Hong Kong Diaries

I sit down to write about my experiences in this new city before the sheen of being a newbie fades out. I am inching slowly to have spent almost two months here, about time to dedicate a post to the new city..

To set the mood, before writing this post, I listened to We're going to be friends-White Strips. I wasn't done, next on my list was Landon Pigg- Falling in love at a coffee shop...
Yes I am professing my love for this city with songs.. I have totally internalized this city's love for 'cuteness'.. hey there 'Hello Kitty!'..
To be honest I am already biased to the city because you are never too far from the hills or from the water. I might have confessed a million times to my good friends(the ones I bore with 100 renditions of same old stories) that I wanted to run by the ocean looking at the hills. When I really found myself running along the harbor, I caught myself smiling at this part of me which occasionally bubbles up with genuine happiness.

When I was moving out of US and going through the tedious affair of packing and selling my things, I thought that perhaps I wasn't going to work this hard any time soon..
And then I moved to HongKong. So I guess you are never done..
My first month in the city was all about apartment hunting, cooking & eating weird broccoli permutations, furnishing the apartment/kitchen, trying to meet new people and make new acquaintances. I am not yet done, still braving weird hot/cold showers every morning- courtesy the 'environment friendly' tankless water heater.
Moving into a new place is always a hassle but local standards, practices and systems can either make things simpler or create complications. Apartment hunting in this city is a revelation, you come face to face with the reality of the over-inflated real estate market prices, tiny apartments that are like those Sunday newspaper puzzles that come crammed in a small box in a corner- and they challenge you to find what's missing...
This city is very modern and efficient on surface but at its core it is a very traditional society, there is a human element in most transaction. For instance your apartment search begins with the brokers, you tag along as they show you a 'lot' of apartments. Each broker/agency will specialize in a neighborhood, so if you are searching a broader area be prepared to talk to multiple brokers. Add the work schedule to this equation and you have some brutal weekends.
When you do find the apartment of your dreams (by this point apartment hunting has already turned into a nightmare)the broker will settle all the legal stuff for you, set up the utilities and put you in touch with the internet agent. For all his services you pay the broker, the internet guy on the contrary would promise you a gift coupon for signing up through him, and well I haven't my gift card yet..(update:I had to go in person to collect it from the store, but I did get it finally!)
I'd say the whole process was very intense and took a few weeks but with some distant friends prodding me through, i did find a place.. and while skyping with my parents all they had to say was, 'this place looks decent than what you had been telling us'.

When people say it is a small world, they usually mean it figuratively, but when I say HK is a small place I am almost speaking literally. I have the worst direction sense and after getting lost a few times, I realized that it is such a small place that you cannot get hopelessly lost. It definitely helps if you know the major roads(generally English names so easy to remember) and also there are multiple modes of transport to get to the destination.  Taxis are a safe bet if you can get a Cantonese speaking friend to do the talking for you or else just walk it up with a GPS in hand.

X who has lived here for few years keeps telling me that this is the most capitalist city in the world and I keep disagreeing. In terms of my simplified view of capitalism, there are two very defining characteristics of capitalism:
a) the enterprising shall have access to capital, ideally-free market forces (the good)
b) the rich keep getting richer and the poor poorer(the bad)
I might agree to the second point, which sadly makes HK a crony-capitalist place. However it is not such a bad picture because of lower corruption levels and the generally honest HongKong populace. HongKong owes its status as world's key financial centre as much to capitalism as to China's communism and the general lack of trust in the Chinese government.
It is the most commercial city no doubt, even Buddha sitting peacefully on a hill-top is not spared, a fake Bodhi wishing tree with redeemable coupons complete the picture.
Its the shopping mecca.. big stores, flashy stores and the stores with flickering neon lights in broad day light. I have not erred much on the shopping side, so can't really comment, I am still grappling with the roti-kapda-makaan paradigm!

My relocation to HongKong coincided with the Occupy Central, pro-democracy protests. I would have to concede that i don't have much experience with protests, I have watched them from sidelines. As a child I witnessed the Uttarakhand state movement, the demand for a separate state to spur development. That vision is far from realized but I would avoid any judgement on the movement.
In the violent times that we live in, we rarely see protests that are inherently peaceful, creative and so young. The HK protest was all of the above. I saw the protest sites where people were peacefully camped and going about their business. Like a naive tourist I took pictures at the protest site and asked questions.  You can be more pragmatic when you are not involved, and despite all the passion and conviction of the protesters i didn't really see the mighty Chinese government conceding ground any time soon. To be honest I wasn't quite sure of what they were hoping to achieve.
I think after I explored the HK University campus on my way to a hiking trail, I accidentally uncovered something very fundamental about the roots of this movement. I was surprised to see video's of the Occupy movement running on TV monitor next to the elevator in the campus. Pro-democracy slogans on the bulletin boards. The campus has a 'pillar of shame' dedicated to the Tiananmen square massacre and the caption there says- "the old cannot kill the young forever". I stood there for a moment trying to capture the mood of the University and somehow I felt like what I witnessed on the streets was brewing and seething in this atmosphere..

This is a rich city(true that!!!) and there is something intricate and almost mysterious about the Chinese culture and psyche, so there is a lot to discover here..