This line of questioning, starting out soft, getting loud and a bit insistent, then soft again, is sure to elicit an exasperated “WHAT?!?!?” at about the 10th “Aaron?” I love it. Never fails. Ever.
Oldest brother of mine, I love spending time with you. You have dad’s sweet heart. Mom’s thoughtful quietness. Yet you still manage to be among the silliest of the Veach siblings. I applaud your efforts, though you’ll never surpass my silliness. No, you match my silliness. I look forward to our time together because I know a lot of what it will entail. Smiles from the start. At least a few episodes of random laughter between the two of us that others will question the root of at first, then accept that there is no reason behind our madness.
How did all this begin, anyway? Was there a great transfer of brain waves when you dropped me off the porch (more…)
Boxing Day 2008: A three-mountain day. Want to walk with me? Cool. First, take a look at where our hike begins: The bottom of Violet Hill.
The first of what would be many stairs. Think you can make it? Please, follow me. The views are worth it…
You’re nearly to the top of Violet Hill. You may be wondering, “what’s the difference between a hill and a mountain?” Join the club, friend. While you sit on an enormous rock pondering that, check out Hong Kong. You’re breathing cleaner air. Your ears are learning how to open again after spending so much time trying to block out the noise of city life. A few large birds are circling, swooping. There’s a strong wind blowing in from the south. Shall we?
Wait, what’s that ahead of us?
Ha! More steps!
The final batch before we reach the top. And, a fork!
I’d done a bit of research before setting out this time. But none of the place names I was expecting to see were here. I’d come from Park View, so that left two options. I went for Tsin Shui Wan, chosen because it sort of pointed in the direction of Stanley, by my calculations. How right I was!
While hanging around on top of Violet Hill, I stopped to pose for a moment…
Thanks to the first of the day’s trail friends for taking this shot. At the bottom of this mountain I’d make a few more friends…
To my left in the photo is back up the Violet Hill. To my right is the first of The Twins. Continuing with the poetic beauty that is Hong Kong, when this photo was taken I was about to “Do the Twins.” Lovely, eh?
On top of Twin 1 I paused to eat an apple. That’s when I met Jeff, trail friend number 3 (if you count the group above as a collective friend). Jeff and I hiked down Twin 1, laughed a little bit, and hiked up Twin 2. Decidedly less strenuous than the first, but made a little tougher by talking about football. Soccer? Yes. Brief pause atop Twin 2 (heh), aka Ma Kong Shan, then down the steps to Stanley Gap Road and the always enjoyable Stanley Market. Shrimp wonton in noodles for me, chicken wings in noodles for Jeff. Mmm. Stopped for a few minutes to watch what I dub “the penguins”:
… if for no other reason than it was my first thought when I saw this group of people hanging out on the rock outcropping. I’ve never typed outcropping before this blog post. How bout them apples.
Hi from Times Square. Among my awesome Christmas presents: A new camera! Hoping to keep from losing this one! Thanks, Dad!
For more of the first batch, including a peek into where I spent my Christmas, click on the awesomeness. And have a nice day. I’m off to the mountains.
Sunrise in Discovery Bay, Hong Kong, on Sept. 5. Apols for the delay in uploading. Just today I took the time to sync my mobile phone with my computer and download the media content and contacts. Fun times. So far I’m a big fan of vimeo. I previously wrote about this morning: see my earlier post, “Hong Kong can whisper”. Now, let’s see how this embedding works out…
Ah ha! Success! Forgive the camera noises and shakiness. It was the end of a fun-filled night. The shot starts out pointing northeast toward Disneyland then pans south. Hong Kong Island is to the east/southeast. Discovery Bay and the South China Sea are before you. In the distance you can see the skyscrapers of Central on HK Island. The end of the pan points mostly south and has a glimpse of one of the piers in Disco Bay. Note the islands clearly visible. Most days you can’t begin to see that many islands.
I am consistently amused while walking through the open-air market off Bowrington Road near my home. First impressions, as you’d expect, are that it’s quite foul-smelling and jam-packed with people, fish, produce and nastiness. The furthest thing from pleasant. But now, after walking through it countless times, usually on my way to somewhere else, I find it sweet and somewhat homey. I recognize the vendors. The produce guy nearest Canal Road really doesn’t like me, and I can’t figure out why. So I picked a new produce stand where the ladies are excited to sell me fruit. I’m excited to buy it, so the transaction is better all around.
During the morning and until dark settles, the market’s tide of shoppers, trucks, carts, bikes, tourists and those of us passing through slogs through like a polluted stream that some time ago exceeded its limit of both water and debris. Sort of interesting, really, how people can’t help but stop for a moment, without fail, to watch as a fish is slapped on a table and spends its last moments of hope flopping from side to side, flipping up and flicking smelly water on market dwellers. Slowly but surely it fades and joins the ranks of the other fish with mouths gaping, in their last moments of life. The vendors plop hopeful, new fish on the table strategically to draw the interest of passers-by. All sorts of fish: spotted, pink, yellow, blue, huge and tiny and shrimp and eel. Got a hankering for a fish head? They’ll sell it to you. Oh, and the skilled fish choppers show off the swim bladders, white-ish and stretched like a balloon that a clown would twist into a dog or a sword.
The first moment from the fish market that stuck with me, and sticks with me today, is this: A woman with a cigarette hanging off her lip, hawking fish in the middle of the market on the north side of the street — the left if you’re working your way from Wan Chai to Times Square — sloppily gathering a handful of some small fish into a basket and weighing it with a traditional Chinese scale. She wears a white apron over a gray long-sleeved cotton shirt. Dark pants. She’s heavy-set and has her hair pulled back. She brushes back a stray lock of hair from her face with the back of a rubber-glove-clad hand while holding up the scale so her customer can see. They agree on a price and she tosses the fish over her shoulder where the butcher goes to work. And she goes back to telling everyone in the market how good her fish is. At least I assume that’s what she’s saying. But across the stream of people passing through she can see the real line, stretching past her stall. I haven’t a clue why this one stall has the longest line, but it always does. You can’t get to some of the stalls for this line.
I’ve been told it’s best to stop in this market before noon to avoid the smell. But I’m fairly certain the timing doesn’t matter. It always smells. You deal. The real time to hit the market is after about 9 p.m., when you stumble out of the market on the Wan Chai side and look to the left to see a row of restaurants where big, round tables have been set up. The plastic stools are filled just as fast as the staff can set them up.
I’m the nicest person in Hong Kong, he said. Then he qualified, necessarily: I’m the nicest person one can hope to meet in a week in Hong Kong. It started with a beer and ended in Times Square.
A healthy contingent of America’s finest arrived in the waters off the Kong two or three Saturdays ago. They checked into hotels and started the routine. At first the curiosity and excitement of new places is motivation enough to see more than whatever bar is still open after the one you’re in closes. There are sights, there’s local life. Every city is different, but only for so long. After 10, 20 stops it had long ago started to weigh on them. The routine changed. Maybe it was gradual. Maybe it was a snap decision: The flip of a coin. However long it took, the S.O.P. rewrote itself to focus on drinking while awake.
I come into this picture by following my own S.O.P. Late nights at work, followed by generally quiet walks home. I change the route often, either following the water to the east to start or heading south before turning east. I always share my walk home. I wonder where they’re coming from, where they’ve been. I chuckle that I should pay attention to their shoes. None of them have ever talked to me before, and I’ve never talked to them.
This Tuesday in November I accepted an offer of a beer at a bar near my office. The Bridge is open 24 hours, and I’ve never found it empty. Sometime in the course of two beers (I bought a round too), this gentleman said he found Hong Kong quite boring. I wouldn’t let that thought leave the island. I love Hong Kong. But if all you see are the late-night bars, of course it seems devoid of character and the same as every other city’s late-late scene. So I offered a daytime tour the next day to correct his point of view. He seemed interested, and we left off agreeing that he’d call if he wakes up, and I’d answer if I wanted to answer.
Mike called at 0845. I answered and made my way to meet him on Kowloon side, a 20-minute taxi ride from my apartment. Then I took him on a smashing tour of the Kong. First, the Star Ferry: a must-see for every HK visitor. We made our way to the little-used viewing platform in IFC 2. The office of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority has a fairly foreboding security presence. Visitors must present ID and obtain a pass. But from there, the friendly staff guides you to the 55th floor where you have a great view of the Kong. Then we walked via elevated walkways and escalators to Soho, where we stopped in one of the usual weekend haunts for me and my pals, Divino’s. We rode a tram, another of Hong Kong’s wonderful and unique means of public transportation. He showered me with compliments. I pinged him with questions. We talked about how similar our lives are right now. We both feel that life is, at least in part, on hold. But our adventures will forever be part of whatever future life is in store for each of us. We ate egg tarts. We walked through an open-air market, a great park in the middle of huge banking towers, a cathedral. He said he was amazed at it all. He said his friends probably were still in their hotel rooms.
For a few hours, I gave back to someone whose contributions to freedom leave me forever grateful. No, by himself Mike isn’t keeping me safe or free. But he is part of something greater. We are all part of something greater. It’s only when two lives intertwine and affect each other that once-blinding differences fade to reveal how small we all are, and how important we all are. Connections are our lifeblood. Knowing my connections around the world are out there looking after things … that helps me sleep at night.
Mike and I stood in Times Square and took it all in. People streamed past, left and right, walking fast, walking slow, walking the way only Hong Kongers do. They kept going, but we parted ways. I think I’ll remember that Tuesday in November for a long, long time…
