I love teaching children English, and yet felt
like a Teacher Martyr awakening this morning, my body racked with coughs, and yet on the horizon a large rickety Chinese ocean
ship.
The weather has turned quite cold, and I have only
summer bedding, one thin blanket with faded quilting.
Laura called me last night quite worried about
me, and pledged to hunt aroundfor spare bedding. there will be an electric blanket, andwe laughed about possible electruction
due to the strange ill-shapen outlets in the room
I have tried to ket the kettle to plug in, with
no success, and will have tomove it to the telefvision socket.
You can be sure whatever banana republic you are
in around the world, some things work. The television, and the sex trade, and the bill collector.
I am dreading going back to Chamma Tau to collect
towels, sheets, dishes and the beautiful wicker chairs I had to leave - this furniture Ineed, and thelonger I leave this,
the more tension builds up.
The collapse of our dream, that we would marry
here and have good jobs, not the best - just any sort of good teaching and computer work - has fizzled.
What is successful about me, having hundreds of
thousands of readers, is only makingmoney for others, as Iwant todo the ads on my sites myself.
Still, I am grateful to America for helping me
to do this, and especially the Internet world - I truly am, for I was rejected always by New York publishing, and now I have
more readers than other friends of my literary youth who received steady government arts grants, for their books that
are never once taken out of the Canadian public library system.
It is important for a writer to have readers, just
as a restaurant exists to provide food.
The cost of the battery for the laptop is a shocker
so Iam still at that level, and if I fall ill for a month...
I must rush the business ideas I am working on
faster, for Hong Kong is not even remotely as luxuriant as Shenzhen, where I had a whole sunny bright floor of a house to
myself - six spotless rooms, high ceilings, tropical fans, a large balcony, and Chinese landladies who made me dinner several
time a week, and gave me so much insight into Chinese family life.
The griminess of Hong Kong at lower levels, and
that includes educated middle-class jobs where you have to work six days a week...yet worst of all, the subway crushes.
I had a nourishing breakfast of soya milk, peanuts,
white fried bread - not so healthy, and a charming cup of almost hot Hong Kong Coffee.
I found all the breakfast cafes here, andwas temporarily
dismayed to find that most of them serve meaty eggs - called omelettes optimistically, and white sandwich bread with various
toppings.
I tried for China foods, like the egg rolled pancake,
and they suggested McDonald's quickly, too quickly, assuming that is all we eat in our foreign countries, and that is all
we will ever eat.
I was miffed at the cafe I usually go to, as I
want a hot drink in themorning to clear my coughing, and there was no tea there today.
I settled on going back there for breakfast, and
found in the recesses of their kitchen they did make coffee.
If I was back in China, would visit a good Chinese
doctor, and get a bunch of small bags of herbs to brew on my stove.
I gave up so many things to try to start my own
businesses, and will keep doing this, until I can.
Looming up this - avian bird flu, a nothingness
that will puff up into a very huge somethingness, and stock market ups and downs, and the doubling of rents here which will
cause so much hidden pain.
The way the Chinese hide their pain and suffering
is convenient for the bright breezy style of a tourist driven city.
Began a new teaching job for private contacts and
the mother was grateful for the detailed forms I made,
Parental Input Forms.
This allows the parents to check on a weekly basis
every new thing they would like to me to add, subtract, or change in their tutoring.
Shrinking economies as Hong Kong will be with so
much money drained out of consumer spending and into rents, and this is happening too in Vancouver, Canada, have fearfulness
which inhibits original business thoughts.
Thomas Edison is one of my favourite heros of history.
The Corporate World would have written him off, as he was actually sent home from school, and his own mother had to educate
him.
He went on to discover electric light, and the
light he sheds by his example is a powerful lesson.
Laura is a good friend to my dream of being an
entrepreneur, when we ate dinner in Xing Xing, she noted everything the restaurant was doing to lose money when it could have
been making money!
She also has a good sense of humour.
Last night on the phone I said, You sound a lot
more cheerful.
That's because you are doing my
university paper, she laughed.
Sharing the university paper,
I said, as she had brought it as far as she could go on her own, and simply could not understand the convoluted instructions.
I would close, May be the light be with you, except
that it's time I kept some of it for myself.
