Veg out

As Hurricane Sandy - or as I prefer to call it, the Al Franken-storm descends on New York, you may have missed another kind of natural disaster is taking place in Asia.

No, I'm not talking about Typhoon Son Tinh - which incidentally must be totally pissed off that it has been so comprehensively upstaged - I'm talking about a drought. A drought which is causing untold suffering amongst little expatriate children all over this small green land. I'm referring to the Great Hong Kong Vegemite Drought of 2012.

A jar of Vegemite, not in Hong Kong yesterday

The disaster seems to have first come to light on 21 October, when "Newbie_hk" on the geobaby.com forums noted that there was no Vegemite to be had at three supermarkets near her (I am going to assume Newbie_hk is female - let's be honest, not too many blokes post on geobaby.com's "Hong Kong Baby and Pregnancy Forum").

This created a mild panic amongst other posters who raced to their local stores to check for Vegemite.  Well, all except for that one poster - there's always one - who didn't read the first post properly and helpfully responded by noting that Vegemite is available at most major supermarkets in Hong Kong. Well yes it normally is but right now it isn't that would be the whole point of the original post.

There was a sighting in Fortress Hill on the 22nd, but it appears that source was quickly depleted as Newbie_hk remained bereft of Vegemite by the 24th.  She has not been heard from since then - hopefully she has not given up on life in the absence of yeast extract.

I also notice that there have been a few plaintive pleas on the Kraft Foods Australia Facebook page. I do not expect this to lead to anything - after the whole iSnack 2.0 debacle, Kraft has presumably resolved never to listen to its consumers again because they are morons with bad ideas.

I myself checked four supermarkets in a futile attempt to score a hit of the good stuff.  Not only did I fail to find a single jar or tube of Vegemite, but several of the supermarkets had with misguided good intentions, filled the space on the shelf with jars of Marmite.

Now I am sure that as a black, salty paste that spreads on toast, Marmite would appear to a Hong Kong supermarket manager to be an acceptable substitute to Vegemite.  Clearly, it is not.  I am not sure why it is not - I frankly have very little idea what is in either product - it's just that Marmite is English and strange and belongs in that class of strange British food that we recoil at, along with Bovril, haggis and kippers.  Vegemite, on the other hand, is Australian and strange and belongs in that class of strange Aussie food that is awesome, along with pie floaters, Tim Tams and Moreton Bay bugs.

That said, our helper went ahead and bought some Marmite anyway and we are currently serving it up to our unsuspecting boys on toast in the mornings.  We will tell them when they are older.

Unfortunately, Kraft has form in this kind of supply chain blockage - any expat will tell you about the legendary Great Vegemite Drought of 2008, which lasted more than three months and rated a mention in both The Age and the South China Morning Post.  Fortunately, my parents are visiting next week and will bring some Vegemite with them, hopefully enough to see us through until this accursed drought breaks and the Australian community can go back to having vegemite toast for breakfast once more.

Ten things Hongkongers never say about food

1. This queue is far too long. This restaurant simply isn't worth the wait.

Hongkongers will wait in a queue for any length of time, for anything.  It is not unusual to wait 45 minutes for a table for lunch at a moderately good restaurant, and a couple of hours at a really popular dim sum place.  You rarely pass a restaurant of any standard which doesn't have a queue outside at lunch.  A good trick is to go alone - single diners get in straight away to fill gaps in the seating.

2. I'm really busy today.  Let's just get a sandwich and take it back to the office.

In Hong Kong, lunch means sitting down in a proper restaurant, and never means bringing your lunch back to the office.  You could fire a cannon in our office at 1:05pm and you wouldn't hit anyone.

3. Have we ordered too much seafood?

You can never have enough seafood in Hong Kong. Shark fin soup, whole lobsters, crab claws, abalone in addition to the prawns, mussels, oysters and fish Westerners are used to.

4. Ask them if it has bones - I hate having to avoid the bones.

There is a simple rule in Hong Kong - if the dish has the word "fillet" in the name, then it has no bones.  Otherwise, expect it to be between 50 and 99 percent bones.  My personal unfavourite is sweet and sour pork ribs.  That would be batter covered pieces of either pork or bone in sauce. Do not bite down too hard until you have ascertained which.

5. Are you mad?  You can't eat that part of the chicken!

The supermarket's default setting for whole chicken involves leaving the head on, which is kind of disturbing to us sensitive Westerners who don't like to meet our dinner face to face. Chicken feet of course are legendary.  Like skydiving, I admire those who partake but feel no compulsion to ever do that to my own body.  

6.  I don't go to that place anymore, they use too much MSG.

That whole 1980s "no MSG" thing evidently only happened in the West and passed the Chinese by. The cheaper Hong Kong restaurants have no problem with MSG and use it all over the place. 

7. Could I have a small coffee please, without cream/whipped cream/sugar/hazelnut syrup?

Hong Kong coffee basically consists of Starbucks and the local rip-off, Pacific Coffee.  The coffees are enormous and full of stuff that isn't coffee. Syrup is popular enough that I have even seen it in the few Australian-style espresso bars in Hong Kong.  Why not just go and have a milkshake?

8.  Is there a 7-11 around here?

Hong Kong has the second highest density of 7-11s per square kilometre of any country in the world (Macau is first). There are often 2 or 3 7-11s within sight of each other. Hence the trick Hongkongers like to play on tourists is to tell them the place they are trying to get to is "just next to/across from the 7-11".  True but useless.

9.  You know what I hate?  Cake.

Ok, I know cake is popular everywhere but if Hong Kong had any more cake it would be constructed out of cake. I have never seen so many cake, muffin, biscuit and baked good shops as in Hong Kong, and they are generally big shops in prime real estate positions.  I have a theory that in Hong Kong you are never more than 100 metres from a swiss roll.  

10.  I'll just heat that up in the oven.

The oven is not a standard kitchen appliance in Hong Kong and the vast majority of people do not have one.    Our house has one and I am the envy of my colleagues at work when I tell them how I had a meat pie or a roast on the weekend.  I don't really know why this is: roasted meats are a big part of Asian cuisine and as I noted above, everyone is mad for cake. Still, kitchen space is at a premium in Hong Kong, and I guess the oven is the least frequently used of the major cooking appliances.  To make up for it, Hongkongers have at least one kitchen appliance that I have never seen in Australia: the steaming microwave.

Bronze... bronze... bronze for Hong Kong!

I'll probably write more about the Olympics in due course, but for now I will just offer a brief observation on the medal tally and the relative positions of my home and my adopted countries.

Australia finished with 35 medals - 7 gold, 16 silver and 12 bronze.  The Australian media largely agree that this was a dismal failure and an embarrassment on the global stage.  They are currently debating as to whether to allow the 2012 team back in the country. 

This is because we are Australia, a nation of lean, muscular, determined, underdogs. We spend a lot of time playing sport when other countries are off inventing things or composing operas, so we had better make sure it is time well spent. We spend a lot of money on our athletes and we expect them to finish first so that we can yell "Gold... gold... gold for Australia".  We will accept the occasional silver but only in appropriately heroic circumstances - say if your best mate was shot during the race and you had to go back and carry him across the finishing line.  We secretly believe that other countries only know us as "that country that is quite good at sport considering their size" and if we were to stop overperforming at the Olympics they would forget us entirely.

Hong Kong most definitely does not define itself by sport. With the exception of the Rugby Sevens, international sporting events are pretty much unknown here. As everyone knows, Hong Kong's most nation-defining pastime is capitalism. Hongkongers do like to go for a hike on Sundays or perhaps do a bit of dragon-boat racing, but unless they make merchant banking an Olympic sport, medals are going to be few and far between.

In London, Hong Kong finished with 1 medal.  It was bronze in colour.  It was won by Sarah Lee Wai-Sze in the women's keiren (that's the one where they chase a motorbike for some reason). This placed Hong Kong 78th overall.

The Hong Kong media were absolutely delighted with this result, and with good reason. Despite having sent a team to every Olympics since 1952 except Moscow, this was Hong Kong's third Olympic medal of any colour.  Hong Kong's medal haul could so nearly have been higher too - they narrowly were beaten to table-tennis bronze by those giants of the table-tennis world, Germany.  (Although, when you think about it, we are all giants as far as table-tennis is concerned.)

Even so, the Hong Kong team managed to increase the total number of Olympic medals the country has won by 50%.  That has to be considered a successful games - to do the same, the USA would have had to win every medal on offer and then somehow another 300 medals on top of that.

So well done to all the medal winners on their achievements. And if any of you Aussies who won silver or bronze want to feel a bit more appreciated, you might want to try moving to Hong Kong.

The case for the defence

July in Hong Kong means heat and humidity.  It's the best month to get out of Hong Kong if you can.  My wife and kids did exactly that recently, heading back to the cooler climes of Melbourne for a few weeks.

While they were away, I entertained myself in a number of ways - television, video games, enjoying reading the Sunday newspaper without a 1 year old slapping me across the head. One Sunday morning, I went to Hong Kong Disneyland.  Without my kids.  You probably think I'm strange now. This is where I try to justify that decision in 500 words or less.

Firstly let me say that I was by no means Robinson Crusoe in being at Disneyland without kids.  The majority of people there on an average day do not appear to be accompanied by children (although it is possible they arrived with children and have simply left them having a tantrum in the line for the Slinky Dog ride, as I have been tempted to do).  Chinese culture appears to have a love for Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters as one of its central tenets, so to require people to have kids before they can, say, get their photograph taken with Buzz Lightyear would be unnecessarily cruel.

I did have a reason of sorts for going to Disneyland.  We have just bought a car, and I had been charged with picking up my family from the airport when they returned.  Hong Kong roads are a treacherous series of motorways, interchanges, tunnels and bridges designed to overload the senses and lead the uninitated astray.  I have driven to Sha Tin twice since I got the car, and never intended to go there once.  So I needed to take a test drive to the airport.  Disneyland is just before the airport and my yearly pass gets me free parking, so it seemed a more fun destination for my test run.

Fair enough, you say, but a test drive would merely require me to find the airport/Disneyland.  It does not require me to stop, or indeed to get out of my car and go into Disneyland.

You are correct.  It does not.  But I have yet to tell you about Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters.

Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters is basically a laser gun shooting gallery.  You get in a little pod mounted on a conveyor belt, and you get taken through an alien landscape which is full of targets to hit with your laser gun.  You can rotate the pod using a joystick.  Your dashboard has a display which shows your score.

Astro Blasters is my sons' favourite ride at Disneyland because they like shooting things (we do not encourage this but it seems to be coded into the DNA of small boys) and they worship Buzz Lightyear. It is my favourite ride at Disneyland because it rarely has a queue and is airconditioned.  The boys and I can get through it 6 or 7 times in the half an hour we would spend in line at a lot of other rides, and during that time no-one complains about being thirsty or hungry or that they didn't get as much popcorn as their brother.

The only problem with Astro Blasters is that the kids cannot ride alone. We all have to squeeze into one pod, and the pod is only equipped with two laser guns.  This means Dad gets to sit in the middle and do nothing.  Actually that is not quite true, I get to steer the pod, but on your sixth trip through in half an hour, that starts to wear thin. The boys are having far too much fun to allow their father to have a go on the guns, and this is fair enough. Even with my own limited parenting skills I can appreciate that being a Dad sometimes means sacrificing your own fun for the sake of your kids.  Even when you are sure you could rack up a pretty good score, given that your many trips through the ride have allowed you to memorise where all the high scoring targets are.

On one occasion, my 5 year old had a flash of generosity and decided to give me a turn on the guns, given that he had just had 7 in a row.  He would steer.  Unfortunately, this meant that he just jammed the joystick hard to the left and we spun in circles the entire ride, making it impossible to hit anything and making me vaguely ill.  He thought it was hilarious. It was this incident that finally made me accept that I was destined never to test my potential in the Astro Blaster arena, and I would be forever left wondering whether I could have achieved the rank of Galactic Hero.

Until, that is, I realised that I needed to do that test drive.  I parked the car, headed straight for the front gates and then Astro Blasters.  My first run was a warm up - good but not spectacular.  On the second run, the ride temporarily paused in front of one of the higher-value targets, and I hammered it for all it was worth.  I scored 734,000, enough for Level 6 - Cosmic Commando.  I could have gone back and tried for the high-score (the score display only goes to 999,999) but I suspected that I was probably already well past the point where a bit of fun becomes a pathological obsession (although you may reasonably consider that I left that point in my wake some time ago) and decided to leave it there.  I headed back for the car park, stopping only for a Mickey Mouse-shaped ice cream (hey, it was hot) and reflected on a mission accomplished.

Thar she blows

It's typhoon season in Hong Kong and we got a doozy last week.  Typhoon Vicente was rated as a T10, the highest grading and the biggest typhoon to hit Hong Kong since 1999. 

Vicente was a bit of wake up call for me. To a newcomer, Hong Kong seems pretty paranoid about the weather.  Everyone carries sun umbrellas for a start, to ensure they do not risk getting a suntan (Hong Kong shares an inexplicable affection for skin-whitening creams with many other Asian countries). 

There is a spectrum of rainstorm and typhoon warnings - the lower-grade warnings seem to go up every time there is a bit of drizzle.  When a typhoon warning gets to T8, all office work ends and most shops close.  If we are fortunate enough for the storm to arrive in the early morning, work is called off for the whole day.  Everyone is supposed to stay indoors and shiver under the table or something. 

So when the T8 was called last year I looked out the window and expected to see fire and brimstone but was greeted only by a little rain and a slight breeze. I work in an international law firm which is populated by workaholics who I assumed would feel a duty to turn up even if the office was underwater.  So I went into work confidently assuming that my boss would expect to see me there.  No-one else came in.  Not my boss, not the tea lady, not the cleaners.  It turns out everyone goes shopping or to the cinema on T8 days and not even workaholics try to get to work.

Therefore you can understand my scepticism when a T8 was declared last Tuesday afternoon.  I was watching the weather map all afternoon, and was cheering Vicente on as he suddenly lurched north off his eastward path, like a driver who almost missed his exit, and headed straight for us.  Having no plans to go out, I figured the rain would at least be good for the garden.  Little did I realise that, weather-wise, shit was about to get real.

Vicente ripped huge trees out of the ground and left shredded branches and leaves everywhere.  Random pieces of metal and glass were strewn across the streets. Buses were rocked from side to side.  Remarkably, not a single person in Hong Kong was killed - the same cannot be said for mainland China.  It seemed that abundance of caution did have a purpose after all.  

As for my garden, when I got home, I found that my pot plants had been blown off my garden wall and into next door, a barracks for the People's Liberation Army.  I assumed that this meant that any rainfall they were receiving was moot.  The recent face-off in the South China Sea has shown that the PLA are not too keen on giving back any patch of dirt, however small, so I did not hold out much hope for seeing my pot plants again. Imagine my amazement when, the following night, my pot plants had been placed back on the adjoining wall by army personnel unknown.

So I have learnt two lessons from Typhoon Vicente: 1) the typhoon warnings are a good idea; and 2) say what you like about Tiananmen Square - when it comes to looking after pot plants, the PLA are very nice people.
   

Pleasant, in a violent sort of way

Hello again. I had to post before the month is up or they'd declare my blog legally dead and distribute my digital assets.

A friend recently sent me this link to 42 things you'll only see in China.  Number 19 caught my attention because I know full well who that is.  That, my friends, is none other than Pleasant Goat.

Pleasant Goat is the star of Pleasant Goat and Big Bad Wolf, a Chinese cartoon that is available (in Cantonese or, thank the lord, English) on Cartoon Network in Hong Kong.

Now I find calling a cartoon character "Pleasant Goat" hilarious for a start.  This is a brilliant example of how Chinese to English translations often end up using English words in really awkward ways.  I'm sure that, in the original Chinese, "Pleasant Goat" conveys the essence of the character.  In English, you may as well call him "Blandly Inoffensive Milquetoast Goat".

Maybe it is just me, but every time I hear Pleasant Goat, I feel an irresistible urge to start making up other characters for the series.  Passive Aggressive Pig, Bigoted Rooster, Surly Sheep and so on and so forth.

Luckily, the actual cartoon backs up the initial weirdness of the name with a wonderful premise.  Pleasant Goat is a goat who lives in a pasture and attends school under the tutelage of Steady Lamb, the village elder.  Why the village elder is still a lamb is not explained.  Maybe there's a Children of the Corn-thing going on, maybe it's an ironic nickname, I'm not sure.

Grey Wolf (the big and bad wolf of the title) lives in a nearby castle with his wife, Red Wolf.  Grey Wolf is the Wile. E. Coyote of the piece, constantly trying to catch and eat the lambs via a series of increasingly intricate plans (but of course never succeeding, so as not to traumatise viewers).  So far, so generic, as you would expect from a PRC government-authorised production.

What is most fascinating about Pleasant Goat and Big Bad Wolf, however, is the relationship between Grey Wolf and his wife, Red Wolf.  To quote Wikipedia on the subject of Red Wolf:

"Red Wolf is somewhat impatient and enjoys making her husband do all the work. She never tries to catch the goats herself, but always yells at her husband. She likes fashion and behaves like a modern female adult. She knows nothing but lamb and she loves to hit Grey Wolf with her frying pan."

Now, as we all know, domestic violence is hilarious and certainly not the sort of thing anyone is going to object to in a children's cartoon, particularly when perpetrated by a goat who sounds like Peggy Bundy from Married With Children.  (What I particularly enjoy about this description is the statement that she "behaves like a modern female adult" being immediately followed by the observation that she frequently belts her husband with a frying pan.)

So it turns out that Grey Wolf's key motivation to pursue the goats is to avoid being yelled at and receiving a potentially fatal beating from his wife.  This adds the sort of subtext to proceedings which Wile. E. Coyote never had.  Just imagine if there was a scene every time he fails to catch the roadrunner where his spouse berates him for being a miserable middle-aged failure.  I have to say, I think Warner Bros might have missed a trick there.

The Australia Network

In 1993, Paul Keating had the idea to start an international television network broadcast by satellite to our Asian and Pacific neighbours. He originally wanted to use the network exclusively to broadcast insults at Dr Mahathir, but was eventually convinced that the new network would help engage Australia with the region by showcasing Australian culture, teaching English and encouraging foreign investment and trade with Australia.

The problem with this plan is that some of the people who live in Asia and the Pacific already speak English, and they do so in broad, semi-comprehensible Australian accents.  It turns out that these "Aussie expats" were also extremely keen on the idea of an Australian network engaging with them by showcasing football and police dramas.  These Aussie expats also had a fair bit of money and so attracted advertisers, which was handy because the Government is frankly not that keen on funding the ABC stations they can pick up in Canberra, let alone some mad venture to broadcast to dirt farmers in Ulaanbaatar.

As a result, the Australia Network has always been a bit of a messy compromise between the worthy and noble aim of engaging with Asia-Pacific and the no less worthy and noble aim of showing the footy.  

Unlike the venerable Radio Australia (which has broadcast since 1941), the Australia Network has only been around since 1993.  Still, it is telling that in that time it has managed no less than three name changes.  The whole debacle that was the Australia Network tender over the past 18 months has highlighted the fact that no-one really knows what to do with it.

As you may have noticed, I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the Australia Network.  I think it is a brilliant idea in theory which could be wonderful, both for engaging with the region and for entertaining expats. Unfortunately, you ultimately have to judge a television network by what programmes it shows, rather than by how good an idea it is in principle.  The Australia Network's programming is something of a mixed bag.

The good is indisputably the AFL.  For those Aussie expats who come from south of the Barassi line, four mostly live games of AFL a week is mana from heaven.  Frankly I'd be happy if they showed the footy and nothing else.  The network lost a lot of expat fans when they stopped showing the NRL a couple of seasons ago.  Those northerners found cold comfort in the NRL being available on Setanta for a mere A$15 a month.

The ABC News is pretty good too, if only for the fact I can still get my nightly dose of horrific financial news delivered with clever graphs by upbeat economist Alan Kohler.

The range of ABC documentaries and panel shows would be interesting if I hadn't seen them all several years ago in Australia.  The Gruen Transfer, the New Inventors, Foreign Correspondent and Catalyst are all two years old - which is a particular problem for a science and technology show.  I'm pretty sure I saw Bastard Boys before I had kids (pun not intended).  Two in the Top End is four years old - they were toasting Kevin Rudd for his decision to sign the Kyoto Protocol the other night in a nicely heartbreaking moment. Costa is still in his cult Garden Odyssey days on the Australia Network.

Then there are the cooking and lifestyle shows.  Poh's Kitchen is not so bad - especially when, a few months ago, it was on straight after BBC was showing Poh in an elimination challenge during Masterchef Season 1.  That kind of spoils it, when you can just check the programme guide and realise she's probably going to be okay.

Mercurio's Menu seems to be on every time I turn on the telly.  I did not even realise Paul Mercurio had a cooking show.  I have two questions: 1. Is this the same Paul Mercurio who starred in  Strictly Ballroom?  2. If so, why?

But my personal unfavourite is The Best in Australia.  I must have seen this show a dozen times on the Australia Network and I am none the wiser who the three chefs are or why the Australia Network felt that its already ample lineup of cooking shows needed one more entrant.  The internet tells me this is a Lifestyle Food channel show so I assume it is getting a wider audience on the Australia Network than in Australia.

Finally we have the Sunday Lights arts lineup.  You know how the ABC shows arts programmes from 3 to 5 on a Sunday afternoon?  Of course you don't.  You're watching the footy, mowing the lawn or interacting with your family.  Well, Australia Network has decided the arts is good for you and you are bloody well going to watch it.  So not only do they have a couple of hours worth from 3 to 5, just to make sure you don't miss it they replay it in prime time a couple of hours later.  Hooray - it's HMS Pinafore starring Jon English.  That guy just won't leave Gilbert and Sullivan alone, will he?

The only thing that gives me heart was when I visited Australia at Easter and realised that my memories of Australian television programming may have been just a little bit rose-tinted.  Seven had a promo for a show about traumatised fat people called Excess Baggage, Nine is committed to showing Two and a Half Men for as long as the Americans keep making it and Ten is reviving Young Talent Time.  Maybe having only one Australian channel isn't such a bad thing.