(Through Rose-Coloured Glasses)

“Hello there, Johnny, long time no see. Remember me?”

“Hi, eh ….. of course, long time.”

“How are you? Still working hard?”

“Yes, no choice, can’t retire yet.”

“Where are you working now?”

“Same old place.”

“Have you seen Freddie lately?”

“eh….. No, not for a long time.”

“How’s family?”

“Great. Kids all married now…… and yours?”

“No such luck, still living at home. Ha ha.”

“Ha ha.”

“Hey, have to run, nice seeing you again.”

“Ditto.”

Who is she? Who is Freddie? Mistaken identity? Memory loss? Alzheimer? Old age?

“Hey, over here, Johnny, long time no see. Remember me?”

Oh my God, here we go again.

(Through Rose-Coloured Glasses)

50 years ago in Hong Kong, adoration and worship of the West were the norm of the day.

Once, father brought us to a restaurant to learn British table manner, how to properly use the forks and knives, in what order they were used during the courses of dinner, how to cut and eat like a lady and a gentleman, where to put them when finished. It was quite a treat for us kids.

At home, we were still stuck with our Chinese-ness, we still used the chopsticks, all the time. But I have to admit, I didn’t know how to use them properly. As long as I could swing the two sticks open and close to grasp some food, and able to put them into my mouth, I was satisfied. I figured, that was all I need to survive, no matter how my parents scolded me.

Later in university, I was told superiorly by a British friend, “Chopsticks are for savages. For those who lived in the forest, using two sticks to pick up food to eat. We are more civilized, we use forks and knives.” Such conceit. I was stunned. I went home and determined to re-learn how to use the chopsticks properly.

The whirlwind of Ping Pong Diplomacy swept across the globe. Entered the dragon, onto the world stage. Although under a different social-political system, the economic power of China is unquestionable and enviable, by the whole world. The status of the Chinese has been on the rise, especially for the last few years.

Take Hollywood as an example. Many movies now depict actors at ease, using chopsticks, properly and skillfully, although they may still order by the numbers, still eat egg-rolls, drink wonton soup and ask for the fortune cookies, but they no longer laugh at our way of eating, or view the chopsticks as novelities, as strange and uncivilized behaviour.

Look around you in real life, in chinatown, more and more Canadian know how to order real Chinese dishes in restaurants, not just Dim Sum, and no more Dinner Combo. They bypass the forks, in favour of the chopsticks.

50 years later today, the wind is blowing from the other direction. The adoration turns East. The Chinese culture has finally established herself as another civilized alternative.

All these years, I have lost contact with my British friend. I should track him down one day and quote to him this, from “The King and I”.

King: You will order the finest gold chopsticks.
Anna: Your Majesty, chopsticks? Don’t you think knives and forks would be more suitable?
King: I make mistake, the British not scientific enough to know how to use chopsticks.

PS Do you know the famous Japanese lacquered chopsticks (Wakasa-nuri hashi) are produced in the City of Obama, Japan?

(Through Rose-Coloured Glasses)

I don’t like banquets, charity balls or any fund raising functions. Don’t get me wrong, I am no Uncle Scrooge. I am happy just to donate and simply get my tax receipt. But sitting around a table, with a group of strangers, trying to start up a conversation politely, just to kill time; before the first dish arrives, that’s a chore.

“How are you today?”

“I am Mike. Nice to meet you.”

“Today’s weather ………..”

“Going on holiday?”

These lasted at most 15 minutes, and then silence.

We wreck our brain trying to restart the conversation.

But weekend gathering with friends, that is a different kettle of fish. We don’t have to try hard to find a topic for conversation, it just flows easily. We are birds of the same feather after all.

During our university days, when together, we talked about courses to take, professors and assignments, boyfriends and girlfriends, or simply seeping a beer, watched a hockey game together.

In our final year, we talked about job prospect, job interviews or graduate school, and might be, a wedding date.

After graduation, that year, we were overwhelmed with weddings. During receptions, we talked about our new jobs, family planning and who was going to be the next victim.

The next year, all the wives came to the gatherings with big tummies. We stared at each other and laughed. Natrually the conversation fell on the due date, maternity experience and preparation. Childbirth classes, breathing technique, natural birth, mid-wife or obstetrician, on and on we kept talking.

Next year’s gatherings were noisy indeed, with so many babies crying like an orchestra. Obviously converstation was centered on how to raise a healthy child, what to feed a baby, their growth and milestones. “Johnny starts crawling already.” “Mary already knows how to say dada.” We compared notes. We were all proud parents. And these lasted for the next 5 years.

As the kids grew, our conversation was switched to the merit of private vs public schools, French Immersion or Montessori; and then later, concentrated on which piano teacher was best, was private tutoring necessary, and which saturday Chinese school. Eventually, which university, what faculties and courses to take. Decision, decision, work of the parents would never end.

Recent gatherings, we were talking about, which eye doctor is best for cataract or surgeon for colonoscopy, what to do for arthritis, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, what to eat and what not. “Are you retiring yet?” “going on a cruise, or China tour?” “Symptoms of PMS?”

Pretty soon, we will be talking about our good old days, our dwindling retirement funds, the nursing home and the funeral pre-plan.

Amen.

(Through Rose-Coloured Glasses)

This winter Olympic sparked euphoria and Canadian patriotism across the whole country, to the envy of all politicians. If this nationalism can be kept up, a majority government will definitely be in sight.

How to pass this flame of patriotic nationalism on and circulates across the country and keeping it alights, till the next election? That is the dream of all politicians.

Now prorogation has ended, parliament reopened its door; the throne speech was given and a new budget was announced, even threw in a gender-neutral national anthem for distraction, but the euphoria is dying fast. What a politician to do? How to rekindle that nationalistic spirit?

With a jolt, the politician realized someone was standing before him.

“I am the Ghost of the Olympic Spirit, Sir. I am here to show you the way.”

The large TV screen was on. “Let’s go back three weeks. Here is the opening ceremony, with athletes entering the stadium. Notice those countries with only one or two athletes, that is the real Olympic spirit. Participation first, winning second.”

“No no no, we do want to win. We want a majority.”

Puffed. In a jiffy, the Ghost of the Olympic Spirit was replaced by the Ghost of Owning the Podium.

“Canadians are too modest, Sir. We went into the Game with fighting spirit, with only one aim in mind, no matter what, just win, win, and win.”

“Now you are talking.”

The TV was showing our first week dismal results, we did not own the podium, and for what were awarded, they mainly belonged to the woman athletes.

“Oh no, we only want cracks in the glass ceiling, not big holes.”

Puffed, out went the Ghost of Owning the Podium, and in his place, appeared the Ghost of Humility.

“Sir, here is Joannie Rochette, our bronze medalist, skating in memory of her mom.”

”Will this translate into votes?”

“Here is another story, Brain Mckeever, the legally blind cross-country skier, who made history by qualifying for the Olympic.”

“We have squeezed all possible publicity out of him already, and in the end, he was benched and forgotten. He has no chance of winning anyway.”

Puffed, the Ghost of Humility exited angrily, and in her place, the Ghost of Gold Rush.

“Sir, I am glad to report we do own the podium, the top of the podium, to be exact. We now hold the record of the country that got the most gold medals. Our last gold was the one that triggered the euphoria of nationalism across the country, from coast to coast to coast. We own the hockey podium.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what we want. To keep the patriotic flame alight, we need to ‘Own the Hockey (Male) Podium’, the government has to form our own all Canadian NHL team to do just that.”

A quiet voice spoke from the corner, “why don’t we just draft Sidney Crosby for PM, should be cheaper and more effective.”

The politician woke up with a cold sweat.

(Through Rose-Coloured Glasses)

Everybody loves a bargain.

When I was small, mother used to bring us kids along, for an excusion of whole day shopping. Hong Kong was known as the Shoppers Paradise, with shops everywhere, selling all sort of merchandise, from jewellery, clothing, shoes, toys to food and dried goods. Street vendors were at every street corner, yelling and selling their “Jump Off Building”, world cheapest wares.

Selling and buying in Hong Kong is an art. You stopped and looked at some merchandise, the shopkeeper would suddenly appear from nowhere, right away started listing the qualities of his ware.

You cut to the core, “How much!”

“10 bucks.”

“Too much, 3.”

“Oh, no, too low, can’t survive. How about 8 bucks.”

You started to leave. “All right, final price 7.00.”

You kept walking, shaking your head. “OK, ok, 6.50”

You stopped. He smiled. You smiled. Another transaction completed.

That is the technique of a bargain hunter.

But when we first moved to Canada, we completely lost this magic touch, because here it was one set price policy. If you asked the salegirl for a discount, she just stared at you, wondering what planet you from.

With the economic ups and downs of the past few decades, advertising marketing keeps evolving. Now we have Scratch and Save Days, discount coupons, and instore on sale items with door breaker prices, “we will match the price of competitors,” “Don’t pay till 2012” etc, but all these are initiated and controlled by the merchants and stores, not by the customers, and completely took the fun and art out of bargaining.

Until one day, a patient walked into my office, with a sore throat.

He opened his mouth. The tonsils were red and angry, with pus. I did a throat swab.

Then told him, “You have tonsillitis, need antibiotics, I am going to give you 30 pills, you take 3 times per day for 10 days.”

He raised his hand with five fingers, said hoarsely “50.”

“What? You only need them for 10 days.”

“40.” He lowered one finger.

I stared at him. Silently I wrote the prescription: Amoxil 250 mg 3 X per day for 10 days total 40 pills.

I stared at him. The bargain hunter has finally arrived.

(Through Rose-Coloured Glasses)

This is a 50 years old legend, from HKU.

Young Dr. Kildare was a first year surgical resident. He was not on call that night. As a matter of fact, he was having a happy time with his buddies in the bar near the hospital. Suddenly his beeper went off.

“Excuse me, I have to call the hospital.”

“Doctor you are needed in emerg, there is a serious multi-cars accident. We are overwhelmed. We need all the help we can get.”

Back to the hospital he went. He was assigned a patient with stomach ache, and with a tummy as hard as rock, who screamed with every touch. He made the quick diagnosis, appendicitis, that required surgery right away. He tried to find the chief surgical resident, who was tied up with the accident cases. The chief sent back a message, the case is all yours.

Young Kildare’s jaw almost touched the floor. He had never done any appendectomy bt himself before. He assisted in a few cases, and did some other surgeries, that’s all. Well, you know the surgical basic, you have to walk when your horse died, the young doctor kept telling himself. He went in to scrub and put on the surgical gown and mask.

Nervously he entered the Operation Theatre and approached the operating table. The patient was already prepped, and waiting for him. He spreaded the drapes and covered the body.

“Scapel.” He put out his hand, and made the first cut. He tried to remember the number of layers he had to cut through, before he could enter the abdominal cavity. Luckily, he had the abdomen opened with minimal bleeding. He was congratulating himself silently.

“Rat, where is the appendix.” He searched and searched, with no success. He began sweating, beads of water appeared on his forehead. Then he realized. “Holy Mackerel, I am on the left side, the wrong side for the appendix.” He almost passed out.

Swearing, he changed side with the nurse and made another cut. This time the inflammed appendix was quickly located, ligated and cut. Now he had to closed both wounds, one left, one right.

An hour later, when the patient woke up from the anaesthetic, the young Dr. Kildare was already at the bedside, speaking in a low voice, “you see, I want to make sure everything is OK, so I took a look at the other side too. And this is on the house, no extra charge.”

The patient was extremely grateful and thanked the young doctor over and over again.

Well, that is the legend.

Headline in today’s newspaper: Patient sued for wrongful masectomies.

So the legend might be a true story, after all. Time changes, but there are things that never do.

(Through Rose-Coloured Glasses)

Life is a struggle. Always.

Last weekend, we went to see a play called Future Folk, in Toronto.

It is produced by the professional group Sulong Theatre Collective. It tells the story of the Filipina nannies who come to Canada seeking a new life. Back home in the Philippines, life is a struggle. They come under the Live-in Caregiver Program, which, while dangling the prospect of freedom and possibility of an immigrant status, in front of some women in desperate situations, usually provides Canadians with very affordable and compliant nannies. Philpina nanny, this is  an universal phenonemon with many countries around the world.

Through songs, dances and story narrations, we learned about the hard work of the nannies, abuses they face with their employers and problems with families back home. Although it is mainly one-sided, but the play does reflect some of the problems that exist. It tells the hope and struggle of the Philpina nannies, and hence the title of the play, Future Folk, I presume.

Flash back forty years, when we were still university students, we also did shows and plays of the hard life of the Chinese immigrants. Those who came to this “Golden Mountain” to seek a better life for their families, to work in the coal mines, in the TransCanada railway, in the kitchens of chinatowns, and sent their hard earned money back home to their wives and children. Most stayed and were buried here, never had a chance to return home. We traced the root of the Chinese immigrants, the history and devastation in China in that period, that forced them to seek a chance of a better life.

Same story, different period, different nationality. Life is  a struggle. Always.

Also this week in Toronto, they are showing a documentary, Last Train Home, on migrant Chinese workers and their family problems in nowadays China, directed by Lixin Fan, a Montreal documentarian.

Each year, the train stations, ferry terminals and bus stops are packed with travellers, more than 130 million of them, who travel from their factory jobs in the big cities of China to their faraway homes in the country, to be briefly reunited with family members for Chinese New Year celebrations. Just like the Thanksgiving and Christmas here, except on a more massive scale.

The film follows the struggles of Changhua and Sugin Zhang, a couple who left their rural home 16 years ago for more prosperous jobs in urban factories in Guangdong province. They left behind a daughter and a son, who were raised by grandparents. The daughter, Qin, just turning 18, has grown to resent her parents for their long absences: “All they care about is money.” She drops out of school and works in a factory, against the wish of her parents. Conflicts and alienation grow between them. But what can they do? As the mother said, that’s life.

Same story, within country, different setting. Life is  a struggle. Always

(Through Rose-Coloured Glasses)

Air rage, celebrities have it, time and again. Naomi Campbell (fashion model) went ballistic when her luggage got lost. Clay Aiken (American Idol) got into a “dispute” with a fellow traveler when his in-flight nap invaded her personal space. Icelandic singer Björk lashed out at a reporter in a Thai airport just for welcoming her to the country. And a near riot took place at London’s Heathrow in 2006 after Snoop Dogg (rapper) and some of his entourage were asked to leave a business-class lounge—and almost took down a duty-free shop with them. Angry Ivana Trump (Donald Trump’s ex) was escorted off a plane. And now a junior cabinet minister has an outburst in Charlottetown airport last week. The list goes on.

Why do they fly into a rage (no pun intended  🙂  )? The angry generation? For publicity? Or their ego? Or is it just fun and game?

Look at another recent example. Just a week ago, Matt Romney, the former US potential presidential candidate, was involved in an air rage incident in Vancouver. This occurred just before takeoff, when Romney asked the passenger in front of him to return his seat to its full upright position. The request sparked a confrontation which resulted in the man becoming physically violent and attempting to strike Romney. The man turned up to be a rapper, Sky Blu, who proudly proclaimed in his own video on the TMZ Internet site that he was the other party, and went into detailed narration of his misadventure.

Blu said he was trying to go to sleep and reclined his seat, when a passenger sitting behind him started to protest.

“Then all of a sudden I see him reach over and he grabs my shoulder (and says) ‘Sir, put your seat up,’ and I just react,” he says making a punching motion in the video. “‘Boom!’ …. … get off of me.”

“That man assaulted me, I was protecting myself.”

After Blu’s punch, Romney and his wife began screaming for help. The plane, which was taxiing to the runway, turned back. Blu was arrested and later released, not charged.

A video confession, nicely done, Mr. Blu. Why did you have the seat down during take off, in the first place? This is against airline policy. This policy actually is for your own safety. And why didn’t you put it back up when asked a few times? Instead boom, you flared up into a rage and started a fight? “He touched me first” is not an excuse.

OK, Blu is a minor celebrity, but probably has already developed an oversize ego (a spoiled kid, no doubt. He is the nephew of Motown Records founder Berry Gordy). Self importance, ignorance and righteousness, and if combined with alcohol, will create a dangerous air rage cocktail.

Lesson learned: Don’t travel with celebrities (disregard of ego size) on board.

And even better, isn’t Air Canada proposing a nut-free zone for allergy sufferers; why not a nut-free zone to buffer such violent pests.

(Through Rose-Coloured Glasses)

Wow, this is cool. Utopia finally comes to earth. “Eat what you can, pay what you want” commerce is our next trendy culture! As soon as I hear the news, I hurry out of door, to search for such a godsend in our area. I spend hours walking up and down of all the streets in my neighbourhood and beyond, stop every pedestrian I can question. They simply stare at me blankly, shake their heads or snicker at my back, Who cares, search of the Holy Grail has to go on. At long last, a good samaritan points and steers me in the right direction. This joint is not a “pay as you wish” as such, but a “pay by weight” restaurant. Close enough. I eagerly push open the door.

A huge sign hangs by the entrance, “Eat all you can, pay by weight, 10 cents per lb”. I figure, how many lbs can I consume, even 10 lbs can cost only a dollar, wow, this is gourmet paradise.

I pile my plate with all sorts of food, from lobster, fish, shrimp to prime rib roast, vegetables of assorted colours, pasta, bread, pate, cold cuts, desserts …………

Euphorically I arrive at the check-out counter. The smiling waitress politely says to me, ”step this way please, sir, right onto that scale, to see how much you have to pay”. Oh my god, ‘pay by weight’ all right, but it’s my weight they are after! And I wish I was here 80 lbs ago.**



** ”These” for you, GY

(Through Rose-Coloured Glasses)

Forty years ago, we arrived as foreign students. This was our first taste of independence. We usually lived in dorms or with fellow students in rental rooms/houses around our universities, home away from home. Some of us even learned to cook for ourselves. When friends came to visit, they were surprised that we liked chicken wings so much that we had them for every meal. We always explained that’s because chicken wings were cheap. In those days they only cost $1.00 for 3 lbs. But the actual fact was, we don’t know what else to buy. We don’t know the English names of most food products. Minced pork, prime ribs, chicken gizzards, those are exotic words not taught in high school, not the requirement for university entrance, and were definitely not included in our vacabulary. So we just kept asking for what we knew, i.e. chicken wings.

But man cannot live on chicken wings alone. Eventually, we developed a simple smart scheme. Although our vacabulary was still extremely limited, but then we survived much better. The magic was to use the word “THIS”, with one finger pointing, we told the butcher or shop-lady, “I want this, this and this.” Simple, we understood each other perfectly, and the transaction was quickly completed. We had more varieties on our dinner plates.

Our vacabulary and our diet improved and we adapted into the Canadian way of life, we don’t have to use “THIS” scheme anymore.

But now forty years later, who can imagine, we are once again faced with a dilemma. We have to resort to “THIS”, the simple and reliable scheme. We are so forgetful nowadays, occasionally we cannot recall even our friend’s names. So once again when shopping, we may have to resort to finger pointing and THIS.

Nowadays as the composition of the Chinese Canadian immigrants keeps changing, we are faced with a new language barrier, in Chinatown. There are many Mandarin/Putonghua speaking workers. The other day, I was ordering a food tray in a Chinese supermarket, the shopgirl didn’t understand my Cantonese and I, her English. Finally we have to resort to the catalogue pictures and with one finger pointing, “I want this, this and this.”