Rice and the Trailing Male

I spent yesterday afternoon with Phillipe walking around Mui Wo and eating some good squid. I am so happy and grateful to be able to see him here in Hong Kong.

During our long walk and talk, he mentioned that there is a label for the existence that I've found myself in.

What is that label?

TRAILING MALE

I was a little surprised that there was a name like this, but also a little pleased at how clever the description was in describing my and other people's situation.

The fact is, I am in Hong Kong because my wife's career has brought us here. My VISA clearly states this reality.

But, this hasn't affected my life in quite the same way that it may have other men's.

Why?

My career was already quite non-traditional to begin with, and hence, it hasn't been derailed or disrupted in the same way that it might have been had I had a more traditional suit job.

And aside from the fact that I miss some aspects of my life back in NY, I think I've adjusted rather well to life here and to my existence as a 'trailing male.'

I'm managing to earn a few bucks doing Korean-to-English translations, am writing my third novel, and have begun making short films and keeping this blog. In addition, I've managed to learn enough Cantonese to get by and carry on simple conversations with Cantonese people who speak little or no English.

That said, do I feel lonely and isolated sometimes?

Absolutely.

Do I feel completely emasculated?

Not really.

The truth is I really don't think it's as big a deal as some other people do.

Of course, there are plenty of people out there who do think it is quite quite a big deal.

For instance, last Sunday, I went to JUSCO and bought three bags of Japanese rice before heading to my Cantonese class, which is in Wanchai and subsidized by the HK government. The class is actually quite terrific with an amazing instructor and about 500% better than the Cantonese class I took at the Tsim Sha Tsoy YMCA, which was a complete waste of time with an instructor who was excellent only at being inept.

Anyway, I was a little late to the class, and hence, ended up making an entrance, lugging the bags of rice, in front of the 25 or so other students.

The instructor saw my entrance and made a comment about how HK society had changed so much in recent years and the status of men had depreciated so much that men were now reduced to shopping for rice and lugging it home for their wives and families.

It was a semi-humorous and completely innocuous comment, especially given the fact that the class is usually conducted in a very casual, fun atmosphere with jokes exchanged in good spirit.

But then, during the rest of the class (breaks and the end of class), about half a dozen of my classmates (mostly Indians and a few Filipinos) went out of their way to tell me what a good husband I was for buying rice for my wife and how rare this was. Basically, they made such a big fuss that I couldn't help but become a little startled.

My buying rice seemed to be something completely foreign to them, when to me, I had simply bought the rice because it was convenient to do so then. I'd simply consolidated my going to class with doing an errand.

Anyway, I used to do grocery shopping all the time back in the U.S. without anyone making a big deal out of it. And here in HK, I do most of the grocery shopping and the cooking and cleaning for my wife and myself. I work from home, so I try to keep the place clean. It's just not that big a deal for me.

The point is, this business with the rice brought home two things:

1) As modern as HK and other parts of ASIA seem to be at times, the grip of tradition still lingers strong, especially when it comes to conventional gender roles. Call me naive, but the U.S. seems much more progressive on this front.

2) You can't let other people dictate how you live. That only makes people miserable.


That's my three cents for today.

Having said that, I do truly hope and pray that those 3.5 people out there who read this blog do not start to think less of me for being a.....

...trailing male.

Newspapers and Your Sense of Self

Last night, we went out to dinner with Philippe, his wife, and another couple from NY.

A great dinner and a great night.

At some point, we got to talking about the LIRR and how the workers there abused the system to win disability pensions. It had been written up in a big spread in the NY TIMES a few weeks ago.

That got me thinking about newspapers.

In the almost one year we've been here, I've continued to read the TIMES as my primary newspaper. There are many reasons for this.

It's a good paper. It's easy to read on-line (no fee), and it makes me feel tethered to what's happening in NY.

I usually read the TIMES in this order: NY LOCAL News, National News, International Asia News, Opinions, Business, Sports, and Real Estate. I am most interested in NY news.

I haven't yet found myself regularly reading a HK newspaper. I've found them to be less informative and less interesting. This is especially true of the free papers they hand out on the street.

But, I'm sure this may change in the future.

I wonder what the experiences of other expats are like in regards to newspaper reading.

Do you still continue to read the paper from the U.S., Australia, England...?

Or have you switched your primary newspaper to a HK one? If so, when did this happen for you?

Anyway, this is my random musing for the day.

By the way, the most important item in today's NYTIMES is that the Phillies have won the World Series!!!!

My first allegiance is to the Mets, having grown up near that stadium, but So Jene is a life-long Phillies fan. On top of that, we both went to school just outside Philadelphia.

I am so happy for the Phillies and the great city of Philadelphia!!! What great news in this time of gloom and doom!!!

Go Phillies!!!!

Which is harder, writing a novel or making a film?

My friend Philippe, who is a huge Satyajit Ray fan and is one of seven people who has actually seen the Calcutta trilogy in addition to the Apu trilogy, is in town with his wife Amanda. I met up with him yesterday and had a long talk about various things while walking around Tsim Sha Tsoy and Jordan.

At one point, he asked me, Which was harder, writing a novel or making a film?

It got me thinking...

Here is a long-winded response.

As a novelist, I guess I would be called a mid-career writer on grant applications and such due to my age, the fact that I have accomplished a few things despite how shabby these things all look to me when I get down on myself every now and then. Still, whatever the case, no matter how obscure and seemingly insignificant, the fact is I am the author of two serious novels that have won me a modicum of recognition, no matter how brief and fleeting. And as comical as my royalty checks are at times, I know that there are lots of would-be aspiring novelists out there working away on their babies who would die to get their first book published.


As a filmmaker, I have far fewer credentials. Sure I made an indie 16mm feature film back in the 1990s straight out of NYU, but that feature went nowhere and was lackluster on many fronts. Since then, I've made a couple of short films that are about 20min. long. I've written a couple of screenplays, managed to sell one for a little bit of money (it never got produced). Now, I'm in Hong Kong and I've begun making very short art films (1 min. long), which I post on this blog and on youtube.

For all intensive purposes, my claim to the title filmmaker seems tenuous at best. Still, as annoying and insignificant as making little films and posting them on youtube may seem, I do it because: a) it keeps me in practice (framing shots, shooting, editing etc.); b) These little films do get seen by a handful of people; c) It's immediate. I can shoot, edit, and post the films without having to first gain the permission of some board of self-important censors to give me their approval.

Writing is different. Unless you're writing in a journal for your eyes only (which this blog sort of is), writing entails jumping through a lot of hoops. There was a time when I was a lot more eager about accepting how things were done to make it as a writer. I was more in love with the idea of writing and being a writer in general back then. So I wrote short stories, submitted them to numerous literary journals, wrote to agents, and amassed a pile of rejection letters before a confluence of little miracles got my first novel BOY GENIUS published by an edgy small press in NY.

But boy did I get sick of all those little hoops you had to jump through. Waiting for someone else's permission gets real old real quick.

And sure, with feature films, you have to go through similar things with finding distributors and 'winning their permission', but it's different with a film.

Even the worst film ever made that doesn't win distribution and simply peters out, offers pleasant things: camaraderie with cast and crew, funny anecdotes, and some cool memories.

A failed novel is a totally different animal.

There's nothing as shabby and unpleasant as a failed novel, aka, an unpublished manuscript. All you have is a bunch of pages that's not a real book and the only memories from it is of a schmuck and a typewriter.

Just ask anyone who's tried to write a novel and is now stuck with an unpublished manuscript. It's ugly.

Anyway, that's my three cents. Writing vs. Filmmaking.

The winner is Mothra.

Not Applepicking in Hong Kong

Sorry about the "Not... in Hong Kong" title.

I just couldn't resist.



Anyway, here is a short film that I edited over the weekend using footage I shot of my parents some years ago. I had the footage on Hi8, paid to have it transferred to a DVD that my computer, it turns out couldn't read. Had to search the web for a program to convert that DVD to a format that my computer could read (hence the strange white line across the screen.)

I shot it originally on a PXL-2000, aka Pixelvision, which is a toy video camera that Fisher Price made back in the 1980s. I think the original retail price in the U.S. was $99 and it used audio cassettes to record video and audio.

That camera has since spurred its own filmmaking aesthetic, in which filmmakers use it to make an anti-slick, anti-corporate statement. I think a guy even shot a feature on it, but I'm not sure about the distribution.

Filmmakers have described shooting in Pixelvision as akin to sketching while shooting with film or higher resolution video as drawing or painting.

I wasn't really making a statement or sketching. I was just curious about what Pixelvision was all about and managed to borrow the camera for a weekend from Doug Ing, an indie filmmaker who was doing a MFA at the time at City College.

It does produce an image (b&w and very low resolution) that's like nothing else.

Anyway, October makes me think more and more about my parents, as we did go applepicking with them every October. I'm not even a big fan of apples, but the apples sure were good right off the tree.

Picking apples also reminds me of the Andrei Tarkovsky film IVAN'S CHILDHOOD, in which there's a haunting scene involving apples.

Anyway, enjoy and please leave comments if you have any. I enjoy reading them.

Not Playing Ball in Hong Kong

If I'm being honest with myself, the truth is that a part of the reason that I've begun this blog is that since I sprained my ankle about 3 months ago, I haven't been able to play basketball.

This is the worst sprain I've ever had in the 25+ years that I've played basketball and I've had my fair share of ankle sprains over the years. At first, it was so bad that I actually went to the hospital to have the thing x-rayed, thinking the bone had to have been broken.

Two x-rays later, the doctor at St. Paul's Hospital expressed his surprise that no bone was broken and told me to go home and rest, ice, compress, and elevate.

I've done that. It's now 3 months later, but the damn thing is still a bit swollen and I've lost range of motion on it. (Damage to tendons, muscles, ligaments what have you) So Jene has been freaked out by my getting hurt so bad and has been telling me take it easy as I am not so young any more. But I've seen guys who kept playing well into their 60s. Go to Riverside Park on West 72nd St any Sunday morning)

I tried playing again about 3 weeks ago. It felt weak. And afterwards, it swelled up ridiculously.

Basically, the whole experience has gotten me a little down and much less cavalier about playing ball.

Prior to my injury, I was having a blast playing pick-up ball in Hong Kong even though the style of play here doesn't suit me at all and the general level of play is subpar to any city in the U.S. No one drives to the hoop. There's very little one-on-one moves. People play a very soft style and are more than willing to call phantom "touch" fouls that kids used to call in 2nd grade. To a lot of HK people, any contact is a foul.

I'm used to playing people who are a lot bigger and stronger than me back in the U.S. as that's whom I played with all my life. Here, I'm not always the shortest guy on the court, but I am nearly always the most aggressive and sometimes the only guy who'll take my guy off the dribble to the hoop. I rarely ever call fouls except when guys grab my arm with both hands and yank me down to keep me from shooting. Anything else, I figure is all fair and just part of the game. After all, a typical pick-up game has a lot of grown-men running about in a pretty small space. There's going to be some contact.

I remember the first couple of times I played with a group of oldtimers at Wah Fu Estate who run a Sunday morning game, they couldn't figure me out. I look Chinese, after all, but my style of b-ball was so different from theirs. They tended to pass the ball around the perimeter endlessly before launching some set shot. It sort of felt like playing with weird old Jewish guys who'd show up sometime at random playgrounds back in NYC, only the Jewish guys had more flair and would run backdoor cuts and throw behind-the-back passes.

Mind you, I've played ball all my life and surprise a lot of people who mistakenly peg me for a chump, but as far as being good, I peaked as a high school varsity player. Why? I'm small but slow, and I can't jump at all.

Still, there are times her in Hong Kong where I feel like I'm Godzilla. Maybe it's 'cuz I weigh more than the average Hong Kong man, but it's a trip outmuscling people for rebounds.

I was talking to a Filipino guy in my Cantonese class about the HK style of play. Talk about love for basketball, if a Filipino doesn't play ball, then he is not a true pinoy. (Back when I was in junior high, I used to play ball with a group of older Filipino guys back in NYC.) This guy basically summed it up and said, "The HK Chinese do play ball. Some play a lot and are even good. But they do not have any style."

I have to say that I have to agree with him. Very little style. Most people play as if they learned how to play from some gym teacher in PE class at school. The style is also very passive. This has tended to confuse non-HK people who do not play ball when I tell them this. Their view tends to be that HK people are rude, pushy, and aggressive, and are very surprised to learn that this doesn't carry over to basketball arena. Do I have an explanation for this?

Absolutely not.

Anyway, I pitched writing a story about the pick-up ball culture in Hong Kong to TIMEOUT HK, thinking it might make interesting reading.

They passed.

I still believe basketball may be the premiere sport here. Sure there is rugby and football and badminton, but in terms of sheer numbers, basketball is one of the few sports that HK people actually play. Just go to Wanchai, North Point, Victoria Park, or parks in Mongkok. They even have courts in Peng Chau, for crying out loud.

Whatever the case, playing ball here has been a lot of fun, and it was one of the few chances to get unmediated unstructured genuine interaction with local HK people. I've found HK people to be in general very distrusting of outsiders. Their guard goes up very quick. This was not so playing ball. I got to be a regular at a regular game in Wah Fu Estate on Sunday mornings. This was a great feeling.

Anyway, no basketball for at least another month. I want to rest it until at least after our big trip in November. Anyone know of a good court to check out? I know there's a full court in a cage in Hang Hau or Tsung Kwan O that I walked past and saw locals playing. It was behind LARDO'S.

Anyone ever play there?

Not Driving for Free in Hong Kong

This is along the same lines of the sentiment expressed in the HONG KONG LAUNDRY video.

I know lots of people still have cars here despite how tiny the place is, but we do not have a car. I know if we really wanted to, I could alway go and buy a used car, but there really is no use for it. And I know that not driving is better for the environment, but I still can't help it. A part of me really misses driving.



Believe it or not, even though we lived in NYC, we used our car a lot and depended on it to get around. I had a reverse commute that would have taken 1.5 hours each way on public transportation but was 30 minutes by car. And on wknds, we'd drive to Philly or to see my folks in upstate NY. Sure we could have taken public transportation but that would have turned a 2 hour trip to 5 hours (door-to-door) and a 1.5 hour trip to 3 hours (door-to-door).

Here, our trips within HK are usually at most a little over an hour. There just aren't that many places to go. And there's no real possibility of doing a long-haul road trip like the ones So Jene and I used to do back in the U.S. (NY to Key West, NY to Savannah, CA to NY).

Anyway, I'm not a gearhead, and I'm not even that into cars (new flashy cars that you see so many well-to-do HK people in), but I do miss driving, especially in our last car, a 1984 Mercedes 300D, a diesel car that I personally rigged (by changing the plumbing and installing a second fuel tank in the trunk (a converted ice box)) to run on recycled vegetable oil that I used to go pick up from the CROWN FRIED CHICKEN establishment at the corner.

Yes, folks! I was one of those people who ran their cars on recycled vegetable oil. It's a lot of work, and it's cumbersome, but it works. I drove that Mercedes on vegetable oil for around 7000 miles and then sold it right before we moved. So Jene used to hate how the exhaust would smell like fried food and did not at all appreciate how I had to keep a large barrel of recycled vegetable oil in the corner of our kitchen--what can I say? She's put up with a lot and is a saint. But she did like the leather seats, which were in good condition considering how old the car was.

That said, people who do the vegetable oil conversion on old diesel Mercedes usually tend to live out in the burbs or way out in the country. I was one of only a dozen or so nutjobs who insisted on doing it in NYC of all places. Still, it was a blast, knowing that I was beating the oil companies and driving for free on my own effort--I also got to meet some cool guys who worked at the fried chicken place. (They couldn't believe the car would run on the old fry oil!!)

The entire conversion cost me around $250 U.S. in parts and lots of my own labor. They sell kits for around $1000, U.S. but I managed to do fine without the kit. I didn't get the kit because it was more expensive than the car.

I looked into doing something similar here in Hong Kong. The tropical climate here would make it very easy to run diesel cars on vegetable oil as the main difficulty of doing so is cold weather. And I always see tons of those metal cubes of used vegetable oil piled up in backs of HK restaurants.

But sadly, there are no diesel private cars here for whatever reason. Does anyone know??

Anyway, the photos here are of that car--I wish I had better photos but I took them only to post ads when I needed to sell.



The car was an old jalopy that looked good only from about 50 feet away. I bought it from this old guy up in Scarsdale for $850 specifically to convert it to run on vegetable oil. The Mercedes Benz symbol hood ornament was so old that the inside had fallen off and was just a hoop. I hope this car is still on the road and still running strong on recycled vegetable oil.

My one regret with this car is that I didn't get to put it in a movie. I should have. It was interesting. And I got to meet many cool people while collecting recycled vegetable oil from fried chicken establishments, but that's another story...

Our Experience in HK so far (just short of a year)

Here's a quick recap of our adventure in ASIA so far for the year 2008 for those who're checking this out from the U.S. and elsewhere.

I post this because these are events that took place prior to the start of this blog. We'll try to make it quick.

HAPPY NEW YEAR in Hong Kong! We got to HK just before the new year. I think this was New Year's Eve in Central, near the ferry pier.




This is So Jene inside the royal palace in Bangkok. We were there only for a weekend, but saw some sites and ate really well.


Here is another photo of Bangkok. You do see a lot of military guys in Bangkok, guarding stuff.

**We now take time out to give you a virtual Thai greeting with our hands clasped in front of our chests and bowing slightly (the angle depends on the power dynamic between the greeters.)**




This is us in Tokyo, at an exhibit inside the Edo Museum. Our rickshaw puller is our friend Akiko, who was so incredibly sweet and made our trip especially memorable.

The above is footage of tuna at Tsukiji Fish Market.

We don't have pictures, and you'll have to take our word for it, but she took us to the famous sushi place next to Tsukiji Fish Market. While we were eating sushi, the best we've ever had, in comes Bobby Valentine, former manager of the NY Mets. It turns out he's like a regular there and speaks pretty good Japanese. Go METS!!!




This is me in Phu Quoc, Vietnam, riding around like the locals on a moped on dirt roads. The locals usually ride two adults, one kid, plus cargo on one of these.

Here is also footage of Saigon and the mopeds that cover the streets there. You have to see it to believe it.



In addition, we saw Sydney, Singapore, South Korea, and Macau. The strange thing is, as close as we are to China, we have not yet gone. It was the hassle of getting a China Visa w/ the Olympic brouhaha and all that. We'll get to it, though, probably early 2009.


That's about it for now. Hong Kong is a great base to travel to the rest of Asia!!

Kim Ki Duk's DREAM at Hong Kong Asian Film Festival

Like I wrote on my last post, last night So Jene and I schlepped out to Kowloon Tong AMC in Festival Walk mall to see Kim Ki Duk's DREAM, which was being screened (one-screening only) as part of the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival.

We, especially I, had very high expectations since the guy's been remarkably consistent in making truly unique films. I love COAST GUARD, BIRD CAGE, and BAD GUY. I also believe that this guy is the most-talented, most-original, filmmaker of my generation. (That is correct: He is the best most-original living filmmaker I have seen in the 30+ years that I've been watching films.)

But, it turns out the guy is only human, and this movie was less than stellar.

Here are some tidbits: The main character speaks only Japanese, but all the other Korean characters can miraculously understand him. He talks to them in Japanese. They answer back in Korean. And nothing, not even one piece of dialog, is used to explain or address this.

But this is just a minor quibble in the overall plausibility benchmark.

Granted that Kim Ki Duk movies aren't usually known for being very plausible and we knew going in not to expect a mainstream narrative, but this movie was just too much. Too much so that it prevented the development of real empathy.

So Jene termed it aptly by saying she couldn't empathize at all with the characters because the things they were doing were outright stupid.

Stupid in what way?

For instance, the main character is put in a situation where he must not sleep. So what does he do? Normal people would drink coffee. This guy starts to stab himself in the head and pound his foot with a hammer.

I actually don't think Kim Ki Duk is one of those gratuitous gore-type directors like Miike, who do gore for fore's sake.

Kim Ki Duk's 14 other movies are magnificent, equally disturbing and sublime, and even more impressive because he wrote and directed every single one of them.

I know the next Kim Ki Duk film will be amazing.

On the whole, a rather disppointing night. Still, while watching the film--the audience was mostly HK Chinese (I'd been wondering what sort of fanbase the guy has here in HK; in South Korea, his movies don't play at all)--there were scenes that really inspired me. I started thinking, I could do this. I've shot scenes like this. All it takes is two actors and a 35mm camera.

Cut to the chase, I began thinking I could make a 35mm feature film. All I need to do is write a script that has very little dialogue. That way it can be shot with novice actors with a 35mm cameral.

Sure it'll cost some money (I figure it can be done for 50-60 thousand dollars), but what the hell am I waiting for? Even a bad movie can get some light of day, and can lead to the next film.

You have to have something to show for yourself.

Hong Kong Laundry (**Short Film**)

I've made it four for four this week by posting a youtube movie for four consecutive days.

Granted only two were films shot here in Hong Kong, but still, I feel very good about myself.

Here is the latest film called HONG KONG LAUNDRY. It is a 1-minute haiku about... Hong Kong laundry.

Enjoy!



As for the Kim Ki Duk film, I'll write more about it tomorrow.

SOMEBODY'S OLD CHEESE

I forgot that I never posted SOMEBODY'S OLD CHEESE on this blog. It's an 8-minute film that prompted the response video from Jonny Stranger.

Its genesis was a trip I took to Austin, TX two summers ago. I went to visit Jonny Stranger and to make a film with him there based on one of my old plays.

That film never came through in the week I spent there. Still, Jonny and I took turns interviewing each other and thus came SOMEBODY'S OLD CHEESE.



By the way, the woman in the photo above is Elizabeth Regen, who is a terrific actor and writer. I met her when we were both writers at NYU. She played the older sister to Natalie Portman's character in Luc Besson's THE PROFESSIONAL back in the day. She appears in TV shows from time to time. Most recently, she was in the movie BEER LEAGUE.

The guy in the photo is Jerry Ongkeo, a talented rapper from NYC. I've lost touch with him. I hope he is well and wish him the best. I remember eating at his house a few times when I was very broke.

I'm doing some translation work right now. Tonight, So Jene and I will go see a Kim Ki Duk film in a movie theater in Kowloon Tong. I'm very excited. I'm a huge fan of Kim Ki Duk and believe that he is one of the most original and unique filmmakers in the world today. The closest thing to a Kim Ki Duk even in the history of cinema is Fassbinder, and Kim Ki Duk is more original, more intense, and more creative, and more maverick than Fassbinder.


Kim Ki Duk's aesthetic can best be described as most original and most disturbing but not perverse for perversion's sake. And the guy is prolific with barely any misses. Nearly all his movies are captivating. And he writes every one of his own movies. How he manages is beyond me. The guy is unbelievably talented.


That said, I've only seen Kim Ki Duk movies through DVD. Tonight will be the first time I get to see one of his movies on the big screen. It's being shown as part of an Asian Film Festival here in HK.

Jonny Stranger sends me a delightful video response

This is a link to a video response that Jonny Stranger sent me after seeing SOMEBODY'S OLD CHEESE.

He looks grizzly with his beard, but his voice still has that youthful mischievous tone.

I miss him. He's a good guy.

Anyway, here it is.



Enjoy!!!!!

Jonny Stranger is an independent filmmaker based in Austin, TX. He has made two feature films: YORICK (16mm) and MOJO TANGO (2008). On top of that, he has a huge list of films on youtube. Google him!!

ANTIGONE 5000 Clip

I'm not trying to flood this blog with short movies, but since I have been motivated lately to go through my old films, I used a 2-minute clip from ANTIGONE 5000 to make this short film.

I still can't quite get over just how terrific an actor Nelsan Ellis is. I so wish I'd written something for him back then.

Anyway, he's now in L.A. getting regular work on TV. He also did a movie called WARM SPRINGS about FDR's futile attempt to try to cure his polio.

Nelsan was amazing. I really should have done a better job with this film, but what's the use of Monday morning quarterbacking, right?

Anyway, here it is:




The film was shot in the woods in New Jersey. So Jene was so supportive of me. But, ultimately, I let her and everyone on the cast down by not being more thorough with the production. Still, it was a return to filmmaking after about 6 years of not touching a camera.