Be aware

"My ex-wife used to hit me," the six-foot tall former policeman told me. I nodded, hoping it would encourage him to talk more. He took the cue.

Good luck

I was visiting my friend's flat in the Mid-Levels when I noticed that her neighbour's door had a bright red square patch with the Chinese character for 'luck' written in gold stuck upside down.
"Why has your neighbour stuck the sign for good luck upside down?" I asked my friend. My friend is not Chinese, so she shrugged her shoulders.
"I don't know," she said. "I didn't even know it was upside down."
It struck me as very odd, but I forgot about it.

Then this morning, as I was sitting on the top floor of the bus in to work, I saw a bright red square patch with the golden 'Luck' written on it hanging from trees in Central. They were decorations for the Mid-Autumn Festival which happens towards the end of September. I remembered the upside down 'luck' sign again. Perhaps the ghostly spirit of Luck walks around buildings upside down, so it wouldn't get to read the red invitations to it unless the invites were also upside down? I imagined scores of lucky Chinese apparitions walking around apartment blocks upside down, feet on the ceiling, searching desperately for one door that they could make sense of. No wonder good luck was difficult to get.

"It's because the word for 'upside down', do jun, sounds the same as the word for 'arrival'. So you post it upside down for good luck to 'arrive'," Chinese Sad Associate explained when I asked her this morning.
"Poor Luck! It has to arrive upside down?" I said.

Even Luck seems to have difficulties in life. Ha.

Time out

"We'll see each other very soon, OK?" M. said as he hugged me at Chek Lap Kok airport this morning. He kissed me on the lips, then grimaced. "Eurgh!"
"It's the coffee and my lipstick," I said apologetically, holding up the paper cup which was sporting a rim of shiny pink lipgloss. He looked at the coffee, then kissed me again on the right cheek.
"Well, I'm going to skedaddle, and you should go to work now. That'll distract you," he said. I watched him go into the departure hall then took the lift down to the Airport Express platform. Hopefully this will be one of the last times we have to walk away from each other to be thousands of miles away.

Once I was on the train heading to Central, I slowly rolled about the lukewarm paper cup in my hand while thinking about how badly the weekend had gone. Oh, my parents were too uptight to yell and protest their opposition in front of M. They had been civilised and polite at the lunchtime meeting, leaving us to spend the rest of the afternoon hours by ourselves. But, as it is with supposedly innocuous one-night stands where the real madness of the situation surfaces the morning after, the temporary feeling of relief was replaced by a harsh conversation with my parents the next day.
"M. is not suitable to be your spouse," my dad said over breakfast. "He is too weak. Actually, this is probably because you are too outspoken and arrogant so you can only get someone who is weak. Your arrogance is probably the reason why you got into trouble at work."
"Dad, you don't know anything about my work. You shouldn't say things about my life that you don't know about," I said.
"See? You can't deal with your elders in the correct manner," my dad said. "Who says things like that to their own parents? And the other thing is, he is not ambitious enough. He doesn't have enough social standing, either. You'll probably have to work to support him."
"I don't know why you keep going out with weak boys like M.," my mother said. "Is it because you can't stand people of substance?"

My grandfather and I carried on eating in silence while my parents continued their tirade. There were so many thoughts swirling through my head, all forming ill-tempered exclamations against my parents' talk. Weak! Being a nice person doesn't make you weak! Not ambitious! Why would I end up supporting someone who earns the amount M. does? Social standing! Is he meant to be running for president? People of substance!!!

But my parents misinterpreted my silence as compliance, and started talking about spending the rest of the day at a nearby park.
"I'm going to the airport, actually," I said. My parents nearly fell off their chairs.
"Why?" my dad asked. "Your flight isn't until the evening. You don't need to be there until 5pm."
"I want to spend that time with M. and besides, he has my ticket," I said. My mum's expression blackened.
"Why can't you just see him at the airport at 5pm? Why does he have your ticket? Isn't he flying straight to America from Seoul?" she asked.
"No. He's flying back to Hong Kong with me," I said. My parents looked on angrily as I took my bags out to the hallway.
"Fine, get going with that... that man," my mum said.
"It's better this way, it looks like we'll be fighting the whole day if I stay any longer," I said.
"I'm telling you now, if you marry M., that's it. You'll suffer, and your children will suffer, too," my dad said. Both of them were standing in the hallway leading to the front door as I put on my trainers.
"I guess that means no one is going to take me to the airport? I mean, why are you two getting so angry?" I said.
"If you marry M., I'm not going to see you again," my mum said.
"You can do what you want. I have two more daughters, so I can disown you," my dad said. I said goodbye to my grandfather, who said, "Think again, child, it's an important matter. You can only get married once."

M. was very calm compared to me when I met him at the City Airport Terminal in Seoul and told him what my parents had said.
"I'm not suddenly going to change into the person your parents are looking for just because I meet with them," he said, matter-of-factly. "You shouldn't be so disappointed."
"I'm trying not to be," I said. "But does this affect you?"
"No, because this is really what I was expecting, more or less," he said. "But I'm worried about you, you seem really upset."
"I am," I said. "I am bitterly disappointed."

I called E. this afternoon. E. said it was just something we have to deal with over a longer period of time.
"Of course, your parents can't just say he looks OK when they've been so opposed to the marriage," she said. "They just need to see M. more to get to know him better. Like me."
"But what if they don't want to see him again?" I asked.
"They'll have to, once you tell them about the wedding plans," she said. I envisaged more elaborate, nonsensical arguments down the phone with my parents and could not suppress an enormous groan coming out.
"This is not going to work," I moaned. "They're bonkers."
"They have to come around at some point," E. said. "M. is such a great eligible bachelor, they will. And your parents have completely misunderstood what sort of person he is. I actually thought he could be quite the sly type. He could make a lot of money and not get stabbed in the back or fired."
"You don't need to convince me that he's a good catch, it's my parents you should be worried about," I groaned."What am I going to do?"
"Take some time out," she said. "Make sure you don't antagonise the situation further. It's probably best to keep quiet for now. And stop being so crestfallen, at least they've met M. now. You have to carry on with your efforts to convince them. You haven't changed your mind just because of what your parents said, have you?" she added, sharply.
"Of course not! Half of what they said doesn't make any sense, anyway," I said.
"Good. Then it's just time to wait. Things will work out," she said. "If it's the right thing to do, then people will follow the course of things."