On My First Couple of Weeks Being Mister Garr-Finn and Mister Gay-Fun!

Well it’s been one full week and half of another since I started my job as the one Western brother in two kindergartens in the north of Hong Kong – a lifetime away from the hustle and throng.

The worst part of work is I live in the city so must take the train and that sure is a pity for my patience unending is tested at length to the point where I really must beg for the strength. Who decided this city of ‘never-walk-straighters’ should be put in charge of free morning papers? And why is it so hard to look back in inspection before suddenly brutally changing direction?

But it’s nice to reach work and not have to cuss at the tangled position I’ve stood on the bus in this place where five foot ten is the norm where seats must be queued for the second you’re born.

I work nine ‘til two on three of my days and for about seven hours in the other place so it’s hardly a stress but NO… HANG ABOOT!... I’ve just been told that change is afoot. For two of those days I must now work ‘til three but for three times my wage which is alright by me! Before sharpening your knives in angst at the ease of my new working schedule take a moment and please consider the down sides to of the job that I do, believe me there’s many but here are a few…

My tip from the top if you’ve pricked up an ear and consider you might want to try this career is take all that’s sibilant, fricative too and cast it away from the lessons you do. The sea of saliva these sounds will create shall be cast from the mouths as the cherubs orate and you’ll startle with fricative sibilant hate as you lose all control and spit out a ‘FFFUCK SSSSAKE!’.

And when they request you be closely attending do not even think about crouching or bending for the moment you do the unknowing rotters explode from within with a volley of snotters. When posted far north I was told of the scenery, was this what they meant when they talked up the greenery?

A further lament concerns arriving in the morning and catching the sight of a child without warning whose outermost layers once brilliantly white are now caked in his meal from the previous night. This is a hazard of first week nerves and a sight to behold that no-one deserves. I feel for the auxiliary staff most I’d say for their job is to spirit the vomit away. I thought I’d be polite and buy them a cake but they were diabetic and made the mistake of cutting it up for some children aged four who gobbled it up and then threw up once more…

Then there’s the problem of going to the can which is awkward for me given I am a man. In a mainly female working space the ladies staff toilet is quite commonplace but for the occasional man who enters the fray he is not welcome there in any way. Imagine my horror imagine my gloom at being told I’d have use the little boys room! And so when I go to bog in one school I have to sit down for a piss or a stool for the walls of the booth are about four feet high which is more than two feet from the height of my eye. There’s one adult sized toilet that I’m grateful for as the ones for the kids are a foot from the floor!

But if that’s as bad as it gets who’s complaining? I’m still positive even though it is raining. I just went down to the convenience store where a man and a woman were on the shop floor and he seemed determined to garner her number but she seemed determined she wouldn’t cave under. She relented as I left and read her number off and reminded him squarely ‘This is business… not love!’…

Hong Kong is fucked up!...