I have this fascination with contrast - contrast in foods, in colors, in textures, in settings. Like St. Paul's Cathedral. It's a typical enough Catholic church...but BAM it's in the middle of the financial/business-y district of Hong Kong. It's the only one of its kind around here but for some reason, it works for me. Contrast baby.













I went up to the 43rd floor of the Bank of China Tower and this is what I saw.

For some reason, I needed another museum and decided to go to the Hong Kong Museum of History. And although I'm not all that interested in history (Jim, don't be disgusted), it seemed like a good day for it. I wanted to know contextually at what point I was at in Hong Kong's timeline. How it got to be so...circus-y (in a good way, of course). Here are some things that stuck out after I left: Hong Kong is 400 million years old, the first four notable Chinese peoples living in Hong Kong were called Hoklo, Punti, Hakku (?), and the 'boat dwellers'...I don't know why but those names are freakin' funny to me. The Punti for many centuries and still in the present engage in a birth ritual every year to celebrate all newborn sons, to celebrate the continuation of clan lineage. Only sons....poy! I spit on this and all other rituals excluding girls! Funeral ceremonies involve burning paper goods as an offering for the deceased in his/her afterlife. I already knew this but what I didn't know is they're making ovens and mobile phones people! I mean seriously...do you REALLY need a cell phone when you dead?! And finally, Hong Kong has been whipped and battered, the British colonization, the Japanese occupation...so no wonder. You look centuries back and see that it's just like any other part of mainland China...Hong Kong partook in all of China's main traditions and even looked geographically like it. But after years and years of people immigrating, settling, trading, colonizing, de-colonizing, developing...Hong Kong has turned out to be the rebellious bastard child of China. It's AWESOME. They call it One Country, Two systems....uhhhh yeah...I don't know how that's quite possible but um, yeah Hong Kong's schizo I guess.

Since what I love most about Hong Kong are the buildings...I decided to take some pictures of my favorite ones:






















So I'm getting to the end of Ender's Game. What an adolescent boy's dream. But then again...it could be an adolescent girl's dream too. I don't understand why we live in a society where Babysitter's Club is a 'girly' book while Ender's Game is a 'boy' book. I wish I read this when I was little, I would have been able to escape then too. Lai told me it's going to be made into a movie...with the kid from sixth sense. I think he'd be the perfect choice. In fact, ever since she told me that, I've been imagining him as Ender and how he would act out certain parts. Julia Roberts in Closer, on the other hand....not so much. She's a type - the smile really big and act the same bubbliness type. Other than that...Closer was good in that it revealed all these things about ourselves that are sometimes true and that we don't necessarily want to and ever want to admit.

Sometimes, I walk down the street and ask myself, "Why is that girl wearing diapers?" No seriously...I have seen about 1 out of 3 girls here wearing shorts that scrunch up at the bottom which end up looking like diapers. And they prance around thinking they're hot...but they're not. And why are boys here so pretty? Like...not in a good way? Their arms are lean but as skinny as girls' arms...so they really just have sexy girl arms. And they even have more beautiful hair than most of the girls I see around here. Why is that? And why do I feel drops of I-don't-know-what whenever I walk around on the streets...when it's not raining? I wonder what's dropping on me...I know it's not bird poo and I know it's not water...what is it?! It happens when I walk under buildings. Beats me.


I ended my night with the Temple Street Night Market..just a bunch of vendors selling stuff - from converters to old chinese propaganda posters to sex toys. WIDE range. Halfway through it, it dawned on me that I had been here before. My cousin took me here 6 years ago, the first time I came to Hong Kong. I couldn't believe it. It had looked so different then. Cleaner, I suppose. I don't remember what the streets looked like, just the stuff they were selling and the lightbulbs. It was more beautiful then. Not that this wasn't great the second time - I call it dirty and happenin' with a load of charm. But how does your mind pick out certain things to remember and certain things to block out? Based on emotions? Based on level of importance? Based on novelty? Psycho-geography....you never go to the same place twice based on all these things. As you change, everything else changes too. Even if you've already been there.