Jackie the Chinese lesbian

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In order to avoid the midday heat, I decided it would be a good idea to get up early and go for a swim in the outdoor pool in Towloon Tsai park, however, at 7am my rumbling stomach had other ideas! After a trusty, peanut-free bowl of porridge I fell back asleep and finally made it to the pool for 10.20 am. Having barely swam two lengths; I was waved over by a fat, t-shirt-wearing, moustache-bearing thing (I wasn’t sure whether it was a man or a woman at this point). Being the friendly idiot that I am, I swam over and said hi but as the conversation progressed, I began to wish more and more that I wasn’t so willing to go off and do things on my own and that I had fought off my early-morning hunger and thus would have avoided this horrible encounter and saved half an hour of my life…



After answering its’ question at least five times as to what I was doing in Hong Kong (Cantonese speakers pride themselves on their ability to speak English but they definitely struggle on the understanding front), the woman then began to tell me her life story and told me how privileged I was that she was wasting her time talking to me! She claimed proudly that she was more intelligent, older and wiser than me and therefore (in her words) “a much higher level of person,”<span> I think I probably should have just swam off at this point but I just stood there nodding enthusiastically and smiling whilst she coughed in my face and told me how sick she was. She then progressed to tell me her life story including the fact that she had a PhD from the best university in Taiwan and was as qualified as the Taiwanese president’s wife (this snippet of information was repeated at least a further 3 times during the course of the conversation.) I must not forget to mention (she certainly didn’t) that I “was extremely lucky” to have met her as she was (according to her) in the top 5% of intelligent people in the world.



<span> Then she moved on to the subject of her niece “Katie”, or rather she decided to use her niece as a way to introduce her entire family history.<span> Katie’s father had died when she was younger and, as Katie was coming to visit Hong Kong next week, she would need someone to spend time with, looks like I was the chosen victim. I did find it quite amusing that she confided in me her hatred of Jewish people and explained that this was because they had big noses and worked hard and were therefore sometimes more intelligent than herself (Katie’s intelligence was apparently due to the fact that she shared some of Jackie’s genes combined with the fact that she was half Jewish). After I had endured at least 20 minutes of being spoken at by this thing, she finally introduced herself as Jackie, she then proceeded to tell me how bad her father was and how he had gotten into gambling and hadn’t look after his children. After failing to get away, I now found myself backed into the corner of the pool when she decide to announce at least three times how she was proud to be a lesbian “you understand”. Now, I’m not one to judge people’s sexuality but when you are perfectly straight and have an extremely scary butch lady talking at you in the corner of a swimming pool, it get’s slightly unnerving! <span> I managed to divert the conversation back to Katie and got another telling off because it would be too expensive for her to txt my phone and I refused to buy a phone just because Jackie told me too for Katie’s benefit, the cheek! I found out that Katie is 22 and apparently must be cleverer that I am as she did an exchange programme in Oxford last year, Jackie then asked what university I went to, I usually hate telling people that I’m a Cambridge medic but at this point I felt the need to get my one-upmanship! Unfortunately, this was greeted with the response, “ah, but do you speak fluent Cantonese?” Of course I don’t speak bloody fluent Cantonese!! Katie is therefore better than me as she spent a year in Oxford and can speak both English and Cantonese fluently and she is planning on doing a PhD.



Now I can thank Jackie for one thing, she made me realise something about myself; you can belittle me all you like and I won’t care too much but, say something bad about my family or my culture and I will be offended! She asked me what my parents did and where I was brought up, I jokingly said that Blackpool isn’t worth visiting to which she responded, “although you are not worthy of talking to me and there is absolutely nothing I can take from you, we have one thing in common, we have both made the most of poor childhoods and have escaped from bad situations.” This infuriated me!!! She also told me that she was retired and that people in Hong Kong could only work until forty years old otherwise they would die because they work so hard and that British people do not understand what it is to work hard which is why we aren’t intelligent and again why she should not be talking to me.<span> After finally managing to escape I began my swim in rage, wishing that I’d taken more notice at primary school when they told us not to speak to strangers.

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