on the buses

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I have never actually watched that TV programme but I have heard about it on numerous occasions due to my parents’ disgust at my love of the name “Olive”. Anyway that’s just a bit of an aside concerning this post’s title.



This morning we said hi to our bus driver Billy, after ten minutes or so he turned to our director and said “Fukein School”. He wasn’t testing out his knowledge of English expletives or expressing his hatred toward the Hong Kong education system, that is a legitimate school name. However amusing the name may be (at least my childish sense of humour seems to think so), this was not the school we were meant to be teaching at which meant a ten minute detour back to BU and the probable wrath of team 4 this evening for delaying us all.



Since I am managing for the beginning of this week, I don’t really have any interesting anecdotes about the kids instead, I’ll briefly tell you about what I got up to yesterday and some of the crazy Cantonese customs I have observed during my time here.



Yesterday was a mixed bag; I went to a few museums including the Art Museum, Science Museum and the Hong Kong Heritage Centre. Surprisingly the Science Museum was my least favourite for various reasons.



1. Learning what pigs’ glands, throats, hooves, skin, hairs, nails, stomachs etc. are made into was quite disgusting! I’ll never look at my hairbrush, car seats, candles, gelatin, shoe polish or soap in the same way.

2. The additives in convenience food become completely irrelevant when they all the items contain peanut traces anyway.

3. As much as I enjoyed the brain and cognition exhibition, I didn’t particular want to be reminded of last year’s neuroscience lectures, this also applies to the vaccines exhibition (maybe if it had been about the band I would have been slightly more interested.)

4. There was a huge exhibition on saving the planet and renewable energy sources, which ironically was full of neon lighting and computers also almost definitely running off non-renewable energy sources.

5. I have an irrational fear of plastic models of people; there were so many plastic people and some of them even moved.



I must admit, I really enjoyed the mirror maze and I was quite impressed when a computer told me that my food choices would not give me enough iron- who needs a medical degree?



The Heritage museum was just bizarre; their featured exhibition was all about future inventions including, a remote to control your TV remote, a bunked that transforms into a bicycle, a suitcase that folds into a giant plug socket, a homeless shelter inside a wheelie bin, a banana cutter and “mumbrella” that rains on you and is apparently supposed to remind you of your mum—to Cantonese mothers spit on their kids or something?



My favourite was the art museum; my new (and first) favourite artist Feng Zikai drew (haha) me back for a second visit and I was even inspired to buy a book (yes mum, you read that correctly). Feng was a cartoonist and had some strong views on vegetarianism that he portrayed in his work. Looking at a sketch of an open tin of tuna named “opening the coffin” was quite disturbing and his work made me understand the mentalities of vegans and vegetarians. After seeing his work, I was quite tempted to join the vegi crew but you’ll be happy to know that I had to decide against it for health reasons.



I’m pretty sure last year’s illness is back; epic sleeps, dizzy spells, constant tiredness and horrid headaches don’t really go too well with teaching groups of screeching children! Hopefully I’ll get well soon (otherwise it’s going to be a long four weeks!), but in the mean time I’ll try and rediscover my sense of humour and keep you entertained!

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Comments

[anonymous]

loled Fukien is 福建 in Chinese, which is actually an older translation of Fujian, a city in China.