Home Sweet Home (for the next 3 months at least)

So today I was finally able to leave the grubby Harbour Plaza behind and move into my new digs in Wan Chai. Now if Google Earth had some funky way of letting caputre urls of locations around about 'here' you'd find a link showing you exactly where i'm at... but no, instead you'll have to make do with some good old fashioned photos:







Had to do the obligatory trip to Ikea earlier to buy essentials like coat hangers (for all my woolly jumpers!) and a plant for the place, otherwise its equipped with the basics, including a view West towards Admiratly (I can see part of the HSBC building if I lean out the window) and a view over Victoria Harbour towards Kowloon, where I can see the Star Ferry Terminal clock tower, the Peninsula and also a get a great view of the helicopters coming and going from the heliport just across the road. Basically its 'vivant' as the French would say.
Being in the 'big city' has its novelty value but after 3 days of concrete jungle i'm craving green, so popped into Dymocks bookstore and found myself a guide to hiking in HK which promises alternatives on the island to retail therapy. Its a public holiday here tomorrow however i'm supposed to be working, but I think I might have to clock in a little late and get myself some nature first. Maybe i'll find somewhere quiet to sit and read my book!

Could YouTube be the answer?

I only made it through about 6 lines of Riddley last night before nodding off and despite my wanting to pick it up this morning I knew that if I did, i'd not make it out of bed before midday, so I fired up the laptop instead.

When I dont have work clawing at my back a usual laptop morning involves hiking through a range of sites, starting with the news (IHT, NYT, BBC, Guardian, Liberation) then on to friends sites and blogs, before rounding the trip off with the lastest YouTube pickings, pulling up the 'most rated' and 'most viewed' or searching for something in particular that most likely one of you guys have told me about. Its rare however that I click on the 'Featured video', but the black and white image of Santa / Garden gnome type bloke and the name 'Robert W Service' caught my eye, and inside I found The Cremation of Sam McGee.



"There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold..."

Go put the kettle on, make some steamy tea and sit back for the full icy 8 minutes of chilly poetry, read by our b&w gnome with some wonderful windy sound effects.

YouTube, it appears, could possibly be the answer to my linguistic thirst here during this little Asian Adventure...

Bad Language

In the months before leaving for HK I was speaking more French than ever before; socially, professionally, but still poorly. Although I can make myself understand and understand a good 90% of everything thats going on around me my grammer is irregular, my vocab at times can be shonky and I know that getting rid of some of mistakes that have become hard coded into my brain will be tough. However on a recent trip back to the UK I realised that I also now speak English poorly and also spell horribly. My friends picked me up on it, pointing out my bad grammer, my splicing of French words that don't exist in English into sentances and even translating French phrases directly into English and hence coming out with 'as you wish' (pretencious) or 'that rolls' (just plain nonsense) countless times throughout the day. Not only has being away from a wholly English culture for years done nothing for my English language skills, but i've also cultivated a mongrel English/American accent, with the odd Ozzie/Froggy tinge dropping in from time to time for good measure. And just as all that poor grammer and those dodgy accents have been etched into my brain, the last couple of months of continuous French have had their effect, so that here in HK I automatically reply to waiters, shop assistants, people in the street in French - I just can't seem to kick the habit!

HK is an insanely culturally diverse city, possibly more so than NY or London given the range Western and Asian countries from which the expat community originates, combined with the enormous number of Chinese on the island. Regardless of this rich ethnic mix I know that its likely to prove linguistically bland with me continuing to have to 'dumb down' my vocab in order to be properly understood by the various nationalities around me. Therefore I threw Russel Hoban's 'Riddley Walker' into my suitcase on leaving Paris and have just started in on the first chapter.

First published in 1980 it apparently took Hoban more than 5 years to write, and at the end of which he was unable to either spell or talk properly. Based in post nuclear Britain our narrator, Riddley, uses what I would describe as a cross between a West Country Dialect and the terms used by teenagers in text messages; Riddleyspeak, using 'girt' for 'great' or 'cud' for 'could' to conjure up twisted phrases such as 'how cud any 1 not want to be like them what had boats in the air'.
In the latest edition of the book Will Self, who's 'Great Apes' opened my eyes to the way language could be warped to aid in the imagery of a story, points out that 'Riddleyspeak' forces us to actually read the text rather than simply recognise the words (word recognition being how most of us read after the age of 9 or 10). He goes on to warn us that in todays world, where nobody wants to slow down, few want profound and there is little time to sit back and consider, reading Riddley Walker is like walking through toffee and runs the risk of, like Hoban, coming away for the experience with damaged languageabilities. So what have I got to lose? I already speak 2 languages poorly, lets add Riddleyspeak to the list and make it solid 3.

Jet lag sucks!

Usually i'm on of those annoying people who manage to skip through timezones without too much trouble but i'm paying for it hard this time around. Actually i'm telling myself its exhaustion and not jet-lag in an attempt to make myself feel better, either way i'm out of wack big time.

Having woken at 4am, starving hungary, I was litterally banging on the door for them to open the hotel restaurant for breakfast at 7am. Yep, I could have gone out and got something in town but I just couldn't be bothered, lethargy having set in along with the hunger.

Around 12 I met up with Emma, my colleague who'se relocating out here 'permanently' for brunch. Honestly, I dont know how she does it but shes only been in town 5 minutes and she already knows all the good brunch places, where to get the best computer equipement and to shop... Anyway, we spent the afternoon wandering around Wan Chai, taking care of business. I had to pick up the contract for my appartment and was hoping to actually get a look at it before signing the 3 month lease. No luck though, it seems all the appartments are currently occupied, so I had to make do with a glance at the reception area, which king of resembles a concrete and glass kitch lounge club with mood lighting that pulses and changes every couple of seconds and an over-the-top chandelier. Very Austin Powers as Emma pointed out.

Actually everything in HK is OTT. Check this out for example



A fine example of one of the many 'tuning' efforts around the island that we were lucky enough to spy today. Thankfully Emma had her camera with her, although unfortunately its difficult to make out the plastic gold seat covers from this shot.

One of the other things I managed to achieve through my jet-lagged haze today was to apply for my visa for China. Normally I wouldn't be going out of my way to visit either Shanghai or Beijing, but given that works sending me out of my way for 3 months i'm going to take advantage of the fact and see if I can sneak in a couple of weekends away here and there. Actually if I cam manage it i'm also going to try and wing a trip here: http://banyantree.com/ringha/

In not usually into these type of spa/resorts but i've a friend of a friend who knows a man with a dog, and anyway, if I can get my arse to the middle of bloody no where, up the side of a mountain in China then theres a weekend of full on pampering and R&R waiting for me.

Right now though I have to enforce some R&R in this pokey hotel room in an attempt to appear almost normal tomorrow. Emma has a jam packed afternoon of shopping planned for us given that its 30c outside and I packed my wooly jumpers.

A bientot with more HK highlights

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