On shopping for a tshirt

Yesterday started out great. I splashed around in dragonboats in the morning - having my first sweet taste of victory (well, we came second to be totally accurate but after being annihilated in the first round it certainly felt like a victory not to come so decisively Last). I ambled toward work with the wonderful knowledge that this would be the last day for a while I'd have to discuss Miller's, 'A View from the Bridge' alongside Dai Sijie's, 'Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamtress' - the GCSE English Literature exam is today, and it didn't come a moment too soon for my sanity.

Anyhow, from the moment I stepped on the ferry to leave Lamma, an island I suddenly felt a great surge of affection for, things went downhill. I wont bore you with the specifics, principally because I can't be bothered to type all the background information to explain why I was quite so angry with the world as I came home, but I do have a rant relevant to the majority of readers...

Shopping. I have the good fortune to be the least materialistic person on the planet (okay, second least, I think my brother warrants the number one spot there) and subsequently Shopping is me entering into a personal hell. When one tshirt falls apart I generally grumble for a while and then set about replacing it with another, and this was on yesterday's agenda. Shopping in Hong Kong adds a further dimension to the nightmare of finding a product: there is so damn much here. If you ask three people where they recommend going for a cheap pair of shoes, the first will suggest Mong Kok and the Ladies' Market up there; the second will dispute this heavily and send you off toward the markets at Stanley, while the third will sigh dramatically and tell you that they're both wrong and the markets in Central will have everything you need. If you make a mistake of asking a fourth, they'll have you across the border into China where prices are as low as they get anywhere in the world.

Although 'good bargain' wasn't necessarily on my mind, I meandered past H&M and saw a particularly acceptable tshirt on display in the window. Not being one for wandering around an entire city and comparing product upon product for days on end, I made a snap decision and entered into the vast store on Queen's Road. A good half hour of marching around that blasted edifice resulted in no tshirt sighting, and this is where I started becoming incensed. I swear some stores put products they don't even offer in their windows in order to lure unsuspecting shoppers in: by not having the product in store, they ensure the potential purchaser has to wander around their entire shop in search of it, the theory presumably being that hopefully they'll get distracted en route by the other 'fantastic' products on offer.

In a thoroughly foul mood, I trudged along to Marks n Sparks and went to the cashier with the product I wished to purchase (okay, we're all friends here, it was a bra. Another one having finally disintegrated recently). Having finally found where I was supposed to queue - and how I hate it when that place isn't immediately obvious - I approached the unsmiling cashier who grabbed said bra from me and practically snatched my credit card from my hand. While punching in God knows what numbers onto her till, she randomly asked me if I'd like to buy some biscuits today. In the first place, how is there any connection between bras and biscuits, and in the second place, if I have the intelligence to choose from their vast array of bras and actually manage to make some degree of selection presumably I have the brain cells required to decide whether or not I want biscuits that day. I hate it when stores do this - WHSmith in the UK is a particularly bad culprit - and try to push some utterly random product onto you at the last moment. Unlike the majority of the population, apparently, I am buying something not for the sake of buying and spending but because i need it. I hate the underlying assumption that I'm an idiot who can be manipulated into forking out for any old thing.

I also hate those 'meeters and greeters' in stores who ask me cheerily if they can help me. Part of me wants to yell at them that I severely doubt it, and the other part to say they just need to give me ten seconds to look around their store first then I'll let them know. They magically dissipate the moment you do want one of them, obviously. The worst country by far is America, where there isn't a smile in sight to go along with the words: yes, I want to be accompanied on my shopping mission by the most miserable soul in the city, please join and help me decide what kind of clothes I like. Furthermore, they insist on wishing me a Nice Day, while I'm sure deep inside they are cursing every ounce of my being for having roused them from their semi dormant state in order to serve me.

I love catalogue stores, I really do. I know what I want, I go and get a whopping great book and find the exact product, I do a quick search on a nifty little computer and it tells me whether or not the item is in stock, and five minutes later with the minimal amount of human interaction and annoyance the product is in my hand. If it could be guaranteed that size 10 meant size 10 (UK, please, UK) and that 34" trouser leg meant the same thing in every shop, I would do this for clothes as well. If they could have photos of people of all shapes and sizes wearing the specific item and I could see that ah ha, on a 6ft soul the tshirt reveals a good two thirds of their midriff, it would save me the sweaty hell of messing about in miniaturised changing rooms with people occasionally bobbing their heads round the curtain saying, 'oh, sorry!' or, 'can I help you with that?' (I remember one particular occasion in Argentina when I was trying on a formal dress and the assistant just walked in on me in my underwear. Needless to say she felt the full Wrath of Jane that day).

I still need a new tshirt. To save myself going through the inevitable torture over again, I'm thinking it would be much less stressful and considerably easier to learn to make my own clothes. Bit of material, pair of scissors, needle and thread (ideally a sewing machine, even I know that much). Maybe one day I'll become a domestic Goddess, with rows of pickles and preserves in jars with twee little chequered cloth held tightly over their lids and the smells of cinnamon and nutmeg permanently mingled in my carefully embroidered dresses. Rest assured, you'll be the first to know if it ever happens.

“A woman who has no way of expressing herself and of realizing herself as a full human being has nothing else to turn to but the owning of material things.”

A poem for my female audience

There have - inevitably - been occasions over the years where I've had to be reminded that I'm executing a worthy sort of existence on this planet. My friend Steph has sent me the following poem at least twice, but I suspect it is considerably more than that, both when she is ricocheting about in the depths of despair and when I'm ranting about such things as make it relevant. I can't remember what we must have been talking about a few weeks ago for her to send me this, but I've been meaning to post it on here for the benefit of those who don't generally plunge headlong into anthologies of poems. It is written by Maya Angelou, the embodiment and indeed definition of a 'phenomenal woman'. Angelou was brought up in the Deep South in America, black at a time being black wasn't acceptable; raped at the age of nine by her mother's boyfriend, witness to KKK atrocities, living in a car for part of her youth and a single mother at 16, you'd think if anyone would have cause to fail in life she would have. She has worked as a prostitute, a pimp, a dancer and singer - evolving into one of the principle activists in the Civil Rights Movement, one of the most important and relevant contemporary writers, and someone who will forever be a significant inspiration to me. Anyone who can deal with all life has thrown at her and still come out on top is someone to be honoured (as she has been, with over thirty degrees being bestowed on her, and multiple literary prizes). I went through a phase a while ago of deciding that fiction was utterly pointless and burrowed my way through an extensive pile of autobiographies. Angelou's is by far the most accessible and fascinating life story that I've come across, her six book series starting with, 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings'. (She also has a cracking poem with that title that, contrary to the belief of the majority of English teachers in Hong Kong, is not just about birds...). For anyone who has ever felt a modicum of self pity about anything, I suggest they read these books: they will put your troubles into perspective.
Anyhow, thank you Steph for reminding me of this - yourself a pretty damn phenomenal woman. I miss your version of insanity, come cause some chaos in Hong Kong.


Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

The Gods will decide for us

(Picture: me in my stunning new Lamma Ladies dragon boat tshirt. I never thought I'd wear anything quite so... well... pink.)

In response to a PostSecret video on YouTube, an exceptionally large and generally physically unattractive man had recorded his 'secret' on film - saying that he wanted someone to love him, and didn't he deserve it, too? I bothered to read a few of the comments viewers had made, and they typically ran along the lines of, 'aww, dude, you'll find someone; just keep believing she is out there.' The overwhelming feeling was that the guy - whom presumably an exceptionally low percentage of his audience actually knew in person - deserved to be loved on the basis that he was a person.

I'm sorry, I have to take issue with this viewpoint. I could cite some obvious examples but then this thought would start wandering down a road I can't really be bothered to debate right now: I'm fairly certain that Hitler probably doesn't deserve to be 'loved', arguments being that he wasn't actually a 'person' at all, not someone with feelings, and on the other hand there is the thought that perhaps if he had been truly loved he'd have developed into a different person. Anyhow, if you want to argue about that, do so with your inner mind and not with me as I'm not particuarly interested.

Using myself as an example - appropriate given that I can at least claim to have some degree of knowledge of myself - I think it is fairly easy to demonstrate that nobody has a birthright as such to be loved. I personally think I have plenty to offer someone in a relationship, but I also know that I can be incredibly difficult to deal with on multiple occasions. My forthright manner and sometimes painful honesty to every emotion I have gets me into trouble regularly enough outside of a relationship; I can barely begin to imagine how unutterably frustrating I must be most of the time. Given that I can go from ecstasy to despair and back again in the space of thirty seconds, I guess I must be fairly exhausting to keep up with.

The only thing I think that I, and indeed anybody, deserves from this increasingly mad world of ours is the space and possibility of being who I want to be. Yes, I am frequently controversial and argumentative, stubborn and impatient, sullen and awkward, and I am the most judgemental person you are ever likely to come across, but I am also many other somewhat more positive things. Oh, and I have a low tolerance threshold for stupidity, I dislike people who incapable of being the individual they were born to be, and I am incapable of dealing with those who spend their time wallowing in the depths of self-pity.

Generally speaking, nine times out of ten people plunge headfirst into this self-pitying doomstruck mode when they focus on the idea that they deserve to be loved by someone. It is a ridiculous concept, like saying that someone deserves to be respected. It is fairly well accepted these days that respect is something which must be earned and is not an automatic right; saying that, I tend to respect everyone until they give me a reason not to. Why has love become something which everyone has a right to? I believe there is actually a fine balance to be achieved: I can't love someone who doesn't love themselves (borrowing a very corny philosophy from all American chat-show hosts there), and furthermore I can't love someone who loves themselves to the point of obsession and arrogance. For me, demonstrations that a person loves themselves are that they take some degree of effort over their physical appearance - they do their best to look like an acceptable specimen of humanity, without taking it to extremes. A guy who goes for a run a few times a week is viable; a guy who has ever even considered a manicure is not. Intelligence is a bonus; I don't think anyone is actually stupid as such, I think they just haven't learned how to make use of their brain effectively. No, everybody doesn't have the possibility of being an Einstein, but then not everybody has to be a George Bush either...

An unobservant reader may here conclude that I am saying attractive and intelligent people deserve to be loved. Not at all, I'm just saying that people who care about themselves are more likely to have the option of caring about someone else - they've had a bit of practise, after all. You are born alone and, as the expression goes, you damn sure die alone; there was never a promise made to us that the interim years would be passed with 'that special someone'. I used to be desperate to find someone to love me and to love in return, and this was especially true after I'd experienced that world. Now I am just thankful I was lucky enough to find those feelings, I will admit that there is barely anything comparable to knowing that just as someone is in your heart every minute of every hour of every day, you are held safely and tightly in theirs. I want everyone to know that same feeling, but I don't expect everyone to - I don't even think the majority of people in their so-called relationships even know or understand a quarter of what I ever felt. I was lucky, and that is all it was. It is not because I was a better person then than I am now, it is merely because the Gods decreed that I was to have a glimpse of the possible beauty of the world.

I owe it to myself to have the best life I can. I need to go to the places I want to visit, try out the lifestyles I want to, be every day the person I want to be. There are no certainties in this life beyond the fact that one day it will draw to its inevitable close, and I can't spend my brief years here yearning for something that may never happen for me. There is nothing I can do to improve my chances of having someone love me for who I am, and it is best to accept that philosophy and get on with the business of living.

Besides, as Shakespeare put it, 'Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.' (Twelfth Night)

A cluster of rants

My not updating my blog frequently doesn't equate to a rantless Jane. Rest assured, I have plenty of complaints stacked up over the past few weeks - here, have a few of 'em:

- I'm fed up with parents who expect me to mother their child. It is not my job to cajole and convince someone that GCSE English is a worthwhile qualification. To be honest, despite being a teacher, I frankly think it is one of the least worthwhile pieces of paper you can gain these days. I had a mother on the phone recently for 45 minutes, asking me for advice on how she can motivate her 16 year old son. I am an English tutor, not a relationship counsellor. I am operating on the theory that if they want to learn from me, they have the option to. If they choose to fritter away their youth that is not my business. I resent being required to teach in a manner that inevitably ends up with children loathing poetry and literature; I barely attended English lessons in school, and those I was present for I was essentially absent for with my mind wandering far, far away. How is it I managed to get A* at GCSE, A at A-level, 1st Class (Hons) for my BA, without ever using the following terms: assonance, consonance, enjambment, sibilance, and even, I suspect, personification? Oh I know, it is because I can read a poem and with barely a second thought understand what a writer is trying to say, and I imagine that innate ability comes across in my essay writing. I am preaching what I do not believe, and it is getting to me.

- People who say 'BudaPESHT'. Seriously, yes, we all know that is how the BudaPESHTians say it - but in my eyes, it makes you look like an idiot emulating them. We do not forgo the 's' in Paris, nor do we gently roll the R and end softly on an A when we pronounce the city name Rome. Stop being so damn pretentious.

- Speaking of words, I keep coming across Americans over here with the tendency to litter their conversations with two particular pet hates of mine: 'errands' and 'hike'. Fair enough, you're American, you can't help having what I regard as a ludicrous vocabulary. When English people start using the term 'errands' however, it makes me shudder inside. 'Hey, yeah, I'll see you later, I just have to run some errands.' No, you don't, you just have some Stuff To Do - stop trying to make it sound more interesting and important than it is. Grr.

- The fact that an airline company executive can wake up one morning and decide enough is enough, a billion dollars or so of debt is clearly an imposslbe situation to resolve and proceed to inform all the poor buggers who've booked with them that hey, their flight doesn't exist any more. Oh, and that they'll probably keep your money for some time into the future - if not forever.

- There are a few basic principles that I live my life around, one that is relevant to this posting being that money can't buy you happiness. Everyone reading this will probably nod wisely and say oh yes, wise words, they understand and agree. No, you don't. As I tried explaining to a student yesterday, there is a cut-off point where more money doesn't equate to more happiness. As long as you have food in your mouth and you aren't freezing to death at night and you have the basic necessities of life, money has done its job in terms of having any positive influence over your state of mind.

- I live in a small village on top of a hill, everyone pretty much knows everyone - by sight, if not necessarily to share a bottle of wine with of a warm evening. Given the proximity of one building to the next, and the fact that the majority of people who live on this island do so because they want some degree of peace and quiet, why can't everyone make an effort to not disturb their neighbours unless absolutely necessary? Alarm clocks left unchecked; stilletoed feet banging and echoing their way up the stairwell; kids being allowed to play that games that seem to involve an inordinate amount of screaming; dogs being left to bark at plants for hours at a time; drunken conversations being cackled away on a roof terrace well into the early hours of the morning. I need to live alone somewhere, far indeed from the ever more madding crowd, and until that time appreciate that I need to have some degree of tolerance and understanding for my neighbours. I just wish they'd be more generous with their understanding of others.

- One final rant: I am seriously 'off' the majority of Men. Men who idle away their lives with the deluded belief that as long as they are not getting in anybody's way they are not being offensive to others; men who make harsh and indeed wrong judgements on their indescribably beautiful girlfriend in order to dent her self confidence and ensure she stays around him; men who think muscles maketh a man; men who think I want to hear jokes even remotely related to two year old toilet humour; the endless line of deluded men who are labouring under the misguided belief that because I played Facebook Scramble in a virtual room that I will want to receive messages and 'pokes' from them. Men who slam doors in my face, men who fail to give up their seat on trains for me, men who tell me what I need is a 'good man', men who become offended when I ignore their wolf-whistles. There are more, of course. But these particular brands of man have been overly annoying in recent days, thus they are worthy of a mention on my blog - if nothing else.

Making this an epic post, I am going to post a formidable and relevant (to that final ranted point) poem by D H Lawrence. Read, don't even think about looking for assonance and enjambment and alliteration and all that absolute rot that people are required to find in poetry: feel the words roll or jar from your tongue and listen to them, understand them, learn from them.

How Beastly The Bourgeois Is

How beastly the bourgeois is
especially the male of the species--

Presentable, eminently presentable--
shall I make you a present of him?

Isn't he handsome? Isn't he healthy? Isn't he a fine specimen?
Doesn't he look the fresh clean Englishman, outside?
Isn't it God's own image? tramping his thirty miles a day
after partridges, or a little rubber ball?
wouldn't you like to be like that, well off, and quite the
thing

Oh, but wait!
Let him meet a new emotion, let him be faced with another
man's need,
let him come home to a bit of moral difficulty, let life
face him with a new demand on his understanding
and then watch him go soggy, like a wet meringue.
Watch him turn into a mess, either a fool or a bully.
Just watch the display of him, confronted with a new
demand on his intelligence,
a new life-demand.

How beastly the bourgeois is
especially the male of the species--

Nicely groomed, like a mushroom
standing there so sleek and erect and eyeable--
and like a fungus, living on the remains of a bygone life
sucking his life out of the dead leaves of greater life
than his own.

And even so, he's stale, he's been there too long.
Touch him, and you'll find he's all gone inside
just like an old mushroom, all wormy inside, and hollow
under a smooth skin and an upright appearance.

Full of seething, wormy, hollow feelings
rather nasty--
How beastly the bourgeois is!

Standing in their thousands, these appearances, in damp
England
what a pity they can't all be kicked over
like sickening toadstools, and left to melt back, swiftly
into the soil of England.