Cirqadian rhythms.

Now I remember why I’m here.

I’m sitting in the front row of the theatre, stage right. My strap artists are finally out of the training room, and on the big winches. The best strap artist in the world has just tried his first flight in the new space, and is 40 feet over my head, 10 rows out into the house. I did that. My thumb on the dead man switch, my fingers on the joystick.

On stage leftt, the new girl is squeaking at the apex of every swing. My Alice, she didn’t stop buzzing for ten minutes after coming down.

My toys. My winches, my artists, my responsibility.And they fly like angels.

jai.
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Also, boom. This weekend, there will be pictures of the boom. Bigger fireworks displays than the commercial ones in Australia, and it’s just random folks setting them off. Tomorrow, that will be us.

Work proceedeth apace. Ex-co-workers of mine will be unsurprised that my first performance evaluation consisted largely of “satisfactory”, with some “outstandings” and only one “Needs Improvement” - Teamwork. I prefer “brusque and disaffected”, but it’s a fair cop. And it’s what I’m here to work on. I want to have a better attitude, I want to resolve the issues I’ve always had not playing friendly with others, and I figure 2 years here will do that. Or my colleagues will kill me.

Anyway. Nothing that can’t be resolved, people like me and I do good work, I just have to shut up a bit more. I can do that….

Other than that, it’s all looking so pretty. We have scenic elements hung, acrobatic rigging going in, and the Technological Terror is looking awesome. I’d tell you more about that, but … NDAs, you know how it is. Besides, I don’t want to spoil the surprise!

jai.

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Matters are now much improved. We had a very productive week at work, the show is going to be very pretty, everything is coming together nicely. More importantly, this weekend, Macau started feeling like home. The weather today was lovely - warm, sunny, not too humid - so we went to buy a heater, and a toaster. Rumour has it that February is the cold month here, and it’s been chilly since New Years, so hopefully the heater will help. It seems a little odd, given how warm it still is here when the sun is out, but at night, and when it’s cloudy, it’s actually very cold here. By Australian standards. The Canadians think we’re pussies.

So, better weather, more attention to the flat, more exploring, generally just settling in. Becoming regulars at the cafe downstairs, wandering new streets, learning more Chinese.

And the team, we come together well. So all is well.

How about you?

jai.

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We have the theatre, we have a lot of funky new toys. Of course, for every roll of Spectra, there’s a few dozen spreader beams to hang, at a couple hundred pounds each. Nonetheless, there is Spectra. If you’re not a rope nerd, just use your imagination.

So, work proceedeth apace. There’s a bit of “Oh, that beam you hung yesterday? Can you move it 3 inches?” as the blueprints meet reality, but you get that on the big jobs, and oh boy is this a big job. And it’s nowhere near as bad as I expected.

Unfortunately, finally getting into real work (== 10 hour days and much tiredness) has coincided with the 3-month blues. I was warned about this - 3 months in the thrill has worn off, but you still don’t feel at home or speak the language, and you miss your friends, but haven’t really made new ones yet. I’ll cope, it’ll pass, but I’d kill for bacon and eggs at the Blue Train right about now. U.S. bacon, quite frankly, is not worthy of the name. I now understand the “Move to Macau, eat at Pizza Hut” thing, though we eat “local” food most days, on the grounds that we can stuff ourselves for about $10 AU each. Unless we go for Japanese, which is shockingly expensive. Last night, we had 5 dishes, including tempura prawns and mixed sushi platter, and a couple of beers, and it cost MOP410. That’s nearly $30 AU *each*….

On which note, goodnight. Bedtime for this little black duck, to do it all again tomorrow. But it’s glamourous grid dust, because it’s *circus* grid dust….

jai.

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Before I came to China, I would go for food (mostly pork) with my girly asian ex-managers (independently. In fact I’m not sure I’ve ever seen both Leon and Thorf in the same room together. Hmmmm….[0]).  And when I knew I was going to Macao, I would ask questions, like “So when a waiter brings my food, how do I say thank you?”. And they’d both look puzzled and say “I dunno. You don’t, really. You’re paying them, right?”. And so later I learned the word for thank you, and kinda started using it when a waiter brought me a dish, and then I pretty much stopped. Not because I’m paying them, but because the word for thank you in this case is just so overloaded in Cantonese (and this is one of the very few syntactic differences between Mandarin and Cantonese[1]) that using it just starts to sound silly. Today, I have used “ng-goi” for the following:

“Pardon me!”, to get past someone on the street.

“Excuse me!” to get the attention of a waiter.

“Thank you”, when that waiter brought me a drink.

“Please” when ordering take-away.

“Thank you” when that take-away arrived.

“Sorry” when I realised I’d have to pay with a large bill.

“Thank you” when I got the change.

And those are the ones I remember. It does mean that “ng goi” is the only word you *really* need in Cantonese. But it gets pretty ridiculous after a while. So I’m trying to limit myself to one use per person per day.  But it occurs to me that linguistically it makes a fair bit of sense. In English, “excuse me” can mean a couple of things, overlaps with “Pardon me”, which can also mean a couple of things, and overlaps with “Sorry”. “Please and “Thank you” are a little different, but they all fall into the same basic category of acknowledging another human being and your interaction with, or impact on them. Which is mostly interesting to me because shortly before I came I was reading a post in a friends blog about the use of “Please” and “Thank you”, and someone responded with the tired “They’re emotional blackmail! They’re weasel words, and I don’t use them because people are either doing something for their own benefit, or doing it under duress!” argument that I grew out of at about 12.

And this is an interesting case in point. The Chinese certainly say please and thank you less, especially in commercial situations, but they use it less precisely *because* it’s an acknowledgement of another human being. They use it when appropriate.

There is another word for “Thank you”, used even more sparingly - “Daw jie”. A couple of the boys in LX looked puzzled the other day, when we were discussing “ng goi”, and said that they’d used “ng goi”, and the person they were talking to had corrected them to “Daw jie”. That’s unlikely for a couple of reasons, so I asked for more details. “Oh, we said ‘ng goi’, and they smiled and said ‘daw jie’!”. Like the Chinese do when they’re correcting us”

“Ah. These were shopkeepers?”

“Yup!”

“And you’d just bought … something large and expensive?”

“Yeah, a lot of furniture.”

“Paid cash?”

“Of course.”

“Ok. They weren’t correcting you. They were saying ‘nono, thank *you* for giving us all this lovely cash!’ You say ‘ng goi’, they say ‘daw jie’”

That amused me, for some reason.

Anyway. Next week, we have a theatre, and this week we’re writing procedures for everything from subgrid access to lockout/tagout for specific machinery, so the topic of communication, and lack thereof, is greatly on my mind.

jai.

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[0] Thorf and Leon will be amused to hear that the Assistant Head of Rigging to whom I report over here is called Roy, and is from Singapore, and totally understands being the one called over to stick his girly asian hands into places other riggers can’t reach.

[1] Syntactically, Mandarin and Cantonese are almost identical, which is either the cause or result of having the same written language. Actual vocab and pronunciation differs quite a lot, but there are only a handful of cases where you can’t just swap in a different pronunciation. Interestingly, though, that change in vocab means classical Chinese poetry is almost always red in Cantonese, because it was almost certainly composed for Cantonese pronunciation, even though the meaning in Mandarin will be effectively identical.

We have 3 piggy banks. One for Hong Kong dollars, one for Patacas (MOP), and one for Renminbi (Yuan). In Hong Kong, they take Hong Kong dollars. In Macau, they take Hong Kong dollars and Patacas. In Actually China (ZhuHai), they take Yuan and sometimes Hong Kong Dollars. So Hong Kong Dollars are generally safe. But 100 HKD is 94 Yuan (so in Actually China you just pay the marked price in HKD rather than haggle for a lower price in yuan), and 103 MOP. In Macau, if you pay in HKD, you generally pay as if they’re MOP, and get change in MOP[0]. So you lose $3 on $100. Which is about $0.50 Australian. Which hardly seems worrying about. Except that, over 2 years, if I pay HKD for everything in Macau, assuming I spend my entire salary, I lose about $3,500 Australian, because you can be damn sure the bank will reduce my balance by $103 every time I take out $100 HKD. It adds up.

Anyway. Today we went to Actually China, to show Rabbit the acres of bling. I managed to blow $750 yuan on a little stereo, a DVD player, 9 DVDs, and the boxed set of Rome. Season 1 and 2. That’s $115 AUD, with today’s shitty exchange rate. I am, as my wife points out, a spendthrift and a wastrel.

But I can’t help thinking. At these prices, someone has to be getting screwed. And that’s the hardest thing to get used to over here, about the “Chinese culture”. This country takes for granted a level of poverty that we hardly see at home. And my bleeding heart left wing friends will say “Oh, we have poor people here!”, and they’re right - and the state, for example, of our indigenous population is tragic - but in Australia, they are the exception. In Hong Kong, in Macau, in Actually China, people are not only poor, but poverty - what you or I would call poverty, if you have a computer to read this - is the norm. There’s no great debate about escalating house prices or election pork-barreling. There’s a resource boom here, too, though - the hike in the price of copper recently makes it worthwhile for someone to sit and strip every piece of cable and pipe from old buildings, and then every strand of wire from every metre of that cable.

So I  don’t haggle too much, in Actually China. I could probably get a 65 Yuan ($10 AUD) tshirt down to 50 Yuan ($7.50 AUD). But that 15 Yuan is a meal for someone else, and pocket change for me. I’m not sure how long it will take to get used to that.

jai.

[0] For large purchases, there are often 2 prices - HKD and MOP - taking the exchange rate into account. But usually, in  supermarkets and street vendors, you’ll pay $20 HKD for a $15 MOP purchase, and get 5 MOP change.

So it’s been an interesting few days. I’ve spent most of this week dealing with immigration in various forms - either being fingerprinted for my Macau work permit, or getting a visa for China, or trying to get accurate information on a stay permit for Rabbit. I think it’s all sorted now, but oy, the hoops to jump through. So yesterday, I took advantage of it, and went to China for a day.

Macau, of course, is only technically Chinese. And ethnically, and culturally. Legally, it’s a “Special Administrative Region”, like Hong Kong - theoretically under Chinese control, but with its own laws and government. Right over the border is the city (and “Special Economic Zone”) of ZhuHai. “Special Economic Zone” basically means the Chinese government encourages them to be nice to foreigners, so the foreigners will bring in lots of money. On a macro level, that means huge construction projects for foreign companies tapping the Chinese labour pool and technological boom. On a micro level, it means that right next to the border is a shopping mall that is just acres of teh shiny. Cheap shiny. Stereo systems for $50 Australian. DVD players for $30. Don’t even get me started on the DVDs, and the bling. So next week sometime I’m taking Rabbit, and we can furnish the apartment a little.

Then, since I’d lost a day to shopping in China anyway, I figured I could dash over to Hong Kong and vote, so I could do other things on Saturday. This, of course, is a classic mistake. You’d think I would have learned years ago that the best way to deal with a budding infatuation is just to stay the hell away. But nooo, I had to go back. God I love Hong Kong. I’m not going to bother ranting about it again, but oh, the markets, the food, the lights.

Funny story - after I’d voted, I was in the lift with a guy who was clearly an Aussie expat living in Hon Kong, who looked at me and said “You’d be with Circus Oz, then?”. Apparently it shows. Though I did explain that no, Circus Oz weren’t in HK anymore, and I was with Cirque. He said “Oh, in Macau? Bloody Nora, you’ve come a long way to vote!”. I didn’t think anyone actually *said* “Bloody Nora”, even in Australia.

So, back to the title, today we went shopping for a junkyard. We think we’ve found one (or at least, a corner of one where we can throw up a shed and a genny and start welding), right next to a big fuck-off scrapyard, handy for buying steel. It’s amazing how much Cody (Assistant head of carpentry) and I think alike on this. We haven’t even had to discuss it, just one day I said “Hey, those big yards full o steel? Some of that shit’s for sale!”.

“Yup. I bought an 80 gallon drum to turn into a BBQ”

“Awesome. We should see if we can rent a corner of one and put up a shed.”

“Yup. Reckon we could build a potato gun that’d shoot all the way to China?”

It’s like we were seperated at birth. He’s even run it past the Powers That Be at work, and they, in theory, support the concept of an offsite workshop. I just wasn’t going to tell them, but this way we might even get budget. I think we have to print out photos from SRL and Monster Garage, though - our mate Danny is doing an awesome job of translating, but I think even he has difficulty answering “But *why* do the crazy white men want to build a shed in the corner of our steelyard? And what are they going to do with those old scissor lifts??”. There’s a culture barrier there, I suspect. Also - things they have here that we’ve never seen in Australia or the US? Scissor lifts with treads. Little rubber treads. I shit you not.  What *that* means is that they’re already tanks with elevating platforms. The possibilities are endless….

jai.

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At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that Macau is a city of half a million people. I grew up in a city of half a million people. So some things are eerily familiar. There was only one decent cafe in Canberra, too. Many things, of course, are different - it’s crowded, there are more tiny shops everywhere, selling a whole lot more weird stuff, it smells more … Chinese. It’s different because it’s Chinese, and it’s different because it’s tiny, but when all’s said and done, it’s not that different. 2 decent pubs, for example. Because the Chinese, they don’t do pubs. I thought “engage with the local culture” meant “drink in a Chinese pub”, but apparently, not so much. I’m not sure what they *do* do, but pubs isn’t it. I suspect they go eat together, maybe stay home and watch telly and drink tea. That’s fine. I can do that But not huge on pubs, your average Maccanese. Which means there’s fuck all to do here if you’re not into casinos (Oh, maybe *that’s* where they all go!) or you have a mahjong circle.

So I thought to myself, “Self”, thought I, “You need a day away from Taipa”. Because Taipa is an even smaller island, with even less to do. And there was some kind of car race on over in Macau, and Coloane is even emptier then Taipa. So, since I’m getting the hang of this China thing, I went to Hong Kong.

Holy. Fuck.

Macau, really, is just odd because it’s crowded and Chinese. Hong Kong really *is* completely bugfuck crazy. By any standards. I think I love it.

I started the day in usual explorifying-feet mode. No plan, no real preparation, just a few hundred HK dollars and my passport. I did text the lovely Sarah, a young Hong Kong lass working at the Venetian, before I left to ask her what I should look out for.
“That depends on what you’re there to do/see/buy ….”
“I have no idea! The food, I guess.”
“In that case, just enjoy and discover. Should drink in Lan Kwai Fong early then Wan Chai later on. Have fun.”

Which, really, is the best advice to give me, in explorifying mode. So, one hour on the ferry later, I stepped out of Sheung Wan station and immediately got myself pleasantly lost. Hollywood St, Ladder St, Aberdeen St, back down to Queen’s Road Central. Cartier, Prada, Marks and fucking Spencer. They have double decker trams! Insanely cute. Insanely odd. The British influence in Hong Kong seems much stronger than the Portuguese influence in Macau - or perhaps, again, just that Macau is so much smaller. But the heart of Hong Kong is not so much a split personality as an indescribable melange. At the top of a hill I found a cathedral, and in the hall was a strange kind of jumble sale, just selling Royal Doulton, cheaply. Oh, and home-made scones. On plastic plates. I was going to buy some Bunnykins, for obvious reasons, but the queue was unbelievable, and full of middle-aged Chinese ladies, who’d crammed boxes full of the stuff. Inscrutably.

So, back down the road to Queensway, and on to a tram. For 3 whole stops, before I saw a street market, and jumped off, on Hennessy road. Or rather, just off Hennessy road. 3 blocks of stalls, putting the Red Market utterly to shame. Food, hardware, crafts, jade, clothing, anything you like. Including presents for certain rabbits, to make up for the lack of Bunnykins. Walking from here to Causeway Bay, I found hardware shops selling industrial Hydraulic pumps and solenoid valves, hole-in-the-wall machine shops, “cultured marble”, Ferrari dealers, temples, fabric shops. And not just one or two of each. This is shopping heaven. And then there’s Causeway Bay. Oh baby, is there ever Causeway Bay. Causeway Bay is another example of the melange. It has a central pedestrian walkway, but there’s no street market stalls here. Disney store, China-style (if you can’t be bothered going all the way to Disney Hong Kong), upmarket brands, but all with a distinct Chinese twist. It’s not entirely Cartier and Prada, it’s not cheap knockoffs. There’s nothing cheap about Causeway Bay - apparently the rents here are the second highest commercial rents in the world, next to 5th Avenue. I bought a Gatorade and a bottle of water, in case you were wondering, before wandering down to the park. And this is quintessential explorifying. I had no idea what Causeway Bay was, or where I was going. All of a sudden, there it was. This frustrates some people, but means my life is an eternal surprise.

Anyway. Sooner or later, even I have to stop being surprised and just sit down. So I jumped on a tram - I wanted to get one to Happy Valley, but they were full - to Shau Kei Wan. Because that was the next tram. And this is a whole other side of Hong Kong. This is China. Unsurprisingly, away from the high-rent stores and the tourist markets, Hong Kong is a lot like Macau, and I’m sure a lot like any Chinese city. Crowded apartment buildings, tiny shops, “parks” full of concrete and old people, doing nothing, playing Chinese Checkers, waiting for tomorrow, for whatever reason. Imagine a Melbourne full of commission housing. It’s not exactly depressing, but it’s not inspiring and uplifting, either. It’s life, for a huge number of people in the world.

And 20 minutes away from Shau Kei Wan is Mong Kok. I went to Mong Kok for the electronics, and never even found them. Straight out of Mong Kok station is a street full of goldfish. An entire street, for a couple of kilometres, with fish, aquariums, snakes, anything you could possibly want to put in a tank. Handy tip for young players, if you’re going to eat from the street vendors, try not to wonder what happens to unsold stock at the end of its shelf life, as it were. Awesome dumplings, though. Then there’s Tile St. All those hardware shops I saw scattered around during the morning? Tile St is just a solid block of those. And then there’s Portland St. Y’all can google for “Mong Kok Portland St”, but let’s just say when I told Sarah “Being boys, we’ll probably end up in Mong Kok “[0] I’d meant the electronics. Honest. Whatever must she think of me now!? I will blush the next time I see her. Mong Kok is truly spectacular. And I saw here a couple who were the closest I’ve seen to Goths in China. They were a little industrial, but not exactly Camden Town. They stood out of the crowd because he had an eyebrow piercing. Seriously. So I followed them for a while, in case they were going somewhere hip. And after a block or two, watching them, I started to think “You know, I bet they’re going back to his place to shag”. Sure enough, next corner they peeled off into a pharmacy, and I went back to aimlessly drifting. Or rather, because it’s “later” now, purposefully drifting, back to the train and back to Wanchai.

Where I come out of the station onto Lockhart Road. You can google that too, if you’re over the age of consent in your local jurisdiction. Let me just say that the pretty Filipina girls in CFM and hotpants, they also love the dreads, but not enough to offer me a discount. This is the strip that gave the world the phrase “Sexpat bar”. I’m not entirely sure if it’s what Sarah had in mind, but who knows? I do suspect her of a somewhat dry and wicked sense of humour. Regardless, it’s late, I’m tired, and it’s time to go home. I walk from Lockhart road back to the ferry, past some stunning (and stunningly lit) architecture, new and old.

And it’s here, in Central Hong Kong after dark, that I understand the reference to “Blade Runner’s source material”. It’s cliche, but it’s all here. Buzzing neon, sizzling woks, the latest toys from Sony and Nokia in dark alleys where tourists never tread, and if they do, they fear they may never re-emerge. Unreasonably, I should add - everyone in Hong Kong was perfectly friendly. But when you’re lost, and it’s late, and you don’t speak the language, and they have big cleavers….

But I loved it. Every moment. I’m settling into Macau, but I’ll do my two years here and go home. It’s just not that enthralling. But Hong Kong? Part of me wishes Cirque could do a show there, instead. Part of me suspects that if they did, I’d never come home. It’s fascinating. Macau is interesting for a couple of days in its own right, for a few weeks if you’re also adjusting to China. But Hong Kong is a whole other world. Or possibly several. And now that I’m done explorifying some of it, I want to go back with a local guide, for a proper tour of the bits I found, and go back with my wife, to show her the bits I found, and go back alone, to explorify more. And it’s only an hour and $25 AU away, but I only have 2 years ….

jai.
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[0] I’d originally planned to go with another Cirque guy

All day in the theatre, finally. I’m a lot better at wiring up CM power and control leads than I was 8 hours ago. Also, putting hooks on CM 2 tonners. Man, they’re big motors.

Not as big as our winches, but then our flying winches travel at 10 metres per second.

Mmm, toys.

jai.

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Because otherwise I’m going to leap to my feet screaming “Are you people all BUGFUCK CRAZY???” And they are, of course, and that’s because you can’t get a decent cup of coffee in this fucking hemisphere.

 So yesterday morning I was on my way to work, and went past my local worker’s cafe ($2 crispy skin pork FOR BREAKFAST!”, but it was obviously *too* early, because they were closed. So I went 50 metres round the corner to the next one, who were not only open but full to bursting with locals having dim sum. At 8 am on a Monday. As you do. So I was too late to do anything but grab my pork and run (as the bishop said to the actress), but this morning I went back with Matt and Simon, lead rigger and lead carpenter respectively.

 We had 6 steamers of dumpling things, all different, some odd, all good, and endless tea. We avoided, to be honest, the chicken feet and unidentified lumps of gristle. We finished sated, but not stuffed. A good breakfast, in all. We went to pay. “48 MOP”, said Simon. “Oh, ok”, I said, handing him 2 twenties and a ten. “No, that’s all together”. That’s roughly 7 dollars Australian, with the current exchange rate. Call it 7.50, round it to $2.50 each.

So there are good things about this place. I am enjoying it. I just wish to the goddess they knew how to make decent espresso. It is impossible to express just how far from good coffee infinite tea really is.

I also grow weary of ebullient Americans. Please send caffeine and a rabbit. I don’t want to come home, but dear god I need a care package.

 And it doesn’t matter that you can’t get vegemite here, because there’s no western style bread to put it on anyway. Oh well.

On the other bright side, I’m done with online training and into the theatre tomorrow. It’s not quite ready for us, but we’re getting involved in the last stages of construction. Finally doing something resembling the job I was hired for!

jai.

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