Get in line

In a city of 7 million people, there's going to be a lot of queuing.  There's a queue for the bus, for the lift, for lunch and especially for the new iPad.  I once witnessed a queue halfway around the block that was just to get into a department store lift.  I have never wanted to shop in a department store badly enough to join that queue.

There are several approaches to queuing in Hong Kong.  Ninety-nine percent of people queue, in the finest British tradition, with extraordinary patience.  They have long ago resigned themselves to the fact that doing anything in Hong Kong takes a really long time.  A visitor to Hong Kong can witness queues that curve neatly around corners and obstacles seemingly of their volition.  In some cases, the queue curves to avoid obstacles that have been moved out of the way since the queue formed.

Alternatively, you can just send your underlings to queue for them - the South China Morning Post recently carried a photo of a happy Lady Gaga fan so dedicated that he sent his maid to queue for concert tickets from 6 am.  He then swanned up when the box office opened at 9:30 am to pay for his tickets and give an interview.  Presumably forcing your maid to go out and queue at 6 am breeds the sort of resentment that would make giving her your credit card a bad idea.

A less amusing version of this is the increasingly popular practice of sending thugs to queue for consumer goods.  Whenever a hotly anticipated item goes on sale in Hong Kong (usually an iThingy - although in one case it happened at the release of a new designer range of women's clothing at H&M), grey market retailers send paid queuers along to buy as many as possible, for resale at a profit in mainland China and other countries where they haven't been released yet.  The thing about paid queuers is they don't really want to camp out overnight; so instead they just turn up fifteen minutes before the doors open and threaten to beat up the people in the existing queue.  At some point the police turn up and restore order, hopefully before anyone gets hurt. The SCMP generally describes these people as of "southern Asian appearance"; clearly this is supposed to be a euphemism for a particular nationality or ethnicity but I'm happy to say I have no idea which one.

The final approach is to just push in. Pushing in isn't exactly common in Hong Kong, but those that do employ this method have it down to a very fine art.  I firmly believe that Hong Kong queue-jumpers (pusher-inners?) can compete with the best in the world.  I often see tourists on the MTR left agape, unable to believe that someone has pushed in front of them so blatantly and shamelessly.   First, they wander up to the queue, feigning ignorance of where the queue starts or what the queue is for.  When the queue starts moving, they just step in front of the first person.  It's just that simple.  They wear earphones so that they can just blissfully ignore any angry remarks, and unless someone wants to challenge them physically they pretty much get away with it.

If only queuing and queue-jumping were sports, Hong Kong would be world champions.  So keep an eye out at the London Olympics.  Hongkongers will be there, competing with and beating the world - in the queues at the stadia, on the tube and at the check-in counter at the hotel.

Big White Guy

Just a short update - I wanted to point anyone interested in Hong Kong to what I think is Hong Kong's best blogger, Big White Guy.  This guy is a Canadian who has been blogging about life in Hong Kong since 1998 - which I'm pretty sure is before it was even called blogging.  He covers a lot of quirky and colourful news and happenings and he has a light and whimsical sense of humour which is a welcome contrast to my whiny-albeit-articulate ranting.

7 strange habits of Hongkongers

Hongkongers have a number of amusing and/or annoying little habits (depending on how much of a hurry you are in) which alone probably don't justify a whole blog post but together make a nice little profile.

1.  Interviewing fruit
I am always staggered at the supermarket by how long Hongkongers spend examining their fruit before deciding to take it.  Usually, I give fruit a quick turn to check all sides for blemishes, and unless there is anything major I'm pretty much okay with it.  By contrast, Hongkongers don't just give their fruit a cursory once over - they look deep into its soul, as if divining its path from tree to supermarket. I am not sure what they are looking for - perhaps they fear that they are trapped in The Matrix and are looking for signs of pixellation or motion blur.

2.  Apologising for no reason
This is probably one inherited from the British.  The locals are continuously apologising to me for everything and nothing.  This is most common in the corridors at my office, where people who are not even close to getting in my way are constantly apologising for being in my way.  This is very disconcerting to me. Frankly anyone who knows me knows that getting in my way frequently constitutes a public service.

3.  Opening the box
If you ever buy electronics in Hong Kong, always allow time to go through the compulsory ritual of opening the box and checking that every single component is there.  I have actually had the guy put batteries in a camera and turn it on for a quick test run.  On its face, this seems like the act of a kindly shopkeeper who wants to ensure customer satisfaction; what it actually means is that there is no frigging way they are going to allow you to return it for credit.  You're a long way from the Trade Practices Act here, son.

4.  Closing the lift doors
For slow walkers, Hongkongers are in one hell of a hurry.  There is a certain breed of impatient Hongkonger who makes it their duty to stab the "doors close" button of the lift approximately 0.3 seconds after the doors have opened on any floor that is not their destination.  Several times I have had to fling my hands into the closing doors while a guy inside the lift who can quite clearly see me holds down the close button in a battle of button versus infrared sensor.

5.  Agreeing but not agreeing
Explaining what you want to a call centre operator is hard enough in Australia.  In Hong Kong it is made rather more tricky by the fact that English is likely the operator's second language and they often have difficulty if the conversation goes off script for any reason.  Now of course this is much more my fault than theirs, given that I can speak all of five words of Cantonese.  However, what is annoying is their tendency to save face by just agreeing to whatever it is you just said.  After a while you get to recognise the reluctant "mmm" which means "I have no idea what you just said but I'm going to keep agreeing until you hang up."

6.  Throat clearing
Hongkongers look down on mainlanders for their habit of spitting in the street.  Hong Kong men would never be so gauche. They know to wait until they are in a public bathroom, at which point they let rip with the loudest, most unselfconscious loogey-hucking I have ever heard. I don't know if these guys smoke, have bronchitis or what but they are sure as hell not going to suffer in silence.

7.  Sleeping on your desk
I cannot fathom this one - I have trouble sleeping in an armchair or on a plane. Hongkongers by contrast are happy to just move their keyboard to one side and fall asleep forehead down on the desk. For the record, if you approach a co-worker who is snoozing at their desk at lunchtime, it is considered rude to leave the report they asked for on their shoulder blades.

Heartbreak High

To say Hongkongers are quite keen on education would be like saying Charlie Sheen is quite keen on cocaine.  It is only a slight exaggeration to say that Hongkongers consider a good education more important for their children than oxygen.

Evidence of this is everywhere in Hong Kong, although the most prominent examples are the massive billboards advertising tutor schools.  Tutor schools offer cram classes for high school students.  You remember back at high school, how every day after school finished you were just raring to start an evening of tutorials?  No?  Well, you weren't competing for a university place with tens of thousands of other students who were.

These billboards have to be seen to be believed - therefore I have included a modest example below.  They generally feature the tutors dressed and coiffed like members of One Direction (for those of us over 30, read New Kids on the Block) with their name and subject in lights.

Actually the billboard above has an unusual number of older guys in glasses (notice that those guys teach subjects like physics and chemistry, while the pretty young things generally teach English).  This school must have not run this ad past their agency - most billboards are 90% cool young dudes like Alan Chan there on the far left.   The more successful tutors earn millions, drive sports cars, get recognised in the street and (I can safely assume) alienate the remainder of the academic community.

Just in case you are missing him already, here is Alan on the side of a tram, this time wearing a cool leather jacket. Not sure if his hair is parted on the other side or the photo has been flipped.

But the insanity need not wait until you are in school.  It can start when you apply for schools.  Hong Kong has a severe shortage of English-speaking schools, which are the desirable kind for expats and locals alike.  Of course, the government has plenty of money and could fund more schools at any time, but in important areas like real estate and education, the Hong Kong government likes to encourage shortages in order to generate a bit of desperate Darwinian competition amongst the populace.

The number of applications to international and other English-speaking schools is staggering.  Last year, the German-Swiss School (which despite its name teaches in English and German) received 1,600 applications for 120 vacancies.  The numbers would be similar at other international schools.

Shortly after my arrival in Hong Kong, there was a story in the paper about a man who had been successfully prevented from jumping to his death from a bridge in Wan Chai.  He was suicidal because his daughter had failed to get a place in a private school. I can only hope they sent Alan Chan out to talk him down.  That guy looks like he could handle anything.

Hong Kong fast food part 2: KFC is an abomination

Apologies for the delay between posts.  This is partly attributable to my going on holidays over Easter, and partly attributable to the psychological burden I naively placed myself under last time by promising that I would write about a particular subject.  Previously I have been at liberty to write about whatever takes my fancy from from week to week.  This week, however, I have been labouring in vain to capture in mere words the sheer disappointment of my visit to KFC Hong Kong.

Last week I noted that McDonalds is pretty much the same in Australia and Hong Kong, apart from a few localised menu items and the inexplicable ability to have your freaking wedding there.  One presumes that there is someone at McDonalds HQ whose job it is to ensure a degree of uniformity across McDonalds' international operations, so as not to disorient Americans who somehow find themselves travelling overseas.  I can only hope there is no such person at KFC, because if there is, then that person is massively incompetent.

Now I am not exactly a regular at KFC in Australia.  The whole idea of KFC seems to be taking chicken, which is a pretty healthy food when roasted or braised, and seeing how deadly they can make it by coating it in batter and deep frying it. While hamburgers are pretty unhealthy too, beef is basically full of fat to begin with; at least they're not covering it in chocolate or something to make it even worse for you.

I don't really go for the idea of eating deep-fried chicken pieces, mainly because they leave a greasy residue on your fingers afterwards which reminds you of what you've done.  I prefer their burgers, which by keeping your fingers clean allow you to mentally disavow ever having eaten fast food and move on.  Everybody knows, however, that KFC Australia's main redeeming feature is the chips.  Proper chips, of decent thickness, loaded with chicken flavoured salt, in a little red box.  Sure, they're not as good as the ones at the fish and chip shop, but you can get them at the drive-through, which is another factor which facilitates disavowal.

So imagine my surprise when I discovered that KFC Hong Kong does not sell chips.  No french fries either.  Why?  Why would that be the item you exclude from your localised menu?  Have sliced deep fried potatoes not yet proved that they are more than a passing Western fad in Hong Kong, like ugg boots or cognac?

What KFC instead serves up in Hong Kong is a series of side order-based insults to someone who was expecting chips.  There is rice with sauteed mushrooms or a sort of chicken casserole on top. These are not salty or deep fried and are therefore scarcely an alternative.  There is corn on the cob, which okay, goes with fried chicken but in addition to chips, not instead of.  There is KFC's venerable reconstituted potato and gravy. Right, so you imported *that* idea across borders but not chips?  That just makes things worse.

What KFC offers in lieu of chips is a bizarre waffle-shaped abomination it laughably calls the "crisscut fry".  I have so many problems with this.  Firstly, "crisscut" is not a word.  Secondly, calling it a "fry" conjures up images of the fries other fast food places serve, which are thin and long and moreish.  The KFC crisscut fry is a fat slab of latticed potato which takes several mouthfuls to eat.  Because it is so big, you only get about four to a medium serve, so the act of stealing a chip from your dining partner ceases to be a laughing matter.  Thirdly, at least when I visited, the crisscut fries were so thoroughly deep-fried that I am taking it on trust that they were once potato.

There is of course a range of other oddities, although everything else seems trifling next to the absence of chips. There are only two burgers on the menu, one of which features thousand island dressing - Hongkongers love thousand island dressing on pizza too, incidentally - and the other "savoury cheese sauce".  The adjective "savoury" implies something is added to the cheese but wisely gives no clues.

So there you have it.  Cultural relativism is all very well, but I have learnt is that it isn't much help when you just want a caramel sundae and some proper chips.  All I can hope is that somewhere in Australia there's a Hongkonger on holiday staring up at a fast-food restaurant menu and wondering where the hell he is going to get a prawn burger, a medium mushroom rice, a taro shake and a wedding for under $500.

Hong Kong fast food: part 1

Hong Kong is a foodie's paradise.  Your dining choices in Hong Kong run the gamut from curried fish balls on a stick in the street to 9-course degustation menus on the 110th floor.  But at some point, we all gravitate back to the ubiquitous fast food chains for something familar, cheap and deep-fried. Allow me if you will to do a little review of some of Hong Kong's most popular Western fast food chains.

First stop, Maccas.  What strikes me most about McDonalds is how standard it is across borders.  Most of the differences you find at Hong Kong McDonalds are minor, Vincent Vega style examples.  They have a prawn burger.  They offer taro pie and taro shakes.  And there is no caramel sundae.  I know this because I tried to order one and it was as though I had ordered a walrus in suitcase sauce.  There was nothing but confusion all around.

The only Hong Kong McDonalds item I would miss in Australia is the "GCB".  Presumably this stands for grilled chicken burger, because that is what it is.  But you cannot ask for a "grilled chicken burger", otherwise confusion reigns.

This is a problem for me because I have a policy when ordering in fast food places that I refuse to say the name of an item if I think it is stupid. There is a gourmet burger place here called "Shake 'Em Buns" whose nomenclature tomfoolery is particularly egregious. They call their basic hamburger the "Missionary" and their cheeseburger the "Cushin for the Pushin'".  I will not order those burgers by name under any circumstances. I would rather go hungry. I will ask for a cheeseburger. You know what I mean, dammit.

Where was I?  Oh yes, the GCB.  When you finally get one, the GCB is actually pretty good - the chicken has an amazing soy and chilli marinade which is frankly wasting its talents working for McDonalds.

Hong Kong McDonalds is also unconscionably cheap. I cannot be expected not to eat fast food when a regular Big Mac meal costs A$2.50. The lack of caramel on my sundae is assauged by its price of A$0.75.  A McChicken burger costs A$1. From this, we can conclude that Australians are getting majorly ripped off.

But by far the most notable thing about Hong Kong McDonalds is the McDonalds Wedding Party, the wedding for people who are still mad that their parents wouldn't take them to McDonalds for their sixth birthday.

You get a McDonalds restaurant for two hours, decorations, an MC, burgers and fries for all the guests, McDonaldland character bonbonerie and a pair of McDonalds-themed wedding rings. You can even get a cake made out of hot apple pies! Packages start at A$500 for 20 guests.

Now, ladies I know you are probably thinking "that's not for me". But you haven't heard the best bit yet.  They can also do your dress! Why spend thousands of dollars on some lame Mariana Hardwick creation when you can get a dress made out of balloons for less than A$200?

As far as I know, Hong Kong is the only place in the world McDonalds offers weddings. I am not quite sure what this says about Hongkongers. Maybe they are cheap. Maybe they just really like hamburgers. All I can say for certain is this: it is a real thing that actually exists.  I think that is all I can tell you.

Now I was going to review KFC next, but the whole wedding thing sort of took the wind out of my sails for now.  So I will be back next time with a look at Hong Kong KFC. A minor bit of foreshadowing: it is neither finger-licking nor good.

Hong Kong's newest attraction: my kids

Ok Hong Kong - you don't understand me and I certainly don't understand you.  So let's make a deal: I will start eating duck feet if you lay off my kids.

I'm fortunate enough to have three boys.  When we are out and about, it's usually on the MTR.  Now, my boys are rarely what you would describe as well-behaved on the train.  Robbie, our 3 year old, likes to swing on the various handles and poles, fight with his brother, and loudly announce that he doesn't have a seat until some old lady with a walking frame offers him hers.  Often I feel as though I have set a couple of chimpanzees loose on the unsuspecting public.  However, as it turns out, I could hardly attract more attention if I had.

I was surprised to discover that most Hongkongers have apparently never seen a small child before.  I don't know how this is possible, given that there are 7 million Hongkongers and the population does not seem to be decreasing, but it certainly seems that way.  When my kids and I walk into a train carriage, the place becomes a recreation of the scene in Children of Men where everyone realises the main character is holding a baby and they all stop rioting and just stand in stunned silence.

Everyone is transfixed by our baby.  Now, admittedly, Jeremy is a pretty cute baby, but Melburnians seem to be able to restrain themselves to a quick glance or a perhaps a smile.  In Hong Kong, it is not unusual when holding Jeremy to look up and see what I initially assume is a crazy person bobbing their head, pulling faces or making the sort of noises you make at a budgerigar.  Jeremy of course loves every minute of this.  What we didn't love so much was the old woman on the bus who reached into her handbag and handed Jeremy a packet of Tiny Teddies.  Unfortunately his motor control is not yet sufficiently advanced to open a packet of biscuits - and also HE HAS NO TEETH.  She seemed disappointed when we relieved him of the packet and put it away.  Presumably she was expecting that we would pull out a thermos of tea.

While Jeremy loves making new friends, Robbie is not so keen on the attention.  The other day I took the boys to Hong Kong Disneyland.  We got on the Mickey Mouse train (which incidentally is the happiest damn train on earth) and, as is his modus operandi, Robbie scanned the carriage for empty seats and identified a one foot-wide space with a window view between three middle-aged mainland women as prime squeezing-in room.  He shoved them aside, parked himself in between them and stared squarely out the window.

The women cooed over him enthusiastically.  Fine.  Then they started to laugh amongst themselves about how cute he was.  Ok.  Then they reached for their cameras.  Starting to get creepy.  Then they started to try and poke him to get his attention so he would turn towards the camera.  This seemed to me to be a bit much, which clearly Robbie was also thinking, as he reacted by turning to the camera and giving a frown last seen on Arnold from "Diff'rent Strokes".  This of course led to gales of laughter amongst the women, which made Robbie frown harder.

When we got off the train, Robbie was clearly a bit upset, at least for a three year old arriving at Disneyland.  He said "Daddy, those ladies were laughing at me."

"They weren't laughing at you Robbie, they just thought you were cute."

"I'm not cute.  I'm a big boy."

The child has a point.  Three year olds deserve to be taken seriously, regardless of how cute they or their expressions may be.

By all accounts, Robbie may have gotten off lightly.  Apparently some friends of ours visiting Disneyland had their two year old picked up by a stranger and carried off to be in a photograph.  Now I am trying very hard to understand Chinese culture but I can't crack this one. Let's put aside the practice of filling your photo albums with holiday snaps of you posing with the children of people you don't know, I am not quite sure who would consider physically carrying off someone else's child as Magic Kingdom-appropriate behavior.  Apart from a wicked witch, obviously.

But the creepiest bit of camera work we have encountered was on the Star Ferry a few weeks ago - and it involved a tourist, not a local.  An American guy was sitting behind Gen on the ferry pulling the usual faces at Jeremy.  He then leans over and says "My wife thinks your baby is cute".

This would have been unremarkable, except that he was sitting alone.  "Right.  And where's your wife?" Gen asked.

"Oh, she's back home.  I just texted her a photo."

I believe the Chinese have an expression - WTF?