Well, it has been a VERY busy week. And I have a new hobby – turning down jobs.
First there was interview number three, to become an editor for an online travel magazine. I discussed photography, music and even Rabelais with my interviewer and everything was going well until, for the first time in my life, my Sorbonne education worked against me – the guy just couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to write for a political or charitable organisation instead of his website. This really took me by surprise and I had one of those moments where my whole life passed before my eyes – I saw my past and realised I had gone from wanting to write novels to writing about a Renaissance monk and then to describing car trims and door handles... It also didn’t make me feel very confident about how great he thought his own magazine was...
Something must have worked for him though, because he offered me the job. Well, first he invited me to a ‘2nd interview’, which turned out to be another ambush. Do these companies really think that by locking people in a room and offering them a job they will automatically accept?! I mean, I am claustrophobic by nature, but surely this would make anyone feel like a trapped animal. Anyway, he gave me the “we are ready to make room for you on our team” speech, followed by the traditional “we have stretched our budget but we think you are worth it” guilt trip, but he then took me off guard by adding an “obviously I can’t put this in the contract, but if I give you a job I’m going to have to ask you not to have any children”... I was screaming “lawsuit!” in my mind but I kept quiet, reminding myself that I was in a foreign country, one where asking someone to get married to get a job seemed completely normal...
Anyway, I ignored my fear of confrontation, remembered this guy’s macho tendencies and the worrying frequency of phallic references in his Editor’s Letter and managed to ask for a few days to think about it before running away. Not that I’ll turn it down, but I do need to think about it!
Meanwhile, the bijou travel guides got back in touch to tell me I was still in the running for the job. Things could get interesting...
Then there was the fashion interview, in Quarry Bay. I sat down in the editor’s office and at first I couldn’t concentrate on anything she was saying because I was transfixed by her botoxed face and its oddly smooth eye sockets. Whatever cream she was using on her eyes, I felt like suggesting that she start using it on the rest of her face, too... I was interrupted from building up the nerve to do so, though, by hearing her tell me that everything I had been doing according to my CV was ‘easy’ compared to writing about the fashion world. “Oh yes,” I thought, “I am sure that writing a thesis about medieval French literature is nothing compared with discussing the advantages of ruffles over raffia”... I suddenly felt the urge to run away before she, too, offered me a job, but I was too late. She did. And now I have another difficult decision to come to terms with...
So, after getting Krusty to jump up and down in his suit for me on the roof of the IFC (check out the photo below!), I went for a little session of soul searching to decide where I wanted my career to take me. The search took me all the way to the wholesale fish market of Shau Kei Wan as I waited for an interview with one of HK’s main newspapers. One good thing about all of these interviews is definitely that they are taking me all across HK and making me visit places that I wouldn’t otherwise have had the urge too...
The ‘old man’ (his words!) gave me a long monologue to explain why his paper was better than its competitors. After one word of agreement from me I was suddenly his ally and he wanted to help me out. I was quite enjoying the complicity, when he said, “look, cards on the table, I want to employ you, I think you would be an asset to us,” in his smoky, shifty voice, his leg bouncing up and down all the while. Of course, as I braced myself for the inevitable, he added, “thing is we don’t have any budget at the moment to employ more staff.” I tried to tell myself that he only wanted to employ me because he was tired from his all-nighter working on the budget issue the day before and that all of his self-promotion was probably just self-assurance anyway, but it didn’t help. This was the second time that I was in a situation where I could almost have a job, but not really. And of course that made the job that much more desirable.
Still, it hasn’t all been work and existential crises. First there was the fabulous fashion party that I was invited to, held on the roof of the Star Ferry Pier. Veuve Clicquot ran freely and I felt really un-glam until the bubbles took their hold. Suddenly I fancied myself one of the crowd and I even recognized a few faces in the shadows, making me feel so well connected, dahling. Of course, it ended up with fabulous Victor and I strutting down the catwalk when the show was over, feeling very Carrie Bradshaw and Stanford Blatch. I am sure it was much more glamorous in my head than it must have been for onlookers, but hey. I even smuggled Krusty in, but he soon dragged me down off the catwalk and back up to his office because he had some unfinished business there. I rested my head for just a second, and woke up drooling on someone’s desk 30 minutes later...
A few days later I was making my way around the antique stalls of Cat Street and wondering why my bag was so heavy. I peeked inside, only to find two rocks that hit me with dread as I remembered my drunken self taking them from the fashion show... I had been carrying two heavy rocks around for three days – if that isn’t a warning against excesses of alcohol, then I don’t know what is.
I recovered by taking refuge in the Chanel Mobile Art Exhibition on the top of a parking lot in Central. Zaha Hadid’s husky voice took me away from reality thanks to the funky MP3 set-up of the show, leading me from the inside of a handbag to the blinking white globes that were her brain cells... Just what I needed to disconnect me from reality.
And then there was the gallery opening in the company of the lovely Julie and Jesse. We went from witty Russian art in Soho to tacky Indonesian curry in Lan Kwai Fong, and finished off with a White Russian in honour of the dude in Elgin Street.
I came away from all of this ready to face some more important life decisions.
But wait, I am forgetting the most important event of the week – we have finally moved in to our new flat! Of course I didn’t really enjoy it until day two because we had visited Chrissie in DB the day before and I had forgotten about my special ability to literally roast at the speed of light, making myself sick with minor sunstroke. But the next day I woke up bright and early, ready for a day of arguing with Krusty as we decided which basics to get from IKEA, how to make our new bed, what to cook for our first meal and generally how to make the flat our own.
Of course we have now found out there are a few down sides to living in a commercial building (the suspicious looks from the security guard as we pass him with giant bags of soft furnishings and the limited availability of hot water, for example), but this compromise means we have plenty of space and we feel right at home. Contrarily to the tiny studio flats I first visited, here we can breathe. Well, not too deeply if we don’t want to inhale the fumes of dried deer antlers from the street, but you know what I mean.
The flat is conveniently located next to some supermarkets, too, where the cashiers wave and say “no” when you speak English to them and there are handy signs to indicate what the Chinese vegetables are, such as ‘A Vegetable’. Helpful!
I think we are going to like it here, though. And every time I look out of the window, the open sky and harbour views just make me smile... I'll send some pictures through as soon as possible, I promise. But until then, here are some scenes from this week, from Quarry Bay to Shau Kei Wan, Sheung Wan to the IFC...
