Hong Kong Ham

It took him a 10-metre fall from a roof onto concrete, but my friend Will has decided to give up drinking. For three months. He reckons he’s never felt better, and that a hangover actually takes two weeks to get over, and it’s just that we’ve never got to that point before pouring the poisons back into our system, so we’d never know. He’s two months through the self-imposed detox, but reckons he might extend it to another three months, and then, perhaps, even another six months after that.

It’s a shame, because Will, a 25-year-old with metalhead long hair and a solid build, is a very, very fun drunk. His propensity to perform acts of extreme stupidity have given us many hours of mirth, not least in their re-telling. But his latest caper actually sounds quite scary. And if it weren’t for his extreme drunkenness — and associated floppiness — he might not have been around to tell the story.

He’d just finished an exam, had been out to celebrate with a few mates at a lousy Dunedin bar, and did what any right-thinking drunk would do at the end of a night of unfettered revelry: he started running along rooftops above the main street.

Well, he’d insist he was walking, but, frankly, it’s more interesting to say he was running.

So, anyway, after some distance along this rooftop excursion, Will noticed an incline. He assumed the roof continued on flat after the incline and stumbled onwards without concern. Until he noticed the 10-metre drop he was about to topple over.

Too late to react otherwise, he kicked off and tried to turn his impending tumble into a last-second jump, lurching for the other side, two metres away. His elbow made it to the ledge, Sylvester Stallone style, but unlike Sly, he couldn’t hold himself up. He bounced off both walls on his way down and remembered thinking, ‘Shit, I’m still falling.’

Lying at the bottom, enclosed by walls in a 5m x 2m area, he said he felt like an amoeba spread flat, waiting for his molecules to flow back into each other. A few moments passed before he decided he wasn’t crippled and could answer his mate, who was calling to him down the pitch-black hole. He was alright.

Somehow, he pulled himself up, and, holding onto a small pipe running up one of the walls and bracing his feet against another, he started shimmying his way to safety. Then a large block of concrete — perhaps 2m x 3m — saw fit to dislodge from the wall. It accompanied Will back down to earth with a thud and found residence on his foot. The pain, Will said, was excruciating. After much teeth-gritting and brainless manoeuvering, he freed his stricken foot.

The mate went for a harness and rope. He soon returned and started lifting Will out. The rescue attempt got Will about one-and-a-half metres up. And then the rope snapped. Now, his mate was panicking — his quivering voice made yodelling sounds. Will, lying prone in the hole, had to calm him.

Eventually, the mate went for extra help from climbing buddies and Will was lifted to safety. Three serious falls and a lot of pain later, he was alright. No broken bones; no ruptured tendons; no traumatic stress disorders. While he can probably blame his drunkenness for the accident, he can also probably thank it for his unscathed survival. In my mind, that’s even-stevens. Hardly a reason to give up drinking…

All the newspapers are doing it, even Eating Media Lunch is doing it, so it must be time for me too. Some parts of this are a bit self-masturbatory — but, hey, that’s the nature of a blog.

In 2006, I have travelled, worked, lived, and got drunk in Canada, USA, New Zealand, Thailand, England, and Hong Kong. I have acquired one girlfriend, disappointed a couple of hopefuls, and reached a quarter-century in years. I have worked at two Hong Kong magazines, interned at a New Zealand newspaper, been published in two New Zealand magazines, a Canadian newspaper, a Canadian scene rag, and a newsletter for a Cancer support network in London, Ontario.

I lived with seven different people, including four ardent Christian girls, a tree-hugging journalism student, a lady’s man, and a cellist who hails from the village at the centre of the Suffolk serial murders.

I’ve been to two ping-pong shows, one Cantonese play, a strip club in Toronto, a DJ Shadow gig, an NBA basketball game, two jazz gigs, and countless parties at various hotels, restaurants, and bars in Hong Kong.

I subscribed to the New Yorker and read my first business-related books, in Freakonomics and Blink. This is the first year since 1999 that I haven’t made a written contribution to Critic.

I wore a suit exactly one time.

I’ve written about: Chinese bloggers in Hong Kong; Cantopop fan culture; the first made-for-internet movie (a flash film from China based on Stephen Chow’s A Chinese Odyssey); a 17-year-old Harvard student from Hong Kong who signed the Brian Jonestown Massacre to his record label; a Chinese Karaoke Idol contest; a scheming Kiwi who convinced a good number of North Americans he would make millions from converting trash into electricity; student magazines in New Zealand; and Hong Kong’s public toilets.

I’ve had my first hot-pot, my first Korean BBQ, my first durian, my first fresh lychee, my first jackfruit, and my first street pad thai. I watched a dreadlocked man eat a live tarantula, and later I rode an elephant.

I’ve slept in a hut in a Thai jungle village, in a friend’s attic in Aro Valley, Wellington, on the floor of a New York City apartment, and on a concrete ledge just round the corner from my flat in Wan Chai.

I’ve attended one wedding as a groomsman, and been asked to be best man at another.

All in all, a pretty damn enjoyable year.

Favourite stories I wrote this year:

Energy to Burn, New Zealand Listener, May — an investigative expose on an enterprising Kiwi whose grand scheme to convert trash into electricity sounded too good to be true

The Cult of Cantopop, bc magazine, September — a glimpse at the unbridled fanaticism that characterises the talent-starved pop industry in Hong Kong

Favourite story I read this year:

My Date With Suzi Suzuki (written by a friend a few years ago)

Favourite films I saw this year:
Dave Chapelle’s Block Party

The Prestige

Out of the Blue

Sione’s Wedding

An Inconvenient Truth

The Best of Youth (part one)

Favourite music I listened to this year:

Final Fantasy

Kim Tak Building

Fan Hung A

Camera Obscura

Hess is More

Favourite food of the year:

Salmon sashimi

Potatoes

Penang prawn noodles

Favourite websites and blogs of the year:

Slate

ESWN

Kiwiblog

Asia Sentinel

Hongkie Town (old and new)

Shenzhen Zen

People of the Year:

A guy called Tanya who lives in Kanchanaburi, Thailand (near the border with Burma). He sold me a meal for 20 baht (approx. NZ80 cents) , then shared his whisky with me as I sat with him and his two mates and shot the shit. Tanya, who the next morning also cooked me a free breakfast (much too large for normal humans to consume), wanted to travel to New Zealand to work on an orchard and earn a little extra money so he could fix up his very simple restaurant. Visa problems have prevented his visit thus far.

Gaye Stanley, a Canadian from London, Ontario, who has fought back two cancers and is facing down another. Gaye is a woman with enormous strength and determination, which I hope I can one day emulate. I profiled her in March for my journalism class’s website.

It’s taken three flights, one lost bag, one power nap on a couch in Sydney airport, and a five-hour drive down the middle of the southern South Island of New Zealand, but I’m back home.

Now you might get some blogging from me. After all, I should have some spare time. I’m in a town about as far removed from Hong Kong — geographically, physically, economically, and culturally — as you can get: Alexandra.

• Population: 5,000
• Median age: 64
• Hippest new restaurant: Subway

The hot topic of conversation round these parts is whether or not traffic lights — a would-be first for the town — should be installed at a busy intersection in the centre of town. It is a topic that has raised passions at both ends of the political spectrum; this is a town divided between those who crave the glory and mana that traffic lights and their associated trappings bring to urban areas, and those who prefer a simple round-a-bout to solve the vehicular quandary. My father has been sufficiently moved into submitting a Letter to the Editor of the local newspaper. “If Alexandra gets traffic lights, I’ll see red,” he quipped awkwardly.

It’s been a nice change from the choking debate on Hong Kong’s worse-than-shocking air quality, and the even more detestable lack of government action to address it. A breath of fresh air, should I say?

Speaking of which, I am thoroughly enjoying being able to breathe without feeling as though I’m drinking diluted tar. The big blue skies of Central Otago’s summer have already had something of a cleansing effect on my lungs. The clean air and open spaces will be the first things to draw me back here to live one day. And just to prove it, here’s a photo of me taking a slash at the peak of the Lindis Pass.