A model life

The Episode: Season 1, episode 2 (yeah, it’s been that kind of weekend)
The question: If men like Nick are dating models, what chance do ordinary women have? Do you have to be a supermodel to get a date in New York?

This episode is about ‘modelisers’ (womanisers who are obsessed with models). In New York, this is a particular problem because while in other cities, models are confined to billboards, out there they “run wild on the streets” and men can “pet them in the creatures in their natural habitat”.

Now one would think that I couldn’t possibly identify with this scenario but strangely enough it struck a particular chord. Because V and his friends used to be/are modelisers. I didn’t know there was a word for it until I read the SATC book.

See the thing is I met V in Bombay in isolation and he seemed quite normal. The first time I visited his city and went out with him and his friends, I began to get a distinctly uncomfortable feeling. The other girls out that night were all models.

They were 18, super thin (I was thin at that point and began to feel lumpy), hyper dressed and posing and basically twittering. I had always hoped – being obsessed with Vogue and Kate Moss since I was 12 – that models were attractive because they were beautiful and smart but I unfortunatley realised that the cliche was true. These women had nothing to say beyond twitter such nonsense as ‘Ohhh V” and “Shutttup”. I never actually heard a conversation come out of their mouths.

Though maybe as one of the modelisers in the episode said: “Models have brains. They just don’t need to use them.”

That said, they still made me feel insecure. Like Carrie I felt dumpy and basically invisible. I felt that they were smirking.

The other thing is that they seemed to not want to be with other models but with normal, lay men. Including my man. Or maybe pouting and simpering did not mean flirting in their world but just an extension of their working personna.

At the heart of this episode is unrealistic standards of beauty and how women are expected to conform to that. The more images of unrealistically thin women are out there, the more men begin to believe this is the natural state – and convince themselves that it’s possible without purging and chemical supplemets – and that women who don’t conform to it are lazy. And then there are women like me who have internalised the standard and don’t really need a man to egg them into it.

The sad thing about being in these situations – being surrounded by models I mean – is that you begin to be convinced that all men would rather be with them. But the funny thing is that I realised that V could be with them. And he had been. But he actually chose to be with me.

Hmmm. I’ve still been scarred for life though. I still feel I have to be unrealistically thin.

PS: I’m beginning to understand why so many women have a thing for Mr Big. He’s the modern take on Mr Darcy.

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Doing it like a man

The Episode: Season I, Episode 1. (Yes, finally I’m starting at the beginning).
The Question: Can a woman have sex like a man? AND Do women

My dirty little secret is that I have not watched the very first episode of SATC before. There I said it.

But I have read the book. Most people who read the book hate it. I did too. But it grew on me. I actually like it now and reread it, as I am want to do with chicklit in a way that happens with say, Virginia Woolf. Both have their own pleasures though.

What I realised is that the first episode is almost exactly like the book. It lays out the anthropological examination that will play out throughout the series. Which is – why can’t women in New York get a man? Do they need to? Do they want to? What’s wrong with the men?

It is also the introduction of Mr Big, which is a very sweet undertone to the cynical examination that will become the thesis of the show, almost undercutting the logical probing of Carrie’s narrative by throwing in the complicated mix of emotions.

But back to the question at hand. When faced with men who have decided that they’d rather have a younger, more attractive and less complicated model than women their own age, what do the women do? Especially in a situation where the women of a certain age and economic status are no longer willing to settle and simper either.

Could they, as Samantha says, have sex like a man?

They could. And have. Even Indian women.

I did it as an experiment. Also I was feeling a bit blue at that time and blue makes me numb and numb makes me analytical. So I embarked on a sexual experiment.

It was quite empowering and practical. Because your range of possibilty gets extended to men you don’t really like, might not have hung out with but who are simply available. Of course, I don’t think I could have sex with someone I didn’t start out liking at least at the beginning. I need some fodder for the imagination especially since really attractive men are such slim pickings that you have to go for personality as a turn on.

Quite quickly I decided I was not interested. But hey, I needed to be distracted and sex gave me something to do.

I have to say it wasn’t for me. But that could just be because the man wasn’t that good in bed although he thought he was (which was quite funny actually in retrospect). I guess most people aren’t that good in bed and the emotion tides that over.

Also as randy as one is, one is not that randy. The other day was discussing with V the relative difference in quantity of how much men think about sex versus women. Women do think about sex a lot more than we’re given credit for. Especially when bored – which frankly makes Mass an unfortunately fertile time for fantasy but let’s forget that. But I think men think about it more. And have the energy to act on it.

I don’t. No matter how much I fantasize, I don’t always have the energy to go through with the act. I might actually rate sleeping above sex. (I think this happens when you’re married also. Before there’s a shortage of supply and then when it’s unlimited it’s like ODing on icecream).

Also, I suspect for a lot of women they can actually have very satisfactory sexual experiences all on their own. I don’t think this is true for men. Jerking off for men is just a compromise. For women, it could an end in itself.

In fact, the only reason a lot of women want another person around is the warmth of another body and the cuddly stuff. If the other person, male or female, is not going to be cuddly then you’re sort of cheated. You could have just shagged in your own bed.

I have to say though, being able to do it and then just get up, put on your clothes and walk off without a care in the world is quite a power trip. But after the power trip is over you end up feeling a bit, well, inconvenienced.

There are probably women who enjoy that kind of sex but I don’t know any. I know women, like me, who would like to think that they do. Because it makes them feel stronger. And sometimes because they might not have a choice at the time.

But back to the episode (also because I don’t have much more to say about this). The fascinating thing is that it is Big, a man, who presents the note of sentimentality in this episode. He points out quite simply that while one can always have sex like a man, being in love makes all the difference.

The Darjeeling Limited

After two-and-a-half years in Hong Kong, I have finally joined a video library. It was surprisingly easy. You pay HK$30 and you get a membership card which enables you to rent movies from a closet-sized shop remarkably similar to the ones in India. Except, these are not pirated, bad prints I think, though I could be wrong. The girl at the counter even spoke English. Of course, most of the movies are Chinese but then in India most of the movies are Hindi.

I take this video-renting experience as a sign that I am putting down roots.

We rented The Darjeeling Limited. It is a very quirky film. My main observances are:

1) Natalie Portman is the new Audrey Hepburn. If anything comes close to that kind of perfection it is her.

2) Beautiful women should not be allowed to kiss mediocre looking men with moustaches in the moives. In real life, it is ok because there are more beautiful women than men.

3) The defining factor that unifies India is dust. Every single part of India is dusty.

4) It is still beautiful though once you get used to seeing through the dust. 100 points to this film for not airbrushing out the dust or heightening the colour so it looked more vibrant. It is exactly as is.

5) Except for the stewardess on the train. Women like her do not work on trains in India.

6) I am still scarred by being hit on my creeps that wouldn’t go away on trains in India to want to go travel by even so picturesque a trian as a Darjeeling Express.

7) I do not know what that Luftwaffe scene was about exactly. Something to do with the father dying but is it a reference to some film? I’m too lazy to look it up so can someone who has watched the film and has any thoughts please stand up.

8) Boys remain boys who want their mommies forever.

Retraction of sorts

Despite continuing to believe that:
a) Mental paedophilia – if not a physical acting out of these fantasies (hopefully) – is more widespread than one would like to believe.
b) Someone who has been arrested on one charge becomes an easy target for other charges, which he may or may not have committed.
I’ve decided to delete the previous post because:
i) Gary Glitter is not the best example with which to illustrate this point (because there is very little doubt that he is guilty).
ii) This issue deserves more than a knee-jerk post.
I think I surprised myself by feeling momentarily sorry for the man and that sparked off a number of trains of thought. Now I realise I have the same reaction when I see mass murderers in court. I hate to see that hunted, cornered look in anyone’s eyes and then I have to shake myself and remember that they deserve it.

On Friends

When you’re in a new place, you feel this pressure to make new friends. Well, if you’re going to be alone for long periods of time, you pretty much need to. In Hong Kong, where there are so many expats, people are more ready to welcome new people… somewhat.

But it’s still an exhausting process. There are some people who geniunely enjoy meeting new people. I’m not one of them. I revel in the comfort of old. I cling to my old friends even though they are miles away and if I was in the same city as them, god knows if we would really be that close.

I go through spurts where I say ‘I must go out’, ‘I must be social’. I have one friend who tries to round up this group of women and get us to go out together. Although I am fond of this friend and the rest of that group looks good together, I realised the last time that I went out with the core of them that I don’t really have much in common with any of them. Is it really worth it trawling through scores of people to come up with with (maybe) one that could possibly be a friend and then putting in all that effort and surmounting all the awkwardness that comes with the beginning of friendship to maybe end up as friends. (I’m really not the kind of person that calls people you ocassionally party with ‘friends’, I just call them ‘people I know’).

God, this is what dating must be like. For me, I never had to put much effort into the dating game. You just go out with a group of girls, someone inevitably hits on you and if you’re in the mood you flirt back and you’re off. For me dating never had the same pressure on finding things in common as friendship does. If the physical chemistry can carry you through and you have enough to say so that the silences are not awkard, it works. Friendship though is another thing. Silences are paramount.

I have come to a point where I can’t be bothered. I have made peace with the fact that V is the person I like to hang out with the most. This should not surprise anyone because he is after all my husband but V is not one for long conversations and debate. But he is the person I am most at ease with and unfortunately, when someone big happens in life it doesn’t feel like it’s completely happened until I tell him. So he is my current ‘best friend’.

There are some others in this city I genuinely like. A couple I know I can turn to in time of trouble. A couple of others who I don’t hang out with regularly but who I know enough. Since I am not part of their regular groups – through my own lack of ability to conjure up the enthusiasm to fit in – I like them and they like me and we meet up for a drink ocassionally. It would be nice to be part of ‘a gang’ but I haven’t really found one that I actually want to be part of.

I remember my first encounter with a new place and how awkward the friend-making game seemed. I had never done it before in a conscious way because I had always lived in the same place and so had default friends who actually went to college with me. At work, if you have other friends, there’s no pressure but you end up making friends anyway. In fact, one of the reasons I was insistant on getting a job in HK asap was that otherwise you never meet anyone except your husbands colleagues and you become totally isolated and crazy.

And I did make a couple of good friends at my first job here. This one, not so much maybe because there are older more entrenched groups here. They only hire people who have some experience in HK so they’ve already been here a bit and so already have some friends. Though I do get on with a few of my colleagues, mainly for the purpose of bitching about our boss.

Anyway, I think now that I have a few fallback guys I’m not going to go about actively soliciting friendships anymore. This is dangerous because in HK, people come and go and so the people you are counting on could leave. On the other hand, it makes all the effort even more futile because the people you invested so much energy in end up leaving. Most people in HK make peace with this transcience or leave themselves.

I instead vegetate on the couch with my husband ocassionally murmering “we really should call so and so.”

On the flip side

Since I’ve been going on in defense of the Chinese and the Olympics so much here are some criticisms:

1) The Chinese little girl who sang a song at the opening ceremony was only lip synching it turns out. Which frankly is ok, though even at the time I commented at how plastic she looked. But it has been revealed that there was another little girl who was actually singing and it was deemed that she was not ‘presentable’ enough. This decision went as high up as the politburo (can you believe it?) and was taken in ‘the national interest’. Honestly! It is the most ridiculous thing ever. I understand if the girl with the good voice was too shy to sing in public but that was not the case. It just appears that she was not cute enough (which – if you look at her photograph – she is, all Chinese kids are cute). But whether she is or isn’t cute enough is beside the point. The whole thing is just stupid… that the national cabinet should seek to control something as inane as this, how children should look. Ugh.

2) TVB Pearl, the Hong Kong channel that is airing the games, takes every opportunity to play the Chinese national anthem. First of all, their coverage is biased to events that Chinese participants will excell in – which is fine, I guess, but since it is the English channel and many of the viewers who watch will be from different nationalities they should maybe consider that too. But it’s more irritating to be subjected to the full Chinese national anthem every two minutes, in their edited coverage or even in their news reports. That telecast time could be used to show the actual sports, Chinese athletes or others. I really don’t understand this kind of weird sucking up and indoctrination. Also all the coverage of the games in Hong Kong is sooo pro-China, it’s dangerous. Whatever happened to balance – either you have the sniggering West, or the obsequious East.

3) I have been so pissed with my boss and my job that I lost interest somewhat in the Olympics. I know there is no connection between the two but just an indicator of how foul my mood is.

The beginning of the end

Nine months is how long it takes to make and deliver a baby.

Nine months is also how long it has taken me to come to a point where I hate my job enough to have decided I want to quit.

In theory, it is a very nice job. This is one of the most prestigious publications to work with in Hong Kong. I have to write one feature story a week and get to meet interesting people while doing it. Easy peasy right?

Wrong. Sitting at the helm of our motley crew are two women whose pettyness, mood swings and general randomness has turned what should be a dream job into a nightmare.

I have already described the pressure cooker that is our editorial meeting. But let me recap. Everything about it is random down to even whether there is a meeting or not. Sometimes it’s every two weeks, sometimes it’s every week, sometimes it doesn’t happen till three or four weeks have gone by. There is no way of knowing till the Friday before the meeting when an email comes around and then you have to scramble to prepare and cancel all appointments. If you’ve made any, that is. The one time I made an appointment for an interview and was later informed of the meeting, I was told to cancel the assignment even though the meeting is basically nothing more than target practice for the bosses.

At the meeting, we resort to such petty strategies as where to sit so that we are not unfavourably placed in the presentation order and presenting five ideas most of them crap so that the bosses have the satisfaction of turning down three and hopefully giving you one to play with. If you don’t have an idea okayed you are screwed because even if it is the bosses that killed all your ideas, it is you who have to come up with a story every week.

Very rarely do the bosses suggest ideas and you do not get any credit for executing them. It will be held against you for using too many of the bosses’ ideas. Also, the bosses’ ideas are generally stupid in extremity. Your mediocre ideas, which get shot down, are better than theirs which make it to the page. But you have reached the point of not caring what lukewarm drivel your name gets attached to in favour of a paycheck.

Yeah yeah, we know all this but what happened? you are wondering.

Well, I actually had two stories that I was finally excited to be working on. I spent days researching, did the interview in a typhoon and spent a day and a half writing. I think I came up with a pretty good piece given the reticence of my interviewees. I get an email from my boss saying ‘it lacks colour’.

Now I know I shouldn’t care and just get on with it but when you’ve put so much work into something and actually let yourself get excited about it after such a long time, this is demoralising at best. I no longer have the strength to be excited.

Never mind. I go on to working on the next story which I know they were not super keen on but I kept them updated all along. I have an interview at 2.30 pm. At exactly 2.30 pm – after I have left – I get an email from the boss saying ‘this is about marine conservation, right?’ When I reply outlining what it is about later in the evening, she tells me it’s not a story.

For me this is the turning point. a) I don’t see why it’s not a story because she has okayed even more pointless stories b) Even if she stands by her inane logic, she should have told me earlier. Guidance or just brutal crushing of ideas is supposed to happen before the interviews not after remember? c) I now do not have a story for next week and somehow it is going to be my responsibility to find one.

I have decided I can no longer do this. There are people who, I am sure, work under greater stress and more asinine bosses. In fact, some of my team members have a worse deal than me because my boss is even more ruthless to them.

But it is not worth my health and my sanity. I cannot keep counting the months and getting satisfaction at every month I have ‘survived’ when I do not know when the end is in sight. As tempted as I was to resign on the spot, the end for me will be in February after I get a bonus. Then, I will start looking. Where I don’t know. Because I already landed pretty close (my dream job would be editing the features pages not writing for it) to my dream job but I find that I cannot stomach it.

But this is just for the record. So that you guys can remind me in my days of sunshine that beneath it all it is fuckall and I need to move on.

Getting smart

Everyone go watch this! Because:

1) It’s got Steve Carell. Admittedly, there’s a hint of his character from The Office but hey, that’s why we love him. Also, I was a bit grossed out that he and Anne Hathaway kissed but presumably she got paid a lot to do that.

2) It’s also got one enormous guy called Kali and that hairy guy from Borat. Yes, that’s who he is. Trust V to recognise him.

3) Anne Hathaway is transformed from eternal dowdy-girl-gets-a-makeover to makeovered. She is now certifiably hot, with a little help from Chanel and a weight loss programme. I need a white jacket pronto. Chanel or Prada will do.

4) I had just had a roaring fight with V. But I was laughing out loud during this movie. I even ended up kissing V for pure joy. Everyone else in the cinema was laughing to. TheChinese girl next to me kept saying ‘Oh My God’ in English, which I thought was pretty stunning in itself.

5) You need more reasons? It totally takes the piss out of George Bush.

6) And it as Ode to Joy, my favourite piece of music ever.

Be warned – it is set in some futuristic 50s era so you can safely suspend disbelief about every unlikely thing that happened. That’s what these little-spy-conquers-all movies are for, no?

Olympic obsession

I don’t remember ever being so excited about the Olympics. I don’t know if it’s because there was so much said about China or because I’m so close to China or because really there was something fantastic about these Games but I was super-excited. *

And the opening ceremony did not disappoint. I have never seen an Olympics spectacle like this one. Every single performance was spellbinding and a showcase of Chinese culture down the ages. The perfect choreography might have seemed to a bit like Krakauer’s The Mass Ornament, but maybe we should find in this uniformity something to admire. Constant rebellion – although my mode of choice – is also uniformity you know.

But back to the opening ceremony. I even surprised myself by watching every single country come out and not getting bored. I liked the idea of the order of the countries being in Mandarin so that countries whose names start with letters at the tail end of the English alphabet have the novel experience of coming out first. I loved the mystery leadning up to who would light the torch and the simple choice of the first man to win China a gold in its very first Olympics in 1984 and the way the torch was lit. I loved the mad Chinese crowd demonstrating to the world that they are not all rigid formal communist boors.

I now find myself watching everything from shooting to cycling with avid interest. I am of course addicted to swimming and gymnastics and was thrilled that these telecast at convenient times on Sunday. V is getting a little bored but hey! it’s the Olympics. And those swimmer guys are cute!

I almost had a heart attack in excitement when South Korean Park Tae-hwan won the 400 m freestyle. The irony was I thought it was just a heat and belatedly realised it was the final. So cool for him.

Ok now back to the gymnastics.

*Probably a combination of all three. The never-ending Western-biased criticism of Beijing’s preparations for the Games irritated me no end. I don’t think I remember such controversy over the preparations in previous Games. It seems to me that it’s just becuase it’s China and at some level, the West is scared about the rising power of a country that does not follow a system they understand.

Having actually been to China I refuse to accept the views of those who have not, or who have simply interacted at the levels of hallowed diplomatic cirles. I have interacted with people in China from the poorest dumpling guy to the CEOs of Chinese banks with their inevitable bureaucracy and I think that only after this kind of people to people interaction can anyone deign to comment.

There are real people in China, with pride in their country and hurt at the way the world is reacting to their preparations. These are people who are unfailing curious and polite to foreigners and just generally fun. I compare people in the mainland to people in Hong Kong, and although the former may be loud and push more in the subway, they are more real than their Western-influenced plasticized versions out here.

Yes it is true that there are human rights violations in China but there are human rights violations in Iraq and noone called for the US being banned from the Games. There are human rights violations on a massive scale in India too.

Nevertheless, I think Tibetans and whoever else, has the right to protest and we should continue to give them our ear. But the real victories are won quietly, often diplomatically, and all this brouhaha is only going to set back things.

Instead of harping on China, people might do better to watch out for Russia who has seized the opportunity provided by the world’s leaders being at the Olympics to push its defence of South Ossetia to invasion of Georgia.

De rigueur

In India, I have followed the route of a madman who ran down a street stabbing everyone in his path, sat in the bushes outside Bal Thackeray’s house staking out the politicians who paid a visit while the Congress government was teetering and braved the streets during a riot.

In Hong Kong, the most risky (risqué?) thing I have done as a journalist is venture out during a Typhoon 8 signal and get completely soaking wet (in a white shirt) in order to interview a couple of sailors who had conquered some of the toughest routes in the world in record time.

Ah well.