Tuesday 15 September 2009: Flying Cows

Patrick Wong, my brother-in-law, is a really nice guy. Friendly, thoughtful, and so chilled out. He’s been chilled out all his life. This can be evidenced by an old black and white photo taken in about 1973. It features Patrick and Pat sitting on a fairground ride – one of those toy vehicles that you sit in and you put in 50c and music plays as the machine gently oscillates. In the picture Patrick can be seen looking up optimistically without a care in the world. Pat on the other hand - aged about 3 at this point - looks serious pi**ed off. She has that look about her. I learnt to recognise that look through experiencing the receiving end several times within a year of meeting her (and I still adore her!). When I first saw the picture in 1997 I literally cried with a knowing hysterical laughter. When Pat has that look she is in a seriously black mood. Paraphrasing Spinal Tap “How much more black can a mood get? None. None more black”. Luckily I don’t see that mood very often. But at 5pm today I witnessed essence de noir. More of that later.

The story of the day really began at about midday in the local Silver Café in Wah Fu estate eating corned beef and egg on ramen. The severity 8 typhoon had been a severe disappointment. I had entertained Hollywood-esque visions of cows flying past my 25th floor apartment and oil tankers being cast ashore in front of me – derring-do rescue stories. As it was the sev 8 seemed no different to severity 3 which was the status at midday. I’d experienced a severity 3 several years beforehand anyhow. Hong Kong people nonchalantly respond to a Sev 8 warning with ‘So we don’t have to go to work.’ The shops close and buses don’t run. The continual stream of container ships that pass the apartment discontinue.

That means we are apartment-bound. And Hong Kong apartments are jolly small.
And it is Indigo’s 8th birthday.

Poor girl. We’d meant to go to Ocean Park theme park the previous day but the typhoon was called. We’d spent a large amount of time in the apartment then. Now we had another day of this before us so it seemed. Indigo slumped in front of the TV for what have seemed an interminable period. Actually, she has been very, very good about it. Had a good, mature, attitude. Am very proud of her.

But at about 11am the typhoon was downgraded back to severity 3. Shops slowly opened, buses started, and the ships got going had again.

Pat and I slipped off to get our hair cut. The hairdresser in Aberdeen evidently knew Pat and was clearly rapt to see her. As she had her hair done I read my book, Alain de Botton’s “The Pleasure and Sorrows of Work’. I was reading the chapter on an artist that spent the last three years painting pictures of one particular tree. A tale of craftsmanship, obsession, and perfectionism. As my turn came up for a haircut I dwelt on this for some time. I’ve done my own hair for the past 7 years so I hadn’t been to a barber or hairdresser for a long time. The tone being set by the book I considered the hairdressers craft.

I can’t remember Pat ever having a bad haircut, but I only remember four haircuts as being particularly good, this being one of them. Each time the hairdresser was a Chinese. I guess there is some implied significance in that. Pat did really need the haircut. As bizarre as it sounds, her hair has acclimatised to Melbourne, and so reacted to the humidity of HK by beginning to impersonate a bogbrush.

I was told that the colours of my hair were really good. The cultural differences in hair aesthetics did not really translate across the divide. Neither would my thoughts on hearing this had they been verbalised.

With the rain now stopped and the typhoon waning I insisted we take Indigo out. It was her birthday, and she’d behaved well. We decided to go to the Science Museum in Tsim Tsa Tsoi on the Kowloon side. We got the bus to the museum.

To date, the Science Museum in London has been the best, though I guess the Smithsonian in Washington which we’ve not been to would probably be the world’s best. Scienceworks in Melbourne and Questacom in Canberra are both very good. What would HK’s offering to be like? I guess you need to wow your audience on first entry. Y’know, whet their appetite and stuff. So what was the first display? In proud neon we entered…wait for it….yes, the Occupational Safety section. Get the kids while they are young, eh? Jeez. What happened to rockets and strange goo? Actually, after the initial anti-climax it did get better and Indigo enjoyed it.

We left at about 5pm. Outside it was seriously, I mean, SERIOUSLY raining. Pat’s mood began to blacken, and I mean blacken. Obviously, the rain was my fault. How dare I do this to her. Even Thor decided to put up the ‘Please do not disturb’ sign and have a cig as Pat was throwing a few pointed thunderbolts in (not so) Dear Hubby’s direction.


Neither was Pat particularly grateful for the opportunity to stand in any number of puddles of all different sizes for prolonged periods of time with an umbrella. She won’t be able to do it in Melbourne y’know. How ungrateful is that?

We ended up on Nathan Road, the rain calming slightly.

At this point the story twists a little again. I’ve been to HK several times but have rarely done any of the tourist things. Yeah, I’ve been on the Star Ferry, and been up The Peak. So today’s route home afforded me the opportunity to go by some tourist things I’d never been to.

First up was Chunking Mansions. I’d always wanted to go, since watching Wong Kar Wai’s classic film ‘Chungking Express’. The desire probably had more to do with the fact that the delectable Faye Wong starred in the movie, and I wouldn’t say no to a highly improbable chance encounter. Chunking Mansions is famed for its Indian community - about 20% of people by my observation- and curries. It was very busy with lowlife. Long lines of people queuing for upstairs backpacker joints, massage parlours and presumably any number of dens of iniquity. The ground floor was a pantheon of small traders with metre wide shops selling any number of badly made dirt cheap goods. There were several attempts to hustle me. The guy that asked me if I wanted a prostitute did so with such a heavy accent I had no idea that is what he said, until Pat clarified for me (!) We left, ensuring Indigo didn’t see the rows of dildos on the shop by the exit we chose.

Only 100 metres later we were at the Peninsula Hotel. In front a Bentley parked majestically. It’s been on the wish list to get completely mulhered on the Peninsula Hotel bar since my friend Martyn Hammond told me about the pleasurable experience he had there. But standing outside all I could think of was the Bentley and how it, and the Peninsula Hotel harked back to colonial days, when Lords, Ladies, tycoons and Sherman McCoys stayed there knowing their place in the world – the superior one. The most damning thing about British colonial rule in Hong Kong is that the Hong Kong Chinese didn’t notice them go. You forget an itch quickly when it is gone. My now-deceased father-in-law was typical of his generation. He was no communist, but would rather be ruled by Chinese than anyone else, and would make money under any rule.

Got the Star Ferry across the harbour then the 4X service bus to Wah Fu. It was the first time either me or Pat paid any attention to the ads on the bus TV screen. They were worthy of comment. First, they were heavily focused on women and beauty. In the first an already skimpy cute woman is put under the knife to get a ‘HK Beauty Queen’ figure to end up on a billboard – yes, a cosmetic surgery ad for thin people to become thinner. Next a breast enlargement advert. The Chinese seem to have succumbed to the supposed (but not my) western aesthetic of big boobs are beautiful. Well, at the least the chiropractors will be kept happy. Next an advert for turtle jelly to keep the toxins out and get other women to envy your skin’s beauty. And finally, my favourite. Men, this is life changer so get your notepads ready.... Apparently women’s crotches emit a green coloured odour which creates a cloud around them wherever they go. Buy “Eve” crotch deodorant now! Well, as I’m a guy, I’ve never really had hang-ups about my rate of flatulence; but Pat, being un femme, still feels enthusiastic enough about my fom pei [Cantonese, lit. poisonous gases] to remind me when I’ve enjoyed an indiscretion. She pretends to be annoyed but I know she’s kidding really. Well, anyhow, now I can return the joke and comment on her green crotch vapour odour.

Goodnight.