HK Life

Life these days is as normal as it can get in HK. Work has been pretty slow, so I keep a 9-6 schedule, fit in yoga twice a week, have dinners with friends and even manage to cook a few times during the week. If only my work schedule could be like this all the time, I could stay in my job forever.

There's nothing too exciting, dramatic or stressful going on in my life, which means that my need to blog has gone down. There have been a flurry of very exciting things going on in the lives of my friends, although it's not my place to announce here, in case the readers know each other. I love hearing good news from my friends, but I always feel a little bit of sadness that I can only be happy for them from afar, and can't take them out for a drink to celebrate. I have so many "saved up" celebrations to celebrate with my friends when I get back home that I think I'd need a month full of happy hours, dinners and brunches to get through all the rainchecked celebrations.

One thing about life in HK - time flies by ridiculously fast, as if you were in some crazy time warp. I can't believe that we've been here over 7 months now. We arrived here at the end of summer last year, and now it's the beginning of summer (although to be fair, summer in HK is about 5-6 months). Time goes by much faster in HK than anywhere else I've lived in the world - I think it has something to do with how everyone and everything here is always in a rush.

Out of boredome and on a whim, I contacted a couple magazines in HK to inquire about food writing opportunities, and I was contacted by one of HK's luxury lifestyle magazines (I didn't contact them, but they received my contact info from Time Out magazine, who I had contacted) to contribute to their Best of HK restaurant guide. So come this summer, I will be eating at and writing up reviews of some of HK and Macau's restaurants - a welcome and happy addition to my life in HK.

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When we first arrived in HK, I loved the city while El Hombre had his reservations. I loved how vibrant it was, I loved how it managed to be so very international and yet so very Cantonese at the same time, I loved the amazing Chinese food and I loved the charm of the tram. At the time, the crowds, pollution, pushy old people, cockroaches, dirt, garbage, nasty smells and humidity were all things that I was willing to put up with. On the other hand, El Hombre didn't like HK very much at all at first. Over the last 7 months, my love of HK has cooled, while El Hombre has warmed up to it, so I think we've reached a similar balance of liking HK and being annoyed by its annoyances.

I read a book called Maximum City a couple years ago, a memoir about Mumbai/Bombay, which the author refers to as the biggest, fastest, richest city in India. Hong Kong is likewise a "maximum city" - it is a city that can be described with many "-est" adjectives. It's the densest, richest, most fast-paced, most hurried, most crowded city I've ever lived in. It is a maximum city - maximum people, maximum humidity, maximum wealth, maximum food, maximum materialism, maximum work hours, maximum everything.

Due to the maximum air-conditioning and maximum germs from the maximum crowds of maximum unhygienic people, I have unfortunately caught a maximum cold and lost my voice. I sound like a horror film monster.