A Week of Wet

After a wet weekend it was still wet.  Pissing and pouring rain, washing away the heat and filling gutters.  Thinking to avoid the worst of the rain I boarded the light-rail tram and made my first mistake for the week.  Squashed in tight with soggy commuters and being stabbed with dripping umbrellas I was a little disgruntled.  The rain continued for another few days and brought the temperature right down.  While everyone was getting excited about pulling out jumpers, I became obsessed with monitoring typhoon and storm warnings.  A 'red' storm or 'level 8' typhoon warning means no public transport, no services and no school.  A day off for a wet day seems a very exciting concept, a holiday determined by nature.  The only problem with all this rain was that I had to buy my own umbrella, the hot pink one I had borrowed from Naomi was causing a few odd looks.

Some traditions are truly international and it seems "tight-arse Tuesday" at the movies is one of those shared cultural insights.  This week we took our first excursion to the local cinema to see Adam Sandler in the film Click.  While it was certainly packed full of comic moments - a dog "cuddling" a soft toy is always going to be amusing - it was predictable in places, but worth the cut price far.

My first full working teaching week went well.  Doing the same classes over and over again means that by the eighth time I'm going to be pretty good at them.  A lot of the week was spent trying to keep a straight face when students told me their "English names". Some interesting examples include: Apple, Elephant, Cartoon, Slurpee, Water, Fire (they sit next to each other), Spiderman, Hansom and Man.  The students were generally good, maybe all the time the spend lining up, tallest to shortest, girls and boys helps ...  Though all the teaching staff are extremely welcoming and lovely they seem to have no concept of the line between personal and work time.  On Wednesday I was starting a meeting at five-ish and only just finishing at seven.  I did however slip out Friday afternoon when I saw everyone merging towards the staffroom at ten to five for a "meeting".

It was Friday and I had finished a week's work, was their no better excuse to drink beer?  We met Jacki and Chris for a few 'happy hour' drinks in the hotel bar.  Of course a few drinks became a few more and the evening finishing looking at photos of Chris' boat and dreaming of trout. I awoke to discover a sore head to which the tasty fried treats of Saturday morning Yum Cha seemed to be the only appropriate medicine.  Lining up for a restaurant at 9.30am seems a little crazy, but Naomi's impressive grasp of one to five hundred in Cantonese means that at least we are able to spend some listening for our number and crying "bingo" while we waited for our table.

Saturday morning somehow became Saturday afternoon in a relaxed blur and suddenly it was shower, shave and hop on a train to Central.  Bars here, especially in trendy areas such as Lai Kwai Fong, are extremely expensive.  The only ways to have a cheap drink is to buy booze from the supermarket and drink it at home (or around the corner from the bar as many seem to do) or to take advantage of the daily happy hours.  Bars can sometimes be "happy' for up to five hours offering half price drinks or two-for-one deals.  The fact we were dressed up and drinking by five then, wasn't just a sign of alcohol abuse, but also an indicator of being frugal.  We had a couple of drinks with Kevin, a guy we met at the new teacher training course, who keep us entertained with stories of his time in Japan.  We barged through the bars and hoards of drunk westerners of 'the Fong' and had an excellent Malaysian meal, pimped by a guy who looked a little like Elvis (see review).  Seriously this guy had sideburns and hair bigger than some of those small European we have visited.  After the meal we about to call it quites when a young local fella, sprouting an excellent Aussie accent approached us and asked if we could do him a "favour".  Usually his would induce lots of flashing warning lights, but we listened ... anyway what I think happened was that he was promoting for a new bar opened by a rich guy who wanted to waste money.  His job was to take 'potential clients' for a tour, give them a free drink, tell them not to worry about purchasing anything, try to stop himself from laughing too hard at the ease of his job and see them back to the street.  We left with our wallets intact, confused looks and a handbag heavy with free brews.

Sunday morning I had a job, luckily it wasn't a job that involved filling in a form, something much more vital.  I was to buy a toaster.  A toaster would mean that I could cook bacon and eggs and toast.  Breakfast was good, Sunday was good. Several more jobs filled in the day.  Purchasing some headphones so I could listen to Triple J on the net at school was a big priority.  I went for a jog in the evening and instead of doing the normal laps of the sourounding blocks, I graduated to a bigger block and went for an enlightening lap of Tin Shui Wai.  I went passed the new Hong Kong Wetlands Park and jogging along the creek/drain/gutter I saw people catching fish.  Catching fish 500m from home, next weekend I was going shopping, not for a toaster or headphones, but for tackle ...  Dinner was a pleasant meal at a local Thai restaurant that I didn't know existed.  Joined by Jacki, Chris and Marcus we sucked down tasty and authentic dishes accompanied by bargain $10 beers.  The meal was great and the band that emerged was awesome.  Two blokes with the winning combination of a bass and keyboard dished out sloppy love songs accompanied by a smooth discoball.  It had finally stopped raining, but school was starting again tomorrow.