Postcards from Hong Kong #005
It’s really hard being away, sometimes. Shiny and new really isn’t all that it’s rumoured to be.
I forget how everyone back home (London? Singapore? Both?) looks like, lose track of who is where why doing what, and I begin to confuse memories from fantasy scenarios. Did we really do that, or is it my imagination? Or did I do that, but with different people, not you? Hmm.
It’s also so easy to be transient. If it happens that we see each other often and become friends, that’s great. Otherwise, I’m happy not knowing what the name of your cat is or what you do for a living or even where you’re from. Maybe I’m becoming used to not being in once place long enough for very much of anything or anyone. There’s not much one can do a few months here and there at a time.
On the other hand, I’ve become an expert at passing through airport security and smiling at immigration officers. That must count for something, right?
It’s the new year
Oh hello, 2010, there you are.
Hand over heart, I promise it'll be better this year.
Postcards from Hong Kong #004
It’s been almost three months since I’ve been here in Hong Kong, and Christmas is just round the corner. There’s a festive feel in the air, but it’s not really Christmas like it is in Blighty. That sharp winter chill and frozen tips of noses.
I thought you might like this – I read it in the Guardian today:
In the absence of a loved one, all the pageantry, all the carols and parties and bright bustling pubs, are an unbearable silence. For many, the season of goodwill and joy is also the season of loneliness and despair, during which nothing grows except the longing for what can never be.
I’ll be back home in Singapore for Christmas, for the first time without two-thirds of my siblings around. I’m slightly nervous about the prospect and it might turn out to be a very strange experience. I’ll let you know.
Jutty said to me the other day that as I get older I’ll start spinning out from the familial web and begin making my own family of friends. I’ve already reserved a place on his Christmas plans for 2010 with his friend-family (which I’m sure also somehow includes siblings, but let’s not quibble), although apparently I’m going to get thoroughly beaten at Monopoly. I can probably live with that.
Postcards
(commissioned for broadcast by BBC World Service)
- At first I sent you a postcard
From every city I went to.
Grüsse aus Bath, aus Birmingham,
Aus Rotterdam, aus Tel Aviv.
Mit Liebe. Cards from you arrived
In English, with many commas.
Hope, you’re fine, and still alive,
Says one from Hong Kong. By that time
We weren’t writing quite as often.
- Now we’re nearly nine years away
From the lake and the blue mountains,
And the room with the balcony,
But the heat and light of those days
Can reach this far from time to time.
Your latest was from Senegal,
Mine from Helsinki. I don’t know
If we’ll meet again. Be happy.
If you hear this, send a postcard.
- - Wendy Cope
Get shirty
You arrived in that shirt, and every other thought flew out my head.
Quickly recovering – blink, blink, swallow and smile.
I’d played it all out, step by step (ooh baby), it was going to go exactly as I’d imagined.
But you had to turn up in that shirt. Now I have to reconsider, regroup and reorganise.
Next time, please don’t wear that shirt. I’m not sure I can do this again.
Postcards from Hong Kong ＃003
On another note, it is strangely soothing watching from my office windows the Star Ferry putter over there and back again, white flecks of foaming water waking in its trail.
Postcards from Hong Kong ＃002
Hong Kong is getting slightly cooler these days, but I still arrive at work hot and flushed and dress sticking uncomfortably to my back after having traipsed down almost the whole stretch of the Central-Mid-levels Escalators (it’s world famous, don’t you know) from my flat.
I got to wear my Ghostbusters outfit for Halloween – ‘twas very popular, especially since there were 5 of us wearing Ghostbusters outfits – then spent all day Sunday on the sofa after only getting home at 7 that morning. I then rocked up to work on Monday only to be told that we’d be flying to London that evening for a couple of days of meetings, so let’s get packing. Hurray.
Have I ever told you about Tsui Wah? And it’s amazing tom yum chicken noodle soup, the clatter and clamour of late night HK dining? I made a fortuitous re-discovery of Tsui Wah late one night and have been extolling its virtues ever since. I’ll bring you there sometime.
Postcards from Hong Kong #001
We haven’t yet left the office before 7pm.
Our attendance at the banking training conference in Singapore next weekend has also been thrown into doubt. My boss reckons that none of us are going anywhere that weekend.
Tomorrow will also be my second Sunday spent working, in as many weeks.
Unfortunately this means that the sights are yet to be seen, although I’ve been on the Star Ferry across the water and back and also went to the Wednesday races in Happy Valley (where I also lost my camera, but that’s a different story). It’s not a great amount of touristy things done so far, but I’ve got a while to tick all the boxes, I figure.
What we have done a lot of, is eating and drinking. We’re slowly crossing off a long list of places to dine/drink at, and right now I am so pleased with all this great food. I don’t think I’ll be so pleased in a couple of weeks when I realise my jeans no longer button up.
Epigraph
you have navigated with raging soul far from the paternal home, passing
beyond the seas' double rocks and now you inhabit a foreign land. - Medea
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