Well violate my puckered sphincter if it hasn't been an inordinately long time since my last blog post. You will forgive me for this, but my diminished online presence has been the result of being occupied with many varied occupations too dull to go into here. Highlights include marking year 10 coursework and redecorating my in-laws' bedroom.

The Monday before last, however, was the day my hard working and wonderful (though smelly and spotty) cast of adolescents performed The Tempest at the Shakespeare Schools Festival which was hosted by the Preston Charter Theatre.

Both myself and my fellow director (the lovely and talented Lizzy Anthony) entered our kids (our students, not our illegitimate love children) into the festival thinking it would be a great way to get young people to engage with Shakespeare in an exciting and dynamic way.

On observing our competitors' entries into the festival it seemed that we were totally wrong in our belief!

It turns out that the actual aim of the festival was to offend the ancient, decomposed corpse of the bard to the point where he actually rises from the grave and destroys his collected works in shame!

To say that the other schools' entries were shit would be like referring to the bombing of Hiroshima as a minor impediment to the city's public transportation network.

Having said that, I harbour no blame against the students who did their best despite their oh-so-evident apathy and the fact that they'd probably much rather be sniffing glue and cranking out bastard babies. No, my venom is directed entirely at the teachers who conducted themselves with so little sense of occasion, enthusiasm or team spirit you'd think they were there to sort and colour co-ordinate Nick Griffin's cum-stained underwear.

They'd clearly applied this attitude to their rehearsals as well since in the dress rehearsal students frequently fluffed their lines, called for prompts, chatted amongst themselves, fidgeted and committed all manner of sins that Lizzy and myself would have cheerfully disemboweled our students for doing.

First came A Midsummer Night's Dream, or more aptly A Midsummer Night's Doze. Dead eyed students went languidly through the motions with only the animated and charismatic young boy playing Bottom giving the play anything like its much needed comic appeal.

Then came a rendition of Hamlet that was about as respectful to the memory as Shakespeare as exhuming his corpse and pissing into his empty, wasted eye socket. First of all, Hamlet is not a play suited to strong scouse accents! After the third or fourth rendition of "What 'o 'amleh!" I became sure that my brain would implode with rage. But that was before the completely out of place and unneccessary street dance interlude.

You heard me!

A fucking street dance interlude!

In cunting Hamlet!

Our students, however performed with professionalism and aplomb and even drew comments and compliments from the theatre's tech and management staff. Lizzy and I were filled with quasi-parental pride as were the great many other teachers who'd turned out to the theatre to support our students.

For all the pissing and moaning I do about my job it really is a priviledge to be working with such hard working, dedicated and talented kids. I'm immensely proud of them and really grateful that they showed me so aptly what it is I love about my job!


P.S.

Apologies for the stock image but a) I didn't take any photos of the performance proper and b) since the internet is used almost exclusively by paedophiles I didn't want to put myself in an awkward position of putting photos of minors on t'interweb!

Apologies for having two consecutive political rants on these blogs but you can blame the world we live in for being so ludicrous!

In just under half an hour the curmudgeonly far right countenance of BNP leader Nick Griffin will be filling my screen as he attempts to hold his own against actual politicians on Question Time.

 The news today was deluged with reports of protesters picketing the studios and spewing pints of roiling bile at the BBC for allowing the self deluded Nazi onto the program.  Now, as you may have guessed, I'm not a fan of Nick Griffin and I find the BNP to be a loathsome, hatemongering sham of a party that represents a vast fecal stain on the Union Jack.  I do, however, feel a twinge of sympathy for the largely elderly and ignorant masses who have voted for the party having been fooled by their empty promises to get Britain back to 'the way it used to be!'.

Of course this conservative argument for returning Britain to some sort of elusive glory of yesteryear is complete bollocks but I can't blame those who feel alienated from their current time to find comfort in the idea of a returning, comfortable bygone year, even if it is one that never necessarily existed! 

What really makes me die laughing is this notion that there was ever a monocultural Britain that Griffin keeps alluding to.  Trying to enforce racial purity on a nation that the Celts, Romans, Norse, Normans and countless other peoples and cultures have dipped their toe into over the centuries is utterly ludicrous!

As much as I loathe Griffin I'm not at all impressed by the footage I saw of militant lefties being dragged out of the studio by BBC security staff squealing 'Pig' and 'Nazi' at anyone wearing a badge.  The camera crews couldn't have chosen to lock their lenses two more stereotypical backpack wearing leftie students that looked like something out of a Viz strip either!  Such petulant protestation can only damage the left's credibility. 

As much as I sympathise with their sentiment, we have to trust in the people to recognise bigotry and hatred when they see it and to try to sensor Griffin's voice on television only adds to his smug assertion that he's the voice of Britain's silent majority.

I'm sick of hearing the bloated racist cunt bleating on about how he's saying what the people of Britain are thinking but that he is quashed by a media overcome by 'political correctness gone mad'.

So fuck him!

Let him have his say.  I seriously don't think his presence on question time will lend the BNP any sense of legitimacy.

Quite the opposite, I think such a forum will allow the people of Britain to see him for what he is.
We have to face the fact that wherever people have differences we must be prepared to face prejudice, but sensoring people like Griffin out of awkwardness or fear isn't the way to combat it!

Due to nearly all films being shit these days, I'm not as up to date with up-coming movie buzz as I once was.  I have, however been aware for quite a while that a big screen adaptation of Cormack McCarthy's melancholy post-apocalyptic masterpiece "The Road" is in the works.

"The Road", for all you illiterate ignoramuses (or is it ignorami?) out there is the story of a father and son's increasingly desperate attempts to survive in the aftermath of an apocalypse (the nature and cause of which are hinted at but never explicitly mentioned) 

I must say, without hesitation that I love that book.  I cried like a prepubescent girl at the ending (not just a little bit either but loads and loads, like a prepubescent girl who's just been forced to watch her Dad raping her entire collection of teddybears!).  Despite my love for those bittersweet 307 pages of abject misery I can't for the life of me imagine why anyone would want to make a film out of it.

For one thing, nothing happens!  Seriously! 

The relentless, even oppressive monotony of the characters' day to day lives is part of what makes it work so well.  While this makes for compelling reading, where we're privy to the character's inner turmoil it makes for a pretty fucking dull celluloid experience.

In fact, how long's the screenplay?  I can't imagine how it's more than 2 pages at the most!

In fact, here you go 'Hollywood', have this screenplay I've just written myself in 3 minutes!

FADE IN:

EXT. CHARRED REMAINS OF SOME NON SPECIFIC AMERICAN TOWN

FATHER AND SON ARE WALKING DOWN 'THE ROAD'


 
On the plus side, the always excellent Viggo Mortensen is in it.  When i was reading it I thought to myself;

"If this were to be made into a film, Viggo Mortensen would have to play the father.  But nobody would ever make this book into a film because that would be mental!"

Anyway, I'll probably give it a look, but I simply can't see how it would work!

In the meantime, everyone watch No Country For Old Men, then read the book, then watch the film again!  That's definitely the best way to experience it!

Taste. It's a funny old thing (not to mention completely transient).

For years I was perfectly happy to allow the cultural phenomenon that was / is Harry Potter completely pass me by. The books first emerged when I was in my teens and I was peripherally aware of them, but of course the real 'Potter boom came in 2001 with the release of the first film.

By then I was a newly anointed undergraduate and (despite my growing collection of comics and graphic novels) undergoing a massive literature-snob phase. At the time my impressions of the franchise were fairly derisive. The premise seemed a little outdated, effectively Jennings or Just William with superpowers. I imagined the series to be some drawling 'growing pains' allegory and I couldn't have given a ha'penny jizz for the adolescent yearnings of yet another scruffy haired pubescent angst valve!

Of course there was an inherent hypocrisy in this. My love of all things superheroic clearly demonstrates my taste for adolescent power fantasies. I suppose the beginnings of the grumpy twat I was about to become were first stirring and I didn't want to jump on the band wagon of a younger (and obviously inferior) generation's cultural iconography.

I attempte to watch the original film once or twice. I saw very little that wasn't being done better in The Lord of the Rings. And so it was that I left Harry Potter, Hogwarts and the various other registered trademarks well alone and was none the poorer for having had nothing to do with them.

But then, people change and my newly emerged enthusiasm for Harry Potter came with my newly emerged enthusiasm for another figure whom I had previously reviled.

I used to think of Mark Kermode as a self important, pseudo-intellectual cad, who disparaged popular cinema purely because it was popular cinema. but as my cinematic tastes (and bloated sense of self righteousness) evolved I found myself becoming more and more wont to concur with 'the good doctor' to the point where I am now a regular listener to the podcast he shares with the amiable but dull Simon Mayo.

Anyway it was through Kermode's review of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince that my interest in the franchise was peaked. Hints at certain plot points and references to some of the set pieces made me realise that there was perhaps meatier, more mature fare contained within the books than I had given J.K. Rowling credit for. I had been vaguely aware that the series became progressively darker and more mature with each instalment (presumably to service it's maturing audience) and resolved to rediscover the books and films, even if I had to wade through the more juvenile opening instalments to get to the good stuff.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I fell in love with the first book within 20 pages.

Despite my way to push my way past the kiddie's table to get to the bar (how's that metaphor working for you?) I found that the very innocence and wholesomeness I thought I'd rail against made the book infinitely charming and wonderful. Fond childhood remembrances of hunching over the Narnia books, The Hobbit and Just William with a duvet cover over my head came flooding back and the pleasant sense of nostalgia and wholesome fun remained with me throughout the book.

I'm now just finishing The Prisoner of Azkaban (book 3 for the uninitiated) and am awaiting the second and third films in the series in my Lovefilm queue.

Rather than railing against a power fantasy out of the reach of my age demographic I found myself caring about the characters, not because I identified with them (or aspired to be them, as I would have as a younger reader) but I had come to see them as almost surrogate nieces and nephews, not unlike my reaction to some of the very young kids I teach.

The 'growing pains' sections of the books I enjoyed not with aspiration or identification but a sort of knowing, fond remembrance and for that reason, I'm quite glad I came across the series approaching my 30s and not approaching my teens.

Of course, the books present very little in the way of new ideas and pretty much everything is re-appropriated from some other branch of popular mythology, with references to gryphons, the philosopher's stone and even cerberus abound in the books. Then again, this is nothing new and nto a criticism that the likes of Tolkein or CS Lewis are above!

The Potter books have an inherent wholesome charm like the works of CS Lewis and the Superman films starring Christopher Reeve and are a welcome addition to the pop culture canon to which I'll be forcefully exposing my unborn children.

I'm sure that by now news of the death of the 'Swayz has reached your ears and / or eyes!

While it would be tokenistic to posthumously elevate Patrick into the pantheon of great actors of our time there was something intrinsically likeable about the man, despite his often less than inspired career choices.

Nonetheless it was Swayze's affable persona and undeniably tongue in cheek screen presence that led to him being the sole redeeming feature in a great many terrible films (Road House, Tiger Warsaw etc.)

And, let us not forget that Pat did turn in some really quite good performances!

His turn as the uber cool, amoral armed robber / extreme sports enthusiast / armchair philosopher Bodhi elevated Point Break from being just another early 90s buddy picture.
Mind you, I could probably train a pomegranate to steal a scene from Keanu Reeves.
Not to mention his surprisingly moving performance as murdered yuppie banker Sam Wheat in Ghost! Even if you didn't burst into tears at the end I defy anyone not to give a toss about that character by the end of the film.

But it's as Johnny Castle that Swayze stole the hearts of generations of hormonal adolescent girls the world over. In Dirty Dancing, Swayze proved that not all male dancers are homosexual (and that some are even macho enough to wear leather jackets!). Although I can't help hating him a little for all the unrealistic expectations his character would create for generations of would-be suitors of the afore mentioned hormonal adolescent girls.

Smug, impossibly handsome dancing twat!

I wonder how many times people, on average, look back on a working day and announce cheerfully;

"I love my job!"

It's certainly taken a long time for me to clamber amongst the ranks of those happy few but today has provided an experience that has rendered all the toil, stress and hair loss of the last two years completely worthwhile!

Y'see, a select few of the unsightly rabble of self absorbed, preening adolescent luvvies that I teach have been entered into the Shakespeare in Schools Festival. Both my fellow drama teacher Lizzy Anthony and myself have worked our tits and testes respectively off, staging a (massively abridged) production of Shakespeare's The Tempest.

As anybody who's tried to direct tired, cranky taurine saturated teenagers will know, the rehearsal process can be a nightmare and there have been many times when we (or certainly, I) have lost perspective of how good or bad the end product is.

Not that we haven't done our best with the material, mind!

We've tried to make the production as visually and aurally rich as possible incorporating lots of physical theatre and soundscaping to create locations and atmosphere, and there are a few moments and concepts that we feel were genuinely inspired (yes the two-headed Caliban was my idea!) but there's always been that nagging feeling that what we were rehearsing might not be as good as our egos convince us that it is. This gets especially worrysome when you're up against other schools. Not that the festival is a competitive event, but that sure as shite wouldn't stop us from wanting to put on the best production on there.

Anyway, we travelled to the Preston Charter Theatre at the Guild Hall for the kids to workshop some of their / our production for some lovely people from the National Youth Theatre.

And, fuck-me-bumways, I've never been so proud or impressed!

Not only were the kids polite, co-operative and supportive with each other and kids from other schools but the small extract they performed from our production was played with such aplomb, focus, conviction ans sheer luvvie-darling-stage-swaggering-panache it was all I could do to restrain myself from hugging them all individually, so hard their vital organs shot out of their ears.

I was impressed by the scene and I've seen it hundreds of times. The kids and teachers from the opposi- er, other schools really seemed to enjoy it too!

The experience was vaguely bitter sweet, however! I did get the familiar twinge that self indulgent thesps like myself get when watching others perform and it did remind me that it's been a long time since I've directed or acted in anything that wasn't school related.

Still, there's life in my arthritic old bones yet and I'm not quite at the age where *choke* *sob* I shall never play the Dane!

Nonetheless all the cast should give themselves an enormous pat on the back before they go out to sniff glue and have unprotected sex behind the recycling bins in front of Tesco!
They've done me proud!

Jasper Carrott once said;

"Imagine Oxford Street in London on Christmas eve. That's hong Kong at 3am on a Sunday morning."

While far from being a street savvy urbanite, I've been in enough big cities to have developed a tolerance for bustle. I arrived expecting Hong Kong to be busy, but still the density of the steaming, thronging masses that clog up the conovation's concrete arteries far surpassed even my expectations. Its a minor miracle that the children of Hong Kong make it all the way to adolescence without being swept away from their parents on a tide of sweaty, work weary bodies.

Hong Kong is is an amazing place to people watch. The teeming masses negotiate the streets and catwalks between the tightly packed skyscrapers with what can only be explained as some sort of internal radar.

Nobody ever looks where the fuck they're going!

And yet they weave amongst one another with seemingly inhuman agility, with only tourists and the mentally infirm being trampled in their hurried wake or twatted about the head by the umbrellas many people carry to stave off the oppressive heat.

By way of common courtesy I usually do my best to learn a smattering of the local tongue whenever i go away anywhere but the tonal nature of Cantonese completely eluded me and thus we spent our first few days being bustled from pillar to post without being able to squeeze by with a meek; 'excuse me', 'pardon me', ' I beg your pardon, but your umbrella's in my eye', or a firm but polite; 'I don't want to have to bludgeon you to death but I will', or even a curt but civil; 'get the fuck out of my way, Cocktonsils!'

On observing the populace, though, a delightful potential hobby soon reveals itself.

Engrish spotting!

It's a well established fact that all those billions of westerners who get tattooed with the asian characters for 'Warrior', 'Love', 'Peace' and 'Dragon' are a bunch of utterly pretentions cunts! In fact, it would be poetically just if those tattoos actually said, 'Gout', 'Smegma', 'Herpes' or 'Mister Floppy' without their owners being any the wiser.
Well it turns out that it works the other way, except the residents of Hong Kong are at least smart enough to apply this dynamic to their clothing rather than getting it indellibly etched onto their bodies. Thousands of people strode the walkways of Hong kong and Kowloon wearing t-shirts adorned with bizarrely mistranslated English slogans from the opaque to the utterly meaningless. Amongst them were;

"Okay Robot, go!"

"Love touch it here, man!"

And my all time favourite;

"Guns don't kill people... People with the badness ideas kill people!"

Delightfully, though, we were able to find a few vistas of total calm and tranquility easily accessible on Hong kong island. By far the most charming are the Botanical and Zoological Gardens, which are free to enter and offer a delightful reprieve from the clammy urban crush amongst the soothing sights and scents of nature.
















The park boasts a dazzlingly beautiful and comprehensive variety of plant life as well as an impressive assortment of monkeys, primates, reptiles and other furry, crawly, scaly things. Oh, and (freakishly) the stuffed remains of the park's dearly departed resident jaguar.

Here's a picture of Lauren chilling amongst the foliage.
















Within equally easy reach of the civic centrum is a tram which offers an unsettligly vertical trip up to Victoria Peak which offers breathtaking views of the city.

And, of course, a wide variety of unimpressive shops and disproportionately expensive restaurants. Here's a photo of Lauren with some staggering altitude;




















Being, in my teen years, a huge fan of Golden Harvest / Shaw Brothers chop-sockey flicks I was ludicsourly impressed by the ostentatious Avenue of Stars where the streets are adorned with the hand prints of some of China's biggest film stars. As such, it was a point of some personal pride, being the only white man there at the time to stop and marvel at the hand prints of lesser known Hong Kong stars such as Yuen Biao and jimmy Wang Yu. Although, I wasn't so much of a snob that I didn't queue for ten minutes to pose like a twat beneath the statue of Bruce Lee like everyone else!




















But, the undisputed highlight of our visit to this glorious Chinese metropolis was a visit to the famed Ocean Park, which is essentially Blackpool Pleasure beach with pandas.

No witticisms or cynical musings on our time at this place of wonderment, I'm afraid! Just giddy childlike excitement at the prospect of seeing adorable creatures in a man made approximation of their natural habitat.

So, in lieu of cranky mutterings, quirky wordplay or gratuitous swearing let me just say;

PANDAS!
















PANDAS!!




















PANDAS!!!!!!



























And, for the connoisseur who prefers a bit of variety in their panda there were also two Red Pandas! Red pandas are adorable lazy, happy, fuzzy tree creatures and easily my favourite animal. Obviously they're completely unrelated to their gigantic counterparts (I believe the raccoon is their closest relative) but still they're wretchedly adorable.

Check them out!

Very few things instill in me any sort of faith in humanity.
Fewer still are the instances in which I want to fall to my knees and weep with joy at the apparent redemption of my fellow man, and emphatically renounce all the times I've labeled the general public a bunch of "characterless cack swilling cunts!".

Still, yesterday the decision makers at Channel 4 reaffirmed my faith in humanity by axeing the narcissistic lunatic parade that is Big Brother.

Big Brother has (for better for worse) become something as a cultural zeitgeist, encapsulating the face of popular culture for the best part of a decade, transcending its televisual roots to become a media phenomenon.
When a new gaggle of self absorbed simpletons are shepherded into the Big Brother house to argue about milk and attempt to fuck eachother, a news hungry member of the populace can't help but be assaulted with images and editorial plastered all over the printed and electronic press of these conceited shits and their various forms of outlandish hair.

The fact that it has become the very institution that it has raises some very serious questions about our cultural palette.

Nonetheless, it seems that the proletariat aren't quite the thoughtless, autodidactic shitmunchers I had presumed them to be because slowly but surely they've been coming to their senses and tuning out of Endemol's progressively crass attempts to get colourful, bubbly morons to fight and fornicate on live television.

Personally I couldn't be happier, although I'm not naiive enough to assume that this is the beginning of the end for the reality TV phenomenon.
Perhaps the Hydra's biggest and ugliest head has been severed but the beast is still alive and writhing perversely at my snobbish artistic sensibilities.

Perhaps one day people will also tire of moderately talented and attractive young ladies who think that the only way into the music industry is to win it on The X Factor.

...

I can but hope!

















"WANKERS!!!"

Picture the following scene!

You're visiting your dear and seldom seen Aunt who lives in the Cotswolds or Devon or some shit. She makes a big fuss of you and after some tea and Dundee cake you feel right at home. Just when you're kicking off your shoes preparing to vegetate in front of count down and update your Facebook status on your Blackberry you hear the old crone's reedy whine;

"Oooh, did I show you my holiday snaps, dear?"

If such a scenario makes your bowels spontaneously void with dread, or conjures up visions of you gnawing off your own metacarpals in disdain then you may want to skip by this blog post.

Essentially I'm going to be providing a brief account of our honeymoon travels with intermediate pictorial illustrations. While I'm aware of how banal and uninteresting it can be to read people's self-referential wanking on about their holidays I'll try and make the following as entertaining as possible.

Furthermore, given today's fast paced climate of instantaneous literary gratification you probably don't want to read anything too long and taxing so I'll break it down into short, concise episodes (obviously this quite long and elaborate introduction notwithstanding).

Part 1- Honk Kong

Personally I find flying long haul only marginally less uncomfortable than having my finger nails removed with pliers while a quintet of midgets rub powdered glass into my scrotum.
Breathing in several hundred people's recycled belches, sneezes and farts for twelve hours while a cataleptic stranger dribbles at your shoulder and digs their elbow into your ribs is not the ideal start to anyone's holiday! Nonetheless I was prepared to endure this torment as a necessary evil in order to experience the wonder of the orient.
Moreover we'd tried to blag our way into a free upgrade as the doe eyed honeymooners we were but the hard faced Cathay Pacific official glibly informed us that the flight was full.

Poo!

Suffice to say I didn't get a wink of sleep but fortunately the airline had a fine selection of films to keep me going. I whittled away the hours with;

* A frustratingly sanitised version of Watchmen- An adequate attempt to bring Alan Moore's iconic novel to life that (like V for Vendetta before it) lacked the depth and scope of its source material.

* Gran Torino- Trite, heavy handed and bordering on caricature at times but thoroughly entertaining nonetheless. While I'm not the biggest Clint fan he had some devastatingly cool lines here.

* Valkyrie- Tom Cruise manages to hold his own alongside such heavyweight thesps as Tom Wilkinson, Ken Branagh, Terrence Stamp and Bill Nighy (oh and, delightfully Eddie Izzard's in there as well). Reminded me that Tom Cruise is actually pretty damn good at his job even if he does believe that all negative emotions are caused by the ghosts of aliens that were dumped into volcanoes. The film's depiction of Klaus Von Stauffenberg was a little blinkered and why they didn't act the whole thing in German was beyond me as Cruise's accent and pronunciation are excellent in the opening scene!

* No Country For Old Men- Despite the meandering prose you can't take your eyes off it. Sterling performances all round and a profound reminder of why I love both the Coen brothers and Cormac McCarthy as much as a heterosexual newlywed can love another man.


Jetlagged and irate we arrived in Hong Kong after rigorous H1N1 screenings. By rigorous screenings I mean a card that essentially said;

"Do you have swine flu?

Yes /No"

When leaving the airport and arriving in town I'd like to say that the first thing we noticed was the monumental beauty of the architecture, the hurried but easy charm of the locals or the ruthless cleanliness of the streets.

It was, however the near crippling heat and humidity that first assailed us, coupled by the indefinable, sweetish, vaguely sweaty meat smell that seemed to permeate everywhere, emanating from innumerable restaurants, stalls and vendors.

Upon arrival at the hotel we had a little more luck blagging an upgrade and managed to rate a "superior room" (it had a heated towel rack!). After a quick nap to acclimatise to local time and shake off the jetlag we set about to explore and investigate.
Our hotel was situated on Kowloon bay and before entering Honk Kong island proper we had a scout around the locality;




















A fifteen minute walk led us to a thriving marketplace where everything from cheaply made fake designer t shirts to cheaply made fake designer watches could be obtained, and the trendy youngsters of Kowloon assembled to pass the time, shop and purchase foul but intriguing smelling snacks from less than sanitary street vendors.

Amongst the bustle of the marketplace were numerous sportswear, designer clothes and electronics outlets which we avoided, favouring the cheerfully tacky charm of what was called the ladies market. Excellently, we were also able to detect an undercurrent of sleaze with 'by the hour' hotels sharing space with sporting goods outlets and shoe shops.

It was from here that I purchased a Mooncake- a festival delicacy of Hong Kong (which, though out of season I was able to pick up quite easily). A Mooncake is a pastry delicacy about the size of a pork pie filled with lotus seed paste and the dried, whole yolks of salted duck's eggs. Eating Mooncake is an experience I can only liken to dining on a pastry covered brick made out of equal parts sugar, salt and fucking sand! How the Chinese make it to adulthood at all chomping on these as a matter of course is a mystery for me.

Speaking of food, Hong Kong is an essential visit for the gourmand. The famous Chinese saying 'If it has it's back to the sun, we'll eat it" is in full effect here and if a menu boasting jellied pig's knuckle or pickled goat's scrotum is likely to make you queasy then there are a great many blander alternatives more suitable to the western palate.
Those expecting sweet and sour chicken or beef satay may be in for a rude awakening, though and visiting China is a jarring reminder at how homogenised what we consider Chinese food actually is.
By rule of thumb one's enjoyment of a meal is in directly inverse proportion to how much one considers the ingredients that make it up, and I can honestly say that abiding by this I never had a bad meal there.
There is one staple delicacy, however that always eluded me and that was the simple Congee (a porridge of rice usually including eggs, seed pastes, vegetables, fish and / or meat) which I avoided devoutly purely because of the fact that it looked like a bowl of semen with bits of dead animal and green stuff floating in it.





Meh. No thanks!


There's still a great deal to appeal to the unenlightened though. Such western favorites as Peking duck are abundantly available and you've never tasted char siu until you've been to Hong Kong!

And if, like myself, you're a dim sum fanatic then you can find exquisite steamed balls of delicious non-specific meats pretty much everywhere you look at more than reasonable prices.

Our first two days were spent simply taking in the vastness in scale and grandeur of this unique and disparate country.

Indeed, our first visit to Hong Kong island itself (easily accessible on the cheap-as-chips Star Ferry) was spent wandering the streets agog, staring in wonderment at the sky tickling monuments to wealth, commerce and finance that towered over us.

Hong Kong is a paragon of finance, industry and wealth in stark contrast to the relative poverty traditionally associated with mainland China.

The very opulence of the island makes it hard to imagine the time barely half a century ago when the British colony was a hotbed of crippling poverty, organised crime, drug pandemics and prostitution.


NEXT

People, Pandas, and Engrish!

P.S.  You'll find a nice new cartoon waiting for you over at Supersillyous!