What the F*** (Literally)

The Queen of Crab has returned. Hide, all ye small people, for she will trample on your puny bones and squeeze your little fingers.

No morning coffee yet - thus she is ready to explode. Why, she asks, waving her diamond tiara in the air ("Are those real diamonds?" ask her friends, who know her to be a cheapskate), do women feel that they should make noises during s6x when they are not enjoying it?

Q. C. had just laid down her royal head on the pillow last night when she heard something that made her doubt her ears. It was coming from the other side of the building, but it sounded so close, it was almost as if she was in the same room.

"Ah.... Ah ah ah ah ah...AAAAAHHHHHH...Ah...Ah.. AH..." (that was the charwoman).
"Ugh..Ugh..Ugh..Ugh..Ugh.." (that was the woodcutter).

Q.C. threw off her heavy eiderdown with a massive sigh of exasperation. Did she really have to spend the night up listening to her subjects fornicating? The grandfather clock had already struck twelve - shouldn't they be turning into potatoes or some other type of vegetable? As she sat there, smoke coming out of her imperial ears, she realised the charwoman was definitely sounding out of rythmn with the woodcutter. For example:

Woodcutter: Ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh (steady 4/4 beat at an even tone)
Charwoman: Ah, ahahahahahah, ah (6/8 beat complete with rising crescendos)

Now, why was this so? Could it be that the woodcutter and the charwoman were not working in tandem? Could it be that they were dubbing two different p8rn films? Could it be hell. She was tempted to throw a cat/dog/hippopotamus out of the window and scream, "Get a room!" but then she realised that was the problem, they already had a room.

Then everything went silent for two minutes.

End of two minutes. The charwoman was at it again - but this time you could only hear the woodcutter every now and then. Surely this wasn't right. The Queen shook her head as she came down to her royal conclusion: the charwoman was faking it. The charwoman was coming to her ff crescendo - and no doubt the woodcutter was thinking the s6x was really hot and he was coming out as Mr. Schl8ng. This was a farce. Q.C. decided she would write a note to the charwoman to tell her to buy 'The Joy of S6x', a couple of toys and get a new woodcutter. Or at least tell the woodcutter he wasn't cutting it for her.

Q.C. is as miffed as hell that she was robbed of her sleep, no matter that it was only for half an hour or so. She also has a headache. So get out of her way.

Being Intelligent, Tolerant, Charming and Happy

I have this suspicion that M. thinks I am always on the verge of shedding my girlie outfits to become a full time, armour-clad, Boaddicea of feminism. I suppose I do give him some cause for concern - for example, my aversion to all things 'cute'. This undignifying label is something I attribute to a wide range of things - wearing pink, Hello Kitty accessories and Meg Ryan films to name a few.
"If we have a daughter and she likes cute things like Hello Kitty and pink lace, would you beat her up?" he asked, once. I resisted the urge to say the choice number of things that I felt ("No daughter of mine is going to wear pink!" "Yes, and some." "I would consider her retarded, possibly - who can like Hello Kitty and be normal?") and instead said, "Well, I suppose we'd have to respect her choices." M. isn't one to be played for the fool, but instead of questioning my dubious answer he just shook his head.

This morning he was knitting his eyebrows over my choice of reading material. I suppose it might be somewhat alarming to a man if his girlfriend reads books with titles that have the word 'bitch' in them. Last weekend when I had finished The Bitch in the House he had asked me, "So are you now going to hate me because I'm a male and I oppress all women?" (to which I had prudently answered, "No dear, you are definitely more enlightened than most men. And I believe in judging on a case by case basis."). Today he asked, "Why do you have to read all these books about angry women?" when I'd told him I'd finished reading Why Men Love Bitches. "Actually this book is not about angry women, the title really is more tongue-in-cheek than that," I said. "It just makes me angry about women, as a matter of fact."
"Why?" he asked.
"I didn't know women were capable of being so sappy," I said.
"Why read books that make you angry? Find something that will make you happy," he said. But I persisted.
"For example, there's a story about this woman who makes a four course meal for her boyfriend and he cancels at the last minute. Do you know what she does?"
"What?" he asked.
"She goes over to his house the next day, and then makes him the same four course meal! For someone who stood her up! It's crazy!"
"Well, maybe he was working," M. pointed out.
"He could have called earlier. You would have called earlier," I said.
"True. But don't you want to do nice things for me? Is that bad?"
"Of course I want to do nice things for you, dear. I'm not saying that. Look, there are these women who rack up huge bills because they pay for their boyfriends while on holiday and their boyfriends never pay them back," I continued.
"Now that's wrong," M. said emphatically. "Some women really need to learn to stand up for themselves."
"See. If I have a daughter I'm going to put her through self-confidence training," I said.
"OK," M. said. I am so proud of him, honestly. He's dealing with my inner-Boaddicea really well.

We should change the meaning of the word, 'bitch'. I personally do not like the term and would never consider it flattering. Isn't it meant to refer to a female animal? From the two books I've read over the past week (oh the veritable fountain of knowledge that I am) I suspect that the term 'bitch' really should be used to refer to women who know what they want and how to get it. I propose therefore that the word becomes an acronym standing for "Being Intelligent, Tolerant, Charming and Happy". Be a B.I.T.C.H. rather than a doormat, ladies.

The message of moon cakes

I was given a moon cake for breakfast today by a colleague. It is rude to say no to these things, especially when she had saved it from a dinner at a renowned Chinese restaurant, so I said a hearty thank you and proceeded to bite into the egg-custard and duck egg mix wrapped in pastry as if it was manna from Heaven.

The pastry for these round little things is made with flour, syrup, eggs and rice wine, left to harden for about six hours or so and then stuffed with the traditional mix of lotus seed paste and two duck egg yolks. The combination is then moulded on a wooden mould carved with decorations, glazed and baked. Every self-respecting bakery or restaurant in Hong Kong sells boxes of these heavy pastries during the run up to the Mid-Autumn Festival - even Starbucks offers up its own variety: Espresso Mooncakes. The artery-clogging mix of egg, egg and more egg usually means that the more weight-conscious ladies divide up each moon cake into quarters to share with friends. I try to aim for the yolk-less quarter. Somehow the combination of savoury and sweet does not appeal to my palate and the lotus seed mix is too dry for me.

Why, I mused as I stopped to peer into the inside of my own moon cake to check I was singling out the egg yolk parts, do Chinese people eat moon cakes?

There are at least three different legends I've uncovered. The first is the so-called historical one, which is that the moon cakes were used to pass on secret messages amongst the Chinese rebels to mobilise them successfully in an uprising on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month against the then ruling Mongols in the Yuan dynasty (A.D. 1280 - 1376, or 1368, depending on your source). The Han Chinese then went on to establish the Ming dynasty and their descendants eat the moon cakes on that same day every year to celebrate that fact.

The second depicts the story of Chang-Er, the Moon goddess. There are so many variations of this story I can only sum up the gist of them - that Chang-Er drank her husband's elixir of life (which was his reward for shooting down nine sinister moons that had appeared to terrorise the Earth) and was banished to the Moon to live with a furry rabbit (the furry rabbit has another legend of its own). Chang-Er is the beautiful lady in an extravagant costume depicted on many thousands of boxes of moon cakes sold in the shops.

The third story is about the furry rabbit, who is better known as the Jade Rabbit. He offered himself as a sacrifice to feed three fairies who had disguised themselves as beggars, and as a reward for his kind-heartedness the fairies allowed him to live in the Moon palace, where he became known as the Jade Rabbit. He is sometimes depicted as pounding the elixir of life with a pestle and mortar.

It is surprising that none of the stories I have learned about have a link to the fact that this is the harvesting season. I had assumed (probably influenced by my knowledge of Korean culture) that I would find something pointing to an ancient agricultural society. The Koreans celebrate chusoek or han-gawi around this time of year, which is very clearly a harvesting festival dating back to the Kokuryo dynasty (B.C. 19 - A.D. 18). The second thing to note is the story of the rabbit. In Korean folklore, the Moon is often depicted as the home of a rabbit making rice cake by pounding at a pestle. I didn't expect to find a mention of a rabbit in Chinese folklore as well. Then I remembered a conversation from my childhood with my mother about rabbits. I had told her I liked the White Rabbit in 'Alice in Wonderland'.
"They have red eyes," my mother said. "They look strange."
"They don't have red eyes!" I said, never having seen a live rabbit at that age but still disturbed at the thought of a red-eyed animal.
"Yes they do. The white ones do," said my mother firmly. "They're strange."

Rabbit or no rabbit, I need to finish the remaining half of my moon cake, but I've come to the yolky part.