Happy New Canto Year!
Greetings from Shangri-la, formerly a fictitious “idyllic settlement high in the mountains of Tibet” of James Hilton’s Lost Horizon fame, now a city in China. In this photo, however, we’re a few hours further south, →
Ingredients: Buy Foodstuffs in Cantonese
Today I wanted to write a well-researched rant about Cantonese NOT being a dialect, a kind of sub-division, an inferior sub-division, of Mandarin. But I have to cook for 13 in a couple of hours, →
Children Outside Society
Last night I shared a taxi from Tung Chung – oh how it pains me to spell it that way when it’s pronounced DUNG Chung – with a boy and his domestic helper. I noticed →
Only Whitey Can Be Racist
I have in my hand (and when I say hand I mean computer screen) an extraordinary document entitled “Tool: Recognizing Microaggressions and the Messages They Send”. Reading through the list, I’m damned glad to be →
Beautiful Serendipity
I spent the weekend in Shenzhen and it was lovely. As I walked around in the sunshine Sunday morning I suddenly realised why I’ve been so unhappy recently. Well, ISIS, WWIII is coming, all that; →
It’s All About Face
Here is one of my students – let’s call him X-tor. Like so many he succumbed to “MOvember,” the terrible annual male uglification-fest where guys deliberately mutilate their faces to get people to give them →
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
Life is funny eh? You think you know something or at least are fairly familiar with something, and then something happens that sends your whole world view tumbling to the ground. Me, I thought I →
Hound Hoping for Home
Here is a thoroughly kind, cheerful and people-loving dog called Rascal, 3. The name is misleading because he’s not alpha or naughty. He’s also not fearful. I’ve known him ever since his owner adopted him →
SUNDAY: Semi-Dignified Farewell
Yesterday I dragged myself up Lantau Peak to scatter the ashes of a dear friend who died in April. It really made me admire even more those brave souls who participated in the Moontrekker thing →
I Spake Too Soon About Market
Ha ha! I laughed bitterly yesterday when I had to go to FUSION to buy some toilet paper or whatever. I remember when the melody in the story above irritated me. And not only me, →