It has been quite suffocating recently as both there are so many work at school and the renovation work of the new apartment is about to be completed. Anyway, Sandra and I are determined to move in the new apartment tomorrow although there are still many things incomplete. The scariest part was that Sandra was on a training trip and I have been working on my own. The whole world seems to collapse at the same time. Therefore I had to apply for sick leave last Tuesday as my body told me I could not take any more.

Before Sandra went for her training trip, we bought a brother for Choco. We had been discussing having a puppy for a long time. We would like to have a poodle like Choco. But we preferred one in darker colour. However, black poodle or dark brown poodle was not easy to find in pet shops.

One day when we passed by a pet shop, we found a dark chocolate poodle puppy in the window. We could not resist the temptation and went in. When we walked out of the pet shop, we were the parents of another poodle. We would like to name this one with something related to drink as Choco was a name reminding people of hot chocolate although Choco’s colour was similar to coffee, latte or toffee. If Choco was not named Choco, this new puppy would definitely be called Choco as he was dark chocolate in colour.

Black tea, cola, expresso, macchiato, etc. We had thought of many different names. Among all these, Cola was one Sandra and I both liked.

“How about Zero then? As this new puppy was so dark that the colour resembled cola. Interesting! I loved “Nightmare before Christmas” so much. The dog spirit of Jack Skellington was called Zero. Why not? Therefore we had a new member to our family Zero.

Choco Zero seems a kind of delicious drink. Zero is actually a very lively puppy. He asks everyone to play with him. He is also as greedy as Choco. Whenever there is food, there must be the silhouette of Zero nearby. But he is now raised in the pet shop as the new apartment is still under renovation.

I can’t wait to move in the new apartment. One of the reasons is that I would like to get rid of all the worries of my daily life. Another is that I hope to collect Zero as soon as possible. He is supposed to be primarily mine as Choco is primarily Sandra’s.

I find that students nowadays are quite heartbreaking as it seems that they have not acquired anything from their families. But at the same time they are quite adorable as they never hide their true feeling from you.

When I graded the proposals of S2 students’ projects, I burst into laughters several times. My colleagues asked me what had happened, I told them the reasons.

One group of students attempted to write down why their chosen topic interested them. They wrote down, “This topic is easier to find on the Internet.” I therefore remarked, “This is one of your reasons why you have chosen this topic. But this should not be the only reason which interests you. Perhaps you choose this topic because it is challenging to you.”

Another group answered the question of what tools you would expect to use to do the project. They chose to measure the shortest distance from the school hall entrance to the school logo high above the stage. Very challenging! Right? They only wrote down “measuring tape” without mentioning how they used the measuring tape. Should I be scared?

There was another group who tried to tell me their division of labour. There were four members in this group. The first member was in charge of giving suggestions to groupmates; the second, “searching information” (This was exactly what they had written down!); the third, correcting suggestions given to the group; the fourth and the last one, giving suggestions to the group. I could not help but laugh out loud. And at the same time my mouth was full of froth as if I were poisoned. How could this group be so honest to me? They told me that three of the four of them only did the bull session, leaving only one to do the whole project. Of course I asked them to redistribute their duties when I met them.

There is always room for the students to improve. Of course this is why they come to school. On one side, they really need someone to shape them or to help them build up some good habits. On the other side, they are only children. They are so creative. Of course their straightforwardness and daringness further enhance the sense of possibilities among them.

“Aren’t you cross at them,” asked one of my colleagues.

“Yes, I am. But you can’t deny that they are lovely.”

Tell me how I can be so harsh on them or how I can excoriate them without a grin at the corner of my mouth.

Choco is now sleeping on a heap of Sandra’s clothes. Before I put him down, I had embraced this little heartthrob for an hour telling him how adorable he was. All these happened after I went back from the airport seeing Sandra off for her European training trip.

Choco was obviously not in the mood the whole day. He looked sad. No matter how Sandra explained to him why she had to leave for a fortnight, Choco was still not himself. It was a busy day. Before we went for dinner with my parents, Sandra had been packing her luggage for the whole afternoon. We brought Choco with us to dinner.

“He looks sad,” my Mum said pointing at Choco over the dining table.

“Yes, he starts missing Sandra,” I told my Mum.

When we came back to our temporary apartment, Sandra checked up the content of her luggage one last time. Then she sat down on the settee playing her laptop and having a cigarette or two.

When it was time to leave, Sandra stood up and attempted to grab her handbag. At this moment, Choco rushed out from under the settee and sat on Sandra’s handbag. This caught both of us off-guarded.

“Choco, Mama has to leave. Mama only leaves for a fortnight,” Sandra told Choco. But Choco crouched down covering Sandra’s handbag. Sandra could not but grab Choco. He growled.

“Choco, please,” Sandra grabbed Choco up. When he was put down on the floor, Choco dashed back to Sandra’s handbag and this time he even buried his face into the plastic bag of clothes Sandra would bring with her on board.

The tantrum lasted for several more minutes with Choco growling at us. If he were a human, Choco should be bawling. Finally we got out of the apartment leaving Choco seeing us sadly.

“Who can have expected a pet like this? Choco makes me cry,” Sandra said on the taxi to the airport.

“Me too,” I pondered. As a man, I could not even show my feeling as directly as a dog. From no ground I could show it after Choco showed his.

Humanity to certain extent is too complicated. Why can’t we be simpler? Perhaps it is only a problem of mine.

Many people love children or they claim they love children. When the babies grow up and reach the age to enter primary schools. The children start talking back and having their own ideas. People start loving children less.

We love Choco. One of the reasons is that he never hesitates to express what he feels in front of you. He wants to eat. He wants to play. He wants to sleep. He wants you to hug him. He asks for your company. The most important of all is that he will not talk back. He cannot insist on his own ideas too as he totally relies on us to survive. Or simply we have complete control over him even he has his will. Choco is a walking 2-year-old baby. This wins him much adoration from all the people around us.

All these make me ponder on what we need or like. We all like the animalism instead of humanity. Why do we love Choco? We like his animalism and we also like our humanity or control over him. The same thing applies to children. Why do we love babies? We like their animalism and we also like our control over it. When they grow up, we start liking them less. It is simply because they have developed some humanity. We do not like humanity. It may seem pathetic. As humans, we do not like humanity. Isn’t this sarcastic? It is the free will which defines humanity. But it is also the free will which makes us dislike each other.

I ask myself whether I love Choco because he is one of the family members or because he is only a living thing I can control in my life. But this is also a question every one of us should ask ourselves. What are we? What defines us? Do we love ourselves because of what we dream or because of what we can control?

Choco is now sleeping under the settee behind me. He growls once or twice as he makes bad dreams. What an adorable walking baby!

I have been a fan of Apple since I bought my iMac. Frankly speaking, I am not a computer “nerd”. I am only an end-user. The world has already been full of experts who care for the next upgrading of hardwares. There should be someone who use whatever they have invented and ask for more. I am such a person. But I like the sense of holding the world in my hand wherever I am. (There are still some people especially the hardware guys thinking that they are the real people holding the world in their hand. Whatever!)

The graphic of iMac and the interface of iMac are superb. I can drag the picture of certain webpage to the desktop to copy the image. My colleagues ask me to use Keynotes of iWork to do even their presentation. I once bought a kit to upgrade the operation system and all Apple’s softwares installed in my iMac. I put the one-and-only-one disc in my iMac. Within 10 minutes, every upgrade was done leaving all other softwares and files intact. It was so carefree. It seems that I am drowned in the abundance of handiness created by Apple.

Later I bought my first iPod. I went to gym with it. I found it a good mate whenever I wanted to be alone with my own world. To further my indulgence, I bought an iPhone 4. Then came the real addiction. iPhone is not a cellphone. It is a tiny palmtop. I can get access to the Internet wherever I am and whenever I like. On one hand, I become more autistic. On the other, I feel secure because I really have access to the world of information at all times. Some people like installing games in their iPhones. I like installing the apps of museums and books in my iPhone. It is the feeling that I own a part of the collections in Louvre which makes me shivering with satisfaction. I have also joined MobileMe which enables me sync my calendar and share any files on the web, my iMac and my iPhone. Life is simple and easy in a blink.

My addiction has obviously affected Sandra. But as she travels a load to Mainland China, she has to keep her two-number-SIM card. This means that iPhone cannot quench her thirst for being “i” and she can only envy of my indulgence of “i”.

Before she set off for Europe for a fortnight, I bought her an iPad. Since she owned her “i”, she has been iPadding whenever she likes. The world of apps really fascinates her. Sandra’s problem is not being autistic like me. I think hers is attention-deficit/hyperactivity one. She needs several different things always ready around to attract her or to keep her occupied. Therefore the ownership of iPad is really something to her. She has already synced her calendar on MobileMe and is certified “i” in progress.

Sandra and I plan to go to sign up a 3G plan for Sandra’s iPad today. Then our metamorphosis of “i” will be completed. The world will become so large that there will be no limit and at the same time so small that it is contained in a size not greater than a piece of A4 paper.

PS: There are other choices than Apple’s products. They can also help you complete your metamorphosis of “i”. But Apple’s design is so carefree that I rank other brands lower in the list. Bite me!

The old lady stumbled slowly across the podium garden. She walked past my mother and her friends, who were playing Taichi, until she reached the bushes of bougainvillea. Then the old lady took a piece of garment out of her pocket.

It was a piece of underpants, supersize one! It should be the underpants of this old lady!

My mother and her friends were stunned and could not believe their eyes. The old lady put her hand into another pocket and took out something from it.

They were two laundry clips! The old lady bent two branches of the bougainvillea so that she could clip the seamed sides of her wet underpants on the two branches, one on each branch. The outcome was a masterpiece. It shaped like an English letter “H” with the pants as the horizontal stroke. Contented with her masterpiece, the old lady stumbled away from the scene, leaving my mother and her friends picked their jaws from the floor.

An estate security guard was coming over checking if there was any irregularity. One of my mother’s friends asked him over and told him everything they saw.

“Did all of you see her hanging the underpants?” asked the security guard.

“Yes,” my mother and her friends replied in unison.

“But…” hesitated the security guard.

“What?” asked another one of my mother’s friends.

“It is inappropriate for me to tear the old lady’s underpants down,” confessed the security guard. (I could not help laughing upon hearing to this part of my mother’s story. She continued.)

“You can ask a lady security guard to tear the pants down,” suggested the third friend of my mother.

I do not the ending of my mother’s story. There are no needs. I only know that the whole story is eye-opening. Why did the old lady only hang one pair of underpants? Were the pair of underpants her only pair? What did she react when she saw her underpants missing? Perhaps she stared at the hollow of her original state of art wondering who had stolen her worn out underpants. No one knows whether we should be angry or sympathetic.

But one thing I can be sure. Next time when I walk through the park or the podium garden, I will check if there is any national flag of some old lady hanging over the branches of the bushes. I do not want to walk under any underpants.

There are different kinds of changes since August.

Sandra and I have sold our apartment and bought a new one. We applied for mortgage and at the same time tidied up our financial entanglement. We started planning the renovation work of the new apartment. But in between we searched for a temporary one. Finally we have moved in to the present temporary apartment which we find not going well with both of us. What could we ask for? The owner is so nice to offer us a short term contract.

A new principal has come to our school. She is obviously not the type I used to work with. But as I have said, changing leader is also a kind of changes we have to deal with in our life. I teach S2 Mathematics which I have taught for ages and I have to work with a group of new colleagues, S5 Mathematics core curriculum and extended curriculum both of which are new, S6 and S7 Mathematics & Statistics which are left behind by Mr Wong who has been promoted to the Principal of another school, and lastly S5 English/Chinese/Mathematics Enhancement the students of which come from different classes and I have to give them something parallel and in pace with their learning progress. The core part and the extended part of S5 Mathematics are combined in a weird way. 19 out of 40 students take both the core and the extended parts. The remaining 21 only take the core part. I have to split the class into two in certain periods. This doubles my preparation work and also tests my capacity to manage my classroom instructions.

There are some other changes. I have no choice. I can only leave my temporary apartment in a mess as I have no extra energy to finish all the daily household chores. I know there must changes in our life. But I did not expect there could be so many at the same time. I have no time to do any self-pity. At this moment, I am working on the electrical appliances we have to buy for our new apartment for some of them should be built in and require to be delivered to the new apartment shortly.

“Honey, wake up,” Sandra puked me in my sleep.

“What?” I barely opened my eyes.

“I think we have been locked inside our room,” Sandra told me.

“What?” I was a little bit awake because of what she said.

“We are locked inside the room,” Sandra repeated. I woke up and checked the bedroom door. It was locked. The lock was broken inside. No matter how I turned the door knob, the lock was deadly still.

“Isn’t it spooky?” Sandra suggested. Since we moved in this temporary place, everything was not alright. The apartment was old. The cupboard was broken. The drainage was broken. The door lock was broken too! “How about using a card?”

“Let’s try it.” I grabbed some plastic card and tried to slide open the door. But the lock was not designed to be slid open from inside. “Can I smash the door open?” I pondered. But there was no place for me to lever any force as the bedroom was too small.

“What can we do?” Sandra asked. There was no phone inside the bedroom as we could not find the LAN phone set after we moved here. We had not brought our cellphones inside the bedroom as the following day was a holiday. We had neither paper nor pen. We had neither any hard object nor tool.

“The gate has been bolted. The apartment door has been locked. We have been blocked from outside by three locks.”

“How about crying for help?”

“Yes! Open the window and cryl for help! We have no choice.” It was one o’clock in the morning. Our cry would be very shocking. We rushed to the window, opened it but hesitated for a moment.

“Are there anyone around? We need some help,” Sandra cried hesitantly.

“It isn’t time for subtlety,” I interjected, turned to the street lit by the streetlight and shouted with full throttles, “Help! Help! Help!”

Sandra joined in. Two persons ran out of the building on the ground and shouted something back but there was no way we could get what they said.

“We are locked inside our bedroom. There is no phone. Could you call the police?” I cried.

Some flashlight was dancing from a few stories below. A head or two poked on the window pane.

“Kids? Do you have any contact number of your relatives? Tell me and we call them for help!” the people a few stories below asked.

“Yes, please call 24XXXX53. Tell them we are locked inside and need help,” Sandra shouted.

“Have they just called us ‘kids’?” I asked Sandra.

“Really? I don’t think so,” Sandra said. There was babbling outside our apartment.

“Are there anyone outside?” I shouted through the tiny gap between the bedroom door and the door frame.

“Do you need help?” a very faint voice shouted back two doors and a gate behind.

“Yes, we are locked inside our bedroom. There is no phone. Call the police please!” I shouted back.

“Alright! Give us some time,” the faint voice shouted back. Finally! We were connected to outside.

One minute after another passed. We lost track of time mainly because we did not want to make ourselves nervous. Our cellphones in the living room rang. Our LAN phone in the living room rang too. But no way we could get access to them.

Choco growled. Someone banged on the gate. I shouted to them. They said they were working on the locks of the gate and the apartment door. We grabbed Choco into our arms and soothed him. There was noise inside the apartment. Choco started barking.

“Wait a few more minutes! We are now inside,” my brother’s pacifying voice was heard. As he finished his sentence, the bedroom door was opened. Choco dashed outside, barked on everyone on site and fled under the couch immediately.

“Thank you!” We went outside to get the fresh air although the air was not fresher in the living room. There were the locksmith, my brother, my father and the head of the security guards. We thanked everyone repeatedly for how long we had no ideas at all and paid the locksmith.

After the security guard and the locksmith were gone, my father and my brother looked at us and could not help laughing.

“What?” I asked.

“The guy in the phone call said that there were two kids locked inside the bedroom and asked if we could get contact to their parents. I had hardly thought his call serious,” my father told us and my brother was laughing.

“Really? Yes! They called me kid when I cried for help,” I explained.

“When your brother and I came over, the guards and the neighbours kept telling us that there were two kids locked inside the bedroom. We denied that you two were kids. But the guards said that they received many reports of two kids being locked inside the bedroom,” my father told us.

We were completely gobsmacked. It was a quarter past two. We thanked my father and my brother again and told them to go home “earlier”.

My father and my brother left. But it was impossible for us to sleep after all these. One of our topics was what we would probably face in the morning.

“What will the neighbours say when they find out that we are no kids?”

“That will not be disastrous enough. What if the neighbours point at us and say, ‘They are the parents who keep the kids locked inside the bedroom.’”

This was the first time in my life I desperately felt hopeless and could do nothing except waiting for the other people to help.

Hong Kong people like everything high in calcium and low in fat. Since they started being aware of the intake of calcium, “hi-cal low-fat” has become some kind of fanatic mania. But what we actually need is low in animal fat only.

I forgot to buy milk yesterday. (I love milk and egg. There must be eggs and milk in my refrigerator.) I ran down to 7-Eleven to buy milk. When I approached the shelf, I was shocked. I could not find my type of milk. I usually bought skimmed milk. But there were only variety of hi-cal low-fat milk or ordinary milk on the shelf.

Fact 1: Animal fat is not good for health. If you have chance, you should skip all the animal fat. If you buy milk, go for skimmed milk. It is much better than full cream.

Fact 2: Everyone needs calcium. Otherwise, you will suffer from osteoporosis. However, not any kind of calcium is easy for digestion. Calcium carbonate is cheap in price and you can find it as an ingredient in most calcium supplement. However, calcium carbonate is not easy for digestion. Calcium citrate is a choice other than calcium carbonate. It is much easier to digest.

Fact 3: We need Vitamin D to absorb calcium. Vitamin D can be produced by our bodies if we are exposed in sunshine. Of course, fish oil is another source of Vitamin D.

Fact 4: Calcium may not be stable as a food addictive. It requires other additives to stabilise it in food. Those extra additives may not be needed by our bodies.

Fact 5: There is enough calcium in milk. There are no needs to add extra calcium into milk unless you have special requirement on calcium intake.

Fact 6: Even if you add more calcium into milk, it does not mean that you can absorb the extra calcium in it. The cost used to add calcium into milk is not justified by the absorption of the extra calcium.

I had no choice. I picked up a packet of “Hi-Cal Low-Fat” and studied the list of ingredients. OUT OF MY SURPRISE, THERE WERE AROUND 10 INGREDIENTS IN THE MILK. ALL OF THEM WERE UNNECESSARY ADDITIVES TO THE BODY BUT FOR STABILISING THE ADDED CALCIUM. I put the packet back on the shelf immediately in case it contaminated my hand. I was more determined to buy skimmed milk next time. Having no choice, I picked up a packet of ordinary milk and studied the list of ingredients.

“Fresh Cow’s Milk, Pasteurised & Sterilised.”

This was milk, genuine milk. If there were no other choices, even full cream milk was much better than “hi-cal low-fat”. Who would like to ingest 9 more other unwanted chemicals along with the milk? If I could survive from osteoporosis, I would probably die because of kidney malfunction caused by processing the extra additives in “hi-cal low-fat” milk.

Hong Kong is not a place for pets, especially dogs. When compared to Shanghai and other cities in China, Hong Kong is in general afraid of any kind of contact between humans and animals. This is quite a weird development among all the well-developed cities and countries in the world. Many people in Hong Kong have redirected their anger to irresponsible pet owners to their pets instead without any logical reasoning. No matter how crowded Hong Kong is, human is only part of the mother nature. Pets may not be considered as natural beings as they are raised by people. But they are also facts. How can a father ask his child to love the nature if the child does not have chance to know how to care for an animal? Pets give children (and even adults) a good and irreplaceable opportunity to know about sickness and even death in life.

I have learned this since I started having Choco around. I find that many places prohibit the entrance of dogs. Sandra and I have moved from our previous apartment partly because the estate prohibits dogs. Ridiculous! How about cats and birds? How about goldfish? People get rid of their fish into the toilet bowl. This causes biological contamination. Therefore, we should educate the people instead. We have to educate people how to raise pets responsibly and also educate people how to live with animals and people with animals. After all, we are all animals. Some of us are not less animalistic than the animals in the wilderness.

I put Choco in the pet bag and went to visit my parents. (My parents love Choco so much. Well, he is really adorable.) When I went into the lift lobby of the building my parents were living, the guard stopped me and said that the estate did not allow people to raise pets. I protested that I was not living there and I only brought my dog to visit my parents because they loved my dog so much. The guard asked me to see the sign in the lobby and said that there were rules prohibiting pets in the estate.

“This is not a pet in this estate! Are you sure what the rules say? Do the rules prohibit estate residents to raise pets or prohibit pets of outsiders appearing in the estate? I am now going to take the lift to my parents’ apartment. When I come down after dinner, I need to see a copy of your so-called rules of the estate explicitly saying that I have no rights to bring my dog to see my parents. If I see no sign of such copy, I reserve the rights to issue a lawyer’s letter to you (I am pointing at the guard at the time being!) and the management company.”

The guard shut his mouth up. My parents also felt infuriated when they heard my story. When I went downstair after dinner, I saw no copy of such ridiculous rules and the guard spoke nothing of nonsense again. Of course I did not issue any lawyer’s letter at all. But this incident reminded me how unjust people turned into when they talked about something unfamiliar.

Pets are also symbols of civilisation. To deny them, one also denies one’s humanity.