One in a Dillion

I collected our four year old from nursery school early today and took him to his big brothers’ school for his Y01 entry assessment. The assessment of six four year olds took an hour and a half and I began to wonder if my bouncy lad would grow short of blood sugar as it got closer to lunch time. He emerged looking cheerful, told me he couldn’t remember what he’d been asked and we went home.

Barely two hours later I got a call from the school Admissions Secretary. She informed me that our son had not been successful in the assessment and listed the reasons why; he hadn’t been able to give the names of the letters and only knew 17 out of 26 of his letter sounds. That many? Good boy! He had not been able to count backwards from 10 to 0 and was uncertain of the higher numbers. I can relate to that. What had counted against him most, however, was that when asked to name the number zero my son took one look at it and said with conviction, a dillion. Laughter (mine).

The teacher had asked him again and our son repeated his answer, a dillion. The Admissions Secretary explained patiently to me that the teacher who had been assessing our son was not familiar with the word a dillion. She began to sound quite put out, whether this was due to my guffaws or because an assessment of our son had been a complete waste of the school’s time, I’ll never know.

One thing, however, is clear. I need to find a school that does know what a dillion is and that appreciates a boy who, when in a tight spot, is able to think on his feet.

Just a spoonful of sugar......

I am not a fan of theme parks. We live opposite one and I will go to some lengths to avoid actually going there myself. In London we lived close enough to Windsor for Legoland to be a day of annual sufferance in my calendar. Here, each time we drive to the airport the familiar outline of Mickey Mouse's head looks down at us from the motorway signage so it was only a matter of time before the subject of Hong Kong's Disneyland was raised in our household.

Our seven year old has recently turned eight. Rather than have a party organised by his embarrassing parents he asked if we might go to Disneyland instead. As the appointed day came closer, I began to grit my teeth in anticipation.

Reality was suspended the moment we drove through the gates. With no prior warning we had entered a vast landscaped world of manicured grass and monumentally straight palm trees which lined our route to the car park, a space so curiously empty of cars that we began to wonder if Disneyland was in fact closed for renovation. A few others arrived so we followed them to the main gate along the neat brick paths, with wrought iron railings, fountains, topiary and quaint buildings lining the way.

Tunes from Mary Poppins were playing and the children began to sing and skip along to the music. I looked around, half expecting Dick Van Dyke to come and shake my hand as the whole place started to look more and more like Cherry Tree Lane. The noise and dirt and skyscrapers of Hong Kong were a million miles away and we had been magically and inexplicably transported to a fantasy place like, well like Disneyland, I suppose.

We were greeted by helpful attendants who smiled so much that the pain of parting with vast amounts of cash was forgotten. Ahead of us was a flower bed reproduction of The Mouse's head on a grassy bank which rose to a picture perfect railway station. And blow me down if a huge, new, shiny red steam engine didn't pull up with perfect timing and whistle at us to clamber aboard.

In a state of disbelief we wandered down Main Street USA looking at the small-town white clapboard shops full of Disney merchandise, cotton candy and apple pies. The air was full of the sugary smell of toffee flavoured popcorn and Donald Duck waved to passers by from the porch of a house. I was prepared to laugh, think How cheesy! and endure, and yet to my amazement I found myself admitting it was rather well done, not in the least bit tacky, clean, shiny and well-organised and all presented in surprisingly good taste.

Agog we headed for Cinderella's Castle, rode on her fantasy carousel with crowds of giggling Chinese men, flew with Dumbo and in Adventureland took a river cruise on a steamer through the jungle where we were sprayed by elephants, frightened by piranhas, shot at through blow pipes and roared at by the Fire God. Then we climbed up to visit Tarzan's house which I was convinced was built in a real tree. Duh! Nothing here is real, Mummy! Cynic that I am, I was beginning to enjoy myself and was wowed by the special effects. The animals were life-like and all was completed with astonishing attention to detail.

We had our photos taken with Mickey and friends, were charmed by Minnie's antics and hugged by Pluto, spun in cups at the Mad Hatter's tea party and saw the most incredible 3-D film of Donald which had us all ducking (ha, ha) to avoid the objects that flew out of the screen at us at high speed. We moved on into Tomorrowland and went on a space mission instructed by Buzz Lightyear to shoot down space robots. It was such a blast that the six of us ran back round to the entrance to do it all again. The cold had kept the masses away so there were no queues and we were able to climb straight back in to our space cars and ride once more.

As the fireworks lit the skies above Cinderella's Castle and we walked back down Cherry Tree Lane to soothing farewell Disney tunes I found myself wondering if an annual pass might not be a sound investment. The children were wide-eyed with wonder, tired and happy with all they'd seen. And I, having expected the worst could only admit that I had had the most brilliant time.

If the shoe fits....

Despite Hong Kong’s vast array of shopping opportunities I have struggled to find children’s shoes, or at least anything resembling the sort of children’s shoes I can relate to. Think flimsy, think shiny, think odd colour combinations and adornments on the other hand and the choice is huge.

Brought up on a strict diet of sensible shoes by my own conscientious mother due to the combined evils of wide feet and high arches I have a clear idea of the sort of thing I want my daughter to wear. Fortunately the clever people in the footwear marketing department back home have now worked out ways to keep both mothers and daughters happy, which was not the case when I was small and yet the sort of shoes I have in mind are proving some what illusive. Take note: there is a gap in the market here just waiting to be filled.

Having outgrown the sandals and Mary-Janes she arrived with from UK, our daughter owns nothing but a pair of trainers and some rubber beach shoes which are not ideal as local temperatures plummet to a hitherto unimaginable 15 degrees.

Yesterday I found a Start Rite shop listed in a useful book called Everything Hong Kong but we arrived only to be told by the building’s lift attendant that it had closed down six months previously.

We identified a second shop which, the book informed me, was a good source of well-made imported shoes for children and made our way there. It was a relief to find that the sales assistants were prepared to measure my daughter's feet, or their length at least. On a previous excursion with the boys when I asked to have their feet measured the assistant looked at me in astonishment and said, we don’t do that. So how do we know what size to buy? I asked. He shrugged. We left. Another note: providing a measuring service might sell more shoes.

My children all have wide feet. G fittings are standard for us but a width fitting for my little girl was not on offer. Having established the length of her feet I eyed the narrow buckle shoes with scepticism. It is the end of the winter season here and the sales are on which left us with a selection of some inappropriate designs in fairly extraordinary colours. Our final choice was between a shiny pink pair that my daughter said hurt her feet and a heavy black pair which I struggled to reconcile with the whimsical pastel dresses she selects from her wardrobe each morning. Then I saw the price, $HK 704, on sale, which at today’s badly depleted (for us) exchange rate is not far off £70. I looked at the pink ones again, $HK1409 or £130. For shoes for a two year old? That’s more than I pay for my shoes (or that’s what I told my husband when I rang him to protest). I left the shop, justifying my decision to put the two year old back in her trainers by saying they hadn’t been wide enough anyway. Her little feet had looked so squashed. Images of tiny bound Chinese feet were by this time flashing before my eyes and I decided we’d better go home.

Today we were back on the warpath. I rang an English friend to find out where she’d got shoes for her two year old and she gave me the name of a shop, adding by way of warning that she hadn’t dared admit to her husband what she’d paid when she’d finally tracked down a wider than average Italian make. I was by this time not surprised to learn that the shop didn’t measure but I seized on the sensible sort of shoe one might find in the Putney Exchange, paid twice what you’d think of as reasonable there and went home making a mental note to buy in bulk when we finally go home to UK on leave.

Good Morning Vietnam

After a happy Christmas and numerous walks down memory lane and elsewhere, Grandpa returned to the UK while our eldest son was able to enjoy Grandma’s undivided attention on an action packed three day trip to Shanghai. They returned bubbling with enthusiasm at all they had seen.

Grandma stayed on for the final days of the school holidays to give us the gift of a child-free weekend in Hanoi. We were like children let out of school early and our eyes were as big as saucers as we took in the vast range of impressions that make up Hanoi’s varied, jumbled and bustling cityscape.

Arriving in Vietnam for the first time, one can not fail to be amazed by the traffic chaos. As we approached the capital through a flat, wet landscape of paddy fields, maize and small plots I was struck by the numbers of mopeds, some piled high with live chickens, eggs or fruit and grew concerned for those that hurtled towards us on the wrong side of the dual carriageway.

As we approached the city the madness increased along with the density of buildings; traffic poured in all directions at junctions and intersections, road signs an irrelevance, thousand upon thousand of mopeds, bikes too, tourist cyclos, the odd motorised three wheeler, some busses and a number of cars and small taxis, all flowing like a wide, slow river which can’t or won’t stop, paying no heed to the considerable potential for accidents.

The noise of horns and bells, all sounding at once and combined with the constant roar of hundreds of engines was deafening. Crossing roads was a challenge we didn’t undertake lightly. The green and red pedestrian signs at zebra crossings mean little to the traffic which bears down on one from all directions should one dare to leave the safety of the pavement. And as one does, the vehicles neither slow nor stop but fan out, aiming for a space either in front or behind the reckless pedestrian, parting like the Red Sea as Moses makes his way across.

Narrow town houses, some with fantasy turrets, balustrades and pinnacles, up to five storeys high and several rooms deep but sometimes no wider than six foot, line the roads in uneven rows or stand further back in unregulated jumbles. Business is often conducted from the ground floor room. We grew accustomed to the sight of a moped parked inside a jeweller’s or a dress shop where space outside was short. In the old quarter the pavements are packed so tightly with the two-wheelers that pedestrians have little choice but to walk in the road which in turn contributes to the noise of horns and the general levels of road chaos.

Telephone wires loop loosely between the telegraph poles in their masses, close enough to reach up and touch. In the French quarter the streets are wide and tree lined with generous pavements and large old houses, cool and quiet behind their louvre shutters. It is a buzzy place, vibrant, colourful, smokey and chaotic and we were charmed by its odd mixture of faded French colonial grandeur, ancient pagodas and temples, the so called Vietnamese tube houses and a dollop of Soviet architecture around the military parade ground where Ho Chi Minh’s ponderous grey mausoleum stands.

We got up early to visit the mausoleum. Unfortunately our arrival there coincided with that of 1,000 high school pupils all dressed in identical blue and white cagoules. Some way along the queue we were spotted by an official who pulled us out of line and quizzed us about cameras and mobile phones. We had both about our person and assumed he was going to remove them. He didn’t. His intervention was more to do with the exercise of power for power’s sake. He made us stand to one side and let about 400 of the said school children pass before letting us proceed. I couldn’t even give him the benefit of the doubt for wanting to separate us from the mass of school children as there were still another 400 or so behind us when he allowed us to rejoin the queue.

The line moved quickly despite our set back. Cameras were taken away from us at a security check further along, but surprisingly we were allowed to retain our mobile phones. I certainly wasn’t going to be the one to inform the custodians of Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum that mobile phones can now also be used to take pictures.

As we got nearer the entrance the babble of the school children simmered into quieter, more respectful whispers. I on the other hand was told by a guard to take my hands out of my pockets and the Pioneering Accountant was instructed to hush. We were not, it seemed, treating the visit with due respect and attention. We entered a dimly lit room where Ho Chi Minh has lain in his embalmed state since his death in 1969. Poor Uncle Ho. In his will he declared his wish to be cremated and have his ashes strewn in the north, the south and the central region of Vietnam as a symbol of the country’s unity he so desired. His wish was overruled by his successors who had the Father of the Nation embalmed for all to see.

I couldn’t help thinking that Ho, a man who eschewed the trappings of power and chose a simple two roomed house on stilts over Hanoi’s grandiose presidential palace, might even have detested his final resting place and all it represented. Half way round I wanted a closer look. Was there a trace of a grimace in that peaceful old face? I reached into my bag to rummage for my glasses. The Pioneering Accountant stifled a squawk of alarm and, assuming I was about to grab a quick snap with my phone, put a hand on my arm. I’d already had a premonition that I might be shot for reaching for my glasses but decided I must stand up for my right to see clearly. We emerged blinking into the daylight and struggling to hide our laughter from the disapproving guards.

The sights of Hanoi are many and varied. The increasing liberalisation of the country which has enabled individuals to pursue their own business interests is in evidence all around. Women with flat woven baskets suspended from a yolk across one shoulder carry with them the means to set up a small street restaurant complete with stove, cups, bowls, chopsticks, ingredients and even tiny plastic stools for customers. Fruit vendors sell their harvest in baskets from a wooden platform on the back of a moped, a cyclist pedals by with a popcorn machine and a saucepan on the back of the bike, another with wire baskets holding heavy fuel pellets which are sold to the street kitchens. A barber hangs a mirror on a tree trunk, unfolds a chair and touts for custom. A lottery ticket vendor puts up a folding table and is open for business. Between us we must have had declined hundreds of offers to clean our rather dusty shoes. There is a different attitude to the use of public space and tiny businesses thrive wherever they are able.

We avoided the street vendors, not out of concern for hygiene but simply because my very tall and not very bendy husband could not have sat comfortably on seats made for small two year olds. We ate like kings and amused ourselves by reading the menus which offer such tempting dishes as boiled dog meat, pig's solid small intestine and fried tortoise. The food was delicious but one can't help feeling that something gets lost in translation.

Returning to Hong Kong with mixed emotions I reassess my feelings on the city we now call home. Despite my eagerness to be reunited with the children I am not particularly thrilled to be back. Hong Kong has none of Hanoi’s charm and leads me to conclude, albeit not very originally, that the place is unashamedly and solely dedicated to the pursuit of money. Whilst it has its own unique character and is constantly renewing itself in pursuit of its goal the side effects are an undeniable harshness and a soullessness I have not encountered elsewhere.

As someone who has never been much good at making money it strikes me how unsuited I am to settling here and that without goals of my own I could sink without trace and be deemed an abject failure in Hong Kong’s eyes. Yet I am pursued by a nagging feeling that I owe it to my husband as well as myself to do better than that. So how shall I use my time in Hong Kong? Perhaps it’s time to make some New Year’s resolutions.

Don't count your turkeys before they're cooked

Christmas Eve is always a busy day for me. It involves making giblet stock, preparing the vegetables for tomorrow’s lunch, keeping the children occupied yet not over-excited, wrapping last minute presents, welcoming the visitors, feeding the flock several times over, making the stuffing, going to the crib service with the children, lighting the candles on the tree (a nod to our many Christmases spent in Germany) and then slipping off to midnight mass once everything is finished and the rest of the house is sleeping soundly.

This year I was feeling rather smug. Instead of a day in the kitchen armed with the peeler I had passed on detailed instructions to the Dream Team, namely Annie and her recently arrived younger sister, Veronica, aka Clarabel, as all readers of Thomas the Tank Engine will appreciate she just has to be called. We in the meantime spent a lovely day on a junk far out in the New Territories with Grandma and Grandpa feeling nostalgic and several friends feeling chilly.

We got home and got the tired children to bed, whereupon, by force of habit I thought I’d take a look at my prize organic imported turkey which had made the Pioneering Accountant wince when he paid for it yesterday afternoon. I should just add, at this point, that I am in a considerable minority for rolling up my sleeves and cooking Christmas lunch in Hong Kong. It is a public holiday and therefore, not unreasonably, helpers get the day off. With no-one to cook for them, many families opt for the carry-out Christmas dinner option and order the full Monty, turkey, trimmings and all, ready cooked and delivered by a caterer or one of the larger hotels. Others compromise by ordering the turkey cooked and reheating it and others go out to a hotel or restaurant for Christmas dinner. Many others just go home to mum, back in England.

The smell of giblet stock is one I associate with Christmas Eve and when I didn’t see either a pan or jug of it anywhere in the kitchen I asked Annie where she’d put it. “I threw it away, Ma’am.” She answered. “Oh,” I said, tight lipped, “What a shame.” Bugger, I thought, no gravy. Never mind, we’ve got stock cubes, and Bisto….

When I took the turkey out of the fridge in readiness for tomorrow’s roasting (I am a true disciple of Delia Smith) I couldn’t help feeling it didn’t look quite right. On closer examination I realised I was looking at a cooked turkey and I began to whether I had indeed ordered it raw and not subconsciously decided it would in fact be easier to order one ready roasted.

“What do you think, Veronica?” asked Grandma. “Don’t you think this looks cooked?”
“Yes Ma’am,” she said, “Annie boiled it, with the giblets, for two hours.” Then she giggled.

There are some situations when it is better to say nothing. I could have wept. I could have screamed. For Christmas lunch in Hong Kong we’ll be having cold, boiled turkey.

Happy Christmas to you all!

P.S. At 8.40pm we realised the shops would be open until 9 and seeing my dismay Grandma has rushed out with the Domestic God to save the day and buy us another bird. All will be well but there’s going to be an awful lot of turkey curry in this house!

Lights on, lights off

Term is over. We have limped over the finishing line and the children have, predictably, all developed coughs and colds. I go in search of a pharmacy and find that it is half western, half Chinese medicine. In the window of the Chinese half are various dried remedies, most of which I am unable to identify although I am a bit dismayed at the sight of a large tray of dried seahorses. Fortunately the cough remedy I am sold does not involve stewing seahorses.

Grandma and Grandpa have arrived for Christmas. Despite some anxiety that at the time of their arrival not a single loo in the house was functioning we are overjoyed to see them. We have a packed schedule and are busy showing them our favourite haunts besides one or two of their own. This is not their first Christmas in Hong Kong for thirty years ago they lived here too. From our front deck we can see the block of flats up on the Peak that was their home for three of the four years they spent here.

On Sunday evening we attended the service of Nine Lessons and Carols in St John's Cathedral. As the choir entered the silent Cathedral lay waiting, wreathed in darkness. And as the soloist sang out the opening verse of Once in Royal David's City a single flame lit the first of many candles, each held by a member of the congregation, and was passed along the rows, neighbour to neighbour, until the Cathedral shone out with the light of over 500 candles. Out of darkness comes light. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

The tall arched windows of the Cathedral stood open to the mild evening and with additional heating provided by the candles our two year old stripped down to her vest in protest that I had dressed her too warmly; old habits die hard. We heard the nine lessons including one in Tagalog, one in Cantonese and one in Mandarin, sung out the familiar carols and were amazed that our children managed to set neither each other nor their service sheets alight.


After the service, in a garden full of fairy lights beside the lovely old Cathedral we enjoyed mulled wine and mince pies in the lee of the HSBC building, the Bank of China Tower and AIG Tower. Old Hong Kong juxtaposed against new China. High on the tapered top of the AIG Tower an animated logo displays the building's name, occupier and joint owner. It stands today on the site of the first AIG office in Hong Kong which opened in 1930. The lights appeared to go out momentarily and the irony was not lost on us. Is this the end of the road for AIG in Hong Kong, just three years after the prestigious AIG Tower was opened? It was but a second's pause in Hong Kong's metropolitan light show and the lights of AIG lived to see another day, another night. And yet who can help but wonder how many more Hong Kong skyscrapers will be changing their names and their owners in the coming months of the new year?

The Blame Game

Last week our eldest boy turned ten. It should have been a joyous day, a momentous arrival in the realm of double digits. Instead the birthday boy was subdued and when his Godfather rang from UK to wish him a happy birthday he commented to me that he sounded a bit down.

This was perceptive at the end of a telephone 5000 miles away and I congratulate my old friend on his levels of sensitivity. Right now, I could wish that our son’s teacher had even one fraction of that sensitivity but from where I stand, I might as well be wishing for a white Christmas.

On the eve of his birthday we received an email from the teacher. The missive contained a list of our son’s failings and the concluding paragraph stated, “With Calum turning ten tomorrow, it is an ideal time for him to take some extra responsibility by following instructions and showing how talented he is.”

Thus in full awareness of the date, our son’s teacher chose his birthday to make him turn over a new leaf. To this end he was kept in during first break and made to complete a homework task he had forgotten to hand in. During second break he was made to copy all the week’s homework assignments into his homework diary. Playing, having fun with friends and leaping for joy at turning ten were not on the agenda. “My worst day ever at school was my birthday.” he told me today with tears in his eyes.

Our eldest child is a bright, quirky lad with a delightful sense of humour. He is dreamy, disorganised, forgetful and infuriating at times, but no more, I believe than any other boy of his age. He is also chatty, curious and confident. Or was.

“I don’t know why he doesn’t like me Mummy.” What do I tell him? It could be for all of the above and more. It is a tough lesson for a young boy but one which we all have to face at some time. More worrying to my mind, is the problem the teacher is having in concealing his feelings from our son. Having been told by his teacher he is not capable of change our son has accepted this as fact and has, I fear, stopped caring. The lights have gone out and my wonderful inspirational boy has lost his way.

Our attempts to approach the teacher to discuss our son’s issues and learn how we might support both our son and his teacher have been rebuffed. Relationship building with either pupil or parents does not appear to be his forte. In desperation we approach a senior member of staff who tells us the teacher concerned has complained that our son is needy.

Needy.
Needy of some support and guidance in a new school several continents removed from his old one, perhaps?
Needy of some positive feedback for the concerted effort he is making to get things right?
Needy of a positive role model in his form teacher?
Or needy of some affirmation that despite the fact the bottom has fallen out of his small world, all will be well?

Yup, in his situation, I’d be needy too.

Our boy has not been handing in his homework. There are systems designed to help him do this, most of which involve check lists, ticks and signatures added along the way. We are so busy ticking, signing and checking that there is barely time to complete the homework itself which in the meantime assumes huge and scary proportions in my mind and presumably in that of my son. Who still forgets to hand it in. For this he gets into trouble. That much I understand. There is a reading record designed, I believe, to ensure that reluctant readers are working through 15 minutes of a book four times a week. Our book worm of a son is so busy reading that he forgets to record what he has read. For this he gets into more trouble. This I struggle with.

At a parent/teacher appointment last month which also happened to be my first face to face meeting with our son’s teacher he informed me that he believed our son to be an ADHD sufferer and that he had decided, henceforth, to treat him as a problem child. More check lists came home, more reminders to tick and sign. Besides being flabbergasted at the unprofessional presentation of this inaccurate diagnosis, I find myself frozen in the glare of the tick lists, stressed and anxious on our son’s behalf. He in turn is brave and stoical in the face of what has, to our minds reached unacceptable levels of unkindness. Our son is being bullied. By his teacher.

I won’t bore you with the details for they are many and repetitive. I’ll give just two examples of what my son is enduring in the name of the highest standards of education in a reputable international school.

Leaving your bag even slightly open is a class crime. Usually the class monitors patrol the pegs outside the classroom and point out to the criminal the error of his or her ways. Yesterday however, the teacher assumed the role of the bag police and brought just one bag into the class room. “Now who do you think this belongs to?” He asked of the pupils in tones heavily laced with sarcasm. My son identified the bag as his and was called to the front of the room. The teacher then asked the class if they could suggest ways to help his errant pupil to become more organised. In good faith every member of the class put up their hands and gave their ideas, two or three each. Once all the hands had been exhausted, the teacher asked again, just to make sure there weren’t any hesitant volunteers. More helpful suggestions were forthcoming. Shamed and humiliated my boy was allowed to return to his seat.

We can I suppose be thankful that he did in fact have a seat on that occasion for today it was removed. Our son was called to the front to apologise in front of the whole class for intentionally tripping up his teacher by leaving his chair too far out. His written work was finished on his knees on the floor at his desk.

I am in a tailspin, my thoughts as clear as the Kowloon horizon on a smoggy day. “Don’t complain, Mummy,” said our son to me on another jaw-dropping occasion. “He’ll only accuse me of playing the blame game.” Blame game? What in heaven’s name is that? Pupil guilty, teacher blameless, so don’t bother telling your parents?

We threw him a party at the weekend and under sunny blue skies took ten of his friends on a hike. We had a picnic lunch, searched for hidden treasure and played some hilarious games before returning home for tea and cake some four hours later. It was a joyful day and did, I hope, go some small way to restoring his faith not just in birthdays but in himself. I watched my ten year old son and I took in his delight at the books he received as birthday gifts. He is a phenomenal reader and his vocabulary is extraordinary. He is energetic and enthusiastic, well-mannered and good company. His conversation is probing and intelligent.

Later that evening we played together the complex strategy game he was given for his birthday. His concentration, understanding and grasp of the principles was remarkable. This is not a boy with attention deficit disorder. This is a boy who is uninspired by a formulaic and inflexible teacher; a boy who knows education can be better than this, who’d rather be reading a book than filling in yet another worksheet. This is a boy who when enthused and inspired will go to the ends of the earth for a teacher, a boy who just six months ago loved school.

How fragile is a boy’s love of learning and how quickly damaged it is. I find I am both saddened and angry. Sad that my boy is hurting so much. Angry with a teacher who has seemingly snuffed out my boy’s desire to please, who is down on him for forgetting to tick boxes or highlight words, and who has repeatedly reminded our son of his failings without ever once acknowledging his strengths.