Monday, November 10, 2008

Entry #217

As cliche as I have to begin my post with - Yes, here I am again. Smack in the middle of a PR crisis, if I might add. But oh, the heck.

I've been reading the blogs of strangers on campus, and (secretly) enjoyed many odd but somewhat familiar rants. Ruiming's latest blog post lead me to finally want to do something about this one over here before it goes into a mindless and boring read of songs and lyrics.

After three months of shying away from the blogist limelight because of a few indirect slaps to your cheek, I never really imagined myself back here again. I had sworn by my beliefs that the things that you reveal to others will do harm to you one day. I was, hence, particularly surprised by the people who retain the ambiguity of emotion with that bit of personal touch.

And so I'm lifting the keyboard restrictions aside, first with the slapping down of a little of my immediate thoughts.

In the same three months' time after that I boarded that Airbus A-god-knows-what back to sunny Singapore, I find myself at three o'clock on a gloomy Monday morning missing good o' Hongkong all over again. I stone, wondering what I could possibly be doing at this hour in the night over in Kowloon Island. And I start thinking aloud:

It's never the apartment. It's not the food. It's not the shops. It may be Margie and the folks over at Business Traveller. It may very well be the arcades. But I reckon with my gut feel that it's definitely the feeling of carefree-ness that I yearn for the most.

A trip out to Mongkok or Tsim Sha Tsui alone was okay in my books. Staying out way beyond 2pm and spending HKD$90 to hitch a ride back to home in Quarry Bay was the habitual. Even being seated on the tram, oversleeping until you reach the terminal station and cursing the time spent getting back was like an everyday routine transfixed into The Book of Kenneth's Patterns.

I still vividly recall those first few steps into #1519. And the subsequent incessant weekend cleanouts. The chasing down of lizards that didn't bother me, the more-often-than-not tampering of the toilet springs. And that time where I just lay motionless on the couch slapping my head over spilled milk.

Those were nonsensical times being a poor intern trying to survive the complexities of relationships and a seemingly unforgiving Hongkong society. But those were equally fun times.

I've grown fond of it all of a sudden, that apartment and the life that came along with it. I feel I've truly left home for ages instead of returning home to local soil.

I'm dying to want to speak a lot of Cantonese again.

Argh. Maybe it's just the stress from the modules, a colourful blurry mix of writing for the fluff and the tough. Maybe it's just the home that kind of got overwritten by school in every sense of the word. Maybe my cheong-ster instincts still need a few knocks.

I'm sure of one thing though. If time reversed, I would never mind living the ups and downs of this 5-month Hongkong stint all over again.

I won't release my trigger on the camera this time though.