...go die in a fire.
Oh, I'm sorry, I should be more polite.
Go die in a fire, please.
*NOTE: This was posted after an excruciatingly painful and frustrating week and should not be taken as a commentary on my genuine feelings toward the people of Hong Kong at large. As with comments about the US and any other country, these statements pertain only to a particular subset of the population. That being said, even those statements that are sincere should be taken lightly...for the most part. I apologize for any offense caused in reading this...unless you are, in fact, one of those Hong Kong cabbies who thinks it's okay to speed up when approaching a red light and almost hit people. Phew!*
Okay, yeah, this is going to be another one of my immature blog rants but, frankly, I think it's been earned after the week we've had (which Carina has been calling the Week from Hell; fitting for the time of year, no?).
It all started on Sunday when I finally succumbed to my most recent respiratory infection from the pollution and Heaven knows what else in the apartment thanks to Beanpole's inability to clean up after himself. As we move into the (barely perceptible) winter months of Hong Kong the air pollution seems to coagulate and you start to feel like you're just sucking down smog. It's gross both in terms of the damage to your health and the taste left in your mouth, yuck!
Anyway, so here I've been with a runny, swollen nose, itchy throat and eyes, and utter exhaustion for the past few days. Halloween comes around and Carina's boss has invited us over to her flat in Discovery Bay for dinner. Just a heads-up, Discovery Bay (DB) is the place for the beautiful people in Hong Kong, and by beautiful people I mean foreigners...except for us, obviously. I'm ailing, but I don't want to ruin this for Carina and, besides, maybe it'll be a good time even with my sickness. In fact, it was a pretty good time. We had some of the best food we've not cooked ourselves in a while and it was nice to be around some Halloween activities. They really go all-out in DB and the kids love it. Hell, we loved it, too.
Unfortunately my sinuses didn't, and I was miserable as soon as I came down from my high.
Fortunately, I've been healing pretty well and after that night I started to rapidly recover (although I'm still blowing my nose all over the place, and that's a little gross). Our bad juju seemed to transfer to Carina, unfortunately, and she has spent most of the week playing catch-up with work and school along with getting her visa information sorted out. This culminated in a random day trip to Macau (again) where we had some cocktails and not-so-great Thai food to celebrate her getting a visa. Hopefully this will all play out well in the end and she'll be able to start receiving a paycheck ASAP. Also, hopefully we won't have to blow any extra cash on Macau. We need that money for plane tickets.
That having been taken care of, Hong Kong's indeterminate spirit of ill-will seems to have transitioned back over to me for the morning. I woke up late and ended up having to navigate the taxi-infested streets of early morning HK. It's really disgusting how many people take cabs instead of public transport or, Heaven forbid, walk to where they need to go (which is usually only a few blocks away). In my frustration I decided to try a new route uphill to get above the pollution. The plan was to simply run up to a neighborhood I know and then turn off on a road that leads downhill into an area I usually run around.
Grr, and it would've worked too if it weren't for those meddling ill-conceived pedestrian walkway patterns!
Seriously, what is wrong with your city planners, Hong Kong? Why is it that if I want to cross a street in some places I have to vault over a railing just so I can cross a five meter gap? What is the point of that!? On the bright side, I got to practice my parkour, but that also really mucked up my timing...that and the fact that none of the roads are clearly marked and I totally missed my turn-off. Whatever, no big deal, I just ran all the way back downhill and found my usual path to run and make up for lost time...well, almost. I mean, navigating a maze of geriatrics does inhibit your ability to run at full speed.
Topping all of this off, of course, was the fact that whenever I wanted to cross the street this morning I had to dodge a taxi. This rule seemed to apply even when the cab had a red light and I had a green. This is not the first time this has happened, either, which brings me to the question of the week: What the Hell, Hong Kong!?
Seriously, do you people just not have the ability to wait five seconds for something? Do you have to crowd and wrangle every market, bus, and entrance? Is queuing so foreign a concept for you that you always need to be forced into lines to order yourselves, you can't just figure it out spontaneously? Do you not understand that a red light means "STOP" and that you should always give pedestrians right of way? Here's something for you: Red does not mean "GO". Yellow does not mean "GO". Only green means "GO".
Here's my advice to Hong Kong cabbies: grow a freaking frontal lobe and learn to exercise some patience and common courtesy. Your damn schedules and fares don't outweigh the value of human life. You drive up to me, threatening to hit me with your outdated deathtrap. Would you do the same to a little old lady? If you would, shame on you! If you wouldn't, still shame on you! A little old lady might have less resilience, but any human life is a human life. GET THAT THROUGH YOUR THICK SKULLS!
Okay, okay, sorry. I just needed to take a moment to get that out. People ask what life in HK is like, though, and I tell 'em. This is what you deal with in HK: pollution, discourtesy, and an inability to engage with anything beyond the self or, at most, the immediate. Oh, that and rapid inflation. Pretty soon food will cost as much here as it does in the US, but most people will have far less money to use. Have fun with that.
Arrrgh,
Colin
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