Letter from 2005

WAN CHAI NEWS ROUND-UP

1) The Sample Shops along Johnstone Road are currently 

overflowing with the entire range of J.Lo's Children's

Clothing Collection. Each piece is selling for between 

A$0.30 and A$0.50 and still not selling. 

Guess Jennifer Lopez really got it wrong and there is 

absolutely NO market for sexy, sequinned, spangly, 

"I'm a pole-dancing stripper" prostitute-style 

toddler clothing. 

2) You know that full-purdah Muslim woman I've told 

you about? The one who must live around here because I 

see her all the time, who wears the black veil to her 

ankles with only her eyes showing and a white polar-

explorer-style puffy-jacket over the top? (There's a 

Fundamentalist Muslim Drop-by Centre in the next street 

so I'm guessing she's the one who runs it.) (I also 

think it's her teenage sons who are training the little 

sino-toddlers in how-to-play soccer down there in 

Southorn Park.) 

Well, here's a piece of news about her that will make 

your jaw drop: Yesterday she was walking down Wanchai 

Road, arm-in-arm and deep in conversation with a young 

ponytailed Chinese guy!  Doesn't that just boggle your 

mind?  I mean, what Fundamentalist Islamic Universe 

does she inhabit where she's allowed to do things like 

that? 

Oh, yeah, I see how it's possible! Maybe she needs 

glasses and thought he was a woman! 

3) Last week, this self-same Purdah-Woman was wearing

a gorgeous Japanese silk print orange and white scarf 

wrapped around her head over the top of her veil. I 

decided that the urge for colour, beauty and adornment 

must be universal and at that moment I decided that I 

really liked her a lot ... 

... or maybe that was the beginning of the slippery

slide into the reckless abandonment and degradation 

that had her walking arm-in-arm with a young man who 

was so obviously NOT of her immediate family.