there's still some shock lingering on

On the third day of the Lunar New Year, I had some time to kill so I headed to a mall. Little did I know that I would encounter what would probably be the most horrible thing to ever be witnessed. Am I being overly dramatic? Well you can decide after you read my accurate report of exactly what happened. This post is not based loosely on a true story but it is indeed a true real life experience that happened to yours truly (and a bunch of other innocent victims).

So here goes:

Skip to the best part and I’m lining up for the bathroom. In Hong Kong, it is common practice to linger around for 15 minutes before you enter a stall. No, I’m kidding. The harsh reality is that you cannot ever pee without having to line up for 15 minutes. NOWHERE. Unless the toilet in your own home. But then again, people here live with such large families that you probably have a waiting line also.

Anyways, back to my story.

So I’m waiting in line trying to hold my breath (yes for 15 minutes) and this lady rushes in and totally ignores all lining-up-ers. I’m fourth in line and the ladies before me tell that woman to go line up. She (the one who tried to cut the line) held up a white square packet which looked like a sanitary pad and said, “Oh I need to change my pad!” And then the ladies in front of me said, ‘Well, you should still line up…we all need the toilet too.” And then what the lady said next shocked me and I think I will remember her words till the day I die.

She said…

”Oh I don’t need the toilet. I can just stand in the corner and change my pad.”


At that point my eyes were so wide my eyeballs could have dropped out. And I abruptly turned my head around the other side. Before I could regain consciousness, I believe I had uttered, “Oh Goodness…trust the people from the strong nation to do such a thing” (because that lady spoke mandarin and was presumably from mainland China — aka the Strong Nation).

Then something even more unfortunate happened.

The toilets in Hong Kong are rather small and when I turned my head around I was faced with a wall of MIRRORS where the basins and taps were. Oh GOD. And I saw that lady. Changing. Her. Sanitary. PAD. Fuck that shit. I had nowhere to look and so I literally stared into the lady who was lining next to me. We both exchanged looks of horror. I said “Sorry, I don’t know where to look….so I’m just going to look at you.”

it was pretty much like this…

AND THEN THE WORST OF THE WORST HAPPENED. (You’re probably thinking, yeah right, what could be worse??)


That I’m-just-gonna-pull-my-panties-down-and-unhygienically-freak-everyone-out-by-putting-my-bloody-vajayjay-on-show lady just walked out like nothing had happened. AND I SWEAR THERE WAS NO WATER SOUND. She did not wash her hands.

Oh my goodness.

Just writing about this makes me shiver….talk about re-traumatizing. But I doubt anyone has witnessed such craziness that I must report it. And if you’re reading this and realize that you’ve changed pads in public, I strongly suggest you do so in the privacy of a bathroom with closed doors.

Just imagine if she was using a tampon instead. OMFG.

I hope you all had a more normal Chinese New Year.

women helping women, or not really?

I’m on Youtube and I see a link “What to wear for your Body shape!” and I click into it. I watch the whole video but I’m still not sure exactly what my body shape is, so I read the description and there’s a link to find out your body type.

And so I click and the questions are kind of like these:
Where is your fat most stubborn?
Which body part are you most unhappy with?
If you ate a whole chocolate cake, where does the weight all go to?
Do you have a protruding belly, big thighs or broad shoulders?

And then I closed the damn window. Seriously? Why do people always assume that every woman is not happy with their body?

If I ate a whole chocolate cake, (first of all — I probably wouldn’t do that), but if I did, I don’t think the weight would suddenly pile on overnight. I’m not going to wake up and scream, OH YOU BLOODY CAKE!

And I have a slightly protruding belly, I don’t really have big thighs, I have a normal looking shoulder, I have excess meat on my waist when my jeans are too tight. But so what? Does that make me horrible and unlovable? Does that mean I have to swear an oath never to eat chocolate cake anymore? Or that I must MUST always wear dark colours because it’s slimming? HELL NO.

You know, it’s easy to blame men and say that they objectify women as sex objects and always want a hot women — but the real problem is women ourselves. Women are way more harsher than men in judging appearances. Most men I know like girls without makeup. Most women I know would die before walking outside with no makeup on. Men see cleavage and they’re rather happy (sorry to simplify you men like that, I know you’re all capable of intelligent reasoning too). Women HAVE cleavage but complain about their stomach, arms, cheekbones, butt…yada yada.

So, I would like every women out there to GIVE YOURSELF A COMPLIMENT. You don’t have to wait for others to say something nice about you in order to feel good. You don’t have to compare yourself to celebrities or models. Give yourself a compliment today.

Life dishes up way too much shit already. Don’t shit on your own plate. :)

That’s my love message for the day. xx

Food for thought: Celebrities who have what you consider to be the “perfect body” are also susceptible to depression, cancer, drugs, divorce and other problems. Looking beautiful doesn’t make your problems go away. Feeling beautiful though, makes you feel good about yourself and self-esteem is linked with greater life satisfaction and longer life expectancy. You only get this one life here, love it. 

Funding, science and egos

Autism is to have a new definition. So will Asperger’s and other developmentally related deficiencies. Is this good or bad? The psychiatrists offering advice say they are taking into account social, political and scientific aspects of a definition. One can only hope that these have indeed been the motivations behind the current proposed redefinitions: that they haven’t, in fact, resulted from academic in-fighting, battles for resource allocation or clashes of the sorts of titan egos that tend to domin
ate in science, even when it’s conducted in the public interest. After all, at the end of the day, the definitions are valuable only if they meet one very basic, if somewhat pedestrian, criterion: getting kids who need help the best help that exists. All the rest, however fascinating, is just talk.

A cartoon of a Science Warrior tromping all over town…

So, apparently it was black friday

Last week was Black Friday and it was probably the blackest day for me. And while I wade in my own self-pity, do realize that they’re just first world problems.

1. I ate a fake chicken panini. They put iceberg lettuce in it and I could not tell whether it was chicken or canned tuna (not intending to sound like Jessica Simpson, but the “meat” was seriously so mushy and flavourless that I just couldn’t tell what it was). But I ate it because it cost me $42 HKD. And that’s expensive. (Not really, but then again, I’m cheap).

2. I then proceeded to go to my favourite nail polish store (which was RECOMMENDED by a certain magazine) and I bought 3 bottles of O.P.I. polish. I was super excited all day about my new colours and when I got home I realized they were FAKE opi. Being the scientist that I am, I hopped online and did a thorough investigation and have concluded that they are fake. DAMN it.

3. I flipped on the TV hoping to find something that would cheer me up. Some music award show was on and this gay singer who couldn’t sing nor dance was getting 3 awards and he was singing and dancing horrible. Then another gay looking guy came up and received the award for “Best female artist.” Wait, wait, wait….FEMALE?? Apparently yes. I got faked a third time.

This was the “female” that faked me.

4. Feeling really humiliated because I was continuously faked all day, I reached for a box of chocolate. I popped it into my mouth and waited for that glorious feeling to submerge me. Nope. Something was wrong. I could taste…what was that taste? White chocolate? Maybe it has a white chocolate filling? Nope. That wasn’t it. What was that taste? FOUL. That’s what it was. Expired milk. That’s what it was. I ran into the kitchen and spat it out. EW. Why….why chocolate? Why are YOU also fake???

There you go. That’s my pool of self-pity. Haha. I’m just joking, I wasn’t really feeling sorry for myself but it just coincidentally all happened in one day and on Black Friday too! What an awesome blog post (if I say so myself). HA.

How was your Black Friday?

"It goes without saying..."

"If it goes without saying, then why do you say it?" — Charlie Brown.

This is one of my favourite quotes. It just sums up the irony that is the bullshit drummed into us every day, every corner of our lives. 

Just take today, whilst attending a class for Professional Ethics, here’s what I read:

"Women who have unintended pregnancies, or abortions, have a greater likelihood of having previously engaged in unprotected sexual intercourse (Insert: a bunch of "researchers" and date of publishing)."

ARE YOU SERIOUS? Some dudes sat around thinking, HEY! Let’s get some dumbass bullshit published in a respectable scientific journal!

But wait, it gets better because the next line reads (and I quote):

"One explanation for this pattern is that involvement in problem behaviours follows definite pathways in which specific factors place the individual who has participated in one behaviour (e.g., unprotected sexual intercourse) at risk of initiating another (e.g., unintended pregnancy), which in turn puts that person at risk for another event (e.g., abortion) (Insert: some more weed-smoking, high-fiving "researchers" and date of publishing)."

WHAT?! So that’s the sequence…Oh My God (in the voice of Janice from FRIENDS). I had no idea that I had to have a pregnancy before I could have an abortion. And I certainly did NOT know that unprotected sex puts me at risk of becoming pregnant!

See, that’s how much we can learn….all in a few hours. 

What a lovely Saturday night I’m having….learning about Professional Ethics and having read almost all the articles on Google News and then decides to look at what would happen if a client informed me that she wants to have an abortion and THIS IS WHAT I FOUND…and it’s under the American Psychological Association guidelines and reports regarding what else but “Abortion”. DUDE. I could not have used my time any better.

Happy Saturday.

The upside of having a million people around you at all times

Hong Kong has a population of seven million people. And a land mass of just 426 square miles. Which is rather shocking, if you ask me. But as everyone always complain of how tightly packed and squishy it is here (I am guilty - I hate people crowded places), I decided to brighten up my day and also yours by letting you know the upside of having a million people around you AT ALL TIMES.

1. You can be as aggressive as you want and push anyone you want just to get somewhere. And if that person turns around and gives you a stare like “Hey, watch it, don’t push”, you can just put on the same disgusted expression and look to your left, making it seem like that innocent man in the square glasses pushed you both. Aww….. isn’t that something?

2. There’s just about so many people that there’s always someone uglier than you. So you can walk around town with no makeup, a T-shirt with holes in it, and unwashed hair and feel absolutely normal, if not a little pretty.

3. You always, ALWAYS must wait at least half an hour before you can even get into a decent restaurant. However, they say that anticipation is almost better than the real thing and all this waiting makes the meal just that much more delicious (even if it’s your own brain playing tricks on you to solve your cognitive dissonance).

4. People watching is way better in a super densely populated place. If you just stood still for 10 minutes (which NOBODY in Hong Kong would EVER do that - because everyone is in a rush to … I have no idea where) you would see unthinkable things happening right before your eyes. You would see high schoolers in uniform making out (or even having sex under the street lamp if it’s Christmas eve). You would see 60 year old ladies dressed in outfits that would only be legal on a toddler. You would see men, MEN, in jeans tighter than Pamela Anderson’s clothes and hair gelled more aggressive than Elvis Presley’s. You would also probably see a Chinese tourist mother holding out her son over the corner of the street peeing, yes PEEING…INTO A BOTTLE. Well, you’d see a lot more but that’s just some stuff I’ve seen.

So there you go. Four awesome reasons why you should cheer amongst the crowds right this minute. Everyone, enjoy the first week of the year!