Random Thoughts by Pauline

April 2017

Common sense

Common sense says that we don’t use our mobile phone when we cross the street. But why are people still doing it? Don’t they have this common sense of danger?

Why is there the need for MTR to make public announcement telling passengers not to look at their mobile phone when using the escalator?  That is not the only “gentle reminder”. Others include beware slippers get caught when standing on escalator,  loosen clothing when in compartment etc.

Obviously, what makes sense to some doesn’t mean so to others. Besides, what constitutes the “common”? A dozen, a hundred or more people? These people need to have the same history or same likes and dislikes to make up “a mass”. Then they might share the same “common sense”.

This can explain why parents and their children, employers and their staff, teachers and students cannot agree on their respective “common sense”. They have to make deliberate effort to understand the other party, accommodate differences and build  ground for common sense to be nurtured.

So next time before we make a comment using “common sense” as the argument, we have to first  establish if there is anything in “common” .

Random Thoughts by Pauline

April 2017

It’s a different world now!

There was a time when we helped strangers asking for directions most readily. When neighbours knocked on  the door asking if we had an egg to spare, we happily gave a couple. Telephone lines and refrigerators, expensive luxuries then, were generously shared. Grocery store-keepers  delivered rice bags to our doors with the bill settled monthly. That was the world I grew up in. We were not rich but were generous. There were no desires but only satisfaction.

All these seem like fairy tales now!

Strangers wandering on MTR platform shy away from interaction when offered help. In public transport, seats for those in need have to be labelled as though commuters cannot decide for themselves to whom they should offer their seats. Backpackers have to be persuaded to unload. Neighbours no longer greet each other. We dare not knock on doors for help. And yet we know and let friends know about one another’s lives in details. We react with our thumbs and smileys.  There is no human touch at all. We nestle in our own isolated world comforting ourselves that we have tens and hundreds of friends.

Oh! I miss the good old days!

Random Thoughts by Pauline

April 2017

It was yesteryears once more!

“I so wanted to touch your bang then,” said Lily.

“I am sorry, Lily. I would love to let you but it’s already gone!” I said apologetically.

It was the second gathering of the 1981 graduates in nine months. There were 22 of them and two teachers including me, their revered English Language teacher. Though those attending the two events were not all the same, the fondness was abundant in both times.

These students are now in their 50s but once they started talking about the classroom days, they were teens once again. They happily reported to me that they are all successful in their own fields and that they hold their alma mater, Wellington College, a private school closed down in 2001, most dearly. They keep telling me they owe much to their teachers who were all very strict.

Then I was in my early thirties, a trained teacher with only the Advanced Level Examination as academic qualification. I was teaching around 60 periods a week with over 50 students in a class. But in their recounts, I knew I was serious with my duties and they loved me for that. 

That makes me so proud. What matters most in a teacher is not just the credential but the heart that is anchored in the welfare of the students.

Random Thoughts by Pauline

March 2017

Bean Bean lives on

It was around this time of the year when Bean Bean lost the fight against cancer and left us. He was 15.

On the first day of the Lunar New Year, we have this practice of taking a photo with our furry child. So last year though Bean Bean weighing only 3 kilo was almost a bag of bones, we still had the photo taken. He was not the cheery self anymore but lying almost limply in our arms.

We missed him very much and the house was quiet without us yelling his name or him barking for food. We couldn’t have another pet as we worried he might outlive us. Then what would happen to him?

Soon the silence in the house started to depress me. I must have another pet. We agreed that we would not buy but adopt. However, Mervyn insisted that we would only adopt a Pekingese, same breed as Bean Bean. I browsed various animal adoption websites until my heart bled. There were just too many pets being abandoned, starved and tortured. The worst would be those abandoned by breeding farms. And I discovered that dog owners are quite trend conscious. There were lots of poodles, corgis and terriers but no Pekingese.     

Just when I wanted to stop the hunt, sheer luck brought Mimi, a Pekingese to us. Her owner had passed away and the other family members did not want to keep her. She is already 10-year old, overweight with bladder stones, infected eyes and ears.

On January 24 just before the New Year, we adopted Mimi. She quickly adapted to us, the new bed, new pan, new diet and new ball. She takes all medication quietly and complies with all the urination rules. 

Bean Bean lives on in Mimi! The house comes to life again! 

Random Thoughts by Pauline

March 2017 

Unspoken compassion

I walked past the couple every time I took the footbridge leading from Kowloon Tong train station to Festival Walk LG1. Rather humbly dressed, they looked like in their 70s though the man could be a few years older. Using a simple iron cast box placed on a wooden stand as the counter, they were selling a traditional Teochew snack – the crispy candy roll. The wrapping is one flimsy white flour sheet while the main stuffing is crunchy maltose bars.

This small business was run quite smoothly with the woman collecting the money and the man preparing each order upon request. Carefully he took out one sheet of wrapping from the box, laid it flat, put a candy bar in the middle, sprinkled some sesame and coconut shreds on top and then rolled up the whole thing which he put in a small brown paper bag. They even had a speaker on broadcasting “Crunchy, crunchy, you miss out a lot if you don’t try it out”. It was the hoarse voice of the man.

I did try one. Crunchy but too sweet! Business was not exactly good.

Then yesterday as I walked out of Festival Walk LG1, I was amazed to see a queue waiting in front of the stand. But it was not the man preparing the rolls. It was the woman while another woman was handling the money.

The scene brought to my mind the news story that the man passed away last week and that the woman after shutting up herself for a few days crying her eyes out decided to resume business. The news went viral resulting in the queue waiting patiently and silently to be served. The broadcast was still the same familiar coarse voice.  

Random Thoughts by Pauline

February 2017     

On sexual equality

Sexual equality has never meant “sameness” between men and women when after all men and women are not born, groomed or socialized in the same ways. Stereotyping the two sexes is still unfortunately the norm. Boys are stronger, tougher and less articulate etc. while girls are meeker, weaker and more expressive. In Hong Kong, males in their forties and are still single are crowned as “diamond bachelors” while the female counterparts are teased as “residual girls”. Married women with no children are looked at as “incomplete” or even condemned as “not delivering their duties”.

As in all cases of generalization, sexual stereotyping is dangerously naïve. Careers such as the disciplinary force or professions like the architects, engineers, medical doctors, lawyers etc. have long taken women on board. These days, women can bring in money while men do the laundry. But social conceptions are not easy to change. It takes time. Quitting jobs to attend to children is expected of women but regarded as an act of sacrifice or stupidity when it comes to a man opting for it. .

Institutionalizing sexual equality is not to promote “sameness” but “fairness” of not discriminating between two people on the basis of sex. They are to be judged on the same criteria or standards irrespective of gender. They are to be given the same opportunities and granted the same rights. But even in this modern society of ours, such is sadly not the reality. Women are still earning less. There are more men than women in top positions. Why are housewives not classified in the employed category? They are doing a “no-thanks” job putting their body and soul into the big business of taking care of the family and bringing up children.There is Women’s Day but no Men’s Day! Why not let us have Human Day like the 7^th day of the first month of the Chinese calendar!

As the Chairperson of Hong Kong Women Teachers’ Organization, I have been criticized as sexist! I am not. Our activities or classes held at Hong Kong Teachers’ Centre are open to all teachers, men and women. And it is because of the limited space we have at our office that the classes held there are for women only.

So sisters, with heads held up, let’s celebrate our greatness - Happy Women’s Day! 

Random Thoughts by Pauline

January 2017

Street food

I spotted him walking quite briskly in his flip-flops right in front of me – an elderly man with all his tools of the trade on his shoulder. It was something like a made-shift wooden stand with a plastic bag labelled “Love the Earth. Recycle the bag” hung on one side and a container with bamboo sticks on the other. He might be one of those street-hawkers selling traditional Chinese tea-cakes, those steamed in bowls and extracted with bamboo sticks! He was quite light-footed, perhaps because he had sold off all his tea-cakes and was now on his way home.

This man took me down memory lane. These days, there are fewer and fewer hawker stalls not only because government policies do not encourage hawking but also because we are so worried about hygiene and in particular food-poisoning that we hesitate to patronize. In my childhood days, there were no big shopping malls but only small stores and street hawkers. The latter offered all kinds of delicacies – the aromatic bovine offal and braised squid, stinky tofu, sugar crepes, egg puffs and pickled carrots soaked in vinegar throughout the year. There were seasonal delights like roasted chestnuts, sweet potatoes and ginkgo in winter and popsicles and frozen fruit slices in summer.

Streets in many districts whether industrial or residential were lined with Dai pai dong or the street cooked food stalls preparing fish ball noodles, sweet soups, steamed rice rolls, stir-fried dishes and claypot rice right there before the customers. Dining there in open air could be steaming hot in summer though a big electric fan might be roaring behind and chilly in winter days though fire was raging in the charcoal burners.  

Though hawker stalls can still be found in some parts of the old districts, most of these street goodies have now been upgraded and “housed” in posh restaurants. To hope for the best, the taste is still there but what is missing is the coziness and the intimacy of interactions that we are now deprived of. Or perhaps, it’s all so beautiful in my memory as Barbra Streisand sings The Way We Were!

Mem'ries may be beautiful and yet

What's too painful to remember

We simply choose to forget

So it's the laughter we will remember

Whenever we remember the way we were