I'm not supposed to use the pictures from our Hong Kong trip before A receives them in a CD I'm to burn and snailmail to her, but seriously, who's bothered, right? I mean, it could be another millenia before the CD actually gets removed from its stack and even loaded into my computer. I kidding, A, really. Like, really really. The wicked-ass vacation photos aren't ready to leave my desk, though, for a simple reason. You'll find that out soon.



Anyhoos, that was my excuse - and a valid one at that - for not (yet) blogging about the HK trip. Must not spoil it for A. I am lame but loyal. And proud of it. Shing!

Tonight, I was caught up on the fascinating topic of Homing pigeons while traipsing around Internet-Land. Pigeons have, of late, been on my mind's radar. First, in the guise of pretending to be one, i.e. a pigeon, in order to appear inconspicuous. (There are also very funny actions that accompany this act of inconspicuousness.) Then, encountered in Hong Kong: roasted, as an alternative to chicken wings to be had with beer. This is a very versatile little bird-creature, I must say.

And just yesterday, I came across the subject of pigeons in M. F. K. Fisher's How To Cook A Wolf, published together with the rest of her excellent writing in the 50th Anniversary Edition of The Art of Eating. She muses,

"It is not easy to find pigeons, these days. Most of the ones you know about in the city are working for the government. [...] By far the easiest way to make a pigeon cry "Come, eat me!" is to buy it, all clean and trussed, from a merchant."



For me, there is a high possibility the romantic ideal of owning a homing pigeon stems from Hedwig and the notion of Owl Post, courtesy of J K Rowling's Potterverse. Wouldn't it be nice (cue humming) to send short, important messages scripted onto thin, lightweight paper tied to a bird's leg?

I now know how homing pigeons find their way about from point A to B. Thank you, Internet. You have been a veritable vault of information I may not immediately know what I'd have use for. But now I want to know: how I can send that bird back to the sender - will this be possible, communicating both ways via pigeon?

To A: before you cry foul about my use of the HK images, may I offer you this. Read the parts about the pigeons again. See? Not a word about Stanley!

And so, last night after knocking back a few drinks, as part of bird-mania, our topic turned to bats. M and me, we were wondering, if bats, as mammals, copulated upside-down, hanging off the rock ceiling of their cave or tree? And would their wings, two pairs, enfolded, offer the privacy of a four-poster bed of sorts?

Or were bats essentially birds; if they were, how did they lay eggs upside-down? "Oh," intoned R airily, "they excrete a kind of gel-like substance to stick the eggs onto the cave's ceiling." We were impressed. This was after a few drinks. "Then umm," I wondered aloud, "do the bat-babies fall to the ground upon hatching, according to the workings of gravity?" Poor bat-babies! Slightly smashed: us after a few drinks as well as the bat-babies.

Mr C has been coming over to sit in my room often in the past week. I read somewhere, just a few weeks back, that,

"in a cat's eyes, all things belong to cats."

"How very true," I said thoughtfully to nobody in particular, as I copied this line into my sketchbook. And conveniently forgot to note the reference.

4 days ago, we returned from Hong Kong - we've got the wickedest vacation photos from this trip! Too much noodles and not enough money, I say! Who knows the bad weather we'd brung with us, where, upon our arrival, rain was encountered beating sideways against our brollies; our last day was sunshiney and humid. Like I said, who knows these things, right?



The day before we left, I'd hurriedly morphed into my crafty self and hand-sewed, yes, hand-sewed an apron for A, who, in her bid to be an independent big girl, landed herself a very cool job in Hong Kong. Her expatriate status had me green with envy for a bit, but brought back the bitter-sweet-sour memories of being alone and feeling lonely in Melbourne, even though I loved the place to bits. Can feelings about my surroundings can run counter to the feelings inside of me, I wonder? Digressing.

So.

Being a working girl alone over in Hong Kong, A gets to cook at home a lot. That explains how we came to have every one of our meals out while we were there. Kind of. Unless we count suppers, where we had cake. Pandan chiffon! From Bengawan Solo at Terminal Three! Nothing, I suppose, beats a taste of home for the homesick, even if it has to come in a 30x30x10 cm cardboard box.

The apron was made from a brand new Good Morning Towel we'd bought in Singapore, brought over to Melbourne, and then air-freighted back to Singapore. They - a grand total of 3 out of 4 - remain unused, but rather well-travelled. I thought it was a rather clever idea, to use a clean white towel as the main material for an apron, because I'm guilty of hastily wiping my hands on my T-shirt or pants when I cook. Grubbiness does not a lady make. And white happens to be A's favourite colour too, so: 2 birds, 1 crafty stone. Yay.

"There's something about owning your own one-person business that over the years has manifested itself more than once. It's the strange solitude that accompanies the big moments. I don't know if solitude is the right word. It's probably, actually, "aloneness," or something closer to that. I remember when I worked in offices, as part of various "teams," going through crunch times, doing major pushes to finish a book we were working on by deadline, or get a catalog out before a sales fair. ...

... and thought about my old friends at work, and how there was a irrepressible camaraderie in sharing the stress and tight deadlines and impossible tasks that seem about to overwhelm. Even though everyone has their own job to do, there is something comforting in the collective suffering -- a shared context that doesn't need explaining. But when you own your own business and do almost everything yourself, you sometimes miss that context (not to mention, of course, the physical help, but that's something else completely). You have to tell complete strangers how busy you are -- you tell the mailman who's bringing you more mail-order yarn, "Oh man, I am so busy! I'm freaking out!" and he's like, "So what, who cares?" Because there's no one else in your "office," no one who is really a part of the hard times, when things get messed up or aren't going right, when balls that have been dropped need to be picked up, and, often, to be launched back into the air. It's just you -- little, overwhelmed you, in sweatpants and glasses with no time to eat lunch -- who bears the responsibility and the challenge. You don't want to crash and burn. At the same time, neither is there anyone who has had a significant hand in the work around to celebrate when something really great happens -- a big order, a little publicity, a pursued opportunity granted. You walk around the studio grinning like a fool, and calling your friends who are in other offices, doing other jobs, on teams of their own. Bearing the brunt of stebacks and successes, is, for the most part, your task alone, and finding the ability to keep in all in perspective -- well, it can be lonely sometimes."

This just about sums up what I've been feeling recently. I couldn't re-write all that, especially not when Alicia Paulson has already written so eloquently about it. I couldn't help but nod and nod, and feel my eyes prickle a little at the exasperation of working alone.

Now I have learnt the importance of having colleagues. Maybe not those who stab you in the back, but colleagues nonetheless. I will find that shared context in my next job.

Being in-between jobs currently is a little uncomfortable, to say the least, when there's a certain member of the family who expects a twenty-nine year old to already have an established career. And this someone is torturing everyone else by making his unsolicited views and selfish advice known. Makes mealtimes or being downstairs such a chore, I'm just saying. Yet again, the space of one's own room offers much-needed solace. At the risk of sounding better than thou, I feel sad for people who do not have their own space to retreat to. I really do.