Things that stop you leaving the chaos (#5): A rather realistic portrayal of what would have become of me had I stayed in England for the next 20 years

Don’t miss the last in the current series.

58. What Do Expats Do All day?

You couldn’t help noticing my lack of recent updates. Now, bold as brass, you’re offering to find time in your busy schedule to step in and ghostwrite a few posts for me. You are explaining your highly competitive rates. You are expounding the exponential growth in commercially-advantageous web traffic attributable to good English language usage. You are reaching into your suit pocket, opening a faux-leather case, and handing me your business card…

That’s right, since last ranting diplomatically about the neighbourhood ‘kidz’ I have moved on to more fitting pursuits. And pursuit is the right word as I descend (or ascend, depending on your point of view) into the world of networking, in a shameless bid to boost trade. A meeting with a time-generous, hard-nosed New York editor (offering journalistic leads) and time-generous, hard-nosed Home Counties editor (offering HK publishing insight) has opened up a plethora of opportunities to me. I simply had no idea that all this was going on around me. My networking career begins next week. Not a natural salesman (both Mrs Dip and I tend to barter upwards whenever faced by any real or metaphorical market stalls) I enter that world mindful of the advice of an SfEP colleague: that the secret of networking is not gabbing on about your own speciality, then nervously thrusting a business card in someone’s face, but attending events principally to satisfy your curiosity, vis-a-vis, What Do People Do All Day?

In tandem, I should really take the advice of Editor #2 (both women, incidentally) and go along to the next Women In Publishing (WIP) meeting dressed up as ‘Petra’. WIP is apparently Hong Kong’s best networking group of a highly extensive range in our field. Is this because more women than men work as editors, or are female professionals simply better at this kind of thing? Which brings me onto today’s principal topic; not so much ‘What Do People Do All Day?’ as ‘The Mistakes Expats Make Each Day.’ While the related article was forwarded to Mrs Dip by my mischievous father-in-law, each bone-shudderingly familiar blooper has been painstakingly identified by a female expat blogger who (again, perhaps coincidentally) seems to have got herself organised (i.e. networked) a lot quicker than me. Reposts (sic) are my own, with tongue firmly in cheek.

Mistake 1.  You have very high expectations that people back home will continue to want and initiate consistent interaction with you.  

Always. Where are you? I hate you.

Mistake 2. Somehow, somewhere you’ve decided that making new friends isn’t your strength. 

I have hundreds of friends, some of whom I’ve actually seen within the last five years. I don’t need any more.

Mistake 3. You decided that you only want strong, intimate connections and you are not interested in anything else. 

Who wants superficiality? Like humans and seahorses, I network for LIFE.

Mistake 4.  You think your to-do list is too long and you just have no time to get out and get to know people. 

‘Bye, love. Just off to the local…again.’

Mistake 5.  You take trips home every 3-4 weeks for a vacation, just a visit, or… just because. 

We’ll have to wait for the freelance money to start flowing in before realising this particular dream.

Mistake 6. You feel uncomfortable chatting to people because your language skills are not perfect. 

‘Scusi?’

Mistake 7.  You engage in unfavorable comparisons of your current place of residence with home (or with the one you left). 

There’s only one Manchester. Or there was until this season.

Mistake 8.  You use social media like there is no tomorrow.  

Busted. Time to sign off…perhaps you’d care to take my new card before I go?

57. Artz

Why, why, why, why, do it?

If you have some talent, or something to say, then make it known. But if you haven’t, keep a lid on it. I suppose it’s easy for me to say. Writing on-line, amongst billions of others, you can content yourself with the fact that someone out there might discover your musings, purposefully or through serendipity, and connect with one or two of the things you say. Meanwhile author and uninterested majority can delicately ignore one another, crossing the road when one or other sees the other coming. As a visual artist I suppose you have to get your work out there, or risk it being stuck in the back of a gallery forever. While people might feasibly search for ‘tips on living in Hong Kong’, no-one is ever going to type into Google, ‘Fat bloke playing football near some steps.’ You need to get it out there, and give your audience what it wants, before it knows it.

In my last post I went over-the-top about preserving national artworks. I came across as a little pompous. I certainly never thought I’d be providing a link to a Daily Telegraph piece. Well, here I go again (apart from the Daily Telegraph bit). Take a look at another image I enjoy walking past most days, in our easy-going neighbourhood.

And take a look at it now, after the work of KIDULT – a person, or persons, who seem to think they’re Banksy (and whatever you think of Banksy there’s plenty of craft and humour to his work) but come across as the lamest of public school anarchists. If only this were the sole example, but KIDULT’s lazy slogan, and sub-Warhol take on celebrity portraiture is EVERYWHERE. And while their web-based manifesto would have us believe that their doodles represent a protest against the ‘hijacking’ of graffiti by global capitalism, they’re more than happy to sell expensive T-shirts emblazoned with the KIDULT ‘brand’ on their website. If you must sell out, then do so – quietly. But don’t cover up the work of those with more talent and – from the evidence before our eyes, and on-line – more principle.

Additional reporting: Karlos Adidas