Dating Tips For Plonkers VI Today: Undesirable Behaviour For (By?)Women

Everybody knows that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. But who wants to catch flies?

Or maybe it was catch colds. Anyway, today’s tip is for you women, bints, girls, whatever, out there. Or anybody really. Yes today’s tip is just as suitable for men as for women, especially from a legal point of view. I would certainly not like to be treated like this by any man or woman.

If you’re female (or male) and you’ve been “going out” with or “seeing” this guy (or woman) (or anybody) for a few months, here’s what you don’t do when the person in question starts to call less and less frequently, finally saying “Look it’s not me it’s you, you’re an idiot, you bore me senseless and when I behold your countenance all I feel is bilge rising.” or whatever it is they say.

You don’t (yes, I know it’s difficult but when someone breaks up with you it’s because they don’t want to see you, not because they’re gagging to see you but all means of communication in HK have mysteriously broken down for three weeks) call incessantly, hundreds of times a day, one one particular Sunday notching up 124 calls in one hour.

It’s counter productive. Your victim’s common or garden boredom with everything you are and stand for will only after the 20th or so phonecall have turned into active dislike. Maybe even disgust.

And whatever you do, and I can’t stress this enough: After calling incessantly for three weeks without result (other than your victim rather wanting to chew his way through four kilos of cold snot than to even see you in a photo,) do not, NOT! go around to your victim’s office and stab him (no matter how short the knife) in front of his colleagues.

It’s just really bad form.

The police might just laugh and advise your victim not to press charges because you’re “only a girl” but still, in such a conservative town a girl doesn’t have to go to prison to get a bad reputation. You keep the knife action up, and soon you’ll be known as a “stabber” and some people may be wary of entering into more than the most perfunctory of couplings with you. 

Of course this is only a theory as I don’t go out with women, stabbers or no. I can just imagine that most guys dislike being stabbed in front of their colleagues. That’s all.

Bah Bah Humbug, Politically Correct Sheep (Warning! Contains a word used to depict the colour black!)

It seems Britain is trying to out-politically correct the Americans. That takes some doing, but how about banning the song “Bah bah blacksheep”? Because saying the word black can be offensive to black people? That’s right, it’s happened in British schools and kindergartens.

The latest one, funnily enough, also has to do with sheep. Animal rights activists complained about a sheep shearing contest in Kent saying cutting off the wool was against sheep’s rights and a ‘cruel practise.”

Well how are they supposed to get the wool off? Are the sheep supposed to walk around with three meter long coats? I think that would infringe on their rights more than being relieved of the matted morass of hair, no?

These politically correct people are turning into the Cultural Revolution in China, out-doing each other to find new things that can be deemed offensive to, anti- or pro-something, egging each other on.

At one stage Mao’s revolutionaries suggested changing the traffic light rules so that red meant “go.” Excellent idea, really revolutionary! Now let’s see… and let’s make owning more than one pen punishable by death, and then…

Because it’s so-called well educated, middle-class, well-meaning people coming up with all this politically correct insanity, often hiding behind the incredibly patronising cover-all shield of racism, they don’t get laughed out of the room, but listened to by other earnest sheep.

Where will it end?

Yeah I know the photo is of a goat. Just wanted to be unconventional.

“… and Thou Shalt Be Stricken With Disappointment Again And Again, and Thy Book Shall Never Be Published…” Job’s Book of Publishing 5:2

I think I’m coming down with psychic… itis. Becoming psychic. Take yesterday: I was skipping lightly up the many steps to my house, thinking of nothing as I have no inner life, when I suddenly had a thought.

A thought about my new book “Don’t joke on the stairs.” It was probably the steps that brought it on but I walk up and down them many times every day, so why now? Anyway, the thought was: What if X (the publisher who had promised me to start the work on Don’t Joke in April after South China Morning Post Publishers with whom I had a contract to  publish it in February this year suddenly announced in January that the company was being suspended) … what if X also backs down? Then I won’t have any books coming out this year at all! No launch party… no insights in the real, surreal China for the great unwashed masses before the olympics. And social death for me.

But then I thought, no, X won’t do that? She’s a woman of her word?

But in my inbox this morning I found a mail saying that’s exactly what happened. Now I’m thinking: I wonder if she decided that at exactly the same moment as I was struck by the thought on the steps outside? If it isn’t the case, in fact, that I’m becoming a raving psychic? That would be good for business perhaps, but it’s still not good. I’d rather have no thoughts.

And I’d rather have my book published two months ago!!!!

Dating Tips For Plonkers V. Today: Pickup-Lines For The Elderly

So you’ve made it to 70. Maybe you’re not 100% convinced that “70 is the new 40″ (at which point life is supposed to begin) but on the whole you’re feeling pretty good about yourself; the jaunty spring in your step, your sonorous voice and all-round youthfulness. You’ve got a good head of grey chest-hair which you like to show the world by artfully forgetting to button your Hawaiian shirt – all is well!

So why not celebrate life by going to China and taking a cruise up the Yangtze to see the Three Gorges before they become the Three Not Very High Slopes?

You quickly realise you’ve made a mistake going on a tour with fellow Americans of your own age – most of them are a sad sight with their Zimmer frames, walking sticks, bandages and aches and pains. And so old! But it’s your first time in Red China and you’re determined to make the most of it.

Getting on the cruise ship in Wuhan on the last leg of your journey you’re relieved to find a group of people 35 years your junior in the bar. These are evidently your kind of people and they listen with rapt attention while you regale them with stories of how you’ve “done” Shanghai and “done” Xian, and how stupid the Chinese people are. With not a little pride you indicate that you’ve more or less single-handedly got rid of the spicy Chink stuff on the ship’s buffet table (probably cat and dog anyway, ah ha ha) and replaced it with real food: Pizza and hamburgers.

So far so good! The young people are hanging, open-mouthed, on your every word and especially one of them, a blonde, keeps looking at her watch as if anxious to be alone with you. One by one the young people drift away – it is after all past 9 in the evening – until only the blonde is left, yawning provocatively and making coyly as if to leave.

At this stage, pensioner, or anybody; kindergarten teacher, axe murderer, nun, hello kitty-card collector or flautist, do not, I repeat DO NOT grip the woman’s arm with your white-haired, liver-spotted hand and whisper: “Do you want to come back to my cabin? My room-mate’s deaf!”

Well you could. But you’d be a total plonker.

 

Product Placement (Warning! Contains product placement!)

Sexual intercourse can sometimes lead to closer acquaintance.

Thus starts my novel Blonde Lotus, a bunch of copies of which I came over at G.O.D. yesterday. I’m only mentioning it here because (I want to sell lots) and because the books bore the singularly non-intriguing sticker:

“Warning! Contains train journeys and sex in Hong Kong!”

Well that’ll have people beating each other back while stampeding for the till.

Still, my new book is coming out soon so it would be good to clear the shelves of Blonde Lotus, which is a bit like this blog but with a story line and no acronyms, abbreviations, numbers or facial hair.

But lots of dudes, (plonkers and beautiful ones, boring and interesting ones, with and without clothes) sex, philosophy, the truth about relationships and life in general, how to learn languages by sleeping one’s way to the top, and yes, some train journeys. But only in China and Russia! And Mongolia.

Most of all the book is a kind of ode to China, or the China of the late 80s and early 90’s at least.

Actually now that I think about it there are a lot of Dating Tips For Plonkers in it as well. Oh yeah.

 

You can buy it from www.havenbooksonline.com, G.O.D or bookshops, or straight from me. Sales! Saaaaaaales! If you buy 2000 copies I will have made more than $HK 300 out of it.

HSBC Shows Its True Face (Grammar Hour Again)

Ah, HSBC. The world’s local bank – except it’s closing down about two outlets or branches or whatever, every day.

But I suppose it’s local in the sense that it assumes that for example 95-year old illiterate women picking up discarded cardboard for a living all have internet banking , i.e. everybody has their own bank in their living room, and don’t need the physical banks anymore.

That must be why my particular local HSBC-bank is only open four days a week, and why they’ve got rid of the person they used to have standing in the dorway bowing you in and showing the directions of the the three teller windows – easy to miss in the 30 square feet room. And that must be why it costs HK$ 150 to transfer money with a few days’ gap between transaction and the actual transfer,  manually by teller. Do it by computer or die, democratic HSBC says.

But I digress. What this rantiscule is about is … not anagrams but abbreviations; companies’ names that are letters. Like HSBC. And PCCW, AIA, DKNY…

Why can’t they just have names? 

It took me several months to be able to say “PCCW” with ease, and that after having called it “PPCCW,” “PWWWC”etc, making people look at me like a total berk. I still don’t know what it stands for and I don’t care. Hong Kong Telecom – what’s wrong with that? I could say it the second or third time I tried!

And Hong Kong Bank. One syllable less than HSBC! Is that progress? All right, so the sniffy stiffs over at Midland Bank (another word easy to remember) didn’t want to have the words Hong Kong (or was that Shanghai? Or both?) in their bank’s name. But come on - it’s still called Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation really, isn’t it, and you’d have to tell people that if they asked what HSBC stood for.

How many abbreviations can a brain hold? In my case, five. So bring back names, I say. Original, inventive names. Names which express the true nature of the company. Like Wanko (a clothes chain.)

One way to do it is to enter the abbreviation into your mobile phone. Try that with HSBC and out comes a perfect name: GRAB.

Dating Tips For Plonkers IV. Today: Marriage Advice from The Experts!

Do you know, I have got this far in life without ever reading Hello Magazine. Strange I know, but somehow, briefly glancing at the cover has always been enough for me.

Brangelina has (have) put on two milligrams in weight, (fat shock horror) Victoria Poshham Chips A Nail,  Madonna shows an ankle, then changes religion – it’s the kind of thing I can read about in the SCMP on a boring Sunday. Or not.

But yesterday I was having a haircut and the only reading matter was the aforementioned HELLO.

And what do you know – the magazine has depth and insight! It offers advice! The happy couple above of whom I had never heard, one Cheryl from some girl band and her Ashley, ruminated on the secrets of a happy marriage. Sorry, Kimberley and Justin. Oh dear, I didn’t read the actual article. In a kind of reversal to how men allegedly read Playboy, I only looked at the pictures and skipped the articles…

Anyway, my eye was drawn to the following sage advice from this couple married for two weeks or whatever:

So there you have it people, that wasn’t so hard was it? If everybody was aware of this universal truth, there wouldn’t be so many divorces.  Or marriages, for that matter.

Damn You, People Of Hong Kong

Aaarghhh, it’s happened again.

Another pair of  students are stopping the Cantonese lessons because they “can’t get motivated.” And these are in my top 3 of the most fantastic students ever! In six months they’ve gone from nothing to conversational about all sorts of topics. They have good pronunciation, superb syntax, great vocabulary and can also read quite a few characters.

So what’s the problem?

No matter how hard they try, HK people will still answer them in English and even come across all sniffy beacuse these two whitey dare to address them in that “useless” language, Cantonese.

My students feel they’re bashing their heads against a great wall of Chinese and that all their hard work is in vain.

I’ve asked millions of HK people why, when addressed in one language, the choose to answer in another. “I just think it’s polite.” Well you know what? It’s not!

I think in their eyes, Cantonese is like breast-feeding: Something their ancestors did in the rice paddies of Guangdong province, vaguely shameful, necessary at the time but too close to the earth. Also, all whitey speak English and nothing else and if they try to stick their head out of their appointed pigeon-hole they must be stuffed back in at all cost.

Yes this is the same lament over and over again. It’s just that most of my students complain about the same thing over and over again…

For all you eager Canto-students out there, I have only one piece of advice: Stand your ground. Keep speaking Cantonese and you will succeed. You’re the customer and you can take your business to places where people are happy to talk to you in the local language. That should learn’em! If HK people accepted the fact that white people can actually learn Cantonese, that it’s not “too difficult for them” and that the only way to learn it is to practise, we would see a very different, less polarised society here.

And I would still have an income. 

Dating Tips For Plonkers III

I know internet dating (internet dating) works for millions of people all over the world. There are no hard and fast rules, but common sense should loom large in this as in many other things in our modern and confused world.

The other day my friend told me about this woman in .. Lithuania? One of those Formerly Known As The Soviet Union places, who had been internet dating-emailing this colleague of his, and who had written something in Russian, or the Cyrillic alphabet, in the mail. My friend happened to recognise those words: “I love you.”

I love you? To someone you haven’t even met???

But the human heart holds all sorts of things (crap) so what do I know.  Anyway, here comes the internet dating tip:

When you’ve sent a few emails to a woman, telling her about your job and other wildly interesting things and you’ve put your phone number there and received a text message from her, and the texting has gone backwards and forwards for a few days, and you’ve told her how really interesting she is and how you really would like to meet her to get to know her better, DON’T, (I repeat DON’T!!!! send a text saying: “Do you want to meet tonight for a one night stand?”

All right, so some women would leap at the chance. Not many, but some. But as a rule, I think discussing having a one night stand with someone you haven’t even met (see above) is counter-productive.  As a rule. Honest, but counter-productive.

Welllllll-come Hiring Talking Muzak Artist! People with normal enunciation need not apply

There’s a NEW JOBopeningat WELL-come!!! APP-licantsmustpossessanin CREDibleaBILitytoputthestressonthe WRONG wordinthe SENtenceandSOUND likeatotal PLONker!!!! ENJOY shoppingat WELL-come! Or ELSE!

I remember the days when I found muzak in supermarkets irritating. Muzak anywhere, really, especially Kenny G. But with the wall of talking sound that has taken over The Wellcome Chain Of Overstacked Supermarkets (the WALL of TALKingsoundthathas … etc) recently, I’d do anything to get Kenny back among the shelves.

I don’t know how the management thinks that listening to these insanely upbeat, non-stop talking and advising (“when you STACK foodinyourfridge ALWAYS STACK thebarbecuedtoddlerson the SAME shelfastheSEVEREDheads. ENJOY stackingfoodinyourFRIDGE!”)  will make people buy more stuff.

In my local Wellcome I see people running frantically around, just chucking any old thing into their shopping trolleys while dashing for the tills, trying to cover both ears with one hand to keep the relentless, penetrating noise out. But it’s impossible, the speakers are turned on too loud and the voice too intense.

It enters the brain like a dog whistle for humans and makes you dizzy, confused and unable to remember what you came into Wellcome for in the first place.

This morning I went in there to get some toothpaste and the SCMP and came out with a bunch of barbecue forks, a pair of socks and four litres of bleach.

Management of Wellcome: People know how to shop. They can find the bargains. They know how to put things into their fridges.  Having some bint scream into my ear how I should “enJOY shoppingatWELL-come” doesn’t make it enjoyable. Some peace and quiet or even Kenny, might.

Well, of course  not enjoyable. How can being in a supermarket ever be? But it might make it tolerable.