Challenging, weakened

It was a challenging weekend to get through. My girlfriend was laid low with the sickness she'd had from Thursday night onward, and I was at the clutching-at-the-floor stage of my hangover. So rather than achieve anything epic and salutary on Saturday, we lay about the flat trying to avoid movement. I did read to her from Kolymsky Heights, my favourite deeply-implausible spy thriller, but there wasn't much else worth attempting.

In the late afternoon, we finally ventured out. After three months of living in a building where they had failed to supply a finished entranceway, it was a surprise for us to encounter several topless workmen, installing panes of glass and lights to the front door. The entrance now has a large pane of glass studded with LEDs, glistening like stars in the sky as you walk in and out. It's just a shame that the glass has a dirty great handprint in the middle of it, they've knocked out a panel from the wall that they only put in a month ago, and for some reason they've had to rip out a set of wooden partitions fifteen feet away, for no apparent reason. So maybe by the time we move flat again, the entrance might be finished.

We walked through Victoria Park, then took the MTR to Wan Chai so I could buy a new and shiny lens for my SLR. I've now got four lenses: my mother would probably ask why, because I can't use them all at once. I can use the new one to take pictures of the cat from slightly further away though.



The cat is growing more clumsy; yesterday it ran into a table, and its latest party trick is to jump up at the window sill, miss, and land in an ungainly heap on the floor. She also got her claw stuck in the sofa this morning and couldn't extricate herself without leaving a significant bit of nail behind, so we finally bit the bullet and trimmed her claws this morning. This is quite simple to do if you have a resourceful girlfriend and a towel to wrap the cat in (and me to stroke the cat and offer comforting platitudes while doing nothing else).

That was one duty of care carried out. In the afternoon, we did our second superogatory deed, by taking Noel Gascon, one of the comedians visiting from the Philippines for the competition, to Tai O. Rather than filling him up with booze all day.

It was raining, so Tai O was not as pleasant as on our first visit, but we still managed to spend a happy twenty minutes staring over a railing at a big patch of mud. This initially unattractive sight turns out to be rife with crabs and mudskippers; I could happily have spent all day there peering at them.

However, we walked further down until we met five dogs, all jammed together in some wierd canine interlocking arrangement, with one trying to hump the others. All the dogs involved seemed quite cross about this, so we didn't proceed further through Tai O, but retreated to the centre of the village, where an old man was making waffles. Tai O, great if you like crabs, dogs, or waffles.

I won't be getting a job with the tourism board any time soon.

On the way back home, we met another comedian (comedienne? Or is it now a unisex term like 'actor'?), Smita, who invited us out for Mexican. This was a good thing, as it meant I didn't go to Triple O's for the nth time to stuff myself with burgers, but it was also a bad thing, as I had half a pint of lager and got all shouty about why The Wire is overrated. And shouty about Danny Boyle films. And shouty about zombies. And Danny Boyle films with zombies in them. My girlfriend is presumably thankful that Danny Boyle never directed an episode of The Wire (with zombies in it) as I would probably have spontaneously combusted.

Then again, it is getting chilly in Hong Kong this week.