河國榮, An Aussie in Hong Kong

Our little village has gone to the dogs; literally. Our up-door neighbours moved out several months ago because they couldn't handle being surrounded by dogs. Our own dogs bark but thankfully not incessantly but there are plenty of other dogs to make up for the silence.

In clock-face terminology, try to imagine this arrangement.

At 2 o'clock, a new neighbour has moved in and surprised us by laying claim to having not 3, not 5 but 13 dogs. Only four of them reside on the roof where we can see them. The other nine reside within their third-floor apartment. Three of the roof-residing dogs bark occasionally and who can blame them? Life on a walled-in roof can be pretty dull.

Count your lucky stars that you're not married to me. My wife has a hard time putting up with my idiosyncrasies, habits and overall behaviour. She puts up with it because she loves me. There's no other way she could stay married to me for these seventeen years.

Case in point: Tonight, I finished "Perfume" 香水 rehearsals (you remember, the play that you're all going to see because you just know it'll be great!) and was home in time for dinner. My wife though had spent the day out and wasn't home yet. It was also our maid's day off so there wasn't any dinner to speak of. I knew this in advance though and had already planned to order pizza from PizzaBox where I can always get a large pizza for half price as long as I pick it up myself. It's a good deal.

Getting him to the vet to get his rotting skin treated was a challenge. After giving the pup three sleeping tablets that the vet had given me, our visitor refused to sleep. In fact, he only displayed just a hint of drowsiness. Half an hour later as instructed by the vet, I gave him another two tablets. Now he was feeling sleepy but still refused to lie down. His survival mode was in full gear and there was no way he was going to let me put him into a car.

The following day, I talked to the vet and was given another seven tablets to try again. Back at home, I wrapped five of the tablets in cheese and gave them to the pup. An hour later, he was feeling the effect but was still in full control. I gave him the other two tablets and waited another half an hour.

A week and a bit ago, I received a phone call from a caucasian man (we'll call him J). He asked if I was Charles to which I replied 'yes'. Charles is my middle name. I use it frequently in Hong Kong because many local people have trouble pronouncing my first name Gregory. They usually see the g's and r's and assume that it's George. They never have trouble with Charles because everyone knows Prince Charles, so I use Charles to make things convenient for everyone depending on the situation.

Anyway, J told me that he recognised the pup and knew the owner. I was cautiously optimistic. I didn't want to get my hopes up to much just in case he had mistaken the identity of the pup. After all, a lot of dogs have one droopy ear and that's one of the things he based his claim on. J was busy that day so we organised to meet the next day.

My wife and I have been nominated as SPCA Angels for Animals this year. We will be talking about our pet and animal relationships at Tai Po on August 7, 2005.

I have made comments about the SPCA is past articles. Those comments are unfortunately true, but I have been able to talk to various people at the SPCA and have found out more about what happens at the SPCA and why with regards to abandoned animals. I'll write more about this later.

A couple of weeks ago, Jason was hit by a car. That's his name, Jason. We were trying to avoid naming him because it would mean that we'd end up keeping him, building an attachment to him that would be difficult to break. So instead of naming him, we were calling him "number 11" 「十一號」. It then occurred to me that this was worse than naming him because it inferred that he was going to be our eleventh dog, so we named him. I wanted to name him Lucky because I think he's been lucky to have met us, to have survived the screwworm flies and to have made it this far. My wife didn't like the name though so I asked her to come up with a name. She named him Jason.

We hadn't taken the time to train Jason on a leash. Actually, I had taken him out a few times on leash without any problems. He would tug hard in different directions, look back puzzled at the leash and then eventually realise that he wouldn't be getting away so he'd relax. Unfortunately, we normally take five dogs out at a time so adding Jason to the bunch was not an easy thing to do. I was ok with it because I'm a big guy but our helper wasn't up to the task. Nevertheless, Jason liked to follow us out on our daily walks.

A few weeks ago, I returned home with some of our children after taking them for their nightly walk. While taking their leashes off, they seemed very curious about something in one corner of the court area where our gas canisters are kept. A couple of the dogs even displayed sudden reactions to something that I could not at the time see in the dark that is night.

After letting the dogs through to the main garden area, I went back to take a look at the gas canisters. I was curious too and wanted to see what had them acting so unusually. It didn't take me long to spot the reason. A green snake was wrapped around the tap of the gas canister looking pretty scared. I guess I would be scared too if several dogs one hundred times as large as myself suddenly started poking their wet warm windy noses in my direction.

Overall, the weather here in Hong Kong has been dismal for the past six months. We've had much more rain than usual and blue skies have been rare. Unfortunately, even when we did have blue skies, they carried a heavy tinge of brown thanks to the increasing levels of pollution coming across from China. There's nothing we can do about the pollution except be grateful for the blue skies when they do appear.

Because blue skies are becoming rare, I sometimes spontaneously run off up the hills and mountains around Hong Kong to admire the view. This happened one fine day in the beginning of July when I took Batty and Siu Bak with me up a near by mountain. I took my camera with me too so I have a few photos to share.

Last week, we had an appointment with friends for dinner in Sai Kung. We left home early expecting to arrive in Sai Kung with plenty of time to look for a metered parking space (very hard to come by in Hong Kong) only to find ourselves at the end of a queue of slow moving cars waiting their turn for the round-about. We were almost to the round-about when we noticed something unusual in the driveway to the left of us; a small white rabbit.

It was clearly out of place and confused, skipping up and down the driveway, absolutely unsure of where to go. I immediately steered the car into the driveway and got out of the car wondering how I was going to catch the rabbit. As I approached the rabbit, guards in charge of protecting this very expensive home were wondering why an unauthorised car had parked in their driveway. As one of the guards opened the gate to request ("command" might be a better word) that I leave, I pointed to the rabbit upon which he closed the gate and left us alone.

I like this photo so much that I had to share it with everyone. This is 小白 ('little white'), our second dog.

In my home, we have a table, a chair, a bed, a sofa, a refrigerator, a television and many other household articles. If I hit them, they don't feel pain. If I drop them, they may break but they will not be aware of it. They are simply material objects.

In my home, there are five people. We eat. We live. We cry. We laugh. If someone hits us, we feel pain. If someone betrays us, we hurt. If we are injured in any way, we know. We are aware.

In my home, there are eleven dogs and one rabbit. They feel joy when we return home from a day's work. They feel hunger before a meal. They feel lonely when the people are not home. They feel apprehension when they have done something wrong and see me approaching. They envy those who sit close to us. They speak. They cry. They even shed tears.

The benefits of this play are many.

After completing part two of an interview with 大公報 at lunch time, and filming 奸人堅 today at TVB in the afternoon, and having 'dinner' at Starbucks this evening, I returned home with a goal in mind, one which I wasn't really sure I would actually complete. I often have goals in mind, and more often than not, they evaporate. This one actually happened: weight-lifting!

It has been years since I weight-lifted, but my dance routines in the play will look better if my tummy is flatter and stronger, and certain steps involving lifting Sompor 蘇芯寶 will be better performed if my muscles are tuned. I don't need nor desire big muscles. I simply need muscles adapted to and ready for rapid and strong movement.

Batty had x-rays a couple of weeks ago and hip dysplasia was not evident. He's on muscle relaxants until we can work out what his problem really is, but even with muscle relaxants, he still has difficulty sitting or lying down. When the vet comes back from holidays in his homeland Scotland, we'll look at other possibilities. Who knows? Maybe he really does have spline problems. We'll see.

My health is also being investigated. With my voice easily affected by two or three songs and feeling strained most of the day, I decided to get a professional opinion. When attending Kan's 莫鎮賢 official re-debut at Olympic City, I ran into Anders Nelsson (also a little interesting history about Anders here) and he recommended that I see an old school buddy of his; an ear, nose and throat specialist. At the doctor's clinic, I described the tightness around my throat, the raspiness after singing only two or three songs and the severe cramps I've experienced at the top of my throat over the last several months. He was surprised by the cramps and said that he'd never heard of these cramps in his thirty years of practice, and simply recommended that I find myself a good singing teacher. He was a very nice doctor but somehow I think his knowledge might be out of date. He did however say that my vocol chords were fine after looking at them through a mirror in my throat.

I feel like I'm living in an old people's home.

Four of our kids are on medication twice a day. We wrap the medication up in small strips of cheese so that we don't need to shove the medication down their throats and nobody gets defensive although the healthy guys do tend to look on despondently; "where's my treat?".

People sometimes ask me if looking after 11 dogs is expensive. Well, it is and it isn't. On average, we go through one 15kg bag of dog food each week which isn't too bad. The food cost doesn't scare us. The potential medical cost does.

Over the last month, all of our kids have had all of their shots including one for Heart Worm, a combo 5-in-1 shot, and yesterday the mandatory Rabies shot. Because we have 11 kids, we don't go to the vet. The vet comes to us. The home visit costs extra but everything gets done quickly and smoothly. Fortunately, the vet (and other vets in the past) is good to us; we don't usually have to pay full fee because they're aware that our kids are rescues, and that we have 11 of them.

Last year when melamine-spiked wheat gluten killed thousands of pets in the U.S.A., a list of pet food manufacturers was released by the F.D.A. What was interesting about that list was the fact that one or two manufacturers were producing multiple brands of pet food. Producing two or even three brands could be explained by a manufacturer wanting to produce an expensive specialty brand for vets to sell, a brand which in all likelihood contains little of the unhealthy content found in their other retail brands. But there can only be one reason for a manufacturer to sell more than two or three brands, and that is to dilute the brand awareness of competing manufacturers. (download the list and count the number of brands that Menu Foods manufactures)

I noticed that the brands we were giving our kids to eat were made by one of these multi-brand manufacturers, and I immediately began looking for smaller and hopefully more trust-worthy pet food manufacturers. I found a few. Unfortunately, they were all located in the U.S.A. without suppliers in Hong Kong.

One of our 'kids' is in hospital.

Beethoven follows me everywhere when I'm at home. At night before I go to bed, if I get up from my computer desk and move toward the bathroom, he notices and gets up to follow me within seconds. Except for last night.

Last night, I moved toward the bathroom and Beethoven didn't move. It wasn't until I came out of the bathroom that I noticed he hadn't followed me. I snapped by fingers which is usually enough to indicate to him that I'm going to bed, and he still didn't budge, so I examined him closer.

I'm feeling very tired.

Monday night, I took Beethoven to the 24-hour vet clinic in Mong Kok at one in the morning. I didn't get much sleep that night.

Yesterday before lunch, I was able to bring Beethoven home. He hadn't recovered fully but he seemed chirpier than the night before. The saline drip had definitely helped him. Unfortunately, he was still weak and refused to eat or drink. Last night, I watched him carefully, considering every minute whether to take him back to the hospital. His breathing was heavy and a little quick. I didn't get much sleep last night either.

My best friend has left us.

Yesterday while working in China, my wife called from the hospital to say that Beethoven was in a very bad way, and that he might not last much longer. Fortunately, our work in China had to stop earlier than planned, and I rushed back to Hong Kong to the hospital in Mong Kok.

Beethoven looked restful and relatively calm when I saw him. The hospital had increased his pain relief and he was feeling better. My wife had stayed with him all day and was extremely exhausted. I suggested that she return home while I stayed with Beethoven through the night. At the time, I felt he still had a chance of recovery.