Confessions of a Cat-holic (71)

Not sure if Jacqueline's "connection" or "linkage" with Principal Henry Poon, who then sat on the board of the primary school section after retirement, helped Jacqueline successfully continue the legacy in sending her kids to SPCC. People in Central tended to have twisted values and put prestige over anything, including their health and body, anyways. Not only that, Jacqueline graduated from Rosary Hill Primary School. I had seen enough of its graduates to deduce its competitive school culture. When they fought, they fought hard. They were the "catfish".

You might think that these people who were desperate enough to sell their body and health for a medical school degree must be destitute new immigrants who might be struggling to live among the partitioned homes in slums. Ah, no. Dead wrong. Based on my observations after spending most of my life in Hong Kong, most of these sex-slave-minded elites came from a middle class background, whether it was Jacqueline, Jane from St Francis, Mindy, Sharon or Rebecca. They were either living in Baguio Villa, Evelyn Towers, South Horizons, or a 3000-sq-feet townhouse provided by HKU to its staff.

What they wanted were no longer just good grades, a college degree or a job opportunity, since they had all of them anyways. They were usually valedictorians or salutatorians of their class, or year even, not settling anything less than a HKU law or medical degree, which they really might have been able to attain it with their own merits anyways. But no, what they wanted was a "guarantee". Yes, that security, that sense of security that all women craved for so badly was what drove them towards the dirty under table trades.

They wanted a stable, and lucrative of course, paycheck month after month, without the needs to compete or hustle and bustle. They wanted a social status of a chartered professional. They wanted prestige and respect. They wanted the most challenging jobs, so that they could brag about their restlessness and hard working ethics. They wanted the most competitive college degree and certificate to prove their existence and intelligence.

Maybe these desires of them were self-driven. But judging from a native Hong Kong point of view, I suspected that these values they instilled themselves with could be largely orchestrated by the press, and also the society. Since I didn't know when, Hong Kong had a signature stress culture with the notion "city never sleeps". In order for the nation to prosper, we all needed to want more. And only through wanting more, we might be able to achieve more. Having an apartment in Braemar Hill or Pok Fu Lam was not good enough. A house at the peak should suffice, nevertheless.

That was where got me stuck for the longest time. Could we really achieve and possess more if we kept wanting? Was this "I can't get no satisfaction" or "never enough" attitude truly a desirable trait for the society as a whole? I remained skeptical. I was a devoted Catholic. All I could say was that I was trained day after day to give thanks and gratitude in morning prayers to God for all the food and possessions I was granted.

If you looked at the profiles of the model couple, Alex and Jacqueline, in our year, you might envy them. Alex became one of the best private practice ophthalmologists in town. The couple were living in a condo on MacDonnell Road, which was clearly an upgrade with Jacqueline's original residence in South Horizons. She even made it clear in her wedding speech by publicing denouncing the neighborhood she grew up in and confessed how much she hated the bus ride to school.

But I wondered what the rest of the 240 students in my year were doing. I needed to thank Mina Cheng, a surgeon in Queen Elizabeth Hospital with special interests in vascular and trauma surgery. She was the "Student of the Year" elected by SCMP and graduated from the University of Hong Kong in 2007. She obtained her FRCS in 2014 and was awarded the Li Shield's Gold Medal for her outstanding performance in the fellowship examination.