Hong Kong - Nov 4th 06

Been up since seven this morning, so my body clock is starting to normalise a little bit more.

Hopefully tomorrow it’ll be eight, or even nine that I get up.

Yesterday was a fairly straight forward day, nothing too unusual.

Made it up to the roof terrace, which is ridiculously high up, to my vertigo struck knees.

I prized the big metal door open carefully, unsure of what I was going to find on the other side. I had to really heave it open, and was afraid that on the other side there would be a sheer drop of several hundred feet. Of course that was just irrational, as there happened to be the building I was standing in between me and the ground…

The door eventually swings open in a melodramatic style and out in front of me stands a terrace, roasting in the sun light.

I step out on the terrace, unsure of my footing – even though the floor is perfectly level, and very large. Bloomin’ vertigo, haven’t really had it in a while. The back of my knees felt like they’d gone out and got drunk while I wasn’t looking.

I started to walk around a little bit, feeling a bit like a duckling in moon boots.

The view from the roof is amazing. You can’t really see anything but buildings from the roof, but boy are they interesting. It’s an awesome cityscape. There’s even a big billboard style advertisement not far from our building, the sort of massive neon sign that you expect to stutter, with it’s Chinese characters all glowing and red. I can almost imagine a Woody Allen story taking place up here.

I had a lovely sense of the freedom that you get when you travel yesterday. I was walking around, not far from our building, looking for a place to get a coffee, when it suddenly struck me, “Hold on… I’m in Hong Kong…” and everything seemed suddenly a bit ridiculous, as only a few days previous I’d been at home, staring out of the window on the view from my bedroom. I couldn’t help but beam a big smile out.

I was introduced to the MTR, the underground system here, by Sean yesterday. It’s really quite something, very smooth and clean. I even managed to navigate my way back home on it last night. Which is a useful thing.

Food still daunts me slightly. I went in to a place last night and ordered what looked like a simple chicken breast from the menu. But when it arrived it was a bit more than that, bones and different bits still attached. Fair enough. But I was determined to eat with chopsticks. How the heck do you de bone chicken using only two blunt knitting needle like items? I tried, believe me, I tried, but I had to ask for a knife and fork. I hung my head in shame. Bloody “whitey”, with his empirical ways.

I finished reading The Prestige yesterday, and thoroughly enjoyed it, even if it is a bit silly at the end. Looks like I’m going to try and catch it in the cinema tomorrow with Giles and his good lady Amanda, with whom I’m also going on a cruise this eventide.

I’ve now started in to the first Flashman book, by George MacDonald Fraser. It’s very enjoyable already, full of caddery and bounderism. There was a gentleman who knew how to behave when abroad…

Well, I now must be off to get a shower and explore a bit more.