Coffee or Tea

Scurrying across the bridge in Wan Chai to the Hong Kong Houseware Fair last week, I stumbled across several youngsters in bright tees with their clipboarded stacks of forms for voter registration. Given how user-enemy the online registration procedure is, I came really close to stopping at their booth to serve my duty. But that was 40 minutes before the closing of the fair so I thought "what the heck, this thing ought to still be here next week when I come to the Gifts & Premium Fair."

I'm going to the Gifts & Premium Fair tomorrow. Sure as I am that the voter registration booth will be there at the exact same spot, I'm still contemplating whether I should still register for the seemingly meaningful gesture that masks the democracy-depriving reality.

The Chinese NPC Standing Committee's decision on our city's constitutional development is the one thing Hong Kongers are more disappointed in than Tung's performance as our chief executive.

It's like offering caffeine-intolerant me the choice of coffee or tea when what I want is water with a side of universal suffrage.

25 Going on ...?

I thought menopause hit early. For the entire Easter long weekend I thought I had fallen under the spell of the ultimate hot flash. What I didn't realize, because not having to get up at 7:30 meant missing the morning news and weather forecast, was that the city has gotten its taste of the summer.

For the past couple of days, the temperature had remained at a good 25°C. For someone who was sleeping under a down cover just six days ago, it's not an easily adaptable phenomenon.

Summer, in Hong Kong, lasts half the year. I can't predict which will cost more, the electric bill for our fair share of cool air at home, or my spending on my summer '04 collection. Mind you I'm now a regular at the gym and am expecting to start losing weight and inches any minute now. The season's latest tiny tops and bikinis might just come in handy.

Before the typhoon/monsoon season hits, I shall organize/attend as many barbeque parties as possible. Barbeques in the summer and hot pots in the winters are much the same, not especially delectable, but inexplicably addictive.

A less mysterious addiction of mine is the gym. Basic Steps 1 is more fun than one can imagine once you get the hang of it. That is, when you know the routine well enough to laugh at the losers who don't have the slightest sense of rhythm or direction.

This is what hot climate does to me, it turns me into a meanie, as if being a bitch alone was insufficient.

MTR Revisited

More than 785 million passenger journeys are taken on the Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway system annually. It seems the sole purpose of 700 million of these are to hinder other commuters from getting on the train. It's bad enough that I must travel on three separate trains before even getting close to my workplace. But when fellow canned sardines block the doors like soccer players guarding the goal against a penalty kick when there's clearly an air pocket behind them, that just pisses me off.

Just this morning, a brown suited barbarian put up a good show trying to shove me out of the train at Tai Koo twice before the door closed, and of course I didn't fail to grant our audience a nice come back by shoving her further into the train. It was almost like Superbowl Sunday. The door closed and my face was forced flat against it. The crowd cheered for my triumph. With my build, it's hard to lose. But at her typical Hong Kong anorexic girl size, a nudge by her razor-sharp elbow can be lethal.

You'd think that once on the train, you're safe. But mind you you're now in close proximity with numerous pole-leaners and leg-crossers. The city's Equal Opportunities Commission has ensured that those deprived of a healthy spine to hold up their own bodies and must rely on the sturdy steel poles in the train to hold them up against gravity are also entitled to commute on the MTR, just as those whose legs would lock into scissors positions as soon as their buttocks come into contact with a horizontal platform, even if it means stamping their shoe prints onto the white pants of a standing sardine.

And then there are the paper-readers. I really think the standard size of newspapers sold in a city should be negatively proportional to the population density of that city. Because people seem to think that a paper in hand grants them the power to mark territories in public transportations. When you step over that boundary line, no alarm will sound but you'll get a gaze from infrared eyes that shoot out laser beams.

I only wish the list ends here. But without these distinct characteristics of Hong Kong's population of canned sardines, I might just have nothing to blog about.

With the two long weekends coming up, I think I'm really going to miss the intimacy with my fellow cat food.

Karen and Richard

There was a time when The Singles 1969-1973 hogged my CD player 24/7. The Carpenters do magnificent things for me. For one, it eases knots in the heart. And it never fails to cheer me up or help me sleep, whichever one I was in need of.

It's been a while since I've felt such need to hear Karen's voice. Rainy days and Mondays always get me down, but today is neither. Yet I still got what they used to call the blues. I knew I needed The Carpenters when I not only missed a stop on my way home yesterday but hopped onto the wrong train right after.

I have my dad to thank for bringing some of the best music into my life. The Carpenters have been listed as my music ever since I started getting goosebumps listening to their songs. Pavarotti is good too, just not goosebumps material for me.

[Three tracks into The Singles 1969-1973 and feeling better already.]

Plan B

My new digital camera definitely added a lot of fun to my day on Lamma Island. With only the 16MB memory card that came with, I had my mind occupied the whole day deciding which pictures to keep and which to delete. I ought to admit, looking through an aspherical ED lens with 10 times optical zoom made me appreciate Mother Nature more than I could imagine. Dollars well spent.

Mother Nature has also given me a fat pulsing knuckle and middle section on my right index finger from a mosquito bite. Obviously took too long to find the right focus with my new camera.

Came into the office this morning and discovered a fish tank bottom full of fish do. What was a white sandy beach for my fish is now indistinguishable from any other beach in Hong Kong. Looked more carefully and my fish seemed to have really slimmed down over the weekend. I must have washed too much cream off my hands when changing its water last week. Just watch the hand cream diet develop as the city's next trend.

But if you ask me, electronic product purchases shall rise as the mainstream in dieting. Want to lose 10lbs? Buy a digital camera. Want to keep it off? Buy a laptop.

999

I was a kindie when I called 999 (Hong Kong's version of 911) for the first time. Two policemen came up to our home as a result, and, since that day, my mom hesitated at every attempt to go grocery shopping during my nap.

Twenty years later I took advantage of the free emergency calls service on my mobile and dialed the three-digit number to report a car accident.

It happened three days ago, right in front of me. A motorcyclist stamped on the brakes and barely missed killing a fourth grader crossing the street. The kid was in need of nothing more than post-trauma therapy while the motorcyclist seemed to have suffered from a few broken bones.

I'm not taking either side as I'm officially filed in the police records as a witness. But if anyone was wrong, it had to be the swarms of people hovering the scene of the accident. I understand that a car accident could be the most fascinating thing that would ever happen in a boring neighborhood such as Shau Kei Wan, but as if blocking traffic wasn't bad enough, some openly called the traumatized kid inhumane, while the others suggested all kinds of possibilities of how the accident occurred, most of them sounding as if they saw it in a documentary.

The amount of fascination that crowd had shown makes it obvious how the true idol will be a platinum seller. People just love to see extraordinary things happen to ordinary people.

And the Winner is

"I love you too, but I really have to go," I said to my bed at 7:30 sharp this morning.

Warning number two from the manager marked the kickoff to a competition between three colleagues and me. By the end of this month, whoever has been late to work the most accumulated minutes will have to treat the other three to a night of karoke.

I gotta admit, it felt pretty good beeping my access card at 8:53 this morning. For once I actually hoped the CEO had peeked out his head like he always does whenever someone walks pass his office.

I wasn't a participant of the previous round of this game until the karaoke part, which was during lunch hour and the bill for four people only came to the price of two movie tickets. But this time around, with the evil kadevil joining, the rules have changed. Karaoke at night easily costs multiple of that in the afternoon, and this time around, there's sure to be alcohol involved.

As eager as I was to be part of the game, I completely saw myself paying the $1000 bill at the end of the month. But who knew one of the competitors would be so lax as to forget that the game had started and didn’t show up until 9:30 this morning.

I just hope the four of us can finish the big bottle of Chivas Regal.

Avoiding

Must try very hard to avoid hearing any news on the Oscars today. Living on the other side of the planet plus having a regular day job equals having to watch a rerun tonight of what was broadcasted live this morning. Did that with the Grammy, will do that for the Oscars. I just pray it's not another four-and-a-half-hour show that's going to haunt me for the rest of the week.

Unfortunately, not all things in life are avoidable. Only four and a half hours into the day and I've already gotten enough bad news to not only reverse all the joy built up from my wonderful weekend but haunt me for the rest of the year.

From New to Old, and Vice Versa

One's leftover is another's friend. My new pet fish is one of the lucky ones that escaped the jaws of a bigger fish at the other corner of the office. I was given two fish to choose from and picked the hyperactive one to keep, because a hyperactive fish would take longer to get bored of than an ordinarily active one. But still, it's only a matter of time before I give up and serve it as breakfast at the other corner of the office.

It's what the Chinese call the "three-minute heat", or the "new toilet". See, the amount of time it takes for a new toilet to smell just like an old is about the length of time our interest and excitement last for new things. Once a tint of "old" is seen, we'd long for something newer to replace it with.

Some people (quite a lot, actually, as I've noticed) have found different solutions to counteract / prolong the wearing process of new things, or at least attempt to trick the mind in believing something old is still new. Examples easily found in Chinese households include age-old plush toys that have never left their "This bag is not a toy" plastic packaging and saran-wrapped remote controllers. And it's not rare to find people leaving the protective films on watches and the LCDs of cell phones and digital cameras, but that's a transparent film so not too easily noticeable. But then there are the gold-on-black "UV Protection" labels on the lens of Ray Ban sunglasses, and the white barcode labels on the anything-but-white bottom of shoes.

I'm only interested in keeping a small fish, the one I have now is perfect. So I guess as long as it doesn't grow, I'll be fine with it. It's also very reassuring to know that if and when I do get tired of it, the getting rid of it goes to a good cause. One's unwanted pet is another's source of protein.

Day in Tai Po

Since seeing it on TV for the first time I don't remember how many years ago, I've wanted to visit the wishing tree in Tai Po. The chance finally came up yesterday when I attended a not so traditional "basin cuisine" lunch I wasn't invited to. "Not so traditional" because endless pieces of taro were found in our basin where a fair share of avian flu carriers should have been. Other than that, it was good old traditional village cuisine. Where else would you be served 20 separate types of food in the same dish? More importantly, where else could 20 separate types of food all taste the same?

The wishing tree experience would have been more fun if we hadn't been lucky enough to run into Hong Kong's tATu. For a minute the digicams and flashlights had me think our prosperous tourism industry was really rebounding Hong Kong. The flock of fans and press was probably the tree's worst nightmare, of course after nearly getting burnt down last month.

The whole idea of the wishing tree is to write down wishes on a thin stack of what felt like rice paper material, which is then rolled up and tied to an orange. And the wish maker is then to toss the whole thing up the tree. For the price of a pineapple bun, I had the time of my life tossing again and again with what little arm strength I had, up to what looked like Oscar the Grouch's idea of a Christmas tree, while staying alert for flying Sunkists from every which direction. I finally made it at the third attempt, when my wish twirled around and clung onto someone else’s wish without ever touching the tree itself.