love in the digital city

If all New Years resolutions came true, how does your city weave into your creative aspirations for 2011?

mmmm nothing like putting something down on paper to solidify a project! Or at least make you contemplate why you perhaps didn't attempt it.

So in 2011 I vow that Hong Kong and I will become closer.

OK so firstly 2011 brings a creation in its oldest form - a new birth. And Astro, babies working title, will be a Honkanese bubba. The first member of our little family to be born outside of Australia.

And with this birth comes a whole new level of letting go. When Hugo was born, he was proceeded by a carefully typed birthplan and a high set of expectations with the precise birth I wanted for us. I can happily say it all came off in its own way and I was well supported by the amazing staff at the Royal Womens Birth Centre in Sydney. But there are few city's that offer the progressive facilities I was given access to in Sydney.

This time around my options are somewhat more '1950's' should we say. Hugo's dimmly lit, midwife led, water birth is about as far from Hong Kong reality as it could be. But early on in my pregnancy, I promised myself I would let go of trying to control this process and I would trust Hong Kong with my baby number 2. And I do. I trust these fabulous Hong Kong public hospitals, I thank them for their caution and streamlined processes, I thank them for taking me in so happily and I trust that however different this birth experience will be, I am in the safest hands. I did promise myself that I would bring my sense of humor to the ward with me and it hasn't let me down thus far. I thank the patient midwives for enduring my giggles as I line up with 20 other pregnant ladies clutching their paper cups of wee, and I am weighed on a digital display that announces to the entire room how much heavier Aussie women are than their up the duff Cantonese sisters. So Astro's (working title) entry into the world will be vastly different to Hugo's, as they will be different from each other. But I look forward to it with as much anticipation. How lucky am I, a Chinese bubba, well not in the genetic sense but certainly in where it arrives!

On a creative level I want to crack a layer of Hong Kong that has been keeping me at bay. I want to stop judging her and comparing her to Sydney. Only when this happens will I see the artistic possibilities within. And once on that platform I have two challenges.

1 - write, shoot, and edit a short (non-narrative) film on the neighboring island of Peng Chau. I am capable of all those aspects of film making, I just choose to procrastinate about it. So with bubba number 2 strapped to the outside of my belly, and Hugo probably running off on me, I will put a little vignette together that reveals this ancient fishing town in its beauty.

2- finish a script. nuff said!

Welcome 2011!