Sitting in the Middle, Once Again

Waking up in Hong Kong.  The classic skyline is across the harbor.  I seem to remember Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront down before me has been a work-in-progress with one construction site or another for the last twenty years.  A call with three colleagues who are all here in Hong Kong with me, though they're staying in other places.  We’re speaking with a colleague from another era, who’s now at a new company.  I explain what we do these days and he is interested.  It is so much easier to pitch people at this later phase in one’s career.  

A cab to follow, across and up Nathan Rod to Shandong Road.  I tip the cab driver.  I always tip the cab drives in the mainland and never tip the drivers in Hong Kong.  Why is that?  Perhaps because the Hong Kong guys had always felt a bit more prosperous.  But this is less and less the case.  And their work certainly isn't any less grinding.

All day long in an office.  We order food to eat inside.  By the late afternoon a colleague and I need coffee so we plod over the nearby mall, up four floors of escalators, to the closest Starbucks.  There is one closer, we note, but crossing Nathan Road would introduce blocks of  plodding to place where we could do this.  We head back with a bag of coffees for the rest of the team. 

That night after dinner we look for a place to drink. If we were on the Hong Kong side that would mean one thing.  But here in Kowloon, coming down from Price Edward MTR, just where, precisely are we heading to?  I’m following someone else who isn’t from Hong Kong either, who is suggesting we go to the same place we went to “last year.”  Ned Kelly’s Last stand is a bit of a dive.  But I don't have any better ideas.  It will do.  We find a place up in front, before the stage.  The same old rag time band that I think I saw last year and every year before that are up on the stage.  The bald guy does his Louis Armstrong impression and  the guitarist sings a song as well.  It’s not such a great place to talk but I try to stick together two  disparate conversations, sitting in the middle once again.         

                                                            

My one friend is nervous.  He is going to miss his last ferry to Lama.  I suggest he sleep in he extra bed in my hotel room.  That suits him and after the last round we walk over to the Sheraton together.



Thursday, 11/02/17