April 4-8. Hong Kong.

I must have flown to Hong Kong today. Immigration is nothing to remember and the airport train service costs 100 Hong Kong dollars. Jet set. I wish I could pen down some impressions about Hong Kong, the important port that Britain leased for 99 years because of the opium trade and has given back to China a couple of years ago. Impressions of the smell of the blossoming trees, the polluted air, the remarkable absence of street food stalls we have gotten so used to in India, impressions of the skyscrapers that are literally scraping the grey clouds that lend the scene its tristesse. Impressions of the waterside by night, the contours of the buildings with all the lights on, the big anvil shaped mall on top of the hill with the steep slope train running towards it. Impressions of the few days we stay in the city, couchsurfing and hanging out with friends. But I can’t at the moment, not more than this. Hong Kong was comfortable, great, don’t get me wrong. I might come back to it later. In any case, we have found and will support good causes in Hong Kong, a Clean Air Network (Hong Kong C.A.N.) and a voluntourism organisation based here, both through couchsurfing. We have done our job. It’s a pity we don’t have time to really volunteer with them, but that’s part of the design of Charity Travel. So we just talk to the people from those organisations about their cause and produce a short article on the website. It’s so unprofessional, no proofreading, no investigation, spelling misstakes, but what counts is the intention isn’t it. Ha!

I remember the double decker streetcars of Hong Kong, they look really cute. And some nice restaurants.

I need the hassle and dirt of a region with no tarred roads and street markets, not to breathe but to write, so it seems. And even that. What is there to add, what glyphs can we pack between our periods that are not mere repetitions of ourselves? Can we produce sentences that are more than a garbage dump of the foam from our vanity? This is a page-filler and I have no creative inspiration now. It is comforting is such moments to be part of something, and even more to be part of something good I have started myself. I can give myself a break here.