Candy Mandible Stroke 5

How long have I been here now? Nearly 2 months? Jeez, it feels like a Lord of the Rings-sized slab of time has passed, only without the bells and whistles of Gondor…

And so, the youngling tentatively steps into unchartered bracken, clutching a rental lease agreement and a large rucksack…

Time has sped, mainly because work, taking up a large proportion of one’s week, has sped. It’s been good. We are working on a competition entry. The hours have been long. We are doing this competition in partnership with the Beijing Institute of Architectural Design , like a state-run design conglomerate. I don’t know if I should even be typing the key word “Beijing.” China’s internet police are everywhere, they regularly snipe journalists who don’t take official party lines and criticize the government. And ISPs (Yahoo included) have recently been accused of supplying Chinese authorities with the necessary information that leads to their arrest. Well, if you don’t hear from me for a while, first assume that I’m lazy and write irregularly anyway, then after a little longer assume the worst.
Anyway, it’s been an interesting process, so there you go. No negative press anyway guys…

Recently I could be found in prison-well, actually a Chinese cafeteria near the prison on HK Island, somehow connected with the prison. I don’t know. I’m the only “foreign devil” that ever seems to be there. I’ve been asked along a few times by some of myCantonese work colleagues. Lunch with this crew has a certain pattern to it: There will be much conversation in Cantonese and laughing and joking, then I will be looking around at faces but not really understanding a word. Then after a while someone will turn to me and give me a summary of what has been talked about in the last five minutes. It’s actually a very generous thing to do. Somehow though it doesn’t make for fluid conversation, and this can be irritating. It’s noone’s fault but mine. “You should learn Cantonese” some of them say. And they’re right, I should. I doubt it will happen though. I’m actually thinking of turning to the “Dark Side” and getting Mandarin lessons. But will it be worth it? Getting tutored after a huge day at work, trying to concentrate, rarely getting the opportunity to practice….there are enough people here that speak it I guess, but it will take a pretty big effort. Do I have it in me? We’ll see…
…And the prison food isn’t actually that good. What’s the fuss about guys?

Well, after-work drinks have become ingrained into my psyche. It’s taken quite seriously. It’s probably the best time to socialise. Drop the slew of work. Grab the bag. Go. Drink. Talk. Make plans. Get some food. Go to a club. If this is sounding too “planned,” too “cyclical,” I can assure you it is. But within this weekly pattern is an extraordinary diversity. You always meet some new freak, learn some secret about someone, find some new item on the menu. You become acclimatised to the“Bubble” that is Hong Kong (Thank you Melbourne Bob for this analogy) without ever completely understanding it. Someone famous once posed the question: “what if we did away with the notion ofcontrolling the city and merely concentrated on becoming it’s occupants?” I think this is a great question, because it shifts our perception of the city as an “entity” towards something closer to an environment, even a “field.” Environments are something we are all more comfortable with “altering”and “manipulating,” and so we do away with all these presumptions. We don’t devalue architecture, we just expand it’s horizons.

Lots of new people at work. It’s a young office. We talk. We draw. People have ideas. Yay!

The last few weeks saw me running around in lunchbreaks, after work, weekends, looking at apartments. Land agents are determined here, they give chase. I checked out some dives, some nice spots too. I visited people who wanted flatmates. I think I’m a relatively easygoing flatmate, and that I get along with most people, but I didn’t really warm to any of the potential flatshare peeps I visited. And so I decided that enough was enough, I was gonna live by myself. Eventually I tracked down a place in SoHo, which is pretty cool considering it’s usually quite pricey. It’s partially furnished which is great. I pay 5700 Hong Kong Dollars a month
(about AUS $980) so it’s world city prices alright. But sometimes you just gotta live right y’know? It’s a short walk to and from work, it’s right next to Lan Kwai Fong where all the fun is. It’s pretty good. Still, after bond and expenses, I am well and truly financially floored until payday. Will it be two minute noodles and bottled water for a fortnight? We’ll see…Anyway, the flat will receive some attention soon. The blue curtains are despicable…

Oh yeah, and many fashion models shop at my local supermarket. It’s a strange thing to see someone you swear you just saw on a billboard. Hong Kong is something of a regional fashion hub so model-spotting is not uncommon. They have local haunts too, exclusive clubs that let them in for free and provide them free drinks, probably more…So how do the clubs make their money? From the rest of the schmucks, who go there to play ‘spot the sweetie.” I got taken to Dragon-Eye one night, one of these clubs, and it was pretty fun for about 15 minutes until you realised that activity seemed restricted to standing around looking at people. Perhaps it’s like a 3 dimensional fashion magazine where one merely turns the pages too quickly. Or maybe I just wasn’t in the mood. I don’t know. They sure do smoke a lot though.

The air is so thick here, breathing here is like a meal. I’ve been jogging up to the Peak Club and back, and my ticker literally can’t take it. For sure it’s steep, but…I think my next holiday will be at an Austrian Spa in the Alps….Clint recalled how the other night, after arriving back home at dawn from party, he realised he couldn’t sleep due to drinking too many vodka red bulls (always foisted upon us by Hans, though I’m developing a liking for this “contradiction” drink…) and so he decided to walk it off by visiting the Peak. It was particularly foggy that morning, and so, unable to see his own hand in front of him, he was disturbed by silhouettes of Tai Chi-ers, and by the eerie sounds coming from somewhere in the mist of a Chinese opera singer practicing lines….
I think I’m also a little closer to understanding the local preoccupation with ghosts. There was a ghost festival on recently, which presented the passer by with things like tables groaning with whole cured slaughtered pig carcasses, and people generally burning shit on the road. I’ll be uploading some images of this soon…Anyway, you get dehydrated quickly here during physical exercise, even after knocking down a litre or so of water. And once this happens, I sometimes get these weird green-pink apparitions in front of my eyeswhen I’m running. Maybe it’s just the congealingsweat running into my eyes. But anyway, this leads to the crackpot theory about how the local culture came to take ghosts seriously: they “saw” things whilst in a physical activity-induced delirium. Going back to this ghost festival though, I think it is more about venerating dead family members. It is a nice concept. The elderly here are definitely respected more than in Australia, and they certainly hold their heads high as they move along the streets with their canes, deliberately taking up the entire footpath. Though burning paper copies of prestigious worldly items (yes, there are shops selling everything from paper Rolexes to paper Mercedes Benzes) can be particularly noxious.

If anyone wants a postcard and haven’t received one, all you must do is let me know. I lost my list…