And the bump grows on...

Grrrrr

The year of the Tiger is upon us in just a few weeks - not our baby tiger, but the Chinese astrological one that will become his own blog alter ego, too, if he so chooses. What am I talking about, blogs will be for old people by the time he can write...

Anyway, in homage to the city's imaginative interpretations, I've been collecting the best incarnations around town, albeit on my rubbish camera, but I'm loving the ubiquitous and versatile looks Tigger is taking on this year. Growl. And Miaow.

Blue smoke

I couldn't help but take a picture of these smokers I passed on my way to work this morning (on my camera phone unfortunately) – I would have been ready to bet that they are Mainlanders, as they were all sporting the trademark boxy suit and high waistline with bad leather shoes. Their smoking method was a giveaway, too – keeping the cigarette close to their lips whether they were inhaling or exhaling.

I couldn't say what mesmerised me so much about the bunch. I imagine it was the feeling of looking back through time by about 30 years... I forget that although we live in a Chinese country, it is one that considers itself lightyears ahead of the Mainland in terms of fashion, culture, commerce and architecture. Perhaps these guys just struck me as a nostalgic contrast to the logo heavy people walking past their little smoker's corner...

Or perhaps I was just hallucinating from the fact that I am exhausted from my child kicking me all night (I even woke up at 2am with Krusty in stitches next to me, saying that he had been playing with the baby for 15 minutes without waking me up, moving him up and down and all around my belly) and the neighbour's DVD machine automatically switching on full blast at 5am. Good training for when the bambino keeps me up all night OUTside of the womb?

True calling

Today my husband gave me what he thought was a compliment, and what I thought was one of the oddest things he has ever said to me: after saying how happy he was to be spending the rest of his life with me, he told me, full of love in his eyes that I "would have made a great nun".

Er, what?!

Mythbuster

Honestly, if you see a pregnant lady struggling to get up from her chair, it's not because she has balance issues to do with the extra passenger up front, it's because she has pins and needles in her bum and can hardly walk until the blood rushes back in... Even the gigantic pillow I brought into work today has not helped. Maybe I need to spend the next four months on the sofa at home watching TV series and eating biscuits instead of working out budgets and writing about money...

Catch up

It has been such a long time, I don't know where to start. It's like when you have a conversation with a friend you haven't spoken to in years – for some reason, you feel like you have a lot less to say than if you were having a chat with that friend you have lunch with every week...

I guess I should start where I left off, at Christmas. It was our last "adult" one, well the last one before there is a little thing demanding all of our attention I mean, so we spent it mostly arguing about silly topics, mocking the anorexic tree and playing the wii that my brother had brought with him. And, of course, complaining about the weather, even though we were far from the European snow. The holiday only truly finished when I took a hacksaw to the tree to fit it in the bin. All were glad to see it go (apart from me...).


My parents stayed on for a few weeks after Christmas, so we spent those visiting our old stomping grounds, like Stanley and Pokfulam, hiking up to the Peak through the Chi Fu Reservoir, urban hiking through Hong Kong Park, eating curries at Thai Basil, char siu at Yung Kee, burgers at Triple O...

We managed to squeeze in a trip to Malaysia, too, where we ended up staying in the Hard Rock, a hotel served with an extra helping of cheese. The constant, never-ending and very loud soundtrack is, well, predictable, and the zipped up, liquored up Ozzies were lapping up every second of it. And then, just when the music was over, the prayers began (it's a Muslim country). We made up for the hardships by swimming in the lovely pool, parasailing, and eating lots of buffet breakfast and yummy curries, putting on more weight than we should have, no doubt. Actually, it occurs to me that the expression goes "No pain, no gain", but in fact the less sport you do, and less pain you experience, the more gain you achieve around your waist. It's all the opposite... No pain, ALL gain!






When we got back, I went for another scan, my first at the public hospital I'll be giving birth at. Unfortunately that meant no babysitting at all from the nurse scanning (who was wearing a little shoulder cape and clock brooch, Florence Nightingale style) and much imagination was required to understand what we were looking at. We saw the brain, the heart, the liver, the thighs, and the rest I couldn't say. I stopped asking after the nurse shot me a very strange look when I asked if the brain was normal. Apparently it went well, though, and I was told that my child was well behaved. Makes a change from a month ago when he just kept turning away from the camera.

And now I just wait for the bump to become a bump, as opposed to a spare tire. Not to mention my "glow", which is manifesting itself in pre-pubescent puss form... I've never had so much acne in my life.

In other news, the workmen have left and the flat is "finished", or as finished as our contractor wanted to leave it. Mr Fok spent at least 10 times longer than he had planned trying to get things right, especially the bathroom, which we now affectionately call "The Fok Up". I won't go into the excruciatingly boring details of why the bathtub is a total disaster, but suffice to say that in HK you get what you pay for, and the cheap deal we thought we were getting has meant a lot of cut corners and illogical decisions. Ho hum!

And now, the parents have left, and I am back at work, sitting on an office chair all day with a baby pressing down on my tailbone and making my bottom numb. Oh the glamour.