Listening to Bob Evan’s “Don’t You Think It’s Time.”  I’ve got 40 minutes till I start tonight’s writing.

I’ve been clocking in at least 3 hours of writing every night for more than a month now. I had to start doing it at some point. Initially I thought I’d burn out; after a whole day at the Day Job, the last thing you’d want is do more thinking. But it’s been going really well; some music then cuppa tea to start me off, the initial leap into the writing zone – arguably the hardest part of the routine because it involves shutting out all the temptations, then before I know it I’m there.

I spend the day editing the story in my head, tossing the plot line looking for holes, getting to know the characters, asking the tough point of view questions (tough being if I had chosen the wrong one, I’d have to make a more-than-usual painful rewrite). True, all the potential edits get all tainted by the tiredness from the Day Job but at least most of them make it to the manuscript.

The best part is that the discipline hauls me to crunch words whether I want it or not, instead of having to wait for the muse to stumble in, tie her to a chair, and get her drunk, as Warren Ellis put it. There’s no retrogression in writing the longer you do it (except the case when you’ve been doing it such a long time that the Editor side of your head starts drying up the Artist side and leaves it looking like a prune because it’s already a knee-jerk reaction to have the Editor call all the shots in anticipation of the rewrite – but that’s more of an issue with psychology rather than skill, I think), so theoretically I’m getting better at it. Also productivity’s up, which is never a bad thing.  And it’s a bit like leading a double life as well, in the sense that I have serious work  at night that has nothing to do with the Day Job. It’s comforting, actually, to know that you’ve got something else you find more fulfilling going on in your life.

Anyway, I’ve been using the free full-screen writing software Q10, which blocks out everything else from my monitor and forces me to concentrate on my writing. Cool thing about it is the option for typewriter sounds; it feeds into the romantic idea that I’m in some way connected to the old greats. It’s best when in the heat of pounding first drafts, but when it comes to editing, I must say it gets rather tiresome.

On the fourth month of the ninth year of the twenty-first century, I returned to the Motherland. I found the Mother sitting in the middle of the world, her back before me, chunks of ash from the cigar in her hand falling to her feet.

Piqued by the lack of a welcome, I called, “Black lungs make no one beautiful.”

She did not turn around and I wondered if she knew I was there. As I watched the puffs of smoke rise, I heard her ask, “What do you know of beauty?”

Glass lake from the bus to Yunshanping in Lijiang

Yak milk is...interesting. It's got a bit of a punch in the end.

Yunshanping

Carpets for hire in Lijiang's Old Town

The occupation of the Old Town

Picking up after yourself is pretty important to the Naxi religion

Childhood in Yunnan

Arise! People who refuse to be slaves!

Bridge in the Tiger Leaping Gorge

Songzanlin Lamasery in Shangri-la / Zhongdian / Gyalthang

My National Geographic moment on the way to the lamasery

Can't be paradise without the Internet

The Old Town in Shangri-la

The steppes of Shangri-la

On the Diqing tarmac, on the way to Kunming

Shame on me; it’s been more than a month since I last blogged. And in the face of deadlines and paperwork, I will try to fix that at some point. I’ve got a class to go in 5 minutes; I’m just scribbling this down to remember what to write about here.

1. April trip to China (just got back last night.)

2. Being invited to submit to an anthology.

3. Turning another year older.

4. Regularly writing a few hours every night.

5. Twittering too much.

Thank you.

September 16, 2008.

Sometimes I think I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.

It’s just turned one minute past midnight.

You know what’s great about writing to you? You’re always around. You’ll never grow feet and run away or leave. As long as I keep a good head on my shoulders and not lose you, I’ll always have you to talk to. And you never interrupt.

You never judge. You just wait till I flip these pages again and let me judge myself.

The pages are starting to thin; I’ll need to buy a new one of you soon. I wish you weren’t so expensive. Old friend, we’ve been through so much, and past midnight it’s just both you and me again and the voices in my head.

I wish…but there is no use for wishing.

I wonder if I would care if someone ever read through these pages. I don’t think it would matter much, since most of what matters is in between the lines. At least that’s what we’ve been taught as how any good writer is supposed to write. Restraint, finesse, and subtlety. No bleeding hearts worn on the sleeve. Always discreet, never desperately revealing. One writes to hide and show at the same time.

…Old friend, the one who can tolerate me the most. What are you if not simply myself. You know, one day it’ll end, my having to constantly talk to myself.

One day I’ll have all thorns out of my side, and till then I’ll be left to wonder if it is possible to live a life simply as subtext read between the lines.

You incurable dork.

September 20, ‘08.

I wonder why I always think of Hong Kong as a she? Like it can never be a he, in the same way Berlin can never be a she. How is Hong Kong female? Sly. Vibrant, energetic, flashy, almost alluring. That sharp, cold beauty of a cyberpunk city.

Finally, a formal announcement of it here. After months of preparation and production, the play I’ve written is going onstage in less than two weeks. Let’s do this.

The Foundling (棄兒)

February 12 – 14, 2009 at the Fringe Theatre, Central, Hong Kong

Press Release

Japanese actress and student of the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York City, Haruka Ashida, is directing and starring in The Foundling this month in Hong Kong, in collaboration with Hofan Chau, the founder of Burnt Mango Theatre Productions. The play is an original script written by Crystal Koo, a recipient of the 2007 Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature for her short story “Benito Salazar’s Last Creation.” The Foundling is a story about a feral child named Wendy and her assimilation into a Hong Kong family, as delivered through the eyes of their domestic helper, Maricel.

Abandoned by her parents and raised by dogs, fourteen-year-old Wendy has been adopted into her uncle’s family. Her canine upbringing makes it difficult for anyone to truly accept her, but it is her inability to comprehend human language which gains their trust. Slowly Wendy uncovers a different kind of abandonment in her new home, a place of secret frustrations, until an event makes her presence in the family become more crucial than ever.

Information

Performed in English.

Venue: Fringe Theatre, 2 Lower Albert Road, Central, Hong Kong

Date and Time: 12th – 14th February, 8pm. 14 February, 3pm.

Ticket Price:  $ 180 / $ 150 (Fringe member) / $ 120 (concessionary)

Tickets are now available for HK Ticketing’s box offices located at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, Fringe Club, AsiaWorld-Expo and The Academy’s Landmark Heritage Campus -Bethanie, as well as Tom Lee Music Stores.

Ticket Purchase Hotline: 31 288 288

Internet Booking: The Foundling – HK Ticketing

More information: Burnt Mango Theatre Productions

Cast and Crew

Director : Haruka Ashida
Original Script: Crystal Koo

Actors:
Haruka Ashida as Wendy, the Foundling
Hofan Chau as Maricel, the maid
Joshua Wolper as Frank Ho, the father
Amy Tam as Gladys Ho, the mother
Andrew Huang as Alex Ho, the son

Music Direction: Wong Hin-yan
Voice Direction: Walter Leung
Movement : Hofan Chau
Lighting Design: PC Sei
Stage Manager: Olive Pang

Stage Pictures

Rehearsal Pictures

Full cast run-through 3

Full cast run-through 2

Full cast run-through 1

Photo Shoot 2

Photo Shoot 1

Work in Progress 2

Work in Progress 1

I’m spending my Saturday afternoon marking term essays, augh. Anyway, I took a 15-minute break and decided to read a copy of last week’s HK Magazine that I picked up from LKF when I was there with Joy.

Generally I’m content with what HK Magazine has to offer. To start with, it’s free, and it’s got opinions, classifieds, places to go, concerts to watch, reviews, and news articles of the local scene with an expat approach to it (I don’t mind the expat approach. I’ve got enough of the local from my job anyway.)

But what eventually turns me off about it (and gets me posting here) is the overall snarky tone throughout the magazine. In fact, the shorter the article the snarkier, and that’s largely what HK Mag is made of, anyway: bits. (Welcome to the skimming world of the Internet generation.) I don’t mind snarky; I love snarky in a place say like ONTD!, which makes for great stress relief in marking hell. But given the content of a site like ONTD!, it has readers that’s mostly located in university students and the early twenties, which makes the snarkiness very appropriate, if not expected. On the other hand, you can tell from the price ranges in its ads that the HK Mag readers are expats who are supposed to be loaded, i.e. earning big bucks, i.e. canNOT be just yuppies starting out. I.e. The older Lan Kwai Fong crowd. The tweeny snarkiness just seems really uncalled for in that context, and it gets especially distracting when the article is talking about the HK government’s policies in crisis management.

(And don’t get me started about Muse Magazine either. But to be fair, I’ll say this much: at least they’re trying. Perhaps too hard.)

Or maybe I just shouldn’t expect so much from HK Mag. It’s largely made up of reviews of things to watch and places to go and flavor-of-the-week tidbits about the goings-on in HK anyway. And all the ads make it free, let’s not forget that – the biggest disclaimer one can make in a hyper-capitalist society like HK. I suppose a yuppie fogey like me can just be told off to read the South China Morning Post or something. Can’t believe I actually read The Standard and/or the SCMP every single day last year; I’m really falling behind current events right now.

I’m also falling behind my marking right now.

SHELVES! After a year of searching, I finally found plastic shelves for my books! And they’re stackable too. Found them at the PriceRite in Whampoa when Joy and I were waiting around for a meeting with Haruka; I bought three racks. Am very pleased.

TWITTER. See RSS feed in the sidebar. I’ve succumbed to the prospect of posting little, self-centered updates about what I’m doing at that moment.

Joy left for Taiwan this morning. It’s been a very fun, hectic 5 days. ^_^  Thursday, I brought her for dinner in Langham Place in Mongkok. Friday, I went to work and she went to Mongkok to do some shopping and we met up in the evening for dinner at the Pink Salmon in Jordan. I took her to Temple Street afterwards and we rounded up the night with drinks at a bar in Lan Kwai Fong. Saturday, I brought her around downtown Central then to Repulse Bay and Stanley Market, dinner at Singaporean Restaurant in Ashley Road at TST. Sunday, we went to church and we had lunch with Nell at the usual dimsum place down Nathan Road, then I brought her to Kowloon Walled City Park. We had dinner at a streetside stall in Kowloon City before going to Whampoa to meet with Haruka. Monday, I went to work, she went to Mongkok again XD, and we met with Ron and Yvonne for dinner at Times Square.  Tuesday, I was predictably working again and Joy spent a lazy day in my flat. When I came back that evening, she had cooked dinner, and we spent the rest of the night karaoke-ing with YouTube and watching Wall-E on her laptop while I finished off a small tub of Dreyer’s ice cream that had half-melted in my fridge (Joy had half of it).

A Highlight: Joy and I wanted a picture of us in the Walled City Park and I asked a teenager if he could take the picture. A kind of terror spread through his face and he mumbled “I don’t know” in Cantonese…then he picked up his bag and dashed off! Practically ran away from us. I turned around to Joy with a look of complete befuddlement on my face and she had already doubled up with laughter. I explained to her that he was waiting for his girlfriend and didn’t want to be caught with me and my striking good looks, obviously. XDD

It was very pleasant to come back home to someone after a long day at work. ^_^

Joy alert.

Joy got here two days ago, and promptly got on the wrong train.

Joy’s halter-top was commented upon by the owner of a bar in Lan Kwai Fong, of all places. For a moment, I thought he wanted to ask how old she was. (His comment: Aren’t you cold?)

Joy discovered that she is in fact an old granny as she is dreadfully lacking in stamina.

More details to follow.

Look at the moon. If you see Venus and Jupiter next to it, then we’re looking at the same one.

I’ve been seeing them for the past few days whenever I walk home. November’s been busiest at work. Hellmonth. But it’ll be all downhill from here; a few weeks only and then finally some relief.

I redrafted The Foundling again. And I don’t mean just moving paragraphs around and cutting and adding material; I mean straight rewrite. A blank sheet and typing “Scene 1″ all over again. I finished it last night, and it’s bigger and better, and I think a performance would actually go over an hour.  We figured that the only way out of our doubts about the script was to look at it fresh again. And I’m glad we did. Now it’s more complex and layered with a very firm arc, and the characters have become so real to me that I never hit a wall during the rewrite, which was miraculous. Haruka and I had gone over every character’s motivation and psychology over and over again during dinner meetings that the rewrite felt like I was recording a story someone had already told me many times.  Another week for casting, then some time for preliminary method exercises, then script rehearsals, and before you know it, showtime. 

So, the people coming over for visits! Wooooot! Joy is crashing at my place, and so is Jane (yaaaay! The Southeast Asian Takeover Part Deux!) Karen and Steph are hotelling in TST, la familia is hotelling in Causeway Bay, and Chichi is always very happy staying at her own place in posh Mid-levels.

Dec. 4- Joy

Dec. 20 – Karen and Steph

Dec. 24 – La familia

Dec. 28 – Chichi

Jan. 30 – Jane

Joy, being unfazed by the fact that I’ll be working when she’s here, will be taken by the hand around HK during the weekend, after which I’ll be letting go and she’ll be free to get lost by herself and hopefully will find her way back to my flat every evening so we can have dinner out because there is no way on earth I will let her taste my cooking, full stop.

Steph needs to buy pants before she comes here if she doesn’t want to freeze to death. How is it possible at this day and age that she owns only one pair and the rest are all skirts?? Explain to me that, Karen.