A Hongkong Chronicle

The glass door slid open the very moment the bus halted adjacent the bus stop. A few blocks before, at the upper deck, we were already on our toes readying ourselves to step down. The moment the timer flashed 60, we hurried on alighting from the bus one by one. There were seven of us and a couple of passengers and all of us had only a minute, exactly sixty seconds to climb down the vehicle lest we all want to find ourselves on the next bus stop, a few kilometers off. As the bus sped away, I was fidgety on my scarf. I coiled it twice to add warmth over my nape. The temperature was at a freezing 11 degree Celsius. It was only until here that I had experienced this much cold in my life. I tucked both of my hands in my jacket-pockets as we started to walk. I tugged-on with my siblings while my folks were ahead of us a few steps away. Along with them is my mom’s friend uncle Rey, who relegated himself to being our tour guide. He has been here for almost 17 years. He likes it here more than in his land of birth. Who wouldn’t? Even I have found myself liking the place after only a couple of days. We were walking within Tsim Sha Tsui district. Getting lost but then finding our ways amid the dense crowd. With all the organized, effective and high-technology public transportation scheme this country has, one will find it amusing how most locals prefer to walk – even the old ones. We chatted our way until we stopped to sample the local street-food at a very busy stall. I had dumplings on a stick. The fusion of sweet and spicy aftertaste was great on the palate. “Tomorrow when we’re at the night market, we’ll sample their spicy seafood”, uncle Rey said while finishing his melon drink. I was talking to my brother when a woman approached him and muttered something to him in Cantonese. My brother smiled and stutteringly said “Sorry, I only speak English”.  My mom asked what that was about so I told her the incident and my dad laughed at it in jest. My brother has slanted eyes so it’s not really hard for him to be mistaken as Chinese though he looks more Japanese to me. We continued on our parade taking pictures of anything that caught our interests; amazing infrastructures, cutting-edge architecture and even of people we find fashionable - anything that we haven’t seen back home. 

The wind blew colder as the night got deeper but the crowd builds up by the minute. We found ourselves frolicking back in Victoria harbor. It was just last night when we astonished ourselves with the harbor’s symphony of light: a dazzling synchronization of laser, light and music multimedia of forty-four buildings.  “If I live here, I would watch this show every night giving up ten minutes of my life to pure awe and amazement”, I said to myself.  We all stopped at the promenade and sat at the benches admiring the city sky-line opposite the harbor. Our feet, weary of walk and our bodies, shivering from the cold. “The ice in Mongolia had melted and the wind is blowing all the cold here. In fact, temperature there has gotten below negative and some plants and cattle have died of it”, uncle Rey explained. “But this isn’t even the coldest yet, three weeks ago it was down to 9 degrees. February is the coldest month, you know”, he added. He went on explaining further about the light show; how expensive it was and how many tourists it draws every night. I listened eagerly until a familiar whisper of a warm, almost cry-like tone stole my ears. As uncle Rey’s voice grew fainter to my hearing, the melodious sound grew louder seemingly engaging on a duet with the frequent howling of the cold winter wind. I discreetly searched where the sound was coming from. A few benches away, a woman was romancing the strings of her cello as people passed her by. - Not a care in the world. I kept my eyes at her while I listened to her music. That rich, soothing sound and almost human-like singing kept me entranced for a long while. Ah! This should be life – not a care in the world for me, too.