It feels so weird to have a maid around at my grandmothers place. It’s someone who cooks for me, yet doesn’t eat with me. Someone who cleans up after me, yet doesn’t make any mess herself. Someone I don’t have to talk to, yet lives with me all the same. I’m not quite used to it, but I could definitely learn.
Oddly enough, Pabst Blue Ribbon is one of the cheaper beers here and Budweiser is one of the more expensive. Drinking is simply not part of the culture here, so no one checks for ID since there’s no age limit. There’s a lot of smoking though, mostly for image. People walk around with cigarettes hanging out their mouths, and just have one every now and then, instead of needing cigarette breaks every hour.
It’s always a delight to hear an older Chinese person say something in English without accent. However, hearing an older Caucasian person speak Cantonese without accent it’s completely fucking scary cause it’s like OMG THEY ARE INFILTRATING AND THEY KNOW WHAT WE ARE SAYING QUICK PRETEND LIKE YOU DON’T NOTICE AND SAY THEY HAVE NICE TEETH. I use the word “older” because nowadays it’s not uncommon for people to speak more than one language fluently, whereas at my parents age the education for such things wasn’t the norm.
Went to the Hong Kong Museum of History, and learned that Hong Kong people suck at fighting. Out of the two wars we were in, we won zero and lost two. First was against those damn British in 1839, taking Hong Kong from China so they could have free trade of their soulless opium. Then there was the Japanese invasion in the early 1940’s which made Hong Kong a living hell for almost everyone there, although one could say that the Brits were responsible for defending one of their colonies. I can sort of see what the return to China has done to the exhibits in the subtle hints of propaganda found in the later galleries.
Also went to the Honk Kong Science Museum, which is a complete rip-off of the Ontario Science Centre (or is it the other way around?), from the experiments to the interactive contraptions. I had actually seen almost all of the HKMS already just from my younger visits to the OSC, and most of it was exactly the same. I wonder if there was a collaborative effort with Ontario to create a standardized science museum.
My aunt and uncle happened to be in town from B.C. yesterday, so they took me out to dinner and brought their son along. I don’t believe I had met any of them before, although they all seemed familiar. A difficulty I have with the Chinese culture is the fact that everyone is called aunt or uncle if they’re older, even if they’ve just been met. Our actual relatives (the aunts and uncles related by blood), however, have a completely different name system, mostly based on rank and which side of the family they are from. The problem ends up being the fact that I have no idea what the names of these people are, since we don’t append a first name to “aunt” or “uncle”, and I ran into that specific problem yesterday. I was able to go the entire dinner without having to call any of them by name though, so I escaped with my ignorance in ignorance.
