Bicontinental life

After six glorious days of catching up with friends and family, eating grandmama's banchan, witnessing a friend get married, feeling a friend's baby kick through her stomach, driving and incurring a whole lot of damage on my credit card, I'm headed back to HK tonight. As much as I love the bay area, a part of me is excited to head back to HK - I suppose much of that has to do with El Hombre being there and the life we've built in the last year, but it also has to do with HK itself. Life in HK is so different from life in Cali, but it has its attributes. It's faster, more hurried, more intense, more materialistic, more MSG and dumpling-filled, more crowded, more...just more (of everything except space and fresh air). Cali is where I want to come back to settle down - to put down roots, buy some land (real land, not a piece of pie in the sky like I own now), have a yard, teach my kid how to ride a bike, commute to work, cook from scratch, bake cookies and cakes and brownies and raise a family. But Hong Kong - well, Hong Kong is where I make the money so I can have that life in Cali someday. And it's not so bad itself - life in HK is harried but enjoyable, and I'm looking forward to arriving at HK Int'l (only my most favorite airport in the world for its sheer efficiency) and walking into my tiny HK flat and seeing the HK skyline.

I live a bicontinental life these days, and though I despise all the sleepless hours in airplanes, I kind of love having both - time spent in laid back, slow America where I can wear t-shirts and jeans and flip flops and shop at Target and Trader Joe's and hang out with friends and eat MSG-free non-fried porkless vegetables; and hurried, chaotic Hong Kong where I still love to ride the tram and anything longer than a 10 minute cabride is "really far" and I can eat the most delicious xia long bao anytime I want and get excellent back massages for $25 and public transportation is easy, cheap, clean and efficient and where things are just more...intense. I love both. And while I don't think I'll ever be able to afford any type of property in HK, I've grown to love Asia so much that I do hope I'll be able to buy a flat somewhere in Asia so I can continue to have a bicontinental life even after I move back to Cali.