Sunday 13 September: Ready, set go...shopping

Hong Kong may do concrete better than anyone else, but it - or at least the Wong family - doesn't do built-in showers so well. I always forget about this inconvenience in life until I am faced with my mother-in law's designer shower with the head installed at the height of my nipples. While European medieval philosophers concerned themselves with debates on how many angels could stand on the head of a pin, I have more lowly needs. How to crouch down under a shower head and turn to get to the soap at ground level without pushing my posterior beyond the ill fitted shower curtain and flooding the room? Answers on a postcard, please. This time around we slept at Patrick and Wen's apartment. The shower here had no curtain whatsoever, and a thin sodden flannelette for a bath mat. I spent the next 10 minutes showering the room, with water occasionally splashing me.

My ablutions complete I returned the travel bed in the lounge where Pat surprised me on her waking. She normally has two modes of waking. One, reserved for weekends means waking at 10am and saying 'so tired' before disappearing for 20 minutes to do mysterious things in private that the male is not allowed to know about. Or there is work mode which means getting up 40 minutes after me, with an unaspirated 'Don't talk to me, Fucker, I'm not a morning person' and walking past me as though I am not there. As I am very much a morning person, the boost to my ego this renders has cultured me into getting out of the house within 40 minutes to seek solace in my car stereo turned up to ear splitting proportions and making my way to work. So when she woke at 7am and was calm and chatty I could only conclude the day was going to be different. And, yes, I thought I knew why. The orgy of shopping that was about to begin could be credit card melting. And I am a willing participant.