Candy Mandible Stroke 3

Friday, 22nd July
It's Friday night, my jobsearch can make way for the weekend, and I meet Clint and his workmates at a pub in Lan Quai Fong. It seems that I have already missed out on a number of drink rounds. Two irritating drunken girls are flirting and toying with everyone. As all the lads at our table seem respectable (from first impressions), they try their best to stem their advances politely. One of the girls announces they are from Essex. For some reason some of the english amongst us find this particularly funny. And in some inexplicable way it is.
A grand evening seems on the cards. We are to drink a little more, a little longer, and then make for a housewarming in the Mid Levels. The hosts, James and Angela, have gutted an apartment they purchased (the pricetag staggers this bewildered Adelaidian) and James, another of the many architects amongst us, has retrofitted it to their liking. By the time our taxi is bound for this housewarming, all present are quite tipsy. Between leaving the pub and taking this taxi, we have raided a late night liquor store and are armed with bottles of vodka, gin, tonic, and my HK beverage of choice Pocari Sweat, a kind of Japanese Gatorade. “Why shouldn't it be used in a mix drink?” I ask three incredulous faces.
The rest of the night is comic book drunkenness, entering this enormous apartment complex, careening past the sceptical doorman in the foyer, bursting into the apartment and finding everyone else inside even more boozed than we. Clint takes the initiative in the freshly renovated kitchen, churning out a dubious mix of cocktails. Pocari Sweat is dismissed quickly, as expected. Angela shows us the sights and delights of the apartment. Even at this late hour at your own housewarming, you want to show off your acquisition. It’s your duty as a host. I particularly like the view from the balcony, which looks onto one of HK’s ubiquitous spray-on concrete retaining slopes on the side of the mountain.
The party is a complete success, testified to by the vast quantity of liquor bottles christening the kitchens newly laid granite benchtops. A few of us bundle into a taxi, the driver quaking in fear at the rabble. Stuart is still holding a plastic cup of vodka tonic upon entering the cab, and responds to the taxi drivers swerves and turns by occasionally throwing vodka tonic everywhere. Finally, after the increasingly irritated taxi driver is turning a sharp corner, he sprays the cup’s contents all over Clints lap. The driver snaps, and looks around in dismay, shouting. It is extremely funny, but also a little shameful.

Saturday 23rd July
I need some extra summer clothes, so upon Clints suggestion I get a bus to the town of Stanley, around on the other side of the island. I find some shorts and two shirts at the Stanley Markets, and some cute little old fishermans houses overlooking the bay. Stanley doesn’t really do much for me, just alot of teenage expat girls going “shopping.” Maybe I am just hung over.

Sunday 24th July
Today I get up bright and early (on a Sunday no less) with the intention of going on a good hike. The Clint is floored after a sports bar cricket viewing gone mildly out of control, and so I venture down to the tube station, to catch the MTR to the last stop on the island line, Chai Wan. I am planning to hike it from there into Shek O Country Park, which stretches southward, cut off from the coastline by a ringroad and tiny villages that follow it. I tramp past an enormous hillside cemetery park, hugging the ringroad that envelopes the island. I've worked up quite a sweat, and by the time I've actually reached the park I am pretty dead. It's a solid walk from here on in, and once I make it over the initial climb, I am rewarded with sweeping views down to Big Wave Bay and Shek O Headland in the distance, overshadowed by the Dragons Back.
I descend downwards through some lush bushland, and soon the trail takes me through what seems like villagers backyards. You get a nice intimate feeling walking through these densely jammed in little houses. Like their bigger more expensive cousins, they are often covered in Hong Kong’s ubiquitous pink tiles, or are simply rendered and painted. The verandahs are low and dogs and cats moon about, wishing they could take off their furs while the sun beats down. I catch glimpses of some people watching television, oblivious to the passersby a few feet away from their living rooms. I make my way quickly through big wave bay’s streets, searching for footpaths, which are decidedly absent. I get to Shek O about 20 minutes later, after passing the Shek O Golf Course (world renowned by all accounts). The bus station is cute, as my pictures demonstrate. This is a Chinese beachside town, the outer core composed of all manner of restaurants and shops selling drinks and snacks and cool inflatable beachgear. I will have to get one of these inflatable ducks, they are priceless. The inner sanctum is the beach itself, lined with trees under which families sit, roasting marshmallows or sausages over little brick coal barbecues. This beach is really spectacular location-wise, but as an Adelaide boy used to having the beach all to himself, the multitude of people running around kind of gets to me. And so I walk around the bay a little to the Headland, where evidently Shek O’s crème de la crème reside, in large walled in houses nestled upon rocky outcrops overlooking the bay. The rocks remind me a little of Port Elliott in South Australia, but the water is much calmer and bluer. I am roasting and really needed to cool off in the water, and so I find a shady outcop and make camp. The water is fine, but I am a little uncertain how safe it is to wander out amongst the briny, rocky shoreline with no shoes-I mean, all those crabs and creepy crawlies that get eaten around here have to live somewhere, right??
So I get that over with and set off walking again, steeling myself for this famed Dragons Back. So there I am, my skin sweating and broiling away, trying to get to the entrance of this country park thinking “there will be a little settlement somewhere soon where I can get a bottle of water or two for this trek. ” The walk to the entrance is uphill, along a wide road of heat radiating bitumen. I reach the entrance finally and realise that this will be a real risk, I have no water and am sweating like crazy. I consult my map and conclude that it should be ok but I will have to be careful. The views are pretty amazing along the ridge, but by now I am a little delirious and find myself unappreciative. As I near the road with it's bus stop Shangri La, my sweating quickly ceases, ie my body has literally turned of the waterworks, I am dry. It's a bizarre feeling. But now I don't care, because I am boarding a bus that is city bound, and I have lived to tell the tale.



Wednesday 27th July
And so it is midweek in Hong Kong, where a blonde-headed young man (me) is pressing through the crowds in downtown Mongkok, stopping to check and send emails to potential employers at an internet cafe. I have a job interview on Friday, my second so far this week. The first was successful, I thought. It’s an office I would like to work at too, and this is all too rare for such an inexplicably fickle man as me. I wait patiently. And so in the meantime I begin the next round of telephone calls to check on whether CVs reached their intended destinations, whether it would be convenient to arrange appointments. Now that I am sitting in the gardens opposite the Tin Hau temple, I can actually field calls without the roar of traffic in the background. I’m on the Kowloon Penninsula. It’s the first time, for all intents and purposes, that I’ve visited the mainland, apart from our brief restaurant sojourn the other night with Billy and Hermia. Hong Kong Island is where it’s at, but here is where it all comes together: this is where chinese people go shopping for essentials like clothes, cooking gear, food etc. Ok, that’s all catered for on the island too, but somehow it seems more traditional here, less detached from the mysteries of mainland China. Sheung Wan, on HK island where Clint’s apartment is, lies on the edge of the chaotic lower levels, where Sheung Wan meets Central. I love the walk to Sheung Wan MTR, there are great little eateries everywhere, and the area specialises in dried and preserved goods. Things are done in blocks, streets and precincts here. In Mongkok, for example, there is a street market where you will find little else apart from Goldfish. The next street might specialise in fruit and vegetables and so on.I am still very curious about all these dried things. Some I have to do a double take at when I see them: is that a dried OXE TONGUE? What good is that CUTTLEFISH to anyone? Is someone going to EAT that WHOLE DRIED FISH? There is so much culinary potential for my relatively virgin tastebuds. I had some dried mushrooms in a wonton soup the other day, which became soft and slippery once infused in the hot broth. It was very yummy, maybe a bit slimy though.This week I’m actually trying to be good. I am off too much fun until I find a job, because I could find myself short if I go galavanting. I’m just taking little day trips and incorporating them into scheduled interviews, phone calls and internet café trips.Sometimes my internet café trips have been mildly irritating, when I have to go to Wan Chai. “The Wanch” district is where all us westerners are meant to go, where many restaurants serve steaks and fish n chips and that sort of staunch grub (which I admittedly sometimes crave-I went there with Clint to a sports pub that showed the Ashes tour the other night, and tried to overcome my ignorance of cricket. Clint has been most supportive, though now I just feel un-australian, what with my lacklustre cricketing knowledge. To alleviate this feeling I will visit the supermarket soon and buy an Arnotts Family Assortment pack-oh, that’s right, they got rid of the YoYos in that assortment didn’t they…oh well, Clint has a BBQ out back, guess I can practice the patriotism on that!) and there are a number of themed clubs and things for us western suckers. And the irritating part we always dread? Having Strip Club hoochimamas grabbing your shirtsleeves and trying to get you into their clubs for “happy hour.” No thanks, I’m happy as it is right now-well, maybe you could totter off back to your club and drink one of your cut-price beers FOR me eh? The rest of my eventful day is spent catching the KCR eastern line train to Sha Tin, a town slightly northeast of Kowloon. There was a monastery I thought I’d go and see, the 10 000 Buddhas Monastery. It was just slightly west of the train station, and you had to climb a hill. But in this case, the journey was most of the fun, because the 10 000 Buddhas that give this place its name begin at the bottom of the steps at the foot of the hill. They line the steps right up to the top, then they line the bounds of the temple. All are lifesize and each has a different pose and expression. I realised I didn’t have the patience of a Buddhist to review every single fibreglass statue. They were very smoothly finished with gold lacquer paint, and would look great at the helm of someone’s boat. Oh there was a pagoda at the temple too, and some other fun statues. By this time I wasn’t that into it anymore, the burning incense was choking me and the sun beat down on my already sunburnt scalp.After this I made my way down to the city centre. The plan was to make my way back to the train platform via the ridiculously large shopping centre that enveloped it, apparently one of Hong Kong’s largest (and that is saying a lot). The route I took was roundabout, and I ended up in what I think is Hong Kong’s answer to the british welfare housing estate. I didn’t take any photos once inside, I have only one or two images of the entrance. You entered what you quickly realised was going to be the prevailing reality for the next few blocks through a series of pilotis, or in plain speak large columns at ground level that support a building above it to allow for ground level circulation. At first there didn’t seem to be that much difference between one of these highrise concrete monstrosities and the ones that I was familiar with from elsewhere in HK. But these formed walls around an entire complex, which was also undercut by several large open concrete plazas lined with shops. Covered walkways left off of these and became skybridges that connected to more of the same, and I ask the reader of this journal to try to colourmatch aqua green with bright pink and orange with smoky purple highlights. This was the colourscheme for the next plaza I blundered into. While I’ve witnessed financial poverty before, I’ve never experienced such experiential poverty in my life, and became quite depressed. Apparently this estate is for “squatters” with nowhere else to live. Check my photos of the entry. On my way back to Clint’s apartment I bought some chinese sausage and some vegis for Clint’s “1000-year curry.” He began it the other night and we are going to add to it continuously until we probably get food poisoning. It’s like a different curry every night. I also found some of this white sauce which is such a nice accompaniment to chinese steamed greens. It is made mostly from soya beans and eggs.I also snacked at the Shanghai-style dumpling shop down from Hollywood Road, which was a revelation. I will be back for more, armed with beer.I am finding I am drinking lots of beer here, simply because nothing is more refreshing after a sweaty day out and about. Clint is refusing to drink for a few days after the monster weekend dissuaded him. The beer found in his fridge these days is either San Miguel (from Macau? I don’t even know…) and Tsingdao Draft, from mainland China. It works out to being about AU$1.80 for a longneck, which sometimes makes it literally cheaper than water.

There is a newphoto album, entitled "julysjollyjaunts" which you can view here:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/yert06/my_photos

Here are some photos of our Outpost show at the Prince Albert on Sat, July 12th 2005, for those who haven't seen them yet. They are courtesy of Mr Niko Bourmas:
http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/testtone000/my_photos