My Destroyer

Most of you know the history of my shoulder. For those of you that don't it pretty much goes as follows:
1997 - Ow
1999 - Ow
2003 - Ow
2003-2006 - click click click click
2006 - Ow
2006+ - Click flop spriong ting click click squish click

...you get the picture. And it has been kind of semi-useless since time immemorial.

Now, I decided that, given I'm overcompensating for it & my back is starting to do strange things & I'm certainly not getting any bloody younger, I would actually do what I should have done all along & I went to see a physio. He was unreal. He hurt me. He hurt me so much, but afterwards I felt as if my shoulder was almost like a proper shoulder again. Amazing.

He gave me a follow up appointment, a bunch of exercises & a little massage ball. Sweet.

The massage ball however. Holy freakin flying Jesus on rollerskates, the massage ball. This little bastard of a thing is the most horrific object I've ever touched in my life. I am really, really not one for massages. At the same time as being a bit of a wuss I am super ticklish so I get a double whammy of dontfuggintouchme!!!! Every time a masseuse comes anywhere near me. Even in Thailand, the lady was all 'ha ha ha, white wussy man', until she started getting genuinely pissed off because I could hardly stand her touching my damned neck.

Anyway, the reason for this nearly pointless post is the brutal (gentle) agony (massage) that this freaking ball assails my shoulders with when I use it. The trick is to lean up against a wall with this spiny horror lodged under your shoulder blade & then work it like a kodiak bear against a maple tree on a hot day. My big issue is I didn't think I would feel much. So I get this ball, wedge that shit under my 'bladez & then go to work. The walls in my place are pretty much all plaster & paint like a normal hourse, but in the kitchen it's tiles. Bonza. No potential markings. No stress that I've only got about two feet of clearance, this is a massage, not a rock concert. Down, right, up, lefaaaaaaack! The thing hit the far right side of my shoulder blade & some kind of instantaneous message flew into my brain that said KICKYOURCUPBOARDFALLOVERSHITYOURSELFSQUEALLIKEAGIIIIIIIRL!!!!

So fortunately I didn't shit myself, but the rest...yeah, I pretty much did that. Lying in the yoga-favourite "prone, bruised pretzel saluting the fridge door" pose, I thought:
Note to self...mind that you brace for the whole nerve ending thing.

Good. I'll remember that.

Behold, my destroyer:

The global conspiracy to disenfranchise the project analysts of the world travelling to semi-discrete locations that are obliquely pegged to non-related major currencies that have taken a subsequent bumming due to a protracted history of financing debt solutions with further debt under a groaning, unsustainable twin-party dictatorship playing a populist & exponentially more risky game of chest-puffing, brow-beating, name-calling chicken.

Or,

Ow, my wallet.

Seriously. What the f*ck is going on with US Dollar? I’m watching my Aussie debt grow as I pay it off. Not happy. Like, at all. These twats in Congress had better come to some sort of positive agreement over the next week or two or it’s going to actually affect me. Me! OMG!

Whine over.

Hope you're all having a lovely week.

Good for me!

Yay. Two reasons. One a sardonic 'good for me', you go get 'em simple kid chug on the chin & throw a strained glance over their shoulder at any grinning onlookers. The other, an actual thing that is potentially actually good for me. *gasp*

Firstly, the boring thing. I may have blamed Sauran's evil 'The One' toasty prematurely. I still believe it was the final catalyst for the tempest of evacuation that almost destroyed me, but it has now come to light that it may not have been the only thing that caused it. I've been drinking that milk they sell here, which apparently comes from the Kowloon Dairy. Now, I don't know who has or hasn't been to Hong Kong, but I can assure everyone out there that there is no goddamned room whatsoever for a friggin' dairy in Kowloon. This is a Google image of Kowloon:

Daisy?

Daaaaaisy!

DAAAAAAAISYYYYYYY!

COW-loon? I bloody well think not.

The point I'm trying to make is that I'm not 100% sure where Kowloon Dairy milk - or any of the local milk for that matter - comes from, but an educated guess would say China. Where the melamine lives... So consequently I've since cut it out of my diet & already I feel like I'm going to turn into a fat, happy, healthy white bastard within the week. I believe that this will genuinely be good for me. The end result is a little unfortunate though...um...through a series of isolated incidences I've.. And I'm not a total wanker or anything. I have to stress this. I mean, you people know me. I'm a bit weird maybe. And I do wear a trendy scarf when it's cold & stuff. But I mean, I don't ride a fixie or wear a trilby. I just cut my hair today so I'm not emo. Never have been emo. I'm not. You know. Oh, f*ck it. So anyway, I'm now drinking soy instead of cow's milk & drinking white wine instead of beer. What?

Jerks. So judgmental.

Subject change.

Wow. Awkward.

Next thing that is more of a 'good for you' thing is... Oh my GOD! This is such a trendy wanker thing to do. Balls! Really should have written the post the other way around. *groan* Whatever. My mum thinks I'm cool, so you can all just get bent. So I've build a DIY twin reflex camera. It's way retro & all that crap & yes I think it's cool & yes I'm going to use it & yes, you're still looking at me in that way. What? Are my stripy leggings out of place? Is my satchel covering the logo on my ironically kitsch t-shirt? Okay, I've just got to move on. Artists are always misunderstood in their time anyway. I'm an individual. Just like the rest of them. Breathe...

Let's start that again.

I have built one of these puppies. It was an enormous pain in the rectum to build & took me around 3 hours all up. I swore A LOT. I mean, I do that, but I really swore like a whole bunch. And I didn't even hurt myself. I think I just drank way too much coffee whenever I set to it which gave me the yips, the shakes, & a big dose of the hurry-the-#@&%-ups. Also, I only found this website after building the damned thing, which has cheerily informed me that I've made at least two horrific mistakes along the way, but I've already jammed a roll of film in there, so let's see what happens first & then I'll take it apart & start my barrage of bilious billingsgate at this gormless inanimate plastic once again if it turns out that I have indeed screwed the proverbial pooch. The Chinese-only instructions were a joy, by the way.

Kitted out. Ready to rock.

OOoooooh good! I love chinese writing for it's ability to convey detailed information to me in the most convenient & understandable way possible!

Hooray! A shoddy, but complete job! Also, two surplus screws...

Anyway, I'm going to be taking it out here & there so I'll share the photos with y'all. I have to actually take it to a place & have them developed! You believe that? My mind almost exploded with the atavistic thrill of it all until I remembered that it involves, time, effort & ongoing expense to do that sort of thing. Not to worry! I have visions of cloudy, softly framed shots with all that lovely colour throwing that odd perspective you see so often in Holga enthusiast's photos. Like a kind of thick-lined cartoon bas relief. But realistically I'll probably end up with a whole bunch of really shit photos instead. Time will tell I guess.

More to follow on Luke's so-called 'lomo' adventure. Jeezus, you need to say that one clearly down the phone line... No no! No! I said lomo! No, LOMO! L - O - M - O!

Death Sandwich

Net result of Wednesday's toasted sandwich adventure: two days at home. I've had it all, man. The squirts, the squits, the trots, the terrors, the runs, the spurts, & surprisingly, the squeaks. And let me tell you, for the ultra-lazy out there, I'm sure sitting down a lot is your bag, but toilet seats should not be your first choice. Those things send your legs to sleep if you're on 'em for too long.

That sandwich can go to hell.

Now that you're all sorry you ever started reading this, here's some very random photos from a week or two ago that I just felt like sharing. They were taken at a restaurant that specialises in spider crab. Tasty, tasty tasty spider crab. Something that sucks is that I can't remember precisely how to get there & even if I could, the name of the place & entire menu is all in Chinese, so I'd be pretty useless anyway. But, oh my word was it ever good. Their sushi & sashimi was awesome, but the crab. Oh mang...the crab...

Crab shells big & small. Lots of 'em. That light fixture? Crab shell.

Mo' crab shells. Lots mo'. This place was like what a hunting lodge would be if hunting chinchillas with dynamite was considered okay. The walls were chockers with victims.

The table cloth was some kind of scroll-holding ninja stalk bird laying a five point palm exploding heart technique on a dog turtle monster. Makes sense to me.

The world's greatest crab claw. Was a meal in itself, but pretty much only constituted around 5% of what we ate. Hhamazink.

Get thee hence to Hong Kong, people. But avoid the sandwiches at Gourmet. Not cool.

My East meets West morning so far...

Found a new breakfast place. Hate hate hate hate hate breakfast cereal so I’m usually only able to force musili down my throat about 3 or 4 days a week, which leads to me buying breakfast a lot of the time. Generally I’m hitting Pret a Manger way hard as they’ll give you a coffee (okay coffee by HK standards, which means most big city Aussies would look like they’d just stepped in something & that something squished between their toes if they drank it, but I think I smoked my tastebuds when I was younger so it’s okay for me) & a roll with egg & roast tomato or ham & cheese for $30 Hong Kong dollars! Bargain! So that’s been great, but that has become slightly old after a while. Got to work this morning & thought to myself, ‘Self. If I have musili again today I’m going to try to drown myself in the bowl. Screw. That. Peasant Food.’ Thinking thinking thinking, couldn’t think of a single thing to eat that wasn’t either Pret or Congee. HMMMMMM, conundrum. Then on the way to dropping a suit off at the cleaners I noticed a place I’d never been in before. The word Sandwiches loomed brightly in my field of vision. Mmmmm, white man food. Nom nom nom.

“Do you guys have sandwiches?” (I ask excellent questions)

“Aah, yes.” Points to afore-mentioned sandwich sign

“Haaaam sandwiches?”

“Yes of course”

*little squeal* “Ahem. Okay, ham & cheeeeese sanswiches?”

“No problem. Toasted?”

“Oh god yes.”

“$22 please”

“OMG that’s awesome.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Here’s $30.”

Excitedly I jumped front one foot to the other waiting for my toasted ham & cheese sandwich & creeped out the other patrons, grabbed the ridiculously large paper bag the lady handed me & raced back upstairs to devour my catch.  Dive into the bag, tear open the alfoil(?) & OOOh yes I...wait, wtf? Why is there salad on my toasted sandwich? And why is it crying? There was capsicum, cucumber, lettuce, tomato, the works on this poor enflamed toasty. It was the saddest, wiltiest salad in Hong Kong as it had just had its ass cooked to hell. Sigh. Chinese-Anglo fusion weirdness strikes again...

Oh well, bugger it. It wasn’t Bolognese on rice or soup noodle KFC, so I was on a win there. I chowed down on this thing in a big way & it was actually really tasty. But it was just like everything else ‘Western’ in Hong Kong. It was just a bit....different.

Spines are for losers...

So as it turns out, Dragonboating is a real festival about actual stuff & not just an excuse for Northern Territorians to splash each other & get on the piss. Who would've thought?

It's (traditionally) the Tuen festival. Ostensibly it's about a guy who was so patriotic & so shitted off about the way things were going back in the day that he turfed himself into a river. Because that is totally the way that politics operates...actually, has anyone told this story to Sarah Palin? I think someone should get on that asap. So anyway, the festival goes along the lines of there being these little cakes that people eat on this day, which used to just get thrown into the water so the fish wouldn't eat this guy as he was such a hero, & then (apparently) Dragonboating came about due to it being ridiculously messy & noisy, & is supposed to be an attempt to make all the fish crap it & swim away so they again don't eat this dude. Not sure what part of this festival makes this guy exist in every ocean & estuary through the whole of Asia at the same time & also be somehow floating in the water without decomposing or getting a proper burial & what makes the fish only really want to nibble on him once a year, but hey, who am I to judge?

So that's the bit that every knows. Dead guy, cakes, drums, paddles, etc. Well, that's my version anyway. If you want the boring, boring 'proper' history click this so-called factual link. The hilarious subtext of this festival however, is that it's become an opportunity for the gay community to get out & pink it up a bit. Some genius in recent history decided to give this myth a bit of a  fruity revision & claimed that this guy Tuen Ng was actually bumming the Emperor! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! I thought that was a complete pisser. Way to keep a secret for like a thousand year only for someone with a vested interest to somehow uncover it at  conveniently liberal time in human history. I'm all for the rainbow movement, but seriously people, let's not start on that slippery slope. Buddha was gay too! John Wayne wore frilly neglige!!! Aaah, cracks me up.

So what it comes down realistically, is that once a year there's a Dragonboat festival & people being people, this has become quite competitive. So Stanley harbour hosts a corporate Dragonboat Racing Carnival wherein a whole raft of companies gets teams together of varying levels of seriousness who vie for like about 9 different divisional crowns & a fleeting blast of glory. For the rest of us, it's a day on junk boats downing beers & acting like rubes. I'll let the photos do the talking for this one, as I actually managed to take a bunch of them, but just so everyone knows, I've taken out all of the ones that could be considered even mildly incriminating. There were no shenanigans of a sexual nature & no one made a giant arse of themselves, but given that this was a work event I'm not allowed to take photos of nor mention hilarious things like how people were hurling cans of beer to beggars on neighbouring boats, how people dived from the top of our junk into the ocean & we had multiple escapees to the playboy yacht. Whoops. Also, I wasn't drinking, so this - as per a number of events in that long, long fortnight - was both eye-opening & difficult to maintain. Especially in that heat.

Oh, & just a word of warning, I have included every photo of myself in here & all of them are hideous. Sure you're all used to it by now, but just in case you're eating or something...

Day at the beach anyone...?

Ooooh, that's right. Hong Kong is CHOCK FULL OF PEOPLE!

A guy with wings drawn on his back & a bunch of pandas. Of course. And what's with that guy on the right? Looks like he's really trying to get rid of something...

On the speedboat. To the party junk! 

Me (slacker) with Darran, one of our Dragonboat crew. 

Junk after junk after junk.

This is the starting line of the races. We had a pretty good view from where we were.

The nabAsia gang. All on their best behavior at an early afternoon point.

Stanley Bay & some lovely tropical sun/cloud action.

A HOT guy. 

Neighbours, two boats over. She's not there now, but there was this bird who seriously leaned against that big aerial things for like 3 hours without moving. It was really weird.

The Playboy speedboat! YAAAAAAY!

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!

Actually, I have to stop here because this shit is hilarious. I couldn't work out who it was, but every time this Playboy speedboat came anywhere near our yacht someone from our junk would lean over the side & start yelling "SHE'S GOT AN ADAM'S APPLE!" over & over again. I'm sorry, but that is just out & out funny. Anyway, on with the show:

OMG so hot sailor boy.

The Dragonboat crew enjoying a drink after their race was all done. How'd they do? No one had any clue whatsoever.

Oh! Another race kicks off! I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty confident those guys closest to us won. Look at 'em go!

Everyone ran out of enthusiasm for my camera. Was reduced to photographing myself.

Luke oversees proceedings. Luke owns the sky. I guess.

Can't believe I actually managed to get a shot of the starter gun going off. Thing was a friggin' howitzer. Check that funky smoke plume. 

I tried to photograph the last half of a race, but instead I just got a guy who seriously looks naked from this angle...

And our question was answered. Like real Aussies our team came 3rd! YEAH! But just to make everyone feel better it says '2nd runners up'. Ha ha. Lame.

It's toward the end of the day. You're sick of seeing drunk white people. You just want to go home. It's hot. F*ck it. You get down to your jocks to sail. Rock on man. Rock on. 

Asian tug boat. Or it's a huge mechanical duck with a bunch of ugly ducklings. Not sure.

A kick arse tropical sunset. This is impossible to get sick of.

My head wrecking the scenery. 

The funniest outfit of 2011. I nearly peed my pants when I saw this.

...we're going to Stanley!

WOOHOO! We're going to Stanley!

At the end of a long day, the street party starts! Go the Dragonboat festival!!!

So next year, I'll be doing two things differently:
1. I'll have a drink
2. I'll take part in the actual race. It destroys your spine as you're only paddling on one side, but hey, what's a few vertebrae between friends, right? Spines are for losers anyway.

Only took me about four weeks to write this, but better late than never!

Cheers!

And we're back!

LIVE ON THE AIR!!! On the internet...

Anyway, a few of you horrible whiners have hassled me for taking so long to put up this post, so here it is! Happy now?!

Good!

So, a hell of a lot has happened this past month, where to begin...? I've worked ridiculous amounts, I've drank, I've not drank, I've eaten tonnes, gotten fat, gotten unfat again, wrecked my knee, gone to a rooftop barbeque in the densest suburb in the world, seen all my friends & my girlfriend from Australia, & just generally had an exhausting time of it all. But for the purposes of this post let's just look at how the 'detox' panned out, & the wedding. I'll get onto the other stuff laters.

The Detox:
or, how to feel both great & shit at the same time in 8 short days.

Detox, huh? *googly one-eye stare* Hmmmm, nope. People don't like it. The drinking culture here is quite a lot like Jack Black; thick, rich, hilarious when it's hilarious, & shithouse when it's not. 

Only a handful of times in my adult life have I decided to take a few weeks off from drinking booze & but I decided to give it a crack. Usually when eschewing the wonderfully heady aroma & heart-meltingly refreshing taste of a cold, frosty beer on a summer's day it's done for reasons like:

1. Kidney failure

2. Coma

3. A reasonably large bet

4. DoubleAIDS

5. A momentary aerobics craze

6. Loss of lips, throat &/or mouth

But this time I had - as was explained in a previous entry - a big week of partying coming up. Also, I felt crap from eating out for like four freakin' months. Still good reasons, & of course, taking two weeks out to be healthy is never going to be a bad thing. It is however, a pain in the arse to explain those relatively lame sounding excuses to people who reeeeeeally want you to come out & have a drink. I've recently discovered that along with boozing, peer pressure is evidently one of the national sports here. So eventually I decided to go out. 

I didn't drink however. I mean, given that I am a moral compass for millions, an enduring rock of modern sobriety & the global face of moderation & strong will, I thought I'd better not pull a Warney & behaved. Was a complete hassle, with people constantly in my face going 'WHY ARENN YOU DRINKGING!?!'. But eventually, they were finally pickled whole in pints of Heineken & they must've just assumed I was as legless as they were. Man, I couldn't wait to be one of them again...no really. That was really tough. We were at a bar here, which caters to a select, exclusive clientele whom I like to call the thinking Aussie pisshead. I've of course been there plenty of times given that a) I like beer (...actually, I'll get back to that point soon...don't let me forget yeah?), b) their English is superb, meaning they can still decipher your brlbrghsberrb after you've had 7 pints & c) they actually have reasonably good okay Aussie pub/bistro food. It was a Sunday session which probably wouldn't have been quite so gigantic if they hadn't put on live music (something that is ridiculously rare in HK outside of Phillo cover bands doing Guns & Roses until 5am in Wan Chai), half price pizza, & if Monday hadn't been a public holiday. So I got there & went 'oh'. It. Was. Chockers! And everyone was on 'full retard' by like 6pm. No word of a lie, the place was shoulder to shoulder, everyone was belting out the band's acoustic (?!) rendition of Back in Black, the floor was sticky. Man. It was a mess.

So that was definitely an eye opening experience for me. Am I that much of a boorish douchebag when I drink? Am I like that mate of mine who for some reason kept touching my ear to freak me out & asked me if I wanted a drink about 60 times in 2 hours? Do I sing along to Back in Black? Actually I'd do that part sober...actually, I did do that... I regret nothing. Anyway, I was really wondering if all those years of me thinking I was a pretty good drinker were false & I just thought I was doing well, but really I was hammered drunk, leaning to one side bellowing ALABAMAALABAMAALABAMA & telling everyone corporate secrets in joke form, all with four sheets of toilet paper stuck to one shoe.

This question plagued me for a week or two. Then it was answered: Yes. I just thought I was doing well. For some bizarre reason I seem to have lost my ability to be able to drink beer & not be a complete dick. This realisation only came to me after a barbecue that I attended the weekend before last. It was a rooftop affair in Mong Kok, which as I've previously explained in another post somewhere, is the most densely packed suburb on planet earth. I arrived late, ate like four fishballs & a few chicken wings & then smashed down like 9 440mL beers. Then everything went ffzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt*pop*
I woke up the next morning - Monday - r.e.t.a.r.d.e.d. Arrived at work at 10am, sporting a new green/grey skin tone, a not even nearly trendy half-shave & talking through my cheeks in order to avoid having to take in air. Left work, utterly defeated at 11:30am, walking as if there was something invisible but really heavy on my head & like something ridiculously sad had just happened to me. And even now, almost two weeks after then event, the thought of beer makes me want to do one of those 360 degree Exorcist-style barf ups. Bleugh. Anyway, got three photos that aren't terrible:

BQQ! Well, that's what the sign read anyway... 

Cool cats on a hot tin roof

Cool cats on a hot tin roof...which is actually 12 floors up...

So long story short: I can't drink beer anymore because not long after these photos got taken I went batshit on cheap, Chinese beer & completely wrote myself off. Genius!


The wedding on the other hand, was a very cordial event. No messy drunks, just good times with lots of good friends. I really have to stop writing this thing now as I've been sitting on it for like two weeks & still haven't manage to post it, then I wrote this whole spiel about the wedding but I've had serious beef with my computer & it has somehow been erased, so I'm so goddamned sick of seeing the same entry that I'm going to stop writing & just post the effing thing. It should suffice to say that everything went well for the bride & groom, the day was mostly fine with only a little bit of rain, dinner was AWESOME, & everyone was happy. Anyone who wants actual stories about the wedding can just email me, as I'm over this entry for now. Here's a bunch of photos. Enjoy:

Aawwwww. At the tea ceremony for Sharon's parents

Sexy Rolls taking its rightful place at the centre of attention

SUCH a sexy car...

Representing Ken, the black sheep ties that the 'brothers' had to wear. Hilarious. 

Dress number....3? I think.

The signing of the marriage contracts. The real legal biz. Aaaaaaaall in Canto. What was said? I've no idea. But it seemed lovely. 

The amazingly tasty dessert after the 9 preceding courses. So full...but it was so tasty...

The following night at a bar called 'Joyce is Not Here'. Chilling. Dressing for the heat. Was a good night.

All for now. I promise I'll put up another entry soon. I've still got the Dragonboat racing to tell you all about! That was FOREVER weeks ago! I'm getting lazy. Stay tuned! Mo posts coming soon!