Out Of The Blue, A Telephone Call

Sitting in Saint’s Alps teahouse, a taiwanese bubble tea and noodle chain restaurant, waiting for Rockstar to work excess energy off in Playtown chaperoned by Kings and my inlaws, my phone rings. I don’t recognize the number, and after staring at it hesitantly for some time, I pick up.

I don’t recognize the voice or remember the name, but she’s speaking in Cantonese and knows my dog. (This is code for her probably being from one of the local dog-lover communities JD hangs out in on her 3 hour daily walks, or the additional 20-ish hours she’s out with us on family outings. As a very general statement, the average HK dog-lover community is friendlier than the mummy community, there being no underlying school-admissions-and-therefore-developmental-milestone stress. I’ve had Singaporean visitors who will tell me they hate everything else they know of HK – except the dog-lover community they’re impressed with. There are people here who would seriously choose to keep dogs (or cats I guess) over children. They have told me so. The number of ancient, one-eyed, three-legged animals in HK I would estimate easily outnumbers those in Malaysia or Singapore (if any). Another curious thing – we might exchange dog names and numbers, but often forget each others’ human names.)

Festively dressed dogs this CNY - regret I didn't make a point of taking pics of all the dogs in new clothes this season, there have been many

I narrow it down to 2 dog owners, and hazard a guess – nope, I’m wrong. She corrects me, but I don’t feel particularly embarrassed I didn’t get it right – we haven’t spoken in more than 3 years and when I quit the job, changed the phone, I didn’t import my address book over. (That was deliberate, because I’d otherwise see lots of my former RM’s numbers, former beloved bosses’ numbers, and pine the life, however foolishly. Since I made the decision to get out, I figured I should then do every tiny thing I could to enjoy the decision. So no sense looking at the numbers or old text messages and remembering.)

I still haven’t picked up why Grace is calling. We used to live in the same development, she’s maybe 10 or 15 years older than me, and we once exchanged emails over the increasingly strict (and annoying) dog-keeping rules; the last place we’d lived, Grand Promenade in Sai Wan Ho, had gone from very pleasantly dog friendly, to near unbearably inconvenient, when it came to keeping a dog. That was because dog haters had gradually outnumbered dog lovers and outvoted them at AGMs re how much of the development would be open to dogs being taken for a walk. The place went from Most Of It to Almost None Of It.

I’d lost it after security guards refused me entry into the lift lobby one night while I was with JD – because some girl started fussing “Oh there’s a dog! I’m so scared, I’m so scared!” HK has apartment developments that ban pets for just this reason. Ditto parks. If she’d been that debilitatingly terrified of a dog, she could go live in a building/ area that is not as notoriously dog-friendly as Sai Wan Ho (a.k.a. East Soho, where people lunch/ brunch/ dinner with their dogs in attendance along sidewalk restaurants.) Dog owners don’t have a choice – obviously you can’t go live in a building that bans dogs. The offending guard didn’t even look at me – he just stood on the other side of the door and spoke to the guard saying he would not be letting me in, I could stand there and wait til the lobby had cleared. I remember several of her party catching my eye as I stood awkwardly at the door, and smiling at me as they went up. They looked a little less than terrified of JD.

(After I parked her safely at home, I came back down, accompanied by Kings who felt chivalrous that day, and who reamed the security guard out in his far more fluent Cantonese. I didn’t have further bullying incidents, remembered to dress better or speak only in English and watch the very local guards struggle, but it was a losing battle. Amid much apologetic bowing and scraping they would indicate freshly put up signs around the development indicating dogs were no longer allowed in the area.)

Back then, Grace told me how a few dog-loving residents had already moved out. We did too (though the primary reason was when Rockstar was born, in our search for a bigger place, we decided on one with a nearby park JD could run unmolested in as a compromise to the strange smells and chaos of the baby). But not before I wrote an email to management largely for my own amusement, that got circulated among the remaining dog-lover community (who nonetheless assured me it would do very little good but was fun to read) – it included mock-haughty remarks that management should pay more attention to the guards they hired, since there were ones in their current employ who behaved like the dog I allow in the company of my young baby in a low stroller might be a vicious animal who would tear the throats of other residents out – and occasionally were also unable to recall that we’d been some of the first residents to buy an apartment unit and had been there for years. We would still occasionally be stopped, with stroller and leashed dog with us, and asked if we lived there. “Sometimes people might just want to walk their dog here when they don’t live here.”

(Uh why??? The development is a lot more unpleasant and not even particularly atas compared with other places in the (then) very dog-friendly East Soho. Uh, no, we don’t really live here, we just like to burgle apartments with our small baby and fully-trained border collie in tow… But honestly, it all goes away when you write a letter in – or threaten to. Sometimes there are people on a power trip.)

Grace and I only met in person maybe two or three times, but over the phone she asks where we live now, if she can see JD. I’m on the phone for 10, 15 minutes (an eternity, in HK, to not know why a relative stranger has called you after 3.5 years) talking about nothing in particular, yet I’m strangely patient.

And then we talk about dogs. I tell her how my mum either doesn’t stop bringing strays home, or gets her friends to adopt them. How one of em looked much better as a stray, because “Lady” is now this big fat mutt whom they then attempted to shave because she was so uncomfortable in the Malaysian heat. No prizes for guessing she now looks like mutt-sausage on 4 increasingly staggery aged legs. (But happy mutt sausage.) “Wow, we really ruined the looks of that one,” is the general consensus among my mum and her friends.

How my mum’s dogs are something out of a Marmaduke comic strip – she has the weirdest ways of spoiling them, including sharing her 3-in-1 coffee (please don’t call the SPCA) or the sofa with them at 3am, 4am and through the night when it rains and they stand at the bottom of the stairs and bark imperiously for her to come down because they’re scared. (She maintains this “training” is why, of everyone in the household, she was Last One Standing when baby Rockstar drove us all nuts. I maintain they are not really scared, because they will do that even with the tiniest of drizzles. Ambil peluang only.)

How she’s nursed various ancient mutts with gruel, daily baths when they’re incontinent, followed by olive oil because of the harsh soaps on their skin, til eventually putting them down when they are too old or in pain. How each time she doesn’t want another dog, I talk her into it. How she wants to prepare instructions on how her dogs are to be cared for if someday they should outlive her. How I’ve told Kings that no matter how much I refuse one day after JD goes, he has to get me another dog quickly. (Nothing like having to care for and train another one, to stop you feeling sorry for yourself for missing the current one. Dogs live only so long right, you live a little longer, you get to provide that wonderful life all over again to another animal, when there are so many mistreated animals out there.)

Finally, Grace responds the second of her two old dogs has just passed away this CNY and she’s struggling. The first had been tough she says, and now the second during this festive season… By now, I’m no longer surprised. All in all I’ve been on the phone with her maybe 45 minutes, as my noodles grow near-inedible.

I still can’t explain why I didn’t blow her off when she called and hesitantly started chatting about I-can’t-remember-what, initially. I’m still glad I didn’t.