Pressure

My wine class was canceled for this evening because there's another T8 signal in effect. I was out in the afternoon and it was at least windy this time. I still don't expect much after the last few.

Our Mandarin class is canceled for tomorrow evening because... we bailed on them. I really wanted to try the cultural enrichment thing and learn a new language, but when you don't hear it around you and there's no need to speak it, it's difficult to feel inspired to memorize vocabulary and tones and such. After four of five weeks, neither of us had opened the book except for when the teacher arrived. It was becoming increasingly embarrassing that we had trouble with the simple vocabulary exercises. We canceled last week because Paul knew he would be stuck at work. Before this Wednesday came around we decided realistically that we're just not that interested in putting the time into a difficult language right now. We still have the hours available to us if we want to pick it up again at another time. I feel a little bit like a failure for not even trying, but let's face it - we dreaded Wednesdays and that book was never going to be opened for practice. It wasn't that easy for Paul to run home at that time each week either. Oh well.

In the meantime, I've been under pressure from a few friends to do something I have long resisted. First, years ago back home, it was myspace. I prevailed. Now, it's facebook. For the readers who don't know, these are "social networking" web sites where you put pictures and blogs and stuff and you "connect" with your friends. I would know more details if I had ever actually done it. At first I thought it was age that separated me from those wanting to inform every one they know about their 'current mood' or what their favorite bands are or whatever, but I know so many people on facebook now that I can't argue the age factor.

I'm still not sold on what people claim is the fun of locating people you knew from lifetimes ago, like from high school. If I met someone in the past who is still worth keeping in contact with, I probably haven't lost touch with that person anyhow. I don't know. I'm still fighting it, but I might lose because it seems like something more logical to do when you're far away (even though it's friends here that are insisting I join). I guess I'll never be comfortable with the public display of... well, me. I appreciate genuine interactions more than shallow electronic ones, but I guess I could try being someone who still writes letters - on paper - with a pen - and someone who dabbles in modern online social relations as well.

I know a couple of people, if you've still been reading, who most definitely have an opinion here. Let me have it! If I create an account, I'll surely inform you all.

Not much going on otherwise. Oh, my friend Liz and I decided we will now rate everything we do according to the lantern festival I last wrote about. For example, we went to an outlet mall last week: better than the lantern festival. Lunch the other day: better than the lantern festival. Paul's cheeky example was, I got mugged: better than the lantern festival.

Be My Lantern

Lots of revelry in the last week... I'll start with last Thursday. My friends and I went out for dim sum in the afternoon and then for one last drink later in the evening to wish our friend Sheyla farewell just hours before she and her husband departed for home, which is London. It was my first taste of having to say goodbye to someone I enjoyed knowing, and I don't like it. This is a place with a lot of expats who are just passing through, ourselves among them. I don't look forward to others leaving or to when it's me waving goodbye.

But ignoring that future day, I went to my second baby shower in six months here. One of the girls from my Y group, Britta, is due next month. We were able to surprise her with an afternoon tea at the Mandarin Oriental, and she was very moved. She's from Boston and she hasn't had any friends or family visit her (Can you imagine how sad that is???) so some baby gifts from a few girls were really appreciated.

Saturday, we met up with a couple of the same girls and their husbands at a nearby bar to watch an Australia v. New Zealand rugby final. New Zealand won. Go All Blacks. I don't know what that means; I just know my NZ friend Peggy mentioned it once or twice.

Today is a public holiday known as the Mid-Autumn Festival. Over the weekend there were different events at various venues. Two of my friends and I thought it was a "must-see" to check off the list while we are here. This is the description from the web site of the HK Tourism Board:

The festival commemorates a 14th Century uprising against the Mongols. In a cunning plan, the rebels wrote the call to revolt on pieces of paper and embedded them in cakes that they smuggled to compatriots.

Today, during the festival, people eat special sweet cakes known as "Moon Cakes" made of ground lotus and sesame seed paste, egg-yolk and other ingredients. Along with the cakes, shops sell coloured Chinese paper lanterns in the shapes of animals, and more recently, in the shapes of aeroplanes and space ships. On this family occasion, parents allow children to stay up late and take them to high vantage points such as The Peak to light their lanterns and watch the huge autumn moon rise while eating their moon cakes. Public parks are ablaze with many thousands of lanterns in all colours, sizes and shapes.

Thousands of lanterns! Sounds like a sight to see, doesn't it? The largest celebration was set to take place in Victoria Park in nearby Causeway Bay Sunday night. We met at a local bar and took the train one stop over and followed the signs for the carnival entrance. Uhhhhhhh, we should have stayed at the bar. First, it was uncomfortably hot. Second, Causeway Bay is always ultra-crowded, so a festival just threw some more people on the pile. Third, three unenthusiastic men were following three enthusiastic women with hopes of seeing the light of hundreds of colored lanterns filling the night sky. There were a few lanterns. There were a few stages with indechiperable things going on. One I could see was Flamenco. Yes, Flamenco. There were some large inflatable lanterns set up here and there and a few strings of lights. It was the lamest thing we've ever seen. Needless to say, we didn't stay long and found ourselves back in an air conditioned bar watching more rugby a short while later.

Mid-Autumn Lantern Festival: check.

Oh, we also passed up a party on the roof at J residence with a full menu of tasty-sounding items like giant prawns in butter and garlic because I thought we should do the more cultural thing. Ignore your instinct to choose buttery treats over all else and you always regret it. Today was the actual holiday, but Paul worked as usual so I met him for a leisurely lunch. I was looking for vodka with my club sandwich as I've had some for four days straight. That hasn't happened in a really long time. Ooh, by the way, my new favorite is simpler than vanilla vodka and tonic; it's vodka, soda and fresh lime. I adapt well.

We also had massages Saturday afternoon. There are so many places around that we thought we'd be having weekly ones once we moved here. So far, we only went to the spa in Bali and the spa at the Mandarin Oriental on our anniversary. We tried a place nearby that a friend recommended. I'm not sure if it was Thai or not; it was sort of like one but not totally. Either way, it was pretty good. These tiny Thai women could probably wrestle a bear and win. The place is very no-frills. Paul didn't like that you could hear conversation from outside the curtained spaces we were in. It was a little distracting, but for HK$88 (about US$10) I'll bring my iPod next time.

Just in case I don't write before Friday, happy birthday, Dad.

Dim sum and good-byes at Dragon-i

Tea at the Mandarin

Thousands of people, or was it lanterns?

Everyday

I admit I even surprised myself that it's been two weeks since I last wrote. But look at it this way: how often do you write postcards to people about your daily life? What we live in here and now in Hong Kong is our daily life. September 2 marked six months' passage since we arrived, with undefined expectations, our luggage, and an abstract awareness of a two year time line ahead. One quarter of that line is behind us already, and some moments passed slowly while overall, time is flying by.

I guess it's easier for me to feel the time move because I don't spend it in an office. Funny, nobody from home has asked me if I miss my job. I'll tell you anyway. Not really. It doesn't help that I ended it in a place that felt like a step backwards from where I started, blah, blah. What I do miss is the group of individuals I enjoyed working with for quite a few years (longer than I spent at any previous job). I miss access to unlimited books, CD's and DVD's (especially when you remember to reserve them before the Zuks did). I miss the wackiness of the regular "clientelle" and the lunchtime stories they provided us with. I miss the paychecks. Some days I miss the routine, and some days I can't be thankful enough that I lack one. I have a love/hate relationship with routines. I would say I miss the occasional mental challenge, but I think Mandarin lessons fill that void and then some.

I planned to look for work when I got here. At first, I didn't have the internet as a job search tool. Then when I got it, I found something else... people to do things with. They don't pay me, but they're fun. Here are my other reasons that you could read as excuses or valid and logical - your choice. First, I would have to speak fluent Cantonese to work in the field I have experience in, libraries, so that's out. If I found something else, let's say teaching English, I would not have the vacation time that Paul has already earned so it would hinder our freedom to travel, and travel opportunities were one of the reasons we chose to move here. We are only here temporarily so I don't plan on attempting some new career at entry level either. Maybe most of all, I want to use this time as an opportunity for exploration. It was an unexpected change, but it's not likely to occur again, and as long as I'm allowed (as in, until we run out of cash???) I just might milk it.

It's true that it has been a refreshingly social time for me, and I know quite a few people who don't work, so it would be difficult to give that up (wow, you get used to it soooo easily). But I am not without a goal! I am serious about the wine courses and I consider them an entrance to a new career path, an investment in the future, that I'm fairly excited by. Ideas are, I might say, fermenting. I did leave behind a career that I enjoyed, and I can choose to pick it up where I left off when I return home, but moving here and having free time denies any excuse I may have had for not trying something I have wanted to try.

I realize that none of this search for enlightenment and enrichment - or my carefree social outings - would be possible if one of us was not here to get a job done and get paid for it. You could say that Paul gave me a sort of gift. I do feel thankful for this freedom, and when I feel guilt over not contributing a paycheck, I tell myself that he's happy that I'm happy. (I tell him that too.) Maybe the gift I can give him in return one day will be a more knowledgeable, contented, fabulously fascinating spouse. He'd probably also accept a good bottle of wine.

So, I intend to write often but let it slip more days than I should because even life in an exotic locale becomes simply life. It's more difficult than in the beginning to find things "worth writing home about" though a real or imagined obligation to report does encourage me to keep my eyes open.

A lot of it comes down to choice of movement, with space for the daring and the mundane. There's comfort in the mundane, but if you don't pay attention, you let slip the daring. You can create a routine anywhere (Even an electric hot plate for a stove becomes routine, possibly even comforting in its role as a nuisance). You can travel a great distance, try a green tea and red bean bun, as I did tonight, and still long for Cool Whip on your Jell-O Pudding Snacks. You can create a new life where you live now, or you can drag everything with you and try to force it into the shape of the new place you're in. If you dare to make a new life, you'll find the keys in the same place you left them, in the details of the everyday. There's still intrigue to be uncovered around any random corner, but we've come to the point at which we're comfortable enough to almost miss it.

Almost, but not quite... Stay tuned.


Happy birthday to Joseph, Jessica, and Tom.