better on acually pronouncing the words but not even attempting the tones unless we parrot her. The tones are wierd and I don't quite get how they are marked in pinyin - there are 6 different tones, 3 high -ascending& descending (shown with a french-style grave/ accent), and high neutral which doesn't have anything to mark it. Same 3 in low tones - just marked with accent/grave and nothing..........Apparently if I sing/say it in the wrong tone, the word for 'computer' becomes 'crazy man', or more worryingly 'mother' is 'cow'! Still, we know how to ask & answer about first & surnames, countries we come from, jobs, hobbies and started on times of day. Sadly all the shopping/ size related stuff I really want (shopping!!!!!) comes at the end, four courses from the one I am on, and with all the time/ money this costs I don't know if I want to do 6 more weeks of this after I finish this course!


OK some vital terms - (written phonetically): neigh-ee hoe maaa? (How are you); answer is often Ho Ho (like Santa! = really good). Um. Countries mainly sound like they are in English with a horrible foreign accent - Italian = Yee-die-lay-yaan, Scotland is Scoo-gackt-lahn etc. Exceptions to the rule are Germany which sounds like Duck-walk-yahn (goose-step?), and Faaat-gwok-yahn for those foody French! Any non-western food is that country ending in -chaan, but any eastern country cuisine, its -choi (like pak choi veg). bye is either a really cheesey 'Bai-Baiee' or 'Joy-geen' which makes me think of some happy clappy science fiction futureistic film like Demolition Man. A nurse is a woozie! She can't identify what I now do ( I caused enough trouble pointing out that 'Ying-gwok' was english so what was scottish, AND that the drawing beside Britain was a wee guy in a kilt with bagpipes AND that the French guy was in clogs, a dutch hat and carrying a Gouda cheese) so I always have to be a teacher instead which is a 'louw-sey'. Oh dear. Then again our australian policeman is something like a 'gaaang-zstar' which is what he arrests, surely? The word for job none of us can get, its zik-tzyep or something random.

Bamboo again - talked to a guy who's in the building industry at my classes, and it turns out the whole lot upmteen storeys high has nothing except plastic strips holding it together. At least they recycle the poles - don't know about the strips. But he said every 'square' of bamboo can hold over 1000 pounds weight without buckling or breaking - impressive! And its seen as macho not to have any safety gear (calm yourself, Michelle) so lots of builders die every year.

Eating local is 'fun' according to Pete. As in we ignore the cleaner looking cafes and squeeze in the ones with NO english prices/ signs that are full of smokers & look really dodgy. Fair enough, but I swear thats what made me ill this weekend, as we tried one round the corner from my classes (Pete came to meet me to show me the Friday nightlife Wan Chai is famed for...after eyeing a few gaggles of skinny mini-skirted locals & cooing at petshops we went home to bed early!). He had cheesy sausages in noodles (and they WERE - really odd, tiny frankfurters that squirted a really cheesy flavour when bitten) and I had the famed salted fish with chicken & rice. Which was lovely - except it was really salty, made your eyes water. They serve it really quickly - almost before you have finished ordering - not like the Reef Hotel bar in Mombasa!

Blue crab in lantau cafe
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.

Some of the cafes have small tanks stuffed with live fish - i have done the choose-it-to-be-cooked-for-you thing elsewhere, but in such cramped quarters its disconcerting to have massive mouths or huge crabs rattling the glass as you walk by. Extra fresh is very important for 'live' stuff, so I wonder why they like the ancient dried stuff and the 1000 year old eggs. HAve you seen them? I think they are pickled, are all dark brown & cracked and usually bubbling away in a wierd smelly sauce.....maybe later! And there were some places specialising in crabs - not UK edible or any species I recognise - all neatly trussed up in a twist of grass, tied like a Christmas parcel so their legs were tucked in.
They have great stalls selling fresh juices in all sorts of wierd combinations. I went for dragon fruit - they look amazing all sort of pink & frilled green outside, with (I thought) a deep pink inside with random black seeds - but I'm not sure if thats what I saw cut open, as what I got given as it was white with black grit in it. (Seeds?). Tasted like milk (YAK) so I didn't eat it. Oranges are very popular, I forget why, something about the name/colour is lucky/ healthy too.


Bakeries I am just getting into. So far I have avoided the posh ones who display amazing cakes (sort of french looking) with bizarre spun sugar & sliced fruit decorations on them, all of the torte/ slimey looking variety. Instead we go to the 'common' bakers - you pick up a tray & tongs at the entrance and wander along the shelves, pushing back the plastic lids to get the stuff you want.
Pete likes the half of a mini french stick open sandwich with bacon & cheese toasted on it (found a 3 week old 1 in the bottom of his bad.....looked like broccoli but that wasn't what was originally on it!). I quite like the soft roll in a danish shape with veg, bland sloppy white cheese (almost like French sweet custard under the toasted top layer) and a mini bockwurst. Only thing is, its like Mexico - nearly all the bread is sweet, even when its for savoury toppings, which gets a bit sickening. I did try a pudding thing - looked like a Snowball (those scottish cakey things we had as kids), sort of round & coconut sprinkled on the outside. Turned out to be red bean paste (sweetish) wrapped in a sort of glutinous almost opaque stuff that could stretch amazingly..... and sort of gathered back to itself when I pinched bits off, like an amoeba. If anyone saw the testicle eating bit in 'I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here' it felt a bit like that. One tentacle of it sort of hung on in my mouth while half of it got swallowed. So much so that trying to finish it before getting on the bus, I nearly choked and had another journey spluttering & gasping for air while locals glared at me. (A girl in my class coughed due to dust on the tube and a local held her down and PUT a face mask on her!). Oh yeah, I mentioned the Moon Cakes (Friends of the Earth sponsoring less packaging of them) - they are for the Autumn Festival next month, given as gifts to friends/ business colleagues etc. They LOOK like small round pies full of whole egg yolks (so when you cut them open you get a slice of round moon - the more whole egg yolks the more expensive/ posh the moon cake is) surrounded by assorted fillings in some sort of intricately patterned crust that mimics a chrysanthamum or whatever - I saw the sort of butter moulds they are pressed into, very pretty. Anyway Peter was annoyed as he'd been allowed to taste a bit of one but they started shouting when he wanted to buy one to bring home for me. I twigged why when he told me as I'd been reading about the Moon Goddess the festival is for (lot of varying myths but basically she, a rabbit and a man who may or may not be old/ be her husband had a lot of adventures & ended up as immortals on the moon.) {Wierd - Mayan & Native Americans believed in a moon goddess & rabbit too.} It turns out they are a total pain to make, so you have to order them like a Christmas turkey, and collect your cakes nearer the festival. Pete was relieved, he thought he was being bullied by the baker! I have since seen adverts for 1 Moon Cake maker in English, with as well as the lotus/ red bean etc fillings.chinese ham and sugarbeans..maybe not!


Little old ladies (LOL) really wind Pete up & are starting to get on my nerves too. Here they really ARE little, mostly under chest height, in cotton patterned chinese suits (sort of like pyjamas) and usually with sticks. Thing is they always walk right in front of you on busy pavements (no non-busy streets here!) and I swear they have eyes in back of their heads. It doesn't matter which way you swerve to try & get around them, they ALWAYS GET THERE FIRST. It's uncanny - maybe its all their Tai-Chi, they can sense the life force of us moving or something. Still they are marginallly less likely to get bumped into than the rest of the population who have a habit of stopping dead, bang in the middle of the flow of people, to look at a shop or stare at nothing or answer their phone. Its not like we are hard to miss, I'm at least twice the width of most locals & Petes twice the height! One of the guys on the island reckons its still the locals agorophopia, they sort of gravitate towards big people/ anyone so they don't feel lonely.

I was feeling a bit lonely the days I had at home, especially as there seemed to be no house gecko. But as its been so hot we moved the mattress into the sitting room (better, quieter AC with remote control in there, and fewer windows to let in light/ rain noise) and I have at last found them. One scared the pants off me knocking things over in the kitchen - Pete gets through a fair few cans of cold coffee (yik), beer (San Miguels finest!) and coke, and theres a bag of empties on the sink. (BTW the cans all have ring pulls - when did you last see one of them??? - took me a while to remember how to use them!). I woke up, turned on the light in there and it was pretending to be a tile pattern on the wall .... but it twitched and hit ANOTHER can which made such a racket it panicked and zipped down the back of the fridge to hide. Smallish, about 3/4 the length of my hand. Not sure if its the same one as is leaving tiny poos along the spare bedroom windowsill, but the one that crept guiltily along the sitting room floor on Saturday a.m (I was ill so very quiet, reading) was a lot paler, I think. Whichever it was playing in the sitting room when we were trying to sleep last night drove me MAD. I think it had a penchant for free-fall base jumping or something - I would hear a really fast running patter-patter then silence as it presumably launched itself off a wall/ our tv/ the ceiling......then a SPLAT as it landed elsewhere. Hoping it was for fun rather than for massive-spider-hunting! All I can say is our geckos are quite kackhanded - I could bore you with gecko facts (is it all geckos that have just a membrane separating their ears so you can see through their heads, Kate J, or just leopard geckos??) but I recall the military etc were researching gecko feet as they are so 'sticky'. Its 1000's of tiny hair-like villi which create such a massive surface area they almost bond to surfaces, whether vertically or hanging from the ceiling. Kackhanded here as the geckos in Belize I don't remember waking me, and they were bright enough NOT to knock things over, fling themselves around (OK apart from the one that got hot feet hiding on the shower head and launched onto my head) or fall off & drown in saucepans like in Petes last flat here! Annoying that they are all so skittish, as I could do with them on bug patrol - all the rain/ lack of me sweeping every day now I'm out a lot has caused those tiny ants to turn up everywhere, yug. Oh and to REALLY cheer me up some idiot accidentally imported fire ants from South America, who love it here - warnings up all over the place - I do NOT need to meet them again.


The local men (at least al the older uglier ones) cope with the heat by baring their bellys in a most unattractive fashion - they tuck their t-shirt hems into their armpits and walk proudly around as if they were 6 months pregnant. They don't seem to have fat beer bellies the same as Brits, its all tighter & higher up. Now if some of the pretty boys or the slightly scary gangster looking types did that I wouldn't mind as much! (Not seen any martial arts courses, gee, but the TV sports shows are terrifying, Jackie Chan has nothing on theses guys). Women have fans or odd little paddles to flap that are given away as promotional material by some of the bigger shops etc. Its supposed to be getting cooler (yay) and I must admit this Sunday I didn't have the AC on all day, when the sun wasn't out you didn't sweat if you didn't move.........

Hope you are surviving - Uk cold yet???
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Letter 5- Hong Kong Hats, Harbours, Streets & Malls

Today we are going to talk about hats.
Most of the fisher people wear these sort of woven straw things that remind me of those 70s melamine bowls mum used to have - sort of A-line, straight sides getting wider at the top with a raised ring in the middle of the bottom they sat on (but upside down on their heads). Street cleaners have a flat straw disc with a hole in it that their cloth covered scalp pokes through. I saw one today who had a mad black net mini curtain hanging off around the brim of hers, I kept expecting her to pulll a string to sweep it apart like a puppet theatre curtain. Every now and then I pass a solar powered hat, not sure if they are running a fan or an oxygen supply or what inside, as they have a mini solar panel on the top and a dark visor in front as if they were about to weld something (they aren't, always in a suit or casual clothes!). Quite a few have those hats with mini brollies attached- I always thought they were just a joke! Lots as I said use brollies, some made with silver reflective stuff inside to keep out UV, or even proper parasols ( I presume thats what they are as no way is the fabric waterproof) so I tend to wear my sunglasses a lot as eye protection from all their poking brolly ends. The reason I'm on about hats is I have been trying to buy one, just a baseball cap, as my floppy sun-hat is a bit much to wear around the city/ stuff in my bag. This is proving impossible unless I get a major brand (Gucci etc) which I won't, I HATE names, and everything else is too garish even for me - mad colours AND gold braid AND sequins AND metallic writing.....oh dear! Or unless I want a knitted beanie........?

I noticed that a lot of the boats moored up in the channel/harbour are decorated with what looked like fairy light or tinsel but turned out to be fish carefully arranged by size on strings. I was on a bus going through the dried fish-selling region today, I have NO IDEA what most of the millions of things on display were, apart from dried shark fin (the best soups sell at £30 a bowl!) which I know is decimating shark populations, and they tend to waste the sharks as they just slice off the fins & don't even eat the rest! Oh, one for Sue/ Kate J - apprantly horse 'beezors' (no idea how they spell that) which are sort of hair or grass balls taken form horses stomachs, are good business as they are supposed to be antidotes to poisin. Then again they also sell dried dog's penises so I don't know if you can get a back-door trade going at your vets.......And later on I realised the cases of 1 weird creature I couldn't ID were actually sea-horses, dried with their tails straightened out, not good. Bit sad as I picked up a leaflet about visiting HK's wild places & 1 of their rules is to not remove sealife, but aside from theses big business wholesale shop/stands, at the weekends hoards descend on our island & all the beaches with their little designer fishing & BBQ kits & clean out the seashore & rock pools! I also nearly went to buy sweets from a sweet stall but the front barrel had lots of whole crabs, smallish ones a few cm accross, covered in sweet 100s & 1000s (those cake sprinkles) so I copped out & went to the 7-11 instead. We did have crab curry for tea in Petes favourite Thai place, and have decided to add that to the list of not-on-1st-dates/ meeting-parents dinners, as it was SO messy - slippery curry coated massive pincers and those big metal nut-crackers don't do well together!
Still deciding if I likeThai sweets, the gelatin stuff is just too thick & chewy, but we both like the sweetcorn& rice hot paste sticky thing. Had a scare in the loos there, it flushed automatically but something was wrong with it so the water kept RISING!!! I escaped before my flipflops were christened.

The streets are clean in the litter free sense, and many bins have really severe 'these WILL be cleaned 8 times a day at this hour and that hour' etc signs. The one thing that does annoy me is the lack of recycling - I saw 3 small paper/metal/plastic bins somewhere ONCE but at the moment have a large bag of paper & cans at home & nowhere to put them. All the rest of our rubbish goes into communal wheelie bins at the top of the steps down to the beach, which are emptied by a quad bike trailer several times a day. I have seen posters with "Friends of the Earth support simple-packaged moon-cakes (more on that later) but thats about it eco-wise. Oh, and some of the tube stations have a box to recycle batteries. Shocking really! But as Pete says, lots of people go through bins to collect stuff - when possible he leaves his cans on the top to save them the trouble.
Despite all the pampered pooches I have seen NO dog mess (several dog loos though) and often spot people with large bottles of water rinsing off trees/ poles their dogs weed on. Nice!

Many street corners & often the pillars/ shared walls between shops have little shrines with statues and incense sticks in them; some of the larger corner shrines you can pull up a stool and get blessed at, inches from traffic whizzing by. The police (who I notice have to press the ends of their radios onto little metal studs in some walls - to prove they are on their beats I think) don't seem to mind the blessings holding up traffic.
Did I say about the pedestrian crossings? Sometimes they are hard to find, and many corners are railed off which is a pain as you have to go halfway down the street to get round the railings, but all the crossings make a metallic regular chink/ping sound. As it gets time to cross the pings speed up, like a radar telling you theres an incoming missile, and when the pings go frantic everyone dashes across. Lots of warnings about what they do to jay walkers, but in the busier bits they really don't seem to have co-ordinated the lights/ pings with the traffic signals; we often stand there looking at an empty road as the cars are at a red light, but the cars pile up before our crossing pings have finished letting us accross. Apparently chinese visiting from the mainland don't understand crossings or traffic in general, and police actually waylay tour groups and force them to have road safety lessons, as so many visitors had accidents!

A lot of the pavement railings have big coloured PVC banners with the faces & slogans of governement officers, councillors etc, along with their contact details - brave!

The harbour of Aberdeen is more like a river really, long & skinny with multi storey flats both sides. Even the small ones are 30 stories high, and thats on top of the carparking/ facilities! What is cool is the massive birds of prey - I think they are a sort of big brown kite, they have that v in the tail but look more like buzzards - they dive between the boats so close you could poke them, to pick up dropped fish etc. Huge! They spiral in big groups between the buildings sometimes, its wierd, like an extra lethal 'murder' of crows! What is also cute in a sad way, is the pretty white egrets (like elegant mini herons) that are everywhere watery. They sit & wait for a fish to go by, often on the random barrels etc the boats use as moorings, but even more often on floating rubbish - mainly bits of broken off polystyrene fish boxes. We even giggled at one last night that had 1 foot in each side of an empty take-away box - like a long MacDonalds box. They have amazing balance!

I only noticed today (as the smog had cleared a bit) that 1 set of high rises had been covered in coloured tiles to continue the profile of the hills behind it, quite clever really - I put a pic of it on Flikr.
Several other of the huge buildings have massive holes cut in them, on purpose - for Feng Shiu or ' to let the dragons reach the sea'! Some story about how the sacred dragons travel from the islands mountains to the sea and it would have been bad if they had to deviate AROUND the buildings! So they go through specially cut dragon-sized cat flaps instead......

Turns out that massive HSBC building (who still haven't given me an account) was designed by Norman Foster & was the most expensive in the world when done, in 1985 - and has the best feng shui ever as it sits on 5 'dragon lines', whose energy is sucked in by the escaltors!

My favourite building so far we ended up beneath by accident- I had read about it, a shiney high rise office block, the same age as me, with ROUND windows instead of the usual angular ones, in Central on the harbour . Unfortunately it has been dubbed the 'Building of 1000 arse holes' by locals - double meaning I expect as its offices, probably government in that area! We misssed our stop & ended up at the bus terminus there, but all was not lost as Pete had a sandwich craving (I'm not fed up with rice & nooodles yet) and took me to the high class MacDonalds there! It has a cafe attached - sorry, McCafe - that does lovely sandwiches with WIERD fillings, and coffe in china cups bigger than mixing bowls with a wee chocolate 'M' sprinkled on the top.
I was fascinated by National Geographic being piped in for us to watch (lions killing baby elephants) while I had a McRice burger - fried rice & mushroom patty instead of a bun, passable, actually! The highlight for me was the mall's loos; a lady checked each loo as it was exited, cleaned it, flushed it, air freshened it and then told you it was safe to go in. Even though it also does all that automatically as you leave it!
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Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Letter 4 Sept 06 - Foods, Fish & Bamboo Builders

Ok so prob last 1 for a while as starting to find things to do!


Wednesday I went into Petes work again (1 of his office guys is off so is quieter that day), and got to help him eat his MASSIVE free lunch - no wonder he is finally starting to get a convex belly! Had a lovely fast ride in his rib round the coast to a few bays down to collect a club member & tow his new (laser) sailboat back. Its so hot that the minute Pete slowed the speedboat down, we'd put up the big garden umbrellas they have strapped behind the drivers seat- was actually clear blue bits of sky & SUNNY for once, yay. After work we walked along the promenade (wide curved concrete path with planted beds, with every single tree having its own number nailed to it {incase they get lost?} on the land side of the shore) until we reached Repulse (?) Bay. Very pricey - even the un-serviced flats there cost more per month than we earn per year! We were surrounded by all the Phillipino 'amas' walking their employers dogs. I like the wee private minibus's that are everywhere- takes octopus card (like Oyster or what ever the electronic thing is in London); only 16 seats; drivers wait till full or fed up and then goes, only stops if he has spaces& can stop NOT at bus stops too. Took me a while but I now realise the people sitting with their hands over their mouths on buses aren't scared of infection/ infecting, they are on the phone! Looks weird. Tiki, the anti-coughing thing is left over from the panics during SARS - they think you will infect/ kill them or something even though in my case its the pollution that gets me. They have now tried to stop people spitting all over the streets which I would have thought a worse habit for germs, though! I also learnt not to buy & attempt to eat icecream lollies, as the insides melt faster than you can eat & you end up with it dripped all down your top, which is eyelevel for most of the public when on me.
Talking of which I feel quite out of place as ALL the tshirts/ tops local wear have to have some sort of logo or message on - plain tshirts/ tops are for film stars and me, apparently.

Tried grocery shopping again - its not too bad, Mum, as we only eat juice, toast & crackers at home so it all fits in a few bags & the wee rucksacks Gee gave us at our wedding, so we can carry it up the hill. Anyway they had wrapped bits of peeled Durian fruit this time - I found it by the weird smell - but Pete wouldn't let me buy it as it stank even in the wrapping! They also sell young coconuts, which look like short fat pencil stubs or spinning tops (I take it you just drill a hole in the tip where the lead would be for the milk), and SMOKED whole peeled coconut which is something I have never heard of! There are barrels of stuff you buy by the scoop that I can't read/ identify but will taste test (the lady always waves stuff at me &tries to put it in my mouth) when I have learnt enough to have a vague idea of what it is. Now trying blackcurrant juice with CRUNCHY aloe vera, Kate - yum!
Mistakenly bought crackers which had burnt sugar on 1 side but we now like them with marge. Very disappointed with all the chocolate, tried KitKats, Maltesers etc - all the UK brands but made in China/ Australia, just tastes wrong. Not had the courage to try pea or squid based crisps (puffy ones like wotsits) yet. Weird local booze is mainly gloppy like treacle, or 'for health/ virility/ longevity' with dark stuff floating in it - 'Glutinous wine' just doesn't appeal, so we hope to try them out in a bar before we commit to a whole bottle! Highlight was a tallish (i.e. near my ear) youngish chinese guy in the queue beside me letting rip a massive burp RIGHT in my ear who looked annoyed when I jumped & stared at him. Found a shop selling pillows (bliss!) AND drain clearer. Tried it in the kitchen sink 1st, luckily - no warnings on it except 'will melt bones', so I poured in a dash, HUGE sizzle & puff of black smoke that woke up Peter, and I swear it flashed. So was a bit more careful using it on the dreaded bathroom floor/'shower' drain.....it worked though! And will also come in handy if I ever need to get rid of Pete.......

I got the no-more-than-5-in-a-gathering thing wrong - that's only in China. So the paved 'park' strip between our dock and the main road of Aberdeen is full of Fan Dancers in the morning - men too- when they all snap them open together it sounds like all the Trafalgar Square pigeons taking off.
During the day the fisher people peel 100s of shrimps etc and carefully arrange them on metre square plastic grids to dry, so neat & symmetrical & closely packed I thought they were tiny tiles - looks like those geometric cushions mum used to embroider satin/ long stitch. They shrivel to little pink strings & you buy them in mini sheaves. Evenings is assorted Tai Chi groups, old guys gambling & basketball. Oh and full of the sampan-controller-madams who scream "SAAAAAMpaaaaaan" at us in EXACTLY the same tones as the nutter chinese lady on the drive-thru burger bar arguement scene in the film 'Dude, Where's My Car?".

Really, really dried fish
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.



Slightly confused, had tea in the veggie buddhist place & half of it had shark fin, (BAD - they waste the rest of the catch& shark), meat or fish in it. Lovely corn soup with my first ever non-green seaweed, clear, & sort of crunchy, looked a bit like the red
frilly edged flat seaweed but bleached out - what the name of that red seaweed, Victor??? Not Chondus crispus - i need my Collins seashore guide, I forget! Pete had been dreaming about omelets but got given a weird concoction of spam, (vege?? I think not) sliced egg whites, beansprouts and clear wispy yellow tinged shiny noodles which reminded me of the cat's intestinal worms. Tasted good, though! Offered peanut soup for pud but was too full. Chefs knives must be FAB here Alex as when you do order meat they basically slice the whole lot including bones into your dish; after our roast duck at lunch we had perfect little rounds of all the bones to line up. Oh yeah, another odd drink a la Lochlans-near-death-nut-experience at Gordys wedding - I pointed at Mango juice, it came; mango, orange (nice so far)....tapioca, hmmm, OK, .....rice, noodles and I THINK egg. Um.

Thurs/ Fri Pete had off, so we did a horrible trip into Central to pay for the Cantonese beginners course I persuaded him to get me on. I start Tues, every afternoon for 2 weeks. On the way we stopped off to try to open me an account in the central MASSIVE cathedral like offices of the Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corp (did anyone know that's what HSBC is???). Felt very out of place, is big business area, talk about power dressing! Foreign women (we are all called gweilos apparently) with legs & heels up to my ears, chinese with even higher shoes and the most designed clothes ever. Huge towering scrapers all marble & shine inside, with shops on the first 10 floors & offices above, but not USEFUL shops - entire floors dedicated to 1 store e.g. Prada, Gucci, Chanel i.e the sort of stuff I wouldn't be seen DEAD in even if I could afford it! The waste of AC around there was shocking - so cold workers had jumpers on & we shivered, then steamed as soon as we hit real air.

Did I mention all the building work? Looks normal from afar then close-up you realise its all bamboo poles, tied together! Pretty sure I read about the high tensile strength etc of the stuff, but walking under 30 stories of it is scary. Whats cool is a lot of the builders are women, and the whole crew wear wee white wellies & gloves, with towels (needed!) under their helmets. EVERYTHING is hauled up & down by hand in baskets, work!!! No 'elf & safety Inspectors here, Mich - we spotted a lovely 'this board must be checked & read EVERY DAY' safety bulletin board, for the road workers, full of important signs etc. When we were on the top of a double decker stuck at lights - it was carefully hung out the back of a portacabin office 4 storeys off the ground! Useful - and who kept it current? Best was a bloke in all his safety gear, harness roped up, buddy holding onto the other end, ready to belay/ haul on his rope from the ground 10 storeys below watching him as he edged along a ledge to fix a massive sign. But we noticed they forgot to put the rope over anything or through a pulley etc so all his buddy would have done if he fell off was to make him hit the ground FASTER.


Petes being hassled to get rid of the elderly boat he scavenged from work by the Harbour Police - because one whiner is hassling them that its "in his way". As it sunk in the last typhoon in a corner of the bay thats too low to climb onto the path from, isn't in front of a house, is in the smelly bit near the bin collection point, etc, I don't know what the bloke usually does there.....so Pete sent most of Thurs digging it out of the sand. To find a SERIOUS hole (apparently the earlier other 15 holes and the fact you can push your finger through the hull easily were NOT serious) so he can't sail it off. So its still there. I'm thinking if having a drink or snack on the tube can get you 6 months, ignoring several direct phonecalls form the police will probably mean they remove both his legs at the knees - or his firstborn son (got them there, ha!).
I nearly had a swim while he was doing this but then saw the water - scummy floaty bits with sub-level layers of plastic bag and 'things', so gone off that. Pete says it was usually clearer but the wind was coming into our bay that day. Not much rock pool/ seashore life as locals follow the tide down & eat everything. No exciting shells either, yet, Pete found 1 for me at work and didn't check it was dead - made the Chinese chef who has the computer beside him jump when he brought it (luckily empty) out of his pocket, as apparently its a nasty one - I TOLD him about that but does he listen??? All the field guides & anything needing you to have the object you want to identify actually in front of you (ie anything useful I want to read) is chained to the shelf in HK library. Petes raving about a live-aboard catamaran again but luckily has nowhere to build one apart from our rooftop.Without plans/ books/ tools/ knowledge. At the top of a hill. After 99 steep steps up the hill to the flat. With tiny enclosed winding stairs up to the roof. On a remote island with no shops (these being my arguments as to WHY he can't build it here). But he's already scavenged his dead boat & started spotting websites and local suppliers...oh dear.

DVDs here I only just realised are mainly bootleg, its hard to tell, they have the seals & everything. The official video cds are often worse! But they have been providing us with hysterical amusement - we inherited a load with the flat & have been working our way through a depressing or cheesey selection, so decided to watch a romantic comedy last night. We put the english subtitles on, as they take up less space than the oriental subtitles and don't obscure the film. About 10 minutes in I noticed that whoever had written them either didn't speak english or had NOT been watching the film.......amazingly garbled words, occasionally actually having nearly the same sound if not the same meaning as what was being said (could I have a piece of cake became 'you have pissed on my fathers grave'), rants about "Edna, shut the door" and "let me in, you git" appeared during a very quiet sad bit in a park, topped off by "ELEPHANT RICE" typed repeatedly when it got all romantic. Sadly the DVD died so we couldn't read more. Tonight we watched Finding Nemo, the cute fish-based cartoon, and the subtitle writer this time COULD speak english but swore a lot & went off on a rant about 'Red Rose', space continuums and metaphysical manifestations which I'm fairly sure was not in any draft of the original scripts.

I have an events company (Latin American themed!) wanting to see my portfolio (yeeks not had one of them since I quit art college! - bodging a slideshow on my laptop) next week, may be nothing, could be good; and am talking to the Rock Festival organiser on Monday. Also a large festival on our island are giving me a stall.annoyingly sounds like i will have to get my own shelter for these, hoping I can get a lighter/ easier to carry one than in the UK as will have to be walking/ public transport/ taxis AFTER I get off the ferry for any bookings!Annoyingly all the roll-up tables & tall folding chairs I have had in the UK are made in China but not sold here unless I want to buy in lots of 1000 so a bit stuck gear wise....

Hope you are all well, will be ringing some of you soon as I only seem to get you lot drunk at 2 am your time at the moment!
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3rd letter Aug06 - Clothes, Haberdashery & Chinese cafes

Right, really enjoyed yesterday, the small typhoon (ie rain & a bit of wind in UK terms) finished so it was actually a bearable heat.

We went to Central HK Immigration Tower to drop off my visa application - 15 floors of red tape, and I will apparently be visiting queues in each of these to get the actual visa stamped, when/ if it arrives, oh joy! Then we got the MTR (underground) to the non-central-non touristy bit. The trains/ stations are lovely, beautifully clean, probably as there is an instant fine for littering, taking heavy baggage on the escalators, taking up a spare seat with luggage, etc..and a 6 month jail stay for smoking, eating or drinking there! Very hi-tec though, they have a sort of interactive tube map along the inside of the train walls. It lights up the route you are on, with an arrow flashing where you are next stopping at, and even tells you which side to get off on.


Can't pronounce the name of where we were (Sham Shui Po), but it was the sort of wholesale retail import/export ghetto where everything that says 'Made In chine' appears to come from. I never looked up, really (just dingy skyscraper flats), as both sides of every street were lined with stalls, with more shops behind them. First we got lost in the belt buckle/clasp/chain/ bag handle zone, never knew there were so many types. Then the kids clothing zone, from kilts & mini Chinese suits, to rompers & ball dresses. Then the haberdashery streets - barrels of ribbons, lace, cord, buttons and beads of every description, string and amazing applique/embroidered bits (anything you can ever dream of for decorating clothes etc, from sequinned flowers to shell dragons to tartan teddy patches). I was getting a bit dribbly - all the colours & sparkles - but luckily Pete was on a mission & I don't have all my jewellery making kit with me - yet!

So we wandered around the leather & fur blocks; funky belts, pelts - why would anyone WANT dayglo metallic leather, please???? until we found the materials section. About 12 huge streets, just with millions of swatches of everything from printed silks to pastel fake fur and REALLY cool sparkly tartans. All day we were getting funny looks/ stares as there were NO gweilos (whites) about at all, and Pete was looking especially scruffy in his stained wife-beater sleeveless Tshirt.....not really fitting in with all the fashion/factory fabric buyers with their armloads of swatches who were ordering rolls of fabric! We eventually got several metres each of some daft printed cottons (in keeping with the 70's student tiles in our flat) which I have now ripped into size to clip up as curtains, better than nothing & was cheap! Typically the ONE fabric Pete really liked we spotted decorating a closed hairdressers, and was actually an original 70's design, I think - fairly sure I have seen a pic of mum in a dress she made of similar stuff!


For lunch we tried walking into a smoky cafe thing, to have several hundred men turn & stare (no females). We nodded at the waiter, he stared, we smiled at the cashier who also stared. We stared back, then 4 old men pushed 2 chairs from their table at us. Slight hitch when we realised all the food was written on the walls, no pics - no clue! I started coughing (very smokey) at which point the entire PLACE glared. Noticing they all seemed to be sharing bowls of intestines and what I THINK is stomach lining (looks sort of whiteish with a criss-cross raised netting pattern? not villi but definitely internal!) we backed out. Ended up an hour later in a huge shopping mall's eating court, which was just as scary but at least we had photos of food to point at, had rice & pork (?) in a big steamer thing with nice unidentified veg. (Not Chinese morning glory but similar). Passed on the gloopy brown 1000 year old eggs - I did read about them, will try when I am braver. Had an audience watching us eat. As we were in a 'civilized' mall, we looked for beds....... not good, would classify as kids beds in the uk! Way too short/ skinny.

I got all excited as back in the street markets we found clothes we liked - I bought 2 pairs of really funky beach shorts, in XL (how fat did I feel!), £1 each from 2 different very noisy ladies who spun me around to poke & measure but thankfullydidn'tt make me try them on in the rain & mud. Pete got several new Tshirts, under 50p each. But he decided that seeing as he get some ridiculously high uniform allowance to buy 3 pairs of shorts he's going to SPEND in a proper hard-wearing shop. (Surf shack, I bet). Then he got totally blissed out as we found the streets where all the old machinery goes to die -i.e.e the HK version of our UK garage/ house. Just stacks of dead TV's, stereos, mobile phones, electric drills, defunct computers, wires, fans, ........I know he thinks having no money/ bank account is good to stop ME spending but I am SO GLAD the trek home via MTR, bus, ferry & all those steps stopped him buying any of that junk! I did get tempted by the stalls that let you make your own neon signs though - you pick the shapes, colours & flash pattern & they stick it all together, how cool?

And we found an english speaking stationers stall who sold usChinesee ink, brushes, and the squared paper exercise books they learn to write in - we both want a go at their art, and I want to try to learn some of the character language symbols.

We stopped in Central for tea in a posh AC'd Thai cafe - nice but relatively pricey; still, as lunch stuffed us for 50p each we thought we could swing it! Felt awful as the busboy cleared away our salted squid before we were quite finished, and when she noticed the waitress went mad and bought an entire new meal out just as we were ready to go! (I blame that Peter stayed to eat it for us missing the ferry, not my search for chocolate in a 7-11 store.) We got a sampan back and it was far scarier than last time - lightning storm over our island & VERY busy shipping! Sampans look sort of like wedge sandals, high & vertical at the back, with a curved roof of any old thing stretched over bamboo, and wallow along really slowly. But this time there were LOADS of massive container ships cruisingacrosss our path. One we waited for, and nipped behind, but following it was another that was not about to deviate for us - I know I'm a nervoustravelerr but even Pete kept saying, 'oh, he'll stop here & wait for that one too', then went a bit white and said he wouldn't get that close to it in his boats.
It was so close we couldn't see the top of it looking up as it shot past behind us. I kept thinking there would be a James-Bond-in-Venice-style accident with us sucked back under its propellers and diced.

Got home to a lovely handwritten note from the Harbour Police wanting Pete to contact them about his dead boat in the beach!
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