Hong Kong: October to December
There’s a new kid in my class. His name is Hugo and he’s from the mainland. He speaks neither Cantonese nor English, which are the two languages we conduct lessons in. As such, he spends most lessons looking around the room, then blurting out Mandarin words at unpredictable intervals. When he tries to talk to the other kids, they generally shoot me a look like that emoji used in the “how I look at my marriage therapist whenever my wife says something” meme.
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His arrival forms part of a wider trend in HK; a push by the government to flood the area with mainland migrants, presumably to blur any distinction between the two places. In any case, I feel bad for the kid.
Oh, in another instance of me being woefully unequipped for my job: I had to teach the kids how to use chopsticks yesterday. Me, a white man, teaching 60 Asian kids how to use chopsticks. I only learnt myself a month or two ago.
Do I have anything else to report? I guess my main concern at the minute is making plans for Halloween weekend, which is a week and a half from now. I’m planning to go as Tyler Durden or The Deep, since my hairstyle works well for them. I decided against an anime costume this year because I don’t think it’d stand out very well, and I’m coming to realise that almost no one in Asia has facial hair, including their fictional characters.
Last night I went out for dinner and drinks with Joe, Sam and Nancy on Temple Street, an area known for its Night Market (which sucks) and its prostitutes (one would assume they suck too). We ate at a circular, open air restaurant an ordered a huge Blue Girl beer each.
Blue Girl, an ostensibly German pilsner, is by far the most popular beer here. I have no idea why, given I’ve never seen it anywhere else, but it’s fairly decent so I can’t complain. It certainly helped to wash down my food, which came as a bit of a shock to me. I had the classic lost in translation (not the film) experience of ordering something and getting something entirely other than what I’d pictured. I ordered salt and pepper Bombay duck, assuming it’d be salt and pepper duck, as I’d imagine most Westerners would. No- Bombay duck is a kind of very fatty fish whose texture is most similar to raw pork fat. It wasn’t *bad* per se, though it also wasn’t duck, and I can’t imagine it was especially protein dense, which is something I have to consider once again now that I’m working out. It didn’t even really do its intended job of lining my stomach, as I peaked FAR too early (1 am) and had to leave my comrades in an Uber before we’d even made it to the club. Now, this wasn’t entirely due to alcohol consumption; my decision to leave at 1 was also motivated by the fact that a cockroach fell out of the sky directly onto my head, which I then grabbed instinctively and threw at mach 3 directly into the ground. That’s a vibe killer if I’ve ever experienced one.
I’m sorry if my writing seems weird or bad right now. I have the kind of hangover that hangs like mist over your brain, clogs up your eyes and manhandles your processing speed.
Right now I’m on the MTR to Lantau island, famous for housing Hong Kong’s airport and being the home of the giant Buddha statue on the peak of one of its hills, which is the target of my visit. The journey is mainly underground, but whenever the carriage surfaces I’m greeted with views of endless jungle, interrupted by the occasional tenement building. A Hong Kong staple.
I stopped at Shake Shack for the first burger I’ve eaten since moving here. I have really needed this.
There’s a little baby on the cable car waving at everyone going past and saying “hiiii” in the cutest little voice. I’ve really gone soft.
When I say that Hong Kong is full of giant green hills, I’m not doing them justice. Travelling over the canopy, I’m coming to realise that the colours are far more complicated- there are lime greens, forest greens, grey-greens, yellows, pops of auburn and magenta. The character of the foliage varies too- there are trees, ferns, shrubs and even starches of grass. Oh, and there’s the Buddha. What a sight.
The whole area around the Buddha has been stylised like an old Chinese village, which is nice touch. However, every building houses a chain restaurant, café or souvenir shop. It’s a serious bummer that the giant monument to a religion that famously rejects earthly wealth is surrounded by materialised capital. You simply can’t put a Starbucks, which continues to have ties to a genocidal, ethnoreligious nationalist state, next to the Big Buddha.
Once you get past all that, though, it’s pretty unreal.
The views here are just stupid. Ancient statues of the divine generals of Buddhist myth, marble arches ordained with intricate carvings of dragons and lions, clouds hugging mountainsides and of course, the big one, with its jade palace style staircase leading to its crossed legs.
And the temple, too. Temple street has some great views but they’re nothing to the real thing. There’s even a pond full of Lilly pads and tadpoles. How lovely.
I’m looking at the map to decide where to visit first: The Splendid Bronze Cauldron for Return of Sovereignty or the Auspicious Stupor for World Peace.
Absolutely preposterous: they have a food donation spot in the temple- which is obviously magnificent, by the way- and someone has donated the world smallest packet of digestives. Not even chocolate ones.
There’s an exhibition on the creation of the statue and it’s really quite something, but I can’t help but laugh at the fact that the guy who decided to build it was called fat ho.
I’ve just seen a monk using his iPhone. Is that allowed?
I also just took a picture somewhere that said no cameras before I realised it said that and now I feel like a bad person. The colours were just too spectacular not to. I almost can’t understand how they make their reds, their oranges, their greens, their blues so vibrant in their paintings. Anyway, the main subject of the picture was the prayer hall full of bald monks singing their praises. It’s really quite moving.
So, after disrespecting the temple, I headed off to disrespect the big Buddha. I walked up the hundred or so steps to the peak and wandered around looking for the entrance to his giant frame. You see, the Buddha is hollow and houses what I can only assume are sacred texts and paintings. You'll have to work with this assumption because the descriptions were all in Chinese and photography was restricted so I can't provide any pictures (though clearly that didn't stop me earlier). I wandered up the spiral staircase to the top floor, which brings you out to a platform by this thick, bronze legs. A large sign expressed that there was to be no touching of said leg, but who was going to stop me? The monks? I mean, I guess they could probably paralyse or wushi finger hold me or something of that ilk, but honestly I’d quite like to see shaolin Kung Fu in action.
God my writing has gone to shit. I'm filling in the blanks retrospectively a month after this day trip, and I can tell I'm not doing my wonderful day justice. Once again a hangover is impeding my skills. Whatever, I'll stop complaining and push on for the sake of my two loyal readers.
I left the big buddha complex on a bus headed for Tai O, a little fishing village nearby, where I could take a ferry back to Kowloon. Tai O was wonderful, as I shall explain, but it was in Tai O that my day took a turn for the dramatic. My phone was on 8% as I stepped onto the bus, hence my decision to stop keeping a detailed written account of my affairs and transfer to bullet points (which I am basing my account off now). One of such bullet points went so- 'a girl on the bus just pulled out a bag of horse chestnuts as a snack. Could be the move.' Anyway, 8% was enough to check the ferry times and price as well as pay for the bus and decide on a walking route to explore the village for a while. It was not enough to take a picture of the glorious, 10000 degree glowing red hot iron ball sunset, nor was it enough for me to pay for the ferry using my octopus, nor the tram and train I needed to get home once I'd stepped off the ferry, nor for me to find out which tram and train I should take home. This was quite the ball ache, especially given that I had a date planned for 8 pm that night, and by 6.30 I had only just left Tai O and had forgotten to tell my date that I would inevitably be late. All of these considerations weighed heavily on my mind as I strolled, phoneless, through a village of stilt houses and dried seafood markets.
Tai O truly is stunning, though. The bus takes you to the ferry pier and the main street that leads into the village. This street runs through the winding markets, over a rickety little bridge that boasts views of rickety old houses leaning perilously over the river below, and through the surrounding residential area. Eventually, it takes you up and around a hill, the top of which is famous for being a good place to spot dolphins, and finally loops back into the village. As I followed this path, I fought with every fibre of my being to resist the urge to take photos of everything, knowing how fucked I'd be if I drained any more battery, but it was futile. The town was overpoweringly snappable.
An old, tank-topped man blared metal music whilst grilling squid in a shop adorned with images of him in the same outfit he was wearing, also grilling squid; innumerable shrines poured tendrils of smoke into quiet streets; stray cats wandered in and out of dedicated cat-houses maintained by the villagers (one scratched me when I tried to pet its tummy :(, and said villagers wandered in and out of their tiny, steel plate houses drinking blue girl pilsner and watching Chinese soap operas on their boxy television sets.
Luckily, the path didn't deviate much, allowing me to navigate to the dolphin viewing point without maps, which had finally killed off my phone by this point. This really was a shame, because the views were just mega. Jurassic park mountains galore, and a setting sun as beautiful as any I've seen before. Along with the phone issue, I was troubled by literal hordes of dragon flies swarming a few inches above my head for the hilltop section of the walk, and a perpetual anxiety that a snake was going to pop out of a bush and leave me unable to walk and unable to phone for help. Fortunately, I made it back to civilisation unbitten, greeted by the sight of a beautiful, remote temple and a basketball court. I really don't know who'd be playing there, if I'm honest. It didn't seem like there was a school in the village, and I can't see aged fishermen coming home form a treacherous day at sea and winding down with some hoops. Maybe its the monks- I bet they've got hops.
On my completion of the loop, I spotted a HSBC branch and took out some cash, intending to use it to pay for the ferry. Instead I bought an entire spicy barbecued squid and a pineapple smoothie, which I enjoyed whilst watching the sunset from the pier. This purchase left me with a total of 190 HKD in cash, which terrified me, as I seemed to remember reading that the ferry cost 200, and I knew I wouldn't have time to run back to the bank before the last ferry left. So, almost shaking with anxiety, I watched the little motor boat pull into the dock and boarded it, prepared to beg if I had to. I stepped onboard and asked the man how much it cost. He said something in Chinese and pointed at a board covered in yet more Chinese. I quickly scanned it, conscious of holding up the queue of passengers, and spotted a number that started with 2. I frantically pulled all the money I had out of my wallet and dumped it into the cash box, then sat down before he could say anything. Apparently unbothered by being 10 dollars short-changed, the man looked somewhat bemused and turned his attention to the next passenger. I felt a colossal weight lifted off me, having spent the previous hour pictured myself stranded in a fishing village with no phone on a Saturday night and acutely grateful to be heading back to the skyscrapers of the concrete jungle. In fact, the man's bemused look was not a reaction to being short changed, but rather long changed by 170 dollars; something I realised only once I stepped off the boat.
So, 17 quid down, I found myself entirely cashless, phoneless and thus octopus cardless in a part of the city I'd never seen before. Had there been an MTR station nearby, I'd have had no trouble navigating home, but the closest stop was a 20 minute walk away and I did not trust myself to find it without maps. The only option, then, was to take the light rail to the station, which was conveniently located next to the ferry port. Of course, it couldn't possibly be that simple: a kind transport officer informed me that the light rail only takes cash or octopus- no card, for some reason. When I informed him of my predicament, he offered to buy me a ticket. If he hadn't, I'd have had to chance the walk and I might still be lost on Tuen Mun now. What an angel- I told you all the people here are secretly incredibly kind. So, he bought my ticket and pointed me to the right platform. By this point, it was around 7.30, and the issue of the date was becoming all the more pressing, so time was of the essence. Still, I had something crucial to do before I could leave. I asked the officer for directions one more time, and then took one of the least pleasant shits of my life. The bathroom stank and an old man spent the entire time that I was in there attempting to unblock the toilet in the stall next to me. There was no loo roll, it was 30 degrees and I had to expel beer and milkshake from myself. It was one of those dumps that make you want to take off all your clothes and hunch over. It was awful. It took me 30 minutes and, need I remind you, I had no phone. Truly an all-timer rough shit.
Eventually, I paid my dues and boarded the light rail, determined to make it home quickly enough to attend a significantly delayed date. It took me directly to the MTR station, where I paid with my debit card and took a direct line to Hung Hom. The trip took an hour, bringing the total delay to an hour, and I arrived home at 9, frantically scrambling for a charger to tell the poor girl that I was not intentionally bailing. In the end, she didn't really care all that much, and joined me for two drinks with a view of the harbour. That was the last time I saw her, though, and she's been giving me incredibly mixed signals ever since, which I guess is karma.
We went our separate ways and I concluded a hectic day by drinking three beers and watching evangelion until midnight. Still, as hectic as that day was, the sights Lantau island has to offer made it one of the best I've spent here, and I guess the trials just make it that little bit more memorable.
The next day was equally restless, as Joe and I headed to the sham shui po markets to pick up some Chinese trinkets. I bought a snuff box, an opium pipe and a perfume bottle from a middle aged Chinese woman, and had entirely no luck haggling her down from her initial valuation of 300 dollars. After exploring the markets, we forayed around Prince Edward, which is without a doubt my favourite area of Hong Kong. It must be the most densely populated place in the city, and the rent appears to be some of the cheapest too. This makes for a neighbourhood absolutely rammed with vintage stores, movie poster stores, quirky cafés, bookstores and, bizarrely, a store that sells everything from vintage porn mags to Mau memorabilia to old unopened Hawaiian coca cola bottles. Only yesterday I headed back there to buy a framed picture of Bruce Lee. When in Rome.
On that day, though, Joe and I felt it was about time to buy some coffee table literature with the express goal of scaring the hoes. We spent nearly an hour traipsing through the most crowded (with books) store I've ever been in, searching for gems like Das Capital in Chinese and really anything by Hegel. In the end, we went for A Basque History of the World, a book on Hollow Earth theory, a self-published book on UFOs, an encyclopaedia of the occult, a book of philosophy essays on Batman and finally Ilan Pappe's 'Ten Myths About Israel.' They now adorn our windowsill, holding pride of place in our very pretentious living space.
Joe left to see the old ball and chain, and I decided it was high time to get with Hong Kong fashion, so I moved onto a mall in Mong Kok full of independent fashion stores. After deliberating for a number of hours, I bought baggy Japanese jeans with a Timberwolves NBA patch on the ass, a huge, stripy RL polo, a vintage Japanese Diadora football shirt and a belt to hold up the jeans. The kind man that I bought these items from also gave me a pair of free Levi's because they were a 34 waist and, as I've said, Mong Kok is the Asian twink capital of the world, so nobody else would fit them. I gave them to Joe in the end, and he wears them all the time now. Next, I hit the nearby Ladies market to buy some red sunnies to complete my Tyler Durden outfit. This time I haggled the lady down from a ridiculous 300 dollars to 100 dollars. Finally, on my way home, I bought a blender and some protein powder so I can start having my smoothies again. I'd really been feeling their absence in my constant hunger and obvious muscle mass loss, so the 600 dollars total that I spent were entirely worth it. I then buckaroo'd all of these things back to my flat, a task that left my bad shoulder hurting for a good few days afterwards from the strain.
When I finally got home I gave Susie a bell so we could catch up and she could bounce some writing ideas off me. I really enjoy being her sounding board: it brings me all the joy of the creative process with none of the stress. She's writing, along with her ongoing high fantasy series, a short story about a grieving woman moving back to her home town in the Highlands. The story takes a Midsommar, the VVitchesque turn as she descends into psilocybin fuelled madness in the wilderness of the North. I think I helped her iron out some of the inconsistencies, and I'm genuinely very excited for the end product, which she plans to submit for her final assignment on her creative writing course. I think she's really quite gifted.
Ok, I have now caught up with a large section of this account that I'd been waiting to fill in for weeks due to a period of intense business that I recount, along with the occasional curious anecdote, below.
No fucking way. A 60 year old man just got onto the MTR wearing a Fendi Hawaiian shirt adorned with anime-style images of xxxtentacion and lil peep. That’s so unfathomably hard.
Right, I know I keep saying how much I like my job, but I need to rant now. This week, and indeed the next few weeks, are out of order. Due to a combination of meetings and non teaching days and odd jobs, my allocated marking time during my paid hours has been reduced from 5 twenty minute periods before school, 5 lunches, 5 thirty minute periods after school, and 2 thirty minute Chinese lessons to 4, 2 , 2 and 0 respectively. They’ve more than halved my marking time without considering how that might mean I’d have to stay well over an hour late after school to compensate. I’m also working Saturday from 7.45 am. I will also be working the two Saturdays following that. Look, I make decent money and I really enjoy what I do, but that is quite literally an arse fucking. This ludicrous overtime has been compounded by the fact that I of course need to know *what* I’m doing for the next three Saturdays, as well as starting to learn the dance routine for a Christmas show that no one has mentioned thus far. My pants are round my ankles and they’re elbow deep at this point.
To top it all off, I think I’ve got a kidney infection. It’s either that or a UTI, which is obviously worse. Not physically, but emotionally, since it’s such a feminine trait. A man has no business getting a UTI. Christ Max, get chlamydia or something like a real bloke.
And another thing! I’m on the MTR as I type this and I’ve realised I’m on the fucking Ho Man Tin train. Now, this train runs on the correct line, but stops literally one stop before the end of the line, which is my intended location. Do you understand how frustrating that is? Every other train on the line from work to my house stops one stop before my house. It’s insanity. Oh, and I just gave up my seat for an old man. I feel like Christ on the fucking cross right now. Lather me in your sins Hong Kong.
No no no I forgot something. My dear American friend Abby has been touring around Europe for the first time since she graduated from Lancaster 4 years ago. I haven’t seen her since then, as a breakdown in communication primarily resulting from my huge fuck off dissertation meant that I didn’t link up with her during my US road trip. As I walked out of school today, I opened Snapchat to see Abby out for a drink with Dan, who I also miss terribly. I’m so happy for them, but talk about a left right good night.
Currently reading crime and punishment in Hong Kong police station. There’s definitely something in that.
In the end that was not my only involvement with the police that weekend. That was Friday, and Saturday night marked my first attendance at a Hong Kong rave. I imagine it’s obvious where this is going but from the fact that I’m writing this and I’m not in Chinese prison, you can also tell that things did not go all the way south. So, last night was the 26th of October, making it the last Saturday before Halloween. As such, I fully committed to a costume, like I always do. This year, I went for Tyler Durden from fight club.
I’ll attach a few pictures, but essentially this wasn’t very difficult. I got my hair buzzed again, wore my cropped Hawaiian shirt, my red glasses, some blue pants and black boots. The key, though, was shaving my facial hair into a tache and goatee. That really sold the domestic terrorist look.
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Unfortunately it also required me to clean shave for the first time in 4 years because I looked far too devious to be working with kids. Now I do not recognise myself. Anyway, back to the story. I predrank in the flat a little before meeting Alisa and her friends in a bar called Blue Supreme. Her friends were lovely, though I’ve forgotten most of their names as I was trolleyed for the entire evening, but I hope to meet them again. We acquainted ourselves over two drinks at that bar, and one more at another that Alisa’s friend Dono worked at. Here, we were abandoned by two crew members and picked up two more. It was a two men for two women swap, which was a major result of course. By the end of my time at the other bar, I was well and truly enjoying myself, so our walk to central to drop some things at Dono’s flat involved a lot of me trying to talk to people in familiar outfits (including a very nervous looking Donquixote Doflamingo). We even saw a guy, a friend of one of our party, wearing a Winnie the Pooh hat with a red Chinese traditional shirt. I won’t explain the significance of that, but just know it was a very bold move. Dono changed, and we hopped in a taxi to the rave, which took place on the opposite side of the island in what can only be described as a a building under construction that wasn’t actually under construction. The whole thing was fresh concrete, the type that leaves dust on your hands when you touch the walls, and there were no doors to each floor. We traversed 6 flights up to the floor one from the roof, and entered a room through a typically ravey curtain. Alisa paid my entry because she’s my sugar Mommy and I’m waiting for payday, then we started to bust some moves.
It was around midnight at this point, which, in rave terms, is around 9 pm, so there was almost no one dancing. After probably an hour of dancing, taking in the views of the city from the roof, and dancing again, the music cut off and light beamed through the curtain. Even in my VERY delirious state, I knew exactly what was happening. Everyone piled onto the roof and the HK police walked around, shining torches at people and presumably asking questions (obviously not to a white boy like me). For whatever reason, I wasn’t nervous at all, despite the fact that I was very clearly breaking a law by being at an unsanctioned rave in a building under contraction, and very clearly at risk of going to Chinese prison. High-key goated that I did not go to Chinese prison. The police left and we continued our night much as we’d started it, dancing, talking overly emotional shite, being extremely tactile with people we’d met that night, and making new friends. I’ll tell you, the rave community here is just like it is in Scotland and Paris; but for maybe three or four annoying people, everyone is very hot, everyone is very fashionable, and everyone is very loving. And boy are the locations better than clubs. The view from the roof was nuts. I was sat on a deck chair, chewing the fat with a view of a blade runner coded skyscraper protruding from the skyline directly in front of me.
I think the only trouble I’ll find is balancing 6 am benders with 6 am wake ups for work. Indeed, the horrible thought crossed my mind this morning as a collapsed into my bed that I’d need to be awake and getting ready for work in 24 hours. Still, the night was worth it, and I believe I’ve made some new friends. Alisa, in particular, is awesome. I really see myself getting on with her long term. We share all the same interests and when we danced together last night it almost felt like we knew each other in a previous life, which sounds ridiculous but I guess that’s how people often feel in that setting.
A man in a full suit just walked down my hallway with such urgency that he felt the need to overtake me on the way to his room. He was carrying two cans of Heineken in one hand. I admire his dedication to the craft.
I just had my first interaction with my kids outside of school. Fortunately, it was directly outside of school so I wasn’t dressed like a tart or hammered mid afternoon. It was actually quite lovely. As I walked out of the building at 6.20 pm, two of my kids, with their parents, shouted MR SAVAGE. I turned and waved to them, and they waved back. They then shouted MR SAVAGE BYE BYE. I turned and waved again, then shot them a heart and continued walking. They responded by repeating a chorus of MR SAVAGE BYE BYE until I turned a corner with a final wave. They are very cute.
Today I’ve finally regained the ability to smile, as I’ve been prescribed serious anti biotics to deal with the kidney infection I’ve been fighting for a month. I suddenly have energy again. It might also simply be that it’s a Friday, but it’s still nice to be in a good mood again. A few days ago I felt myself teetering on the edge of a real slump, so this is a pretty major relief.
The following weekend I saw Alisa again. She asked me to accompany her to a pop up shop for a local clothing brand called FFFWRLD. However, I was dead dead broke at this point. The shopping spree, along with the rave, left me with 6 dollars in my current account desperately awaiting pay day. As a result, I did not buy anything from the store, even though I saw some boxers I really would quite like to own. Alisa didn't buy anything either because the shop was popping up the following weekend at a festival she was attending, where she planned to get the hot store owner to give her a stick and poke. Unfortunately, my financial self-control did not extend to drinks, and we followed our store visit with drinks at a rooftop bar she loves. We spent a delightful few hours watching the sky turn dark and over sharing like it was an art form. She's already becoming very dear to me.
I spent the next two days very hungry and very tired due to my lack of funds, which did not help with my recovery from illness. Things did improve once I finally got paid, though the six-day work week negated most of that effect.
I spent that Saturday helping some local teachers I'd not met before interview 2 year olds. They were both very beautiful and the kids were obviously adorable, so it wasn't all that bad. I also, gave Mrs Chong a heartfelt birthday card, which she has not said anything to me about. I think she struggles being vulnerable and emotional, which is fine.
I’ve been doing some reflecting this week, both as the result of downloading a personality analysis app called dimensional and going on a date with a girl who let me talk (at her?) for quite literally hours. I came to the conclusion that I’ve changed drastically as a person, and I feel very strange about it. I found myself saying that I’m the kind of person who’s attracted to people with problems and wants to fix them, who needs constant company but who’s extremely socially anxious around new people and who’s bored without having something to be worried about. None of that is true anymore, though. I mean sure, I’m often drawn to people who’ve led difficult lives, though I think that’s more because trials make people interesting, rather than some kind of saviour complex (which it certainly used to be). And sure, I often drink a little too much before and during the first time I meet new people, but that’s only during social outings. I meet new people in sober settings all the time. In the past I’d take the company of awful people over my own company, now I don’t hate having a coffee by my window and typing away at this thing one on my ones. I think the last one is the biggest change, though. It’s tied to the first. Nowadays, when I meet someone who I think could and would ruin my life, I avoid them like the plague. I no longer want my life ruined. I don’t have the time for it. Part of me is a little sad, because those traits, however toxic and self destructive they were, were MY traits, and now they’re not. The other parts knows I’m just growing up. My frontal lobe is really coming in now, and it’s telling me to settle down and provide a stable environment to raise my young. Now, I have no intention of doing that, but the stability thing I fuck with. It’s nice that most days, my general malaise stems from the state of the world rather than my most valued relationships. It suggests that my Walden Pond plan might genuinely give me the chance for consistent happiness one day. And anyway, plenty of things have stayed consistent over the years, most notably my honesty and my ego. At least now- being a few weeks from rocking a fully fledged six pack, emulating the street fashion of arguably Asia’s coolest city and sporting a flattering buzz cut- my ego might finally be described as honest. I really am as hot as I think I am.
I just watched a 20 something Asian woman wearing a Union Jack tote bag skipping along the pavement towards the supermarket. I LOVE JOY I LOVE JOY!!!
Honestly, I’m getting a little worried about my relationship with food and weight. You see, right now I’m undoubtedly in the best physical shape of my life. I must be 20 kilos lighter than I was two years ago, my physical fitness is probably average and my diet is varied but protein heavy. All of these seem like good things, and I guess they are, but looking at my body now is making me hate how I used to look, and convincing me that I spent 3 or 4 years of my life fat as shit and deluding myself in thinking I was handsome. Only NOW, having lost all that weight, can I be considered handsome. Of course, this can’t be right. Some of the hottest girls I’ve ever dated were at times in my life when, in hindsight, I think I was quite unattractive. It might just be that most people aren’t as shallow as me, though I don’t entirely believe that. Maybe instagram’s insane body image standards are catching up with me. I’m not sure. I’m telling myself that it was so important to go on that journey from a sickly skinny teenager who’d borrowed his girlfriend’s eating disorder, to a guy who ate whatever he wanted and worked out when he felt like it and still thought he was handsome enough for his smoking hot girlfriend, to a single stud that takes great care of his body while balancing his love for food. That’s good, surely? I only fear that I’m currently sat in the middle of a pendulum which is inevitably going to swing back to one of the two extremes. Maybe the only thing keeping me here is my job: on the one hand, I couldn’t spend 8 hours a day, 5 days a week on my feet whilst in a significant calorific deficit and on the other, I simply can’t afford to eat lots of food and drink lots of beer, I don’t earn enough. Frankly, I’m thinking about it too much, and that scares me. I have this intense feeling of shame for having ever been fat, which is no doubt a remnant of a childhood surrounded by dieting women and a high school experience dominated for years by fatphobic bullying. Hey, who knows, maybe I’ll get a good poem out of all this.
As might be apparent from the paragraph above, I have not been having a very good time for the past few weeks. You see, I've worked two six day weeks in a row, and the week before that, I'd been scheduled to do the same but was spared by a typhoon. Still, last night was my first free Friday night all month, which has had a disastrous effect on my overall wellbeing. This has been compounded by the fact that I am still ill. I can't seem to kick this problem with my kidneys, despite two rounds of increasingly potent antibiotics, and cutting out alcohol for 10 days. And, as if that wasn't enough, I've been struggling with my eating (see above). I was broke at the start of the month, which meant I ate less and had less energy. Then, when I started my antibiotics, I had to cut out calcium (which affects the drug's effectiveness), meaning I stopped having my coffee with milk (and thus sugar), and stopped having bread with breakfast (due to the lack of butter). Generally, I have been exhausted and fed up for around three weeks, though it seems I'm through the worst of it.
Two nights ago, I went out for drinks (the first in nearly two weeks) with my co-workers to celebrate being given a day off work due to a strong typhoon hitting the city. I also had a somewhat mediocre brunch with Joe at a place in Mong Kok, which was saved only by our typically enjoyable conversation. He's becoming a very dear friend to me. Anyway, the drinks. Myself, Joe, Nancy, Ben, Sam, Lulu and Victoire met in Mong Kok at a bar called The Ale Project, which I believe is owned by a local brewery called young master. We started at 4 pm, which allowed us all to get trolleyed on 8% ales whilst playing cheat and ring of fire, then make it home by 10pm ready for a staff development day the following morning (Friday). I had a really lovely time. The group we have at work is really quite nice now, and I must here mention a key factor that has contributed to that.
Brie- my inept, Trinidadian co-worker, who's snapchat account was on influencer mode (her bio was 'just your fave tatted teacher' [this was her first teaching job]), and who you may recall I complained about berating me over racism in football and embarrassing me on the MTR- did a runner. Yes, she quit her job and fled the country for Thailand with absolutely zero notice. Nancy, who lived with her, came home one day to find her room entirely packed up and a note on her desk suggesting she'd had to fly home for a family emergency. In fact, we think she has a new job in Thailand (Sam still followed her on Instagram for a good while, and she posted from Phucket). In any case, she left with no notice, completely fucking over the senior staff, who now have to cover her classes, marking and other responsibilities while already a man down (one senior staff member is getting married and has two weeks off). More importantly, though, she abandoned her kids. What a stone cold bitch. However, for us grunts, this development has been nothing short of a miracle. As soon as the news broke, it became apparently that literally every member of staff hated her. Now, I believe I'm a good judge of character, but if everyone else had liked her, or if she'd given a shit about her students, I'd have been prepared to concede defeat. Evidently my dislike for her was entirely valid. No one turns 10 people against them through no fault of their own. Good riddance tatted teacher!!!
Before I get back to the narrative, I thought it was important to note that one of Joe's teachers called him Mr. Skibidi Toilet earlier this week. I thought that was just wonderful. I'll also attach a picture of the sketch book of my medium functioning autistic student, who unrestricted access to YouTube led him to a video about a man slaying a Kraken-like creature, and a resulting hyper-fixation with sea monsters. He also likes large numbers, and enjoys comparing the size of things using written scales. These things combine for a drawing that I think is one of the funniest things I've seen in my entire life.
Oh, and one more anecdote: it was pissing down with rain due to a T3 typhoon. The teachers had to cover up ann animal related display they'd made for this month's theme (animals). Ms Chiu walked into my classroom at top speed holding panda costumes that the kids wear when they play with the display, then proudly exclaimed “saved de panda” and chuckled like a lunatic. In spite of her mild incompetence, or perhaps because of that incompetence, Ms Chiu is growing on me. I can relate to how she feels pressured by the school's perfectionism, it can't be pleasant work environment for someone as naturally disorganised as her, and it's clear she's trying her best. Still, sometimes our classes do feel a little like the blind leading the blind.
I lied, one more: I went to a health clinic this week to see if they could finally figure out what's wrong with my kidneys. There was a literal fucking prisoner in the waiting room. Chained up and escorted by two police officers. Are you kidding me?
Now, I've had a pretty hectic three weeks if I'm honest. It's the sixth of December today, and I've spent this week recovering from the 6 day, 10-12 hours a day week I worked previously. As such, I have a fair bit to catch up on in terms of this behemoth. The last time I updated it was Sunday before said week, and I did so over coffee with Alisa in my flat. We sat in my living room for around 5 hours, vaping religiously and going song for song in a spotify jam, whilst distracting one another from our tasks (blogging and reading) with insightful and introspective conversation.
This was the second weekend in a row that I'd seen her, as we'd met the preceding Friday night for noodles and karaoke with Megan and Jasmine. Megan, I've talked about, but Jasmine I have not. I met her at the rave but didn't get much of a chance to speak to her due to the circumstances. She's hilarious, often without realising, and very, very friendly. She's also Mongolian, and entertained us with stories of yak-milking and horseback riding across the steppe. God I'd love a boys trip to Mongolia. Anyway, we chatted over Sichuan chicken noodles and fruit tea, then strolled over to wan chai to hit a Filipino karaoke bar called Junel's. Junel's is maybe 10 square metres, full of old people and served dreadful drinks. Nonetheless, we had a wonderful time belting out renditions of American boy, I Write Sins Not Tragedies and, my personal favourite, Boys Don't Cry. The latter was a solo, of course, and I put my heart and soul into it. I really did.
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
On top of the natural entertainment provided by a karaoke bar, we were treated to a minor bar brawl between an old butch lesbian wearing a t-shirt that said 'tranny granny', and a tall Irish lady. The Irish lady dared to attempt a duet with the granny whilst she was singing what she insisted was 'her song'. In response, the granny bottled the other lady. Albeit, the bottle was full and didn't smash, but still. I didn't know this karaoke shit got serious like that.
Ok, now for some anecdotes about the following week:
A woman in front of me on the stairs up from the MTR is playing online poker, but all the players are using avatars with horse heads. Ok.
It’s 8.09 am on a Monday, and I’ve just passed a probably 12 year old girl dressed in a full Hatsune Miku costume (blue wig and all) in the MTR station.
Mrs Chong said Phoebe, one of my favourite students, was like my daughter, and it made me unexpectedly quite emotional. I would love a daughter.
On my walk to the MTR today, I noticed a large impact mark in the barrier by the main road that I cross. It was surrounded by loose bricks and a car’s fender lay against it. Around 5 metres away, on some very sittable stairs, I saw 4 cans of Guinness, 7 cigarette butts and a discarded pack of cigs. I love environmental storytelling.
That Friday night, I attended a very dead birthday meal for a co-worker. The meal was tasty, and we followed it up with overpriced drinks in Central. Towards the end of the night, I mentioned that I'd done karaoke the week before and had had a great time. As such, the birthday girl suggested we go to Junel's for a spot of singing. On arrival, I noted the utter lack of people and finally succumbed to my exhaustion, then Ubered home to watch the football, leaving the others to live with my dreadful recommendtaion. We call that torpedoing a night. In the end, I couldn’t even get stream to work.
The coffee meet with Alisa took place on that Sunday and, as I say, the week that followed was fairly unpleasant. Now, I've started eating more, and it's been doing wonders from my overall mood, but even that couldn't compensate for the fatigue resulting from the sheer number of hours I sunk into work. I spent the week pulling superlong shifts in an attempt to get through half out my parent-calling quota. You see, it's school policy that the NET teachers have to call each child's parent at least twice per term, and record the details in a little book. I manged it, putting me firmly ahead of pretty much all of my co-workers, but it was decidedly at the expense of my mental health. Don't get me wrong, calling the parents actually made me quite happy. It was lovely to hear them giggle at the anecdotes I told them about their kids, and it felt good to show that I truly know and care for them at a level beyond professional responsibility. Still, the hours killed me, and the monotony was only broken up by the need to re-record a dance the school had asked me to perform to the gummy bear song for the kids to dance along to in the mornings. Apparently I didn't smile enough in the first one. Shock fucking horror.
The week did produce some pretty great anecdotes, at least:
Another of my favourite students, Jovia, called me fat. Not cool. This followed on directly from being told that I had to re-record my dance, so you can imagine that I wasn't in the best of spirits as I walked back upstairs to slave away at the phone all evening.
The smallest boy in my class, Shawn, has been dabbing at me as of late. He swings the straight arm out first, letting the momentum carry the bent arm into his face and producing one of the cleanest dabs I've ever witnessed. Unfortunately, as soon as I started doing it back, he stopped. Am I Unc?
Another boy kept asking kids in the class a fateful question: English or Spanish? And yes, he knew what it meant.
I feel this little journal entry, written as I walked into school on a Thursday morning, captures my mood quite perfectly: The sun has come out today after two weeks of pseudo British gloom, and I already feel my mood lifting. I feel physically lighter and more capable of smiling. Still, I’m definitely low. Work is fine, my health is ok, no more blood tests for my kidneys. Nothing is BAD per se. I think I’m simply a little lonely again. I think I need a (single) wing man. I need more guy friends to tear up the town with. Maybe I’m just utterly starved of attention, something I’m a notorious glutton for. Wow, that sun does feel awesome though.
On the Friday, I saw an old guy wearing black polyester/ silk blend pants with pink flames on the shins. Could be a serious move. Theatrical but not overly in your face. Suggestion of latent swagger. He was stood next to an advertisement for “the education university of Hong Kong.” Makes you wonder what the rest of them are for.
That night, Joe and I found ourselves at a loose end and decided to check out a Japanese place across the road from our building that offers an insane free flow booze deal. You pay 160 dollars (16 pounds) for unlimited drinks for two hours. I thought it'd be amiss to not cater my outfit to the setting, so I channelled my inner salaryman and changed from my actual work uniform into what I'd wear for work if I was a Japanese banker. I wore black wide leg trousers, a white button up with the top button undone, a black tie and a black leather jacket. We cracked a tinny or two over an episode of our current special interest- House MD- then headed across the road. The place is a bar/ restaurant with a large-ish indoor seating area but no real indoor bar area. Instead, the bar faces out onto the street, through a wide window thats open all the time. There's a ledge for resting you drink and another, lower one for any food you might order. This allows you the perfect opportunity for people watching whilst getting progressively more fucked up on whiskey highballs. It's like if a smoking area was a bar. I love it. The drinks are great too, and you don't have to worry about how much you're spending. It's truly a hall of fame pissing hole. And just to sweeten the deal that little bit more, the food is delicious, fresh and reasonably priced. They even give you a complimentary snack. Shout out Kafu (the bar's name) and shout out Benson, our friendly bar tender who encouraged me to ask out his pretty co-worker next time I see her.
Joe and I spent the evening engaging in progressively more sincere, vulnerable and open conversation which I won't recount here. I've learnt my lesson about disclosing things on here that are personal to other people in the delusion that, since they said them to me, these confessions are somehow an event in my life that I have a right to share. I imagine that makes me sound like an inconsiderate arsehole (shout out Will from the Inbetweeners), and perhaps that's not an incorrect assumption. At least I've realised that, though. Anyway, I just wanted to share with you all that I'm cracking his frosty exterioir. My honesty and sappiness is like an infectious disease.
I love the architecture here so much. Why am I walking across a concrete, white tile covered sky bridge through tenement skyscrapers and mild jungle just to get to the doctors?
I’m in Kwun Tong, a historically industrial area of HK that’s currently undergoing a major revitalisation scheme. I’m here for an X-ray on my kidneys, which took less than ten minutes, so I thought it’d be a waste of an hour long trip if I didn’t check the place out. As such, I’m stood overlooking the entirety of Victoria harbour from a place called cha kwo ling promenade, which is effectively an elevated park that I assume is part of the aforementioned revitalisation scheme.
It’s quite wonderful. This is the quietest place I’ve been to in the city. Of course, there’s a highway to my right, and children running around in the park, but unlike the rest of the city there’s only a *few* cars driving past, and a *few* children around. HK is so densely populated that this is really a rarity, and I love it. I’m still quite sick, and, as with most Saturdays, I’m nursing a hangover, so the lack of loud noise, the pleasant sunlight tempered by my red shades, and the pretty butterflies complimenting and already stunning view are very welcome in my fragile state. I think I’ll read for a while, then take a walk along the larger Kwun Tong promenade. Oh, and a side note: my location offers a view of the Kai tak sky garden, a kilometre long garden built in the carcass of the famously dangerous, now inactive airport, in which planes would fly metres away from buildings to land in the very centre of the city. I’m tempted to pay it a visit, but frankly I can’t be arsed. I’d also like to go climbing today, so time is of the essence.
The girl I’ve been seeing just told me she wanted to break things off because she thinks I’m not interested in her. Now, she’s not entirely wrong, but I’ve only met her three times, and two of them were after working 6 day weeks, so I wasn’t in the best mood. Of course, I respect her decision and I’m not all that mad, but it does give me some food for thought. Almost everyone I’ve ever dated has complained that they never felt quite secure in my affection for them, which I suppose isn’t a great sign. On the other hand, when I’m really interested in someone, I often show that interest so clearly that it’s off-putting. I can’t seem to find a happy medium. You know, I messaged this girl yesterday to ask if she was busy this weekend. When she said she wasn’t, I told her that I was busy and I’d only asked out of curiosity. I did that because the alternative was simply not texting, thing I thought was worse. Surely it’s better to explain why you can’t see someone than leave them in the dark? I don’t know though. Frankly, I’m not sure anyone else I know would ever ask someone if they’re busy purely to inform them that they themselves are. I don’t think that’s a normal thing to do. There’s definitely something wrong with me.
I received this message at the Kwun Tong promenade. It was lovely, other than the building works down the road that produce a huge booming sound every 3 seconds. Combined with the above contemplation, my trip to Kwun Tong took a decidedly less relaxing turn at the promenade, so I opted to go home. In any case, I had to chill that evening, as I had to work the next day (a Sunday). In fact, I did end up climbing that evening, but it had the wonderful effect of physically exhausting me and preparing me for a necessarily restful sleep. It's also very fun, and I can tell if I keep at it, I'll develop crazy forearms, which is a huge bonus (girls love a vascular forearm from what I've heard).
There's very little to say about my day at work on Sunday, but a guy on the bus there told me he loved my outfit :) which was nothing more special than jeans and a soft boy jumper. I also had my first lunch at a HK style diner in a while. The food was cheap and filling, perfect fuel for the monotonous labour I engaged in for the duration of the day.
Strangely, I have no major incidents that I feel the need to report from the last week. I'm finally on top of things at work, which I’m certainly being helped by the fact that everything is winding down for the Christmas break. Joe and I are getting on swimmingly, aided by our Friday night piss up. My friendship with Alisa continues to blossom into something genuinely significant. I've also finally come to an understanding of what it means to have work friends and what co-worker humour is. This I learned at our English teaching staff Christmas dinner on Thursday night. This took place at Kowloon cricket club, and was so boring that I think even recalling it on here will piss me off. It cost 200 dollars for the meal, and we had to get a 200 dollar secret Santa gift too. 40 quid for a meal I didn't want with people I already spent every working day with and the evil boss of my company who I'm fortunate enough to never really interact with. On the flipside, the present I received, a bottle of Riseling, a snoopy mug and a chocolate bar, was pretty great. I also enjoyed watching people fight over the gift I brought: a very pretty ceramic sake set in a beautiful wooden box that I found for 120 dollars in the Salvation Army shop. This was particularly satisfying given that it wasn't even my first choice gift. Originally, I found a Ralph Lauren sweater vest and a GAP hoodie at an outlet store, which I thought would be a hit with some of the less blokey teachers, but I ended up liking them so much that I chose something else, which of course turned out to be just about the best gift any brought. It was certainly better than the giant popcorn maker Joe received, which will continue to clutter our window space for the rest of the year.
On Friday night, I knew something was in the water when I saw a guy walking his pet birds on an RC car with a cage mounted on it. This event set the tone for an evening that I spent with Alisa. It began at a middle eastern restaurant, where I typed away at this and she applied for jobs while we toked away a kaat shisha and ate hummus. Alisa, who has a bad nicotine addiction, decided the shisha wasn't strong enough, and opted to supplement it with her turbo vape to make up for it.
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
After some street food, perhaps 5 pints, a couple of tinnies by the harbour enjoyed over an hour of playing music at each other, we walked to my place, where she climbed into my bathtub and threw up into the toilet, then fell asleep in my bed. Fortunately Joe was out, so I borrowed his duvet and crashed on the sofa, leaving me at the mercy of a very hungry mosquito who'd flown in through the open window in the living room. Honestly, I wasn't mad at all. I love when a hangout extends vastly beyond the original intended timeslot, and if that takes someone throwing up then so be it. We recalibrated the next morning with coffee and biscuits, our conversation interrupted only by Alisa's trips back to the toilet bowl. She even stayed long enough to meet Joe, who dazzled her with his wonderful conversational skills (his response to her asking what he though her racial composition was: 'I don't care’). He was grumpy becuase he's burnt out from work, and I don't blame him.
I'm sure they'll meet again when he's on better form, a he was that night, when we repeated our Kafu motive from the previous week. This time, instead of watching house when we got home, he showed me a decent streaming site to watch the city game, which I'd been struggling to find for weeks. We drew, unfortunately, but it was still nice to see the boys in action again. I'm planning to watch them play Everton at the Etihad on Boxing day with Theo and my grandad, which I am immensely excited for.
Well, I'm caught up again now, which is such a relief. I think I underestimated just how much work would be involved in the upkeep of a travel writing piece when the travel in question is semi-permanent, though I'm glad I've stuck to it thus far. I don't think this is as good as my shorter ones, so if this is the first time you've read my writing and you've somehow stuck with me all the way through this over-long journal, please do check out my Boston piece or something. It's much easier to write about a place when you're not working 45 hours a week there. Excuses excuses Maxwell. Don't blame the workload for not writing funny, just start writing funny again. Ok, ok I will try.
After a busy few weeks preparing for my trip home, I’m just about ready to conclude this chapter of my writing. I’ve got 3 hours to kill before I board my flight, and nothing better to do than tap away at my notes app and stargaze (see much much further below).
First, I’ll recount one of the most memorable nights I’ve spent here thus far. It was last Thursday night, and Alisa had invited me to the cinema with an offer no sane man would refuse. In 2003, daft punk had an hour-long animated film made as an accompaniment to their sophomore album, Discovery. There’s no dialogue, just music, but it still manages to tell the story of a mad scientist on earth kidnapping a pop band from another planet, dressing them all as humans and exploiting them on earth, where they become the most popular band in the world. The story is pretty great; it manages to criticise capitalist exploitation in the music industry, especially of non-white people, while also providing moments of striking romantic and platonic intimacy between the band and their saviour, a fellow alien that witnesses their kidnapping and gives his life to break them free. Still, the story is the least important of a triumvirate of attractions the film boasts. More important are the visuals. The art style emulates the hand-drawn anime of the 80s and 90s, giving it a strong resemblance to enduringly stylish landmarks like cowboy bebop and neon genesis evangelion.
Of course, the main attraction remains the music. I think most people are fairly familiar with the album, but regardless of whether you’ve heard all the songs, the popular ones or none of them, I cannot stress this enough: listen to it again. At the very least listen to Something About Us. It plays as the saviour alien bleeds out in the arms of the female band member. My god that song is sexy. Just give it a listen, trust me.
Now, anyone reading this knows exactly what we did to prepare for this experience, so we found ourselves feeling fairly peckish after we left the cinema. Fortunately there’s a shake shack next door, and we popped in for a burger each. Alisa got a mushroom burger, the freak, and I got my favourite smoke shack. A man in a suit two tables from us had two glasses of red wine (at once) and plain fries. He gets it.
The following night, myself, Joe and a few of our coworkers went out for one last hurrah before the break, and my god it was cute. There’s definitely more of a sense of community developing. The night made me realise that any negative emotions I might have felt towards them in the past have been dispelled. I think they can be put down to how irritable being in constant pain made me. Now that I’m back in moderately good health, I realise that they’re truly nice people, and it’ll be a pleasure to work with them for the foreseeable. Unfortunately, I did not feel that way a few months ago, and I did feel the need to share that online, which has come to bite me in the arse. But more on that later.
Joe and I left the hangout early so we could meet Alisa and head over to a techno club on the island called Minh. We were dressed in Santa hats and behaving in a way that would’ve certainly landed us on the naughty list. The strongest memories I have of the evening are pretending to stir a big bowl of soup in the middle of the dance floor and avoiding a man we knew simply as the sister introducer. We called him this because he kept saying hi to people, starting a conversation with them, then saying “this is my sister,” and pointing to a girl next to him, who would say nothing. The sister introducer.
Alisa wasn’t a fan of the music, so she suggested the take off in favour of another venue nearby, which was hosting a party it called a “freak off” as an homage to Diddy. You know when it’s getting late, and you’re desperate to find somewhere to continue clowning around? It’s one of those feelings that makes you willing to do just about anything to get what you want. Apparently that included pulling on the handle of the locked door to the freak off club so hard that a screw popped out. Needless to say we did not make it inside, and we only found out the next day that the entrance had moved. Instead, we went down three flights of stairs to a godawful underground French bar, whose tacky décor and corny music were just about dreadful enough that it was funny rather than depressing, and we ended up having a pretty great time. I feel this picture illustrates that.
The next day was a write off, but I spent the Sunday at Sham Shui Po market with a local girl I’ve been seeing so I could pick out some Christmas gifts for my family. Let me tell you, it’s much easier to haggle when you have a translator. We had a very pleasant day, though I nearly shat myself on the way home.
Briefly, two further instalments in my MTR NPCs series: Chinese guy reading an organic chemistry text book whilst stood up outside an MTR station at 7.22 am. They’re never beating the nerd allegations. Another guy wearing shoes that said 6AY on the tongue. Come on now.
The following Monday (the start of this week), I found myself in some hot water with my co-workers. As I gestured towards earlier, you might remember that in my last blog post, I had some fairly harsh, angry things to say about a certain Beth and her comparisons between myself and this Paresh character. Again, as mentioned earlier, those feelings have dissipated and I consider Beth to be one of the people I’m closest to in Hong Kong at the minute. Indeed, that’s probably why I got so upset in the first place: I felt that there was a real connection on my part and a kind of blinding nostalgia on hers. I mean, I’m famously very insecure in my friendships, so even if my reaction wasn’t entirely fair, it also wasn’t a surprise. Anyway, this is all relevant again now, because Irene followed me on Instagram and did me the kindness of checking out this website, where she was shocked to read some of the things I’d written. She showed Beth, Emily and Aaliyah (the latter two being fellow returning teachers), who were all understandably frosty with me that day. Fortunately, Beth is a very honest and reasonable person, so she didn’t have too much trouble believing me when I told her why I’d written those things, and why they weren’t a reflection of my feelings towards her at the moment. Still, being greeted in the morning with an ominous: “do you have a problem with me?” Left me deeply on edge for the rest of the day. We’ve made up, I hope, and the others are treating me no differently than they have thus far, so I’m optimistic that it won’t leave a permanent stain on my reputation. I really need to find a way to balance honest writing with the repercussions of honest writing.
The rest of the week was decidedly better, my days spent dossing about with the kids, who were all dressed up in Christmas themed costumes, and the nights spent enjoying the company of most everyone I know in Hong Kong. On Tuesday I met Alisa outside of her work for a bowl of noodle soup and a pint, over which we discussed the book she’s lent me: “Boy Parts” as well as our dire love lives. We’ve known each other for around 2 months now, but with the way we chat you’d think it’d been years. I’m very lucky to have met her. The next night, I went to visit John’s parents for Vietnamese food, courtesy of my “aunty” (his mum). Somehow, even without John there, there were no awkward silences, no hesitations.
The food was lovely and his Mum would not stop spooning more onto my plate, which I was more than happy to finish, both because Vietnamese food is apparently wonderful, and because, in preparation for my ten day trip home, I’ve refused to go food shopping all week, meaning I’ve been living on chocolates I’ve been given by kids and teachers at work. Fortunately, my aunty was not the only source of free food to tide me over for the rest of the week, as the following night was the whole school staff dinner. Myself, Joe, Sam and Oisin had the genius idea to pre-drink the dinner at a nearby bar (the dinner was in TST) and pick up a bottle of soju each to get us through the rest of the night, as we knew the booze options would be limited. Honestly, the meal would’ve been great even without the extra booze, but a flushed red face, the giggles and a generally more calm demeanour made chatting to Ms Chong, Ms Chiu, Kayla and the other local teachers that I’m chummy with all the better. The red flush unfortunately did not help when Ms Li insisted we get a photo together making a love heart with our hands. I turned bright pink and lost a significant amount of aura, I fear.
Still, I think I bumped it back up by being the first name announced in the whole school sweepstake, and sauntering up to the stage to shake hands with a man I didn’t know or care about, and receive a decent enough prize of £20 to spend at the supermarket I shop at.
The next day at school would’ve been truly unpleasant (due to my hungover exhaustion) had it not been the school Christmas party. I spent probably 80% of the time sat on a wheelie chair, pushing myself around the classroom and trying to make the kids laugh whilst they ate their turkey dinner. Also, the principal bought lunch for the entire staff, which provided the opportunity for even more wholesome bonding. What Marx failed to anticipate is that a staff pizza party can be pretty fun.
Now, drawing this chapter of my journal to a close, I have two details to share from my final week in Hong Kong before the break, that didn’t fit neatly into my chronology. First, Ms Chong informed me that a new kid will be joining our class of terrorists. He’s also from the mainland and only speaks mandarin. I’m not kidding. I really mean it. Talk about full circle. Second: my sweet autistic student, Ernest, wrote a Christmas card addressed to “lovely Emma” (Emma being the tallest and prettiest girl in his class) but he was too scared to give it to her. He’s just like me !!!!!!!! Fr!!!!!! He wrote one to just “Anna” too. Again, I had to pass it to her for him.
My emotional send off to Hong Kong involved listening to Chinese ballads in my Uber on the way to the airport, as I started my journey to leave a city I’ve fallen in love with. I’m so immensely excited to be home, but I will miss my new one.
I’m sat in the HK airport sky garden, and I think this is the first time since I arrived that I’ve seen more than one star in the sky. The light pollution out here on Lantau island is just barely low enough that I can make out Orion’s Belt. It smells strongly of cigarettes out here, as most people appear to be drawn to this spot less by the sky than the garden aspect of the deal. It’s very cold, partially due to my hangover, but really the temperature does plummet here in the winter. I’m not used to anything below 20 anymore. Being home will be a shock, but man I’m ready for it. I need to be shivering in a beer garden, convincing myself that trying snus might be a good idea this one time. A beer and a cig could be a serious move right now. Maybe I can bum one from an elderly European homosexual.
And my last note of the year: World Cup winner David Villa is on my flight. As if.
