Okay then. How about longer.
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.
