This chicken is wubbewy

I’m in Beijing AGAIN. Fell deep asleep on the flight – woke up with the usual dribble down my chin. Godawful hotel room looking out over on to yet another building site. Had a doormat for a burger on room service. Pants. And it’s freezing here (compared to HK). I’ll post the pix up when I get back to HK – you can see what I mean by soulless.

Well, I’m not happy.

Rumour has it, I’ll be up here a few days a week for the foreseeable … and they’re thinking about getting me a flat … maybe I can keep my mistress here. By all accounts, it’s very fashionable to live in HK and to keep a mistress on the ‘mainland’ – lots of blind eyes.

That reminds me, on the flight over, (before I fell asleep), I read a weird story in today’s South China Morning Post about a 62 year old HK man being beaten; tied up and locked in his laundry cupboard for hours – he’d fessed to his 43 year old wife and 22 year old daughter that he was just off out to the mainland to see his mistress – so they decided to duff him up. The article refers to him eventually escaping via a small window – shinnying down the 3 stories of his ‘unit’ and reporting the whole thing to the police. The first the wife & daughter knew of his escape was when the police knocked on the door and arrested them. The final sentence reads something like: The other 7 children have been taken into care and the family is on benefits. ‘Unit’; ‘8 children’ etc etc … what lives some people live!

Have just been to a DVD shop (no, NOT THAT kind of DVD shop) to stock up on TV programmes. The quality of the TV in HK is awful … so we need to get TV programme DVDs or watch Mr Bean AGAIN AGAIN AGAIN.

Complete whole-series all-episodes boxed-sets of e.g. desperate housewives; 24; CSI; Friends; Benny Hill; Star Trek Enterprise (YEAH!) cost about five or six quid. They look and feel legit … holograms; packaging; extra features etc .. and they’re sold in a proper ‘high street’ shop - so I guess they’re OK and not funding Triad activity. Who am I kidding? Xmas presents anybody? (Somehow, they do work on UK-standard DVD players). They also have a format out here which I’d not seen before in the UK … ‘VCD’ .. Video CD .. cheap as chips … latest movies are about two pounds … again, legal! Honest GUV.

And when I say ‘high street’, read for that ‘a few shops on a dusty grey drab parade in the middle of a residential area’. Every other shop is a beauty parlour …. With the most ugly looking hags hanging around outside .. I commented on this “hardly being a good advertisement for the beauty parlour” to my colleague who (DOH!) told me the parlours were fronts for cheap knocking shops. Cheap = less than eight pounds for all-the-way. I guess that’s cheap, I must admit I don’t know the going rate elsewhere. I have been properly propositioned by prostitutes twice in my life (that’s another story – the Las Vegas one was quite funny) … but did not get round to discussing rates natch.

To get to the ‘shops’, by the way, one has to step over an assortment of street vendors …. people laying table cloths down on the pavement and selling all sorts of nick nacks … you know, the usual car boot stuff: beads; jade; DVDs; singleton forks/knives; marbles; Russian dolls and, of course, dried deer penis – an organic version of viagra I’m told. It was very very long! I’m beginning to be less-shocked over what’s sold/taken/eaten etc here. The latest foodstuffs I heard about (which I won’t be trying) is Crab Sperm noodles and Cod Sperm soup. And I’m not joking either. We eat Cod Roe I suppose, so I should not be that surprised.

I did, however, get a bit of a shock on Monday – a colleague returned from a week’s vacation to be greeted by the traditional HK ‘back from holiday’ desk ritual … various bits of offal were left all round on top of his desk … a cow’s eyeball; a pig’s ear; a piglet’s brain and a (live) toad the size of a vicious small dog. This is all usual supper fayre sourced from the local ‘wet’ market. My creative department ‘co-workers’ took a vid of it all and posted it to YouTube – I’ll add a link here later if you’re interested. Weird. Weird.Weird. And not for the feint hearted.

They tried to punt the poor toad over to me: “Would make a great pet for the children”. I must admit I have a soft spot for frogs and felt very sorry for the miserable thing. I commented that it looked scared and had ‘messed’ in the box it was temporarily stored in. Turns out the brown ‘mess’ was in fact coffee flavoured icing they’d been feeding it. At that stage, I firmly offered to take it home – but someone had already baggsed it – they were planning to have it for supper that night. In Hong Kong, another name for toads is ‘Field Chicken’.

Which neatly leads me back to …. Oh yes …. Benny Hill. The complete set of Benny Hill is available on DVD for less than four pounds. Tempted? I always laughed at the ‘this chicken is wubbewy’ joke … hence the headline up top. Admitting I like Benny Hill (and ‘The Two Ronnies’) makes Joss feel sorry for me. Hmmmm … two boxed sets of Benny Hill or a quick spit & polish in the beauty parlour? Decisions decisions.

Other Benny Hill moments I’ve had recently:

“Toast? Yes Sir. Bloun Bled or Flench Bled”.

I honestly thought she was taking the mickey,

And today in the taxi when I asked the driver why the delay?: “Tlaffic Rights”. Quite hard to say actually. Bet you’re attempting to say it right now!

I realise I’m rambling (more than usual): trying to keep myself amused. It’s the prospect of spending so much time up here. Feel a bit homesick for the first time really … saw a couple of BA 747s @ HK airport and thought about it … coupled with receiving a few emails from people I’ve not spoken to for a while and feeling dead dog tired … working crazy hours again … 47 hours already this week and it’s only Wednesday. Hey ho.

Mx