Model Cat

Model cat

My Uncle Joe and Aunt Vivien bought me this mod­el cat from Taiwan. It looks so real that I thought it was stuffed at first glance. It’s life-sized, though on the small side, so appear­ing to be a kit­ten. You can only tell that it’s fake when you look clos­er at it’s nose (plas­tic, with­out the same tex­ture as a real cat’s nose) and ears (too much hair — I’m guess­ing mem­branes are too dif­fi­cult to fake). If I was­n’t a cat lover, I’d def­i­nite­ly be fooled.

I’m going to put it in the back win­dow of my car; I’ve been look­ing for a dec­o­ra­tion ever since I got my car a year ago, and this is per­fect. Hopefully no one will smash my win­dows in an attempt to save it.

Protected: Walking Away From The Crazy And Their Crazy Ideas

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A Different Kind of Understanding

The doc­tor told us she has anoth­er 5–6 months. Her colon is so enlarged from the tumor that it’s thick­er than her spine, and the pro­ce­dure was just a tem­po­rary solu­tion to pre­vent fur­ther block­ages.

How strange it is to “know” how much time there is left. I guess that’s why they call it a dead­line. I had already assumed that this would going to be the last time I could see her, but that won’t make it any eas­i­er when I have to leave.

I’m grate­ful to the peo­ple who have been send­ing me their regards. It’s a nice com­fort. One of the best pieces of advice came from Charlotte, who told me to “not leave any­thing at all unsaid to her…leave no ques­tions unan­swered, and to not with­hold any affec­tion you feel for her”.

I had come to Hong Kong with the inten­tion of telling my grand­ma how impor­tant she was to me. Finding the right words in Chinese to express exact­ly what I want­ed to say.

But try­ing to speak with her has made me real­ize that she does­n’t care about any of that. She’s a very prac­ti­cal woman, almost to the point of tact­less­ness. For almost her entire life, mar­ried at 14 and as a sin­gle par­ent of sev­en kids, she’s had no time for words or feel­ings.

I’m here, and that’s how she under­stands how I feel.

Government House

Going up the stairs to the Government House

Thumbnail: Garden path
Thumbnail: Side of garden
Thumbnail: People sitting by the fountain
Thumbnail: Chinese scouts
Thumbnail: Different levels in Government House
Thumbnail: People and flowers
Thumbnail: Photographing flowers
Thumbnail: Trees and buildings
Thumbnail: Sidewalk view
 

I went to vis­it Government House, which is the offi­cial res­i­dence of the Governor of Hong Kong1. The gov­er­nors were all Caucasian, aside from when the Japanese invad­ed, since they were appoint­ed by the British gov­ern­ment. Now they’re all Chinese, and they don’t live here any­more, as a sym­bol of China’s new pres­ence and to lessen the impact of old British lega­cy.

It was a chance oppor­tu­ni­ty, because it’s only open to the pub­lic twice a year. Which pret­ty much means that it’s packed, even by Hong Kong stan­dards. People seemed to real­ly enjoy see­ing the expan­sive gar­den and the din­ing rooms where offi­cial func­tions are held. For me, it was a good chance to pho­to­graph locals, and an impor­tant piece of Chinese his­to­ry.

  1. Now renamed the “Chief Official” after the China takeover in 1997. [↩]

Five Year Timestamp

People here say I’ve changed.

Me and grandma

It’s been five years, and my grand­ma used to describe me all the time as “seun”, a Cantonese word for “pure, clean, unmixed”. But when I arrived last week, she said she would­n’t rec­og­nize me if she saw me on the street.

They used to say I looked like Leon Lai.

Leon Lai

Yeah, this guy. Now they’ll con­cede that I’m bet­ter look­ing than my dad.

People notice the white hair and say I used to have a baby face. That I’m old­er. Or more mature.

It’s true that I feel com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent than the per­son I was five years ago. I tend to reflect and eval­u­ate on a dai­ly basis (which is far too often) so I nev­er get a sense of any long term changes.

But now that I’m in Hong Kong again, and I look back on the per­son I was the last time I was here, I see the changes much more dras­ti­cal­ly.

It’s reflect­ed in ways that I’m not accus­tomed to notic­ing. Not just in the way I see the world, but from the way I han­dle things. The way I speak with those old­er than me. My inter­ests in what they have to say. I did­n’t even start work­ing yet the last time I vis­it­ed.

But at the core, I’m still the same per­son. The same morals, the same log­ic, the same intel­lect. It seems like it’s only the way these core traits man­i­fest them­selves that has changed, most like­ly from the things I’ve been through.

Five years is a long time to be so blind to these changes.

It’s quite sur­pris­ing.