Back to the Kong...




Kinda feels like i've gone back in time to 2006. Same same, not different...

Flying visit

Its all very well being jet-set and international but there is always a schedule to meet and a budget to adhere to. Sometimes the former takes priority but mostly the latter, hence this trip to HK following a very roundabout route.

The direct Paris-HK flight prices were not only astronomical but there was zero availability for the dates we needed so Christophe (IT Director) and I are flying via Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur! It makes the journey hell but nearly cuts the cost in half and means we get to spend a day in KL and take in one or two sights...



Honestly, from the small amount i've seen, KL doesn't rock my world ( I doubt a nation governed by Islamic law ever will...) but just 20 mins by taxi outside of the city sits FRIM (the Malaysian Institute for Forest Research) which has some of the oldest rainforest in South East Asia in a peaceful and well preserved park.



After a week of solid concrete and giant tower blocks it was fantastic to be dwarfed by such beautiful trees and for a couple of hours to escape the noise, dirt and pollution of the city. I took literally hundreds of photos in an attempt to capture the beauty of the forest so if you're in need so some green check out the latest album on Flickr.

x

Back in the Kong...

Just visiting for a couple of days to follow up on the project I worked on here and took my camera out with me for the day yesterday. For once the weather was behaving itself and the pollution joined in to give some stunning scenery at sunset...






More photos and news to follow when I ditch the jet lag.

x

The end is in sight

With less than a week to go my stay in HK, and the project thats consumed my life for the last 4+ months, is almost over. And it seems that HK has been saving its best until last.

For the past week the weather has been stunning; 25c, clear blue skies, low humidity and even a slight breeze to move the pollution about a bit. I was hoping that I could start to wind things down a little this week and maybe take an hour or so each day to explore the island but work has been relentless, with everything ramping up to the final delivery date. So I was pretty frustrated to be still be in the office at 7pm on friday night, having still not had lunch and waiting for a couple of calls from Paris to come in. It was at this point that Randy, the MD for Asia, wandered in sporting a huge bottle of campagne and a big blue box.

'Have you read your email?' he asks.

There, in my inbox, squished between some spam, is a mail from the big cheese in Paris congratulating me on winning the IHT Publishers award.

Oooooo, i've won something. Cool!

My eyes catch the box in Randy's hand and for a split second I realise its blue, that special kind of duck egg blue that only means one thing - Tiffany's!

It was only a split second though, come on, this is the IHT. I count myself lucky if I get a free lunch so swanky Bling-Bling is definitly out of the question.

So I now have a large piece of perspex to prove that it is possible to survive extreme sleep deprevation and live to celebrate the fact.

I'll keep the blue box somewhere special though - maybe one day I get some Bling to put in it!

x

Shopping



Having promised not to buy anything I didn't really need it was obvious after the Shanghai trip that my camera was on its last legs and so knowing HK is the place to buy photographic equipment I managed to concinve myself I really did need a new camera. Et voila!



I've not played enough with it yet to be totally happy but here are a couple of shots from todays hike over the top of the island to Repulse bay.






I'll no doubt be boring you all with more snaps very soon. Consider yourselves warned.

x

Miserable

Today is 31st Jan and i'm truely miserable. Just a few hours from now I should be climbing on board that Air France jet and bidding HK farewell, but the bags are not packed and i'm spending another night sat on my bed working.

When I accepted to come here I was clearly focused on the return date of 31st Jan. I knew that if I put in all my effort and pulled off the Call Centre launch successfully this date, or possibly an earlier one, would be obtainable. Now with the Call Centre launched and my job done i'm stuck here waiting for others to pull through on their part of the bargain. Its like having your jail sentence extended because of someone elses bad behaviour. Whats more, the longer i'm here the longer I have to wait before I can take vacation, and the less time i'm likely to be able to take which increase the chance of me losing vacation. I feel like i'm being penalised 3 or 4 times over for something I have no control over.

For more than 3 months now i'm effectively been camping here in this apartment. Wearing the same clothes, reading the same books and without the creature comforts that make a house a home (books, cds, clothes, photos, bath...). My new return date is only 16 days away and its going to be a very long 16 days. Roll on mid-feb and then roll on les vacances

x

Sejour bref...


Being in HK is a good experience, and one that might be great if I had time to get out an enjoy it, but being based here temporarily is awkward. I have a funky little apartment but it doesn't feel like home (no matter how many books I buy) and knowing my time is limited means i'm less motivated to go out and build up a social life.



Originally I was only supposed to be here until the end of Jan so when it became obvious that my stay would be extended I have to admit I was pissed. I miss my friends, I miss my bath, I miss my books and I miss the sky. Sometime I feel like I go whole days without seeing more than a couple of square inchs of the stuff here and although i'm not claustrophobic I certainly feel cramped in this concrete metropolis. Therefore having the opportunity to get back to Paris for a week was fantastic.






Paris hadn't changed a bit, although I have to say that after HK it looked somewhat poor & shabby. January remains grey, streaked with rain and that special flat light that only comes out in winter, the metro was dirty and crowded and both the number of homeless (sdf) and the amount of dog shit on the streets seemed to have doubled. I wouldn't have exchanged it for the world though.





In Paris I can walk from one side of the city to the other, without having to take a single skyway, tunnel or pass through a mall, the number of independant bars and cafes heavily outways the number of Starbucks, not all the shops are chain brands and there is sky everywhere.

On top of this theres the dining out. Cheese, cheese and more cheese. Oysters by the dozen (make that 2 dozen), great wines, huge hunks of meet and delicate deserts.



What really makes Paris home though is none of this, its my friends. Whether it was coffee on the terrace, quick lunch or full blown dinner every mealtime was an opportunity to catch up with my friends and I loved it. Thanks to all of you who made yourselves available at such short notice and Cama and Doug for putting me up, and sorry to those of you that I didn't spend enough time with. Dont worry though, HK has no hold on me and i'll be home again before you know it!



x

HOLY CRAP - We just had a freaking earthquake!

TOKYO (Reuters) - A 3-foot-high tsunami was headed for the eastern coast of the
Philippines on Tuesday after an earthquake struck off the coast of Taiwan. The
quake had a preliminary magnitude of 7.2, Japan's Meteorological Agency
reported.

Mixie, despite being balanced precariously on the edge of the shelf, managed to hold on as the room shook and the windows rattled here on the 15th floor.

We're both off out for a stiff drink now. We need it!

x

The perfect Christmas

Everyone that knows me knows I cant stand Christmas. Whether you're talking about it from either a religious or commercial perspective as far as I'm concerned its one big farce.
What I do love about Christmas however is that its a great opportunity to get together with a group of friends and do something you'd not normally get up to. Last year was a prime example.

On Christmas eve when everyone was swarming to the stores I went to Musée d'Orsay with Doug & Steven. Usually you'd have to queue for an hour to get in an then jostle with others in order to see the art, but last year we strolled through the doors and had the place practically to ourselves for a couple of hours.
Christmas day was spent with a group of us at the cinema watching a marathon 3 films back to back with only a short pause for beers and burgers at lunchtime.

This year was a little bit different what with being stuck in HK. The benefit of being here is that rather than cold damp Parisian weather Christmas is bathed in blue skies and bright sunshine, although there is none of that horrid humidity or mist that usually dogs the island. Therefore Christmas was the perfect opportunity to get outside and get back to those hills.

On Sunday I met up with Ellen, a friend of a friend in Berlin, and we walked back over the route I did last week, tacking on to the tail of it the next leg of the HK Island trail which took us up to Jardine's Lookout (great views over the city) and then on to the summit of Mount Parker. Getting there was a good strenuous hike but it was the 589 steps down that killed me. Having hiked for a full 7 hours we ended the day in style, seeing in Christmas with big plates of sushi followed by swanky cocktails in the bar at the Mandarin Oriental.

Wanting to make the most of the day off on Christmas Day I met up with Emma and her girlfriend and we hiked the Dragon's Back trail out to Shek-O, ending up on the beach with just enough time for a quick paddle before the sunset. And to finish the day off, Thai green curry in a little roadside restaurant. That is my idea of a perfect Christmas.

For New Year's we're going to hike the New Territories and I cant wait!

x

Head for the hills!

Sorry about that incredibly rude interruption. I've wrestled my blog back from Mixie and have shut her away in her box so that normal service can now continue.

It was such a beautiful morning this morning that I couldn't stand to be stuck in the concrete jungle for a second longer so grabbed my pack and set off to discover the other side of the island. HK is a small place with the developed area being squashed between the coastline and the sharp green hills that make up the spine of the island. From my place in Wan Chai I headed directly South, straight up practically and in 30 minutes had gone from sea level to 500m with amazing views over the city.


In the bright sunshine it was still fresh because of the cold Northern wind however once i'd made it over the crest of the spine there was not a breath of breeze and the temperature went up by a clear 10c. Often either mist or haze obscures the views here but today the views from the top over Aberdeen and out towards Lamma island were stunning (you could even see the power station!)



I stayed on the Southern side of the hills and trekked on for another couple of hours enjoying the fresh(er) air, calm and green, which is interrupted every so often by enormous power lines or the tops of skyscrapers from the other side of the island.




I'm not naturally a claustrophobic kind of person but living in one of the world's most densly populated cities is tough, but at least now I know there are little pockets of wild just an hours walk from my door that I can escape to.

x

Mixie from Macao

Hi there, Mixie here! Kristen's been working too much recently which doesn't make for interesting blogging so i've decided to take over this part of the show.

As my friend Emma needed to leave HK in order to get her visa stamped I suggested we take a trip to Macao to see the sights, and also catch up with my older sister, Sixie who i've not seen in a couple of years. Sixie, and I aren't really very close, shes all religious and 'pure' so we dont share many common interests but still, its good to see her from time to time.

Macao being an old Portugese enclave its got a bit of a Catholic groove going on and has some famous old ruins. We'd arranged to meet Sixie at the steps of the Ruinas se Sao Paulo and there she was, with about 500 other people taking in the sight.





With the obligatory touristy photos out of the way we snuck down the alleys and side streets and found some great little places.

The architecture definitly has a European feel, and as there aren't many high rises and the population is less dense than HK it has a much slower feel to it. Macao also has something that HK doesn't.... sky! Yep, having been hemmed in by buildings i'd forgotten what an expanse of sky looked like!


Down one of the alleys Sixie showed us a temple she goes to an insisted that we meet her spiritual leader.
I don't really understand what his role is. I think hes her Yoda or something, either way he has a cool little house and seemed like a pretty laid back kinda guy.



After the religious dose I needed something a little more lively so we headed down towards the water and the islands famous casinos. As the sun was setting the town turned into Vegas with coloured neon flashing and blinking on every building. Sixie absolutely refused to come into a casino hall with me, refering to them as dens of crime and vice (yeah right) so we went our seperate ways outside - She no doubt had some important Hail Mary's to say or something...

They wont let you take photos inside the casino but the place was packed with people playing roulette, black jack and poker, some of whom looked like they'd been sat at the tables for hours on end.


I came home a couple of dollars up and Emma got her work permit stamped so all in all a very successful days trip. We'll no doubt be heading back there again soon!

Wanderlust

Back in HK after my little Beijing jaunt and I find myself more restless than ever, itching to get out, do more travelling, have less of a routine and a lot more adventure.

HK is an incredibly materialistic place. Everything here is either about making money or spending it, neither of which interests me greatly and i'm in no doubt that this environment is fueling my desire to escape. However with my current volume of work leaving little or no time for recreational travel my only option is to escape digitally, which is why I find i'm spending a fair amount of my available time online researching potential next trips.

Of course if I was really saavy i'd be reasearching ways in which to become freelance and lead a subsistance lifestyle working only when necessary, or working from wherever I find myself. Unfortunately i'm not incredibly commercially minded and as such selling myself doesn't come naturally. I do still hope that one day someone somewhere will offer me good money for reviewing literature; new fiction, history, biography... I figured i'd just need an address to which they could mail the books, a small notebook and pencil to jot down comments and the odd remote beach or mountain hideaway with an internet connection on my route from which to submit my work. My level of freedom would be infinitly higher, whereas my stress levels and overheads considerably lower, enabling me to either work, or earn less. If theres anyone out there that can open up channels for me to get me moving in this direction i'm ready to pay for their services.

In the meantime I sit and plan, and for the first time ever I made a list of journeys yet to be made; Alaska, Peru, Uganda, Mongolia, Ethopia... Treks and train rides feature heavily, but I found that the more research I did the longer the list became. It was starting to look like my next job title would be 'World Traveller / Hobo' (interesting fact: there is a National Hobo Convention in the US each year), but I have decided instead to pick 1 country and aim for there (to start with).

And so I've targetted Argentina as my next stop.
Sandwiched between the Andes and the Atlantic with Beunos Aires as its captial in the North and the wilds of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego to the South and offering mountains, beachs, great hiking and dodgy train services it seems like a suitable place to make a start on South America.

All I have to do now is stay focused enough on this project in HK to see it to completion, pick up a visa and book a ticket. In the meantime those of you with Argentinian friends, families and experiences, or literally world contacts please post your comments below and we'll get this show on the road.

x

Night out with Mixie-san



My Italian friend Trixie ( see her blog link off to the right) put me in touch with her friend and colleague Mixie who despite being of Japanese origins spends a fair amount of her time here in HK. I haven't had much time to get out and enjoy myself or see much of the town so when Mixie offered to show me around I jumped at the chance.

We meet up next to a small temple in Kowloon and I was a little shocked to see how timid and reserved she was, especially knowing Trixie, however as the evening went on I got to know the real Mixie a little better...

and it wasn't long before we were out on the town, hopping between restaurants and bars with me having trouble keeping up with her little legs.








And by the end of the night that shy, reserved demeanour had crumpled...

Searching for..The sound of Silence...

So last weekend, with Arnaud in town, I took the opportunity to do something touristy and hopped on a ferry boat to Lamma, an island a half hour or so from HK, know for its tranquility, lush green vegetation and calm. Here I was hoping to find some peace and quiet, something thats rare in HK. I was also looking forward to the opportunity to see some green, maybe a few birds and some wildlife. Basically to escape the concrete jungle for a couple of hours. Instead I discovered a mass of people, pathed hiking paths (prefect for pushchairs) and an enormous electric power station....





I hadn't come with any intentions to go swimming and the sight of the Mr Burn's-esque power station would have quickly dissolved any I may have had but to some being able to bathe in the shadow of this monster seems a treat, I even think an attraction! Maybe its the amazingly warm water, or curious underwater plants and animals ...

Mind you, except swmimming there is very little you can do here if you follow the rules laid out on the public information boards.




Although there may be no silence and the scenary may leave much to be desired the seafood on the island is great, although check carefully the name of the restaurant before deciding where to dine.

WORK...WORK...BOWL

Blah...Blah....Blah... yep, I know you're all skip of me banging on about the stupid amount of work there is to do here but you know some of that effort is starting to pay off - for example the team that we're training here is really starting to come up together.

Last Friday when we were all feeling worn out at the end of the week we decided to surprise them with the afternoon off. (This was sold to them as a reward for all their efforts, which in part was true, but was mainly due to the fact as trainers we'd not prepared anything special and weren't feeling either imaginative or motivated!)
To cut a long story short we overheard that rather than all squirreling off to their respective homes for the afternoon they were going to go bowling, so I decided to step in and pick up the tab (ie, charge it to the company).

I'm not going to tell you how crap I was at bowling but we did manage to get some good team photos... this ones my favourite.



Yep, everythings funky in HK, even the bowling shoes!

x

Summertime, and the living is easy...

'Merry Christmas' blinks the building across the harbour each night, it's lights flashing out a series of festive messages into the warm evening air. It reminds me of my first christmas in Sydney with shops playing 'White Christmas' and 'Frosty the Snowman' tunes whilst outside the temperature topped 30c.
It seems to be that i'm having another of those 'perpetual summers' giving that its been summer since June for me now, and i'm really starting to crave some cooler weather.

Despite work being incredibly difficult the living here in HK is incredibly easy. My apartment is on top of a shopping arcade, with supermarket, bakery, chemist, bookstore, obligatory Starbucks etc etc. There is a gym on the 42nd floor of the apartment building, free to all residents. All the shops are open late at night, and all day Sunday and all you need to do is think about needing a taxi and there will be a string of them around the next corner. All this comes with a soft but dependable layer of customer service, for example the dry cleaning service picked my clothes up from my apartment Saturday afternoon, and delivered them right back to my door Sunday afternoon. I have a horrible feeling its going to be tough for me to adjust back to Paris in this respect.

Although the practicalities of daily life are easy actually having a life here is not, especially when work comsumes most of your waking and sleeping hours, and you know you're only there on a temporary basis, making potential friendships incredibly short term on a face to face basis. When I do get time to rest and relax its then that I miss my friends and Paris, where after 6 years of effort life now really is very good, very easy.

So instead of going out and making friends i'm tending to invest more time in myself. That incredibly expensive spa membership takes up a good couple of hours ever Saturday (and its worth every penny of it), i'm continuing to try to learn Cantonese, i've started using that gym on the 42nd floor as often as possible and i'm also spending time researching some of those countries that i've always wanted to travel to. This weekend I also finally managed to get my act together and book some flights for a long weekend in Beijing. Its going to be a flying visit given the amount of time I have and the sheer number of things to see, but it will at least give me a taste of China, and an opportunity to escape HK (and therefore work) for 72hrs. Lets face it, whilst my work-head and work-soul is firmly here in Hong Kong, my real mind, body and spirit is clearly with my friends back in Paris, or preparing to continue that perpetual summer in S America.

K

Lazy Sunday afternoon

Having got out of bed horribly early I found myself on the MTR heading for Central with an entire army of knee-high Ninjas. Yep, it appears that every Sunday morning hundreds of 5-8 year old wanna-be Jackie Chan's head off to class, dressed in kung-foo pyjamas and armed with PS2s, fighting sticks and probably the odd throwing death star (or whatever those things are called). Since i've been here i've never once felt threatened or scared, however I have to admit that seeing those kids jabbing, killing and maiming anything that moved on their portable Nintendo and Playstation screens knowing they were all armed to the teeth was a little disconcerting...

Not only did I survive the train into Central but I also survived my first R&R session at the spa. Its an incredibly well organised and luxurious place with big fluffy dressing gowns & towels and plenty of free healthy foods & drinks whilst your waiting or for inbetween treatments. Today I opted for the Chinese deep tissue massage, designed to help ease tension & stress which I though would help my shoulder thats suffering from late nights sat up working in bed and long days carrying laptops and files. I've yet to decide if it has helped but all I know is that the massage woman knew exactly where it hurt and she focused her hands just so as to induce the maximum amount of pain. If I could have screamed 'Get your hands off me bitch' in fluent Cantonese I would have done so, but i've only reached chapter 1 in the 'teach yourself' book and we haven't covered that phrase yet.
All in all though it was a good couple of hours spent resting and completely locked away from the hustle bustle and noise of the city.

The weather here has been great the last couple of days, cooler than before (about 20-25c) and bright and clear, so I decided to wander around the quartier and find a quiet place to work outside. The light was cool and luckily I had my camera with me so I took a heap of snaps to give you an idea of the place:



(Big thanks to Emma for introducing me to Picasa to create the funky collage)

Best dash now, its back to the crazy work schedule tomorrow so I'm going to pack myself off to bed.

x

Mission Impossible

After just 3 days training the new team between 9h-15h, then working with Paris between 1530h-22h, before clocking in another 3 -4 hours of preparation time for the next days training its pretty clear that this isn't just a large project, its pretty much Mission Impossible given that i'm running it as a 1 woman show.

My life has been stripped down to the absolute minimum. The minimum amount of time it takes to have a shower, the minimum amount of time in which an email or phone call can be handled, in order to maximise the possible amount of time left in which to sleep. At the moment i'm managing about 4-5 hours of sleep a night and so needless to say i'm exhausted.
Its also obvious that i'm not going to be able to keep this rhythmn up for very long so i'm hoping someone in Paris is right now hooking up with those Christian Scientists and getting Tom Cruise choppered in to help me out.


When i'm really stressed and/or tired its a long hot bath that usually helps me put myself back together again and so all week i've been dreaming of this:



so I dragged myself out of bed this morning in order to spend a huge amount of money on a 3 month spa membership promising a range of relaxing and repairing baths, massages and treatments. This is the first time i've ever spent this much on such a luxury, but i'm hoping the financial investment will force me to at least partake in at least an hours pure R&R once a week.


I also managed at somepoint this week to pop by the People's Republic of China Resource Building and pick up my 3 month visa:


all I need to do now is find time to go!


There are two other things i've been trying to slot in around all this work:

a) Learn Cantonese... I've only spent about 30 mins with the CDs and the book so progress is almost non-existant.

b) Continue with Riddley Walker.
Here i'm doing better than with Cantonese in that i've probably managed a page or two each night before I fall asleep. The language is tough but its roughness help add to the imagery of the post nuclear planet and communities.

Its funny also in that Friday turned out to be a pretty nuclear day.
I drempt about a HK post 'the big 1' (no doubt influenced by Walker). Then during the day I read about how the USA had posted on the web documents from Iraq that could be used to build an atomic bomb (very smart those Yankies).
Finally whilst eating dinner I watched a programme about a guy who'd photographed atomic bomb shelters.
He explained that some states and countries were so paranoid about the A-bomb back in the 80's that they built more than enough shelters to house all their peoples. Therefore if you do ever find ourselves in a Riddley Walker-esque world its very likely your fellow survivors will be the Isreali's, the entire population of Switzerland, most of Texas, Cheney, Bush and the cockroachs.
Personally in the event of all out nuclear war i'll follow the advise of the SAS survivors guidebook:

a) dig a hole
b) stand in it
c) put your head between your legs
d) kiss your ass goodbye

I just hope I get to get my money's worth out of that spa membership before either Korea or Iran finish downloading those docs !

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!

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.