17-23 April 2005
hemlock@hellokitty.com
Police vans take up positions outside Sogo department store in Causeway Bay. More stand vigilantly outside the Nissan showroom on Gloucester Road in Admiralty. There is probably an armed cop guarding over the sashimi counter in the Wellcome supermarket in Robinson Road. My tax dollars are hard at work today, protecting manifestations of Japanese influence in Hong Kong, though the idea in 2005 of our civilized, gentle people emulating their uncouth and pliable Mainland cousins and smashing windows in an anti-Japanese riot is unthinkable. Don’t spend all the overtime at once, you people in those Mercedes vans with lights on the roof that aren’t flashing and sirens that aren’t wailing. Or work too hard. According to Polly the lipstick lesbian, there are some seriously hot women police officers patrolling the march, but all she emailed me was this lousy shot of a banner blathering about the Diaoyutai Islands. Am I alone in remembering the time then-Chief Secretary Anson Chan casually referred to them as the Senkaku Islands? The sharp intake of breath still echoes in my mind. So… this is a Sunday when Asia’s finest preserve law and order on the streets of the Big Lychee in large numbers. Patriots protest Japanese denial of evildoing – as does my father, refusing for six decades now to buy anything made by Sony, Toyota et al. And I retreat to Perpetual Opulence Mansions and indulge in depraved, dirty and disgusting acts that are of no consequence and anyway, unfortunately, time does not permit me to record.
It’s not the bullet that kills you, it’s the hole. Even Laurie Anderson’s jaunty little song can’t make me feel a little less fragile this morning. I am haunted by the ghosts of last night’s excesses – a throbbing head and a strong disinclination to do any work. Can I make the effort to raise my head and look out of my window on the 20th floor of S-Meg Tower? There is usually something inspiring, and maybe healing, to see. It might be a black kite soaring between the skyscrapers on the warm air rising from the city. It might be a billowing plastic bag, gently wafting past the tower blocks. Straining to raise my eyes, I behold two men standing on the other side of the glass, as if this is the ground floor, rather than 200 feet up. They are Nepalese window cleaners, suspended in their ‘gondola’ and secured by safety harnesses. They give me a cheerful wave, and I try to reciprocate. They get a wave, at least. I glance down at my desk, only to see a newspaper article quoting the Democrats’ boss Lee Wing-tat as saying he is forming a ‘shadow cabinet’ to show that his pitiful excuse for a political party “…is competent enough to devise effective policies and govern Hong Kong.” A prospect as preposterous as it is stomach-churning. And now the phone is ringing. At 100 decibels.
He exaggerates – it’s not that good.
Flicking through the news, I spare a quiet moment’s thought for Singapore. For years, the city state’s central planners have squandered its people’s wealth on incentives to keep refrigerator factories and other futuristic, high-tech industries from relocating to China, where they would be economically viable. Thus, beneath its polished public-relations veneer, the Lion City now faces ruin. While market-driven economies like Hong Kong, the US or the UK have happily let dirty and tiresome manufacturing activities move to the Third World, Singapore – like continental Europe – clings to its widget-producing past. It is only a matter of time before they are reduced to slaughtering the livestock in the zoo. “But wait!” say the plucky little republic’s visionary leaders. “It might be shameful and humiliating and scraping the bottom of the barrel, but it’s worth a shot – let’s prostitute our city out to corrupt Chinese officials who want to gamble in tacky casinos and swagger around the streets spitting everywhere, like in that seedy dump, Macau.”
Wed, 20 Apr
What sort of despicable brute publicly humiliates a harmless old gentleman by asking our no-nonsense Legislative Council to query his academic qualifications? People have no feelings these days. Another scurrilous knave brought the intriguing educational credentials claimed by much-loved Legislative Councillor Dr the Hon Philip Wong, JP, GBS to my attention in October, but I kept the lurid details to myself, not wanting to distress this elegant and kindly senior citizen, who wishes no more than to have the occasional drink and practice his proctological technique. First Kevin Sinclair, then James Tien, and now Dr the Hon Wong. Will there be no end to this impudent disparaging of our finest public figures?
Next in line for this odious treatment will no doubt be Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, who has been elected Pope, taking the name Benedict XVI. Benny – as we lapsed Holy Romans will be entitled to call him – has already drawn criticism for his ‘conservative’ views, as if a Pope is supposed to be some sort of trendy, tree-hugging, dope-smoking libertine. Others are complaining about his ethnic and sexual similarities with 15 Benedicts and countless others before him. In fact, the Vatican City’s equal opportunities and workplace diversity department wanted a wheelchair-bound, black Jewish lesbian – but what can you do if none apply? After several decades of limp-wristed, Koran-kissing moral equivalence, people will once again know where they stand with the Mother Church, thanks to Ben’s ‘back to basics’ approach – burning Protestants, putting Muslims to the sword and gouging the eyes out of people who believe the Earth goes round the sun. He’ll knock a bit of respect into insolent churls the world over.
Thurs, 21 Apr
The morning gets off to a delightful start when the IFC Mall branch of Pacific Coffee serves me my organic wheat germ, sandalwood and mango cappuccino in a Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club mug. According to the serving wench, these are not authentic items, but pirated copies from Shenzhen – just 5 Renmibi each.
Romans 9, 21
AN EMAIL from Walter W Wilde Esq in Lam Tin Valley, where he remains in office as Hong Kong’s last colonial district commissioner and the residents live in blissful ignorance of the change of sovereignty in 1997, fanning him with banana leaves and singing God Save the Queen. He has had a startling – maybe divine? – flash of inspiration…
As the dawn’s early light streams into Perpetual Opulence Mansions, I wake to find that a gorgonzola-fuelled night of fitful sleep has left me hanging over the side of my bed and staring down at the floor. It occurs to me that while I am in this position, I might as well take the opportunity to inspect the area beneath the trusty queen-size – it would be the first time in years. So I lean down a bit further and take an upside-down look at this rarely seen part of my bedroom. Not a trace of dust. The diligent Filipino elves are cleaning the space regularly. All I can see, apart from shiny lacquered oak tiling, is a box next to the wall under the headboard. I slide out of the bed onto the floor, reach under and pull it out. It all comes back to me. It is the remaining seven of a dozen copies of Loving the Self-Absorbed: How to Create a More Satisfying Relationship with a Narcissistic Partner by Nina Brown. I used to leave a copy on the bedside table for women to read late at night while they were waiting for the damp patch in the sheet to dry. Then it struck me that ‘more satisfying’ meant ‘more clinging’, so I consigned the volumes to the dark wilderness below and forgot them.
Flicking through the book, I still admire the author’s insight and wisdom. ‘Give up the fantasy that the partner will change’. Absolutely. ‘Avoid confronting the partner to meet your needs.’ Quite so – give him a break. ‘Shape more realistic goals for yourself and the relationship’. Yes, exactly – get real! ‘Employ emotional insulation or boundaries to ward off the person’s projections and your own triggered feelings.’ Whatever. ‘Avoid empathizing; it will not be reciprocated’. Too true. ‘Withdraw from the struggle, conflict and battle of wills’. Indeed – life’s too short.
That miracle of modern technology, the radio that switches itself on in the morning, chooses this moment to spring into life. RTHK3 are playing a Government public interest announcement. A woman with an Essex accent nags her browbeaten boyfriend mercilessly to hold the handrail on the bus. He is too numbed to hear. When the bus brakes suddenly, he falls down. She leaps at the chance to crush what is left of his spirit by mocking him. As a cheerful voice-over tells us to be safe on busses and hold handrails, I resolve to send the radio station a copy of Nina Brown’s tome to forward to this spiteful creature.
‘DAWN’S EARLY light’. Didn’t Francis Scott Key know a tautology when he saw one?