The Fastest Way To A Mans Heart....

is through his chest with an axe.
This week I learned the word ' misandrist'.
It means 'men hating'.
I had thought that that was misogyny but it turns out that misogyny really only applies to hating women.
The word misandrist is rarely used any more because apparently no one hates men.
I don't hate men also.
In fact, it would be fair to say that a large number of my closest friends are men.
Which is not the same thing as saying 'some of my friends are black' because in truth many of my friends are gay.
So back to me being single, which is what we are actually talking about.
In the past 5 weeks I have been hit on more times than in my living memory.
By men.
Straight ones.
This probably has something to do with the fact that for the past 5 weeks I have spent more time in pubs and at parties than in the last 5 years.
It's cyclical.
In truth, unless I am working, my favourite nighttime position is curled up on a sofa watching either cooking shows or Criminal investigations depending on what time of the month it is.
When I do venture out, it's often with a group of friends I feel comfortable enough to be myself with and quite often ends well before pumpkin hour with the late night purchase of an overpriced tub of Hagan Daz at the local 7/11 and half an hour of the disappointingly misnamed Naked Chef.
My dancing on table top days are well behind me.
I am not sad.
My knee joints are not what they used to be- in spite of the horse tranquiliser sized glaucosomine tablets I shove down my gullet every morning - along with Omega 3, a couple of multi vits, some Evening Primrose, milk thistle for my poor old liver and the contraceptive pill.
Because I am an optimist.
The trouble with men and me, is that the ones who have made an approach in the last month or so are all just so fucking revolting.
As opposed to being revolting fucks which, as I have not actually fucked any of them, I can not in good faith quantify.
But there is a reason for that too.
If you are interested in a woman,gentlemen, - and here's a tip- try not to grab her face and all but drown her in slobber whilst depositing 4 inches of tongue into the back of her throat without so much as a "Hi, my name in Nico and I like your dress".
This actually happened to me , not once but THREE TIMES in one night.
The first time I was so shocked I was prepared to believe I had imagined it.
The second time I thought " perhaps I was too hasty, a bird in the hand etc etc etc"
And by the third time I was ready to call the police.
A mere 3 nights later I was approached by a chap whose opening gambit was to buy me a drink and then bore me to death with pictures of his favourite ice hockey team.
Woah, hold me back, my womb is on fire.
Hero number 3 was a muso, which is usually enough, but his " Hey babe, I've set the ground rules the next move is yours" coolness made me wonder if I was secretly being filmed for a reality show where men trapped in the 80's were brought into the future for a style makeover that involved an amount of bitch slapping.
Man, you are so hip and all that I may actually want to smash a chair into your face before ordering, and paying for, the next round.
Punter 4 - yes I told you, it's been a bumper month- was an old acquaintance who spent half the evening reminding me of the mutual friends we have ( I can't stand any of these people so ba boooow) and the other half telling me how much money he earns.
Really? Is your penis actually THAT small. I had heard that from one of our mutual female friends but I thought she was lying.
Man 5 was also someone I had met before- in fact on an Internet date- and this unexpected reunion reminded me that I had given him a false phone number the first time around. I recall that he may have starred in his very own WAG blog about 18 months ago on account of him being a total douche that night also.
Let your no be no as they say in The Bible.
Mr 6, let's call him Granddad, was the final straw that made me reconsider my position on lesbianism.
There I am, minding my own business but being polite on a rooftop party somewhere in this vast city of old white men and their inflated egos when who should decide that I am the pick of the bunch but Rip Van Winkle himself.
Now, I know I am no oil painting.
I am 43, 20 pounds overweight and I dress like the 'Before' picture in a stylists advertising campaign but For Fucks Sake.
The offer of dinner at a mid range food chain and a pat on the hand is not going to make me fall on my back with my legs open at 180 degrees, I don't care how much you remember the war.
And I am not being ageist, the truth is that Pops was, without doubt, the MOST boring of a mind numbingly boring lot.
What is it about middle aged men that makes them think that the fact that they own a penis is enough for someone like me to share juices.
I. too, own a penis.
It's purple, about 5 inches long and takes double AA's.
I bought it 2 years ago at The Temple street markets.
We have adventures together.
I love it because it doesn't take more than 2 minutes to clean under a cold tap and never breaks wind in bed.
Ever.
Now I realise I may sound emasculating to some men, but honestly....I am open to approach as long as the approach does not involve you being amazed at how amazing you are and then expecting me to fall in line.
Great, you have a job.
Fantastic, you can afford to by me a drink.
Really, your penis can inflate?
Got anything else?
Ever thought to ask me about myself, for example?
Ever thought of inviting me to a museum?
Or a gallery opening?
Does the idea of fucking my mind interest you even nearly as much as the idea of motorboating my tits because I've seen what penises can do and it's pretty much a one trick pony where the ride lasts about 16 minutes- tops- and ends with some grunting, a wet patch and a score out of 10.
And quite frankly if your dismount is anything like your run up, I may just save us both some effort and buy your ex-wife a martini.
We both owe her at least that much.

It's Gym Life, But Not As We Know It.

After donating 5000 dollars to Fitness First over the last 9 months, I am finally back at the gym.
No biggy, well, one biggy, me- around my neck,chest, back and tummy which is where I prefer to store my fat.
It's day two.
Funny thing is in the course of my adult life I must have lost and gained nearly 200 pounds.
Not all in one go obviously.
THAT you would have noticed.
I was a very skinny girl for a very long time, but like a lot of woman, at some point I began to yo yo.
I could blame the babies, but there are much stronger forces at work here than them- and let's be honest, the youngest baby is now 18.
I look mad when I say "my children have ruined my figure".
Victoria Beckham has had FOUR children and you'd lose her in a toothpick factory.
Genetics play a part.
A long lost cousin once greeted me with the exclamation- " Oh and you are an 8 just like the rest of us!!"
She was referring to shape rather than size.
Big boobs, a waist, hips.
Stand a bunch of the Foley women together- the ones that share a certain Portuguese roundness- and we could all be clones.
Childhood sexual abuse plays a role too.
There's nothing like being forced to suck your stepfathers prick at the age of 6 to set you up for a lifetime of fear of your own body and a general trauma regarding male intimacy.
Too strong?
Get over it.
I'm tired of how polite we are to paedophiles.
Jimmy Savile anyone?
There is no question at all to the link between my hoovering through a fridge and a man showing interest in me.
"You think I'm sexy do you?" I'll inwardly challenge "well take THIS!!!" and then I will inhale a box of donuts covered in ice cream with a side order of chocolate fudge just to prove my point.
" How do you like me NOW!!??"
At least these days I can recognise the triggers.
When a man gives me 'that look', I try -try- to stick to over eating vegetables.
I have been known to eat 12 ears of corn in a single sitting.
You probably think I'm kidding.
I'm not kidding.
Trouble is, I love butter too.
And that's the third problem.
Why do they have to make food so damn tasty?
Salty things, and then sweet things. Savoury things and things that are crunchy.
I love them all.
I sometimes think about my cat, and how he eats things that all look the same.
Sure, tuna and whitebait is not the same thing as mackerel and gravy, but to my nose, they seem equally boring coming out of the tin.
If food was boring, I would eat it less.
Anyway, I'm back at the gym.
When I first joined a while back I went a LOT and lost 40 pounds.
The last 9 months I have worked hard at gaining it back.
A couple of years before then I used to learn boxing and a tiny bit of MMA with the lovely Daniel.
I loved punching things.
You don't have to be a genius to work out whom I dedicated my fiercest right hooks to.
And this leads me to my point.
As I sat today in the sauna after a particularly strenuous workout I recognised, not for the first time, that the reason I NEED to exercise has little to do with weight.
It's about me.
It's about doing something FOR ME.
I was raised by a hardcore narcissist.
One that didn't really cope or make good choices.
Too strong ?
Oh well.
Let someone else sugar coat the bitter pills, I've given that task up for Lent...forever.
So I learned early to have close relationships with people who were great at taking but weren't all that great at giving back.
It wasn't until I was in my late 30's that that came to a halt.
Fairly dramatically, it must be said, but needs must.
It had taken me the better part of 4 decades to learn the words 'I want', and once I had learned them, there was no turning back.
And I suspect, and I really mean this, that when I exercise, I actually physically remove the toxins of anger and frustration and sadness that are stored inside my fat cells.
Is that bizarre?
I know enough about body chemistry to understand cortisol and stress and the link to obesity.
I know about endorphins.
But when I actually feel the pain I carry inside release from my body as I exercise, well....I am not entirely sure how to explain it.
And yet, time and time again I have put off making myself well.
I am 50 pounds fatter than I should be, and at least 20 of that is just pent up fucked-off-ness. 
And it's time to let that go.
For good.
I am a lucky person.
My life is now filled with caring, compassionate people who take the time to tell me I am worthy.
I have learned to love myself.
It has been an uphill and high calorific battle, but it is one that I hope to win.
Step by sweaty step.

But Grandma, What a Slippery Tongue You Have !!

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me yourears.
Language can be a tricky thing.
Especially when one is speaking in a tongue not originating from your mother.
Many a hostile development has sprung forth from that same tongue when slipped.
A slippery tongue is both a blessing and a curse.
In the last 5 years or so I have managed to pick up about an extra 500 Cantonese words.
Given that I have lived in a Cantonese speaking country for nearly 14 years in total, that's pretty appalling.
On average, I have learned 0.097 words a day.
I have to say though, that 5 years ago I could barely mutter much beyond " Good morning, please take me to the ferry pier" so these new words are a vast improvement.
Mostly I speak food and directions, but I have also managed along the way to learn some truly obscure nouns that enhance my life in ways as yet undiscovered.
For example, I know the word for 'petal'- which is 'fa-fa'.
It makes some sense as I have long known that the words ' fa yuen' mean 'garden'.
I learned the word 'fa fa' when an insane person I was working with on a production suddenly required hundreds of red rose petals 3 hours before opening. Rather than dick around trying to mime "please help me I am working with a crazy person so I need you to de-head 300 roses and can I have a discount?" I explained my problem to a Chinese friend who said " just ask for fa fa" which worked to tremendous effect.
Who knew?
I also have the word 'hau ma'- long a on the ma- which means Hippo- or 'water horse'- which is what Hippopotamus means in English too, via Ancient Greek.
Hippo is probably a word I will not need to often.
I almost never order them at restaurants.
But should I ever be on a river cruise on the Zambezi, and should the boat be filled with tourists from Hong Kong or Guangzhou, and a Hippo should appear I shall be able to shout " WAH, hi do ho di hau ma " ( Loosely " Wow, a big Hippo is here") and shall no doubt save the day as the Chinese tourists would have been looking in the opposite direction, and I shall become famous as a cunningliguist and they shall make a film about me that stars Selma Hayek playing the lead role.
Perhaps this is a useful word after all.
There are words I know that make me feel silly when I say them - the word for domesticated cat in Cantonese is 'meow'....well, that's what I am told......and the words for colouring in are 'wa wa' which is just silly for reasons I can not even explain.
Thanks to the shop G.O.D every foreigner knows at least one decent expletive.
They print t-shirts and bags with the motto ' Delay No More' which when strung together quickly in Cantonese means "Go fuck your Grandmother".
Which is nice.
I have used that once or twice at taxi drivers who piss me off.
But only after I am out of the cab.
I am not too sure about HOW rude this phrase is.
Which leads us to the nuance of language.
In the play I am currently directing there is a script instruction ( dialogue) using the words " God damned".
For me, these words hold no meaning.
I am Godless, so being 'God damned' would seem to me to be as useful as being Care Bear stared.
Although you should never break eye contact with a Care Bear.
I speak from experience.
However the lovely lady who needs to say these words has a perfectly legitimate issue with the phrase.
She DOES have a God in her life.
Being God damned is not something she dismisses as easily as I do.
So we have changed those - I would say harmless but she would say sacrilegious- words for an expletive which makes the idea of taking your toothless aging grandma for a spin in the sheets something you should pencil in every Sunday morning.
I have blushed.
Others have gasped.
One has questioned my sanity.
But we are sticking with it.
SHOCKUTAINMENT is one of my favourite newly made up words in the English language.
Along with 'fucktard', a word I use with gay abandon.
I just meet so many.
I have always been a fan of the word 'reconnoiter'- apropos nothing.
Just thought I'd share.
In the end, words are just words right?
Sticks and stones etc etc etc.
Unless they are written with a pen, which is mightier than the sword.
But everyone types these days.
So no harm done.
As Bill Shakespeare once said , it's all Greek to me.

Oh. For. The. Love. Of. God. Give me strength.

There are two things you should never do when you are angry.
Blog or have sex whilst driving.
I no longer own a car.
You know those people who look like they do stuff but they don't?
The ones who reflect loads of light but when you stand right next to them, they are clear?
Remember that song Mr Cellophane in the musical Chicago?
I love that song.
If you are not familiar with it, the premise is that the guy singing it feels invisible.

"A human being's made of more than air" he says.....but what if that is not always true?
What if someone turns out to be just skin, and excellent hydraulics?
In my lifetime I have known a few of these people in passing.
My edges are rather sharp.
Either for self preservation reasons they move on quickly when they meet me , or when I meet them I keep on walking.
I can only be diplomatic to people without personalities for so long before I run out of conversation.
It is a failing, but one I am happy never to work on.
I am not running for president.
The only thing you get by sitting on a fence is splinters in your arse.
I tend to be a straight talker.

I wish I could tell you that this is because I am clever, however the opposite is true.
I speak my mind because I am lazy.
And yes, the opposite of clever is lazy.
I speak my mind because I can not be twatted to add cushioned words designed to prevent others hurting themselves on the sharp edges of the truth.
So when I meet cellophane humans I just piss off.....unless.....circumstances mean I need them to fulfill a purpose....like fill in a space......and then?
Then I'm fucked.
This happens rarely enough, but it happens.
As an ex boss once said to me " shit floats"
And so it does.
So here we are, and within the firing distance of my nihilistic horizon are balloon animals parading as people and there is not a damn thing I can do about it other than sit quietly and wait for them to float away.
Only the wind is moving slowly, and the cistern appears to be blocked.
I find I am grinding my teeth in my sleep.
Some people imagine that the World is full of the 'haves' and the 'have nots', but I think this is not true.
The World is full of the 'can' and 'can nots'.
The 'can nots' can not make decisions, they can not think beyond the space they immediately occupy, they can not see across a room let alone over an horizon. 'Can nots' can not contribute forward motion to discussion, they can not read between the lines, they can not face unpleasant truths, they can not imagine solutions, they can not see the writing on the wall, they can not open their minds, they can not reach for higher ideals, they can not express their dreams, they can not grow, they can not contribute to the growth of others.
They sit and occupy chairs that may as well be empty, they steal oxygen from kittens, they eventually spiral into the internal nothingness that is their destiny.
They exhaust me.
I like the 'cans'.
They do stuff.
I often find 'can nots' huddled in groups.
Even nature recognises the simply safety in numbers trick.
When 'can nots' hang out with 'cans', those who 'can' call them energy vampires.
When I meet them in business I call them 'lessons in patience'.
Some religions believe you must face a problem again and again until you learn from it.
This is why I am an atheist.
I say, if something is really pissing you off and it won't go away, kill it.
Only that's not always practical, nor legal.
Which is giving me the shits.
Which is why I am not driving whilst having sex today.
Which is an image I shall leave you with as I head off to the 'escape proof wet paper bag' factory to stand next to people who could not start fights in breweries.
With my gun.

Hush Now. We Don't Pay You To Think.

I once read that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different outcome.
Fair play.
But what if it's not YOU who does the same thing repeatedly but others, and by constantly observing their very stupid actions you are forced into their insanity , almost by default?
Is that YOUR insanity? Or theirs?
I ask because twice a day, everyday, for the past week I have heard myself mutter " I hate people", which is ironic and sad because everyday I choose to be near and interact with them.
But truly I do.
Hate them.
Not all of them.
And not all the time.
And not YOU, obviously.
But a number of them, and often.
Now let's just get away from the big picture of immeasurable stupidity in the form of war and gunfights, and mass violence.
Let's leave behind queues of feeble-minded non thinkers standing like lemmings to pay $100 USD for a t-shirt bearing the free advertising logo of a brand name made wealthy on the backs of slave labourers.
I am not talking about Global NIMBY's * and fucktarded reality TV stars.
I mean grass roots, know them by name -and may even have their number in your phone - touchable moronbiciles (new word) that make you wish there was a delete button available for street usage.
Lately I have been feeling swamped.
Swamped by people I want to bitch-slap into consciousness, even though I know, in my heart, that this will achieve nothing.
People who have so little self awareness you wonder that they don't die of oxygen deprivation until you realise that even lichen breathes.
WHY???
Why do these people exist?
Her delusion, his egotism, their shared fantasy based on a story they both read as children.
Every month or so I break down and write 800 frustrated words of anguish, begging the Universe for understanding for my fellow Earthly travellers whose reality seems less gripped and more touched, and yet.....
I lay awake at night facing the dreadful possibility that it is ME who is swimming in a pool of hallucination and the others, with their stupid thoughts and their lack of insight and their inability to see beyond today that are, in fact, the sane ones.
And that is a scary thought indeed.
But then the morning comes.
And clarity returns.
And I sometimes find humour in their chimera.
So, she thinks Princess is an honorary title ?
So he believes his own spin ?
So they never read to the end of the book?
What does it matter?
"Stupid is as stupid does", as Sally Field once said.
And she should know.
She was a flying nun.
And should the long run be run, and it turns out that the blithering amongst us were right, and that I AM the crazy one - with my constant questioning and my long term considering and my extroverted introspection- then fuck it.
At least we all had a laugh, or at least I did.
For hidden behind the veil of frustrated tears is a woman whose eyes roll in their sockets as often as they face the heavens.
You would think, at the age of 43 I would have worked out what the hell was going on, but I haven't.
I know that I know less now than I knew I knew at half my age.
Now THERE'S a definition of insanity for you.
Doing what you think is right with the hope that something will eventually become clearer to you whilst being surrounded by people who are doing what they hope is true without any desire for clarity.
A Search for The Truth, with the blind leading the dumb.

* N.ot I.n M.y B.ack Y.ard- the concept that we SHOULD have Drug Rehab Centres and Power Stations and refugee camps, and low cost housing. Just not here.

Jesus. Take the Wheel.

I live in Hong Kong.
Ever since I arrived here I have heard the complaint "you never see the disabled in Central Hong Kong"
How would they cope with the traffic/lack of facilities/pace/number of stairs....etc etc etc
And I agree.
In the days when I had children young enough to require strollers, the place was a nightmare.
Luckily I was young enough at the time to consider the heavy lifting an exercise asset rather than the joint crushing, disc popping, medical hazard it would be today.
If I was in charge of a toddler today it would require wheels on it's clothes and would need be comfortable with being dragged a lot of places.
Like up and down stairs.
Literally.
So, good physical health is a practical bonus in Hong Kong.
But what about mental health?
One could just as easily say " You never see the mentally unwell in Central Hong Kong"
But this is not true.
After more than a decade I have come to realise that the HK SAR has cleverly Incorporated those suffering from every kind of mental affliction known to modern medicine by granting them gainful employment in the least likely of professions.
They are the taxi drivers.
Hong Kong has over 18,000 taxis on the streets on any given day.
They are reasonably priced, air conditioned, and are driven by a variety of individuals that fall everywhere on the mental health spectrum from ' what a great person ' to 'Oh My God I am going to FUCKING DIE in this mans car', and all the stages in between.
We all have our favourite 'I survived' story.
I once sat in the taxi of a hoarder....and how did I know?
Because apart from the actual back seat, the rest of the area- including all the front seats, the area in front of the back window and underneath his feet was piled high- and I mean piled high- with newspapers, bags of things and boxes.
I actually encountered this man twice.
The first time I got in I kept looking for the hidden camera.
The second time I waved him away.
I struggle with a 'neatness fetish' as it is, the last thing I need is a near nervous collapse in the back seat of a fast moving vehicle with a man who collects McDonald's wrappers 'just in case he needs them'.
Most people living here are used to cramped conditions, so I shouldn't have been surprised when I sat in the back of a cab where the driver had turned the whole front dash into a Chinese Garden, replete with several tiny Bonsai trees and living goldfish in a cup sized tank (with filter) all hanging impressively via wire construction woven through his air-conditioning.
And of course, we have all met the part-time-taxi-slash-part-time-Formula-One speed demon.
He is almost ALWAYS accompanied by a Buddha or two in the front seat.
That's great for HIM, HE has a God on his side.
For an Atheist such as myself, all I can do is sit there and hope that whatever we hit contains either marshmallow or firecrackers.
If I'm injured, I feel I would want sugar whilst waiting for my blood to all leak out.
If I die, let it be with a bang.
A death wish in a cabbie I get, remember I suspect most of these people are either on or avoiding medication anyway, but the most genuinely terrifying taxi journey I have ever taken lasted all of 2 minutes and ended in a bingle at an eight lane intersection and the words 'run, he's crazy'.
It started innocently enough.
I was in Kowloon City, and I needed to get to Prince Edward.
For those of you outside the region, this is not a long distance, but it was hot, I wasn't going to walk it, and taxis are cheap.
Waved hand.
Cab stops.
I pop in and announce my required destination "Tai Chi m'goi" and settle back putting on my seat belt.
However else I go, it won't be like Diana.
R.I.P.
Within an instant I knew I was in trouble.
I could fill a book with the number of people I have met who chatter away to themselves whilst driving.
Cabbies are all about mumbling shitfully useless information about the state of the roads, the Government and the fact that their wives are fat and lazy and spend all his money on majong and are never up for sex.
Funny how the first words you really remember in a foreign language are always the ones you can't use in polite company.
But this was not what was happening in THIS taxi...oh no.
My rake thin, wild eyed, human sweat factory was gone, gone gone.
It COULD have been planet Methamphetamine, it was most DEFINITELY planet fully blown psychosis.
He was angry.
FUCKING ANGRY.
And he was telling whomever it was sitting between him and the driving wheel EXACTLY what he was going to do about it.
We lurched from the curb from zero to 60 in about 10 seconds, and whilst he shouted at Mr Invisible, he also managed to change lanes in between every second car, across, across, across again.
My mind went blank.
The Cantonese words for 'take care' are 'Sui Sarm', but they would not come out, I was too busy thinking how to exit the taxi prior to my very obvious imminent deceasement.
As if he could read my mind, he turned and looked at me and shouted " it's Ok, it's OK" and then proceeded to swing wildly in and out of the flow of traffic.
My heart was pounding.
I saw the accident before we actually hit the other car.
It was not terribly fast, but my door was buckled and jammed. Thankfully, I was unhurt.
The driver leapt out, locked the doors and started pounding on the other vehicle.
The other driver looked on with absolute horror as Mr What-The-Fuck went bat shit crazy at every single car now caught up in our 8 lane intersection.
Shouting and beating cars, fighting demons that only he could see.
I kept thinking about all that I had heard about the super human strength of people who are out of their gourd.
I kept thinking this minor accident was a lucky escape.
A woman rushed over to see if I was OK, I unlocked the other door and climbed out.
She grabbed my hand and said, "Run, he's crazy".
Now, I don't think this wonderful lady was a medical professional, but I am going to go with her diagnosis.
Should this man be driving a taxi?
I think no.
It's not indicative of all of the madness on the roads, but it did happen and it serves as a warning.
Normally I am right at home with all forms of ' interesting personality types'.
The term 'mad as a cut snake' is a term of endearment in my World.
Wacky, zany, fruity, odd, nutty-all these are attributes in the creative Universe I choose to inhabit.
Like the taxi driver who sang to me for 20 minutes and then showed me the CD of karaoke hits he had recorded (and,yes, I bought one, I always support The Arts) most people touched by the blunt end of the loony stick are harmless enough.
Sometimes they are even gifted and delightfully entertaining.
And perhaps having them as the nations chauffeurs is not such a bad idea.
A new customer every 15 minutes will keep the Schizophrenics and Multiple Personality Types entertained, the Depressed will have someone to complain to, the Narcissists have plenty of mirrors, the Delusional can be flying aeroplanes or riding Dragons whilst seemingly getting you from point A. to point B. in a car.
Even the Agoraphobics are technically inside.
I think it works.
Of course not for the Münchausen by proxy's- one of the more bizarre of the mental health challenges- but then I am sure they will find a way.
They tend to be clever.
Gainful employment is the way forward for the 'emotionally disordered'.
The deranged, the disturbed and the deviated-they deserve to earn a dollar too.
And they can't ALL be actors.

Is That a Rabbit In Your Handbag, Or Are You Just Pleased To See Me?

You know those "one day we will all laugh about this" moments ?
We are about to share one now.
Before we begin, if you are offended by the words 'vibrator' or ' dirty laundry' or feel you may actually throw up at the thought of me being a sexual being....change this page to Google Image INSTANTLY and type in the words 'kittens with flowers'.
I like the one in the pot.
So, back to my story.
Living in Asia has its advantages.
Proper Laksa. Funny signs. Home help.
I have always been fortunate enough to have the assistance of a lady from a poorer country than my own to clean up my crap when the will has left me.
When my children were smaller, or when I was in the throws of producing a new child- which seemed continuous for 5 years- live in domestic help was a literal life saver.
Very few people have family nearby when they live expatriatly....and quite truthfully there is a lot to be said for paying someone to take the baby for a few hours where and when you need it rather than waiting for the largess of an interfering relative who spends an hour telling you that you need more rest but never gives you any.
Instead of telling me how you did it back in your day, Madam, how about you piss off?
And take the child with you.
Cheersthanksalot.
Cast the clock forward a number of years......I am newly single, living with only my daughter at home, the boys being with their dad, and I still have live in help.
Her name is Lolita- but really- and recently my daughter wrote a blog about her feelings towards this remarkable person.
At least, I came to see her as remarkable.
I am not one of these expats who befriends their maids.
I have lived within the system for too long to see the situation as other than what it really is.
For those of you at home, or in other places, who shake their heads at the servitude or unfairness that is the modern day house servants lot, I say only this.
The Philippines was once rich. Corruption within the country made it poor.
Women suffer the brunt of this unjust history, as women often do.
They work overseas to support their families, they are sometimes mistreated.
It is a job, it is not always a nice job.
There are no other options, other than starvation, for a large number of them.
I wish, with all my heart, that Catholicism and power hungry corrupt men would piss off out of the Philippines so that the women could stop having endless hungry mouths to feed.
Truthfully, I can't make that last thing happen.
So I treat my helpers with the same respect I treat everyone.
That is my little bit, it's not much, but every little bit helps.
OK, are we ready for the vibrator story?
I can't remember if I have told it before, but something happened this weekend that made me think of it, so here we go......
When I was 'newly single blah de blah de blah' as I mentioned earlier, I was working on radio here in HK, doing the Breakfast Show at a station called Metro.
Shit station, shit company, but a gig is a gig.
One morning I raced off to work at the usual time....EARLY....and was standing in my studio minding my own business, drinking coffee and think about how much I hated my Station Manager when BAM...it hit me.
The vibrator I had used to......massage my aching joints.....the night before was laying in its place somewhere in my bed.
Now, we expats play a funny game with the home help.
We pretend they see nothing, they pretend they know nothing, when in fact they see EVERYTHING and know EVERYTHING...so the fact that I had toys was not going to come as a shock to the lovely Lolita.
However in MY head, I had breached some kind of over sharing privacy line.....what was I to do?
The fact that this poor woman had been through hell and back with me and a substance addiction, clinical depression and the break down of my family and marriage was of little consequence to my now panicked mind.
She was sure to make my bed.
And when she did, she would see the vibrator.
And when she did, she would know I'd used it.
Oh, the shame.
Even know I can feel my face in full blown chameleon mode- without the googly eyes.
I rang my daughter, who assured me that finding vibrators in beds would not be a new thing for our maid.
I will not go into any further detail regarding that conversation other than to say, to this day, the very THOUGHT of that conversation make my eyes involuntarily shut.
I managed to make it all the way through my day, and, on getting home, raced into the bedroom to find my bed made, and my now sparkling clean vibrator ( go ahead cringe, I am) placed politely next to my pillow.
We never spoke about it.
I have still not fully recovered from it.
I may NEVER fully recover from it.
I am hoping that by writing it out often enough, the humiliation will drain from my blood.
5 years after the event, I STILL find myself gurning and squirming, and not in a fun way.
So what lead me to write about the 'Lolita and the Vibrator' incident.
Yesterday after work, I was feeling poorly, and I decided a nice set of clean sheets would put things right.
Striped the bed, bundled up the old ones , chucked them in a bag.
I live alone now, well, with my cat, so Guinness and I only indulge ourselves in part time help.
I send all my laundry out to the local guy, Raymond.
Raymond has been doing my washing and drying since the week I moved in to this neighborhood.
Over the years we have chatted, he is about 65, retired from a long career in 5 Star hotels, his daughters work with him, he knows my kids, asks after them often, tells me I am looking nice when I wear make up, he delivers clean dry folded laundry to my house for less than it would cost to buy a Subway sandwich in Australia.
Raymond is one of the nicest men I have ever met.
If you leave 20 cents in a pocket, he will tape it to the receipt.
He once found a lipstick in my dirty clothes and popped it in a bag inside the bag for me with a note saying it looked expensive and he hoped it still worked.
Raymond knows all of his customers by name. He knows their addresses.
If you don't have cash, he will keep a tab, and you can pay him when you get the chance.
Old school top notch service, I admire and respect him.
On my way to drop of the bag of dirty clothes today I was thinking that this perk, Chinese Laundries, is one of the great aspects of living in Asia when it hit me.
Where the fuck was my bright purple vibrator?
The blood literally drained from my face.
Springing a fully loaded adult device on a married woman my age is one thing, after all, she was living away from HER husband, maybe she used one too?
But how the hell would I EVER be able to face this elderly Chinese gentleman again?
And I LOVE the way Raymond folds my things :(
You know the term 'Stop, Drop and Roll' they use for fires ?
In the middle of the street, 10 metres from the shop, I stopped walking, dropped the laundry onto the street, and watched my vibrator roll into the gutter.
In front of a couple of early morning coffee drinkers, I nearly wept with joy.
THANK CHRIST !!!!!!!
I am not a religious person, but I can not tell you just how many deities received my grateful praises at that moment.
That I had remembered BEFORE the laundry went in was, indeed, a miracle.
Even now, I am shaking my head at the sense of relief.
I didn't care that it was now covered in whatever the hell it was covered in, I didn't care that I had to wash it privately in a Pacific Coffee bathroom basin and carry it in my handbag all day....and before you ask why I didn't ditch it, I happen to LIKE this particular Buzzy Friend and when a girl finds something she likes, she sticks with it......also, putting a purple vibrator in a public bin is trashy.
As a key learning point from this experience,I have made a solemn vow to myself to always think about what I do with my battery powered bedtime partners when their participation is over, and to NEVER again leave them alone and abandoned where innocents may discover them.
And that is my story for today.
And because I need to purge the things that pain me, you get to hear about it too.
Some people say it's because a problem shared is a problem halved, I always say, better out than in.
So to speak.

To Love Me Is To Love My Pickle.

It's funny what people will bet on.
I once knew a couple in a relationship so flawed, so disastrous, that on the night of the Engagement party a Tote was produced wherein every one's estimate for the marriages demise was duly noted.
The cruelty of the betting was only offset by the hilarity of the moment, as we one by one tried to second guess which of the partners would kill the other first.
In the end, the couple themselves had the last laugh by quietly disassembling their foreverandeverandever vows in record time whilst both remaining alive and with their limbs intact.
No one won any money.
It was both disconcerting and sad.
Recently, I have been embracing new things.
Since I first heard the phrase at the age of 12, the truism that 'if you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always gotten' has haunted me.
So, having found myself in a mental and physical rut, I decided I would put on my big boy pants( yes, I'm a girl, big girl pants sounds fat) and get out of my comfort zone.
I went to a beer festival.
This may not sound like much, I like beer, and the people were nice, but a beer festival is not a place I would normally go.
I went to a networking event.....if you think I sound socially retarded celebrating my breakthrough beer festival, you would not believe how much the words 'networking event'  make my skin crawl.
But I went, and yes, I networked.
It was held in a private members bar, so it was more drink and talk bullshit than let's make a deal, but then this may actually be the sum total of networking events in general.
I don't really know.
I tend never to go to them.
I even ended up in an acting workshop, and given that the last 10 of those I went to were run by me, the idea of learning performance from a very much younger, albeit highly experienced and disarmingly charming, thespie was somewhat challenging to say the least.
However, there again, I went with an open heart and clouded mind to break out of my self imposed 'leave me alone, I just feel like rotting from the inside out' personal exile.
I am not sure I learned many things, other than the word "ACTIONING" but I enjoyed the process very much and I faced the fear of standing amongst a group of peers with my dick in the wind whilst whistling Dixie with as much courage as I had 'in the moment'.
(Once again, and before we go any further, yes I am STILL a girl, it's just that boys get the better analogies.)
Of the 3 events I have forced myself into over these past 5 days, the one that has woken me up to myself the most, was the 'card swapping is the new butt smelling' soiree.
It had nothing to do with the 400 late-to-the-party-yuppies and their omg-so-retro-eighties-buzzwords, or the 200 or so hangers on who were looking for a life partner based on the cut of a suit or the height of a pair of Jimmy Choo's, it was more something a friend said to me on the night.
This lady, who is all things graceful and positive, reminded me - after  I told her that I had no idea what the fuck I was doing at an event so riddled with irony that my hair was rusting- that the first thing to do was SMILE.
Sounds simple doesn't it.
Just smile Wendy, and people will come up and chat to you.
Now, I love this lady.
She is a genuinely good and open person, highly regarded and very respected.
I looked at her as if she had run headlong into the special needs bus riding a donkey and not wearing a helmet.
But, fuck it.
I'd paid my 90 bucks, and I had a stamp saying two free drinks and so I would stay.....and I would smile.
And wouldn't you know it, within a heartbeat, I was chatting to an exacerbatingly irritating peachy keen young Canadian who was here teaching English at a 3rd rate International school.
He loved EVERYTHING, this guy.
And rather than mentally thrust him into the 'I can't talk to you because you are stealing my oxygen' category, I found myself warming to his enthusiasm and his general happiness.
I SMILED at him, and he smiled back at me, and within seconds I had established that I would never require his services, but I certainly was in need of his felicity.
After all, I wasn't really there to network, just to jump start my well being, and THAT he had in buckets.
It was an epiphany.
I spent another two hours SMILING at people, and chatting about this and that, and deliberately shutting down the Doubting Thomas that lives permanently in my frontal lobe.
I leaned a valuable lesson that night.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
It's not a terribly original concept, but it was one I had let go of.
Much like that 'Wedding of the Blink-or You'll Miss It'.
At least they had a nice party.
I am certain that the time has come to fling myself from a perfectly working aeroplane, or some other such midlife crisis....no doubt I shall embark on a set of hopeless lost causes -like my youth, or the perfect body, or tantric sex- over the next couple of years.
Be patient with me, I walk this road but once and I am a shit navigator.
In the mean time, keep smiling, and remember....you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you'll get what you need.


Finally, as a footnote only:
So, back to the betting.
From now on, for my life, I'm going to have a ratings system for things that appear 'simple, but amusing'....to 'complicated, but irritating' and everywhere in between.
The name of this ratings system is to be called 'The Gerkins'.
This is how I will decide whether or not things require my time.
One Gherkin is a 'don't bother'
Two Gherkins is a 'only if you are out of AAA Bateries'
Three Gherkins is 'you have done worse, suck it and see'
Four Gherkins is 'go for it, and remember to smile'
Five Gherkins is 'You Bloody Beauty'
I think this will help me remain out of my rut, I am a visual kinesthetic learner, these Gherkins are part of my process.
When I go to see things, or do things, or wish to embark upon new things, I shall first visualise these Gherkins.
The more Gherkins that appear in my mind, the more I will embrace these new, and old, events.
I reckon it will work.
They say you attract more bees with honey than with vinegar....but I am prepared to put my money on the vinegar just this once...
And if I win this bet, I KNOW it will have worked.
And if I lose, well, I shall be in a bit of a jam, but not a pickle.

GOOD GOD !!! What just died?

It is said that the average human farts 14 times a day.
I think they all do it on the MTR.
The MTR, for those not in Hong Kong, is an exceptionally well run, efficient, safe, and cheap mostly underground railway system that keeps a city of 8 million moving 18 hours a day.
It is also clean, in the sense that there is no graffiti on the walls, no rubbish in or around the stations, no broken or disgusting bits anywhere....except the air.
On a winters day, with the heaters on the train set to 'toasty but comfortable', the smells that emanate inside carriages could kill a canary.
A Scottish one.
And those buggers are hardy.
It's obviously not the fault of the people who run the MTR.
It's not like they can put up signs that say " Please do not fart on the MTR".
This isn't Singapore.
Plus, it's not just the bottom end gasses that cause offense.
Anyone who has lived for 30 seconds in Asia has come to appreciate the delicate aromas that can be left on the breath after a lunch of broccoli and garlic and a plate of hitherto dried and desiccated seafood.
Nothing says 'yummo' to the average Honkie like a snack of roasted dried squid coated in 'what the fuck, lets use all the spices' powder.
I have eaten that stuff.
It smells amazing while it's being cooked.
What does NOT smell amazing whilst it's being cooked is what is known in Cantonese as 'chow dofu', which literally means 'smelly bean curd', which is just like regular tofu only it's left to 'ferment'- ie:rot- and THEN cooked.
To try and describe it in print would be like me trying to explain the ever expanding Milky Way in a Hai Ku.

Ever expanding
Yet you began as nothing
So, how does that work?

OK, maybe I CAN do that....
I shall try a Hai Ku to the smell of Chow Dofu.

Unwashed Vagina's
How can you be so rancid
And yet delicious?

Hmmmm....I feel it doesn't 'scan', as they say.
I have never eaten Chow Dofu....I just can't get past the smell.
I do love the regular stuff though, and at my age appreciate the gloriousness of phytoestrogens wrapped up in easily digestible food.
Asian women do not suffer the menopause so much, they say....bring THAT on.....I say.
Speaking of suffering, I caught a news article ( if we can call what I am about to describe as 'news' and not 'advertorial', which is what it was called in MY day, however, moving right along) about a certain cheaper end clothing chain selling a very-famous-to-the-young-and-hip designer ware at a fraction of the cost of the REAL label this week.
Oh, the World was aflutter....so I took a look at the said so-cool-it-would-melt-the-Arctic clothing and I have to ask.
Are you all fucking blind?
I mean SERIOUSLY???
Prints that make anorexics look fat, tops that suit neither women WITH breasts, nor WITHOUT, and fashion accessories that look like they were thrown away by the Imagineering costumers at Disney??
Has the World gone mad?
When did dressing like a 1960's special needs kid become fashionable ? (With respect and apologies to the special needs kids of the decade of love and new fangled drip dry materials).
I have long had an issue with the fashion industry, having worked for a heart beat with a design company way back in the old days where part of my gig was to 'Host' their runway shows in Grace Brothers to try and explain to Sydney's middle classes why they needed to dump their perfectly good shirts of last season for this years ones.
I have personally stood next to 'designers' who have over bought material from a dodgy supplier and PERSONALLY heard the words " How will we get rid of this shit?".
Easy, it would appear.
Get a bunch of drug fuelled 'fashion writers' to the early showing, force feed them champagne cocktails, and get someone like me to ramble at them about 'newyounghipcoolhoturbanrebelretro' until their eyelids peel back.
Then set up a photo shoot is a suitably grungy (yet accessible to the middle classes) locale with a leggy '15-but-could-be-18-so-it's-ok-if-you-want-to-either-be-her-or-bang-her-year-old-female' and a 'clearly-gay-but-lets-call-it-metro-male'.
Slam the whole lot together in a schmick press release- along with a freebie for the writer and a bottle of Moet for the editor and badabing badabung...FASHION.
Goodness me.
It's so easy, even a child could do it, and in most cases in terms of the ages of the people involved, it is.
Sure, I know I sound old and cynical, and I can live with that.
I grew up throughout the 80's.
I wore things with shoulder pads.
I've been a victim too.
In life, we all have moments of being a winner and a loser.
On the MTR, with the air of a million commuters gently flowing through my hair, I don't always feel like a winner....but I would rather die of asphyxia on public transport than wrap my aging body in clothing not even Minnie Mouse would wear.
Mass produced individuality?
That REALLY stinks.

A noise annoys an oyster, but a noisy noise is just as sweet.

The difference between amateur and Professional theatre is that amateur thespies take themselves very, very seriously.
This statement comes on the back of a delightfully bitchy week in the local English speaking amdram scene in HK.
And yes, there is one.
A large and very sensitive one.
It all started when someone didn't like a show.
And then said so.
Online.
And then it began and............
Oooooooooooooh, the flailing!!
Oooooooooooooh the gnashing of teeth !!!
Ooooooooooooooh the beating of chests.
T'was all amusement, for you see, the show itself- which I declined to see in spite of having been offered two sets of free tickets, and the reasons for which I shall discuss later in this blog- may actually not have been very good.
I base this idea on the straw pole of 30 or so people whom I know who had seen it, and had volunteered that information.
I feel certain some people DID like it.
I feel there must have been some interesting elements.
I feel certain the cast wished it to be good, and that they moved in a sort of 'let's try and be good' direction.
I don't think it was a lack of effort.
However, sadly, effort on stage may not be enough.
Sometimes, things just suck a little. No matter how much we love them.
However, as I did not see this show, that is only a guess, and one made in passing.
I did not see this show because I have seen many, many,many shows involving this company and cast members and I didn't like them.
I didn't like their acting, their interpretation, and their execution, and I personally feel that if you keep doing the same thing again and again and then bitch about the result, you are either clinically insane or irretrievably stupid.
I am trying not to be those things, so I have stopped paying to see theatre produced by this company.
End of story.
The director of this company has described me as ignorant.
So be it.
In this case, ignorant bliss is a chosen position, not a defaulted one.
But it brings me to my point.
When did we stop calling a spade a spade?
Recently I was directing a play for teens at an International School.
A boy, whom we shall call Brendan, was behaving in the most appalling manner at every rehearsal.
Disruptive and selfish, he deliberately white anted the performances of others by scene stealing and cat calling.
Set aside, and having been advised by his parents, his teachers and myself to behave, he continued to find a way to upset the cast by more subtle means.
Lost scripts, late arrival, continued this, that and the other.
He is 13.
During the final line run, and with the audience lining up outside , he decided that when it was his delivery, he would deliberately speak as slowly as possible in order to disrupt flow.
I turned to him and said " Brendan, stop being a dickhead"
Well.
His mother called.
Why would I use that language in front of a child ? How could I work with children if I did?
Why would I single him out like that? Surely there were other ways to manage his behaviour?
I listened, and listened......and listened until she had said her piece.
I apologised for swearing (God knows, that kids tongue could light litmus paper but whatever) and then, words failed me.
"Mrs Brendan's Mummy", I said, searching for another way to say it but finding none" The thing is, at that time, well, Brendan WAS BEING a dickhead".
Silence on the phone.
You see, she knows he was.
She hates him more than I do, and she's his mum.
This kid is constantly in trouble, removed from all privileges, a total nightmare who - by her own admission- brings her to tears daily.
She needs therapy.
He needs therapy.
And a bloody great thwack across the legs with a whippy bit of willow.
But to say such things, in 2012 after all, is not done.
We call punishment 'consequences' and shit service 'less than optimal'.
We give mamby pamby names to our unhappiness and bleat when we don't get what we want.
I don't know about you, but I am all for saying what you mean, and meaning what you say.
It may seem archaic, but in terms of social evolution, it has gotten us to this point, and with governments the world over spinning their wheels, perhaps it's time to re investigate the old ways.
I was recently asked in a bank why I didn't choose a particular service on offer.
I looked the bank manager in the eye and told her it was because the way she suggested cost me more money that the way I wanted to do it, and I didn't want to pay her bank any more fees than I already did.
She seemed quite surprised.
Not that I knew about the tricks of the trade, but that I'd said those words aloud.
How embarrassing.
A truth.
How inconvenient, as they say.
So I say, good on you those in the crowd prepared to shout out that the emperor has no clothes.
Speak the words you mean to say, and do not apologise.
Whatever discomfort you may feel initially will be more than compensated by knowing you have spoken what you feel to be true.
This is, still, a democracy after all, and freedom of speech is not just a birthright, it's an obligation.