So sick of being sick

I fell ill again as soon as arriving in HK after traveling for 8 days through Seoul and Macau. Everytime I sign or close a deal or come back from extensive travel, I seem to catch a bad flu or cold. (And in this job, that's quite a lot) This time was the worst though - I spent an entire day in bed freezing even while my temperature wouldn't drop below 102 degrees. I was completely delirious and incapacitated, yet my boss kept sending me emails telling me to do stuff or asking for calls, even after I straight up told him I was incapable of even sitting up, let alone focusing my brain on doing anything useful. I told him to talk to L, who is the junior associate on our team, but he would insist that "she's not going to understand how to do it, I need to talk to you." So yesterday, I went into the office so I could do the task he needed done, only to realize that seriously, a monkey could have done it if you had just taken the five minutes to give them proper instructions. Was it really necessary for ME to drag my sick arse out of bed and into the office to do it? Absolutely not. Is it really that impossible for him to sit down and spend five minutes giving clear instructions to a smart, capable adult who is clearly not an idiot? I guess not. It's stuff like this that makes me really question how long I can stay a cog in this corporate machine that just does not care about you at all.

I'm sick of being sick all the time. The germs in HK are supergerms, and totally unavoidable. You are constantly exposed to people - walking on the sidewalks, taking public transportation, grocery shopping. As soon as you step outside your flat, you are exposed to billions of God-knows-what kind of germs. In the US, I used to have a fairly strong immune sytem - I rarely got sick. But I think that's because my body has a strong defense against the more sanitized germs of the West, but just doesn't know how to deal with the supergerms of the East. I usually resist taking drugs - I don't like putting artificial foreign substances into my body because you never know how your body's chemistry will react (you could be part of that .1% of the population that has serious adverse reactions to the drug) and because I believe you have to let your own body fight the germs so it can develop antibodies against them in the future. But this time around, I caved and took advil and theraflu. My conclusion? God bless drugs.

***

I spent six days in Seoul with L last week. We had to be in town for a client meeting, but the couple days preceding that were the Chusok holidays, the biggest holiday in Korea, so we went a few days early to hang out, check out the city, and individually spend time with our families. Usually when I visit Seoul, after 3 days, I think "ok, enough! get me the hell out of here!" But this time around, I almost felt like: hmmm, I can kinda see living here in the future, at least part time. Out of all the major cities in Asia, Seoul is the most balanced - it's urban and metropolitan, but it's not as crowded as Hong Kong; the streets and sidewalks are wide and clean and well-paved; the food is clean and delicious and there are tons of options; cost of living is fairly cheap - basically, you can live a good life. That is, if you can put up with the fact that it is still a super-chauvinistic, male-dominated, Confucianist, filial-guilt-inducing, materialistic, judgmental world. If you can get over that one little hiccup, it's a very pleasant place to live.

L and I had a list of all the things we wanted to eat in Seoul, and the piggies that we are, we managed to knock off every single item on our embarassingly long list. Galbi, jjajangmyun, naengmyun, ho dduk, pat bing soo, andong jjim dak, shigol bap sang, ho bak jook, soon dae, dduk bokki. Korea has so much good food, and it's so readily available and so affordable (other than beef, that is). What I love most are all the cafes - I wish HK had more dessert cafes with shaved ice or delicious chai or green tea.

We met my friend F for dinner one night and she took us out to Garosugil, a newly developed street near Apgujeongdong with funky boutiques and cafes and restaurants. It's a little bit alternative, yet totally yuppie. I fell in love with that little street and the existence of that street alone made me think that maybe I could one day live in Seoul - or rather, that if I ever have to live in Seoul, it wouldn't be that bad.

***

Even though Seoul, on the whole, is a much more pleasant place to live than HK, when I returned to HK, I breathed a huge sigh of relief and was ecstatic to be back. When I am in Seoul, I constantly feel like I don't measure up - I'm not Korean enough, I'm not lady-like enough, I'm not rich enough, my face isn't white enough, I'm not pretty enough. There is this constant, not-so-subtle pressure to conform. But the thing about conforming in Korea, is that no matter how much you conform, society will never tell you you are good enough. It will always find something else wrong with you to make you feel like you don't measure up. Who wants to live in a place like that?

Hong Kong on the other hand - maybe it's just me, but in HK, I feel like I can just do whatever I want and no one cares. While it's true that HK is a very materialistic, money-driven society, if you consciously decide for yourself that you're not going to join that race (and if you want to stay sane, you should decide that you are not going to join that race), then life is pretty awesome. Because it's such an international, eclectic society, I feel like there are no "rules" on what you're supposed to be or how you're supposed to act. Cantonese people in general seem to do whatever the hell they want anyway, so I feel free to do whatever I want too. And I find that freedom invaluable.