foreword

Having accumulated enough traffic fines that could have paid for my trip to Hong Kong plus a good hotel (with no subsidy whatsoever) when I went with Yanni and Jerrie, I am officially a tamed driver.

For now.

I am a bush
But I do not rustle with the wind
For while I pry paradise from undeserving eyes
I am also invisible; fabrics of vine
Skirt the slightest thought of me

So there I was again, in the land that resembled Singapore but a little less sterile. It welcomed me in with open arms, and almost didn’t want me to go.

I wasn’t able to take the Airport Express this time, unfortunately. The landscapes you pass through in the almost-vacuum silence of the cabin is breathtaking, but when travelling with my Mom and her friends the taxi is usually our best friend, unless there’s a horrid jam and taking the train is a load faster.

Somehow it was only this time that I realized how they wrote the word ‘Taxi’ in Chinese. Oddly simpler than the supposedly simplified Chinese that I was used to. Coming to Hong Kong always makes me wish I could speak at least a little bit of Cantonese but alas, I grew up listening to my Mom gossiping (loudly) in Hokkien most of the time. We stayed in a very out-of-the-way hotel that had the view of the harbour, but we were given rooms that greeted us with this:

I kid you not.

I had to leave in the wee hours of the morning because I had a test to catch that afternoon, and I almost didn’t make it back. It was typhoon season, and it stayed at the scale of 8 from the night before. In lieu of the weather the taxi-man quoted me his own price to take me to the airport, which was almost half the money I’d converted to HKD at the start (as a disclaimer, I don’t change much currency when I travel). Nothing like waking up in the early morning to feel the wind wrap itself around the vehicle as it sped along towards the airport; this would be added to the list of why Hong Kong is so much livelier than Singapore, though the streets were practically deserted during the strong winds.

Reaching the airport with barely enough money for a morning coffee I settled down in a chair that looked more comfortable than it actually was, and made a friend who refused to pose for a picture – I managed to capture a few though, thank the brightness of the day. She liked staring, and continued with that even when she passed me on the plane.

The winds continued on, and the flight was delayed by more than an hour (the air crew was later than the passengers and the departure time – for SIA that is really not what I’d expected. I’m sticking to budget next time, they’re friendlier.) I had to run over to school to take the test immediately after I landed – talk about reality hitting you in the face.

I still love Hong Kong, with its fried noodles, baked rice, desserts, pastries and awesome wanton soup, and for those who mentioned going there next year count me in!

Zombeh-eh-eh-eh-fied.

(though really, it’s not a very nice thing to say this month.)

In the whole of my life when I have said I was busy, I think I was exaggerating. Those moments weren’t ‘busy’.

This one is.

Except it isn’t just a moment, and it doesn’t seem to want to end.