I will remember this winter of 2022 I expect. Every morning I make tea and look out the window at Kowloon. This morning city is strangely foggy, closed off, quiet. There are no runners on the track, no tennis players on the courts. Few folk are out. I cannot see the ICC across the harbor, one of the world’s tallest buildings ghosting me. Neon on other TST rooftops is still on, bleeding through the fog with vague appeals.

This is a rare view of Hong Kong, a city usually bustling and humid. I am grateful for the quiet moments, as they match my life, unemployed and awaiting great change. By the peak of summer’s heat everything will be different, our lives, work, weather, this room, the fact that I sit wrapped in a blanket.

These quiet mornings the past two years have given me time to think. I’ve wasted much of it on reading news and random things, and still around the edges the quiet hours have done their trick. I’m happy here, in the house before it wakes, with my brain before it does likewise. I am glad to tend the cat and put away dishes, to make tea and then watch the treetops of Victoria Park, looking towards the harbor. Even the cockatoos are silent today. Usually they wheel about at seven thirty sharp, expressing their opinions of the morning to the world in loud voices.

The only reliable motion is the trundling busses, double decker ones and mini ones, back and forth on King’s road and up the hill. I love that the only sound is public transportation. There are people out of course, this is a dense urban center, but no more than twenty or so visible, scant different here at seven from two am this morning. There are always ten people visible from our seventh floor apartment. This is Hong Kong and we are never alone.

I wonder what this room will feel like in July. I wonder what my mornings will be like in the heat? Will I run AC in here or enjoy the mornings before they grow too hot? What did I do last year? It’s hard to remember the same as always. I got this chair in June. We gave away the couch that had occupied this spot some time later. The shapes of prior furniture come back to me, vaguely, but not the
feel of their coverings on my skin. Years later and I am still confused by the changes in weather.