NOOOOOOOOOO….!!!!!!

Hollywood’s gonna remake Akira into a live-action film.

Is nothing sacred anymore??!?!?!?

I *heart* Hong Kong

Not.

So after ten days in Singapore, we return to an ice box of a house. From about mid-January, we’ve been having miserably cold weather here. Can’t be surprised there – China is having its worst winter in … what… fifty years? 

But it isn’t the cold weather here per se that’s bothering me. It’s the lack of central heating. You heard me. NO CENTRAL HEATING. What’s the big deal with that, you ask? Well, when you live in a city that insists on believing it’s in the tropics, you get idiots that build buildings like it’s the tropics. No insulation, no carpeting, no built-in heaters, no two-way aircons. So all over Hong Kong, people are suffering. Because our damned apartments and houses are not built for the cold. It’s not that I refuse to spend the money to warm the house up. It’s just not possible.

Sure, we don’t have issues like frost bite here, but nothing is more miserable than coming in from the cold outside to be welcome in the house by even more cold. A Korean friend of mine said it’s minus 9 degrees in Seoul, but at least everyone’s toasty in the house. A girlfriend in NYC was bitching about the sub-zero temps, but said she never froze her arse off like she did living in Hong Kong. I for one sorely miss the nicely-warmed computerized toilet seats that we had in Tokyo. I’m just wondering what the point of having shelter from the cold is when it actually feels colder indoors than out. We now live around our radiators and fan heaters. Is this any way to live?

But of course, I run on too long about the cold. It actually got warmer the past few days. A few degrees up. And all the difference it makes. And the sun was out too. Yay. Or more like, almost a yay. Because with the sunshine, blue skies and mild cold, came the POLLUTION. Yes, the hazy cloud of pollutants that will insist on ruining every pleasantly sunny day I’ve had out here for the past eight months.

And so it’s time to say goodbye. Literally. The sands are shifting and we find ourselves packing our bags and boxes yet again. While I will miss Smallville, this little piece of surreal living, I can’t say I will miss Hong Kong. Good riddance and I will give D so much crap if he ever EVER moves us back here again. 

10: The new 4

Have you noticed how our children are getting bigger and bigger ang paos (red packets) at Chinese New Year? Is ten the new four? Where are all the two dollar notes? I was counting the kids’ takings this year and there was hardly any purple at all. All reds, and some blues too. Has inflation hit the ang paos too?

Just as I was pondering all this, I remembered I had promised S she could take a little something from her ang pao money and buy something. A lesson on our part to teach her about money and counting and all that other stuff. It seemed only convenient to take the odd three two-dollar bills in her stack and give it to her. Except I didn’t. I thought about it some and then balked at the idea. I mean, I used to get 50 cents a day when I was seven. Is six dollars too much for an almost four year old?

Anyway, all that pondering and back and forth proved useless. S’s forgotten about my offer and the money has since been whisked off to the bank and deposited into her bank account, unbeknownst to her. And so I postpone yet another tricky issue for another year. Hopefully by then I can figure out what’s an appropriate sum for a nearly five year old.