"Roots"

I hail from Hong Kong originally. I can testify to the theory that most people don't remember their childhood, cuz mine was just one big blur. Spent a couple of years in Singapore when I was really small, but I remember practically nothing from the experience, so there's nothing I can tell ya about the place. Even if I could, anything I say would be way outdated anyway.

"Growing Pains"

Anyway, I endured ten relatively uneventful years of spoon-fed type education in two seperate Protestant schools, making me an agnostic for life. Got into trouble at times, but nothing major. At least not according to me. But according to those conservative (read: uptight as hell) teachers in Hong Kong, I was probably closer to the anti-Christ end of the spectrum. In retrospect, I can say that the education system (and often the teachers) in Hong Kong actively discourages personal development, stifling the child in everyone, killing things like fun, creativity, and spontaneity. Remnants of a Confucian culture, I suppose. After all, a class of zombies is way easier to control thean a class full of rambunctious kids. To me, it is no wonder that most Hong Kong people today are so spiritually lacking, since they grew up in a system that did not encourage personal growth at all. But I digress. Not being the most diligent sort and more inclined to lounge in front of a TV than study, my marks were below average, to put it mildly. Which meant I would not get past Form Five. Which sure helped my parents' decision to send me overseas.

"Far and Away"

Having spent years in the cramped little corner of this earth called Hong Kong, I left for that far and away land called Canada at the tender age of fifteen. Now, on such occasions, some people laugh, some people cry. Not I. I was floating in a detached state as I boarded the plane, wondering if all of it was really happening. Freedom was thus found. For ten years I spent in that cold and frozen land (contrary to popular blief, Canada does have more than two weeks of summer every year), and, looking back, life was good. No parental units, no nagging relatives, and I, me, moi, could do pretty much whatever I wanted whenever I wanted to (well, most of the time.)

"Fast Times at Ridgemond High"

I entered into a little private school called St. John's Ravenscourt School in Winnipeg, Manitoba. While there, I learned what "stinking rich" meant watching some of the other kids. For example, "I wanted a Porsche, but my dad wouldn't let me. So I settled for a BMW." Or kids being driven to school with Rolls Royce (with wipers on the head lights no less.) Three uneventful years I spent there. It was boring. Or rather, still struggling with the subtleties of that thing called the English language and not being much of a socialite, I was a bore. Never really rode with the hip crowd, ya know what I mean? Most people I met there, hell, everyone I met there, I never contacted after graduation. I doubt most of them even remeber who I am.

"School Daze"

On to Queen's University it was, in Kingston, Ontario. Don't ask me why I went there, cuz I don't think I knew what I was doing when I picked universities. To this day, I am not sure what made me choose this one particular school over any other, might have something to do with the fact that hardly anybody else took me. I never regretted the decision though. Especially not after I got there. The campus is located near the quaint little downtown area of colonial looking Kingston, and was a nice change of pace from the bleak, flat, and vast expanse of Winterpeg. This is the place where I drank, partied, played soccer compulsively, chased girls, socialized, crammed for exams at the last minute, blasted (ie. "group efforts" in terms of assignments and lab reports), and learned not to take life too seriously (somehow most things just don't seem all that important no more after a while.) In short, this was the place I became fully "Canadianized", possibly to the dismay (or amusement) of many of my countrymen. A "cultural-traitor" as I saw it at the time. But I was more at ease with the relatively liberal, laid-back, do-what-you-want-not-what-is-expected-of-you Canadian menatlity than the more conservative, concientious Chinese one.

"Jungle Fever"

Never did hang around Chinese people for the first few years. Just didn't see the point of going six thousand some miles from home just so I could hang out with Chinese people. If I wanted to do that, I might as well have stayed in Hong Kong, right? The fact that I find many Chinese people's behaviour overseas an embarrassment had something to do with it too. Many simply had no respect for other people's culture, with no understanding of "When in Rome...". But I did make quite a few friends of the Chinese persuasion after a few years, after I've become comfortably "Canadianzied." That was after I finally understood what a great and glorious culture I grew up with, and that part of me, that very fundamental part of me, should not be cast aside so casually. I read and studied a lot of Chinese philosophy, history, culture, and literature after that, and I became quite comfortable in the knowledge that I could be both Chinese and Western at the same time. A cross-cultural person per se. I can see most things from different perspectives this way (granted, probably more from the western perspective than the Chinese one), and it has opened up quite a few new possibilities for me.

"The Neverending Story"

Thinking that I was gonna be staying in Canada for good, I took Mining Engineering as my undergraduate major. The fact that I figured it was the easiest way to an undergrad degree had absolutely nothing to do with the choice. I swear! No siree Bob! Boy, was it the breeziest, most feathery way to get a degree, I tell ya. Not to knock Mining or anything cuz they do have some very bright people, but this was also the discipline which was taking in students rejected by all the other engineering disciplines! Take the path of least resistance, I always say. Ha ha ha!

My big mistake was going on to do a Master's degree in Mining as well. There, I encountered my nemesis, my supervising professor. Understand that I am an optimist by nature, always thinking people are inherently good, and have never before met anyone I considered to be a true hypocrite. But, boy oh boy, this boy must have been the definition of "hypocrite" in the Oxford English Dictionary. He would bitch about the other faculty members, day after day, for various "wrongs" that they did, turn around, and did the exact same things himself without so much as batting an eyelash! An example would be his criticism of other professors using their graduate students as cheap labour for their own personal gains. This coming from someone who once threatened to vacate me from my office space unless I drive five hours one way to some mine to act as a delivery boy for him. Did I also mention the said delivery was completely pointless, the sole purpose of which was to spend every last dime on a research grant he got so that he wouldn't look like a jerk for having asked for too much money in the first place? Another example was his taking a one-year sabbatical, yet absolutely refused to let anyone teach his courses for him. His solution: he would come back for one week during the term, and teach the entire course (which was not easy), assignments, mid-terms, and final exams included, within seven days. I truly pitied the people who took his courses that year. Can you say "academic responsibility"? The concept eludes him, I'm sure. It eludes the Department Head too, I am sure, as he allowed this sort of bullshit to happen.

As I started working for him in my first summer during my undergrad years, he was kinda a mentor to me, so it took a few years for my respect for him (a Chinese thing for teachers, you know) to drop into the negative end of the chart. That was when I started my MSc., when I began to develop a serious hate-on for him. Needless to say, my MSc years became a futile exercise in "personality conflict" (the official term the spineless Department Head, who didn't really care but of course supported his faculty member unconditionally, used to describe the problems between me and my supervisor.) So, three and a half years later, I quit the MSc without even coming close to getting a degree. Oh no, I am not bitter. Really I am not. Not!

"A Sort of Homecoming"

Having quit my studies, I could no longer stay in Canada as per Canadian law. So I made a speedy return to the land I thought I would never see again, Hong Kong. Man, the place has changed while I was away. Appparently it has developed in bounds and leaps ove the ten years I've been away. I've back a few times, and had some idea of the changes since I was always getting lost going somewhere every time I came back. But it didn't hit me how fundamental the changes were, and how out of touch I was, until I met a few of the locals. Locals of my generation were both more and less modern (in some cases, read: westernized) then I expected. In some aspects, people were still quite conservative, but in others, they were quite up to date on world trends.

"The Living Dead"

But, as I said before, I still found the majority of the population spiritually lacking, in a big way. For example, the most popular form of entertainment among friends is karaoke. Now, if you were completely drunk and don't mind making a total fool of yourself, karaoke can actually be fun. But these people take it all VERY seriously, and many simply refuse to believe that they cannot sing and proceed to put friends through hours of torture. It was simply impossible for them to conceive of "going out and having a good time" without resorting to going to a karaoke place. Also, I personally found it to be impossible to hold any sort of intelligent conversation with my Hong Kong friends, not for more than five seconds anyway. Most people here have such a narrow vision of the world, confined to only what they've seen in their day to day lives, it isn't even funny. Really kinda sad, actually. I have found very very few people in Hong Kong who can be said to have an open mind. And you should really see the so called entertainment TV shows and movies the local stations and studios come up with. Granted there are a few exceptions in the movie business, but mostly they're just complete crap. Not fit for people over five years of age, I say. Lets just say watching them would be an insult to my intelligence, and I vowed to never watch Hong Kong television (the Chinese channels anyway) and most Hong Kong movies again. A complete waste of time and money (bad movies, however cheap to rent, still costs time and money you know.) I don't want to flame the local culture, but that's just the way I see it. The thing is, if this place was the vanguard, the future, of the Chinese race, I pity us. The sorry fact is, they are lapping all this up back in the mainland! I pity us.

Missing the Candian social scene terribly, I hit Lan Kwai Fong and Wan Chai (where the western bars are) hard. Met a lot of CBC's, ABC's, BBC's, etc. along the way too. But those people were mostly quite superficial (not all of them of course), often with an immature gung-ho mentality like those in first or second year university, thinking that being loud and obnoxious was "cool." If there ever was one cultural distinction I observed over the years, it was this: westerners go drinking because they wanna go drinking, whereas many Chinese people (at least those of my age) go drinking because they wanna flaunt something (like a pretty girl friend, look-how-wild-I-can-get, or how-I-can-drink-more-than-you sort of silly stuff.) Pretty dumb.

One thing though: all of a sudden, I found myself in this really racially homogeneous place (mostly Chinese people, of course.) It took some getting used to. And I really think that most Chinese people don't deserve to be treated equally in terms of race. The reason I say this is, even in the small office I worked in (with about thirty people, a few of whom are westerners) some people still managed to get some sort of racial segregation thing going. A few Chinese people would, on a regular basis, talk in Cantonese about the westerners, right in front of their faces. And if any activity such as a dinner was organized, more than likely the westerners would not be invited, unless I (or other western-educated people) say something about it. I don't think they do it intentionally, just that the Chinese simply have no consideration for the sensitivities of people from other cultures and races. It was truly amazing to watch after having been steeped in the lores of racial equality in Canada (where I almost never encounterd racial discrimination of any sort.) I try to be the mediator/translator/ambassador as often as I can, but one can only do so much so often. Not to mention the fact that, over the years, I've heard so many Hong Kong people, locals and emigrants alike, express how they feel the Canadians are "so dumb and so slow." It REALLY pisses me off when I hear shit like that spewed forth. The idea I've had (for a long time now) of the Chinese being probably the most racist of all has been reinforced time and again. I am convinced that it has something to do with the ingrained mentality that we, the 'glorious' Chinese, have had such a long history, such an old culture, that everyone else is just inferior. Well, if we were so damned superior, Britain (and quite a few other European countries, and the good old U.S. of A.) couldn't have come and kicked our collective asses last century now, could they? And if we were so damned superior, why do we still constantly refer to westerners as "Gwai Lo" (Ghost people; Foreign devils; etc. Take your pick.)? If we were so damn superior, why is the average per capita GDP of China still around US$1000? I truly hope it's something we, as a society and as a culture, will soon grow out of.

"Nine to Five"

Being a Mining Engineer by training, I had little luck in the "A Job Tailored For Me" department. The closest thing I could do was fake being a civil engineering or geotechnical engineer, which I did. Shhhh, don't tell anyone. I was fairly lucky and found a job with a fair-sized engineering consulting company, Binnie & Partners, who was subsequently bought by Black & Veatch, a large US engineering consulting company. The guy who hired me headed a government project, so I got paid by the government scale in the beginning as well, and it wasn't too shabby. After working on the government project for about a year, I was moved back to the head office. Four months in, as I was getting absolutely bored with my new posting, diasaster struck.

"Outbreak"

Back in my undergraduate years, I developed a kidney condition known as Glumerulonephritis, which basically meant the nephrons of my kidneys, which filter the toxins and fluids out of my body, were inflammed and dying out. I was left with 50% of my kidney functions all of a sudden, and didn't know what hit me. With health insurance in hand, the Kingston General Hospital started me on chemotherapy (which isn't JUST for cancer you know) program of two years. It wasn't as bad as it sounds. All it entailed was going in one morning each month, and getting a dose of medicine intravenously. The hardest part of which was getting up early enough so I won't be late (gimme a break, I was a university student at the time.) Of course they gave me tons of pills as well, but that was easy. One of which was a steroid called Predisone, which supposedly will make you bloated (ie. looking fat) if taken regularly. Well, I didn't. Just thought I'd mention that. I seem to be one of those people who can't gain weight no matter what. Ya, some of you are probably saying "Right, cry me a river..." Anyway, the doctors at the renal unit at Kingston General Hospital did a superb job, and my kideny function was stabilized at about 50% for the next seven years.

As I was saying before, disaster struck as I was getting abosultely bored with my posting. I found my kidney funtion declining again, and I had to start dialysis. Doctors at the Princess Margaret Hospital (some of them quite good, some of them quite useless) started me on peritoneal dialysis, which also entailed my having a tube surgically implanted into my stomach. As a result, I had a 9-inch tube sticking out from my stomach for the next year or so. Peritoneal dialysis meant I had to put a dialysis solution, know as a dialysate, through the tube, into my stomach, let it absorb all the toxins and fluids, which my kidney could no longer dispose of, by diffusion into my peritoneal cavity, which was the cavity between all the organs in my mid-section, and replacing the dialysate with fresh ones at intervals throughout the day. Before starting dialysis, I was feeling tired all the time, and was getting seriously bloated from water retention (swollen ankles, faces, and all that.) Once dialysis started, I felt way better, though still by no means well. Just okay. I was also put on a seriously restricting diet, though I confess I didn't adhere to it very well. The purpose of the diet was to control the amount of protein and electrolytes I was taking in so that they could be disposed of adequately through dialysis.

I had to do this four times a day, so I had to quit my job and stay home all day. As I could only go out for about six hours between dialysis sessions, I couldn't really do much in terms of work unless I worked from home. I was moping around at home for about six months before I was able to do this. All thanks to the Internet.

"Wired"

Since I had a lot of free time at home, I got connected to this trendy thing called the Internet. Since you are reading this, you would know how much time one can waste on this baby. I surfed, surfed, and then surfed some more, and then found this thing called IRC. My world was never the same. I was quite lost for a while, as there were a zillion IRC servers out there. But then I found this server with a lot of Hong Kong people on it through a friend (chat.navigator.com), and got into it quite a bit. Through this I met a translator, who introduced me to a translation house. Thus began my career as a freelance translator. Working for about ten hours a month, I was making about half of what I made with a full time job. And all the jobs were delivered to me through wither fax or email, both of which I receive with my PC. The finished products go out the same way. Which means I hardly ever have to leave home. Good money, own hours, and working from home. What more could a boy want? As the expenditure of someone on peritoneal dialysis was minimal (the most expensive bit, the dialysate, was paid for by the Hong Kong government, thank goodness), my bank account was once again experiencing positive growth.

I soon grew tired of the IRC thing, since most people just babble on about absolutely nothing. So I stopped wasting money on that, and found some other more intelligent places to roam instead. Electric Minds was such a place. This was a conference type site, with highly intelligent conversations about various aspects of life in the virtual community and online. Highly recommended.

"Body Parts"

All through this time, I was waiting for a kidney transplant, which was the most complete and cost-effective solution in the long run. Getting one in Hong Kong was damn near impossible, since the waiting list is long and donors are few. Therefore, I (or rather my parents) looked into having it done in China, where any organ transplant possible can be had if you had the money and the right connection. I went to this one hospital in Guangzhou, in Guangdong province, for a complete check up, and waited. Six months later, I was still waiting. Then my break came. My dad met this someone, who knew someone (this is how things work in China) who was in charge of the renal unit in another hospital experienced in and famous for doing renal transplants. They have done over a thousand transplants over the past decade, and I do believe that, in terms of surgical skills, this place must be one of the best in the world. Within three weeks, I was told to pack my things, and get ready to be cut wide open for a few hours in Guangzhou.

So, the big day came, and fear took hold. Okay, so I am a chicken shit. But I just hate the idea of someone cutting me open and messing with my innards. Fortunately, this person my dad knew was quite influential at this hospital, and she pulled together the most experienced surgical team the hospital could muster for me. On to the surgery table I go, and, three needle pricks later, I was out like a light. Actually, only local freezing was required, but I didn't want to know nothing about what they're gonna do to me, so I asked them to knock me out. And they did. Anaesthetic is a wonderful thing, and an induced coma is the next best thing I tell ya. Next thing I knew, I was concious again, with someone giving me a pat on the stomach while saying "Okay, you're done!" The surgery, which took a mere three and some hours, was a complete success. I now have three kidneys (two dead ones and one good one)!

With various tubes and needles stuck in and out of me, I stayed in the hospital for two weeks. One by one, they removed the tubes. I was hooked up to something intravenously every day. Apparently, they gave me a lot of human albumin and immune globulin, which were proteins that helped the body heal quicker and better, plus various other immunosuppressants and antibiotics type stuff, and I recovered quickly and uneventfully. Of course, they also started me on a veritable diet of pills. The morning dose alone required two gulps of water to wash down lest I choke to death. Immunosuppresants (Sandimmune and CellCept), Predisone, antibiotics, glucose solution, saline solution, human albumin, immune globulin, blood pressure pills, stomach medicine (some of the drugs cause ulcer or upset stomach or something), you name it, they gave it to me one way or another. Fourteen days later, with an extra three-ounce piece in me and a nasty six-inch scar (which, with all the stitches across it, looks like a zipper on my stomach :-) ) on me, I was outta there! The guy next to me wasn't so lucky, as his wound still hasn't closed and was leaking fluids from his stomach cavity when I left. The poor man was stressed, I tell ya.

"A Better Tomorrow"

First thing I did once I got home was updating this page to its present state. My homepage sucked for the longest time, so I figured a new life deserved a new start in everything. And since I have to stay home for a long period to recover and avoid catching something (with my suppressed immune system, even a cold could become something quite nasty), I figured I'd start with this. This page still sucks, but at least it is now completed.

Seven weeks after The Big Cut, and my scar has all healed up. Now I got this pinkish thing on my tummy, looking like someone tried to plant a zipper on my stomach. Cool eh? Except now I am dreading my next 'minor' operation where they take the dialysis tube back out. I was told (by other who had this done) that it is more painful than the transplant itself. Yikes!!!

Sick as it may sound, I am actually looking forward to starting work again. I am SO bored with being stuck at home all day doing nothing. Or rather, not being able to go anywhere to do something. And my bank account is suffering in the last leg of its long decline.

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