Please Hold The Handrail.

Oct 26, 2024

∙ Paid

It felt like the beginning of a cardiac arrest.

Newsflash to myself: when I left Fukuoka I did not expect to hike 550m 48 hours later.

“Don’t be a wuss”, Parky assured he’d lead us to the easier trail.

I woke up at 6am to a text saying he couldn’t make it due to jetlag. In Cantonese, that’s ‘fong faye gay’ 放飛機 , like plane rides that never came.

Who’s the wuss now?

I was up anyway, with nothing else to do.
How hard could it be?

Not even ten minutes, and my chest was tightening, short of breath.
The last time I went on a stair master in a gym was never.

Deep down, my body wanted this.
I told myself.

For all the things I did yesterday.

All the things I ate.

People are in a hurry.

They don’t say ‘thank you, come again, see you next time’; they say ‘tankyubuy’.

Like America, Hong Kong emits this Deja vu familiarity, like I’ve been here countless times, due to growing up with the movies in the 90s.

The taxis, road signs, the food, the language.

The bipolarity.

The taxi driver switched the channel to English, that’s considerate. (I waltzed into the city to the tunes of - not joking at all - California Dreamin’. How clichely WKW.)
Same taxi driver, when dropping me off, would yell and remind me not to scratch his trunk.

Welcoming, but rude.
Harsh, yet with care.
Service, with self-preservation.

I exchange greetings with a guy in the elevator. We laughed at how the door wouldn’t close without hitting the ‘close’ button. He walked out of the fifth floor in the hotel slippers, I assumed to collect laundry.

More than half a dozen spots came up when I searched ‘coffee’, I couldn’t put my finger on why I chose Two and a Half Street. A combination of ‘not awful rating’ and ‘nice looking photos’.

When I arrived it was just another expat place, serving Allpress coffee.
Lululemon and dogs. Pick a better duo to go with $8 long blacks.

After I sat down, a guy in hotel slippers appeared.

The same guy in the elevator.

He told me he found the place by looking for ‘breakfast’, ‘French’.

Bill was in town to be a guest speaker at an A.I. conference.

We spoke about everything for almost 2 hours. He’s from Canada, but lives in Bangkok, now starting tech companies everywhere around the world. He invited me to both the conference and after party. I begged him to start a business in Fukuoka and hire me instead.

Parky showed up and we went for dimsum not too far away.

The hotel is near Sai Ying Pun, close to Parky and his workplace - HKU. Our first breakfast together had to be dim sum. If the bobo (bohemian bourgeois) hang out at specialty coffee shops with their avocado on toast, then senior citizens loiter in dim sum restaurants.

We then taxi’d to the M+ Gallery to see the I.M. Pei exhibition and their permanent collection, then taxi’d back to the hotel to have afternoon tea.

I had a mini tea set with crispy, greasy, flavourful 乾炒牛河 beef noodles.

A rest, before heading to central for dinner.

And finished with 糖水 dessert.

Sure, we also walked steep hills, but the input exceeded the output, so much that my body craved some workout.

Everyone was wearing their sports gear and foamy-looking shoes, and I was the idiot with a collared shirt, loafer shoes (my other option was sandals), and a camera.

I thought I was almost done, until I saw the 2000m signage. This was the worst part: too tired to continue, too late to quit.

I don’t believe in superstition, ghosts, and (most of the time) traditional Chinese medicine.

But when I’m in Asia, looking at shops with giant incense, big calligraphic scrolls, and giant sculptures with fiery eyes, I do a little.

I believe in the collective energy, grudge, the invisible sigh that affects the chi in the universe.

Like an Ouija board, if everyone subconsciously or consciously contributes, even through micro bits of mental energy to certain beliefs, things will ‘move’ by themselves.

Or, when you manipulate data and just dial in probability, superstition just becomes insurance.

89% of people who pay for the exorcists did not die, can you risk it?

I told her not to, but ArChan came to say hi on her day off1. We met in 2016, when she was the head chef for Ricky & Pinky - A. McConnell’s forgotten Chinese restaurant located in Builders Arms, Collingwood.

She had since left for Singapore, had cookbooks under her name, and is now executive chef of the modern Asian restaurant in the heart of Asia.

What amazed me about Ho Lee Fook was the interior - the genius of using mirrors to double the ceiling height. Half lanterns become full lanterns. The space was small but designed extremely efficiently with little touches like their branded cutlery and cookware, golden cats and subtle mahjong tiles, like a set made for a James Bond movie. Service was attentive. I received an email the next day to ask for improvements. This would’ve been a two-hat establishment in Melbourne, no doubt.

No one spoke Cantonese, but neither did we.

What amazed me was the company - the managing director of a bank overseeing greater China and North Asia and a lecturer at the Faculty of Medicine HKU.

And me, a guy from Melbourne.