Archive for the 'Piles' Category

Hatches, Batten Down The

Published
by
cecilie
on September 8, 2010
in Government, Hong Kong, Injustice, Piles and property
. 0 Comments

When is something “funny”, when is it “ironic” and when is it just “fcuk off and die, damned parasites who don’t want to work but spend their days living off honest people’s earnings”?

Last night I was talking to some people in sleepy backwater Pui O and for some reason the conversation turned to burglary. They were laughing about one guy who had film-noire’ly walked into his bathroom only to see in the bathroom mirror, a guy hiding behind the door with a knife. We had all been burgled at one stage, none of us liking it very much. They commented on how long it’s been since we’ve heard about a burglary, but thought it was because they had moved to Mui Wo, another sleepy backwater here on Lantau.

I said I didn’t think so, and that if there’s one kind of news that gets shared fast on this island it’s burglary news. We hadn’t heard about any burglaries because there haven’t been any.

I think you know what I’m going to say next. Oh, yes. I just shared my taxi with some people I’ve never met before and who, that’s right, had been burgled good and proper this morning about 4, after their son had gone to bed at 3am.

Is that “funny” or “ironic”?

So, Lantau people: I’m immensely sorry and pissed off to have to tell you: The burglaries have started up again. Same MO as always: Early in the morning, everybody asleep, small window flicked open with a screwdriver; two laptops, wallets, phones, cash, all gone.

And what with Lantau being the place where the most inept police in Hong Kong wash up, the CID’s MO was also as always: 12 guys turned up, touched everything in the house, then told the people who had been burgled not to touch anything. The police laughing and discussing where they’ll go to yam cha in front of the distraught people who had lost quite a lot of important things - exactly the same as when I was burgled.

That happening was in fact the very topic of my first blog entry. Ironic? Funny? Or just fuck off and die? The policemen who came to my house that day (only six! Hmph!) had been laughing their heads off over the fact that my dog Piles hadn’t been barking to alert me. They laughed at me when I started crying over having lost my month’s income and my camera with a lot of important photos still in it.

I wrote a letter to the police chief of Lantau complaining about this, and eventually received an answer saying he would brief his staff to be more sensitive to burgled people’s feelings in future. But of course that’s three years ago so you can’t expect everything. According to my freshly burgled neighbours, now it’s evidently back to laughing in people’s faces and blaming them for being burgled, again.

And, presumably, letting some uniformed officers sit around in a fully lit police van for a couple of hours before taking off, safe in the knowledge that all burglars have been well and truly scared off that particular spot forever.

I’m not trying to suggest it’s the fault of the Lantau police that some bastards are too lazy to work for a living but prefer to go into people’s houses to take what they can find. Far from it. But when it does happen, can they, the police, at least try to do their job with a modicum of professionalism?

Poo and Literature

Published
by
cecilie
on August 10, 2010
in Cantonese, Environment, Eyesore, Home, Piles, Pollution, Travel, food and language
. 13 Comments

You know I’m not squeamish (because I’ve said so many times) but when the woman in the photo started stirring a cauldron full of intestines, holding them up and letting them drop back down, while the unmistakable smell of POO started wafting through the restaurant - well, I couldn’t bring myself to turn around and take a photo, but sort of quick-snapped it backwards over my shoulder.

I think I’ve only really seen nice, orderly fish intestines up close before, because these (pigs’?) intestines, brown, snarly, irregular and with lots of stuff sticking out, weren’t my idea of good intestine action. I’m glad the only contact I have with food is all broken after I’ve swallowed it.

Talking of poo, this morning there was a bit of a to-doggie-do in sleepy backwater Pui O. In my village there’s a dog rescue centre/vet, and at all times they have about 20 dogs living there, with more coming in every week.

The dog walker is a middle-aged Chinese woman who doesn’t seem to like dogs, but then neither would I if I had to take six or seven of them for walks at a time. She lets the dogs poo everywhere; on the footpath and on the beach, without even sometimes carrying newspapers around for show, unlike many domestic helpers in the village.

The first time I saw her let three dogs shit right in the middle of the beach, I asked her in a nice way and in her own language if she wouldn’t mind picking it up, as children play there. (they do.) All I got was a torrent of “English”: “Where is your plastic bag! Where is your plastic bag!” When I showed her the not inconsiderable amount of plastic bags I carry with me every day for the very purpose of being my dogs’ lavatory assistant, she sniffed and walked away, muttering loudly to “herself” about how dirty I was.

The second time I saw her, the same thing happened. This time it was me asking her where her plastic bag was, knowing well she didn’t have any. Oh yes, I can be cunning and evil! I got some vicious stares and mumbles but not much abuse - and of course she didn’t pick up the rather large and steaming mounds. You can say what you want about the dog shelter in Pui O, but they don’t let their dogs starve.

This morning she had seven dogs, four of which, upon hitting the beach, immediately set about defecating like they had been promised a nice side of beef for producing the largest mound. There are only so many ways to say “pick up your dog poo” in a diplomatic manner, I find. “Pick up your fucking dog poo” is one of them. This time she took action - by shoving a few grains of sand on top of the quivering heaps.

Nice! Now people who might have spotted them out in the open before, wouldn’t know they were there before they lay down in the fragrant knolls. When I pointed this out, not declining to mention that this sort of behaviour carries a $1,500 fine, (yes! I’m truly sick of stepping in crap and will resort to anything!) the true nature of her dog poo picking resistance manifested itself. In Cantonese this time. She let loose a stream of invective which I, not a mean invective-ist, couldn’t have done better myself.

It was all about me fucking off back to Central, it was after 1997 so i should shut up, who did I think I was, go home, dirty whore who not only lets her dogs shit everywhere but probably does it herself and, most importantly: I didn’t know how to teach Cantonese. This went on for about ten minutes, for she made many of the points again and again in case I missed them. There was no mention of the Opium Wars but then she may not have heard about those. And here I was, really only interested in discussing dog poo and the removal thereof!

I’m ashamed to say I couldn’t control myself but had a right giggle and some spurts of heartfelt laughter. This didn’t make things any better but - did I give a shit?

So! Scratch the surface and the whole stinking history of … the British? comes out. Oh those British. So much to answer for. How was she to know I’ve never lived in Central? After all, those fastidious notions of mine about not enjoying wading around in dog shit and about the beach not being a gigantic dustbin - that kind of thing just reeks of stuck-up Central-dom, doesn’t it.

So now you’re probably asking: Where does literature come into this? Mark Twain, innit! East is east and west is west, and you’ll never meet the Twain.

But the intestine photo, taken blind - not bad, eh?

Monastery Madness

Published
by
cecilie
on August 4, 2010
in Beauty, China, Environment, Eyesore, Piles, Pollution, Travel, communism and politics
. 2 Comments

If I could understand my friend P’s fascination with monasteries? I mean, he’s a heterosexual male. The one outside Xining, capital of Qinghai (green sea) province, would be the third one he visited in as many days. The second, tucked away in the mountains outside Xiahe, was mercifully closed to women (another proof that although they’re buddhists and very good looking, Tibetan monks are still religious freaks) but at the third one I thought I’d toddle along.

It was described even on Chinese tourism websites as a tourist hellhole according to P, so we both had relatively low hopes.
It had been such a great trip from Xiahe through a stunning landscape

so it was quite a downer to find Xining, which I had loved for its small town charm and advanced hovelage only two years ago, turned into a screaming construction-filled megapolis where every bloody hotel was full of beardies attending a halal festival. Or was it conference? I forget which. Why do they even need it? “Kill the animal with the ultimate pain and mental torture” - isn’t that pretty much it?

Or was it “halal” as in “things that are allowed according to sharia law”? That would have been a short conference.

Anyway - after all those beards it was visually very relaxing to be surrounded by Tibetan monks after we finally found a hotel and could escape to the countryside where the famous Tan’er monastery was. Tibetan monks … and about 20 000 Chinese tourists in cowboy hats and baseball caps, and the inevitable guides.

Stopping under a tree, I said to P that although I have no respect for any religions, I don’t like taking photos of for example people doing the prayer wheel thing. I would hate it if, every time I took Piles for a walk in the morning, 200 Chinese tourists took photos of me.
“Don’t worry,” P said. “They have no interest in the Tibetan monks. All they photograph is themselves.” I looked again. It was true. But still!

That’s when two Tibetan monks started talking to us and invited us to their gaff. Or humble abode or whatever. We drank tea and chatted. One had been helping out during the earthquake in Qinghai, 800 kilometres from where we were, earlier this year. He pulled out his laptop and showed us some photos that hadn’t quite made it to the front page of the South China Morning Post. It was basically earthquake-corpses in all possible shapes and forms, with a National Geographic-like quality and colour.

We were lucky to catch the monastery while it still had some old buildings, because the bulldozers were hard at work modernising the place by tearing down everything. What was being built in its place was a monastery in the Chinese Tibetan style. Just like … oh, the old city of Kashgar, which is now probably complete - a gigantic shopping mall but with mosaic. And low to zero visibility because of cement dust.

In the year 2000, the Chinese government started an enormous campaign to modernise the western provinces. It’s really working! Now you can go deep into the mountains, grasslands or countryside of any western province and still feel, with every breath, that you’re in the most polluted country on earth. If that’s not progress I don’t know what is.

Randøm Bøckets

Published
by
cecilie
on December 3, 2009
in Beauty and Piles
. 1 Comment

Beauty comes in many forms, but plastic isn’t normally one of them.
But with the right light, the right beach and the right dogs, even these mundane objects can have their day in the sun.

Dogs I Know

Published
by
cecilie
on November 26, 2009
in Beauty, Environment, Hong Kong and Piles
. 4 Comments


PILES Top dog


LASI
Elegant buffalo-hunter

 

 

                    COFFEE Loves Piles

              

MERV     Hates Piles

KILLER The world’s most inappropriately named dog

CHIP Barking mad

FEN FEN Dignified boss

DOUGAL Canine hunk

DAISY Wistful dreamer
PEBBLES Drool city
HAK-TSAI
Neglected and misunderstood

There’s been a lot of angry talk about dog poo recently, notably from Fumier. Although I have two dogs, I have to agree. I think dog poo is not attractive, and that people should train their servants to pick it up, if they are too busy to walk their own dogs.

My neighbours’ servant routinely lets their two dogs crap on the pavement right in front of me, sashaying off with the dog-poo newspaper, unused, under her arm. When I confront her about it she says: But everybody else does it too.

I also read a terrible article about the size of a dog’s carbon footprint - you might as well own a couple of jumbo jets and fly them every day. And here I was so smug because I don’t have a car, don’t use air conditioning, always travel by train etc. I’m finished.

But … a world without dogs?

Charles Dickens, Champion of Walking and Putting Things Right

Published
by
cecilie
on October 1, 2009
in Charity, Government, Home, Hong Kong, Piles, language and politics
. 5 Comments

When I was a child, the first “adult” book I ever read was Oliver Twist. I must have read it about 50 times between the age of 7 and 10. I naturally read it in Norwegian, and an excellent Norwegian it was. The lines of the poorhouse woman helping Oliver into the world only to see his mother expire after which the old crone stole the only thing Oliver’s mother possessed, the crucial locket, were conveniently translated into that of the Bergen dialect. (which, believe it or not, actually sounds even better than the Cockney Dickens gave her.)

After Oliver no other work of Dickens’ could really cut it with me. (Although I did go through most of his works in books and films later.) There was super-evil Bill Sykes and his too-faithful yellow dog, the bludgeoning to death of Nancy and not least Fagin in all his glory - I ask you, what other work of Dickens can even touch them? None, I say.

Today, in the Sunday Times literary section, I read an article about a new biography about Dickens (Charles Dickens by Michael Slater.) Dickens didn’t only write “Dickensian” novels, no, he was a champion of his times fighting against all that was wrong with society. According to the article, he: “ran a home for destitute women, organised amateur dramatics for various charities, agitated to make it illegal for women and children to work underground in mines; he campaigned for Great Ormond Street hospital for children; he accompanied the police detective branch on night-time forays into thieves’ dens.”

As you can see, he not only documented the awful reality of poverty-stricken Victorian London in all his books and numerous articles and papers, he actively tried to make it less “Dickensian” - an adjective which now doesn’t even need inverted commas.

Hooray for Dickens! And then I came across an interesting sentence after the ” … forays into thieves’ dens” one: “And still he had energy left over to “walk my 15 miles a day constantly at a great pace.”" Energy “left over”? Hasn’t it occurred to the author of the article, John Carey, that it is precisely because Dickens walked 15 miles a day at a great pace that he had the energy left over to do all the other things?

Energy spent begets more energy, hello! We could all benefit from taking a leaf out of old Dickens’ book. If every lazy fcuker in this town who thinks even walking 200 meters to work, as documented last week when the Donald for political reasons (car free day) had to suffer the indignity of walking to work (less than 200 meters as the cockroach flies) and afterwards claimed that it wasn’t “convenient,” did a bit of 15 mile walking every day, perhaps they too would have the energy to come up with something vaguely resembling brain work.

As it is, they sit, then sit in cars, then sit some more. Then they sit with their feet on the toilet ring, wondering why they’re constipated.

Sunday Morning. Rain.

Published
by
cecilie
on March 29, 2009
in Beauty, Government and Piles
. 0 Comments

Dog walking has many benefits apart from the exercise and the chance to pick up a lot of dog poo with your bare hands. Walking around trying not to die of boredom, I sometimes come across stories. Here is one of them. 

In the middle of a big, empty sports ground: A pair of Nikes. Nike; just do it! Just leave your shoes in the middle of a sports ground! 

Why are the soles different colours? Why are the laces tied together - did someone hop around in the shoes, then hop out of them? A more prosaic explanation is that they were hanging on somebody’s bicycle handles and fell off, of course. But that somebody would be a criminal, because the government has stated in very bold terms all over the sports ground: NO CYCLING. 

I made the sports ground cleaner leave the shoes there until I’d nipped home to get my camera. After I had finished taking photos, she duly threw away the shoes. I thought that was a pity. What happened to hanging lost and found objects on gates and wire fences? Another perusal of the myriad signs beginning with NO… explained this. In the far corner of the sports ground was a small yellow sign: NO HANGING. 

Dog’s Best Friend

Published
by
cecilie
on February 16, 2009
in Home, Hong Kong and Piles
. 3 Comments

It struck me when I got back from Shenzhen yesterday: My best friend is now an animal. Who else looks at me like this? By the way, this is not Piles, who occasionally greets me with a curt nod, but Lasi, who used to be owned by violent Welsh bastard, slowly moved into my entrance hall to get away from him, now my staunchest supporter. Lasi: the most dog-like dog I know. Total devotion, comes when I call, looks at me with eyes, all that. If she and Piles could only play cards! Then my domestic bliss would be complete.

A Difficult Choice

Published
by
cecilie
on August 26, 2008
in Cantonese, Cards, Home and Piles
. 15 Comments

                                                       KIDS…. 

                                                  … versus DOGS? 

Of the many blessings of Hong Kong, one is the ease with which one can acquire a servant. Sorry, did I say servant? How terribly politically incorrect of me. I meant “helper.” Maid, amah, whatever you call them - I can’t see that their function has changed an awful lot since they were called servants. So that’s what I call them. 

Like many island dwellers I have to spend an awful lot of time away from home every day. I normally leave at about 11 and get home at 22.00, and 11 hours is just too long for a dog (Piles, not the one pictured above) to be by himself. So naturally I have a servant to come and take him out twice a day. But arghh, now this worthy, intelligent and indispensable woman has buggered off to the Philippines for three weeks, and I have to leave later and come home earlier … except I can’t because then how am I to put dried dog food on the table?

I was just thinking today as I, stabbed by the relentless daggers of bad conscience, hurried toward the ferry pier, how much easier it would be if I could just call Piles and say I was on my way home. The problem is, he’s just too dense to pick up the phone. Also his fingers aren’t really up to scratch.

I used to sneer at people with children (the incessant crying, the nappies, the transformation of young parents, I mean parents of young kids, from normal people to one-topic cretins (not my friends of course - if they were I would drop them)) but now I’m not so sure.

All right, dogs are of course: More faithful. They never complain. And although Piles, unlike Lasi (pictured above) doesn’t greet me super-enthusiastically with wagging of the whole body but more with a curt nod when I get home of an evening, at least he’s not standing there with a sagging nappy full of poo hurling some ghastly mashed vegetable substance at me. Dogs are much less hassle, they never ask awkward questions and never embarrass you by suddenly bursting out: “Mummy, why did that man stick his tongue into your ear while Daddy was in the kitchen?” 

Dogs never complain about the food you serve them, or that they’re bored, or pretty much anything. They can sometimes give you a  Look but that’s by and large the extent of their passive-aggressiveness. They never disappoint you by growing up to be a customs inspector or chartered accountant and they seldom hang out with bad crowds. 

Then again, they never grow up. They hardly ever learn how to speak, let alone read and write. You can’t leave them a note telling them to take the rubbish out - instead they’ll eat the rubbish.

All right, so you can, like the memorable story about the New Zealander I read about in the South China Morning Post a few years ago, go away  on holiday for a week and leave out bowls with dog food marked “Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday” etc. and hope for the best. In his case “the dog, apparently unable to read, had gobbled it all up by Tuesday and kept the neighbours awake by non-stop barking until they called the police.” You see where I’m going with this? Unable to read!

 And the thing about dogs being so understanding and picking up on your mood - I don’t know. Recently, for example, I’ve been sad because of my mother’s death, but I can’t say I’ve got much sympathy from Piles apart from the usual curt nod and maybe some wistful stares - probably because I’ve been feeding him up to five minutes later than normally.

Dogs never say they hate you and wish you were dead, and they never seem to be embarrassed at being seen with you in front of other dogs. They never jump from the 27th floor when you ask them to do the homework. They are house trained at four months old, and you don’t have to worry about breast-feeding them in the toilet of The Peninsula. But they also never grow up to be a good conversation partner, and they never, ever learn how to play cards.

If you have a husband and two kids like Gweipo for example, you’re set up with card partners for life. Dogs? You’re lucky if they learn to sit, stay and fetch an idiotic stick. (What they’re doing with the stick when they bring it back is thinking: There you go, now make sure you don’t lose it again.)

And another thing about dogs - no matter how politically incorrect and morally defect you are, you can never, ever sleep with their friends. So what’s the point? Having a dog makes you marginally less guilty than having a child, and if you know they’re with the servant you don’t spend every waking moment worrying about them. Other than that it’s the same awful responsibility with feeding, picking up poo and making sure they don’t bite people. 

So yes, I should have had children when I was a teenager; then I would have had good conversation partners, card playing partners and not least: Trustworthy people I could rely on to take care of my dogs, free. 

 

 

 

Glad To Be Alive

Published
by
cecilie
on June 10, 2008
in Beer, Eyesore, Home, Hong Kong, Piles and Uncategorized
. 2 Comments

Saturday was my birthday and this was my birthday meal, eaten beneath fluorescent lights in a greasy spoon. The day was saved when one of my friends turned up with a candle (citrus scented.) Yes frugality in all things! Oh yeah and we drank 200 bottles of Tsingtao; that also helped.

But I wanted to write about the aging process; what it does to … dare I say maturity? Yes, after I took that new step on the ladder up to St. Peter, I suddenly acquired a new and hitherto unseen zen-like indifference.

Last weekend was the rainiest ever ever ever (allegedly) here in Hong Kong, and the relentless bucketing down of acidic water had many consequences such as poor Tai O on Lantau Island being completely cut off - possibly for at least two weeks. But our dear bowtied elder statesman Tsang Yam Kuen flew in by helicopter in a dramatic and self-sacrifing gesture eerily reminiscent of our dear grandfather Wen further up north (not knocking him, he’s doing all right) so I’m sure the victims will have been comforted no end at seeing our Donald’s slimy little rodent smile and piggy eyes.

On a more local level I came home to find every towel in the house having been used by the people with whom I swapped flats - I got a bedsit on the 23rd floor of a matchstick and they got my illustrious gaff with all its bedrooms, bathrooms, towels and sheets… which, when I took them out of the washing machine, I saw had been washed in a rusty mud instead of crystal clean water.

So now all my sheets and towels are brown instead of white. Maybe a good thing? But the problem is the brown is not an even colour. In fact my sheets and towels look like they’ve been used by miners drying themselves off after a long week down in the shaft.

So always buy black towels and sheets from now on, or better still, do away with them altogether! In my new austerity drive, I will be air drying myself on the roof from now on, and sleeping  suspended from ropes.

And what do you know, I did right in not cursing that toxic mud, because when I came home last night there was no water in the pipes at all! And I think we can all agree that bad water (”like sex”) is better than no water.

I’m just happy to be alive, me. And when I found that Piles had rolled in human poo, I just gave a slight sigh and uttered wearily: Oh Piles. But it got me thinking. What is it with our own species that makes the poo less appetising than that of other species?

Take my dog Piles, a pain in the arse. I pick up his poo every day with little trouble, but as soon as it comes to finding his coat covered in human feces… I don’t know. There’s something about it - something distasteful.

So people out there, rain or no rain, zen-like indifference or no: Hong Kong, Lantau and yes, Pui O, are replete with public toilets. Please use one of them next time? Of course I’m just happy to be alive but too much showering isn’t good for the dog’s skin. If you’re on an austerity drive, you don’t have to use paper. Just don’t do it outside? Eh?