The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party, but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.

Ralph Waldo Emerson


via scrapatorium

hehehe. John Howard in india rubber. via invisible shoebox

an idea for a blog: Improving Me - to get a slew of self-help books and actually do what they say - plaster my walls with affirmations, get up 1/2 an hour earlier to exercise, do visualisations, etc etc. of course I won't, but it's a blog I'd like to read.

hong kong weirdness: when they take apart the bamboo scaffolding on buildings, they just cut and drop the plastic ties on whomever is passing below.

and a newspaper report on a boy who'd been seriously injured by a bus also noted that his bicycle had been damaged. like, who cares? the child had head injuries and they're wasting space on the bike??

pollution is the issue du jour here - it's not just me, the place really is filthy, air-wise. I hide inside with the baby a lot of days, not going out for more than an hour unless it's to an airconditioned mall or apartment. it really is that bad. melbourne's smog is ambrosia compared to this lot.

baby=teething. poor little creature.

blogger has a new way to waste your time: at the top of their blog*spot blogs, instead of an ad, there is now a search and "next blog" function, for one-click, mindless, random blogsurfing.

naughty blogger! we're trying to get some sleep here!

what is expatness teaching me? perspective.

that Melbourne is a subtle place, that though I missed it, return is simple being here, not any brilliant moment or surge of joy.

that all the bits of the paper I hadn't missed are not worth reading, though some I greeted with recognition and pleasure. that I need to throw a lot of useless junk out. that I will probably always respond with warmth to Chinese faces from here on in. that my baby is still cute here, but not as cute as he is in Hong Kong.

and, when going to a cold climate from a warm shopping paradise, to BUY MORE WARM BABY CLOTHES AND TAKE THEM.

that said, it is a sunny spring day with a warm north wind and I am well pleased to be here, if only for 12 days. do not expect more blogging, I'll be too busy living.

although one of them did have an amusing link to supermodel personals

like a good broadsheet journalist, I've been reading the South China Morning Post. but to be honest, while it churns out the details of politics and city news, I get more excited when I get a new copy of HK magazine.

this week they had an article about HK blogging. no earthshattering revelations, and after working my way through the blogs referenced, I've concluded that bwg continues to be the most fun, batgung has his moments (which I already knew), and in general if the list in the paper is all HK has to offer in the way of blogs, it's a sad state of affairs.

not that I can talk, being so preoccupied with my darling baby that I can't really be bothered noting the small weirdnesses of HK, like the spiral-shelled snails and the funny outposts like Lamma, a 20 minute ferry ride from Central but with the soul of a Qld country town (and a great-looking beach, complete with trees.

maybe I'll go looking for some better HK blogs. they must exist.

napping is good. these places should be everywhere.

yesterday I thought I saw smoke coming from the high mountains across in China. but it could have been low cloud. today the city is covered in what I hope is smoke - if it's smog it's the worst I've ever seen, even flying into LA. and across the street, two people are flying a kite from the roof of a 20-storey building, using the north wind to send a red paper hawk bucking and kicking through the air.

why does google keep not noticing the wonderful silas carson coates?

HK is officially bilingual, but Cantonese rules. still, it's often not necessary to hear the English version. When the Tannoy makes an announcement 15 minutes before the pool closes, it's saying "the pool is closing". When the sign in the shower is in black with highlighted sections in red and blue, it's saying "turn on the cold water before the hot". When a bloke in the market knocks a vendor with his goods trolley, she says "look where you're going" and he says "your bum is sticking out too far" and everyone laughs. when the girl at the fish stall talks to the baby, she's saying "you're cute" and when he then cries, the blokes on the stall are saying "ha! even the baby's scared of you"

I haven't picked up any spoken words, but I can now read "warning", "fire", "person" (a generic two-stroke figure that is paired with other symbols to make man, woman, many people etc), "lift", "exit", and "just" as in only.

so we're settling in - at the same time I'm plotting a trip home, whether or not Qantas will give me a seat on points. I miss Melbourne, friends, the dog, the space, the baby's friends, the Vic market, the cold...

Okay, I take it all back. About the shopping, I mean.

this afternoon I walked into a store and walked out with, among many other things, a perfect pair of black linen casual trousers. the right length. in Australia, this just doesn't happen. everything is made for five foot ten women and the rest of us are supposed to "just take it up", which of course is annoying and usually would ruin the cut.

but here in the land of smaller people, the length is right. I just fit into their "large" sizes but hey, no complaining.

also, courtesy the summer sales, I have a bag full of bizarre and interesting designer (Mossino, Armani Junior) clothes for all my friends' kids. cheap, yes. the credit card took quite a hit, all up. my tendency when stuff is good and cheap is to buy heaps. if it's expensive, I just buy one. either way, I spend about the same, just that today I got more bang for my buck.

I'm seeing HK through a fog of sleep-deprived exhaustion. so forgive me for the lack of scintillating posts. as a resident rather than a tourist you tend to notice minutae instead of the impressive features of a place.

like: the way there is a United Nations of Coke in the supermarket. for a premium, you can get Japanese Coke, Korean Coke and so on. it all tastes the same - kind of like Australian Coke really.

like the bizarre swimming pool protocols. the rules are the same - stay left, swim in the correct lane for your speed etc - but in practice, everyone cruises along doing breaststroke in whatever land and whatever side of the lane they feel like. in Melbourne, I'm a slow swimmer. here, I'm Ian Thorpe. no wonder they had to give their female swimmers hormones to get them medals.

predictably, the Olympics are everywhere. with the next games after this years' in Beijing, Olympic themes are appearing on murals, in advertising and on (Chinese) Coke cans.

last night we saw Spiderman 2 across the road. we learned that you need to book early to get 2 seats together. and I learned the Cantonese symbols for "person(s)", "thank you" and "just" (as on only, merely). also that as far as English movies go, Melbourne is about ten times better than "international" HK. the only movies are big blockbusters, and even the sole arthouse shows Robert Altman - interesting, but not exactly out there. and baby sessions? nonexistent. sigh.

hong kong is a shopping paradise and hell. lots of cheap no-name and name brand stuff. almost none of it fits. and I'm not huge, just a size larger than last time I was here. gorgeous silk Max Mara top for $120au? wow. doesn't fit. and so on. and why, in a city that is like a sauna, is half the stuff nylon and polyester?

the Post (sorry, no links until I learn to zip around cyberspace on the Mac better) has a daily horoscope for western stars, Chinese years and an entry from the Tong Shing, an advice almanac. today's colour is pink, and I happen to be wearing a pink top. maybe I'll subscribe to the paper and check the advice before getting dressed each day. as long as there's no yellow. I don't look good in yellow...

the Times Square plaza plays Abba. All the time. I am so over "Dancing Queen" already!

we have our new apartment, where the first shop across the road is Gucci. seriously. fortunately, Times Square also has a regular supermarket and there's a "wet market" nearby. I'm learning the uses of the "do not disturb" sign in a serviced apartment full of housekeepers and management staff.

as I was told he'd be, the baby is a star attraction here. I counted five shopgirls at once yesterday, all crowded around the pusher cooing at him. this isn't "oh, nice baby" casualness like at home. this is full on "cuuuute!!!" touchy-feely adoration. he's so fair and blue-eyed - it must be what it's like for people with identical triplets, you can't walk a step without a fan club forming. not sure if it will be good for his baby ego or spoil him. but I have to agree with them all of course.

weather: stinking hot. this is like setting up house all over again, and my immediate future is not the Gucci store, but sourcing organic baby food and cooking oil.

By upgrading, we've downgraded. ie, the new g5 (actually the second one, the first one was faulty, Mac reliability notwithstanding) does not have Word and all that guff, just a basic text program. of course we could buy one. it has sans serif as a default and I am starting to think the anti-sans serif people are right. but who has time to worry about such things? not when one is enjoying the sights of Hong Kong holed up in a small hotel room creeping around the baby so he can sleep, occasionally making short dashes for more bottled water, fruit etc.

yes, we made it. just. various near-disasters on the flight included: Qantas checkin clerk failing to realise we had a seat for the baby and trying to sent his seat off to the hold; further failure to allocate a seat, which we only noticed an hour before boareding; "gate check" of the stroller meaning "carousel collect" at the other end (eventually they sent a person to help us with: the 8kg baby. my handbag. the nappy bag. the car seat. the trolley full of electronics. the toy bag. Andrew's backpack. which was lucky or else we'd still be at the exit gate.

the upside of - and I break off here to note that "ctrl+s" does not mean on an Apple what it does on a Mac, and don't give me any of that guff about not needing to save because Apples don't crash because the first G5 had a t,g,b and 5 key that didn't work - anyway the upside of the company's inexplicable decision that we'd spend the first week in a hotel was that the hotel had a "limo" (car) for us.

the downside is that we're in one room, with no kitchen, nowhere for the baby to nap unless I turn all the lights off and pretend not to be here (and I further note that small differences between this and the old keyboard make typing in the dark harder, shoulda got the illuminated keyboard after all), a tiny fridge so we have to go to the restaurant for breakfast (dependent on baby nap times), that all our stuff has arrived at the airport but we don't really have room for it here, and that all my arrangements for this week are for the apartments we're not in.

ah well. at least the hotel sits atop a mall that runs down half of Kowloon, so we can get quick food/papers - but not baby cots - without venturing into the 30 degree, 90 per cent humidity, real Hong Kong. the park is close by, but it's just green and hot instead of grey and hot like the rest of Hong Kong.

(ps - may never post this. have no idea how to cut and paste on a mac. why no right mouse button?)

pps: like a pencil, the g4 touchpad works better if you wet your finger...

yes, baby still cute. yes, still moving to Hong Kong. which would be why I haven't posted much. Saturday. that's the day after tomorrow.