Cosima Underwater

Remember the nice photos I posted of my newly setup veggie bed?

Well, the arugula has been eaten by a dozen caterpillars a few months ago. They looked beautiful, grass green with bright yellow stripes on their back. When I discovered them it was much too late. A woman from the local gardening society told me that they would turn into beautiful butterflies. Little bastards!

They also ate the Kailan (Chinese greens). The Japanese cucumber and string beans climbed up the bamboo sticks and look pretty, but there is not a single pickle nor bean in sight.

The surprising winners are the cocktail tomatoes and carrots from seeds I bought in Germany. Thirty juicy and sweet tomatoes and a dozen small but very orange carrots. I also put supermarket ginger into the ground and it sprouted. However the lemon grass, which was such a success in Dubai, withered and died.

I knew it would happen. Gardening is about learning and sticking with the winners. It takes time and experience. Next year my compost will be ready and I will dig it into the very clayie veggie bed. Every morning I will search for caterpillars. I will construct a raised bed, because tropical downpours will turn level veggie beds into ponds (with tiny cute frogs). And I will plant German carrots and tomatoes and maybe have a second go at Japanese cucumbers.

While the caterpillars munch the rest of my veggies, I watch a BBC series Around the world in 80 gardens. It’s enlightening. Gardening is like religion, so different around the world, but the concept is the same, we all like it and it makes us happy, in a weird BDSM kind of way.

I have been fifteen years in Hong Kong, but having this little garden around the house has been such a pleasure and new discovery. The veggie garden is a work in progress, but the rest, the so-called weeds, the plants that just sprout up after each rain, they are so pretty. The ones I like, I transplant to prime spots where they will strive and grow.

Whereas gardening in Dubai was about watering thrice a day, gardening in Hong Kong is about cutting down plants you don’t like at least once a month. I feel like Tarzan in a jungle with a machete… ok, huge -made in Germany- garden scissors. I also spray myself with “Deep Woods” mosquito repellent. It lasts for about 15 minutes until a colony of these little devils break out in laughter and descent on me.

And then they are the palm-sized spiders, and the creepy crawlies in the compost pile, and at least three geckos inside the house. I was raised by a mum who threw the spiders from the ceilings under our bath tub to eat the silver fish. Nature is about balance, and we are a part of it.

Little man and I observed our bedroom gecko tonight. George the Slow climbed up the wall, ambled past the curtains, and then stumbled behind the TV. The insect population in our bedroom will be kept at a minimum, my task in the equilibrium will be to wipe the gecko shit away.

Tomorrow little man and I will leave for Berlin where we will take care of my Dad’s garden. He is in hospital and half of his right foot is amputated, but in spite of this, and because of this, his tiny allotment garden is Eden and I will help my mum to take care of it. I am so ready for the pleasure of a temperate garden in summer. A bit of grass cutting and watering, how hard can it be?

Today I encountered a new one.

I was waiting for little man at the school bus stop. A little Dutch girl who was waiting for her brother together with her mum said “I don’t understand why Chinese eat dogs”. Another daddy (Australian, with Fido on the leash) said “At some point in time people had very little to eat, so I guess they started to eat dogs”. Little girl: “I still don’t understand. These poor little dogs. Just imagine. It’s as if they were eaten by GIANTS!”. Mum of little girl: “Lots of people around the world eat unusual foods. For example Germans eat horses” and looks at me with challenging eyes.

Lol… ok this was a new one for me. I usually have to deal with liverwurst and Hitler. How to respond? Yes, there is horse meat available in Germany, though you have to look for it really hard, and most Germans alive today have not eaten it, me included. But then I thought, what’s the difference between a cow, pig, chicken, dog, frog, monkey, or horse? It’s only in our minds and cultural upbringings. Many Chinese don’t eat beef, because they view cattle as loyal helpers that plow rice fields. It is very unlikely that I will ever eat horse sausages, dog drumsticks, or monkey brains, but I will not look down on people choose to do so, because I eat bacon, steak, and chicken breast, and like them. And liverwurst.

Me: “ Yeah, Germans are not the only ones. The French eat it too.” (Lame, I know.)

Little girl: Yeah (turns to her mummy). Do you remember? When we were in France, the people also ate snails… escargots.

Dutch mummy: Yes, with parsley butter.

Me: Have you tried snake?

Dutch mummy: No I haven’t. Is it any good?

Daddy from Alaska (“We don’t like Sarah Palin!”) stares at all of us opened mouthed.

Me: Tastes similar to chicken, almost the same like frog legs. I had it in a soup.

Little girl: The good thing about having a dad who is a pilot is that he brings you many different things from around the world. Clothes, toys, food.

Dutch mummy: Yeah (looks pained because she and daddy are in a nasty divorce)

Little girl: Do you remember when he brought emu and kangaroo meat from Australia?

(Australian dad smirks)

Me: Have you had Impala?

Dutch mummy: No

Little girl: What’s Impala?

Me: A gazelle, really tasty.

Gazelle eater. Dutch cheese lover. Sarah Palin… only well done.

The previous year was not a good one. I can tell from stepping on the scale. I have gained 8 kilos. Don’t know about you, but I gain weight for two reasons. When I am unhappy or when I am pregnant. I am not pregnant.

Other mothers-to-be crave pickled cucumbers, I craved Moevenpick ice cream. It was a delicious pregnancy. When little man was out, the scale was where it had never been before at 80 kilos (wow!). Ok, about four kilos went to Elsie (left breast) and Luise (right breast) to feed insatiable tiny man, but the rest attached to the bum, the belly, and (most bothersome of all) the face. I am pretty tall for a girl at 5′8, but 80 kilos dragged me down to snail’s pace. I felt tired and had no energy. Having a baby and a job was stressful and left little time, but after two years I draw the line. I started to go to the gym, even if it cut sleep from three hours to one. Exercise had always helped to loose extra kilos. Not this time. It gave me more appetite. Now I was 80 kilos and had the stamina to run 5 kilometers every day. Great, but not what I had hoped for.

A chat with my brother-in-law who had lost 20 kilos and a little bit of googling on the internet brought me to this site. My brother-in-law told me that he lost weight by counting calories. He had tried the Hollywood star diet (only tropical fruits) and other gimmicks, but nothing really worked until he wrote down what he ate and limited his calorie intake every day.

On the side, I normally hate my brother-in-law. He has about half a dozen girlfriends at any given time, a terrible temper, and an ego to match. However, I value his diet advice. Someone who has the need to attract women a dozen a night ought to know.

So I found the Hacker’s diet, and it made sense. I downloaded the Excel spreadsheets and adjusted them for my needs (grams instead of ounces, goat cheese instead of American cheese, etc.). I lost 15 kilos, was my pre-pregnancy self, and felt great.

Then 2009 came. Can we all agree that it was not the best of years? I was in Dubai, and hated it. Somehow food became comfort and a curse. 65 kilos, 68 kilos, 70 kilos (gosh), 73 kilos (no!!!).

So I am back to what worked before, an Excel spreadsheet where I put in all the food I eat, and I strictly stop at 1500 calories per day. It’s easy, geeky science. A woman in the prime of her years needs about 2000 calories a day. If you eat more you gain weight. If you eat less you loose weight. And depending on what you eat, 1500 calories does not need to mean a growling stomach. If you eat lots of veggies your stomach is going to feel full all day, and even a bit of chocolate is ok.

You may think it’s strange and over the top, but I know it works and I know what the alternative is. My dad is 73 years old. He is the best Dad in the world. He has been overweight for most of his adult life. Not obese, always active, just with a little pot belly the sun shone on. But diabetes runs in the family. In his sixties he began to need insulin injections, then the pain in his legs started, now the nerve damage is so bad that one of his toes may need to be amputated.

I am worrying about my Dad, trying to get him doctor’s appointments with the best specialists, wanting the best for him, but in the back of my mind I know that everyone of us needs to take responsibility for his/her own health. So while I am prep talking Dad over the telephone, I am busy putting the calories of my lunch into an Excel spreadsheet.

It would also be nice to be able to breathe again in my favorite pair of jeans.

Thank you all for your comments for the burglary post. We have ordered fake surveillance cams. Going forward I will call the police when I see assumed banana thieves. I have installed a timer for one of the living room lamps, it goes on at 3am.  Sticks are jammed into the sliding doors, window bars are ordered, although I hate them. Charles, we don’t live in Sai Kung, that would be too convenient :). We live on the seventh island, over the seventh hill. The police wrote a very detailed report, found fingerprints, and I hear helicopters flying over the hills behind our house. Still, I don’t think we will get our stuff back. APJ, women’s intuition is widely underrated.  We Are Doomed, we were barely coming to know our neighbors when the burglary happened. They are as freaked as we are, and I hope everyone of us will be bit more careful going forward. Lime, Dubai wasn’t pleasant but it taught me valuable lessons.

Still it is beginning to be a home.

We have a car, but not yet a license to drive it on the seventh island. So, I took the bus to the third village north where they have a “supermarket” (cough… laugh… five short aisles stuffed to the ceiling). You learn to concentrate on the essentials  (that’s a good thing), if you have to take the public bus home, still four very heavy bags had to be hauled home.

Once through the door, I cooked Chinese winter melon soup and Jamie Oliver’s beef stew with guinness (yep, I watched TV last night). Both were a first and both are keepers for cold winter days. I love Chinese winter melon. It’s completely tasteless on its own, but in a soup it takes on the flavor of the rest of the ingredients.

I got the second last winter melon slice in the snow-white supermarket. My competitors were seasoned Cantonese grandmas… I had to grab quickly. I cooked it together with pork spareribs, sliced smoked ham, ginger, and wolfberries. The recipe also calls for red dates, but I didn’t want to buy them because of bad Dubai associations… ok, the truth is I wasn’t sure they were needed. Still the soup turned out yummy. I am a big fan of soups, especially if it’s cold and wet. One of the strength of German cuisine is its soups or “eintopf”. Like most of the best dishes around the world it’s poor men’s recipes, but oh so good. I can’t get all of the German ingredients here (does anyone have a cheap and reliable source of celeriac in Hong Kong?), so I am going for local recipes. Winter melon soup was yummy.

Jamie Oliver’s stew had to cook for two hours in the oven. The original recipe puts it into a pie with puff pastry. I am not that English, so I just made the stew and salt potatoes to go with it. It was very rich, smooth, and just what I needed today:

2 large sliced onions fried to gooey, sweet perfection

half a pound of marbled beef

3 cloves of diced garlic

stick of fresh rosemary, hacked to small pieces

1 stick of celery or two

a diced carrot or two

mushrooms ( I took local Chinese ones, not the tasteless, white Holland variety) and half a dozen dried ones (soaked in hot water for an hour)

pepper, salt

1 tablespoon of flour

a can of guinness (even the five-aisle supermarket had it ?!?)

water so that all ingredients are covered with liquid

at 180 degrees Celsius (360 Fahrenheit) for two hours in covered (oven-proof) pot

Jamie, you are the man!

I will also start a new sourdough production. Bread selection in Cinderella’s supermarket is pitiful, stuffed with preservatives, and I won’t buy it. Expect pics of burned sourdough bread in the future.

It’s strange. I feel infinitely more secure here than I felt in Dubai. We moved in our house about a week ago. I love the house. It’s surrounded by jungle on two sides, the neighbors are nice, it’s comfortable but not pretentious.

I am sure we made a ruckus when we moved in. Hundreds of boxes, lots of men hoisting stuff up to the second floor. Everyone noticed that we arrived.

A few days ago, I hung laundry on the roof top terrace (sweeping views of the mountains and the sea). I looked at the banana trees of my neighbor at the hill behind my house. They looked beautiful. I heard a noise. I looked more intently. There were two men among the banana trees. One looked me straight into the eyes.

He was surprised and afraid. Then he and his mate hurried off, up the hill.

“What was that about?” I thought. Why are they hurrying off? Were they stealing bananas? Yeah. Ok. They were stealing bananas.

There were other strange little signs: a reclining chair in a different place on the terrace, strange marks in the wet ground in the garden.

Then yesterday in the morning I came downstairs. I was greeted by  “We have been robbed!” Now all the little strange signs made sense.

They came in through the sliding door on the first floor balcony (easy to open), went downstairs, took two laptops, mobile phones, wallets, and a few backpacks to carry the loot away. Then they exited through the kitchen window. Ten days after we moved in. Welcome!

They had observed us for a few days, found the easiest way in, made a quick sweep while we were snoring loudly.

None of the loot was strictly mine. It belonged to little man (laptop and school backpack) and his father (laptop, mobile phones, wallets, backpack). Which makes me think. I am more paranoid. I had a strange feeling. I am more careful. My stuff was not lying around.

I had, and still have, a very good feeling about the house, despite the fact that burglars went into our house in the wee hours and robbed us while we were asleep.

But I also had a feeling of paranoia, a feeling of being observed since we moved in. Call it female intuition. So my laptop and my mobile phone were beside my bed, not downstairs, and my wallet was in a drawer, not lying open on the dining table. It was just a feeling, nothing concrete.

We called the police. Neighbors asked what was going on, and we learned that it is fairly common. Gangs of men come by boat from Mainland China to Hong Kong. They set up tent camps in the nature reserves and spy on houses in the more rural, out of the way areas of Hong Kong. We were easy picking. Just moved in, inexperienced, no curtains yet, sliding doors not yet secured. The economy is bad, Chinese New Year is coming up (gifts to give), thresholds are low.

Now we know that our neighbors have been robbed too (some of them several times).

The result is an arms race. How can we secure our houses? Neighbor up the hill has turned his house into Fort Knox. More locks, a security system, cameras.

I wish we could leave the doors open. I wish people would respect our belongings. The loss of money is bad, but worse is the loss of privacy and the hassle. Some people draw their curtains very tight. I wish I could leave the terrace door and curtains open and not worry.

In Dubai no one robbed our house, but much worse things happened. It’s the story of little man’s father, who had terrible experiences in his workplace. I am only the third party witness, but I think he could turn his experience into a John Grisham book… and it would become a bestseller.
Here in Hong Kong we called the police. We had no hesitation  about calling the police. They came and asked us what had happened. They looked for and found fingerprints. We were the victims and had absolutely no fear to be turned into the culprits. In Dubai, after all what happened there, we would have carefully thought about the pro and cons of calling the police. I think we would have decided against it.

I feel infinitely more secure here, and that feeling of security makes me feel at home. I know who to turn to. Calling 999 means help.

The year in Dubai was not a positive experience, but it taught me what to be thankful of. Hong Kong is a much better place.

I have been thinking about sayings. They are sometimes right, more often wrong, and they stick in our minds. Maybe more in German minds. The German language is full of them and we use them in everyday language at least five times a day. They are a poetic form of stereotypes.

I am sure you have heard of Dubai over the last few days. I could have told you the first time I visited this place, and that was more than a year ago. It was obvious. Maybe it was only obvious to people like me, middle-aged, lived through the Asian crisis (by far not as many empty high-rises than here), and never prone to believe in snazzy advertising (highest skyscrapers, man-made islands in weird shapes etc, etc).

Last night we were sitting outside, drinking French wine and one of the few friends I made here was saying that the last seven years in Dubai were hard, but she would not want to miss them. It taught her things that she would never have known had she stayed in her country of birth (small,  European, democratic, with a functioning legal system).

On the one hand I agree. I am glad I came here. We are healthy, not in jail, and still have the money to get out of here.  Only one week to go. And it made me thankful. I know that I have been lucky. Your country of birth determines your fate in life. Dubai is full of people off much worse than me, trying to better themselves. I have the feeling that they will soon run out of time to achieve that.

Money. Money. Money. Greed and fear. It’s disgusting what men and women do to each other to get more, and more, and more, and more of it. For some there is no limit. May they choke on it.

Here are the sayings, I have heard during the last week:

Never believe anything until it is officially denied.

Lying makes the world a much kinder place. We all should do it more often.

Don’t throw stones if you sit in a glass house.

Money does not buy happiness.

Men get better with age (with a ;) at the end, why that? … lol)

The tallest building being built is a sure indicator for a property bust.

What is your favorite saying of the day?

Call it female intuition, but I knew that Dubai would not be home. Looks like we are out of here very soon. It wasn’t love at first sight, and it wasn’t love at second sight, but I am grown up enough to know that it was partly my own fault that prevented Dubai from taking a place in my heart.

Most people here don’t see it as their home, and that is part of the problem. It is a place to make money. It is a transient place. Most people don’t care enough to make it a better place. To those who do, you have my utmost respect, and I wish you success.

Here is what I loved about Dubai:

1) M., the cat. I will try to bring you to HK. It will not be easy. It will be expensive. But you meowed into our heart, and I will try to make sure that your bowl will always be full to the end of your days.

2) My garden. I wish I could bring all my plants to HK. I know it’s folly to water a garden in this kind of climate, but to care for paradise for a year was heaven.

3) The friends little man found. Little man wants to return to HK, because it’s his home. But he wants to take his two best friends from Dubai with him. I am trying to convince their parents that HK is the place to be.

4) The Indian bread baker in Satwa. Sir, I can taste that you love what you do, and in the queue in front of your tiny store, I could see that we are all one people.

5) It’s shallow, I know, but I fell in love with a Bavarian beauty. There were a lot of dicey situations on Dubai roads, but you always brought us home safe. I hope you will bring the same kind of luck to the people who will drive you next.

6) The Thai fast food restaurant in Ibn Battuta Mall. Your spicy shrimp-bean stir-fry made my stomach leap with joy. Little man loves your shrimp balls. Thank you!

7) Ms. J, I know that you went through hell, being a mum myself. Loosing your child is the worst you can experience. Please know that you made a difference to those who you cared for. You are a marvelous teacher, and I wish you happiness.

I don’t know if you will understand, but I am afraid of returning home. Paradise is were you imagine it to be, and I hope HK will come close.

For the New Year, I wish you all much love, happiness, health, and many smiles :)

This year will not have it easy with all the doom and gloom that professional naysayers predict, but I have a thing for underdogs and think that 2009 has great potential. I hope that many people will stop, think, and reassess their lives and make small and big changes for the better.

I am not a person that is good at keeping New Year resolutions, but I will try to walk more consciously through life. Enjoying more what I have, pursuing what is important to me, and changing things here and there. For the better, I hope.

I am very thankful for the past year. I was very happy, I loved and was loved back, and I mastered all the challenges that the year threw at me, and maybe grew a little wiser because of them.

Here is to a wonderful New Year and many new adventures!

Little Man and I said goodbye to Hong Kong this week. Seeing your previous life packed up wasn’t easy, but luckily we were too busy to get sentimental. The packers needed a whole day to pack our belongings into boxes, and afterwards I was surprised how small the apartment looked. The furniture and clutter made it look big and full of life, after it was gone, it was a tiny, empty, worn-out shell.

This is for you astronaut and for me:

It can hold a pregnant woman in labour.

Yesterday, little man and I woke at 2 am local German time. We used the early hour to craft “Cutie the Beauty” for Oma and Opa’s Christmas tree.

She is made out of scrap paper, has wonderful blue wings, and little man is especially proud of her goldie locks.

Santa Claus visited us already, and I hope he arrives at your home in time :). I wish you all a Peaceful and Merry Christmas and a Happy and  Healthy 2009!

This evening, little man asked me to pull the blinds up before going to sleep.

“Mama, I want to see Hong Kong.”

“The lights are beautiful, aren’t they?”

“Yes. I am going to miss Hong Kong, and I am going to miss my friends at school.”

“I am going to miss Hong Kong too.”

Little man and I are going to move to Dubai at the end of the year. It is not something that I do light-heartedly, but there was really no other alternative. There are personal aspects that I won’t go into, but let’s just say it’s not going to be easy.

Hong Kong has become my home over the last thirteen years, it is the place where little man was born, and where I had so many other wonderful experiences.

I am going to miss the sidewalks packed with people. I am going to miss the wet markets, noisy and colorful. I am going to miss that there is at least one dingy alleyway next to every glitzy skyscraper. I am going to miss hiking in the green mountains behind my house. I am going to miss having dim sum with friends or a quick noodle soup in a tiny cafe. I am going to miss strolling around old neighborhoods, and always discovering something new. I am going to miss riding on the tram to Causeway Bay, and the Star Ferry across the harbor.

I will miss silly things like the towel rail in my bathroom. I hung on it when the hard labor contractions began. I am going to miss the wonderful view from my bedroom. I will never forget the sunrise on the morning little man was born.

I had written another blog post about our move. It was angry, full of self-pity, and quite pathetic. I deleted it.

Dubai is not a place where I desire to live, but I really have no other choice, and I intend to make the best of it. For little man. I hope that there will be new and interesting experiences.

Before closing his eyes little man said “I love you, mama”. I really have no reason to be grumpy. Next week, we will say a long goodbye to everything and everyone here, then the moving company will pack up our belongings, and we will board a plane. First to Germany to spend Christmas there, then to Dubai.