I Heart Hong Kong - a fragment

(obvious SATC reference, for those who are fans…)

I’ve been living in Las Vegas for a good part of this past weekend. I can’t say I’m proud to admit it, but it’s true and it’s been a helluva good time. I’ve been a semi-hermit this past weekend because I was supposed to be packing and performing a serious purging session, a colonic of sorts for the clutter that fills my apartment for no good reason. Old clothes I haven’t looked at for years, trinkets from xyz restaurants and abc vacation resorts that don’t really add much to my general “décor”, things I own that I don’t even know about, things of other people that I need to return…a one by one bagging of all the “stuff” that is just that…stuff. Not so much definition 2 found on http://www.dictionary.com/: “The essential substance or elements". But more like definition 3.c: “Worthless objects”. It's imperative that I start this purging as soon as possible, since my move is in less than a week, but...I just couldn’t do it.

So instead I retired to Las Vegas, the world of Ed Deline and Danny McCoy, ah Danny…now’s there’s a fine specimen of a man there. In between episodes I contemplated all that I had left to throw out and then proceeded to push the stuff out of my mind once the titles began playing again on the next mind-numbing episode of LV. Finally, the Sunday evening of a weekend that was earmarked for productive expulsion is drawing to a close, and I wonder to myself…why the heck have I been procrastinating so much? What’s keeping me from chucking out the first unnecessary item in my over-cluttered life? And then I realized…I’m suffering from DIP…Denial Induced Paralysis. Yes, that’s a medical term and you may want to go out and get the latest edition if your copy of Black’s Medical doesn’t have it.

I love Hong Kong. I love my little apartment on Mosque Junction, tucked behind the more boisterous Robinson Road and atop a beautiful little area us Hong Kong people call Soho, even though it really isn’t much like the New York equivalent it’s named after. But hey, in HK, we take what we can get. We have spatial limitations here but we make the most of the horizontal limits by extending vertically. Way vertically. I am sitting by my window looking out over my beloved city and I realize how goddam high up I am in my 17th story pad, which is considered not very high up in the HK scheme of things. I look out across the way to my neighbor’s flat 30 ft away from me, so close I can see the bubbles rising in the violet fishtank beside their window, behind the silhouette of, randomly, a row of four of five Chinese vases. Palpable, the humanity across 30 ft of thin air. Their light is still on and well, there’s my anonymous neighbor, HK style. 7 million of us stacked up like legos across this town, lit up at all hours, the constant inhale and exhale of 7 million souls fueling this little energy grid we live in.

My day began perfectly today. I left Las Vegas to cool in my DVD player and took to the streets. First, breakfast with my friend Victoria’s extremely impressive and accomplished father (who climbed Kilimanjaro at age 62 last year) at the newly erected Four Seasons hotel. Another incredible steel and glass structure adorning Hong Kong’s renowned skyline. Service with a smile trained into waiters, bellboys, and valets, alike; an immaculate and stylishly streamlined décor; a menu offering a range of international breakfast alternatives; basically everything you’d expect from the most recent addition to Hong Kong’s upscale hoteliers. From the lap of luxury I meandered through the many covered overpasses of the Central district that shield millions of suited executives from the sun and rain during the weekdays and shelter thousands of Filipina maids (aka “helpers” of these aforementioned executives) on Sundays. Funny how the day of the week can change the atmosphere along those walkways so dramatically. With the kind assistance of a random passerby I found a little shop in an alleyway that alters watchbands while you watch for a mere HKD20. Minutes later I left the crowded lane with two perfectly fitted watches. Ah, the satisfaction of small errands efficiently executed.

Up several lengths of the Mid-levels escalator and I run into a brand new café advertising San Francisco coffee, perfect place to get through the final chapters of the book I’m trying to finish. An hour and a few SMS’s later I meet a friend for a second breakfast at a little café in Soho. Brilliant use of space – we end up in the back “patio” section of the café, technically en plen air dining, but in reality a square of space completely enclosed by apartment buildings on each side, offering the very familiar and priceless sight of undergarments and mops dripping from laundry lines above. A visit to my favorite leather goods store, Lianca on Graham St., lightens my mood and my wallet. Then a bit of pampering at a hair salon on Wellington, whose second floor perch allows a direct view into the gym across the street, where a whole squadron of gym bunnies are sweating it out on a row of treadmills. All this, and it’s only 5pm when I meet an out-of-towner for a slice of French apple pie at Portobello’s on Staunton St. 7pm, take-out from Chicken on the Run and back to the comforts of my couch and the action on the Strip.

The simple details of my day feel so perfect that I realize that I must be a bit lovesick for Hong Kong, lovesick for the life I lead here. I feel so at home in my little flat, so comfortable in this little city with its cocktail of cosmopolitan accents cut with the ever-present dry and guttural local dialect. I’m spoiled by the ease of my Mid-level life, trudging up and down the escalators, to and fro in this microcosm. And speaking of bubbles, it’s 2am and my neighbors are still up but the violet bubbles have ceased their ascent. Ah…even fish need to sleep.

You’re probably wondering about the relevance of these details to the DIP I mentioned before. Simple, really. When you love where you live, it’s tough to take those first little steps of disassociation. The beginning of the colonic signifies the start of my move, and although my due date looms close I am still reluctant to acknowledge its ineluctability. Just one day more of simple comforts. There’s always tomorrow for the purging to begin. Now, to join the fish...