Yearly Archives: 2009

Grandma's Story

I’ve been try­ing to get a bet­ter idea of grand­ma’s life, so I’ve been ask­ing her as many ques­tions as pos­si­ble in the last three weeks. Her mind tends to drift and she gets lost on sub­jects; lit­tle snip­pets from the rest of my fam­i­ly sort of fill in the blanks. I’ll add more if I can get any­thing else out of her.

Grandma was born in Hong Kong, but she fled to Chiu Chow dur­ing the Japanese inva­sion by climb­ing a moun­tain with her only son slung on her back. For some rea­son, she feels a lot of pride about Chiu Chow even though she was­n’t born in that city, and always points out peo­ple from there1. As a result, she can speak both Cantonese and the Chiu Chow dialect.

Continue read­ing “Grandma’s Story”…

  1. She says she rec­og­nizes them by their faces. [↩]

Hong Kong: Nights

Tung Choi Street (or Ladies’ Market), as seen in my Hong Kong: Markets video as the area cov­ered with blue tarp, is for the ladies, and opened all day.

Temple Street, on the oth­er hand, only starts to come alive at night, and is also known as Men’s Street. There are no stalls out dur­ing the day. This is the street that one of my favourite Stephen Chow movies, God of Cookery, is based on, so it was awe­some to be able to see it in per­son.

Instead of hand­bags, clothes, and posters sold in Ladies’ Market, they sell cheap men-ori­ent­ed trin­kets like bat­ter­ies, lighters, base­ball caps, elec­tron­ics, cam­era gear, and sex toys. There’s also a sec­tion with rows of stalls for for­tune telling (at 2:12), offered in both Chinese and English lan­guages, and European (tarot) and Asian (face, palm read­ing) flavours.

Temple street is also known for it’s road­side din­ing, where you can order pots stuffed with meat or deep fried del­i­ca­cies. I was warned not to eat any­thing on tem­ple street though, as the stan­dards are too low now1. One might get away with an upset stom­ach at best, and end up with a trip to the hos­pi­tal at worst.

Since Temple Street is noto­ri­ous­ly shady, where there’s more open pros­ti­tu­tion, drug deal­ings, and oth­er unsavoury activ­i­ties, I lim­it­ed my film­ing on the off-chance that I may have cap­tured some­thing I should­n’t2. Can you spot the two hook­ers?

  1. Even my dad won’t eat there any­more, which is say­ing some­thing. [↩]
  2. During the walk through the stalls, I was yelled at once by a ven­dor to put my cam­era away. [↩]

Victoria Peak

Victoria Peak at sunset

Victoria Peak is the high­est moun­tain on Hong Kong Island, offer­ing an oth­er­wise unavail­able view of Hong Kong, includ­ing the Kowloon side. On clear days, you can see the hori­zon go on into the dis­tance.

Thumbnail: Tram arrival
Thumbnail: Riding the tram
Thumbnail: Riding the tram
Thumbnail: Tramway incline
Thumbnail: Victoria Peak Tower
 

To get to the peak, you can a tramway train, which is about a five minute ride. On the oth­er hand, wait­ing to get on the tram took me about 30 min­utes on a good day at a good time. The tram actu­al­ly has stops like a bus, because some peo­ple actu­al­ly live on the peak, though these are con­sid­ered lux­u­ry estates.

Victoria Peak at sunset

At night, the lights of Hong Kong’s famous sky­line start to turn on, and the view changes dra­mat­i­cal­ly. The sky­line is nor­mal­ly seen and pho­tographed from the Kowloon side, so this is a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive from usu­al Hong Kong pho­tographs.

Thumbnail: Peak side
Thumbnail: Shopping area
Thumbnail: Foggy restaurant
Thumbnail: Mall and patrons
Thumbnail: Peak Galleria
 

There’s an entire lit­tle vil­lage at the peak, with lots of touristy areas sell­ing over­priced mem­o­ra­bil­ia.

(Mis) Understanding Therapy

Occasionally, con­ver­sa­tions around the din­ner table turn to psy­chother­a­py — some­one knows a co-work­er, or a friend, or a rel­a­tive who sees a shrink — and my fam­i­ly would talk about it so dis­parag­ing­ly.

They’d say there’s some­thing wrong with peo­ple who go to ther­a­py; not the fact that they have men­tal health issues, but the fact that any­one who needs to pay some­one else to feel bet­ter is fool­ish. They think psy­chol­o­gists are bad, or of no use. That you only need to go to ther­a­py if you don’t know how to “find a hob­by” or “blow off steam”, or don’t have any friends to talk to. Their ideas about it are so naïve, sim­plis­tic, and stereo­typ­i­cal; a per­fect reflec­tion of their minds and the way they see the world.

I’d always stay qui­et. How could I explain the dam­age done, when it was some of them who dam­aged me in the first place?

But when the con­ver­sa­tion turned to me, I men­tioned that I had a ther­a­pist. Perhaps to change their minds about it, to defend some­thing that has helped me so much. After all, I might not even be here talk­ing to them if it was­n’t for my ther­a­py.

Now they know.

But they still don’t under­stand.

Old Family Portrait

Old family portrait

I found this pic­ture at my uncle’s house. It is:

  1. Hilarious
  2. Hilarious
  3. Hilarious
  4. All of the above

How weird is it that I did­n’t even rec­og­nize myself. And look at those glass­es! They were my first pair, which prob­a­bly means I was around 14 or 15. Apparently, I was still wear­ing my cal­cu­la­tor watch at that age.