Hong Kong - phooey!

I was worrying that nothing of any note had happened today. I had failed to read the paper, so perhaps many wonderful things were occurring around me, but I was as yet unawares.

So low had I got that I actually began to look through the drawers of my desk. I'm not sure what for, exactly. Certainly not inspiration. The main reason for having drawers in a desk is so you can sweep the accumulated mess into them when the occasion demands it.

There's a fairly obvious flaw in this approach to keeping a tidy desk, or so you might think. However, every two years I get a new desk, so I've got away with it for the last decade and I don't see a reason to change now.

However, in the desk today I found a book on Korean history that I'd purchased after I watched The City of Violence and felt embarrassed that all I knew about Korea was that men kicked each other in the head occasionally.

The first thing I learned was that the Korean creation myth involves a bear and a tiger in a cave, having sex and giving birth to the Korean race. I say the first thing I learned, but given that on a second reading I realised I had not memorised the names of either bear or tiger, or if indeed it was a tiger or not an eagle, so perhaps I hadn't learned anything at all.

But if there's anything that's taught me, it's that Koreans must have the greatest sense of humour in the world, or else be in a massive state of denial about what the offspring of a bear and a tiger/eagle would actually look like. I'm going to stop making my tired joke about Seoul in my set from now on, because they deserve better. They all have comedy in their genes.

Along with half the dna of either a tiger or an eagle.

As I was musing on this on the way up the escalator to the comedy club this evening, I bumped into a friend I hadn't seen in months; Pete, a Liverpudlian who looks as Chinese as you can get, until he opens his mouth and it's like he's the second coming of Craig Charles. We got talking about this and that, and his new baby made its way into our conversation. Now, it's at this point that you realise you're lacking in life skills like knowing what weight a baby should be? When he said it had doubled in weight in three months, I didn't know whether to congratulate him, or tell him to stop feeding it so much cake.

Maybe to solve the problem of my woeful ignorance vis a vis childrearing, I should have some kids. I see absolutely nothing wrong with this plan: if nothing else, if I don't turn out to be suited for fatherhood, I can always sweep them into the drawer under my desk.