I was back in Chai Wan today, the district is at end of the MTR ( which simply means Mass TRansit) line on Hong Kong Island where the hotel is based. It starts off packed to the gunnels with early morning rush hour crowds but thins out with each of the 10 stops until it is quite empty by the time I alight and walk straight into a shopping mall. I was alone today so took my time to people and place watch. I was 45 minutes early so after a wander around the mall I found a Starbucks and settled down to an Americano with cream on the side. The barista brought to me a normal sized coffee cup and approximately a quarter pint of cream! This is the second time this has happened, and I am beginning to think that they think the cream is another drink completely, and like a Tequila shot in the old Wild West, I throw it down my throat between coffee gulps, whilst flipping my gun from its holster ! Even I can’t take the coffee so creamy…….incidentally, yesterday after finishing I went to M&S to top up rations and bought a yellow stickered pot of 300ml of double cream. Even with the yellow sticker it was £3 ! Yikes !
We had some very interesting performances today of the aforementioned fairy delight, Everywhere I Look. Infact it was altogether a different experience. There were a number of girls from a couple of the International Schools and they proved really very good, now here is the dilemma - I had to award first place to a Japanese girl who sang like a pro, well a junior pro, then second was an American girl called Amelia, so far no Hong Kongese child note - then I had three third places one fully Hong Kong, one clearly Indian in name and looks, and one who was mixed race. This has never happened before, so all I can imagine is that the usually disinterested in music, ‘other schools’ have suddenly acquired good teachers ? The dilemma is, these classes are called ‘Singing in a Foreign Language’. I am fairly certain that four of the five girls used English as their home language because when they spoke to me and came for the ‘photo with the smiling adjudicator moment’, (367 to date….actually I stopped counting after 75 ) their spoken English was completely fluent. Duh ! I have no idea what the Association thinks about this influx but I can only judge what I hear !?! The flippin set piece is so fast ( though largely twee and meaningless)that it is, therefore, very difficult for the Cantonese singers, so they are at a distinct disadvantage. What does a woman do ? She gives the prizes to the best, and hopes not to get the sack for breaking rule 6b, paragraph 42, subsection 17 !
I don’t care about any of that as I had the most amazing compliment from a competitor ( who wasn’t placed by the way incase you are thinking a bit of bribery going on here ). They all queue up for the obligatory photo call after the class, and one young lady who was the image of one of Inner Sound’s most precious members, Shadri, had her photo holding up my scribbled sheet with much pride. As she was leaving she stopped and turned round and said, ( I kid you not !) ‘ You look so pretty, I love your dress, what a pretty lady’. It’s 50 years since anyone said that to me, and when I told my supper colleague, violinist Iona, she guffawed and said ‘ Wow, hang on to that you lucky woman !!’ Blimey I will ! Made my day.
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