A Good Day

Something unexpected, a little surprise amidst calm of a veiled July morning.  Hearing the lion dance at the temple like it is just outside, sound travels. Watching it chin cupped on my window sill, and The Centre when I look up. Turning around and seeing the apartment, wow, I live here. Turning back with breeze against my cheek and it's lovely. Feeling like part of the fabric of this Hong Kong, today.

Lament Of The Hong Kong House-Hunter*

When your apartment is 400-odd square feet, you let the outside in once you open the windows, since there’s not much of “in” to be held up against.

Which leaves Hong Kong dwellers with 2 options:

• Live someplace where you love the outside of
• Never open the windows (the more common option)

I chose No.1, which when combined with other requirements such as a 5-ft bed (a Malaysian not Hong Kong standard I’m told), the need to live on the Island due to lack of written Chinese literacy, white walls and kitchen/toilet which live up to “expat-ations”, and the aversion to paying Damansara Height rental prices, left me with few options.

4 options to be exact. Out of the 1.4 mil private residential units** in Hong Kong. Okay I exaggerate. I only looked at 45, not 1.4 mil apartments and that was when I first arrived in 2011, none the wiser about neighbourhoods and the true definition of racecourse views (a crack as broad as your index finger) and what 300 sq ft really means (standing up from your toilet sitting position to wash hands at the basin).

Armed with the superiority of this knowledge, I set forth courageously two years later in search of a possible alternative, after being somewhat unceremoniously 20% upped on rental by my landlady (on whatsapp, in 8 words). This time I said, it will be better. I will be better.

This time, I found 3. I only looked at 15, so arguably it was an improvement percentage-hit wise. But it was still sufficiently depressing to trigger a bout of ihatehongkongitis for the past 6 weeks, from under which cloud I am only emerging now, with the help of excellent bars and eclectic neighbours.

The problem with the Hong Kong housing market in my opinion, can be summarised as such:

1. There are not enough apartments.***
2. The mainlanders are rich, and the government is greedy.
3. The landlords are greedy, and the range of tenants is too wide and varied (from expats to dirt poor locals, and locals to dirt poor expats), resulting in a situation of a pot for every cover, and so many pots you never thought could/would exist beyond a Malaysian understanding of what an “acceptable” apartment is.

Anyway, the happy ending of this story is that I extended my lease with an 8% increment, due to reasons I cannot explain other than my landlady changed her mind about the ever-elusive reasons behind the Hong Kong rental “market” rate, which to me is a moot point anyway (see point 1 above).

Or it could be she found my long sulking (5 weeks) then sob story of poor developing country person sufficiently entertaining, or simply tired of the bargaining game she was playing (my local colleagues tell me this).

Either way I am glad, because I love my apartment and neighbourhood. It’s one of those places that makes you happy to stay in or step out the door, from the antique shops you feel you need to approach with respect, to cloud-watching from the couch, and the fruit sellers (from really kind to real rip-offs) who initially do not look different at all. I love its alleys and corners, old businesses and new ventures, juxtaposed in a way that highlights Hong Kong’s heartbreaking transience just so.

It’s one of the oldest spots in this country, where you see locals and foreigners alike adapt, settle and try to thrive in a new landscape. And die too, as it is near a row of coffin shops. Its distinction I make from funeral homes, because that would be scary. In short, somewhere I could call a home away from home.

Am I a Hong Konger now? No. I will always be Malaysian, hopefully with a little more game and a little more worldliness with a little help from my friends. Will I renegotiate the rental down the next time the market dips?

You bet-lah.

* also posted on www.curasian.com
** http://www.gov.hk/en/about/abouthk/factsheets/docs/housing.pdf
*** http://www.cbre.eu/portal/pls/portal/res_rep.show_report?report_id=2305

Questions to Ponder When You’re Halfway Between an Empty Glass and a Full One*

Some confusing things about Life.

• If comfort zones are not good for us, why do we feel so good in them?
• If people are meant to be the same, why were we made different?
• If the path of least resistance leads downhill, why does going with the flow sometimes bring the best results?
• Why is it that even when you are happy where you are, you have to be in motion just to remain still?
• If babies knew everything innately, why are we born helpless, having to learn everything from others, only to have to unlearn them for ourselves later?

All these things confuse me, and to be frank they still do. But one day I thought; What if, the human lesson is not so much that the glass is half full, but that it can only be half full when the other half is empty?

Perhaps then, when bad or upsetting things happen, being indignant is fruitless, since indignation implies that these things should not have happened when of course, they did and will continue to do so.

If it all evens out in the end, why then, do we bother fighting for anything? It’s a valid question, and helps me understand and feel more kindly towards those who seem to never fight for anything.

But I guess the question we need to ask ourselves is not whether we should fight, but at what cost. After all, while time is infinite, it’s finite for us, and generally things that won’t matter in 5 minutes, don’t matter at all. Which also means that, for things which will matter for more than 5 minutes, we fight for. No matter how far it is out of our comfort zones, how different it looks from what we know, how uphill the battle, how happy we think we are, and despite what we have been told.

1. Electoral reform
2. Defending the urban vote
3. Rural involvement
4. Education and security

2013-2018. Here we go.

* also posted on www.curasian.com