Last Sunday evening Rockstar sat for his Dan 1 Part 1, the first half of the Black Belt exam, 6 years after first starting at Potential Taekwondo, 1.5 years after training for the belting.
Rockstar (in blue head guard) at registration; there were over 200 kids taking gradings
By now we’ve kinda gotten used to the kids’ gradings being in places of Hong Kong we would not normally venture to, and from seeing all the locals casually coming off public transport lugging their gear during previous gradings, we decided to take an extra hour to try a similar experience #notsoaccidentalHKtourists
(And look at what HN is doing on the crowded train…)
Checks on hamster, “reads” Stick Man activity book (while still holding hamster… by now Sophie has been to crowded arcades, the movies, restaurants, church, countless supermarkets and cafes… half the time cabbies waive the HKD 5 additional animal/bird charge – “that’s… not really an ‘animal’.” Um.. thanks? (Come to think of it, they didn’t charge for our goldfish or red guppy things either 😀 )
Moments later, HN is gone from Rockstar’s side, squeezing her way (yes, with book and Not Really An ‘Animal’) over to a Putonghua-speaking girl who looks about 7 or 8, on the other side of the packed carriage, attracted by her sneakers (satin ribbon, large flowers), visible in between all the commuters’ legs. I reach them in time to catch the tail end of what HN is saying, ” – shoes.<points> I sa-aid, I-like-your-shoes. Did you make them yourself?” (Since Girl With The Fabulous Sneakers is also carrying an Anya Hindmarch crossbody bag, it’s a toss-up 🙂
Moments later the train jolts and HN rolls backwards on her Heelies, falls right over in the crowded train, pops right back up, still holding hamster and book – “I’m ok! I’m ok!”
Only what her bro and I look like on the inside. (pic frm community.hughesnet.com)
Cool-sneakered girl and her mum smile goodbye and alight, and then it’s our stop next:
HN: Bubbles! How come they get to play in there?
Me: Maybe because they live there
We cab the final short distance…
Cabbie: <curiously, looking through the rearview mirror> Your younger girl is much prettier than your older one.
Me: Maybe because my older one is not a girl.
Cabbie: Oh that makes a lot more sense.
Rockstar: How rude. I no pretty meh? <cabbie chuckles>
(What can I say, these kids are growing up in Hong Kong! 😀 )
And we’re there! Siberia! (Fine, Shek Kip Mei. So almost Siberia :D). We’re a bit early, and the teen boys and girls who use this centre are still in regular training, and lemme tell you – those kids can really slug. The walls reverberate with a constant loud thudding as they throw their weight into their blows, pummelling leather-clad kicking and punching targets of various shapes and sizes. We find Rockstar’s regular coach preoccupied behind the receiving end of a large padded target being hammered by a fairly slight, t-shirt-clad youth who is managing to inflict seriously heavy blows interspersed with cheerful conversation. Man, I love martial arts. I love that the ability to break inches-thick boards is honed alongside self control.
Rockstar mentioned that now in Y6 at school they all do a spot of Wushu regularly, it’s all good.
Amid the noise and action, Rockstar finds some of his gym-mates – everyone is from at least 3 different international schools (plus some local ones though not everyone is taking the exam today) but with this taekwondo class in common. I turn to locate HN in the growing crowd. She’s squeezed herself onto a nearby bench, “Aren’t you going to find a seat, Mum-may?”
It’s the leg-cross that makes it art 😀
HN settled having settled herself, I turn to peer back into the exam hall where, after roll call..
..the candidates are being seated to wait for their turn
The exam is conducted completely in Cantonese. With Rockstar, they repeat things once or twice patiently… in Cantonese 🙂
A few years ago pre-grading out in the corridor, instructors were trying to move a couple kids in Cantonese – said kids appeared polite but unresponsive and then someone from their gym recognised them as fairly new….. and Korean. Just an aside, because HK, especially in the area where we live, is so incredibly diverse it’s really not uncommon to come across Asian kids who aren’t fluent in Chinese…. or Caucasian kids whose first language isn’t English (we’ve had neighbours who are French, Russian, Romanian, Dutch, German, to name a few…)
For the most part though, by senior belting, many faces are more familiar, coaches have some idea who can understand Cantonese, who really can’t, and who can if you light a fire under them 😀 We have always deliberately tried to put the kids in a local activity here and there that is conducted in Cantonese (they get Putonghua in school) because well, we live here 🙂
Usually they don’t allow parents in, even taping up the cracks in the doors, but this time we can even see the wee white belts receiving their yellows
Across the auditorium some proud parents occasionally get down on the floor for better shots of their little kids doing their first pushups in grading – I imagine it must be all over non-English social media – but nothing like that among parents of the more senior belts (God forbid we do something to embarrass our kids and then they don’t let us come watch anymore, even if the examiners still let us in 😀 )
(Though this kid is probably the littlest Red Black; his instructor double checks his standard-issue shin guards before they start, but once they’ve begun he moves nothing like the beginners…)
Throughout the roughly 90 minute exam duration, the head examiner can be heard throughout the hall gruffly telling kids to buck up, perform their patterns more confidently, switch legs, don’t only use one technique, and stop waiting for everyone else to move first. So when in the same tone he snaps at one of the older boys before the free sparring, we’re not expecting “Don’t put your glasses on the floor. Bring them here.” <puts glasses on his table>
As the older, more senior Red Blacks take higher black belt grades…
…they call in more instructors to spar with them. The technique is awesome, but I don’t get any good pictures because they move too fast 🙁
Then grading’s over and everyone pretty much rushes to leave. It’s after all Sunday night, we still have to make it back across town and there’s school the next day.
And of course the moment we let her, Sophie comes out to play 😀
Rockstar’s first lesson after the grading 3 days ago, two Bel-air Clubhouse staff interrupted the class, announcing in front of everyone, “You can’t have the lesson, your parents haven’t paid the fees,” before escorting him out.
Rockstar exits the class where these staff proceed to show my 10yr old son a long list of kids’ names, pointing out his name is also on it. (So what, make him an example and everyone else scrambles to pay up?) 2 more clubhouse staff join them. His coach – at least a 5th Dan (ie very senior) black belt who has been teaching there for years, tries to reason with the 4 staff. I’m usually there by the end of class, they can easily catch me in another 40 minutes. Instead, they remain inexorable about not letting Rockstar back in nor do they make any move to tell me what they’ve done. All this happens in full view of passersby, directly outside the gym. Someone calls me and hands the phone to the staff. After I go bananas, they check our payment records and let Rockstar back in. Without ever clarifying to his classmates that it was a misunderstanding, something of a clerical error. So now I have to say something.
At the time they pulled Rockstar out, we had already paid Rockstar’s fees in advance up til end February 2018. These two staff had hauled Rockstar out over 3 lessons from back in August 2017, a sum so small I could’ve paid with an Octopus card – Rockstar could’ve paid with his Octopus card, except at the time those 2 staff hauled him out they likely had no freaking idea that it was outstanding due to an idiot error (explained below). None of this stopped them from having that little show.
Off and on over the last few weeks I’d been receiving calls and voicemails about “fees due.” At least two of the calls, staff could not tell me what was outstanding, promise to get back to me, and never do. Next time I got a call it would be someone new saying we owe something but again, they would have no idea what.
The morning of the day they called Rockstar out, someone had even called Kings in Bangkok. Now, Kings has been in 4 cities, some with significantly different time zones, in the last 2 weeks. At one point, engrossed on his cell at an unfinished site in Ho Chi Minh, he almost walked off the end of an 18/F balcony. Even if you KNEW what you were really calling about, it might still not be a good idea to call him especially when I’m walking up to the counter every so often asking to pay you money except you have no idea how much to bill us for.
When I got clubhouse messages, I would walk up to a counter next time I was there, and ask what we owed. Each time, I had then either been billed in advance or told we didn’t owe anything else. At 2 different main counters, staff had assured me I had paid up everything. I’m guessing either 1) whatever screen the person at the counter is looking at doesn’t show this up unless they page back, or else 2) the staff, many of whom are constantly new or being transferred around, are too unfamiliar with the system. Either there is no way to leave a note in the system or staff exist in a different dimension, but –
How in the freaking freak hell can we settle something we don’t know we owe, or pay an amount no one can accurately tell us?
Hey, Lai Family, you owe us money. We don’t know how much, but that’s probably not important information that you need in order to write us a cheque.
What we are going to do is wait until your kid goes to class and then we’re going to stop the entire class and tell everyone why. Because instead of a fly swatter for a niggling little pest of a clerical problem, we shall empty an entire AK 47 at it and then run over everything with a six-cylinder turbodiesel engine ATV. Oh and if senior coach tries to intervene, more the power to us. Cos we badass!
Overkill?
Nah.
Even as all around us mums scramble for their cheque books to pay everything they can in advance <resounding clap of thunder> (they got what they wanted, right?)
Rockstar’s coach told us he has received an apology, as did we. In fact, the moment I reach, Bel-air staff say, “We then checked the system and in fact you often pay in advance.” But two staff walked in and pulled Rockstar out, announcing to the entire class that his parents hadn’t paid his fees before checking that. And when they realised their mistake they didn’t rectify that to the class they had informed of Rockstar’s parents’ bad debts.
When I showed the text message about August 2017 fees to the duty staff yesterday afternoon, (btw rarely are the people who call us also the people at the counters when I try to pay) they have no idea who sent the message, and further discover the amount on the text message is wrong and they need more time to get the right amount. I make a special trip back just to pay this one thing – my fourth trip in 2 days – having paid everything else I could all the way to March by then. Y’know, before someone else decides to go Rambo With A Pig Head in the kids’ classes again. (They got what they wanted, right?)
Now, the entire Bel-air development has 3 clubhouses serving several thousand units (quick Google search says Residence Bel-air alone has 2,900 units, and that doesn’t include the other Bel-air development phases which’ll add several thousand more) and they have to coordinate and rotate many, many staff amid what appears to be pretty high turnovers to boot. I’m very tolerant of “errors that don’t hurt” – errors due to staff turnover, errors due to overworked staff, errors due to staff who sit on calculating the fees for me to write a cheque, sit on printing, leave stuff out so the next person taking over their shift has to do it/ get hammered for the mistake. How could I possibly be mean to that next person?
Kings has asked me why sometimes I seem extra nice to near-strangers working the counters or the local Starbucks etc etc. It’s because as illustrated here, some people are baboons who don’t check before hauling your kid out of class and publicly making dramatic accusations for kicks, while others are amazing – clock in for their shift, realise the person before them has flubbed your printouts, immediately replace everything without Much Ado About Nothing. It is inexplicable that these two kinds of employees should be paid the same. But try to tip, try to support the good, deserving ones, and watch the bad ones proverbially pour lighter fluid in your coffee because you didn’t give them credit they never deserved in the first place.
Rockstar’s grading exam, conducted across town at the Shek Kip Mei Sports Centre in a modest part of Hong Kong. His first day back in class at Bel-air Clubhouse in our development. Worlds apart in more ways than one.
