Coming Home

So little time

Try to understand that I'm

Trying to make a move just to stay in the game

I try to stay awake just remember my name

But everybody's changing 

And I don't feel the same

- Keane, Everybody's Changing

It's the 23rd of February, and in a couple of hours I'm going to board a plane back home. Six months away, and with a passport full of stamps and something nasty incubating in my lungs, I'm finally going home. 

When I started this trip, I had a loose idea of where I wanted to be at the end of it. I won't elaborate upon it, because it's basically a pile of fantasy built on cotton-candy, but suffice to say it didn't go according to plan. Not that that's a bad thing, mind you. John Lennon sang that life is what happens to you when you're busy making plans, and that's basically the way it goes. Things always get more interesting when you take the scenic route. 

But the end of the trip is staring me in the face right now. I can feel its eyes upon mine and its whiskers tickling my cheeks and I can smell its foul, fetid breath fogging up my glasses. It's here, travelling beside me, waiting to escort me back home. 

In another two hours, I'll be on that plane and in another nine, I'll be home. And then it's back to reality. Back to angst and toil and the blunt edge of hopelessness. Back to that gnawing doubt that the clock's ticking away and that everything's passing me by. And a part of me is reluctant to get back into it, because I know how much effort it'll take to couple myself back to the system, to get back on my little hamster wheel and run, run, run. 

And that part wishes that that ticket to Melbourne could be fudged to read Mumbai, or Madrid, or Montreal, or Montevideo....

It probably sounds a bit ungrateful, I know. 

Chungking Mansions

"There is no place in Asia quite so multicultural as Tsimshatsui—not Roppongi, not Xintiandi, not even Khao San Road. And from the center of the area's polyglot hordes rises the great sleepless citadel known as Chungking Mansions."

- Liam Fitzpatrick, Time magazine

Dave laughed when I told him I was staying at Chungking Mansions. 

"I'm impressed. Six months ago you wouldn't have stepped foot in there, but now... you're a bad arse. Chung King Mansions is the worst place in Hong Kong. It's full of illegal immigrants and drug traffickers and prostitutes... you're lucky you haven't been killed or mugged. It's in the news all the time. It's a fire hazard - it burnt down a few years ago. There're clips of it on youTube. Google it."*

I tried to tell him that it wasn't that bad. 

It's a bit awkward when you first step off the bus and five touts surround you trying to get you to go to their hostel. And it's a bit strange when you walk into the foyer and it's full of dodgy looking Indians and Africans hanging around in a beaten-up shopping mall, and everything looks worn, fake or stolen. But it's really not that bad. The touts are really quite friendly when you talk to them. And the other characters are interesting enough. They're just scratching out a living like everyone else, and it's really not much different than the dodgy parts of Springvale or Footscray or Broadmeadows. 

Really, it's probably the most interesting place in Hong Kong. The rest of Kowloon is dirty and worn and like what I remember from the stories I heard from my mother. Over the bay, on Hong Kong Island, the city's gleaming and modern and a picture-postcard of capitalist excess. That strip along Nathan Rd, though, is like a bit of New York in the middle of Hong Kong. Ghetto-chic, I suppose you'd call it. Liam Fitzpatrick might be blowing smoke up your arse with that article, but he's blowing quite softly.

 

I amazoned Gordon Mathews, the Chungking Mansions anthropologist cited in this article, and the one who coined the phrase "the best example of globalisation in the world", and he writes some interesting stuff about Hong Kong. Going to have to hunt around the bookstores around here when I have a chance. I'm shuddering at the cost, though. 

Off on a tangent, but why is google a verb, but amazon not? 

Hong Kong is bleeding me dry. I'm leaking money every time I move, and I can't seem to stop the haemorrhage. I've about 250€ left in the bank, and it's disturbing to realise that it's not going to go very far. It's staggering to think that I've still four days left until the flight to Melbourne, and I'll probably blow the lot by Saturday. Actually, it's pretty nauseating, considering how tight I was in Europe. 

Just booked the last hostel I'll ever use on this trip, a little two-day tripper over to Macau. Got a bit sentimental about it, actually. Might print out the receipt and stick it on the wall back home - at least, I will if I can make it out of Chungking alive. 

* It's more a reconstruction of a night's conversation rather than a faithful reproduction. I really can't remember things verbatim anymore. He did say I was a bad arse, though, which was nice of him. When I get home, I'm going to stake out my claim as being the baddest mofo on the east side of the Yarra. 

The World Is Round

"I was in Bangalore, India, the Silicon Valley of India, when I realised that the world was flat."

- The World Is Flat, Thomas Friedman

I was in Hong Kong, China, one of the commerical hubs of East Asia, when I remembered that the world is still painfully round when you're a gooner in the eastern hemisphere. 

We beat Cardiff 4-0 last night, and I didn't see it. Eduardo scored two goals, and apparently, we purred like a kitten being stroked by lambswool mittens. But I can't really say, because I didn't see it. It happened eight time zones away, sometime between the hours of 3 and 4. And once again, watching Arsenal has become a painfully difficult interest to pursue. 

Well done Eduardo, though. He's a good player, and I wish him well. It takes a lot of courage to come back after such a bad injury, and I hope he recovers well enough to take a first-team spot off Adebayor's hands. We could use a guy who knows how to score goals - we've been missing that for a while, now. 

Meanwhile, I don't think it's coincidence that the first great performance we've had for a long, long while took place the game immediately after I got my Theo Walcott shirt back. I bought the thing six months ago, and we started thumping sides 3-0 and 4-0. I stored it away in London while I travelled through Europe, and then we declined. And now, with that Arsenal shirt tucked safely away in my backpack, we're back to thumping sides 4-0. 

If I was Catholic, I'd be beatified by now.