Hong Kong - Nov 19th 06

Rehearsals carry on apace, and today I’m moving to the island of Cheung Chau. No more noisy Wan Chai (for a couple of weeks at least) and hello seaside and swims!

I’m going to miss this little apartment, without a shadow of a doubt, especially now as the cooking facilities have recently improved. Ach well. I’m looking forward to the change.

Went to see a show called Geisha last night with Amanda & Giles it was a load of

The sort of pretentious theatre that makes me very, very angry. The lights were fab though, and it had the nicest cyc I’ve seen on stage for a very long time. That says a lot, no?

In all fairness to it, the music was excellent, an evolving soundscape that performers interacted with composed and performed by Toru Yamanaka. There was also a Samisen player on stage, who sang in an old Japanese style. A bloke danced the dances of various geishas too. That was very skilled. Aye, all that was great, it’s just a shame about the rest of it. It all hung together like a fart from the bottom of a not very well individual.

Not far from here in Wan Chai, on the way to the excellent White Noise records, there is a motorway / road over pass, where old ladies congregate with small shrines and a collection of paper tigers.

Beatrix, my landlady asked me if I was aware of what the old ladies do? I wasn’t, so she explained that they are kind of like Wise Women, who you go to if you have had a run of bad luck recently. The ladies will work out why you’ve been having bad luck, usually it is connected to some one near you who has ‘bad energy’. They then transfer the negative energy to the paper tiger there in front of them, by repeating certain incantations. Next they take off one of their flip flops and smack it several times, crushing it flat.

Thus your luck should change.

Ach well. I’m off to pack my bags and head off to the island.

Heigh ho.