cantomemes:

‘Servitude’ themed party for my dragon boat team. L-R: sexy secretary, cellar girl, cop.

So much work!

My free time is precious moments in between phone calls and emails, every other late night, and every early morning spent bleary-eyed, cursing the alarm and wondering how many times I can hit snooze before there would be ‘repurcussions’. I’ve gone from ‘weekends are sacred’ to ‘I get the occasional weekend, which I’d only spend wandering around aimlessly and not entirely confident that work won’t be summoning soon.’

And yet…

This job is helping me meet so many incredibly zen and helpful people, who are working insane hours like I am, brave-shouldering so well they make me bite back my own complaints. This job is sending me across Mexico, and, en route for a few brief hours each, the tarmacs of O’ Hare and LAX, when a year ago I would have been lucky to be sent from KL to Singapore. Sooner or later, due to teamwork, clientele, language qualification or just plain because, this job will also send me back to Shanghai — my last visit was 10 years ago.

At least, that’s my survival mantra right now, as I resist the strong urge for coffee and wait for my work inbox to blink with my next task.

LOTS of firsts were achieved in 2011:

• First foreign working visa
• First time surviving completely independently
• First credit card
• First smartphone
• First visit to Macau (2 visits to date)
• First time on the China MTR
• First try at dragon boating; First dragon-boat tournament
• First time attending the Sevens
• First costume party (5 to date)
• First lease, and first time buying my own furniture and household appliances
• First music festival (Clockenflap, stayed and danced till 11pm to the crazy and delightful Santigold)
• First surprise birthday party (okay it was a birthday lunch, but it was still awesome)
• First time on a private boat (5 junk trips to date)
• First time wakeboarding (2 tries to date)
• First attempt at surfing (where I managed to stand in a half-squat for all of 3 seconds before wiping out)

This is the year I left behind my screaming, irate quarter-life crisis and got the fresh new start in Hong Kong I’d been praying for. Even after my visa was minted, I waited with bated breath for months, skeptical and hopeful, that I hadn’t been too naive to believe things would really be different here, that I would find out it was just the same shit in a different city.

It wasn’t.

To a 2012 filled with many more firsts, and less ‘what if’s.

“My room is ready! My room is ready!”

T lets out a sigh. He knows I’ve been working tirelessly on the house, up early and at it till late in the night, cleaning and shopping and rearranging things. Testing appliances. Creating checklists. And, having picked the ‘nice but small’ over ‘big but blech’ arrangement for my budget, optimizing every nook and cranny for storage & efficiency. Probably worst of all, he knows I am basically bouncing off the walls in a dangerous fit of hyperactivity, ADHD and OCD.

“I’ll buzz you when I’m on my way.”

His housewarming gift is candy. He pops them into the fridge, hops over to my room, and frowns hard at it.

My room, a square box measuring a few hairs over 9 x 7 feet (with a door that takes up about a quarter of the space), barely fits a single bed, respectable closet, small desk and tiny chest of drawers. In order to leave a huge empty gap in the middle of the room for my brief workouts, the ultimate compromise was leaving an entrance gap between the corner of the bed and wardrobe under a foot wide, which was easily maneuvered by someone my size (I weigh under 110 lbs), but…

“What. What is this? How is anyone any bigger than you going to fit through this?”

“You’ll fit.”

“No I won’t.”

“You’re not even trying!”

T nods, respectfully holding back a chuckle of derision. “Alright then.”

He makes a dramatic effort to squeeze through the gap. It’s fine, but he gives me a big stern look for the trouble.

“On the bright side, it looks really cool.”

“Yep. Not bad actually.”

“And you have to test the bed! The mattress is awesome.”

At this point T’s eyes light up. Hong Kong apartments tend to feature rock-hard, supposedly chiro-practical mattresses. Being Asian and no stranger to sleeping on floors, I was quite alright with this arrangement. But when bouncing from one mattress to the other in IKEA, I realized that the difference between a low-range (HK$700 - 990) and mid-range mattress (about HK$1,500) was like the difference between sleeping on a dishwashing sponge and… a cloud. I splashed for the mid-range, and topped it off with a HK$200 mattress pad which could double as a guest bed.

T cautiously climbs onto the thick mattress, and lets out a short moan as he lies down.

“This is… the first time I’ve laid on a soft mattress… since I left New Zealand.”

“I sleep soooo well on this thing.”

T extends his arms and legs. He turns one way, then the other. His eyes meet Paddington, my wheat-coloured, blue-raincoated teddy bear. He picks it up and plonks it on my desk. “All to myself, please.”

“I need that.”

“It’s fine there.”

“I need desk space too.”

“Put the bear on the floor then.”

T closes his eyes, smiling oh-so-slightly as he lets his entire body weight sink into the pile of softness.

“If you ever come to visit, will it be for me or for trying out my bed?”

“Bed.”

It’s a return on investment, I suppose.

I think the best part was spending an entire Saturday, slightly hung over from a till-dawn farewell party the night before, packing all my possessions into a growing pile of luggage, boxes, bags and more boxes. I slept surrounded by a forest of packages, and slept incredibly well.

The next morning I take a shopping list to IKEA and order my wardrobe, desk, bed, mattress and a shoe cabinet. Then I pick up some cutlery, a mattress pad, new pillow and comforter.

T was appointed as my moving man due to reasons of (1) closeness, (2) physically being in Hong Kong and (3) consisting of about 85% muscle. The assignment was tricky, but what finally worked was pinning him down and threatening bloody murder until he pledged his services. Keeping his promise though, on Sunday he turned up ready to work (slight delay due to a hangover), and true to his straight-to-the-point Kiwi nature, he makes a beeline for my room, plonks himself down on the bed and takes in the scene.

“That’s a lot of shit,” he says matter of factly, as though he’d expected worse.

My smile turns sheepish. “There’s more.”

I throw the closet doors open, revealing stacks and stacks of overstuffed paper bags.

T swears under his breath, drifts into the living room and plops onto a couch.

“Which ones should be the first to go?” I ask.

“Luggage and the big ones.”

I bring out the biggest items, he picks up an impressive load, and we’re off.

This led to three rounds of huffing and hoisting things through my troublesome narrow corridor with a door so wide it barely opens into said narrow corridor, then into the tiny lift where you need to, again, swing a large door open in a confined space, hail a cab to the less-occupied side of the road (i.e. it takes forever), zip to my new flat in North Point, at which point door-to-corridor size ratios become much more bearable and the dropoff is basically a breeze.

T immediately bounces around the place, checking tap fixtures and paint cracks. My furniture won’t be delivered for a few days, so we unwrap the mattress pad, pillow and comforter, slap on fresh bedding, and wrap ourselves up for a while in the surprisingly comfortable makeshift bed and stare at the inside of my new box.

“What do you think?” I ask as he tries to scrape a rogue drop of paint off the windowsill.

“It’s shit,” he grins.

Kiwi code for ‘all good.’

I started by hitting up every online listing I could find which seemed legitimate. I even sent out requests to other home-searchers with the same budget if they’d like to team up and share a flat.

A week later I was legging it to meet my potential new flatmate, a young ballet dancer, and an agent she recommended. Total strangers, of course, but I was pressed for time and we’d been browsing each other on Facebook.

I liked them instantly. Both girls were incredibly friendly, sensible and sincere. The agent spared us any trace of bullshit. The flatmate and I exchanged work and ‘expat life’ stories.

A week and 9 properties later (although I’d also viewed another 6 properties on my own), we had a favourite.

It was in North Point. I’d have to trade in the crazy bustling city (and convenience) for a neighborhood just a few kilometers East and still decidedly a bustling concrete matrix, and yet felt almost suburban in comparison.

On the other hand, it was just around the corner from the train station and countless buses, and the difference of being just a short way off the main road (and our neighbors being mostly old folks) meant our rooms were incredibly quiet. I was further from Central, but closer to work. The apartment was well-ventilated (otherwise a huge problem for badly planned Hong Kong apartments), natural light streamed into both bedrooms, had a small but reasonable layout, and every inch of the flat had been newly renovated, fixed and painted — plain, white, tasteful.

I spent the next week balancing finances and settling the paperwork, as I took measurements of my new room and started creating shopping lists on IKEA and Pricerite’s web sites. Using Adobe Illustrator I created little shapes with the exact measurements to-scale representing my room and all my favourite furniture, moving them around just to make sure everything would ‘fit’ in my modestly-sized new home. I made regular price-comparison visits to Fortress, Broadway and Japan Home.

“How’s the new home search going?” my friends would ask. Their eyes would widen when I replied, “Done. I’ll be moving in a week.”

Now the question was, how would I move all my stuff?

Just under a week ago, I was staying in the heart of Causeway Bay. My first home as a newbie in a strange new country, I opted for one of those all-inclusive setups, where my rent covered the use of a room with basic furniture, ready Internet connection, cleaning service for the bathroom and kitchen, and water and electricity bills.

Other than the pure cacophony and density that is Causeway Bay, it was heaven. The girls I shared the flat with were young, friendly and fun, and the rent was quite reasonable.

Granted, I had to wear earplugs to block out the constant noise of car horns, fire truck sirens and the constant renovation work. But I’ve always been a city girl, and I can sacrifice a few things to be in the middle of the action.

A few months later the problems started. Representatives from our leasing agency would intrude into our rooms without warning at all hours of the day, the cleaning services became less frequent and much less thorough, and one of the smaller rooms had a severe ceiling leakage problem which made it unliveable, hence it was always either under repair (filling the house with loud drilling noises and a thick smog of plaster dust and paint odour), or being rented to a soon-to-be-very-unhappy tenant. The agency also often messed up our paperwork, losing our contracts or making incredibly inconvenient decisions, such as requiring us to visit their office in Central to personally deliver our rent in cash.

Worst of all, at one point my rent was raised HK$2,000 over the course of 2 months. The reasons for these increases were always vague and unjustified, and suspiciously timed. When I received the last increment notice (earlier this month), I called the agency for an explanation and was told, vaguely, that they might not renew their lease on the property I was staying in beyond the end of November. Oh but hey, we have no idea what’s going down. Whether you will have to haul ass out of that room in a few weeks is kind of a big maybe. We didn’t tell you? Oopsie.

I won’t get into the details of how I then tried to procure specific information for this, heard nothing for weeks, personally dropped into the office, caused a stir and somehow got someone fired for unrelated (but sadly justified) reasons.

But basically sometime in the 1^st week of November, I decided I had to find me a new home before the end of November.

Somehow.

I’ve come up with a trick to be really zen in a foreign country that’s highly tolerant of foreigners.

Every time someone gets on my nerves, I just switch to a language they struggle with and continue our conversation. Oddly enough, they will feel flustered that they don’t speak the new language rather than offended that I’m not trying to use their own. This causes them to instantly drop all attempts at ‘attitude’ and focus on the exact message they’re trying to communicate, or in the case of minimum-wage-clocking and therefore linguistically underexposed telemarketers, hang up.

Sales girls peddling face whiteners will quickly shy away, incompetent waiters will rush to summon a problem-solver, and habitual yellers will suddenly lower their voice a few notches. But in case the local language is needed to negotiate a lower price or call someone on their bullshit, I can still bring it out in a flash. This is working so well, I’ve decided it’s imperative that I learn a non-Malaysian language in order to use the same tactic back home.

Japanese is not an option, as an alarming percentage of the people who tick me off are Otakus.

…is when you get really, really sick.

(Warning: long post)

About three weeks ago, I developed mild cramps in my lower abdomen (at the wrong time of the month). I ignored it for a day, until it got so bad the next evening I couldn’t keep a straight face at work. Panadol and warm drinks didn’t work. My boss let me off early to look for a doctor. T met me at the train station and walked with me.

Lots of prodding and poking later, I tested negative for tumors, cysts, colds, food poisoning and movement-related muscle injury. I was sent home with anti-inflammatory painkillers, despite which the pain only grew worse and I could barely eat or sleep for 2 days. Luckily this was a Thursday, so I only had to take Friday off work while the pain subsided slowly over the weekend. A pee test revealed zero signs of infection, normal glucose and blood cell levels, and in fact, normal everything.

With the pain subsiding and all tests (including a follow-up) revealing no problems, I resumed work with the diagnosis ‘deep tissue strain’. Although I loved my work, ate well, exercised regularly and received sufficient sleep, my doctor suspected something was stressing me out to cause enough tension to spark off a severe strain.

I was back at work on Monday and soon no longer required painkillers, thinking that was that. By Saturday I felt well enough to attend my friend’s birthday party and even get a little dancing on.

A week later the pain flared up in my upper abdomen. I had been working out the night before and so dismissed it as normal muscle strains, wincing every now and then but still productive at work. Regular exercisers understand this: muscle strains are the kind of pain you grit your teeth and savour; a satisfying mark of sorts that you’ve had a great workout.

Over the weekend I developed a high fever. On Saturday my flatmate K brought food and water from the nearby grocery store while I lay in bed all day, taking Panadol, but on Sunday I felt slightly better and went grocery shopping on my own. Walking was torturous, but everything is within a short distance in my neighborhood. On Monday I felt great again, and was back at work.

On Wednesday, I woke up with a sharp stabbing pain in my side. It felt as though someone had stuck a dagger in and was slowly twisting the blade. I told my boss I’d be in late, and looked up the earliest-opening clinic in the neighborhood. I had no luck getting a cab, and walking was worse than ever but manageable, as I toddled along at octogenarian pace, trying to stand straight and look normal.

I was at the door 7 minutes before opening time at 8:30. The doctor saw my urgency and wasted no time, but after another round of poking around and lengthy interviews, also couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. He referred me to a surgeon and insisted I take the day off work.

The surgeon was a busy man, as was T, whose new job meant he could no longer visit or take care of me. His earliest appointment was 5pm, so I went home and tried to sleep. The pain prevented sleep and restricted movement.

At 4pm, I hailed a cab to the surgeon’s office although it was just 2 blocks away. An extensive ultrasound showed healthy, perfect organs. It could be nothing, or it could be something only more invasive tests would reveal. He advised admitting me into a hospital for a CT scan, but I decided to wait and see if the pain would subside. The surgeon shared a list of symptoms to look out for.

“If any of these symptoms turn up, you’re going to the hospital.”

30 hours later, the muscles right below my ribcage began to spasm uncontrollably. I could barely breathe or take a step without exclaiming out of pain as my muscles played a decidedly unfriendly game of tackle with my ribcage and the stabbing in my side pulsed along. The ‘emergency symptoms’ included unbearable pain, so I called up my doctor at 1am. To his credit he immediately started dialing numbers, but all his hospitals were full, except one which refused patients at night (what the fish!).

He asked me to take 2 more Panadol and wait till dawn. I was in severe pain, no one knew what was wrong with me, and had no option but to wait. I had avoided telling my mother up until then, not wanting her to worry too much as she was also nursing my grandma back to health after a stroke (grandma pulled through like a totally awesome champ) but at the moment all I wanted to do was talk to her.

Mother tried to calm me down. She trusted the doctor, and the painkillers, and the fighting spirit in my tone. She told me sleep would come soon, and that at dawn my doctor would be able to respond to this. 2 seconds after hanging up my father had been informed, and we had a lengthy conversation to establish all my symptoms. My father was decidedly less calm, and was browsing flight tickets online, insisting on flying over, but I insisted he stay put.

At a little past 7am I had packed up my clothes, books, moisturizer and insurance papers, and woke K up so she could help me across the street and hail me a cab. I checked myself in and asked the hospital to contact my surgeon. I felt thoroughly embarrassed when they put me in a wheelchair, but at that point I simply couldn’t walk normally.

The CT scan and X-ray, both simple, quick procedures, were awful. ‘Staying perfectly still’ is tough for someone in great pain. Throw in spasming muscles, the inability to raise my arms any higher than my waist because it felt like I was ripping my obliques clear in half (for a CT scan, you have to lay your arms flat over your head) and the genuine inability to straighten my back without absolute agony, and these simple painless tests become unbearable.

Oh, and the needles. The needles. I have a pretty bad case of aichmophobia, but almost everything I did required an injection of some sort. The quickest one was drawing my blood sample, which hardly hurt but made me almost pass out. For the CT scan, they had to lodge an IV needle into a vein in my wrist, which is attached to a tube, at the end of which there is a nozzle for inserting more needles. Just to test the IV, they first have to give me an injection of saline. Test injections! The humanity. Halfway through the CT scan, they used this IV valve to inject something called a contrast dye. The sensation of minty liquid gushing into your veins is unnerving enough under normal circumstances, but with the pain, trying to control my spasms without moving, and doing all I can to suppress the thought ‘needle in my wrist needle in my wrist NEEDLE IN MY WRIST’, I practically — muscle restrictions be damned — leaped out of the scanner bed as soon as the nurses walked in to cheerfully announce ‘okay you’re done now’.

The pale green in my face only went away when a nurse removed the IV needle.

Shortly after returning to my ward, I was practically convulsing. The pain and spasms were worse than ever. After contacting my doctor, the nurses came in with the delightful news that I would need yet another IV inserted into my wrist, to deliver intravenous painkillers, along with some Valium to stop my muscles from spasming. Every time a needle is involved, I turn my head away and mutter ‘one-one thousand, two-one thousand’ and so on, which to non-English speakers probably looked like praying.

The nurses were worried sick for me, and very sweetly cheered me up by crafting a makeshift glove out of gauze so that I wouldn’t be able to see the needles, which really did cheer me up immensely. The IV painkillers worked instantly.

My CT scan was clear, and my blood cell count, renal function and glucose levels were fantastically healthy. BP perfect, heart rate a little higher than usual (pain does that) but still normal. Everything was both reassuringly and frustratingly perfect. The surgeon demanded I be prepped for an endoscopy.

Between the tests, I was thankful what a nice hospital this was. Reasonably priced with wonderful, friendly, highly-efficient staff who were all extremely helpful and clearly very concerned with everyone’s comfort and well-being. Spotlessly clean and very modern facilities. High ratio of English-proficient staff. I had a John Grisham novel, the latest issue of TIME, s2k’s iPod to listen to soothing music, and my iPhone to surf the web and keep in touch with my darlings (I don’t like using my iPhone as an iPod — smart phones guzzle up battery life at lightning speeds). The temperature in my ward was perfect, and the curtains separating each patient had a beautiful silk-like pattern. The menu had a pretty great selection, even though I had to fast for at least 6 full hours (not even a drop of water!) prior to each test. I think my favourite thing was the motion-sensor flush in the bathroom. All I do is shove my palm in its general direction, and it immediately obeys with a powerful flush that goes ‘FWOOOMPSH’. It makes me feel like the Professor X of toilet flushes. Not the most glamorous superpower, but still plenty useful, eh? Ehhhhh?

The entire time, Dad, Mom, Jenny, K and my 2 closest dragon boat mates (L, our decided leader who is both super friendly and loads of fun, and A, a German health and fitness nut who was one of our strongest paddlers and someone I just plain found a lot of chemistry with) were in constant contact over the phone. K sweetly checked in every day offering to bring me anything I needed. A is a corporate bigshot and had loads of responsibilities that weekend, but called often, promising to visit as soon as he could. Dad, still anxious as heck, kept reminding me he could easily hop onto a plane, or if I preferred Mommy he could fly her over immediately too. I hate being fussed over, but every SMS and phone call left me smiling, and although the people I loved most in the world couldn’t physically visit, the thought that they wanted to, so badly, was an immense comfort.

Saturday afternoon I had an endoscopic biopsy. This basically means they shove a long tube down your throat to look into your digestive tract, plus nick a tissue sample—in my case, from my stomach lining. I wasn’t looking forward to it, but they assured me I would feel only the slightest discomfort because they would pump me with anesthetics. Unfortunately, the anesthetics didn’t work and I kept convulsing and gagging on the tube. When something’s shoved that far down your throat (mind out of the gutter, guys), you can’t say ‘stop’. I had to be restrained by 4 staff, but the procedure took less than a minute. Once the discomfort was over, I was worried about only one thing: did they get it? Did I ruin everything by struggling too much?

My doctor smiled his calm smile. “We got it.”

The anesthetic took hold a few hours too late, but still managed to do some good as I drifted into a hazy, wonderful, long nap.

I woke up with my appetite returned. Moments later I heard T’s voice calling from the entrance to my ward. He was here with a giant bag of goodies. Fresh perfect mangoes, croissants (my favourite), always-wonderful Macau egg tarts, pizza rolls, and a huge bag of Maltesers (which have become my favourite candy here for nostalgic reasons: it reminds me of a day years and years ago when Jenny and I snuck to a Swenson’s ice-cream parlour to share a giant Malteser shake). He stayed with me for as long as he could, explaining why he was so busy with his new job at a prestigious international school (they have very, very high standards and he was determined to deliver both great study materials for his new classes, as well as manage the many sports teams he’d been put in charge of). He had walked half a dozen blocks in the heat to find me.

While they ran the tests, I slept wonderfully from 10pm through to 6am, woke up starving for the first time in weeks, and devoured the rest of the croissants and pizza rolls T had brought so I could take another round of painkillers. When my surgeon strolled in at 8am, I was sitting up, reading, pain-free.

I had a diagnosis. My endoscopy showed nothing abnormal, but the biopsy tested positive for Helicobacter pylori.

H. pylori is a nasty stomach infection which throws up a very wide range of symptoms, many of which present outside of the stomach, thus making it a little bitch to diagnose. Getting ‘severe abdominal pains and muscle spasms’ was apparently great luck — it’s been known to cause stomach cancer and aggravating internal ulcers. I was cancer and ulcer free, and the cure was a huge cocktail of antibiotics, a photon pump suppressor, and tiny doses of Valium to keep the spasming at bay.

Pills, X-ray and a giant stack of CT scans in hand, I was discharged within the next 2 hours. Dad and RK, both men of science, will have fun poring over the CT scans, as well as the nifty little culture slide they made with my stomach biopsy (rapid urease test). I didn’t need a wheelchair when I walked out of the hospital, and by sheer luck, as soon as I hit the curb to hunt down a cab, one pulled up to drop off some visitors and I slipped right in after them.

A called, having just finished work (on a SUNDAY), anxious to visit, only to find I had been discharged. He dropped by to take me out to lunch. L had told him I was craving ice-cream in the hospital but no one would give me any, so he took me for frozen yogurt too, and we strolled around finishing our dessert before he walked me back to my door.

Me: Thanks for visiting me at the, er, hospital.
A: If you were still in the hospital, I would have showed up with flowers.
Me: Really? Darn! I mean, you didn’t have to :P

I admit, sometimes I feel all alone here in Hong Kong. After years of effort to build up so many meaningful relationships at home, I had left behind many varied but great networks of friends, and a family that had overcome some pretty deep gashes to finally become extremely happy, close and supportive again.

But real love, and real friendships, pull through when it counts. Sometimes your blessings reach you wherever you are. You just have to learn how to appreciate them.