A House Divided...

Ours is a house divided – but in an interesting way.

On one side are the food gourmets; they are knowledgeable, fine cooks and food tasters with discriminating palates.

Mum is an exquisite Chinese cook, spending hours in preparing, marinating, cooking, subtly spicing and presenting dishes. Elder son is of the Heston Blumenthal mould, devoted to enhancing flavour, molecular gastronomy and surprises guaranteed to tingle the taste buds. (He also has an extraordinary sensitivity to flavour, being able to distinguish the merest tinge of a spice, name it and describe it).

On the other side....well, younger son and I are food Philistines.

We have trouble distinguishing beef from pork, lamb from chicken  but we can tell meat from fish - at least six times out of ten. Our idea of a good meal is eating fried chicken (particularly from a certain Southern Colonel’s establishment) with our fingers, or fish and chips (wrapped in the Times newspaper - but not in the Argus though – never the Argus!)  

So, when elder son returned from four months working in Paris we might reasonably have expected him to bring back a souvenir, maybe a silk tie, a first edition from the barrows on the Quais beside the Seine or from Shakespeare & Co, a bottle of Armagnac or fine wine, maybe chocolates from Patrick Roger.  

No, it was a box of macaroons from Ladurée, who have apparently been making them for more than 150 years – long enough to get it right I should imagine.

Apparently you have to eat them soon after baking - and they were hours old, fresh from the Paris ovens - so we bowed our heads over the table, solemnly extracted the first one and got down to the solemn business of tasting.

 

 

The macaroons' egg-white shells were filled with cream infused with pink pepper. They were delicate and had done well to survive the various train, plane, and car journeys. The flavours included mint, orange, vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, rose, lemon, pistachio, caramel with salt and coffee.

And they tasted...‘lovely’ – well, what else would an unrefined  barbarian like me say? Actually, I did learn one thing, the flavours were very subtle and had a particular quality. They tasted not like a synthetic chemical, not like an extract from a concentrate - but like the thing itself. For example, the rose flavour was like what I imagine nibbling on rose petals might be like, similarly for the mint, it felt like the taste that might come from masticating a bunch of mint leaves,,,

Perhaps there’s hope for me yet and one day I might join the ‘other side’ of the family!

Funny-peculiar Dreams...and this one takes the cake!

Quite often I dream, usually in colour and with sound - no TV license required! Recently, I had a particularly vivid dream and my wife insisted that I record it (she also dreams but in monochrome and with little subsequent recall).

It began with a scene in a lodging house, somewhere in South London, where I had a room, typical student accommodation. I remember that I had just written an analysis of tropical storms in Asia, full of graphs and tables, and was vainly attempting to show it to a colleague (who was unimpressed). 

A youth whom I knew from many, many years ago at school, someone who was in the same year class but to whom I was not particularly close, appeared at my elbow. I recognised him immediately as he had not aged. He suggested we go to the pub for a drink.

I vividly remember the route to the pub. From the apartment house we crossed a busy road, using an underground pass. We emerged from the pass and entered a huge complex of offices, pubs and restaurants. Taking two separate escalators, we went up several levels before we entered the pub.

I recall little about the pub, what we drank or what we talked about. I do remember deciding to leave – and discovering that my wallet and credit cards had been stolen, my friend had also vanished and the pub was now deserted. Cue unease and the beginnings of panic.

As I headed for the entrance to the building complex, there was another frightening discovery; the escalators had disappeared and been replaced with a mountainside covered with large boulders and scree. So I was forced to scramble down, dislodging heavy boulders all the way, but made it safely to the bottom.

It was quite dark now and I remember rationalising that, in order to return to my lodging, all I needed to do was to walk all the way around the huge complex of offices and restaurants until I reached the underpass, then I could cross under the busy road and return home.

Some hope!

Turning right, I shortly passed a church on my right hand side, looking rather like the St Martin-in-the-Fields Church that is in Trafalgar Square, London. Outside it, many people were lying on the cold pavement, covered with blankets and coats, trying to sleep. Intuition told me that they were immigrants and I heard a voice intone something about my ‘mission.’

Immediately after, another scene appeared, also to my right. This time it was a Roman cemetery. There were lots of gravestones and funeral statuary – in the form of Roman soldiers in uniform, but none of the statues were intact; many were headless, were missing limbs or other parts of the body. They certainly looked ancient, covered with mud, creepers, dust and slime - all rather B-film.

At this point I hitched a lift, jumping into the back of a passing dumper lorry. Already standing in the back was an ancient navvy figure who grunted a welcome. As we sped along I realised that we were leaving the office complex and I asked the navvy to let me off. He repeated my request to the driver who lowered the height of the truck and I was able to step off easily.

Fortunately, this was opposite the underground pass and I was soon back in my lodgings.

Rationalising the experience, the vast majority of it comes from my subconscious. I’ve lived in student lodgings for several years, including in South London. I’ve experienced many typhoons over the years in Hong Kong - and have begun to work with the homeless during the last couple of winters. Even the Roman soldiers can be explained by an addiction to watching the ‘Time Team’ archaeology TV series. But I’ve never hitched a ride on a dumper lorry - although I worked briefly as a builder’s labourer during one college vacation.

Isn't life strange? 

Food Poverty and Chocolate Street

Yesterday morning I attended a training course on ‘food poverty’ run by Emily O’Brien from the Brighton & Hove Food Partnership (http://www.bhfood.org.uk/). It took place in the main meeting room of Friends’ Meeting House, a place of worship for Brighton’s Quakers. The building dates from 1805 and is situated in a small but delightful garden in the centre of Brighton – yet only two minutes walk from the seafront.

There were about 30 of us at the meeting, the majority from the city council, CAB (Citizens Advice Bureau) and various charities.

Emily began by asking the questions “What are the consequences of food poverty?” and “How would we recognise someone in food poverty?” She then went round the room eliciting suggestions from each participant and writing then on the flipchart.

This is an approach that works only if you have experienced attendees who have good communication skills and are prepared to participate. It worked yesterday. There were social workers and other front-line staff who deal regularly with the less privileged in our city and, fuelled by a cup of hot brew from the kitchen, the knowledge and insights flew onto the flipchart thick and fast.   

Then we moved on to definitions of food poverty and spent the last 45 minutes discussing a number of areas - such as debt advice, food banks, energy efficiency, community projects, sources of free white goods etc. - covered in the B&H Food Partnership website.

I left the meeting impressed by the wealth of information but mulling over the scale of the problem. Food poverty is not a concrete in-your-face issue like homelessness; it’s more subtle, more ethereal - but no less real. (According to the Trussel Trust, the Christian charity that organises most food banks in the UK, only 4% of clients go to a food bank because of homelessness - but no less than 45% go because of problems with benefits; the Trust is currently launching three church-based food banks a week).

And the problem is sizable: FareShare, a charity that redistributes surplus food, provides four and a half tons of food each week to 50 projects for homeless and vulnerable people in Brighton & Hove, Worthing and Lewes.  The local newspaper also reported that the number of food banks in Brighton & Hove rose from two to six in a year and four more are planning to open (Argus newspaper of 11^th August 2013). A recent report by the Church Urban Fund, the Anglican charity set up to tackle poverty, says as many as 80% of churches in towns and cities are involved in some form of food bank. Most have been running for less than two years. And the Bishop of Durham says that a large proportion of people who use the banks are working people, not just people on benefits (see The Times of 16th September 2013).

My road to the car park took me through Duke Street and, being a chocoholic, I noticed three specialist chocolate shops within 100 yards- a real chocolate street.

First, the Hotel Chocolat, a luxury chocolatier.

Next, Montezuma’s, another supplier of luxury, handmade chocolate bars, established in 2000.  

 

Finally, Choccywoccydoodah’s, a Brighton-based team of chocolatiers who design the most incredible cakes, gifts and whatnots. Their window display is always worth inspecting.

 

 

...A bit of a contrast to the morning’s discussion...food for thought...

SVP Festival Meeting at Crawley

Last Sunday we went to the A&B Diocese’s St. Vincent de Paul (SVP) charity Festival Meeting at the Friary Church of St. Francis and St. Anthony in Crawley. The friary closed in 1980 but the church remains, a pleasant brick and concrete structure from 1959 with a long nave, its ceiling painted in an unusual hexagonal pattern.  

(The usually reliable Tom Tom misled us and dumped us a street away from the church – with a huge and impassable building between us and the church. I don’t know what it is about Crawley but the place is challenging for travellers; it’s like the maps of the middle ages that had legends warning ‘Here be dragons.’ In Crawley, it’s roadworks, one-way streets and churches that mysteriously dematerialise and re-appear in unlikely places).    

 

There were about 80 SVP members present and the meeting began at 3.00pm with Mass, celebrated by Bishop Kieran. He reminded us that the Prodigal Son parable is not about the son but about the father’s love and forgiveness, and we should reflect that love and charity to those we meet, especially those in need. The singing was excellent, the mature age of the congregation was no doubt responsible for the tuneful and word-perfect rendition of the Latin parts of the Mass. Bishop Kieran remarked several times on the contribution of the choir but, although I peered several times over the heads of the people in front of me, all I could see was one gentleman sitting in the choir area, trying to sound like a full choir. Puzzling...

Afterwards, we went to the hall for refreshments. Festival meetings at Crawley are always memorable for the catering, there were fewer cakes this time but the quality was high; the carrot cake was particularly lovely.

In the absence of Central Council President Ingrid Phillips, Past President Peter Wells brought the meeting to order and introduced the first presentation, by John Wild, on his recent tour of North India, to review the charitable work funded by SVP conferences throughout the UK, including Arundel & Brighton.

Much of the emphasis was on supporting education, from sponsoring schoolchildren to go to school for £15 a year each, adults (such as trainee nurses, fitters, electricians) to undergo vocational training at £30 a year, or to sponsor doctoral or engineering students at £60 a year. Other projects included provision of solar lanterns so children could study at night; bicycles so they could get to school; medical clinics and pharmacies; housing etc.

The second presentation was given by Dominic Ion, President of Shrewsbury Central Council, on the SVP’s new computer system, SIMMS (Society Information Management and Membership System). He made what could have been a deadly dull subject as interesting as he could and we’ll just have to wait and see whether the modules are delivered as scheduled.

An enjoyable and interesting day - happily we escaped from Crawley without mishap!      

HK – Last Day – The Cathedral and the Cuckoo

Hong Kong’s cathedral is located in the expensive Mid-Level area, close to the Zoo and Botanical Gardens.

 

 

 

 It is a little Gothic jewel of a place, simple but elegant, dwarfed by surrounding skyscrapers and other multi-storey buildings.

 

 

The cathedral was originally located in the town centre but burned down in 1859. The present one opened in 1888, was consecrated in 1938, then was partially damaged during the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong in 1941, and finally was extensively refurbished about 10 years ago.

 

There are four masses each Sunday, three in Cantonese and an English one at 9.30am, which we attended. Due to the narrow entrance road, there were several men in florescent bibs directing the long queue of cars waiting to disgorge their passengers…rather nice cars too; the best-selling car model for 2012 in Hong Kong was the Mercedes E Class (the UK’s best-selling model was the Ford Fiesta!).

I was delighted to see a Saint Vincent de Paul (SVP) volunteer outside the cathedral collecting donations, and another person trying to get people to sign up for blood donations.  

Inside, the feeling was of space and light. The cathedral felt compact, narrow and tall, with light pouring in from the large windows, softened by the coloured glass.

 

 

It has a capacity of about 1,000 worshippers and is deceptively larger than it appears (the Tardis of cathedrals). The congregation was mainly local Chinese of all ages with a large minority of Filipino guest workers and Western expatriates. The choir, about 30 to 40 strong, occupied four pews in the nave, in front of an electronic organ and with its own choirmaster who conducted the music. I estimated there were about five or six hundred present for Mass.

The celebrant, an elderly Caucasian priest, processed in followed by six altar servers and ten Eucharistic Ministers (EMs). At first, I thought the EMs were in uniform as they were all tastefully dressed, wearing dark suits or skirts, and each had a medal on a yellow ribbon around the neck. Then I realised they each wore ordinary personal clothes, tastefully and subtly matched to an overall design, each slightly different to the next but all beautifully cut, sombre but sophisticated. This was clearly a well-off part of Hong Kong!     

The Mass followed the usual hallowed pattern. The choir was tuneful and the congregation’s responses were perhaps a little more muted than those of St. Margaret’s – and a lot less robust than the youthful exuberance of St. Joseph’s congregation of Filipinas.

Going up to the main altar for communion I experienced the only slight disconnect of the Mass. Rather than receive separate bread and wine, body and blood, the practise was intinction, where the consecrated bread is dipped in a chalice of consecrated wine and then consumed.

Afterwards, we walked round the cathedral, admiring the stained glass windows. The altar servers were working hard preparing the sacred vessels for the next mass.

We found some small chapels at the end of the church. One of these, formerly the Chapel of Our Lord’s Passion was rededicated to the Chinese Martyrs shortly after the canonisation of 120 Chinese Martyrs in October 2000. Relics of 16 of these martyrs were placed in a relic box at the foot of the altar.

 

There is also a relic of Pope (and, hopefully, soon to be Saint) John Paul II – a lock of his hair – in the cathedral. Hong Kong is the first city in Asia to house a relic of JP2; it was requested because the Pope had often expressed a wish to visit China, a wish that never materialised due to political tensions, and this is a way that faithful Mainland Chinese Catholics who visit Hong Kong can express their devotion to the late Pope.

 

 

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After Mass we decided on an early lunch at a noodle shop. However, when we got there, there was a queue and people had to share tables (a Hong Kong custom that I haven’t quite come to terms with!). So, we diverted to a dim sum restaurant. We ordered har gau, siu mei (of course) and several other dishes. Then an elderly man with a stick and a large plastic bag from a nearby traditional medicine store shuffled up to our four-seater table.

“Do you mind if I sit at your table, just for a moment, to rest?” he asked in Cantonese.

“Of course not” the missus replied.

He had not been seated for more than a minute or two when his strength miraculously returned and he ordered a dish of fried rice…followed by plain rice, tea and vegetables…and roast duck arrived next.

Then he dived into his large plastic bag and took out a variety of Chinese medicines and medicated plasters which he heaped on the table in front of him. Apparently he was well known to the staff of the restaurant and soon a queue of them – floor captains, both male and female, waiters, bus boys, cleaning staff – were at the table inspecting his purchases. It seems he was quite a character, at one stage complaining he had no money to pay the bill and volunteering to wash dishes in the kitchen (“No, but you can clean out the toilets” was the waiter’s response).

I seem to remember a story about the cuckoo, which invades another bird’s nest and takes over…

…Only in Hong Kong.  

HK – Bruce Lee, Bruised Knee (and hand, ribs)



Hong Kong is justly world-famous for many things. We could make a very long list, for example…

·         Manufacturing (as in ‘Made in Hong Kong’)

·         Global financial centre (on a par with London, New York, Tokyo)

·         Skyscrapers (the world’s most vertical city)

·         Shopping (especially fashions, electronics and brand products)

·         Food (dim sum, egg tarts, roast goose, hot pot, dai pai dong…the list is endless, a gourmet paradise)

·         Making money (in-your-face consumerism, conspicuous consumption, the most Rolls Royces per capita in the world)

 

(just a baby Porsche!)

 

·         Culture (home to a variety of visual and performing arts, including several orchestras, Cantopop and Cantonese Opera)

·         Architecture (e.g. HSBC, Lippo Centre, Bank of China, Jardine House, 2IFC, Hopewell Centre)

 



HSBC Building

Lippo Building







•    Scenery (e.g. Victoria Harbour, Star Ferry, Peak Tram, Ocean Park, Man Mo, Nathan Road)

Star Ferries in Hong Kong Harbour

·         ‘the business of luck’ (think feng shui, gambling, Cantonese numbers, wishing tree, jade, fortune telling)

·         Movie making (third largest after Hollywood and Bollywood until the 1990s decline)

·         Impressive life expectancy (third out of 198 countries for 2005-2010 according to the UN)

 …and so on.You get the idea? This is a rather special place. True, some of these perceptions are historical. For example, Hong Kong is no longer a manufacturing giant, much of its capacity has relocated to Shenzhen and mainland China. Similarly, in the last year or two, relative prices of electronic goods have increased such that Amazon UK prices now seem cheaper than Hong Kong’s main electronics chains of Fortress and Broadway (the smaller retailers still offer bargains but the risk of bait and switch, grey imports and suchlike obviously increases).

But, there is still one undiminished area of glory. Hong Kong gave the world martial arts movies and celluloid kung fu and will be forever remembered for that alone. Let’s hear it for the hometown boys, Bruce Lee, Jacky Chan and Jet Li!



Jackie Chan

Bruce Lee



 

If Hong Kong was to have a Saint, it would probably be Bruce Lee, Hong Kong’s most memorable cultural export and ambassador. He was born in San Francisco in 1940 - in both the year and the hour of the dragon - but raised in Hong Kong. In the early 1970s he pioneered mixed martial arts and popularised Kung Fu, opened Hollywood to Asian artists – particularly Asian leads - and gave enormous lift to the Chinese psyche, presaging the arrival of the Chinese superpower. He was even a cha-cha champion and is credited with pioneering break dancing!

Bruce Lee statue on the Hong Kong waterfront

While he authored 10 books and appeared in 34 films and tv shows, much of his public life was restricted to a few short years, and like many cultural icons of that era (think James Dean, Elvis, Marilyn), he died young, age 32. Even his death (of cerebral edema or swelling of the brain) is controversial and macabre conspiracy theories abound, for example, that he was assassinated by the Chinese for spying for the US, that he was killed by a secret society for revealing a confidential martial arts technique, or that was murdered in a dispute with a drugs gang.

Nevertheless, his legend lives on. He has been honoured with several statues, museums, postage stamps, parks, coverage by Time Magazine, retrospective exhibitions, countless documentaries, etc. Now, Hong Kong is staging the largest Bruce Lee exhibition ever. It’s at the Heritage Museum in Shatin until the year 2018.  

 

OK, so that’s Bruce Lee, but what was the ‘Bruised Knee’ in the title about? Well, I hate to admit it but I managed to fall over again. I bruised my knee, badly sprained my wrist (for the second time in less than two months, see 'The Grape of Wrath'), damaged my elbow and ribs. It’s been cold ice compresses, bandages, plasters, muscle sprain ointment and restless nights - what losing a fight with Bruce Lee must feel like! 

HK - Sunday Mass and Monsters

Today we went to the 12.30pm English Language Mass at St Margaret Mary’s Church in Happy Valley. St Margaret Mary Alacoque was a French nun who lived over 300 years ago and experienced a number of private revelations that led to the devotion to the Sacred Heart – so there is a link to the Sacred Heart Church of Hove in England, my home parish.

It was the second time in my life that I had been to this particular church. The other time was on the afternoon of 29^th October 1988, almost 25 years ago – when Goretti and I got married.

The church is surrounded by high rise housing, it’s located at the top of a small hill and access is via a large number of steep steps. It’s an imposing, basilica-style building with a lovely barrel ceiling and was built around 1923 by Italian missionary priests.

 

Outside, there is a small replica of the Lourdes Grotto and I was delighted to find a Saint Vincent de Paul (SVP) volunteer collecting money. He told us about some of the charity work they do in Hong Kong and that they collect funds one Sunday each month; there are seven  masses each Sunday – five in Cantonese, one in English and one in Japanese - so they can collect quite a lot.

The church was packed, a congregation of about 500, the great majority being local Chinese with a significant minority of Filipinos and a few Westerners. The choir was around 30-strong, with guitars and electric organ. They sang with great zest and fully deserved the applause they were given at the end of mass.    

 

The Mass was very familiar but there were a few small touches that were new to me. The celebrant processed down the aisle proceeded by three altar servers and by the two readers. At the end of Mass, he was preceded by these five plus the Eucharistic Ministers. Normally, back home, it’s just the altar servers. During communion the altar servers held communion plates under the host as it was administered (it’s not usual to see that when communion is given by hand). Also, the hymns were displayed on an electronic board – no shuffling stiff card numbers into a wooden frame!

 

 

 

Finally, by the entrance there was a very tasteful memorial to the recently deceased with photographs of the individuals.

 

In summary, it was a lovely Mass. The church was bright, airy, filled with green, red and blue light from the stained glass windows, it was a comfortable temperature and the ceiling fans revolved briskly, moving the air around. The congregation participated wholeheartedly and the choir sang their hearts out. Everything was tidy and surfaces sparkled, missals were neatly filed away and everyone was appropriately reverent. It was great to see the priest slowly walking down the aisle, greeting people and shaking hands – including the hands of a number of very small children who were obviously delighted by the honour!

Then, into the daylight and after 10 minutes walk…a meeting with monsters.

There were two huge ones, about 20 to 30 feet high on the street outside the Times Square shopping centre. People were stopping to take photographs.

 

Inside the centre, the mystery was solved. These beasts are giant robots, creations of the Gundam franchise of a Japanese animation studio called Sunrise. They are enormously popular with kids throughout Asia (particularly in tv series, novels and manga comics). Apparently, the display was to promote sales of models and kits and there was a shop set up inside the centre doing a roaring trade. There’s always something happening in Hong Kong!