An Unexpected Development

It was the familiar nightmare against which I thought I had prepared myself so well by being hyper scrupulous with the whereabouts of my belongings:

Got off the ferry this morning and skipped lightly to the MTR (“metro”) station to go and teach Cantonese in Causeway Bay. Reached into bag, or rather, started wurzeling in my bag ( new Cockney rhyming slang: Wurzel Gummidge, rummage) – where was my wallet?

Oh no! I had left it on the bloody ferry!

Anybody who has ever left anything on the Lantau ferry knows this: It’s the black hole of belongings. The ferry guys take everything they find, including children’s shoes, books by Ian McEwan and even food, to supplement their meagre incomes.

Knowing that my wallet with a not insignificant amount of money in it was gone forever, I nevertheless started legging it back to the ferry pier with a huge, resounding F word filling up all my brainwaves.

My phone went and an unknown number came up. “Wei, did you just lose your wallet? It’s in the office at the ferry pier.”

There is a god. Or something.

Still, I know it was the ferry guys who took the laptop I accidentally left under some newspapers on the ferry last January, and not some opportunist thieves living in Mui Wo; the opportunist thieves, in fact, on whom the ferry company normally blame all losses. There just can’t be that many thieves living in such a small place.

But I’m happy today, oh yeah. Now I won’t have to sit for a whole day in Immigration Tower waiting to get a new ID card, listening to HK people trying to quack out Filipino names. Yes there is a god.

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.

Confessions of a Lullophobe

Congratulations, as they say, you have reached China Droll, my blawg. I decided to enter the world of blogging because I am a total lullophobe. A lullophobe is a person who abhors and/or fears a lull, a pause, a period of time where nothing is happening. A typical lull-filled life is that of going to work and going home, day in and out until death releases you from lull hell. So by writing a daily blog, was the idea, I would subconsciously generate action to have something to write about, paying more attention to the small things (the neighbour warbling on his karaoke set. A car belching black smoke) as I shuttle relentlessly between home and work. And no sooner had I decided to start a blog before my life took a decidedly action-like turn: I was burgled.