Cross Reclycler.

Having given up a life of continuous educational pursuits, I find (like most people do) the main alternative is a career path -- Something I haven't really had since 2001. In tribute to Jerri Blank, I'm attempting to pick up that same career path just where I left off. Yesterday was my first interview with a potential employer (after meeting twice with a recruitment agency). At first all was great -- I was looking good, wearing my luckiest clothing -- grandpa's old tie clip, holding my favourite Vivienne Westwood tie in place, and my 'jason' socks (to remind me who I am). After about 20 minutes of lovely and casual getting-to-know-you conversation, the gears shift and suddenly and we're in hardcore interview mode.

"Tell me about a time you worked in a team when things didn't go according to plan and why things went wrong and what you would do differently in the future." That was seriously put to me as a single enquiry. The problem with these questions is they are so scripted and unnaturally worded that they create a self-conscious interview. Instead of a conversation, the environment is suddenly an Interview! and I'm being judged by my responses. It's a strange situation -- and so far removed from any reflection of real ability and skills related to the job.

On the upside, the interview went for more than an hour which is perhaps a good sign. I'll find out next week. In the meantime, applying to 10-15 jobs per week -- being a bit more choosy than usual -- grateful that I'm not in a desperate situation, forced to take a job I'd hate... like car salesman, taxi driver, or truck driver. Speaking of, I saw the best truck today. It was for a company called Southern Cross Metal Reclyclers (they have a surprisingly interesting website), but the way the words were laid out on the back doors of the truck, it seemed to read "Southern Metal" on one door and "Cross Recyclers" on the other. One side, a genre of harcore rock music featuring fiddles and harmonicas, banjos and mouth harps. The other side, disgruntled workers who find new uses for religious icons, giving them a second life -- resurrections.

Along with "Teller" and "Control Officer" (jobs I've actually applied for), I reckon "Cross Recycler" is an excellent job title -- one I'd be proud to have on a business card.

HK5 -- Hitting the ground.

Down on the streets, between the buildings and in the alleys and sidestreets... Hong Kong keeps a good pace - not as pushy and frantic as New York... I think the heat slows everyone down. One of my personal favourite elements of Hong Kong is its skyways... though not elaborate enough to compete with those of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, you can still walk a fair distance without leaving the buildings of HK.
Though not the most amazing example we witnessed, here is bamboo being used in scaffolding. It is a surreal juxtaposition of natural materials being used within, and to create, an otherwise synthetic urban environment. From the windows of lofty hotel rooms and restaurants we saw traffic islands completely unaccessible to pedestrians planted and cultivated like oases -- manicured nature to be viewed from afar, and to have some tiny counter-effect against the smog.

And here's an example of the wonderfully simple and comforting store and company names found in Hong Kong. If this store were in the US, the name would undoubtedly be shortened to some nonsensical term: Fritradco perhaps. Though it is strange to consider that friendship and consumerism can be somehow merged, and to find true friendship in a store... and how sad that friendship could be read as a commodity in this signage.

This is likely to be my last post on Honkers... if we meet one day for lunch, remind me to tell you my Hong Kong stories about the Flagstaff House Museum of Teaware, three massages, dim sum, Australia's richest man, toilets with glass doors, the many homes of Jackie Chan, and my dubious sighting of Mr. Matthew Broderick-Parker.

HK4 -- Feng shui and the flight paths of dragons

In the foreground of this photo is the skyline of central Hong Kong, as viewed from halfway up the peak. The close proximity of mountains and the sea are truly awe-inspiring to my mind, having been brought up in the USA's midwest whose features include the Great Lakes and such idiosyncratic topography as kettles and dells. I am from a land shaped by glaciers... Hong Kong it seems was shaped by volcanos.

The city's architecture is influenced by feng shui masters (or so said our driver Jackie when we hired a car one day to show us around). He told us of the dragons who live in the mountains and each day fly down to the harbour for a drink. Buildings have been built with the flight paths of the dragons in mind because the last thing you want is a dragon smashing into your building. One hotel (on the south side of the island) has a huge square cut out of the middle for the dragon to pass through, which brings luck to the building and its inhabitants.
And here is the harbour, with water like dragon-nectar. It is taken from our hotel room window in central Hong Kong, with views across the harbour to Kowloon. Although not explicit in this photograph, this is one of the busiest harbours I've seen... even more action than Sydney's famous harbour. The best part is the extreme variety of vessels we saw: ferries, small cruise ships, barges with cranes, junk boats, and so many others (to attempt to describe them would only exhibit my ignorance of watercraft).

Every night at 8 pm, many of the buildings of Hong Kong participate in a light show, coordinating patterns of flickering lights of varying colours. It lasts about 15 minutes. I wondered if it was somehow set to music, but I never heard anything that matched what I was seeing.. and my attempts to compose a private soundtrack to the sporatic flashes proved futile. It seems you'd have a better vantage point from outside the city centre, or flying over in an airplane. Perhaps it is for the amusement of the dragons on their flights home to the mountain peaks.

HK3 -- Strange fruit and fresh meat

Some alleys of Hong Kong are fresh food markets that go on for blocks. This section specialized on fruits and vegetables. I was able to identify most of what I saw - from the common grape to the spiky-shelled lychee, the chartreuse-coloured starfruit and gorgeous dragonfruit. There remains a fruit I'm stumped by, and regret that I do not have a photograph of it. Shaped like a pear with the peel of an apple... one Hong Kongian translated the name as a "strawberry apple". The internal texture was also pear-like. It is one of the best pleasures of travel - discovering that there are fruits and animals, foods and plants that you've never heard of or imagined.

And there were meats. This picture is one of the tamer stalls - I'm amazed that meat is simply hung out in the open which seems to un-hygenic to my western eyes. I wonder if conditions are so different in Australia or just better hidden from view. Another shop had an entire pig hanging from his hind legs. And yet another had a range of even less-appetizing animal parts hanging from strings. I'll spare you the details. At restaurants there I never got more adventurous than pigeon (a favourite) and goose (a first for me).
Some fish were dead, most were alive. In the foreground of this photograph is a tank of live prawns. There were fish swimming in large buckets, occasionally making an attempt at escape and winding up on the footpath. There they would flail around until the shopkeeper scooped him back into his bucket. Somehow by mixing his metaphors the fish survives -- kicking the fishes, sleeping with the bucket.

HK2 -- the flu(ent) birds.

It was raining on the day we went to see the Yuen Po Street bird garden in Kowloon. It is actually more of a market than a garden, consisting of about 50 vendor stalls selling birds, bird cages and accoutrements, bird seed and feed and bags of live crickets, et cetera. The street runs at a skewed tangent to the flower market. Having never lived in a city with distinct markets and districts, I'm fascinated by the idea of stores organized by their contents -- and how do they compete with one another?Some stalls did specialize. One seemed to only sell exquisite wooden and metal cages, another sold only parrots. You can hear the market from a few blocks away with the steady chirps, squawks and caws of the birds. The parrots had a lot to say, and perhaps they were mimicking some words, but few were fluent in English - endlessly playing the role of a shrill store greeter - "hello...hello"

At this stall, the green parrots were walking free around the countertop - invited to help themselves to the sunflower seeds there. At the bird market and at the Hong Kong Park Aviary, there were signs reminding us to be cautious due to the possibility of the bird flu. Fly --> flew --> has flown.

HK1 -- Nag champa?

Naw, it wasn't nag champa... but I haven't been in a room this incense-filled since I was at university (the first time around). Each of these coils is made of incense. The red card hanging in the center of each is enscribed with a wish or prayer written by one of the visitors to the Man Mo Temple in Hong Kong. The incense coil burns as a continuous wishing, sending smoke skyward. The largest coils were easily a meter in diameter at the widest point, and would take up to a week to burn down completely.

The temple pays tribute to the gods of literature and war -- a fitting combination says this former student of literary criticism. In addition to the coils, there are shrines to each deity and visitors bring fruit and flowers to leave for them. Incense sticks are also for sale in the shrine.

When leaving the temple, those who have made prayers beat a large drum as if to say to the gods: I'm done now, did you get all that?!

Hong Kong Garden

Much of this week has been preparation for my upcoming trip to Hong Kong... the place Aussies so affectionately call "Honkers" (of course pronounced 'honkas'). Some people read travel books or study maps -- I prefer to read fiction, see films, and listen to music. So I'm focusing on those from Hong Kong (Wong Kar-wai, Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung, Faye Wong, etc), and those about Hong Kong... the most interesting being Siouxsie and The Banshees' Hong Kong Garden (1978), with lyrics which change perspective over four verses, from the descriptive (yet very subjective) first lines:

Harmful elements in the air, symbols clashing everywhere...

the second verse, critical of archaic cultural practices:

Junk floats on polluted water, an old custom to sell your daughter...

the third verse of the curious yet cautious tourist:

Tourists flock to see your face, Confucius has a puzzling grace...

finally the ridiculous, the voice of those who only acknowledge Hong Kong through Westernized cuisine and stereotypes:

Slanted eyes meet a new sunrise, a race of bodies small in size,
Chicken chow-mein and chop suey, Hong Kong Garden takeaway

Sioux claims the song was her reaction against racist abuse of the owners of a Chinese restaurant in the UK. In later years, Sioux would prove to be a keen critic of cultural practices and histories. See also: Swimming Horses, Arabian Knights.

Of course this tangent of research tells me very little of Hong Kong... Yet currently in my mind, Honkers will be a sublime mix of the picturesque cinematography of Kar-wai but with an underlying punk aesthetic. Here's hoping...

Shouting at the bar...

Last night there were drinks at a CBD bar (CBD = central business district. The US equivalent is 'downtown') toasting a friend's upcoming 30th birthday. So it was filled with the after-work business crowd until suddenly at 8pm the lights dimmed even more and the music grew louder and suddenly I am shouting things I would normally whisper. In those toxic bar environments I find myself putting on a bit of superficial banter, a false persona of tavern wit, saying things like "do you think many dyslexics spit in the tips jar?" and gossiping about strangers.

It reminds me of driving... I tell people that I hate to drive, which is true... but I rarely tell why. Truth is, it makes me into someone I don't like -- impatient and irritable. At the bar, shallow and clever.

Often I'd rather stay home and read. Or like the David Bowie song goes: "I don't want to go out, I want to stay in / get things done". It's true. I'm ankle-deep in the E.L. Doctorow novel Ragtime (1975) and am enjoying it. It has an element of postmodernist intertextuality that I enjoy -- historical figures interacting with fictional characters, which I suppose would be related to what Linda Hutcheon once termed "historiographic metafiction".

It's a concept that would complicate those disclaimers at the end of fiction films and the start of fiction monographs that (paraphrasing) the characters are fictional and any similarities to persons living or dead are entirely coincidental.

Instead, some of the characters are real, some are not, you be the judge. Very much like a night at the bar after all.