Yesterday, while I was in Singapore teaching, my father's mother died. The end was both slow and quick. Slow because, after 85 years, and a few in declining health, including the last 18 months in a care home, with arthritis, osteoporosis, pneumonia and probably other problems; after a few scares she, to nobody's surprise, died. Quick, because it's a binary thing, you're either there or not, and she was, and now she's not.
Dad and Mam are in the Algarve on holiday, I'm in Hong Kong and Paul's back in Toronto. So I felt a bit disconnected and lost last night when I heard the news. It's a very weird feeling. I loved my grandmother, even though we didn't know each other very well. I left Ireland when I was 4 and other than her holidays in Canada and mine in Ireland - and the one year I spent in Dublin in university - we didn't spend a lot of time together. But what we did spend I loved.
My memory of her is different from her other grandchildren, and different again of her children. She was for each of us, who knew her at different times, a different woman. For me she was quiet, sweet, funny, generous and kind. When I was in university my college was around the corner from the flat she and my grandfather had. A few times a week I would bring over a loaf of bread and some ham and the three of us would have lunch in their tiny flat in front of the electric fire. That's the memory I'm keeping in my head today as I remember her.
The last night that she lived, It was a common night, Except the dying; this to us Made nature different.
We noticed smallest things, -- Things overlooked before, By this great light upon our minds Italicized, as 't were.
That others could exist While she must finish quite, A jealousy for her arose So nearly infinite.
We waited while she passed; It was a narrow time, Too jostled were our souls to speak, At length the notice came.
She mentioned, and forgot; Then lightly as a reed Bent to the water, shivered scarce, Consented, and was dead.
And we, we placed the hair, And drew the head erect; And then an awful leisure was, Our faith to regulate.
I'm sitting here listening to a lovely song, sweet melody by a lady with a beautiful voice. But, more importantly she's singing something sweet and nice, love-songish. Then of course the obligatory rap interlude comes up (because it's always "Some Chick, feat. Some fucking rapper" on these things.) And I'm treated to 30 seconds of rap. Now, if the guy had listened to the song, and put together some thoughtful ruminations on the same bloody topic, then it would be a nice stylistic juxtaposition. But no, he's too macho to do that, it'd be gay to, you know, write about love and stuff. So instead we go from a woman singing a sweet sultry voice, to a guy rappin' about how his baby-girl is gonna love his 'thang'. ugh. It's like hearing Nina Simone doing a duet with John Belushi from Animal House.
I got better things to do with my time I dont care anymore I dont care anymore
-Phil Collins
It's rare that I will reach for the words of a poet to express myself, but my mood today calls for the (ahem) brilliance of Mr. Collins. Back in Toronto I was a news addict. I would read websites, papers and sometimes watch TV (although TV news is horrible most of the time, so I preferred news magazine shows that showed some depth). Of course, living in North America, most of the news is US-centric. Then last year I od'd on the US election and was happy as shit when Obama won. But now, not so much.
I have to say that i'm going off news in a big way. And especially off news of the USA. Nothing wrong with America, it's a lovely place but right now i'm 10,000 miles away, and the news is all stupid political bullshit. I can't bear anymore to hear no-nothing talking head idiots going on and on about the economic mess that the US is in (and is causing in the world). I really don't care anymore.
The world will go on, and what will happen, will happen even if I don't read this crap. So I'm going to break my habit, cut the cord, go cold turkey. It's a mental and emotional waste for me and I realise it's not making me smarter or more interesting to give a rats fuck about any of it.
So, good-bye, Slate, Salon, boingboing, Consumerist, Huffington Post, Globeandmail, BBC, ananova and all your pals. From now on I'm reading Cracked.com and Lol catz, with the occaisional geeky read through wikipedia.
It's very warm and wet here in HK. It seems to be a standard state of affairs here, that except for the period between Christmas and just after Chinese New Year, you will either be rained on or sweaty. It makes sense to me now that you see athelete's foot referred to as "Hong Kong Foot".
I'm not complaining, but it's hard to maintain your composure in a suit in this place. There's not much news from here to tell.. which is why in the last few days we've been planning stuff and trying to schedule more interesting things to do. Not much point in flying all the way over here and getting into the same kinda rut we were in at home. But still life's fun and different here. I'm being sent off to Singapore next week for work again. Eric's going into China about once a week these days for work.
I'm really digging the work I am doing. The teaching is fun, and I'm branching into doing some course design for them too. What I wanna do is do more workshop kinda things, and less directly ESL and more soft skills kind of thing (communication skills etc.) As well i'm negotiating with someone in Canada to bring over a course that is produced there, and localising it for China. It's terribly exciting and I hope it comes together.
oh oh oh. I did have one kinda funny adventure. I went for dinner with an ex student of mine, with whom I kept in touch after class finished. We met for dinner occasionally, and last week after dinner he suggested we go for a beer and asked if I knew of a gay bar in the area. I guess my credibility as a gay beacon is safe. So we took him to his first gay bars on Friday and I think he'll be fine!!
Since returning to HK things have been crazy busy for both of us. Eric has been up to China a couple of times an down to Australia, and I was in the Philippines. But of course, not at the same time. It's been a bit whirlwind and will probably continue to be so for a while. He's off up to China this week for a day or two, and there's a small chance my work will fly me to Singapore again in a couple of weeks for another course. But it's good, we're enjoying it.
Right now is rainy season here. After a dry April we're getting wet now. It's been raining for 3 days without let up and will continue through the weekend before we see the sun. Things will dry up later in the summer (right in time for typhoon season) I'm told. It's incredible to believe we've been here 10 months already. Crazy!!
Work is going pretty well, it's busy but not unbearable, and I have the strange sensation of actually liking what I'm doing. I am looking at starting a couple of new projects here with my company. They're trying to expand what they offer, and I'm hoping to be part of that.
After the adventure of the broken ankle and the dog, and the travel home etc. this month seems pretty tame by comparison. But i like it that way. I get to explore more of the city that way and enjoy life. it's sweet.
I'm at the airport now on my way home to HK from my 4 day trip to Singapore. I have to say i'm not super impressed with Changi Airport (side note, just saw the crew board my plane YUMMY!!! i seriously thing the HR manager at Cathay must be gay!). It's not particularly well organized, the immigration stuff is a nightmare, and it's generally confusing. That said, the restaurants are plentiful and no more of a ripoff than they are in town.
Singapore is a fun city; it’s warm and damp, and tropical. Not much different from Kuala Lumpur last December, except less chaotic and dirty. On the plane I was talking to a local businessman and he described the difference between HK and SG as “In Hong Kong, until the government bans it, something is legal, in Singapore, until the government gives you permission, it’s illegal.” That does seem to be the case here. It’s funny you really do get a sense of control in this city. Funny but you can really feel freedom sometimes. In my head I have a picture of oppression taken from novels about the cold war. People in grey clothing line up at shops for nearly non-existent food rationed by dour functionaries of a totalitarian regime. But Singapore is bright, clean, well-stocked (in fact I’m told that Orchard St is a shopping orgy – I’ll avoid it for a number of reasons). Gays are illegal but relatively un-molested, prostitution is illegal and yet easily, obviously, wonderfully available (there are a dozen side streets in Guylain that host the hookers, and # 16 is the one for ladyboys), and yet people are not really free here. They’ve had one party in power for their entire 50 year existence, with 3 Prime Ministers, (1 and 3 are father and son). Oh, and they kill drug dealers here, and cane vandals. I don’t know if I’m being paranoid when I say I can feel it, but I think I can.
I am sure that you make accommodations when you live here, but I guess that’s the definition of freedom: when you don’t have to make any. But that makes me wonder if we make such accommodations at home in Canada, but we’re just so used to them that we don’t notice anymore. I’m not sure, it’ll be easy to see how we react when we return to Canada permanently.
So since arriving I’ve seen a number of hipon (Filipino for shrimp) with lovely bodies and not so lovely faces. I love the distinction (shrimp are served in asia with the head still on, and you tear it off and eat the body, so a guy with a hot body but a so-so face is a shrimp or hipon). I’ve also seen some just plain lovely boys here. WAH! As Steve would say.
I bought a new pair of flip flops. From what I’ve seen and read that’s the national footwear here in SG. I will post some pics when I get home and can upload them.
OH and on another note, Eric and I are in cell phone hell. It started when I bought an LG phone in December. Turns out it was a piece of shit. After turning it in for repair - twice - it is still no better. It's in again and they called to tell me its fine. As I tried to explain to them either it's working as it should, in which case it's a crap design. Or it's not working as it should in which case it's a piece of crap phone. However, sarcasm does not work. In the meantime Eric bought a blackberry recently and gave me his old iphohe. I was the one who originally opened that one up and got it to work in Canada and here. So i decided to re-open it and upgrade and fiddle with it. And in so doing I think i've fucked it. *sigh* so tonight when I'm back in HK I will spend a few hours working to fix it. In the meantime I have been using a Motorola that has been my backup, but on Friday night I went to plug it in and recharge it and discovered that it won't take a charge at all! So I've been phoneless for 2 days. Fucking technology!!! THEN Eric discovered that the Blackberry he bought is still locked to the old network for email. So unless he can get a hold of the person he bought it from, it's only ever going to be a nice phone and not the email device it was kinda of designed to be.
Technology (and our reliance on it) sucks.
Boarding soon, see you all back in HK (and TO in a few short weeks)
Renewal comes with destruction. It's natural, it is why forest fires, if natural and limited are not bad things. With this recession/depression thing, we'll hurt for a while, but there are a bound to be a few benefits. Here's my list of what I either think will or hope might happen as a result of this economic downturn.
1. The death of the big box. Circuit City in the US is closed. I hope many more follow it. I hate these warehouses of huge, bland lack of choice masquerading as choice. They are, generally a blight. Aside from the philosophical reasons for hating them (are they really offering everything? or just everything they want to sell you?), there are practical reasons: the service is usually shit. They are staffed by minimum wagers who do not give a shit. Here in HK there are no chain stores selling electronics (or much of anything besides a couple of department stores). Instead there are thousands of tiny shops competing. There's one place in Mongkok where it's an entire 4 storey building dedicated to electronics (it's on Shoe Street - an entire STREET for shoes). It's fun, messy, risky and you seem like you're a participant in the purchase process not a spectator.
2. Banks Other than the fact that we need them, and if we let them all die the economy would tank even further, I cannot think of one good reason not to let (force) all banks everywhere to go under. They are almost without exception, pure evil. The labyrinthine regulation, exorbitant rates and fees, and customer service that was based on the practices of de Torquemada. They are all fuckers and the sooner they're out of business the better we'll all be.
3. American Cars There's simply no good reason for GM to exist. They make bad cars badly. There concept of a single company owning 15 brands that compete with each other is retarded. Kill it. Put the whole thing into Chapter 11, and come out the other side as 1 brand (pick the most valuable? Chevy?) and go from there. But first they have to learn to make the kind of cars that people want, not what they think they should want.
4. MBA Perhaps it is unfair to tag all of them at once. What I really mean is that I hope with this colossal fuck-up, this monumental buggeration of the world economy we can stop treating the investment bankers and guys with MBAs as if they are the pinnacle of human achievement. For years now an MBA was seen as the ticket to success. For years arts degrees have been declining at universities as business degrees have been in the increase. We taught and entire generation of people that the only worthwhile education is one that directly prepared you to join the business world and become a titan! Well thanks MBA guys, now we are all fucked. And you know its going to take the kind of creative thinking that someone with an arts or science degree can exhibit to drag our asses out of this mess. So one side effect of this depression that I would love to see, would be for the entire world to snort with cynical laughter in the face of anyone with a business degree who tries to give us advice.
These are just some of the things I'd love to see gone.
In many ways the future that we've been promised, that never quite seems to materialize in North America is here, in Hong Kong (and I'm guessing probably even more 'here' in Japan). You know the shows you see on TV, usually on the Discovery Channel about al the wonderful stuff that people are developing? The cool neato shit that is 'just around the corner'? It never seems to materialize. The TTC still uses paper tickets for cryin' out loud!
Hong Kong is a weird mixture of old and new, but today I want to talk about the new part. I got my phone bill today, and it had a barcode printed on it. I went to the 7-11, they scanned the barcode as if it were a package of smarties, up came the balance on the bill, and I paid it. I could have paid with cash or used my Octopus card (the same thing i use to get on the transit system). It was exactly as sensible and simple as you'd think it could be. It seems that here they've spent the time and the energy to integrate systems and put things together in a way that makes friggin' sense.
The Octopus card for instance, I've raved about it before in my blog, but in short, it's a credit card sized piece of plastic with a smart chip in it; you load it up with money pretty much anywhere (at the transit stations, or 7-11 or other convenience stores), and you can spend that on any bus, mini bus, subway or ferry. You can also spend it at the same convenience stores.
The smart chip is tiny and doesn't need to be in a card, i got hte keychain version, about the size of 2 postage stamps. You can also buy a watch with it inside. It's bloody smart.
So between that and my phone bill today I am reminded how cool stuff can seem to be out here in Asia for us rubes from North America.
Forgive me friends, it has been a month since my last blog post....
Sorry, it seemed an appropriate opening.
Things are going well for us here so far. We welcomed in the new year, then the other new year. Last week we had 3 days off for Chinese New Year. It's a strange holiday. it's all about family dinners so we did none of that. But it is also about New Year's fairs. WHich seem to sell the weirdest assortment of plastic shit. Stuffed, or inflated, on a stick or in a bag. i saw a 3foot plastic iPhone, a huge inflated Ferraro Rocher on a stick (inflated alas), and a waffle, about 4 feet across. The oddest was the inflatable pink poo. So weird plastic 'shit' indeed.
Work is great right now, I'm tutoring mostly now instead of teaching, which means a LOT less work for the same pay. All my clients are in the main business area (last term i was traveling to butt-fuck HK (and no that's not as sexy as Heipel thinks it sounds) for classes). So things is pretty good. Eric's finally mobile again and that's moving.
LIfe here is much like life there really. Funny how that is! If anyone is curious HK is going through the same financial shit as anywhere. We're all holding our breath for how it will turn out, how deep it will be. I was reading this week that negative equity is the highest it's been in a few years here. However, it is nowhere near the high-water mark it hit during Sars in 2003. Rental prices have dropped seriously, in some areas as much as 20%. Which sucks as we negotiated our rent right before the arse fell out of the market. Which means we'll probably move at the end of this year once the lease is up, unless they reduce the rent drastically.
In other new I am being sent to Singapore in March (Steve I will land in SG on your birthday, I will do something memorable in your honour) for a biz trip, that'll be lovely. Then in April we're back in Toronto for two weeks and a bit. Lots of travel for us. I want to get to Japan this year and possibly Taiwan too. But we'll see how the money holds up, and the holidays.
So we're all well, Lucky's as cute as ever, a bit needy and cuddly, but he spends a lot of time with me so that's to be expected. Here we are. Love to all.
We spent a few hours at the dog park today. Turns out it was a HK SPCA fund raising thing so there were lots of people and pooches. It's an enclosed space so pretty good for leash free. This is Lucky meeting Toffee. Turns out Toffee was born in Canada too, so we suspect that they got on well because they both spoke Canadian-dog.
We left on Saturday morning for Malaysia, as detailed a while back, we booked this holiday because we needed it. Friday night I went to my company Christmas ‘do’. We all took a boat over to Cheung Chau – a small fishing island that is part of Hong Kong (remember HK island is itself only one of the dozens of islands that make up the territory, and only the second largest). We walked around a bit, then settled into a seafood restaurant and ate and drank. And ate. And drank. Then we punctuated the evening with drinking. Nobody forced me, it was utterly self-inflicted. We went from there back to HK to Wanchai – the bar district of HK. Here the drinking continued. Until I finally took a taxi home and passed out. The next morning we woke to get ready for our flight, and I woke with one motherfucker of a hangover. Oh sweet mother of fuck, I thought I would die. I was incapable of helping Eric pack our bags – hell I was barely capable of coherent speech. I threw up violently, showered and then felt nearly human, so we left.
The flight to Kuala Lumpur was nice, and I slept most of the way – this greatly improved my general sense of health. The Gravol and Paracetemol certainly helped too. We arrived in KL late in the day and made our way to our hotel. This trip is not a walking tour of anything really, I mean Eric’s reasonable immobile for any great distance for sure. But we got around a bit, had a nice dinner and then went off to bed.
Sunday we spend a few hours finding out how and where we’d have to go to get to Pangkor Island on Monday. Then we did a bit of shopping, puttered, and then went for a two hour massage. I am getting quite addicted to massages here, they are cheap and fabulous and make you feel like a million bucks. Then we hit the local gay disco. It was a Sunday night so the only action in the bar were the Money Boys. Monday we left for Pangkor. It’s a few hundred KMs north of Kuala Lumpur, but took a while to get to. Between the taxi, the bus, the ferry and the bus. But it was worth it.
It’s now Wednesday afternoon, and the weather is awesome. IT’s about 30 degrees, sunny with a few fluffy white clouds in the sky. We’ve had some overcast skies, and then thundershowers at night, but the weather has been totally fabulous for the most part. We’re in a resort with a private beach that has forest reserves on either side. The beach is about 2km long, and there are 2 pools as well. The food is good (although completely weird in that way that only western food can be when cooked by non-western people). The place is completely tropical, in a muslim country and yet they pipe Christmas carols throughout the place day and night. It’s also very weird to see the decorations, and hear the surf. It must be like that in Hawaii or Flordiay too, but add a lot of hijabs and burkas and it’s even weirder.
Probably the weirdest thin is a swimming costume worn by a muslim woman. At the least it covers here from ankle to neck (including a very feminine and discreet skirty thing at the waist) and in some cases includes a hood that functions as a burka (hijab?) It’s odd to say the least.
On the other hand there are lots of lovely looking men in speedos to ogle (and women too I would imagine but who’s looking?)
The time has finally come to retire mail @ markcosgrove dot com. The reason of course is spam. I am now getting spam at a rate of about 20 to 1. So I am going to kill it soon and start a new one. For a while they will overlap, but by the new year I will kill the old one.
Just so that this post does not get read by a spam bot and then used for spam I have written it out (like the one above). But you are clever people and you'll figure it out.
So please update your email address books to:
mnc at markcosgrove dot com
If this does not make sense then email me at the address you already have for me and I'll explain it.
I have not been the kind of travel-writer-new-adventures-blogger I anticipated I would be when I came here. I have resisted writing, not because I lacked anything to say but mostly because I had too many things to say. Some of it banal (subways are clean) and some of it complaining (spitting in public, ugh!). But I think mostly I was not avoiding writing so much as avoiding what I would say, or what I was feeling about this place and the move and all that was going on. There has been a lot, and much of it has been overwhelming.
As a result of Eric's injury, we didn't settle in the way we'd hoped. I had to come home and get some take out (we had not yet bought much for the kitchen when he was injured). It fell to me to do, well everything. I'm enough of a control freak that I guess on some level it suited me to an extent. However I don't speak Cantonese. The problem with that is there's a direct correlation between the cost of a product or service and the likelihood that the clerks speak any English. So every night has been a challenge. Every trip to anywhere, purchase of anything, has been difficult. I am not trying to make out that I'm a martyr or anything like that. Just that the reality has been that my first couple of months in Hong Kong were not the festival of joy and fun that I'd (naively) hoped. It sucks when your husband breaks an ankle, and it sucks about 865 times more when it happens in a city where you know only 3 people and do not speak the language. An example of what I mean: if you were in hospital with your honey and he was injured, you'd do the talking, listen to the doctor, ask the questions, and so on. Instead we've got injured Eric, stoned (hopefully) on painkillers, asking the doc and translating for me. It sucked and left me feeling useless and frustrated.
I have learned that I spend way too much of my life frustrated. And as anyone who knows me can attest, I don't deal with frustration very well. The frustration here arises mostly from the language and cultural stuff. People here will bump into you without thinking, push ahead of you to get on the subway or into the elevator, personal space simply does not exist as concept here... and so on. It is not that they are rude. They're simply not; because what qualifies as rude over here is just different. However so much of our reactions are built in, and visceral, so when someone bumps you, you get pissed, without thinking. Unless you manage your reactions all the time, you end up cranky, quickly. The problem is that you cannot possibly manage your reactions all the time, you can only do it when you become aware of them. And you usually only become aware when you've had 5 bad experiences in a row and you're about to smack someone. So it's a mobius loop of emotion in a lot of ways. Sometimes I just don't want something to be a learning experience, I don't want it to be an opportunity for cultural understanding. Sometimes I'm tired and hot and sweaty and I just want to order some fucking noodles and go home and eat.
The other thing that's been an interesting learning curve for me is figuring out that I spend a lot of my time doubting myself. It's quite crazy how hard my brain works to undermine what I'm doing. Even when I have a great deal of evidence as to how well things are going, and how well I am doing in a given situation, I still walk around in this miasma of self-doubt. "not enough" is my psyche's underlying theme.
Of course you move to a new place like this, the chances are you will spend a lot of time doing stuff wrong, so your brain has a huge amount of accurate evidence that you are crap at stuff. I've noticed that my brain does some weird logic thing where it goes "you are crap at this stuff, therefore you must be crap at all stuff". It's a sneaky and subversive piece of software that loops in my head sometimes, and it has been particularly noticeable here.
I came here for the adventure of it all of course. But the other reason was that I wanted to do a bit of a reboot on some aspects of my life. Particularly my career because, let's face it, it was crap up until now. But walking around in a funk about being not good enough, layered on top of frustration is not a conducive mind-frame for that kind of work.
Don't get me wrong, I love it here and I am enjoying myself. Eric and I are amazed that in the middle of the stress and bullshit we have not killed each other, or even had a serious row about any of this stuff. And yes I am getting out and enjoying myself in this city. I had a lovely birthday at a Karaoke place, I have been into (and in) a couple of weddings and I have started to make friends here. So by no means is it all doom and gloom. I just wanted to banish the negative stuff from my head and the only way to do that is to get it out.
Right now we're going to Malaysia for a week starting this coming Saturday, then we're back for Christmas. I figure that I'll start seriously looking at the career stuff then. And Eric will be well enough that we'll probably be able to properly get into this city in a way that we have not yet. And I'm sure everything will turn out fine.
I may blog again before I go on Hols... but if not, I'll chat to you all Christmas week. For those on Facebook, keep commenting and saying 'hi'. Everyone else, comment here, or email.
it's 7.21 AM Hong Kong time, which puts it at 6.21am EST. At this moment Lucky is in his crate, hopefully a bit stoned on Gravol, on his way to the airport in Toronto. He's about to wing his way to us. We're nervous. Neither of us could sleep well last night. This has taken more arranging thatn OUR trip to Hong Kong, I think Napoleon invaded Russia with less planning.
I'll update more when we have it. Wish the we lad well. Say a prayer to whoever you think listens (St. Francis of Assissi?).
Hey everyone who still reads this thing(although I suspect that even my most faithful readers (shout out to Damien and PJ) are finally fed up with me for not writing).I know it's been ages since I put pixel to computer screen as it were, and told you what's going on. I feel like everyone should know, but I guess osmosis is not the best method of communication.
I'm sitting in my office, it's 11am on November 18 and i'm about to dash off to teach at noon (at E&Y Heip!!) so I'll be brief here. Things are going well enough, I'm a bit bored these days to be honest because the broken ankle has kinda put the kybosh on doing much of interest. However we're getting along. In that department, Eric had one of the 10 screws removed yesterday, as of today he's at phsysio to start putting weight on the ankle and see how things go from there. We expect a full and rapid recovery. At least he'll be up to using a cane by Christmas.
We've booked our holidays - we're doing a week in Malaysia in December where we intend to sit on a beach and do nothing. And as well we've booked 2 weeks in Toronto in April. So expect us over Easter. PJ we arrive Holy Thursday. We would love to see you all when we're there, we'll organize something I'm sure, but in the meantime try not to book your time away during that period :)
So things are okay here, the weather is fine (literally - 20 degrees and sunny), the boys are fabulous, the social life is, er, intermittently spectacular with showers of 'oh my god!', but I do miss all you back home.
Off to school now, I promise i WILL write more later :)
Eric is in hospital this weekend, having the surgery we knew would be necessary to fix his broken ankle. And before you stress out, he's doing well and recovering.
But first the back-story.
Two weeks ago Saturday, we went to play paintball with my coworkers and towards the end of the day Eric, in an heroic (that is to say mis-guided) run for the flag slipped and his foot dug in but his momentum carried him forward and in the opposite direction to where his foot was actually pointed. The ankle was broken.
After a long wait for the ambulance, and a longer ride to the hospital he had an x-ray and the ER doc diagnosed his ankle as severely broken, and, as she did not had an orthopaedic surgeon on call, transferred him to another, larger hospital. Thus began our two week adventure with HK Hospitals.
Eric spent one night in that second place, and had his leg set (closed reduction for those who know) and was told he'd have to wait for about 5 or 7 days to let the swelling decrease and then he'd mostly likely need surgery. They were happy to keep him in there, but despite the snazzy jammies that they offered, Eric was having none of that, and so we went home. The following week we went to a private doc to see about surgery, it would have cost us about $13,000 (CDN) if we went that route. We wanted to look into the insurance situation. The problem was that Eric's insurance had not started until after the accident. After days of back and forth, we discovered that (not surprisingly) the broken ankle was a pre-existing condition and he'd not be covered. So that meant, rather than a private hospital, we'd go back to a public one. The only problem was that the original hospital we went to was way the hell up in the New Territories (imagine, dear Toronto friends, if we were still at Yonge & Front, and Eric was in Hospital in Richmond Hill). So a change was in order.
On Tuesday we first dragged him to the Immigration building to get him his HK ID card. This, it turns out, is the magic ticket. Instead of the public hospital costing us about $400 canadian a day, it would cost $20. A big difference. After that (amazing what a wheelchair will do to make things more efficient!) he went to a local hospital and got them to take his case and they booked him in to have surgery on Friday.
(PJ & Kevin, the hospital was originally run by Irish nuns - Sisters of St. Columban - i'm sure that will make you feel somewhat better about it!)
Friday then he went in for surgery. When they were prepping him they told him they were going to do it without a general anesthetic, instead he had an epidural. Fortunately they gave him an iPod so he was not forced to listen to the procedure as well. The drugs certainly helped and he sang along to hits of the sixties while they screwed and drilled. So now he's recovering. He's doing well. There was a lot of pain of course, and a lot of drugs, so he's either sore or stoned right now. He'll be out of hospital by Monday or Tuesday.
What's next is 6 weeks of recovery, probably more surgery to remove one of the screws, and then a lot of phsyio and the like to get him back to full range of motion.
So email him or facebook him and say hi. He'll read the messages when he's at home this week.
Right, well if you read the blog you'd know that I'm a 39 year old freelance writer with a dog and a husband from Toronto. You'd also know that I've just moved lock, stock and DVD collection, to Hong Kong. Eric, (my loving hubby), Lucky (the Bichon), and I are starting a new life (for a while anyway) in the sweaty tropics
