Posts tagged with "Hong Kong"

Hong Kong Humidity

Difference in Hong Kong and Ottawa weather

One of the notable dif­fer­ences here is the humid­i­ty. The pages of my book are begin­ning to wrin­kle. Towels don’t dry when they’re hung on a line. Even though it’s 20°C out­side, it feels more like 15°C because it’s so damp. Humidity is some­thing that Hong Kong is known for, as it’s sur­round­ed by water and filled with tall build­ings. It makes me won­der how peo­ple deal with mold in their hous­es.

Ironically, it “rained” two days in a row, but the rain was so weak that I had to ask oth­ers if they felt the droplets. Very dif­fer­ent from Ottawa, where rain­fall goes beyond obvi­ous, and can last for days on end.

Last Chance For Grandma

I’m on a plane some­where over the Pacific Ocean, in the mid­dle of this 16000km jour­ney. 18 hours of flight time, one lay­over in Chicago, and two meals.

My grand­moth­er in Hong Kong is dying. She’s been diag­nosed with colon can­cer, and start­ed chemother­a­py last week, slip­ping in and out of aware­ness due to the can­cer, the treat­ment, the med­ica­tions, or all three. So when my dad told me a few days ago that he was book­ing a tick­et to fly out to see her, I had to take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to go with him.

This is the woman to whom I mailed the first pay­cheque from my first job. The woman who gave me the jade neck­lace I nev­er take off. The woman who came to Canada by her­self to find an edu­ca­tion for my dad, when the only English word she knew was “delay”. The woman who taught me how to hold chop­sticks prop­er­ly. The woman I’ve looked up to my entire life.

I don’t know how I’ll react when I see her, because I don’t know what con­di­tion she’s in. The details have been vague.

Awareness is a big thing. I want to be there. I want her to be aware. I want her to know how impor­tant she is to me.

The cir­cum­stances aren’t great, but I’m thank­ful to have this oppor­tu­ni­ty to go. I’ll be able to bond with my dad. I’ll get a chance to see my uncles and aunts and cousins. I was going to go last year, but the trip was can­celed due to unfore­seen cir­cum­stances.

In a way, the tim­ing is right. I already have my pass­port. I was able to get more than three weeks off work. My col­i­tis has been diag­nosed, and I’m tak­ing med­ica­tion that will allow me to eat very well and not wor­ry1. I have all the cam­era gear I need2. And I’ve been feel­ing so jad­ed with life late­ly, it’ll be good to get away, a lit­tle bit of much need­ed exile.

Before dri­ving to Toronto, I dropped Dolly off at Joel’s house3 The fish has a delayed feed­ing tablet. Extra pre­scrip­tions have been filled. The plants have been watered. Projects have been put on hold, both paid and unpaid, and plans have been can­celed. Even Naveed called me dur­ing the dri­ve, and invit­ed me to Rosella’s first birth­day par­ty, but I’ll have to miss it. I don’t like to do things so last minute, but I have no choice.

This will be the first time I’ve ever gone when it was­n’t Christmas. It’ll be warmer, that’s for sure, and I’m going from a bru­tal Canadian win­ter to rel­a­tive­ly trop­i­cal climes.

As a woman in her 80s4 with such a diag­no­sis on a dif­fer­ent con­ti­nent, it’ll prob­a­bly be the last chance for me to see her.

It feels like soon isn’t soon enough.

  1. I have yet to cal­cu­late the adjust­ment for the tim­ing of my med­ica­tions, since Hong Kong is 13 hours ahead, and the dosage for one of them is care­ful­ly tapered over sev­er­al weeks. [↩]
  2. The last time I went to Hong Kong, I was­n’t into pho­tog­ra­phy yet, so I bor­rowed my dad’s cam­era and did­n’t know how to use it. [↩]
  3. He owes me a favour for tak­ing care of Sprocket for six weeks while he was in Australia last year. It’ll be inter­est­ing to see how she han­dles liv­ing in some­one else’s home, along with Sprocket and anoth­er dog. [↩]
  4. No one real­ly knows how old she is, because they did­n’t keep birth records in Hong Kong for girls when she was born. I’m guess­ing some­where around late 80s. She just tells every­one that her birth­day is on Christmas to make it eas­i­er. [↩]

HK Fullscreen, Revisited, Again

Here I am, try­ing to get anoth­er entry down, but there’s a movie play­ing on OMNI.2, one of Canada’s pre­mier mul­ti-cul­tur­al chan­nels. Although the pro­gram­ming of OMNI.2 is aimed for 22 dif­fer­ent eth­no­cul­tur­al groups in 20 dif­fer­ent lan­guages, Saturday nights are always in Cantonese. Almost just as invari­able are the roman­tic come­dies of Hong Kong cin­e­ma that they broad­cast around this time.

It makes sense of course; stud­ies have shown that by 2017, vis­i­ble minori­ties will top 50% in Toronto and Vancouver, with Chinese peo­ple mak­ing up over 500,000 of that per­cent­age. Add to this the grow­ing fas­ci­na­tion of younger peo­ple with the Asian cul­ture, and recent flicks from Hong Kong are the per­fect way to build a strong mar­ket pres­ence.

Unfortunately, the movies are most­ly trite: a col­lec­tion of pre­dictable, sac­cha­rine love sto­ries with lit­tle artis­tic intent, and the one on now is no dif­fer­ent. I have to admit though, as sim­ple as these movies are, they still affect me. When I see the char­ac­ter­is­tic neon build­ing signs, home­ly food stalls filled with wok hey, and claus­tro­pho­bi­cal­ly busy streets of Hong Kong again, I’m filled with a cer­tain inex­plic­a­ble roman­ti­cism.

And I can’t seem to get over it. All I want to do is go to Hong Kong again and share the expe­ri­ence with some­one. An expe­ri­ence that’s heart-rac­ing­ly poignant, like the ado­les­cent mem­o­ry of a first date, when you’re build­ing up the courage to hold some­one’s hand. Perhaps, like Humbert Humbert in Nabokov’s Lolita, the mem­o­ry of my child­hood has frozen some­thing in me. A mem­o­ry that’s beau­ti­ful.

Simply, pure­ly, beau­ti­ful.

Miss You

I’m not usu­al­ly some­one who miss­es things. I miss my cat when I’m away for a few days, and occa­sion­al­ly I get a bit wist­ful because I miss being in Hong Kong, but that’s about it.

I’d miss hang­ing out with my friends on a day-to-day basis if I had­n’t already accept­ed the fact that they have lives of their own. I’d miss liv­ing in the social, relaxed, joc­u­lar envi­ron­ment of res­i­dence if I did­n’t already under­stand that uni­ver­si­ty is a part of my life that’s over, and that I most like­ly won’t being going back (it cer­tain­ly helps to know that liv­ing in res­i­dence is nowhere as nice as liv­ing in a com­fort­able apart­ment or house).

What I do miss though, is hav­ing a girl­friend who mois­tur­izes my back in the win­ter, when parts of my skin get uncom­fort­ably dry and irri­tat­ing. There are spots I just can’t reach, like between the shoul­der blades. It’s also nice to have some­one with warm hands who can stop the win­ter morn­ing shock of cold lotion.