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.