Today was a bit hard. Of course, I was nauseous the whole day, but in addition I was feeling really quite homesick, which was a new concept for me. Then, the short time I forayed out into the world, every Chinese person I met yelled at me, so I slunk home and spent most of the day in bed.
That's it in a nutshell. The rest of this is me whining, so you can stop reading here.
In the past 16 years, I have lived in 11 different cities (not including "couch surfing" for various lengths of time with friends and family) and each time I have left, I have never looked back. I may reminisce about good times, but I never felt bad about leaving the old place or felt the current place I was in was better or worse, just different. In short, never once did I feel homesick. In fact, I never really considered myself having a real "home" to feel sick about. I certainly didn't miss the crappy trailer I grew up in with out electricity, water in the winter, that my mother kept saying she was going to "blow up" she hated it so much herself. And I never really felt terribly attached to any other place I lived. I enjoyed myself when I was there, made friends, but easily detached.
So perhaps I'm just getting old. Perhaps this a stage in culture shock I just skipped the last 10 times. Perhaps my hormones are getting the better of me. Or perhaps I hate Hong Kong just that much. But today, for the first time ever, I thought about the place I lived before I came here and couldn't stop crying. I was totally homesick for a place I only lived 2 years.
Let's compare:
In Fairfax, I lived in a two story apartment complex with about 30 or so other families. Our apartments all faced an inner courtyard that had a pool, grass, community toys for the kids to play with, and a track kids could race around in. I knew every single person there. And almost everyone liked children, loved Kai, and gave him toys, clothes, snacks, candies on a regular basis. Often I would have no idea where my child was, so I'd stand on the grass in the middle and call out "KAI!" and someone or other wuld stick out their head and say "He's in here!" And I'd go over and have a chat and thank them for their hospitality and encourage Kai to play outside where I could at least hear him and have a vague idea where he was. Our apartment also had a community area where people who no longer wanted their books, music, toys, candles, dishes, etc would drop them off and others would take them to use. Large furniture often moved from apartment to apartment and enjoyed long lives. Everyone thought Kai's fashion choices (green tutu, sparkle purse, white communion dress) was fabulous and unique and no one questioned my parenting for allowing him to wear such ensembles. Local restaurants had community toy areas for the kids to play, and the local playground had sand and trees and a small creek, and lots of community trucks and bikes and things for kids to play with, in addition to the normal play structures. There was one ice cream shop, all organic, with a poster "How to make a community" on it, and a wall of photos of all the people in town eating their ice creams. They had massage fairs, crystal fairs, wine fairs, organic farmer's markets, coffee houses that were locally owned and operated and had open mic nights, music clubs, pubs, and even a vegan (no meat, no eggs, no milk no nothing) restaurant smack dab next to the greasiest meatiest hamburger and hot dog joint in town. Everyone and everything was OK. It was like the 60"s never went away. people wore their hair long, were often barefoot, wore non chlorine, non dye, handmade garments that flowed like a cloud around them. Halloween was a community affair, preceded by the costume parade (there were always parades, it seemed). Easter too. They had one and only one church, and I visited there once just to see what it was about, and basically their message was "We don't know what we believe if we believe in anything". It was kind of Agnostic, which I found a rather interesting concept for a church. Surrounding this village was rolling hills with hundreds of trails and MT. Tamalpais, and a 20 minute drive through the hills brought you to to the great Pacific Ocean. A 40 minute drive brought you to San Francisco. The sky was clean and blue, you could see millions of stars at night, nature hugged and nourished us. Everywhere there were redwood forests, rolling waves of grassy hills, and sparkling blue ocean. Everything was clean and the temperature never got colder than a morning frost, and was usually warm but not boiling.
Except for the fact it was damned expensive like the rest of California and you needed a car because public transportation was non existent, it was perfect. I even knew that before I left. But I just couldn't live there on the salaries Mabo and I were trying to live off of. Rent, child care, car payments, and school loan repayments, all the very lowest I could find, ate up 90% of our income, and we had about 200 a month for food, clothes, gas for the car, etc. I suppose 200 could get you somewhere in Maine, but in CA, you can spend that in an hour.
The only way out of debt was to leave my heavenly Fairfax.
Now, in Hong Kong, after months of living frugally, we have paid off all our debts back in the US, except for the school loans, ad even have leftover every month to take Kai to go on dolphin tours, and see "Live dinosaur" shows, and do all sorts of cool fun things we couldn't afford in the US. We finally were financially in a position to consider having another child. We never have to worry if we have enough money to buy groceries, or whatever we want. But at what price?
In Hong Kong, everything is dirty and spoiled. The air is poisonous, the paint is leaded, the walls have asbestos, the furniture formaldehyde, the ocean is clogged with trash, the foot paths in the hills are "Paved" with broken bits of china and other trash, there is trash everywhere, the food makes you sick, the ocean is unswimmable, and the tiny bits of grass that exist are corralled off and guarded, literally. The other day we saw a whole ten stars and got so excited because usually the pollution prevents you from seeing any at all.
The worst part for me is the yelling. Chinese people are paid to yell at everyone all the time. Today, for example, we went to the pool. There are no fewer than 20 rules posted. We followed every damn rule, and still got in trouble. Kai brought a toy, and that was not allowed. I put sunscreen on us, and that is not allowed. Imagine, no sunscreen allowed! Shit! So I put on my T shirt to prevent hospitalization from being burned, and no T shits allowed! A leaf from a tree planted around the pool fell down into the pool. Kai started to play with it. Yep, no playing with leaves allowed either. Fuck me! Kai was in the kiddie pool that is like three inches deep and was jumping around...no jumping! I was just giving every life guard the look of death, I just couldn't believe it. But I COULD believe it, because this is life in Hong Kong. Everything is NO. Every playground, every beach, every place had signs the size of billboards to accommodate all the rules what you can't do. And still, there are tons of rules not written down that Chinese people just make up to get a chance to yell at kids.
And hundreds, maybe thousands, of people are employed to enforce these rules. And they don't just say "Hey, don't do that." Most of the time, they yell and yell and yell and just don't stop. I have a teacher I work with that yells in the kids' faces, with a microphone, and they are crying and hysterical and she still yells and yells and carrys on for 20 minutes. This is very Hong Kong style and I hate HATE HATE it, especially when it's my kid.
Now most people tell me my son is pretty well behaved. I watch him carefully and make sure he never does anything obnoxious and when he gets borderline obnoxious, I nip it in the bud instantly. Non Chinese people praise my son on his manners. Chinese people invent things to yell at him for. It is horrible.
So I earn enough money to pay my bills and have left over to start saving up for the next move. The sooner I can afford to get out of Hong Kong, the better. Sadly, I do not think I will ever be able to afford to live in Fairfax again. The problems of cost of living vs teacher salaries is never going to balance in Fairfax's favor.
I don't know if I will ever find a place that felt like home as much as Fairfax did. But if I do, and I can live there sustainably, I will never move again.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Chinese medicine
I have a friend who is married to a Chinese medicine doctor. He graciously agreed to meet me yesterday, on a holiday, to see if there was anything he could do to help me. Without going into gory details, lets just say my digestive tract muscles are proving they are just as adept at moving food and drink in the other direction as well. Like the rest of the muscles in my body, they are not used to that much activity, so everything from my throat to my diaphram to the rib cage muscles are now very sore, which is starting to affect my quality of life.
I had this problem with #1, and took Zolaft, but it rendered me incapable of comprehending speech, and i refused to take it after the first two times. As a student, I could afford to wallow in misery all day in my bed (as long as i did the required reading and writing), but now as a working adult, I gotta be on my toes. Since western meds make me feel stupid, I decided to take a crack at Chinese medicine.
So far, my one and only experience with Chinese medicine was over the winter, when Mabo and I drank several gallons of medical tea they sell on the streets to chase away the flu bugs. It tasked absolutely horrid and i gaged profusely the first time I chugged a cuppa down, but damn it worked. I never had to take a sick day off of work all winter (for a cold; I got food poisining several times, but that's another story).
So when my friend and her husband met with me, they warned me that Chinese medicine tastes different from western medicine and stressed that I may not entirely like it. yeah, I figured. After checking my pulse and other points on my body, he wrote a "prescription" and walked me to what he considered to be a reputable medicine shop.
Let me take a minute to explain Chinese medicine shops. These shops are literally everywhere. In them, large glass jars of various dried out objects are stored on shelves. There are also dozens of little drawers where smaller dried out objects dwell. In addition to various dried out roots, bulbs, and herbs, these places also carry dried out gekkos, lizards, turtle shells, starfish, sponges, and even sea horses (small, medium, and large) as well as a variety of earth and sea based creatures I don't even recognize. Mabo has recognized a couple items which are on Japan's endangerd species list. The Chinese use literally everything on earth for various medicinal purposes. There is nothing they won't put into their bodies. As my friend said yesterday, the Chinese will never die of starvation. They will most certainly poison themselves to death, but never ever will they starve.
If you have ever watched the Japanese cartoon "Spirited Away" you will understand exactly what i am talking about. (if you haven't, please do; its a great movie!) Watching the "pharmacists" prepare my potion was just like watching Kumoji prepare baths. While various herbs, spices, (and god i dont want to know what) were being prepared, the doctor explained to me how to prepare the brew at home. because he didn't know if i would be able to stomach the medicine, he prepared only two days worth of medicine for me. if it works and I don't mind the taste, he will prescribe more later.
That night, after two and a half hours, the potion was finally ready, prepared as he required: all the ingrdients were to boil in 5 cups of water until I had only 1 cup. then after straining the medicine, i was to boil another cup and a half down to one cup and mix the two. The two cups at the end were to be evenly split and drunk, one cup at a time, in the morning and at night.
I had my first cup this morning. it was not nearly as bad as i had anticipated, and if I liked the taste of anise, I might have actually liked it. And it may be a coincidence, but I haven't had the urge to move my food in the wrong direction yet. the real test will be 3:00 this afternoon, as my most difficult time is 3-8 pm.
Oh, and he also showed me a trick: If you rest three fingers on your wrist, there is a point three fingers down on your tendon that, if you push it, will reduce nausea. yesterday, when I was gagging and wretching and looking for a public restroom, he pushed that point, deeply, and I went from "critical danger" to "generally nauseated but not critical", which was really an improvement for me.
He told me if I visit his father (a medicine man for many years) in a couple of months, he will be able to tell if it's a boy or a girl just by looking at my wrists! I'm super curious about this procedure, so I want to go!
I had this problem with #1, and took Zolaft, but it rendered me incapable of comprehending speech, and i refused to take it after the first two times. As a student, I could afford to wallow in misery all day in my bed (as long as i did the required reading and writing), but now as a working adult, I gotta be on my toes. Since western meds make me feel stupid, I decided to take a crack at Chinese medicine.
So far, my one and only experience with Chinese medicine was over the winter, when Mabo and I drank several gallons of medical tea they sell on the streets to chase away the flu bugs. It tasked absolutely horrid and i gaged profusely the first time I chugged a cuppa down, but damn it worked. I never had to take a sick day off of work all winter (for a cold; I got food poisining several times, but that's another story).
So when my friend and her husband met with me, they warned me that Chinese medicine tastes different from western medicine and stressed that I may not entirely like it. yeah, I figured. After checking my pulse and other points on my body, he wrote a "prescription" and walked me to what he considered to be a reputable medicine shop.
Let me take a minute to explain Chinese medicine shops. These shops are literally everywhere. In them, large glass jars of various dried out objects are stored on shelves. There are also dozens of little drawers where smaller dried out objects dwell. In addition to various dried out roots, bulbs, and herbs, these places also carry dried out gekkos, lizards, turtle shells, starfish, sponges, and even sea horses (small, medium, and large) as well as a variety of earth and sea based creatures I don't even recognize. Mabo has recognized a couple items which are on Japan's endangerd species list. The Chinese use literally everything on earth for various medicinal purposes. There is nothing they won't put into their bodies. As my friend said yesterday, the Chinese will never die of starvation. They will most certainly poison themselves to death, but never ever will they starve.
If you have ever watched the Japanese cartoon "Spirited Away" you will understand exactly what i am talking about. (if you haven't, please do; its a great movie!) Watching the "pharmacists" prepare my potion was just like watching Kumoji prepare baths. While various herbs, spices, (and god i dont want to know what) were being prepared, the doctor explained to me how to prepare the brew at home. because he didn't know if i would be able to stomach the medicine, he prepared only two days worth of medicine for me. if it works and I don't mind the taste, he will prescribe more later.
That night, after two and a half hours, the potion was finally ready, prepared as he required: all the ingrdients were to boil in 5 cups of water until I had only 1 cup. then after straining the medicine, i was to boil another cup and a half down to one cup and mix the two. The two cups at the end were to be evenly split and drunk, one cup at a time, in the morning and at night.
I had my first cup this morning. it was not nearly as bad as i had anticipated, and if I liked the taste of anise, I might have actually liked it. And it may be a coincidence, but I haven't had the urge to move my food in the wrong direction yet. the real test will be 3:00 this afternoon, as my most difficult time is 3-8 pm.
Oh, and he also showed me a trick: If you rest three fingers on your wrist, there is a point three fingers down on your tendon that, if you push it, will reduce nausea. yesterday, when I was gagging and wretching and looking for a public restroom, he pushed that point, deeply, and I went from "critical danger" to "generally nauseated but not critical", which was really an improvement for me.
He told me if I visit his father (a medicine man for many years) in a couple of months, he will be able to tell if it's a boy or a girl just by looking at my wrists! I'm super curious about this procedure, so I want to go!
Saturday, May 7, 2011
News and a new segment: Getting Care in HK
Easter passed, uneventfully, and now my school kids are gearing up for the home stretch. There are about 30 more instructional days, not including days for test prep and tests, a couple weeks of work after the kids leave, and then I get to take some much needed time off! Hooray!
We have decided to go to Japan for the hols to reconnect with family and to bump Kai's language skill before he enters first grade at the Japanese International School this year. It's the best school in Hong Kong, dirt cheap (comparatively), the only non-Chinese school in HK not filled to capacity, and the only requirement is that Kai be proficient in Japanese. Needless to say, we are very anxious that he get accepted, as he wouldn't be able to go to any other school, as the local Canto schools won't take him and the English language schools are already filled for next year, and are impossibly expensive anyway. I have 17 messages in my inbox all telling me to look elsewhere.
As excited as I am to go to Japan this summer, I don't expect I'll be much fun. When I was pregnant with Kai, I had morning sickness all day every day for 9 months. The severity, length, and symptoms lead my doctor to diagnose me with Hyperemesis Gravidarum and gave me Zolaft, which made me feel just awful and unable to comprehend language. As I was still a student in grad school, it was a major problem that I couldn't comprehend language, so I stopped taking the medicine.
It's possible my morning sickness is the normal kind this time around. It's possible by July all this pregnancy bulimia will be a distant memory, but I recently learned that people who develop HG are more likely than others to react the same way in subsequent pregnancies. This leads people to speculate that HG might be an immune reaction to the "foreign agent" in the body. This makes sense since I am a negative blood type and Kai was a positive blood type and there is a very good chance this sucker is positive too, since Mabo is Japanese and they almost never have negative type babies. Anyway, typical home remedies are apparently not helpful for those with HG, and Zolaft-ish products are the only known way to manage the illness. However, as a language teacher, I can't be on meds that render me unable to comprehend language!
So if it's HG again (and let's pray its not, because it's no fun), I won't be anything but miserable the whole time in Japan. But at least that's different from being miserable in Hong Kong. My poor family and friends will just have to deal!
Kai is very interested in this pregnancy and we have spent some time looking at pics of fetal development on the internet as I progress to see how the baby is coming along. While on line, we came across several medical web sites indicating women with morning sickness are less likely to have miscarriages than women without any sickness, statistically. So Kai is OK with mommy puking everywhere because that means I'm "making a good baby," in his words.
And now for a new segment of the blog: Getting Care in Hong Kong
Now that I'm pregnant, I've entered the strange world of maternity care in Hong Kong.
I went to a maternity clinic several weeks ago in April because my gyne doesnt do deliveries and besides maternity care is free for HK residents if you use the free clinics and hospitals. It was rather scary. You certainly get what you pay for in Hong Kong.
Additionally, my area is very close to China, so alot of Chinese come over the border just to get maternity care; even if it's not free, it a lot better than in China. I'm sure clinics in other areas are much better, but where I live its insane. Hundreds of mothers and babies milling around, flowing in and out of rooms or sitting in chairs (if you can find one unoccupied) and DMV-style number counters and window counter people barking out what to do through speakers.
I saw a room with 15 little baby weighers and 15 little counter tops, just like my doctors office in Monterey, but instead of one per room, 15. I didn't know where to go, which line to get into, so I just walked up to a window that had no line and told the lady I didn't know what to do. She asked me to wait, and 45 minutes later, she announced she had made an appointment for me at the local hospital in May and had made an appointment for me for the clinic in June. That was it. I could go home. But first, she pointed out to me the requirements for things I had to bring with me at my next appointment; among them, a sample of pee. Yep, I get to collect my own pee at home, put it in a bottle, and carry it with me all the way to the clinic in the hot June sun. They don't collect on site. Now that's different. No one weighed me, took any samples, offered advice, I didn't even see anyone. I asked if I could change the dates since they conflicted with work, but no. I dont get to choose when I come in. I come in when they damn well say I come in. Now there's service for ya! But, it's free! If all goes well, I may spend less than 50 dollars US for the entire natal care and delivery. That's compared to 100 USD every time I went to the doctor and 65K for Kai's delivery, not including testing fees, so a total of about 70K USD. 70,000 and 50 are mind-bogglingly different in terms of cost to have a child. I'm glad I'm not having this one in the US.
We have decided to go to Japan for the hols to reconnect with family and to bump Kai's language skill before he enters first grade at the Japanese International School this year. It's the best school in Hong Kong, dirt cheap (comparatively), the only non-Chinese school in HK not filled to capacity, and the only requirement is that Kai be proficient in Japanese. Needless to say, we are very anxious that he get accepted, as he wouldn't be able to go to any other school, as the local Canto schools won't take him and the English language schools are already filled for next year, and are impossibly expensive anyway. I have 17 messages in my inbox all telling me to look elsewhere.
As excited as I am to go to Japan this summer, I don't expect I'll be much fun. When I was pregnant with Kai, I had morning sickness all day every day for 9 months. The severity, length, and symptoms lead my doctor to diagnose me with Hyperemesis Gravidarum and gave me Zolaft, which made me feel just awful and unable to comprehend language. As I was still a student in grad school, it was a major problem that I couldn't comprehend language, so I stopped taking the medicine.
It's possible my morning sickness is the normal kind this time around. It's possible by July all this pregnancy bulimia will be a distant memory, but I recently learned that people who develop HG are more likely than others to react the same way in subsequent pregnancies. This leads people to speculate that HG might be an immune reaction to the "foreign agent" in the body. This makes sense since I am a negative blood type and Kai was a positive blood type and there is a very good chance this sucker is positive too, since Mabo is Japanese and they almost never have negative type babies. Anyway, typical home remedies are apparently not helpful for those with HG, and Zolaft-ish products are the only known way to manage the illness. However, as a language teacher, I can't be on meds that render me unable to comprehend language!
So if it's HG again (and let's pray its not, because it's no fun), I won't be anything but miserable the whole time in Japan. But at least that's different from being miserable in Hong Kong. My poor family and friends will just have to deal!
Kai is very interested in this pregnancy and we have spent some time looking at pics of fetal development on the internet as I progress to see how the baby is coming along. While on line, we came across several medical web sites indicating women with morning sickness are less likely to have miscarriages than women without any sickness, statistically. So Kai is OK with mommy puking everywhere because that means I'm "making a good baby," in his words.
And now for a new segment of the blog: Getting Care in Hong Kong
Now that I'm pregnant, I've entered the strange world of maternity care in Hong Kong.
I went to a maternity clinic several weeks ago in April because my gyne doesnt do deliveries and besides maternity care is free for HK residents if you use the free clinics and hospitals. It was rather scary. You certainly get what you pay for in Hong Kong.
Additionally, my area is very close to China, so alot of Chinese come over the border just to get maternity care; even if it's not free, it a lot better than in China. I'm sure clinics in other areas are much better, but where I live its insane. Hundreds of mothers and babies milling around, flowing in and out of rooms or sitting in chairs (if you can find one unoccupied) and DMV-style number counters and window counter people barking out what to do through speakers.
I saw a room with 15 little baby weighers and 15 little counter tops, just like my doctors office in Monterey, but instead of one per room, 15. I didn't know where to go, which line to get into, so I just walked up to a window that had no line and told the lady I didn't know what to do. She asked me to wait, and 45 minutes later, she announced she had made an appointment for me at the local hospital in May and had made an appointment for me for the clinic in June. That was it. I could go home. But first, she pointed out to me the requirements for things I had to bring with me at my next appointment; among them, a sample of pee. Yep, I get to collect my own pee at home, put it in a bottle, and carry it with me all the way to the clinic in the hot June sun. They don't collect on site. Now that's different. No one weighed me, took any samples, offered advice, I didn't even see anyone. I asked if I could change the dates since they conflicted with work, but no. I dont get to choose when I come in. I come in when they damn well say I come in. Now there's service for ya! But, it's free! If all goes well, I may spend less than 50 dollars US for the entire natal care and delivery. That's compared to 100 USD every time I went to the doctor and 65K for Kai's delivery, not including testing fees, so a total of about 70K USD. 70,000 and 50 are mind-bogglingly different in terms of cost to have a child. I'm glad I'm not having this one in the US.
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