Going slightly mad...

You know something's very very wrong when you resort to doing household chores to warm yourself up.  You know, ironing: heat source in itself; washing-up: mmm hot water; hoovering: gets the heart-rate rising and a small brow-bead does form.  And it would be wrong enough to be doing that in England and its Baltic winters, but in Hong Kong??  Isn't this supposed to be the Land of the Rising Sun?  Or am I confused with the House of the Rising Sun?  No, that can't be right as everyone knows that's in New Orleans.  But, I digress.

You'd be forgiven for thinking, especially with the blog just 2 weeks ago, that I'm somewhat obsessed with the weather.  Well, to a certain degree, I am; I wouldn't be British otherwise, young chap.  But it's more than that here.  The climate is absurdly integral to life down Honkers way.  It affects pretty much everything and so when the temperature drops to 7°C, as it did today (and has been hovering around 10 all week) it's cause for much alarm, as the majority of the year it's 27°C (not forgetting the supremely comfortable humidity of 80%+; this week it's down at around 45%).

Now, I can hear you all "pfft-ing" from here - shaking your heads thinking I've been over here for far too long if I'm moaning about a trifling 7 degrees being cold.  What you folks might not know or have not remembered, is that these buildings have NO HEATING WHATSOEVER.  That's right (in case you didn't get it from the capitals - I am one of those people that means to do it ;) ), no radiators, none of those little pre-central heating vents in the floor, no lovely open fireplaces, not even a column of stone that heats up (a la apartments in Krakow).  Plus they are generally fitted with my least favourite kind of windows.  That's the 'pretty crappily installed so they don't fit properly' kind.  It's howling an absolute gale in 'ere, I tell thee.

So essentially, I have spent every day this week when I've not been out, making a kind of nest for me and the kittens in our bedroom and only venturing out when one of us absolutely needs something.  I've put on all the warm clothes I have - including two pairs of socks, plus a hat and scarf; cranked up the only pathetic little fan heater we have which isn't actually powerful enough to take on the draft from the windows, a gnat's fart would probably be more effective; and more often than not, I'm to be found under the covers of the bed.  As I am now.

So spare a thought for me, Pies and the kitties (about whom I will blog soon, I promise) when you're stoking the old fire or whacking the thermostat up to 30 - clearly the building developers didn't spare a single one when planning these high-rises! 

The symbol above is the Cold Weather warning that they display on the Hong Kong Observatory's website to let people know it might get a bit parky.  Its official (and hugely resourceful) instructions are: 

1. Members of the public are advised to put on warm clothes and beware of low body temperature due to the cold weather

2. If you must go out, avoid prolonged exposure to wintry winds

3. If you know of elderly or persons with chronic medical conditions staying alone, call or visit them occasionally to check if they need any assistance

4. Make sure heaters are safe before use, and place them away from any combustibles

Phew - good job they wrote those, I was just about to go out in a bikini and stand about for hours.  However, I do love how you're only advised to check on the elderly 'occasionally'...

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Take some time to smell the cheese - part two

Clearly taking my wine with me was the smart idea after all, as, while Massimo got cracking with the Cheese Soufflé that was dish three of the evening's four, wine dude made himself useful and brought me a refill.  I did feel marginally like the only alcoholic in the room - is it normal to drink on a Tuesday night? - but it went so incredibly well with the cheese, that it would have been rude not to.

Whilst the soufflé was cooking, Massimo didn't waste any time in showing us how to make Parmesan Cheese Fritters, and the sex-starved loons wasted no time in questioning him over the recipe we'd been given which didn't remotely detail the method he was using.  Hmm...maybe I'll allow them that one.

The fritters didn't take very long at all and were served with the Italian equivalent of the 'Colonel's' KFC sauce: Massimo's 'secret recipe' tomato sauce, the ingredients of which he point-blank refused to divulge, no matter how many coy or coquettish looks they threw his way.  It went super-well with the cheesey pancake thingies though, so I didn't much care.

Soufflé, schmoufflé.  Waaay too much effort for a so-so-tasting result.

And then, with the last mouthful swallowed, that was it.  As if everyone had collectively and simultaneously remembered they'd left the gas on, I had to finish up my wine and stuff my recipes in my bag sharpish, or risk being left there alone.

As luck would have it, the ferry ride home was mercifully calm.  Much as I did feel slightly uncomfortable from all the cheese-eating (and mayybee the wine), I wasn't too keen on seeing it in reverse.

PS If you want any of the cheesey recipes, let me know.  However, you might want to contact Sainsbury's or the Ocado man in advance: if you plan to cook all four dishes on the same day, you'll need a whopping 21 eggs!

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Take some time to smell the cheese - part one

Mmm.  I do like cheese.  And thus, where better to schlep my ass than Wanchai, for a cheese cooking class - bearing in mind that this involves going to Central on the ferry for 25 minutes waiting, 20 minutes in the noise and pollution for a bus, only to sit in traffic for a further 20 minutes; I nearly missed the cheese!  But boy.  Was it worth it.

That’s not to say I wasn’t a bit disconcerted when, upon being ‘escorted’ up two flights of steep stairs (clearly your man had taken a look at me and judged I wouldn’t be able to follow the instruction “go upstairs to the second floor”), I found twenty or so people seated round two tables, looking like they were about to be served dinner.  Where were the banks of lab-style desks, complete with individual hobs and recessed sinks?  Why had nobody told me to bring a pinny and some ingredients?  Ah.  Because it’s not a home ec class, you nincompoop.  One corner of the room was a kitchen and one person would be actually cooking: Massimo, the Italian chef.  The rest of us had paid to watch him and eat whatever he cooks.  Oh, ok then.  If I really must.  *Sigh*.

So we got down to business.  Clearly some people had been before as there was a stampede akin to that on an African plain of wildebeests when a lion enters their midst, as the area immediately in front of the kitchen counter was filled with cheese-hungry crazies, brandishing - and using as optimum-viewing-spot weapons - their recipe clipboards.  Sheesh. Being super-nonchalant and laid back as you know I am, I sauntered over, and just to add a touch of rebellion, I left my clipboard on the table.  I know.  I’ll let you know when I’m starting my revolution.

Turns out there was another reason why these women were desperate to be at the front.  (There were two men there, but their approach to the cooking corner fell more in to my ‘well-styled amble’ camp.)  And that reason would be the Italian stalion that was Massimo - or at least if they knew the phrase, I’m sure that’s what they’d have called him.

As he got the cooking underway, they bombarded him with inane or banal questions, initially about the food - "how much cheese would you use, 350 grammes or 700?" Er, the recipe you're clutching in your grubby little hand says 500 grammes, so how about you try that, hmm? - and then moving on to more personal matters - "do you have a girlfriend?"  "No."  "Ohh; do you have a boyfriend, then?" - Titters all round.  All the while they were simpering and fawning over him, poor chap.  It was hideous.

The first thing he cooked us was Fonduta di Formaggio - that's cheese fondue to you and me - and it was excellent. The girl next to me loved it so much that even when she'd run out of toasted bread cubes, she continued to use the toothpick (that had been stuck in each piece of bread) to scrape more creamy cheeseness into her mouth - we were given individual pots of fondue, by the way.  Fortunately, it was at this point that some dude appeared at my elbow to ask that ever-redundant question, "would you like some wine?"  Surprisingly, the wine was pretty damn fine (I just assumed we'd be fobbed off with something cheap as most locals don't drink - mind you, I'm not sure that most locals eat cheese, either!)  So good was it, that when we resumed our positions to watch Massimo prepare Smoked Scamorza wrapped in Speck, I took my glass with me.  For some reason, nobody else did this...

(Oh, I couldn't find any pictures online of the dish itself, so these are pictures of its component parts - scamorza cheese and speck ham.)

After 10 minutes in the oven (an odd manner of cooking given that 95% of Hong Kong kitchens are lacking such a device), the melty cheesey ham parcels were ready and was by far my favourite dish of the whole night.  

I also forgot to mention, the scamorza was passed round for smelling prior to cooking, and it smelled just like bacon tastes!  Genius!

Continued in the next blog posting...

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Anyone have a child I can borrow?

See, this is the problem with not having produced offspring just yet; apart from them being irritating, smelly, whingey little blighters, they can also be quite useful.

Take yesterday for example, when into my inbox I received a jolly exciting email. It appears that from 9th to 13th December, Thomas & Friends are going to be "Live! On Stage" (their exclamation mark, not mine; presumably Thomas is going to burst forth from a cake or something, hence the ! for surprise…) That's Thomas the Tank Engine for you uninitiated out there, who has to be the coolest engine ever dreamt up by a Reverend for his son during a bout of the measles.

But of course, I can't go. While I might get away with it slightly more surreptitiously than if Pies wanted to see Gordon, James, et al, being a girl rather than a potential paedamophile, the absence of a child in tow (probably screaming that he wanted to see that big purple dinosaur - you know how ungrateful they can be) might alert the angry mob that something's amiss.

Same with the Picnic in the Park last weekend: could I go on the bouncy castles? No. Could I get my face painted like a tiger? No. Could I terrorise the patrons by tearing around on my scooter with wheels that light up? No. And all would have been (just about) acceptable had I been able to say, "Oh, I have to set an example for little Zia/Marcheline/Xanthe/Achilles; he/she won't do it unless they're copying me."

Lame. Guess I'll just have to remember I'm thirty, and should really start acting like an adult.



Hee hee hee...

Photo © Keith Packer circa 1987 (and contrary to popular belief, I am not pregnant in this photo!)

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Picnic in the Park

Only in Hong Kong would you get lackeys emptying (well attempting to anyway) the bins when they're not even half full...what a waste of time and resources.  Especially when these bins are clearly designed to be emptied by a big truck - not a couple of numpties who ended up tipping the bin on its side to get to the few things at the bottom, and then left the black bag behind!

This was Discovery Bay's 4th annual Picnic in the Park where the rich and the even-richer gather in Siena 'Park' - we had more grass in the garden at the house in North Cheam - with their myriad offspring and even myriad-er dogs (I've told you before, us writers are allowed to make up words when the sentence calls for it) to fill their faces with processed food from polystyrene dishes and warm beer from plastic pint glasses - kind of like Glastonbury but with less mud and more children.  Hmm...yeah, you're right, it's nothing like Glastonbury.

But I am making it sound terrible, which it wasn't. Some of the acts were good, The DB Big Band being particularly superb - love a bit of In the Mood - until they did a ridiculously out-of-genre cover of 'Knock on Wood' where they employed the non-existent singing talents of some loser woman - maybe just don't bother with that one in the future, yeah?  Clearly they were hoping that after 6 and a half hours of the PiP (oh yes, there was an acronym, and no it didn't stand for Performance Improvement Plan, Accenture peeps, though after Knock on Wood, it possibly should have) everyone would have drunk enough to think it was well cool.  And sure enough, some people were vigorously jigging up and down.  People who definitely should not have been jigging up and down.

It was good to have a day of entertainment (obviously using the term loosely) right on the doorstep, yet far away enough from our actual flat that I didn't have to listen to it constantly, and as I'm sure most of you know, I'm a big fan of outdoor drinking - made even better by the free entry and the 'free' beers which I brought from the fridge.   Half the reason we moved here to be honest; it's nice to be part of a community.

Plus, the one good thing to be learnt from the day was that there are still some nice, polite children out there, which I discovered when I saved a very small child from falling off the kerb I was sitting on and the slightly bigger child who was running after her thanked me profusely.  Well done that child; or more to the point, well done those parents.  I'd just assumed all the kids here were ill-mannered brats.

PS don't ask me what the tents were for - this thing only went on from 11am - 9pm; did people really need an afternoon nap?  Mmm...now there's a good idea.

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Summer in November

Finally. Being in a tropical climate has paid off.

Today, due to a northeast monsoon over the South China Sea, the humidity has dropped to 50%, the temperature is more like 20°C and there are breezes, the likes of which we never get unless a typhoon's coming and that usually involves lashings of rain and the battening down of hatches! (Does one ever batten anything other than a hatch??) 

So, on 3rd November, we have got weather like the British summer days of old. Keen to reminisce on the lazy times oft spent on the Common back in England, but mainly to escape the incessant and skull splittingly-loud drilling from next door's builders, I brought notebook and pen to the local landscaped gardens as the deadline for a short story competition I'm entering is today! It's glorious here: I can hear birds, the water spouting from the fountain, the wind in the palm trees and the occasional plane taking off (though fortunately, the good people that plan these things put the airport on the other side of the island we live on so it's fairly muted). 

Now I'm back in the flat, I need to crack on with editing said short story so I'm afraid I'll have to leave you chaps there. Here's a couple of pics (pretty lame quality as they were taken on my phone) so you can imagine me on my bench, scribbling away, at one with nature. 

PS Don't worry too much chaps, it's heading back up to 29°C and 90% humidity next week. Can't wait...

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