Enjoy the dark days

In Hong Kong, in early February, the world is gray enough to feel like winter. Sometimes the sky drips, and sometimes the fog lingers on the hills. It’s a brief sensation that will be forgotten by the month’s end. As a child of wintery climes, I take comfort in the cycle of seasons, and am glad of these dark days. Pulling on shirt, pants, socks, and hat before making tea is a rare requirement in this city. Having nights be cold enough that the cat wants to snuggle happens but a few times a year. I pad through the unlit house and have to turn on the light when I reach the kitchen as the window, though uncovered, adds no light to the room. These small changes and the brief moment they occupy remind me of our lives in other places, and I treasure them.

Hong Kong will not hold this weather for long, nor the feeling of winter. At seven thirty, as they always do, the cockatoos swirl through our small neighborhood squawking. Entirely tropical birds with incredibly loud opinions and silly plumage, they dispel the idea of true winter with their daily arrival. As the world lightens the density of foliage on the hillside and the park, unchanged from summer, makes it clear that this is no northerly place. The thermometer, were I to look, would say 16 degrees, hardly cold. And yet these are the days for fleeces and puffy vests, for wool hats and socks inside.

We take what we can get, and enjoy each moment we are aware of the variety.

Change

The small corner in front of Little Tai Hang

All things start with our first impression. Our first view of our new flat, windows and doors, is hard to reconcile with the original architecture plans. Was this really a balcony? Our neighborhood likewise. Were these really all car shops, we think, wandering Tai Hang? Some, surely, as they are today, but not all. Was this coffee shop not always here? In this neighborhood the answer is it was not, one of a half dozen to have opened since the pandemic started. Unlike dinner restaurants and bars, coffee shops have boomed the past two years. There are no tourists, but there are thousands of Hong Kongers looking for something new, for a new neighborhood to explore and a new latte to try. Every few months a new sign goes up, a new restaurant is closed for re-modeling.

Some things we have seen change already, early in our time here, and struggle to envision what was before. Fineprint downstairs opened three months after our arrival and I have no memory of what preceded it. As with so many things the answer is several months of empty shop front under construction and so there is no earlier place to be overwritten.

And yet change does not pause.

In our fourth year in Hong Kong the change feels faster. Two places we have enjoyed close within a month, and we wonder what will happen. In our minds they have always occupied these corners, have always featured folk hanging outside on Friday evenings after work. The shock wears off, and we visit them one last time for the memories, noting wear spots on counters and scratches left on the floor by chairs. These signs of use, common to any venue, take on new meaning in our conversations. Did the owners know, and stop making repairs? Most likely not. Any space inhabited by humans is worn down through their contact. Our apartment, despite a re-painting on year two, features a few marks on the walls by the kitchen, where bags or the bouldering pad have rubbed, where careless turns chipped paint. Maintenance is a requirement, needed by private and public spaces alike. The corner we frequent outside Second Draft, one of the closing spots, pictured above, was repaired a few months back, the boards replaced and painted.

Seen in this way the turnover of businesses, rather than a commentary on landlords, neighbors, or the pandemic, is a way to make sure that things are fixed, and to give us all a chance to anchor our memories to moments in time. Whatever fills those spots next will be remembered as much for what they replace as for what they bring.

At least at first.

Various positions

The alley next to Coffee Obsession in Fortress Hill, Hong Kong

I sit on a bench in an alley, leaned against the concrete wall of the coffee shop. Next to me water trickles down the gutter from the earlier showers. It may rain again. The construction site across the way is wrapped entirely in blue fabric, over the thousands of bamboo poles. The building will be thirty stories. It’s not terribly remarkable in this North Point neighborhood.

I’m here because the coffee is good. Quality coffee without much hassle is an art. Fancy coffee is thick on the ground these days. Everyone has started a coffee shop in the past two years. They’re not closed by the government’s lockdown on bars and evening dining. They’re popular with the wfh crowd. They don’t need international tourists, so aren’t hurt by the last two years of border closures. With no where to go, Hong Kongers are exploring their city more than ever, hunting out corners unknown. That there are still so many after two years is a testament to this place’s incredible depth. There are dozens of hikes and waterfalls I haven’t yet seen. Beaches likewise. Coffee shops likewise. Because, though we adventure, mostly we enjoy the neighborhoods we know, the places close to where we live. Mostly we adventure close to home, now that we can not go far afield.

Men rattle their carts down the alley beside me, filled with recycling, or deliveries, or inventory for small shops somewhere out of site. Like all good big city alleys, this one is a thoroughfare, just for the back end of the commerce that occupies the larger streets. It is full of scooter parking, of trash and recycling, of workers on their smoke breaks, of chairs for building attendant’s lunches, of shop back doors and hotel fire escapes. Alleys aren’t the glamorous parts of cities, they’re the required parts, the things that are too often eliminated in nice drawings, in recreations, in Disney versions. Disney, of course, puts all the alley tasks underground, in tunnels, so staff can emerge in place and trash can disappear, setting impossible standards for the rest of the world.

I like the alleys. I like the view of real life they present, of breaks and deliveries and trash removal, even if I don’t appreciate the smoke. I don’t complain though. I’ve come, after all, to where the smokers escape to.

Places I slept, 2021

View of Hong Kong Harbor and Island from a hotel on the Kowloon side

Unlike last year, I tracked this list carefully in twenty twenty one. Some rituals fade in importance when forcibly paused, but not this one. I love recalling our different adventures. Lists like these and the mental exercise they entail are a way to mark time, and to remember life’s variety. In 2021 I needed both. As years go this one was not as slow as the last, and for a brief moment we felt the world open up. After both getting new jobs during the first lockdown in twenty twenty, we started the new year working hard with good groups. For the first time since twenty sixteen, we both made it through the month of August in the same job we’d begun the year with. It was a spring of adventuring around Hong Kong, bouldering on beaches and kayaking in the ocean. We played frisbee, but sparingly, and Tara spent alternate Wednesday evenings running women’s beginner frisbee sessions. Long a passion, her efforts have paid off, with summer sessions attracting thirty-odd women of various levels. Given less access to the world, we’ve invested more in the community we can reach. We also started doing yoga together, slowly, and for much of the year it made Friday mornings the best part of the week. As we learned in twenty twenty, spending time learning new skills is always worthwhile.

Most luckily, we got vaccines in April and were on a plane to the US by the end of June. After more than a year on the ground, seeing Hong Kong from the air during takeoff was a relief and a reminder of how important air travel is to our lives. I’ve rarely been happier to be on vacation. In California we swam in pools, drove cars, ate barbecue on decks, and walked around lakes. In Colorado we went to the All-Star game, and in New York I played soccer on a field with a view of lower Manhattan. Mostly though we spent almost every waking hour in conversation with someone we hadn’t seen in a year and a half, and those moments make up many of the year’s best memories.

Our trip was lucky in all the best ways, as we returned right before Delta re-terrified communities, and escaped with only seven days in hotel quarantine. Those seven days watching Hong Kong and the harbor, the view of which tops this post, represent something of a dream, a small gap to be quietly ourselves and remember all that we’d done. From the moment we left that room and reunited with our friends and our cat, on my birthday in early August, the year seemed to accelerate. Tara changed jobs, a lucky shift back to the renewables industry she never really wanted to leave, and the sense of being underwater that comes with starting new hard things returned. After a hard year for my startup’s business model I too moved on, without a next step in sight. Some decisions are difficult but necessary, and the gift of a partner who can pay rent has enabled me to relax this past month. The cat appreciates the company, and we know by now to take what breaks we can whenever we are able.

Twenty twenty one was a good year, alternately hard and peaceful, and while we miss some parts of our old lives fiercely we are settling in to this quiet new reality, grateful both to those here with us in Hong Kong’s bubble and for regular communication with those further afield. Our list, when compiled like this, paints a picture to me of our relationships. It reminds me of friend’s homes and the comforts of our local situation. We are lucky, as always, to have so much to do.

Tai Hang, HK
Aberdeen harbor, HK (houseboat)
Admiralty, HK (staycation)
Wan Chai, HK (staycation)
Malibu, CA (twice)
Oakland, CA
Fort Collins, CO
Walden, CO
Berthoud, CO
Cherry Hill, NJ
Rumson, NJ
Brooklyn, NY (two separate spots)
Ithaca, NY
Hung Hom, HK (quarantine)
Tsim Sha Tsui, HK (staycation)
Sai Wan Beach, HK (camping)

A longer view

For years we have been on the move. For years when people ask what we’ve been doing the answer has been “working” or “playing sports but mostly working”. In so many ways that has been the truth, the collective summary. In another view, though, we’ve been collecting people, discovering an ever-expanding group of humans we enjoy. It’s the best undertaking, and gains from motion, from working at a variety of companies, playing a variety of sports, and living in a variety of cities. Part of leaving, part of changing, is the joy of meeting new. Here in Hong Kong, at the end of our second strange year, I’m so grateful to all those who’ve been part of our teams.

In the late summer of twenty twenty one we rode out on a boat, past the city’s edge to a bay facing the ocean. The water was cool but not cold, the sky hot but not boiling. Falling off the third deck to the waves I felt free, and light. It’s a feeling of pleasure so simple I repeated the action a dozen times. Each time the release was easy, and the water welcoming.

The boat was full of friends, teammates, partners. They’re a happy group, a third or so just out of quarantine and back to the bubble of Hong Kong, celebrating their release from confinement with extra abandon. We are glad to be back, to be on the water, and to be with friends. In this journey, in this odd bubble world, we are each other’s crew. It’s a simple designation of friendship grown deep through repetition, through boats and hikes and beach days. Mostly, it’s a friendship grown through frisbee.

In the early winter we again are on the move. This time the vessel is a party tram, rented from the Hong Kong Tramways for a two hour loop up and down Hong Kong Island. These rented vehicles serve as gathering points, rallying cries for a group of disparate people who like chasing plastic on grass. The community, formed through training, across games won and lost, is transient. There are new faces and faces of those who will move on. There is even, on this tram ride, a child barely a month old. It’s a glorious group, and cheering people on passing busses and tram stops we float through the city. Like most of us I wear a santa hat and a mask covered with a fake beard. It’s a silly outfit, an attempt to bring Christmas to us. Most of us are foreigners far from home, and the season is a strange one, with few of the flights to distant lands that used to dominate this time of year. Yet as we totter off the tram back to solid ground, like from the boat back in August, we are happy, and together. Tomorrow many will play sports again, focusing on throws and cuts. Today, this afternoon, and tonight, we are on the move, laughing at each other’s stories and playing silly games. I meet spouses and partners, and am grateful for this time together.