Hong Kong - Nov 10th 06

I’m not having a lot of time for adventures at the moment, as my existence is pretty much rehearsal focused. Which is a very good thing.

I think the show could be very interesting indeed. The designer arrived from Korea the other day, and has now replaced Tobaran as my flat mate. His designs are amazing. He just sits at the back of the rehearsal room scribbling away coming up with wondrous designs around ladders and platforms.

I find it all very exciting. It’s going to be one heck of a sweaty show, though. It starts with Justine performing beautiful balletic action, and then Sean, Kar Fai and I start running across the stage, shouting and cursing and getting in to fights. It’s going to be quite a contrast. And then the short story The Vulture starts, whilst K & I wrestle each other to the ground many times.

The dynamic in the company is great, we’re all listening to each other on stage, and it really feels like we’re pulling together. Oh I do enjoy working like this.

Dinner last night was with Kar Fai and Yun Su, the designer, down a side alleyway, where we had fried rice and sweet sausage. It was very tasty indeed. Kar Fai used to live around here, and that was his favourite place to eat. The food was very cheap and really tasty. Rice bound together by sticky friedness, and glutinous soy sauce. A family business to boot too. It’s so different to Europe, just sitting down a dirty side alley under plastic tarpaulins, sat upon plastic stools eating from picnic tables. It’s just great.

It can be a very depressing place though, the thought of rush hour in the MTR still fills me with dread. There’s just so much negativity, thousands of people feeling miserable, and crunching like meat into a sausage machine as they plough up the escalators. Every time I’m in that situation I find myself whistling the first few bars of Chaplin’s Modern Times theme, as it’s exactly the same situation he depicts in that film, with the sheep racing through pens, contrasted with people coming out of the underground.

There are a lot of depressed Europeans here. At that party the other night, so many of them seemed to be of a negative bent. Yet they were on about how much money they were making. Aye…

I’m off to a dinner gathering at Giles and Amanda’s tonight, so that should be a good laugh. I’m really getting to see a lot of this strange place.