A US president lies about the military capabilities of another country and deceives the world into invading it (for years, the US and the president's friends supported the same nation in its own illegal wars, and even provided materials so that it could wage chemical warfare against its neighbours, and its own people).
The US president's lies are exposed
The US president's friends' lies are exposed
The US president refuses to step down
The US president rewrites US laws to make himself immune from prosecution
The US military's use of torture against citizens of the invaded nation is exposed
The US president refuses to step down (he has rewritten the US laws to make himself immune from prosecution)
The US president and his administration condone the use of torture in the pursuit of their illegal war
Scientific analysis suggests 1 million citizens of the invaded nation have died as a direct result of the illegal war
The US president refuses to step down (he has rewritten the US laws to make himself immune from prosecution)
The US president argues that "perhaps around 30,000" of the citizens of the nation he invaded, based on lies, have died
A journalist from the invaded nation throws a shoe at the US president, the president who lied, approved the use of torture, and murdered 1 million civilians
The journalist from the invaded nation is taken into custody by the military of the new regime imposed by the US president and his friends
The journalist from the invaded nation is allegedly beaten by the military of the new regime imposed by the US president and his friends
The journalist's ribs are allegedly broken, as is his hand, and he suffers internal bleeding at the hands of the new regime imposed by the US president and his friends
The US president makes a joke about not seeing the size of the shoes
The US president does not comment on the injuries suffered by the man who hurled the shoe, and US journalists do not question the US president about the injuries suffered by their fellow journalist
The US president does not comment on the fact that the man could face 7 to 15 years in prison for throwing a shoe at the man who has murdered 1 million civilians, and US journalists do not question the US president about the fate of the man
US journalists focus on how the man was free to throw a shoe at the US president
US journalists focus on how the man would have been executed under the previous regime (which was supported by former US presidents and the US president's friends)
US journalists do not comment on how the previous regime was supported by former US presidents and the current US president's friends
The invaded nation has no resources other than cabbages
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Tiananmen Square, the South China Morning Post and historical rewrites
From the December 11, 2008 edition of the South China Morning Post.
June 3-4, 1989
"Violent confrontations break out between soldiers and residents. PLA troops force protestors off the square."
"Confrontations break out" means tanks rolling into the square, over the bodies of demonstrators, and troops executing unarmed civilians. The residents sought to protect the student protestors and delay the tanks. The PLA then put the country on lockdown and the administration hunted down students and residents and either executed or incarcerated them. Thousands were murdered.
Kudos to the journos at the Post for standing up to their governors in Beijing and telling it like it was.
FOOTNOTE: The Post was also first to break the news that the tanks that would roll into Hong Kong carrying PLA troops shortly after midnight on July 1, 1997 were in fact "armoured personnel carriers." Not tanks at all. A very important distinction if you crushed by one.
June 3-4, 1989
"Violent confrontations break out between soldiers and residents. PLA troops force protestors off the square."
"Confrontations break out" means tanks rolling into the square, over the bodies of demonstrators, and troops executing unarmed civilians. The residents sought to protect the student protestors and delay the tanks. The PLA then put the country on lockdown and the administration hunted down students and residents and either executed or incarcerated them. Thousands were murdered.
Kudos to the journos at the Post for standing up to their governors in Beijing and telling it like it was.
FOOTNOTE: The Post was also first to break the news that the tanks that would roll into Hong Kong carrying PLA troops shortly after midnight on July 1, 1997 were in fact "armoured personnel carriers." Not tanks at all. A very important distinction if you crushed by one.
Chinese dementia patients see hope in Santa - South China Morning Post exclusive
Top headline from the December 6 edition of the South China Morning Post:
A world class paper for "Asia's World City."
DEMENTIA PATIENTS LOOK TO OPERATION SANTA FOR HELP
A world class paper for "Asia's World City."
Monday, October 13, 2008
Fuck off McCain
War hero? Fuck off. You’re an army brat, the spoilt offspring of an elite army general. You flew a mach-speed fighter over a country full of peasant fighters and dropped napalm on them from thousands of feet in the air. You burned peasants to death, from a distance. And this makes you a hero? Fuck off McCain.
And did you ever apologise to the people of Vietnam for what you did to them McCain? Did you hell. Instead you go on and on like a stuck record about freedom and democracy and truth. You proclaim your service to your country, as though it was a virtue to bomb peasants fighting against colonialism. But can you tell me how you served the Vietnamese people by shredding them with bombs?
You can’t tell me how you served the Vietnamese people McCain, because you can’t even see them as people. Back then they were thousands of feet below you, and because you never saw them it was okay to bomb them. But just to be sure you called them “gooks”, because a gook is inferior – a sub-human – and killing a gook is not a crime. But over 30 years later you still call the Vietnamese people gooks. It’s because you do not have the courage to admit that what you did was wrong that you use the same language of hatred to continue to justify your crimes.
Let me explain what I mean by a crime. Some of the bombs you dropped were filled with sharp plastic spikes. When the bombs exploded, the plastic spikes flew in all directions, and if they hit a human they worked their way deep into the flesh. They buried themselves so deep they couldn’t be removed. The spikes were designed to tunnel through the body and into the vital organs. And because they flew everywhere, the plastic spikes flew into children’s bodies and tunnelled their way slowly into their livers, kidneys or hearts. When I say slowly, I mean 10, 11, 12, 13 days of screaming. Then the children died – there was no anaesthetic, your government’s bombing and embargoes had seen to that, and that’s why the children screamed. There was rarely an X-Ray machine to detect the spikes, and even when there was it could not find the spikes because they were designed to be undetectable. The bomb was an instrument of terror, a weapon that killed by a slow torture. It was an instrument designed to torture the Vietnamese people into submission.
I never hear you talk about the weapons you used against the Vietnamese people, but you’ve made something of a living out of your status as a torture victim, haven’t you John? Let me speak bluntly here: you weren’t fucking tortured McCain. You got a bit of a slapping, which is less than you deserved.
Let me explain again. You know what happens to most downed airmen, don’t you? See, the people you bomb don’t see you as a war hero. All they know is you just bombed their street. You just killed grandma, and you just killed the old bloke down the street who was a bit off – he had a room full of old football magazines going back 35 years, but he never did any harm to anyone. You blew him up. His leg is now lying in the middle of the road.
So the people don’t see you as a hero. When you crash-land in their street they bash your skull in with the bricks that used to be their houses, or they drown you, or they cut your throat. The British did it to the Luftwaffe during WW2. I can introduce you to fishermen who used to surround any downed pilot in their boats, then circle him, laughing and pointing and waiting for him to drown.
You got lucky. You lived. The Vietcong saved you from drowning in a lake after you crashed, then saved you from the mob who wanted to bash your brains out. You got lucky McCain.
So what did you do? You complained. Oh, there was no proper medical treatment for your broken limbs. Of course there wasn’t. You bombed the hospitals, you bombed the power stations, you bombed the sewage and water systems, and you bombed the supply lines. Remember?
You complained about the food, but you got the same food that everyone else had in Vietnam at that time. The frontline Vietcong lived on taro and salt. There was no food in Vietnam. You bombed the supply lines, remember?
You got dysentery. Well John, that’s what happens when you bomb a country back to the stone age: everyone gets dysentery. Didn’t you know that that’s what happens when you cut off medical supplies and food like you were conducting a Mediaeval siege?
Like I say, you got lucky. You lived. You got slapped around a bit, sure. Get over it. You’re alive. The Vietnamese you bombed are not. And let me tell you, if you bombed my street then crashed your plane in it, I’d be first in line with electrodes for your testicles. Or perhaps just a brick for your skull.
Think yourself lucky you didn’t land in England McCain. We’re not as civilised as the Vietnamese that way.
To sum up. You have never apologised for what you did to the people of Vietnam. Worse, you propose that we continue a war in Iraq that is estimated to have left over 1 million Iraqi civilians dead already. The only conclusion I can draw from this is that you have learned nothing from your life experience, which is a poor recommendation for a politician, let alone a man who aspires to be a “world leader”. But I will go further. I strongly believe that you continue to make the same mistakes because it serves your career to do so. Rather than find the strength and human dignity to relive the past and address the immoral conduct or yourself, and your country, you continue to further your career by proclaiming yourself a war hero.
War hero? Fuck off.
And did you ever apologise to the people of Vietnam for what you did to them McCain? Did you hell. Instead you go on and on like a stuck record about freedom and democracy and truth. You proclaim your service to your country, as though it was a virtue to bomb peasants fighting against colonialism. But can you tell me how you served the Vietnamese people by shredding them with bombs?
You can’t tell me how you served the Vietnamese people McCain, because you can’t even see them as people. Back then they were thousands of feet below you, and because you never saw them it was okay to bomb them. But just to be sure you called them “gooks”, because a gook is inferior – a sub-human – and killing a gook is not a crime. But over 30 years later you still call the Vietnamese people gooks. It’s because you do not have the courage to admit that what you did was wrong that you use the same language of hatred to continue to justify your crimes.
Let me explain what I mean by a crime. Some of the bombs you dropped were filled with sharp plastic spikes. When the bombs exploded, the plastic spikes flew in all directions, and if they hit a human they worked their way deep into the flesh. They buried themselves so deep they couldn’t be removed. The spikes were designed to tunnel through the body and into the vital organs. And because they flew everywhere, the plastic spikes flew into children’s bodies and tunnelled their way slowly into their livers, kidneys or hearts. When I say slowly, I mean 10, 11, 12, 13 days of screaming. Then the children died – there was no anaesthetic, your government’s bombing and embargoes had seen to that, and that’s why the children screamed. There was rarely an X-Ray machine to detect the spikes, and even when there was it could not find the spikes because they were designed to be undetectable. The bomb was an instrument of terror, a weapon that killed by a slow torture. It was an instrument designed to torture the Vietnamese people into submission.
I never hear you talk about the weapons you used against the Vietnamese people, but you’ve made something of a living out of your status as a torture victim, haven’t you John? Let me speak bluntly here: you weren’t fucking tortured McCain. You got a bit of a slapping, which is less than you deserved.
Let me explain again. You know what happens to most downed airmen, don’t you? See, the people you bomb don’t see you as a war hero. All they know is you just bombed their street. You just killed grandma, and you just killed the old bloke down the street who was a bit off – he had a room full of old football magazines going back 35 years, but he never did any harm to anyone. You blew him up. His leg is now lying in the middle of the road.
So the people don’t see you as a hero. When you crash-land in their street they bash your skull in with the bricks that used to be their houses, or they drown you, or they cut your throat. The British did it to the Luftwaffe during WW2. I can introduce you to fishermen who used to surround any downed pilot in their boats, then circle him, laughing and pointing and waiting for him to drown.
You got lucky. You lived. The Vietcong saved you from drowning in a lake after you crashed, then saved you from the mob who wanted to bash your brains out. You got lucky McCain.
So what did you do? You complained. Oh, there was no proper medical treatment for your broken limbs. Of course there wasn’t. You bombed the hospitals, you bombed the power stations, you bombed the sewage and water systems, and you bombed the supply lines. Remember?
You complained about the food, but you got the same food that everyone else had in Vietnam at that time. The frontline Vietcong lived on taro and salt. There was no food in Vietnam. You bombed the supply lines, remember?
You got dysentery. Well John, that’s what happens when you bomb a country back to the stone age: everyone gets dysentery. Didn’t you know that that’s what happens when you cut off medical supplies and food like you were conducting a Mediaeval siege?
Like I say, you got lucky. You lived. You got slapped around a bit, sure. Get over it. You’re alive. The Vietnamese you bombed are not. And let me tell you, if you bombed my street then crashed your plane in it, I’d be first in line with electrodes for your testicles. Or perhaps just a brick for your skull.
Think yourself lucky you didn’t land in England McCain. We’re not as civilised as the Vietnamese that way.
To sum up. You have never apologised for what you did to the people of Vietnam. Worse, you propose that we continue a war in Iraq that is estimated to have left over 1 million Iraqi civilians dead already. The only conclusion I can draw from this is that you have learned nothing from your life experience, which is a poor recommendation for a politician, let alone a man who aspires to be a “world leader”. But I will go further. I strongly believe that you continue to make the same mistakes because it serves your career to do so. Rather than find the strength and human dignity to relive the past and address the immoral conduct or yourself, and your country, you continue to further your career by proclaiming yourself a war hero.
War hero? Fuck off.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
China joins 'spacewalk league' (whatever the fuck that is)
“China joins spacewalk league” blares the front page of today’s South China Boring Most, speaking impartially on behalf of Beijing.
Apparently the man who walked in space for China wore a suit that was made in China, and survived. The Boring Most does not say who his tailor was or if the material was a cotton-rayon mix or one of the advanced washable fabrics favoured by German designers for those awful tight trousers they make.
I’m not at all sure what the Spacewalk League is, or how you score points or win a trophy because the Boring Most doesn’t actually tell me that. I suspect this might be just more nationalistic hyperbole and flag-waving, but don’t want to be seen as cynical so I won’t write that.
My first thought then, as someone who came of age in the 80s, was Shalamar or Michael Jackson – you know, walking forward while looking like you are walking backwards? But apparently not. So the Spacewalk League is not a breakdance or bodypopping league. It is not clear what the Spacewalk League is.
What is clear from the Boring Most article is that China will be competing for points in spacewalking against the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. Except the U.S.S.R. doesn’t exist any more. So, the U.S.A. plus Russia and the bits of Georgia that Putin recently bombed flat. I guess the Spacewalk League is somewhat like international athletics, where competitors travel different distances in competitive times, only now they actually have to be in space in a spacesuit. I wonder if they take steroids. Again, the Boring Most does not say.
The Boring Most does mention that China plans to go to the moon and build a moonstation. My guess is they will then enter a Moonwalking League, which is where they will compete with Michael Jackson and Shalamar, although maybe not. The U.S.A. used to go to the moon but there was no one to bomb there, and no one to preach to about right living, so they stopped going. Maybe China will build a series of widget factories. Maybe N.A.S.A. will bring Michael Jackson out of retirement. It is not clear. The Boring Most does not say.
Finally, and I must go now and have a cup of tea, I should point out that space technology is important because it has been responsible for many important scientific innovations that have improved life on planet earth for many people. One of these inventions is tinfoil. I can’t remember any others right now.
People tend to forget these inventions and focus on the cost of running a Spacewalk League and talk about how when people around the world are poor we shouldn't waste money on shit like this. They overlook the versatility of tinfoil, and focus instead on statistics like these:
Source for statistics: http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats#fact3
Apparently the man who walked in space for China wore a suit that was made in China, and survived. The Boring Most does not say who his tailor was or if the material was a cotton-rayon mix or one of the advanced washable fabrics favoured by German designers for those awful tight trousers they make.
I’m not at all sure what the Spacewalk League is, or how you score points or win a trophy because the Boring Most doesn’t actually tell me that. I suspect this might be just more nationalistic hyperbole and flag-waving, but don’t want to be seen as cynical so I won’t write that.
My first thought then, as someone who came of age in the 80s, was Shalamar or Michael Jackson – you know, walking forward while looking like you are walking backwards? But apparently not. So the Spacewalk League is not a breakdance or bodypopping league. It is not clear what the Spacewalk League is.
What is clear from the Boring Most article is that China will be competing for points in spacewalking against the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. Except the U.S.S.R. doesn’t exist any more. So, the U.S.A. plus Russia and the bits of Georgia that Putin recently bombed flat. I guess the Spacewalk League is somewhat like international athletics, where competitors travel different distances in competitive times, only now they actually have to be in space in a spacesuit. I wonder if they take steroids. Again, the Boring Most does not say.
The Boring Most does mention that China plans to go to the moon and build a moonstation. My guess is they will then enter a Moonwalking League, which is where they will compete with Michael Jackson and Shalamar, although maybe not. The U.S.A. used to go to the moon but there was no one to bomb there, and no one to preach to about right living, so they stopped going. Maybe China will build a series of widget factories. Maybe N.A.S.A. will bring Michael Jackson out of retirement. It is not clear. The Boring Most does not say.
Finally, and I must go now and have a cup of tea, I should point out that space technology is important because it has been responsible for many important scientific innovations that have improved life on planet earth for many people. One of these inventions is tinfoil. I can’t remember any others right now.
People tend to forget these inventions and focus on the cost of running a Spacewalk League and talk about how when people around the world are poor we shouldn't waste money on shit like this. They overlook the versatility of tinfoil, and focus instead on statistics like these:
- At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $1 a day.
- More than 80 percent of the world’s population lives in countries where income differentials are widening.
- The poorest 40 percent of the world’s population accounts for 5 percent of global income. The richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of world income.
Source for statistics: http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats#fact3
Monday, September 22, 2008
Suck on a Fisherman's Friend
September 22, 2008
Overheard on the ferry this morning.
A youngish, slightly doughy Englishman is sitting on the ferry at 08:25 wearing an ironed tee-shirt with a collar. It has one of those indistinct sporty labels that place you in a certain social category, though which category that would be I really could not tell you.
A youngish, slim, nondescript Chinese woman with a slight North American twang walks up in a tight black dress and stilletoes.
"Hi," she says enthusiastically, "what are you doing here?"
She sits down next to the Englishman while he mumbles something unconvincing about deciding to go to work on this ferry on this day, and sit in this particular seat on a whim, a prayer, a spur, or some such.
It's all rather cute in a Hugh Grant kinda way - all rather gosh fancy seeing you here, umm, well, you know, lovely day, like your dress, gosh, isn't the light so ... sort of ... morningy.
Mildly amusing but not very distracting, like a Hollywood film running quietly in the background. Until, that is, she offers him a sweet.
"Oh, yes please," he says enthusiastically. "It's always good to suck on a Fisherman's Friend."
I look over then.
From his face it's clear he does not understand the pun, and neither, bless, does she.
Overheard on the ferry this morning.
A youngish, slightly doughy Englishman is sitting on the ferry at 08:25 wearing an ironed tee-shirt with a collar. It has one of those indistinct sporty labels that place you in a certain social category, though which category that would be I really could not tell you.
A youngish, slim, nondescript Chinese woman with a slight North American twang walks up in a tight black dress and stilletoes.
"Hi," she says enthusiastically, "what are you doing here?"
She sits down next to the Englishman while he mumbles something unconvincing about deciding to go to work on this ferry on this day, and sit in this particular seat on a whim, a prayer, a spur, or some such.
It's all rather cute in a Hugh Grant kinda way - all rather gosh fancy seeing you here, umm, well, you know, lovely day, like your dress, gosh, isn't the light so ... sort of ... morningy.
Mildly amusing but not very distracting, like a Hollywood film running quietly in the background. Until, that is, she offers him a sweet.
"Oh, yes please," he says enthusiastically. "It's always good to suck on a Fisherman's Friend."
I look over then.
From his face it's clear he does not understand the pun, and neither, bless, does she.
Privacy in Hong Kong
Sunday 16th March
Internet down at City Lofts, or at least, I can’t connect using the passwords they gave me.
I call Arman, the enthsiastically friendly Filipino who works for City Lofts and he says he will bring over their tech guy and check out the connection for me. I have to go out, so I will not be there.
He asks if I will leave my computer switched on.
I tell him no, and he is not to touch my computer. He can check the connection, and there is nothing wrong with my computer, it has worked with wireless connections all over the world.
He says sometimes there is a problem between their system and Macs.
I tell him not to touch my computer.
I turn off my computer and put it in my briefcase next to the glass desk which has the TV on so you can’t use it to write on.
I go out, take the underground, then a ferry, and walk across Lamma, the small island I used to live on. It is Sunday, and the sun has come out. I find myself walking a large concrete road that is all but deserted, apart from an occasional unfriendly village house with a collection of violent, unfriendly dogs which come out to bark at me.
The grass is scorched brown from the winter. There is a fecund smell of earth and leaf. The wind moves through trees. I find myself strangely aroused, and realise that growing up in the country in England, my earliest sexual encounters are forever associated with the smells of earth, of cut grass, of the cold chill of air moving over hot limbs coiled in long grass.
I drift in and out of thoughts, and whilst wondering whatever happened to one of my ex-girlfriends, the one who became a heroin addict, find myself on the brow of a hill, looking down over the island from a new vantage point. The hideously ugly power station dwarfs the tiny village below.
My phone rings. It is Arman. He wants to know if he can go into my room. I tell him he can, and I told him before that he can, to check the internet.
I stand on the hill and look down again at the village. I remember that the power station was built here because it was not safe to build it close to the city. So they built it right on top of one of the oldest fishing villages in Hong Kong, and destroyed the long, softly sweeping curve and white sand of Hung Shing Yeh Beach to do so.
The phone rings again. It is Arman. He wants to know where my computer is. I tell him that he cannot touch my computer. He says the tech guy would like to check that my computer is okay. I tell him my computer is fine, thank you, and hang up.
I remember that there was a pig farm next to Hung Shing Yeh Beach. When I first came to live here, 18 years ago, each morning as the sun rose I would awaken to the screams of a pig being slaughtered. It became a ritual of sun worship: the sun rose, the pig died. The pig had to die for the village to thrive. True enough, on my way to the ferry I would pass the butcher’s, a small shop in a narrow street, and see the steaming entrails and limbs of the fresh carcass surrounded by hordes of old men and women, prodding the parts and calling for cuts of this and that.
My phone rings again. Arman wants to know the password to my computer. So, he has gone into my briefcase, found the computer, and opened it, and now can’t get into the computer because it is password protected. My reverie is broken. I demand to talk to the tech guy. I tell him to leave my computer alone. It is private. It has work documents on there that are confidential. This is true. I do not bother with an argument about privacy. Clearly that is an abstract concept that cannot be dealt with from the brow of a hill, over the phone, looking down on the beach that housed the pig farm and is now dominated by a power station.
I tell him again not to touch my computer, that it works perfectly. I am coming back now, I say.
I find my way back into the village, onto a ferry, into the subway, up the ciggie strewn stairwell, and two hours later I am in my room.
My computer is back in my briefcase. I take it out and turn it on. It connects to the internet.
Two days later, I realise that my log files have been deleted.
By this time I have found that all the techie who hacked into my computer needed to do was to tell me to use a different wireless protocol.
So it goes.
Internet down at City Lofts, or at least, I can’t connect using the passwords they gave me.
I call Arman, the enthsiastically friendly Filipino who works for City Lofts and he says he will bring over their tech guy and check out the connection for me. I have to go out, so I will not be there.
He asks if I will leave my computer switched on.
I tell him no, and he is not to touch my computer. He can check the connection, and there is nothing wrong with my computer, it has worked with wireless connections all over the world.
He says sometimes there is a problem between their system and Macs.
I tell him not to touch my computer.
I turn off my computer and put it in my briefcase next to the glass desk which has the TV on so you can’t use it to write on.
I go out, take the underground, then a ferry, and walk across Lamma, the small island I used to live on. It is Sunday, and the sun has come out. I find myself walking a large concrete road that is all but deserted, apart from an occasional unfriendly village house with a collection of violent, unfriendly dogs which come out to bark at me.
The grass is scorched brown from the winter. There is a fecund smell of earth and leaf. The wind moves through trees. I find myself strangely aroused, and realise that growing up in the country in England, my earliest sexual encounters are forever associated with the smells of earth, of cut grass, of the cold chill of air moving over hot limbs coiled in long grass.
I drift in and out of thoughts, and whilst wondering whatever happened to one of my ex-girlfriends, the one who became a heroin addict, find myself on the brow of a hill, looking down over the island from a new vantage point. The hideously ugly power station dwarfs the tiny village below.
My phone rings. It is Arman. He wants to know if he can go into my room. I tell him he can, and I told him before that he can, to check the internet.
I stand on the hill and look down again at the village. I remember that the power station was built here because it was not safe to build it close to the city. So they built it right on top of one of the oldest fishing villages in Hong Kong, and destroyed the long, softly sweeping curve and white sand of Hung Shing Yeh Beach to do so.
The phone rings again. It is Arman. He wants to know where my computer is. I tell him that he cannot touch my computer. He says the tech guy would like to check that my computer is okay. I tell him my computer is fine, thank you, and hang up.
I remember that there was a pig farm next to Hung Shing Yeh Beach. When I first came to live here, 18 years ago, each morning as the sun rose I would awaken to the screams of a pig being slaughtered. It became a ritual of sun worship: the sun rose, the pig died. The pig had to die for the village to thrive. True enough, on my way to the ferry I would pass the butcher’s, a small shop in a narrow street, and see the steaming entrails and limbs of the fresh carcass surrounded by hordes of old men and women, prodding the parts and calling for cuts of this and that.
My phone rings again. Arman wants to know the password to my computer. So, he has gone into my briefcase, found the computer, and opened it, and now can’t get into the computer because it is password protected. My reverie is broken. I demand to talk to the tech guy. I tell him to leave my computer alone. It is private. It has work documents on there that are confidential. This is true. I do not bother with an argument about privacy. Clearly that is an abstract concept that cannot be dealt with from the brow of a hill, over the phone, looking down on the beach that housed the pig farm and is now dominated by a power station.
I tell him again not to touch my computer, that it works perfectly. I am coming back now, I say.
I find my way back into the village, onto a ferry, into the subway, up the ciggie strewn stairwell, and two hours later I am in my room.
My computer is back in my briefcase. I take it out and turn it on. It connects to the internet.
Two days later, I realise that my log files have been deleted.
By this time I have found that all the techie who hacked into my computer needed to do was to tell me to use a different wireless protocol.
So it goes.
A NATION MOURNS. Apparently.
20 May 2008
In the papers today, the press is filled with absurd platitudes about mourning the dead.
“A NATION MOURNS” blares the South China Boring Most, with large font and cliché upon cliché to support the official party line.
Not since the death of Mao have so many people stood still in China to mourn at an officially designated time, we are told. This is apparently a wonder of the age.
“They will never be forgotten” says the Boring Most.
By about page 4 the dead have been forgotten and we have moved on to the reckonings that must be due to corrupt officials.
Perhaps they’ll execute them in the shiney new stadia built for the forthcoming Olympics? Assuming, that is, the stadia don’t fall down because they were built by corrupt officials using substandard materials, like the schools in Sichuan that crushed and suffocated the tiny bodies of the children of the poor.
Over on the back page, a Reuters article reveals that prostitutes in Afghanistan are often young Chinese women. They risk the obvious threats of death to make more money than they would have at home. The downside of China’s economic miracle, it seems, is mass unemployment as state industries are closed, and workers thrown to the dogs.
Or in this case, the Taliban.
The nation does not mourn this.
In the papers today, the press is filled with absurd platitudes about mourning the dead.
“A NATION MOURNS” blares the South China Boring Most, with large font and cliché upon cliché to support the official party line.
Not since the death of Mao have so many people stood still in China to mourn at an officially designated time, we are told. This is apparently a wonder of the age.
“They will never be forgotten” says the Boring Most.
By about page 4 the dead have been forgotten and we have moved on to the reckonings that must be due to corrupt officials.
Perhaps they’ll execute them in the shiney new stadia built for the forthcoming Olympics? Assuming, that is, the stadia don’t fall down because they were built by corrupt officials using substandard materials, like the schools in Sichuan that crushed and suffocated the tiny bodies of the children of the poor.
Over on the back page, a Reuters article reveals that prostitutes in Afghanistan are often young Chinese women. They risk the obvious threats of death to make more money than they would have at home. The downside of China’s economic miracle, it seems, is mass unemployment as state industries are closed, and workers thrown to the dogs.
Or in this case, the Taliban.
The nation does not mourn this.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
City Lofts and Hong Kong's Essential Architectural Pornography
City Lofts has a trendy web site, made up of cut and pastes of old bits of Hong Kong. "Modern Living in Hong Kong's Historic Buildings" they call it. I’m fucked if I know where they found this stuff, but it is very careful editing that put all this shit together.
I’ve lived all over Hong Kong, and I take photographs. While this website is only a pastiche of little pieces like post boxes and old wooden doors with bits of faded calligraphy, and some brickwork, it’s highly misleading because there simply is no old Hong Kong left in the areas where City Lofts have their studios.
Face it, Hong Kong’s rapacious greed for a fast buck means anything of historic or aesthetic value has long since been pulled down – sorry, ‘redeveloped’ or ‘enhanced,’ usually with a 50-storey airconditioned fuck-ugly skyscraper designed by an epileptic crayon-wielding two-year-old on an acid trip.
The result is a smog-soaked cross between a building site and a multi-storey car park, the kind of place that gives financiers raging hard-ons because it is constantly being rebuilt, and that needs money, but it's also a place that needs heavy Photoshopping and an army of spin doctors to make it seem appealing.
Of course, most tourists who visit Hong Kong are wowed by the size of the buildings, but it’s all a bit like looking at freak porn penises. Once you get past the open-mouthed ‘how on earth did she, no, that can’t be real’ factor, there’s not much to say. People have big penises, people have sex with big penises, men with small penises and fragile egos build big buildings. So what? It’s all frightfully dull, but since most people don’t stay in Hong Kong long enough to get bored by its fundamental pornography, they leave feeling itchy and wanting to masturbate. All part of the city’s energy.
Don’t believe me? Try the Sun Yat Sen walk, it’s hilarious. The tour can be summarised thus: “On this site was a building once where Sun Yat Sen had a cup of tea.”
Repeat numerous times.
There’s nothing left of anywhere where Sun Yat Sen sat down his teacup because Hong Kong’s landlords, and their financiers with raging hard-ons, have torn it all down and replaced it with marble-coated buildings that have porticos like vast urinals. If this were England, the whole place would reek of piss because the drunks would be using the porticos as urinals, but since it’s China it merely reeks of a dull and witless ostentation.
Unaware of how cretinous it was being, and desperate to tempt tourists to Hong Kong by claiming the city had a cultural side, the Hong Kong government initiated the Sun Yat Sen Memorial Walk a few years back. Aware that the city had once briefly housed the father of modern China, but unperturbed by the absence of any of the sites where he sipped tea, they ploughed forward with their plan. The result is a series of plaques on various dirty street corners that tell tourists that once upon a time, before the bulldozer and the wrecker's ball, there was a building here where someone who became famous had a cup of tea.
Not any more though.
There's nothing of substance there, which was my first thought when I saw City Loft's website.
I’ve lived all over Hong Kong, and I take photographs. While this website is only a pastiche of little pieces like post boxes and old wooden doors with bits of faded calligraphy, and some brickwork, it’s highly misleading because there simply is no old Hong Kong left in the areas where City Lofts have their studios.
Face it, Hong Kong’s rapacious greed for a fast buck means anything of historic or aesthetic value has long since been pulled down – sorry, ‘redeveloped’ or ‘enhanced,’ usually with a 50-storey airconditioned fuck-ugly skyscraper designed by an epileptic crayon-wielding two-year-old on an acid trip.
The result is a smog-soaked cross between a building site and a multi-storey car park, the kind of place that gives financiers raging hard-ons because it is constantly being rebuilt, and that needs money, but it's also a place that needs heavy Photoshopping and an army of spin doctors to make it seem appealing.
Of course, most tourists who visit Hong Kong are wowed by the size of the buildings, but it’s all a bit like looking at freak porn penises. Once you get past the open-mouthed ‘how on earth did she, no, that can’t be real’ factor, there’s not much to say. People have big penises, people have sex with big penises, men with small penises and fragile egos build big buildings. So what? It’s all frightfully dull, but since most people don’t stay in Hong Kong long enough to get bored by its fundamental pornography, they leave feeling itchy and wanting to masturbate. All part of the city’s energy.
Don’t believe me? Try the Sun Yat Sen walk, it’s hilarious. The tour can be summarised thus: “On this site was a building once where Sun Yat Sen had a cup of tea.”
Repeat numerous times.
There’s nothing left of anywhere where Sun Yat Sen sat down his teacup because Hong Kong’s landlords, and their financiers with raging hard-ons, have torn it all down and replaced it with marble-coated buildings that have porticos like vast urinals. If this were England, the whole place would reek of piss because the drunks would be using the porticos as urinals, but since it’s China it merely reeks of a dull and witless ostentation.
Unaware of how cretinous it was being, and desperate to tempt tourists to Hong Kong by claiming the city had a cultural side, the Hong Kong government initiated the Sun Yat Sen Memorial Walk a few years back. Aware that the city had once briefly housed the father of modern China, but unperturbed by the absence of any of the sites where he sipped tea, they ploughed forward with their plan. The result is a series of plaques on various dirty street corners that tell tourists that once upon a time, before the bulldozer and the wrecker's ball, there was a building here where someone who became famous had a cup of tea.
Not any more though.
There's nothing of substance there, which was my first thought when I saw City Loft's website.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Spring arrives in Hong Kong
Spring has arrived. In Hong Kong, the changing season is not heralded by the return of nesting birds in brilliant plumage, but by the return of chicks in insanely short skirts.
I am reminded of the fabulous Patsy Stone line from Ab Fab: “One more inch and the world’s your gynaecologist.”
The city’s ablaze with womens’ legs in an assortment of micro-minis that might be handkerchiefs, and even this old fossil – thrice-divorced and short on both breath and libido – finds a certain youthful lust, dull but distant, emerging through the rising swamp heat of smog and early spring humidity.
Being old, and white, my eyes must of course be averted from the sight of so much beauty, particularly the beauty of youth. Being old, and white, one is already a pervert (haam saap) by default, a racial stereotype one must always guard against.
However, today, emerging out of the MTR, Hong Kong’s hyper-efficient underground system – which like all public architecture in Hong Kong has all the functional beauty of a municipal toilet – I stand on the escalator and am confronted with a wall of tits, advertising Triumph bras designed to enhance cleavage.
The tits rise in size as the escalator ascends – clearly someone thought this through, because we swell from an A cup at the bottom of the short ride to a D cup at the top.
Of course these are Western breasts, because despite the fact that ten years ago you would not have seen such images pasted on Hong Kong walls (I know of which I speak, because I used to write copy for Triumph in Hong Kong), it is clear that Chinese women do not have boobs. Or perhaps more accurately, Chinese women’s tits cannot be shown on the municipal toilet walls of the Hong Kong MTR. They can be plastered across the pages of the haam saap mags that are on full display on every street corner cigarette vendors stall, but they cannot be displayed on the walls of the underground. Chinese tits are for wanking to; Western tits are for selling bras.
This presumably is one of those “conundrums of the East” that travel writers crap on about at length in tawdry books and tedious column inches.
Tired after a long day of massacring the English language, I find myself dully, disinterestedly gazing at this parade of tits, but noting that 10 years ago this would not be possible. What most fascinates me is that they have chosen for some reason to use a simpering pervert in a bellboy suit to point out the boobs. He looks for all the world like the sort of man who lurks in chatrooms and might be seen on the nightly news, arrested in Thailand or Cambodia.
Presumably, sub-consciously, the ad exec who created this ad has chosen a man who most resembles a drooling Western pervert to wave his hand at tits.
Dully amused by my own meanderings, at the top of the escalator I happen to glance left and catch the eye of an older local woman scowling at me as she passes on the down escalator. Yes, I was smiling. Yes, I have confirmed her mundane housing estate preconceptions: all Westerners are dirty perverts who spend their evenings wanking like monkeys.
And in the instant our eyes meet I want to tell her that we should go for coffee. Over coffee I would tell her that I have never had a breast fetish, in fact, I see breasts as rather biological, designed for nursing. If there is an attraction, it is to this biological need for maintenance of my progeny through a woman capable of providing abundant milk. I have in fact always been attracted to legs, and only look at the walls to avoid looking at legs during the spring season. I would tell her that I am old and rheumy, that sex is entirely academic, and I would ask if she would like to share a chocolate pastry, which is as close to sex as I can get these days. “Besides,” I would say, “these are Western tits darling. I’m allowed.”
Later we would walk along the harbour front, and she would tell me of the poverty of her childhood, and of how Hong Kong once was not so long ago.
The gulf between East and West is not so vast, I think, but it lingers and lengthens as she descends, and I rise out of the tunnel and into Hong Kong’s perennial neon light, off to buy bread and beans in the supermarket for my tea.
I am reminded of the fabulous Patsy Stone line from Ab Fab: “One more inch and the world’s your gynaecologist.”
The city’s ablaze with womens’ legs in an assortment of micro-minis that might be handkerchiefs, and even this old fossil – thrice-divorced and short on both breath and libido – finds a certain youthful lust, dull but distant, emerging through the rising swamp heat of smog and early spring humidity.
Being old, and white, my eyes must of course be averted from the sight of so much beauty, particularly the beauty of youth. Being old, and white, one is already a pervert (haam saap) by default, a racial stereotype one must always guard against.
However, today, emerging out of the MTR, Hong Kong’s hyper-efficient underground system – which like all public architecture in Hong Kong has all the functional beauty of a municipal toilet – I stand on the escalator and am confronted with a wall of tits, advertising Triumph bras designed to enhance cleavage.
The tits rise in size as the escalator ascends – clearly someone thought this through, because we swell from an A cup at the bottom of the short ride to a D cup at the top.
Of course these are Western breasts, because despite the fact that ten years ago you would not have seen such images pasted on Hong Kong walls (I know of which I speak, because I used to write copy for Triumph in Hong Kong), it is clear that Chinese women do not have boobs. Or perhaps more accurately, Chinese women’s tits cannot be shown on the municipal toilet walls of the Hong Kong MTR. They can be plastered across the pages of the haam saap mags that are on full display on every street corner cigarette vendors stall, but they cannot be displayed on the walls of the underground. Chinese tits are for wanking to; Western tits are for selling bras.
This presumably is one of those “conundrums of the East” that travel writers crap on about at length in tawdry books and tedious column inches.
Tired after a long day of massacring the English language, I find myself dully, disinterestedly gazing at this parade of tits, but noting that 10 years ago this would not be possible. What most fascinates me is that they have chosen for some reason to use a simpering pervert in a bellboy suit to point out the boobs. He looks for all the world like the sort of man who lurks in chatrooms and might be seen on the nightly news, arrested in Thailand or Cambodia.
Presumably, sub-consciously, the ad exec who created this ad has chosen a man who most resembles a drooling Western pervert to wave his hand at tits.Dully amused by my own meanderings, at the top of the escalator I happen to glance left and catch the eye of an older local woman scowling at me as she passes on the down escalator. Yes, I was smiling. Yes, I have confirmed her mundane housing estate preconceptions: all Westerners are dirty perverts who spend their evenings wanking like monkeys.
And in the instant our eyes meet I want to tell her that we should go for coffee. Over coffee I would tell her that I have never had a breast fetish, in fact, I see breasts as rather biological, designed for nursing. If there is an attraction, it is to this biological need for maintenance of my progeny through a woman capable of providing abundant milk. I have in fact always been attracted to legs, and only look at the walls to avoid looking at legs during the spring season. I would tell her that I am old and rheumy, that sex is entirely academic, and I would ask if she would like to share a chocolate pastry, which is as close to sex as I can get these days. “Besides,” I would say, “these are Western tits darling. I’m allowed.”
Later we would walk along the harbour front, and she would tell me of the poverty of her childhood, and of how Hong Kong once was not so long ago.
The gulf between East and West is not so vast, I think, but it lingers and lengthens as she descends, and I rise out of the tunnel and into Hong Kong’s perennial neon light, off to buy bread and beans in the supermarket for my tea.
Monday, July 14, 2008
The Studio Studio Journal
Monday 18th February
Studio Studio’s email drone, Warren, writes back to my complaint. He ignores the filthy toilet, the cigarette butt in the sink, the continually leaking cistern that I turn off at night to get some sleep. He also ignores my comments about the pubes on the floor, the broken window, and the absence of promised cable television.
Instead he homes in on the gym membership.
He promised gym membership in his original email, but after I moved in, his front-office drone, Eason – nice guy – told me you only get a gym membership if you rent for 6 months in advance.
Now the email drone accuses me of asking for a free gym membership. “I never told you you could have a free gym membership,” he writes with barely suppressed violence, adding that if I don’t like the facilities, I should consider going elsewhere.
Think I’ve met the Chinese version of Basil Fawlty. Then again, that’s the whole of Hong Kong’s “service” sector.
In the absence of any possible coherent discussion of the real facts of the case, I elect to pursue the “communications problem” angle.
I call the front-office drone and explain that “I think there has been a communication problem.”
He agrees.
“Yes, he says, “I think it is a communication problem.”
“Yes,” I say, “it’s a communication problem.”
We thus agree that Warren is a twat without saying that Warren is a twat. “A twat” is “a communication problem”.
Eason says he can get me a gym membership, but I will have to pay. But this will solve our communication problem. No one loses face and Warren is not directly called a twat.
This strategy does the trick. I do not have to talk to Warren, who has taken umbrage at my complaints and accused me of something I never said. Warren will take satisfaction in my paying for something I had agreed to pay for at the outset.
Problem solved. Although I never had a problem paying to begin with, and my room is still full of fucking pubes.
Tuesday 19th February
Gym membership will come later in the week. “It will take me a few days,” says front office drone on the phone.
Cleaners come and use my dish sponge to clean the room.
Buy new dish sponge from the supermarket to do the dishes.
Thursday 22nd February
Gym membership will come tomorrow.
Legal notice taped to front door of Studio Studio.
Studio Studio is being repossessed.
No mention of this from Studio Studio staff.
Friday 23rd February
Gym membership will come on Monday.
Woman trapped outside her Studio Studio bedsit-cum-studio apartment. She locked her keys inside when she went to the gym. Call Eason on my cell. He comes to let her in.
“Did you know we’re being repossessed?” she says, then, “you’ll have to move.” She won’t, because she signed up for 6 months.
Monday 25th February
Gym membership will come later in the week.
Tuesday 26th February
Cleaners come and use my dish sponge to clean the room.
Buy new dish sponge from supermarket.
Friday 29 February
Collect gym membership.
Too fat and lethargic to go to gym.
Saturday 30 February
Email down. Calls to Eason rewarded with his coming round and turning the email back on. I guess he just turned the power on and off. This guess is based on the fact that the electrics in my room are fucked and there are regular power surges that turn off the current to my computer. Lights flicker, power sockets fizz when you put a plug in, and you have to put a plug in or take one out every five minutes – there are not enough sockets to accommodate a lamp, a kettle, a microwave, a fridge, a TV and my laptop. Yesterday I left the fridge unplugged all day by accident. At least the microwave was plugged in though.
Sunday 1st March
Finally go to gym. California Fitness.
Muscle-bound Chinese-Americans polite to me.
Am I that old then? Or just fat?
Monday 3rd March
Can’t move after gym.
Internet down. Call Eason. He comes and fixes it.
Tuesday 4th March
Realise the walls are paper thin. Kept awake all night by the tall Serbo-Croat woman with a face like a bag of chisels who moved in next door yesterday and spends the entire night talking to her friend who has come over for vodka and a conversation that sounds like two women with colds clearing their noses.
Wednesday 5th March
Woken by a Cantonese old lady yelling at someone, presumably her husband. I guess she’s yelling “Where’s me fucking teeth, have you seen me fucking teeth? I put ‘em down here and they’ve gorn. Where the fuck are me teeth?”
Realise dimly that it’s like this every day, it’s only today that I’m more aware of it. It’s like being in student dorms, but filled with deaf pensioners.
Realise I’ve been behaving like a student by drinking late, when I should be behaving more like a deaf pensioner.
Realise that if you grow up with these constant invasions into your private space your conception of private space is ruptured. There is practically no conception of private space in Hong Kong.
Thursday 6th March
Main water supply is switched off. I discover this after having a crap.
Start thinking of SARS and its relationship to sewage.
Fill the cistern from the shower and flush the crap into Hong Kong’s vanishing harbour.
Later go to the gym so I can use their pissoir.
Friday 7th March
Water supply still out. Call Eason. He says, “Yes, I know.”
“When will it be back on?”
“There is a problem with the main water supply. You can use the shower to fill your cistern.”
“I’m doing that already.”
“Good. That’s okay then.”
Saturday 8th March
Water supply is back.
Monday 10th March
Notice to quit posted on all doors inside Studio Studio. Repossession not mentioned. Those who have paid for longer will be relocated to Studio Studio’s other building, in Wanchai, near all the underage Thai prostitutes dancing on bar-tops. I will have to fuck off somewhere else.
Fortunately I have already made other arrangements, and will move down the road to a rival cubicle-away-from-home-arrangement called City Lofts.
City Lofts doesn’t have any lofts, just rooms. Small rooms, but they look nice.
Tuesday 11th March
Receive an email from Studio Studio thanking me for my interest in renting from them. It is the same email I received when I first moved in. I wonder if Warren has lost it: he is promising me gym membership, clean rooms, views, no pubes, Internet and cable TV.
Then I realise he is responding to my post on Craigslist looking for an apartment.
I write and tell him I am actually already in Studio Studio, but I am looking for another place because the room I am in is being repossessed and he is kicking me out.
He doesn’t write back.
Later I talk to Eason who says the apartments are being closed because of the water supply problem. He says I can overstay if I want. The workmen will tear out the fixtures, but there will be a bed. It's really quite sweet when you think about it.
Wednesday 12th April
Internet down. Call Eason who says he has already gone home. Sounds like he’s having a shag, or watching porn. “Sorry, sorry,” he says. He will fix it tomorrow.
Ask him if it just requires turning off and on.
He says “Yes.”
Ask him “Is it in the hall?”
He says “Yes,” then realises what I am going to do and says, “Don’t touch it, for it is very high up.” I love it when Hong Kongers quote from Victorian textbooks, it’s so heartfelt and winning.
I know that Eason’s thinking “Shit, this guy is gonna get a serious shock from our fucked up wiring. What will we do with the body?”
I walk into the hall while promising Eason on my cell I won’t touch his router and find the router amid a maze of crazy cables up near the ceiling.
I turn off the power as Eason promises me he will come first thing in the morning.
I turn the router back on as he apologizes for the inconvenience while ploughing a furrow into someone in a motel, walk back to my room and check my email as I accept his apology and wish him a pleasant evening.
Thursday, 13th March
I like my privacy. A bit weird I know, but it’s this thing I have. I have stuff, so I like to keep it private. Journals and shit like that. I also have stuff I value, like my passport and airline ticket. Money too.
So I put this kind of weird personal shit in a suitcase with a combo lock and use a random number to prevent access. Weird, I know.
Anyway, every day I set the lock to a number like 3-3-3 or 6-6-6. Today it was 3-3-3. When I get home it is 3-3-4. I wonder if I’m getting paranoid, but I haven’t smoked dope in about 20 years because it makes me paranoid.
So here’s what I figure. I guess that for convenience, people will use these consistent numbers, perhaps with one digit altered. So, they set the combo to 3-3-3 to lock it, but when they need to get into a suitcase, all they do is flick one number over, rather than all three. So, they flick to 3-3-4, and they’re into the suitcase.
And I guess if you work in room service you get to know these human foibles. So, you change one number just to see if the suitcase will open.
Then again I could just be fucking paranoid.
Friday 15th March
Schlepp my gear in suitcases across Causeway Bay and up five flights of stairs strewn with cigarette butts into my new abode, City Loft. Ex-ex-wife calls to talk about kid while I’m doing this. I am not late with payments, she just wants to talk about kid. I try to explain that I am sick and trying to lug suitcases up stairs. I cough vehemently.
“Christ, you sound like shit,” she says.
I thank her.
She says I should have settled in one place, implying I am too old to be doing this, starting again in a foreign city.
I want to tell her that I would have settled but left the place where she still lives because of irreconcilable differences: I couldn’t tolerate her shagging the neighbourhood. But I don’t say anything, just cough more.
She asks if I’m seeing someone.
I tell her I’m seeing an awful lot of myself lately. She says something about that being sad, then hangs up.
My new abode by night is brightly lit with neon from the restaurants and bars that fill the street with a hubbub of crowds until three or four each morning. Cannon Street is the thriving alternative hub of Hong Kong side. Goth kids, punk kids, rapper kids, all imitating a disaffected teenage insouciance, sulky and gorgeous, with a trendy throwaway nihilism imported from the West. But they smile when I smile, say sorry when they block the stairwell whilst having a group chain-smoke, show due deference for my age and aching limbs. They wear black because they wear black, punk their hair because they punk their hair, wear ridiculous glue-on dreads because they wear ridiculous glue-on dreads. They maintain the surface of disrespect for authority, but like all things imported to the city it has mutated.
I open the blinds and startle the diners in the trendy restaurant across the street with my flaccid middle-aged body.
I close the blinds. I have moved to City Loft.
Fuck it feels good not to hear that woman yelling about her fucking teeth to her husband.
Studio Studio’s email drone, Warren, writes back to my complaint. He ignores the filthy toilet, the cigarette butt in the sink, the continually leaking cistern that I turn off at night to get some sleep. He also ignores my comments about the pubes on the floor, the broken window, and the absence of promised cable television.
Instead he homes in on the gym membership.
He promised gym membership in his original email, but after I moved in, his front-office drone, Eason – nice guy – told me you only get a gym membership if you rent for 6 months in advance.
Now the email drone accuses me of asking for a free gym membership. “I never told you you could have a free gym membership,” he writes with barely suppressed violence, adding that if I don’t like the facilities, I should consider going elsewhere.
Think I’ve met the Chinese version of Basil Fawlty. Then again, that’s the whole of Hong Kong’s “service” sector.
In the absence of any possible coherent discussion of the real facts of the case, I elect to pursue the “communications problem” angle.
I call the front-office drone and explain that “I think there has been a communication problem.”
He agrees.
“Yes, he says, “I think it is a communication problem.”
“Yes,” I say, “it’s a communication problem.”
We thus agree that Warren is a twat without saying that Warren is a twat. “A twat” is “a communication problem”.
Eason says he can get me a gym membership, but I will have to pay. But this will solve our communication problem. No one loses face and Warren is not directly called a twat.
This strategy does the trick. I do not have to talk to Warren, who has taken umbrage at my complaints and accused me of something I never said. Warren will take satisfaction in my paying for something I had agreed to pay for at the outset.
Problem solved. Although I never had a problem paying to begin with, and my room is still full of fucking pubes.
Tuesday 19th February
Gym membership will come later in the week. “It will take me a few days,” says front office drone on the phone.
Cleaners come and use my dish sponge to clean the room.
Buy new dish sponge from the supermarket to do the dishes.
Thursday 22nd February
Gym membership will come tomorrow.
Legal notice taped to front door of Studio Studio.
Studio Studio is being repossessed.
No mention of this from Studio Studio staff.
Friday 23rd February
Gym membership will come on Monday.
Woman trapped outside her Studio Studio bedsit-cum-studio apartment. She locked her keys inside when she went to the gym. Call Eason on my cell. He comes to let her in.
“Did you know we’re being repossessed?” she says, then, “you’ll have to move.” She won’t, because she signed up for 6 months.
Monday 25th February
Gym membership will come later in the week.
Tuesday 26th February
Cleaners come and use my dish sponge to clean the room.
Buy new dish sponge from supermarket.
Friday 29 February
Collect gym membership.
Too fat and lethargic to go to gym.
Saturday 30 February
Email down. Calls to Eason rewarded with his coming round and turning the email back on. I guess he just turned the power on and off. This guess is based on the fact that the electrics in my room are fucked and there are regular power surges that turn off the current to my computer. Lights flicker, power sockets fizz when you put a plug in, and you have to put a plug in or take one out every five minutes – there are not enough sockets to accommodate a lamp, a kettle, a microwave, a fridge, a TV and my laptop. Yesterday I left the fridge unplugged all day by accident. At least the microwave was plugged in though.
Sunday 1st March
Finally go to gym. California Fitness.
Muscle-bound Chinese-Americans polite to me.
Am I that old then? Or just fat?
Monday 3rd March
Can’t move after gym.
Internet down. Call Eason. He comes and fixes it.
Tuesday 4th March
Realise the walls are paper thin. Kept awake all night by the tall Serbo-Croat woman with a face like a bag of chisels who moved in next door yesterday and spends the entire night talking to her friend who has come over for vodka and a conversation that sounds like two women with colds clearing their noses.
Wednesday 5th March
Woken by a Cantonese old lady yelling at someone, presumably her husband. I guess she’s yelling “Where’s me fucking teeth, have you seen me fucking teeth? I put ‘em down here and they’ve gorn. Where the fuck are me teeth?”
Realise dimly that it’s like this every day, it’s only today that I’m more aware of it. It’s like being in student dorms, but filled with deaf pensioners.
Realise I’ve been behaving like a student by drinking late, when I should be behaving more like a deaf pensioner.
Realise that if you grow up with these constant invasions into your private space your conception of private space is ruptured. There is practically no conception of private space in Hong Kong.
Thursday 6th March
Main water supply is switched off. I discover this after having a crap.
Start thinking of SARS and its relationship to sewage.
Fill the cistern from the shower and flush the crap into Hong Kong’s vanishing harbour.
Later go to the gym so I can use their pissoir.
Friday 7th March
Water supply still out. Call Eason. He says, “Yes, I know.”
“When will it be back on?”
“There is a problem with the main water supply. You can use the shower to fill your cistern.”
“I’m doing that already.”
“Good. That’s okay then.”
Saturday 8th March
Water supply is back.
Monday 10th March
Notice to quit posted on all doors inside Studio Studio. Repossession not mentioned. Those who have paid for longer will be relocated to Studio Studio’s other building, in Wanchai, near all the underage Thai prostitutes dancing on bar-tops. I will have to fuck off somewhere else.
Fortunately I have already made other arrangements, and will move down the road to a rival cubicle-away-from-home-arrangement called City Lofts.
City Lofts doesn’t have any lofts, just rooms. Small rooms, but they look nice.
Tuesday 11th March
Receive an email from Studio Studio thanking me for my interest in renting from them. It is the same email I received when I first moved in. I wonder if Warren has lost it: he is promising me gym membership, clean rooms, views, no pubes, Internet and cable TV.
Then I realise he is responding to my post on Craigslist looking for an apartment.
I write and tell him I am actually already in Studio Studio, but I am looking for another place because the room I am in is being repossessed and he is kicking me out.
He doesn’t write back.
Later I talk to Eason who says the apartments are being closed because of the water supply problem. He says I can overstay if I want. The workmen will tear out the fixtures, but there will be a bed. It's really quite sweet when you think about it.
Wednesday 12th April
Internet down. Call Eason who says he has already gone home. Sounds like he’s having a shag, or watching porn. “Sorry, sorry,” he says. He will fix it tomorrow.
Ask him if it just requires turning off and on.
He says “Yes.”
Ask him “Is it in the hall?”
He says “Yes,” then realises what I am going to do and says, “Don’t touch it, for it is very high up.” I love it when Hong Kongers quote from Victorian textbooks, it’s so heartfelt and winning.
I know that Eason’s thinking “Shit, this guy is gonna get a serious shock from our fucked up wiring. What will we do with the body?”
I walk into the hall while promising Eason on my cell I won’t touch his router and find the router amid a maze of crazy cables up near the ceiling.
I turn off the power as Eason promises me he will come first thing in the morning.
I turn the router back on as he apologizes for the inconvenience while ploughing a furrow into someone in a motel, walk back to my room and check my email as I accept his apology and wish him a pleasant evening.
Thursday, 13th March
I like my privacy. A bit weird I know, but it’s this thing I have. I have stuff, so I like to keep it private. Journals and shit like that. I also have stuff I value, like my passport and airline ticket. Money too.
So I put this kind of weird personal shit in a suitcase with a combo lock and use a random number to prevent access. Weird, I know.
Anyway, every day I set the lock to a number like 3-3-3 or 6-6-6. Today it was 3-3-3. When I get home it is 3-3-4. I wonder if I’m getting paranoid, but I haven’t smoked dope in about 20 years because it makes me paranoid.
So here’s what I figure. I guess that for convenience, people will use these consistent numbers, perhaps with one digit altered. So, they set the combo to 3-3-3 to lock it, but when they need to get into a suitcase, all they do is flick one number over, rather than all three. So, they flick to 3-3-4, and they’re into the suitcase.
And I guess if you work in room service you get to know these human foibles. So, you change one number just to see if the suitcase will open.
Then again I could just be fucking paranoid.
Friday 15th March
Schlepp my gear in suitcases across Causeway Bay and up five flights of stairs strewn with cigarette butts into my new abode, City Loft. Ex-ex-wife calls to talk about kid while I’m doing this. I am not late with payments, she just wants to talk about kid. I try to explain that I am sick and trying to lug suitcases up stairs. I cough vehemently.
“Christ, you sound like shit,” she says.
I thank her.
She says I should have settled in one place, implying I am too old to be doing this, starting again in a foreign city.
I want to tell her that I would have settled but left the place where she still lives because of irreconcilable differences: I couldn’t tolerate her shagging the neighbourhood. But I don’t say anything, just cough more.
She asks if I’m seeing someone.
I tell her I’m seeing an awful lot of myself lately. She says something about that being sad, then hangs up.
My new abode by night is brightly lit with neon from the restaurants and bars that fill the street with a hubbub of crowds until three or four each morning. Cannon Street is the thriving alternative hub of Hong Kong side. Goth kids, punk kids, rapper kids, all imitating a disaffected teenage insouciance, sulky and gorgeous, with a trendy throwaway nihilism imported from the West. But they smile when I smile, say sorry when they block the stairwell whilst having a group chain-smoke, show due deference for my age and aching limbs. They wear black because they wear black, punk their hair because they punk their hair, wear ridiculous glue-on dreads because they wear ridiculous glue-on dreads. They maintain the surface of disrespect for authority, but like all things imported to the city it has mutated.
I open the blinds and startle the diners in the trendy restaurant across the street with my flaccid middle-aged body.
I close the blinds. I have moved to City Loft.
Fuck it feels good not to hear that woman yelling about her fucking teeth to her husband.
Monday, March 10, 2008
A room with a pube
Studio Studio they call it. Well, it sounds better than Broom Cupboard Broom Cupboard, which would be more accurate. Of course, the website looks nice. Cosy little rooms with flowers in vases. Brightly lit, serviced and clean. Cable TV and Internet access. Exclusive gym membership, and 150 square feet of proportional beauty, right in the heart of Hong Kong, all for the discount price of US$1,000 a month. A regular home from home.
Of course, after you move in you find the cable TV is in their “other location.” But of course it is.
The toilet bowl is stained brown from the water that constantly leaks from the broken cistern (Note to self: always lift the lid on the toilet before you pay the deposit).
Wet black mould is marching along the walls and floors of the shower.
The window doesn’t close, which means the room is coated with a fine layer of cement dust from the building site 20 feet away. (Note to self: always open the blinds and look out of the window before you pay the deposit).
Oh, and that exclusive gym membership? You only get that if you book for three months. So no, you can’t have it. And when you ask, you’ll be accused of asking for something you were never promised, so don’t fucking ask. (Note to self: ask questions about "exclusives" before you pay the deposit.)
I should have known better. I’m a copywriter after all. I lie for a living. So I’m grateful to Studio Studio for reminding me that in Hong Kong you should never expect to get what you are promised.
If it's fucked, it's your fault
In Hong Kong if they can lie to you, it’s your fault. You bought it, it’s fucked, it’s yours. It’s your own fault. Your problem.
I should already know this. After all, I've lived here before. So I look on Studio Studio as my "Welcome Back to Hong Kong's Bullshit" package. And I am grateful. Every city has a different system, and this is Hong Kong's. Thanks to Studio Studio, I'm getting reacquainted with the way this particular city does business.
There’s a definite limit to tolerance though. I can tolerate the fact that there’s no toilet paper and no cleaning stuff. I can tolerate the fact that the cleaners use my dish sponge to clean the room. I can even tolerate the constant sound of running water from a broken cistern that they refuse to fix, and the brown stained toilet bowl.
There is a limit ...
But every man has a limit to tolerance.
Wet black mould is marching along the walls and floors of the shower.
The window doesn’t close, which means the room is coated with a fine layer of cement dust from the building site 20 feet away. (Note to self: always open the blinds and look out of the window before you pay the deposit).
Oh, and that exclusive gym membership? You only get that if you book for three months. So no, you can’t have it. And when you ask, you’ll be accused of asking for something you were never promised, so don’t fucking ask. (Note to self: ask questions about "exclusives" before you pay the deposit.)
I should have known better. I’m a copywriter after all. I lie for a living. So I’m grateful to Studio Studio for reminding me that in Hong Kong you should never expect to get what you are promised.
If it's fucked, it's your fault
In Hong Kong if they can lie to you, it’s your fault. You bought it, it’s fucked, it’s yours. It’s your own fault. Your problem.
I should already know this. After all, I've lived here before. So I look on Studio Studio as my "Welcome Back to Hong Kong's Bullshit" package. And I am grateful. Every city has a different system, and this is Hong Kong's. Thanks to Studio Studio, I'm getting reacquainted with the way this particular city does business.
If it's fucked, it's your fault.
There’s a definite limit to tolerance though. I can tolerate the fact that there’s no toilet paper and no cleaning stuff. I can tolerate the fact that the cleaners use my dish sponge to clean the room. I can even tolerate the constant sound of running water from a broken cistern that they refuse to fix, and the brown stained toilet bowl.
There is a limit ...
But every man has a limit to tolerance.
With me, it’s living with other people’s pubes. A lot of other people’s pubes.
The pubes come in a multitude of colours and lengths, the visible detritus of the humanity that passes through this city like a dose of avian flu.
The pubes move around the room from day to day, caught in the thin wind that blows through the broken window.
I really should start naming them. Then I could create imaginary characters to go with them. Then again, I don’t really want to imagine that much.
Some are curly, some are straight, some are red, some are black. Some of them might even be mine. The only common denominator is that they are still there at the end of every day, even after the cleaners have been in. In fact, the only days they seem to stay still are after the cleaners have been in.
The cleaners have an uncanny knack of making the pubes stay still.
When I complain, the people at Studio Studio tell me I should move somewhere else if I don’t like it. They say my standards are too high.
Maybe they are.
Then again, I didn’t ask for a room with a pube.
The pubes come in a multitude of colours and lengths, the visible detritus of the humanity that passes through this city like a dose of avian flu.
The pubes move around the room from day to day, caught in the thin wind that blows through the broken window.
I really should start naming them. Then I could create imaginary characters to go with them. Then again, I don’t really want to imagine that much.
Some are curly, some are straight, some are red, some are black. Some of them might even be mine. The only common denominator is that they are still there at the end of every day, even after the cleaners have been in. In fact, the only days they seem to stay still are after the cleaners have been in.
The cleaners have an uncanny knack of making the pubes stay still.
When I complain, the people at Studio Studio tell me I should move somewhere else if I don’t like it. They say my standards are too high.
Maybe they are.
Then again, I didn’t ask for a room with a pube.
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