The Hong Kong Rugby 7's 2010

The Hong Kong Rugby 7's 2010
A sceptic joins the scrum...

Even if the appeal of sitting amongst a crowd of angry, drunk men and shouting at some people who are too far away to hear you isn't immediately obvious, it's hard not to be swept up with the excitement and energy of the 35,000 strong crowd that lines Hong Kong Stadium on Rugby 7's weekend.

The costumes were generally more surprising than the results on Saturday, with the big exception being our home team Hong Kongs' win against Wales. Hong Kong defeated Wales with a score of 19 - 21, and went on to secure the Sheild for the first time ever after beating Korea and Italy, much to the delight of the crowd - the boo's boomed across the stadium each time Italy scored, and the enormous cheers were surprising, suggesting a sense of patriotism that Hong Kong is often accused of lacking.

A definite star of the show was the talented Keith Robertson for Hong Kong, whose energy and speed thrilled the crowd down to the last minute when Russia made a last attempt to catch up, eventually falling two points short as the ball went out and the game ended.
Kurt Baker of the All Blacks was thrilling to watch, leading the New Zealand team in scoring 4 tries in their semi-final win over Fiji, and 2 tries in their Cup finals loss to Samoa.

On a more personally disappointing note, Canada surged forward against Wales, who seemed to loose heart as Canada took three converted tries in the first four minutes. Wales finished as runner up for the Bowl, and had to be hurried up publicly over the loud-speaker ('Wales, we're waiting for you') after the game. We were waiting for you too - where the hell were you guys?! I felt like the lone Welsh-girl amongst a sea of Canadians, and I even heard a girl near to me say "Wales? I didn't know Wales was big enough to have a team", before clamping her hand over her mouth as I shot her a frosty glance.

So although the Rugby 7's are often associated with hordes of drunken, pink-wigged tourist vomiting 7 pitchers worth of pimms across our streets, there is thankfully much more to the weekend than this. The Rugby 7's is possibly the biggest sporting event on Hong Kong's calendar, and it draws a crowd from all over the world - the universal camaraderie, the mexican waves, and even the streakers (especially the guy who managed to climb the post, and then elude the security staff with impeccable comic timing) provide a not unwelcome interlude between the short, sharp and spectacular games of what Bill McLaren deems "the Olympic games of Rugby Union".


Kim Haslam is a journalist and converted sceptic who is already planning to attend the 2011 Rugby 7's wearing only a Welsh flag.

The Theatre of Abuse

Apologies for the previous entry (actual vomit followed by verbal vomit). I'm feeling much better now.

The Theatre of Abuse
My set, my set, my actors for a set...

From the 25th - 28th March, the Hong Kong Arts Festival brings us Oscar-winner Sam Mendes (American Beauty), directing 'a formidable transatlantic company of actors in William Shakespeare's The Tempest.' The advertising campaigns for this production are capitalizing on the fact that it belongs to Sam Mendes. Sure, I see the marketing point they're making use of - big name, big money - but the idea of the 'celebrity director' strikes fear into my theatrical core.

As Steven Berkoff (noted British actor, writer and director) talked about in his recent workshop, theatre should always be about the actors, first and foremost. The director, the props, the set, the curtains, the lights - these things are all secondary in importance. The actors are the core, the beginning and the end of all that happens in the empty space. Berkoff himself proves this in his recent performance of On The Waterfront, which he performed in and directed. The actors were not weighed down with pointless props - only a few chairs and tables were used, and perhaps a gun or two. Everything that wasn't totally essential was mimed - stacks of cash, pint glasses, a saloon bar, an open fire to warm their hands over - none of these things had a physical presence. The changes of scene were suggested with light, with mime and with the changes in energy that the actors brought to the stage. They transported us in a single beat from a roof-top with caged pigeons to the docks to a dark alley at night, and it was beautiful, clean and free from pointless props and clunky set pieces. Once these hindrances are removed, what do we have left? We have the voice, and the body of the actor, and little else to use, or rather, misuse. We have tone, and movement, and gesture, distilled and pure, with no prop or set piece to distract us or hide behind. Isn't this what theatre is really about?

From the audiences point of view, who wants to sit in a black-out for thirty seconds while badly disguised stage-crew wander around swapping sofas and beds and benches in the half light, and we look away awkwardly? The brilliant illusion of reality that the actors have worked to create and transport you to is crushed in this moment.

I am not accusing Sam Mendes of anything clunky and hindered, in fact I suspect it will be an excellent performance. I simply want to say 'beware the celebrity director'. It is a dangerous cult that allows the little man who thinks that, because he has created a little world and controls the people in it, he is some sort of God, and therefore he can use those people as puppets, to ferry superfluous props around onstage, and wait in the wings for a table to be exchanged for another table.


Theatre without Theatricality

Berkoff also talked at length about the state of British Theatre over recent decades, and sadly I recognized much of what he said.

There is a vein of British audience which seeks a theatre without theatricality. That is, people have become afraid, as we are in real life (in that repressed, Victorian-hangover sort of way) of big displays of intense emotion. We shunned it, we felt uncomfortable, we called it fake, and we pointed the blame at the Americans. In fact, we were right - real theatre had left our fair isle and, as Berkoff suggested, the American writers were creating the real theatre.

As I see it, our repressed theatre-goers were then exposed to the 'in-yer-face' theatre of the mid-90's. We borrowed this term from the Americans to describe this new, shocking movement, which was a reaction to the sterility that preceded it. Interestingly, the origins of this movement can be found in the theories of Antonin Artaud, whom Berkoff mentioned and praised repeatedly during his workshop.
So, we subject our reserved, repressed audience of little social plays to confrontation, violence, and the brashness of Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill and Anthony Neilson. The result is strange.
We are left with an audience now comfortable with certain types of theatricality. Terrible, brutal physical violence? Yes, non-provocative nudity? No. Domestic abuse? Sure. Spitting in your lovers face? Yeah. Gang violence? No problem! Calling your mum the C word? Why not. But what about devotion to another person, what about sacrifice, and what about those dramatic, poetic Shakespearean love scenes? These can be just as brutal, just as heart-wrenching and explosive as using dirty words and spittle. Heck, Shakespearean actors were spitting all over each other before Alice in Closer was a glint in Patrick Marbers' parker pen!
Yet, these 'classical' extremes we shy away from. We confine them to opera, because that is what opera has become to us - a spectacle, a place for a shrill soprano to lose her mind as hoarse old men shout Bravo! and quaff champagne.

In this, the age of the screen and the celebrity - where attendance to real theatres is boosted by having a soap-opera celebrity star in Sondheim - we try to play these emotions to the cinema screen. But theatre is not about that! Micro-gestures are lost on all but the actor two paces away from you, ends of lines are lost when we whisper - as if overcome by some big emotion that we try to keep inside, that we bravely push down inside us. But remember - even real tears can only be seen by the first two rows. Theatre is not about subtlety. It is not about being 'realistic'. And audiences are perfectly capable of 'suspending disbelief' IF the actors give a good performance, so to try to explain every little inconsistency that happens is madness - it is method acting gone mad. A great director once told me that prior to a scene in a play, a British actor was seen running around backstage. An American actor asked him, what are you doing? And he explained that he was about to enter as a page-boy or some such, and was to be exhausted from rushing there. The American actor replied 'or, you could just 'act' exhausted...'

According to Variety, "This is a beautifully spoken production, every word clear as a bell”. This, and other things, make me sure that Sam Mendes' production will be wonderful, not a clunky clumsy clogged-up facade, not a repressed, robotic echo of a spectacle, of an historical artifact. This quote gets to the root of the issue of what theatre should be, for me: clean and clear, both in word and emotion, and beautifully poetic.

Right On The Money

So, food-poisoning and neon green vomit are scary/nasty/disgusting. I'm still not feeling quite right after a bout of gastro. That's right, 'woe is me' and all that. On the subject of cliches, what about 'have wheels... will travel'. What about 'have wheels... but can't travel due to being stranded on a tiny over-populated island and having no cash?' Yeah. No road trips for us here in Hong Kong. Not unless that road trip involves an aircraft... doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

So, first and foremost, it's time to cut to the chase, so to speak, and quit crying all the way to the bank... in fact, quit while you're ahead. When there's slim pickings, perhaps it's time to eat your heart out instead instead of wining and dining. That is, watch the wallet, and drink nothing but all the tea in China in order to save some shiny new dimes, because there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and every cloud has a silver lining. So, let the good times roll! We can 'pay as you go' for a change of scene, because time is money, and money is the root of all evil, and in a jiffy we'll be higher than a kite on the way to some far-off place (if the price is right) and this'll all be just a bad dream.

Chat Roulette

CHAT ROULETTE
Show and Tell for the I Generation

Across the globe, strangers are meeting for the first time from the comfort of bedrooms, classrooms, bathrooms and just about anywhere else you could possibly take a computer: Chat Roulette is quickly becoming the latest greatest internet phenomenon. You'll come face to face with everything from sock puppet psychiatry, people in fancy dress, guys jacking off, college students taking delight in saying 'BUM' to strangers, drunk people smoking hooka pipes, people playing instruments, a whole array of sinage ('show boobs' seems popular), Norwegian choristers singing in eight part harmony, to your garden variety exhibitionists - the one thing you can be sure of is that you will see things you'd rather not and things you never quite imagined.

Here's how it works: click “start” and your webcam turns on, connecting you to a video chat with another person at random. It's annonymus and unrecorded, so you never quite know who or what you're going to get. Chat Roulette is like YouTube gone wild; unregistered users blindly connecting to other users may seem intriguing to many, but for all those strange weirdos creeping around the internet, it's a freaks paradise. It's like 'Show and Tell' for Generation I, only instead of bringing your pet guinea pig to school, you're showing your wang to unsuspecting strangers halfway across the world.

Looking at the facts, I'd say it's a safe bet that you're on a one-way trip to Worldwide Wang Fest 2010. OK, maybe I'm jumping to conclusions here, since I've only actually used this programme once. There were four of us sitting in a friends lounge, and the conversion went like this...

Stranger: Hi
Stranger: I can see your boobs
You: That's my shoulder, genius.

Not particularly inspiring, but maybe I've been too quick to judge? Enough of the speculation, it's time to do a little experiment.

It was a Thursday morning when I sat down with a cup of coffee and a notebook, ready to connect with precisely 20 people in the name of random sample research. As I connect, I am told that 20,000 people are online. Firstly, who the hell are all you people? You're sitting alone at home, and you want to talk to strangers, so either you're a wanna-be internet journalist blog-superstar doing your research (like me), a bored Psychology student who makes a hobby out of social experiments (like me), or you're simply Very Weird (like... not me).

Turns out, my second meeting (the first one being a penis, of course) was with a person who was infact a Psychology student. We chatted idly for a while, about school and pens and where we were from, until I told him I was doing research for an article. Then this...

Stranger: Well I've been spreading a message on CR. I've left it up for days and mmmmmany people have seen it. What do you think? I saw too many penises... and didn't really want my finace' or sister or mother to have the same experience.


Stranger: I think what shocks people is they are expecting a religious nut to be behind the sign.

Yes, it would certainly seem that way. A little stange, but also heartening that there are people out there with more noble aspirations than sharing their body parts.

My fourth encounter (the third one being another penis) was with a black square. When I confessed my purpose for being there, he told me this...

Stranger: actually i have a story. i've been trying to find out how to post it. i saw someone that hung themselves last night.

He said he would send me some pictures, but I declined. It was probably a hoax, or not... either way I didn't want to see. Instead, I disconnected, and continued filling up my columns to reach stranger number 20. The cam focused and... it was a penis. My final stranger was another penis. I pressed next, thought I knew that I'd already reached my target number. I waited for the next random stranger to appear, determined to prove that there was something more interesting than disembodied penises floating around.

Stranger number 21 had no camera. After a few lines of chat, I discovered that they were in school. What, right now, you're in school? Yes, in high school. OK, I'd seen enough. Point proven, there was something else out there, and it's your kid sister, looking a 19,000 disembodied penises. Ew.

So, my findings were these; out of a random sample of 21 strangers, I encountered 4 actual penises, 2 suspicious looking crotch shots, 2 indecent requests, 2 certifiably normal conversations, 1 suicide hoax, 1 underage user, 1 sign, and sadly, no people in fancy dress. As for the 'Roulette' part, I fared pretty well, with 8 disconnects, thought admittedly I did find myself feeling somewhat offended each time, and sort of wished I'd at least put some make-up on first. I could imagine that 20 disconnects could leave a person feeling like the spotty, geeky kid in high school that no one wants to talk to, and by the end of my experiment I was glad to be back in the real world where people are more covert about their judgments of others.

Conclusions? Firstly, chaos reigns on Chat Roulette. The medium of self-publishing has hit a new low, making it easier than ever for Pedophiles to connect with youngsters. All the more reason to monitor you kids' internet access.
The concept itself is nothing new; web cams and chat programmes have been around for years, but many users now opt for facebook and MSN instead. Why? Well, it weeds out the weirdos and allows you complete control over who you connect with. Yet, there is something strangely addictive about the Chat Roulette phenomenon. It's sort of like waving at a stranger on a passing boat. We're compelled to do it, but we're not sure why. We wouldn't do it to someone we didn't know in the street, yet there seems to be some worldwide desire for anonymous social interaction.
Statistically speaking, my results suggest that the majority of people are actually NOT just trying to satisfy some voyeuristic urge to exhibit their naked organs. Quel surprise! Maybe Ideological Religious Psychology Guy was right. Maybe Chat Roulette is a great opportunity to chat to people from many cultures, across the world, sharing our news, views and simulated high-fives. Some people want to broaden their minds and interact with people from other cultures, whilst others merely aspire to bare their privates in front of strangers. Such is life.

Will it stick around? Sure it will, but whether it will become a marvelous tool for a meeting of the minds or simply a global cockfest remains to be seen.


Kim Haslam




INTERESTING CHAT ROULETTE QUOTES

Stranger: Well... we just got on here because we were pretty fucked up. the majority is strange guys stroking their peepees. but there have been a few cross-cultaral moments like we are having currently. i have enjoyed it so far and really hope to see more vagina

Stranger: i talked to a gingerbread man

Stranger: yeah, it's a great opportunity...if it doesn't become the red light district of the Internet.

Stranger: Tell me you are drawing me a picture.

Stranger: i didnt think girls existed on here. 30 min and nothing but dudes jackin it

Stranger: im trying to find celebrities, my friend talked to the jonas brothers and snoop dog lol

Stranger: the internet has fallen into ruin.

Stranger: i think i just have a general misanthropic attitude towards people on the internet

Stranger: i WISH fetlife was all just a dream, i could sleep at night easily.

Stranger: your in a cafe and not getting coffee? thats like punching jesus in the face!

Stranger: Hong Kong! No way! My room mate is Japanese! Wait... you're lying, you don't look Japanese.

Frankie Says RELAX

So yesterday, I was thinking about pregnant women. Or rather, the people who treat those women like they're disabled. I heard a guy reprimanding his wife over the phone for being out so late (it was 6.30pm), in the same tone you might use towards a child who insisted on repeatedly hiding your car keys.... "If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times!". He then got quite animated, almost angry, and started shouting "Will you just RELAX! Go home, RELAX! If you can't relax, then how the HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO RELAX?!?!" Personally, I've found that shouting RELAX at un-relaxed people isn't particularly conducive to... well, anything. I guess there's two sides to this story - namely, the women who act like they're carrying a super-sensitive touch-activated body-cavity bomb rather than a child. Well, maybe someone should organize a speed-dating event for men who shout RELAX with self-pitying pregnant women who find a man shouting RELAX at them, RELAXING.

Touch Wood

I spent the day contemplating my weaknesses and driving around in a golf buggy. It was a beautiful day out at Kau Sai Chau, and most of my problems come down to some some inexplicable knotty ball of mystery deep inside my soul.

Back to golf. I glanced over a back issue of Golf Digest, namely the rather untimely article titled "10 Tips Obama can take from Tiger". Actually, I think the timing was rather fortunate, for said magazine - don't you want to read that article already? Well you should, it's hilarious:

"One of the major lessons that President Obama could learn from Woods is his ability to quickly recover under pressure after a bad hole or two under pressure, writes prominent golf star Arnold Palmer." (Link.)

Ha, hahaha. Pun intended.

On the subject of the real news about Tiger Woods, I say this: leave the guy alone. Plenty of people cheat, and if you're gonna put someone on a pedestal, then don't be so surprised if they fall. And if his wife really did club him, then good for her.