Observations on a Tuesday Morning
I was reading through my old blogposts and found this little thing, which I wrote in about twenty minutes on March 5, 2019. I forgot I even wrote like this. It’s kind of cute. Thought I would share.
Right now, I sit on one of those mahogany benches outside the ground floor restaurants in Stanley Plaza, across from the gelato place and the playground where Nicky and I once pretended to be pirates after late nights at McDonalds, playing hide-and-seek on the fake sterns, chasing each around the deck. Today is one of those languid days of March break where everyone else is at school, German Swiss, which I may visit later, but, right now, it means that I have the morning to myself. A whole morning.
I love watching the people that filter through this clearing. Clearing. I love that word. To my left there is an old couple—tourists, his tufts of white hair peeking through a navy cap, her fanny pack coiled comfortably around her torso. There is a middle-aged woman clutching two bags of shopping. And there is an old lady. Still fashionably young, though, in an HKU hoodie and bucket hat, with an adorable corgi trotting happily beside her, a stroller for when he gets tired. She just passed by me. She doesn’t know I’m writing about her.
Old lady just dropped her McDonalds soft drink—Fanta—and screamed in loud, distinctly-Cantonese Cantonese. Home.
In front of me there is scaffolding beckoning the advent of another new restaurant — “Taste of Love.” There has never been a time I have seen a whole row of restaurants in front of me in this plaza, all fully open. Something is always under construction. Something is always changing, always modernizing, always gentrifying, whatever you choose to call it. Peko told me this a year ago as her salon was in the process of being edged out of Stanley Plaza to make place for some European bank. She was forced to find a new, smaller place in the market. Not that the market is worse. Actually, I think it’s better.
When do you get to call yourself a local of a place? Certainly, not just by living there. It’s probably time. Time and experience. It is when you look ahead at Beef and Liberty, at a patio and bar area studded with glaring neon signs, clearly meant to attract tourists with money to burn, when you look ahead and you can tell yourself that before Beef and Liberty, it was that high-end French place that lasted barely two months, and before that, it was Saffron Bakery, which you went to for its iced cookies after Sunday school, and much longer before that, when your parents were still deciding to make the move to Stanley, what was there was a McDonalds, a huge one, much bigger than the one there today, a McDonalds you went to for your morning frappe, or whatever, and Mami got her latte and Anna was there, Agnes B bag in hand, and Nicky — was Nicky even there back then? Yes, he was.
More people. A bunch of middle-aged women who just got back from a hike. A bunch of fifteen year olds, HKIS, probably, who got off school early and are doing some exploring. Construction workers in cargo pants taking a break, bright yellow helmets, cigarettes. Another tourist couple, she in a flowy, floral shirt — the word that comes to mind is voluminous, sort of like those you’d get in a Bangkok night market — and he in a black polo. They’re both in flip flops. Then a couple that’s probably from Hong Kong, also doing some sightseeing, and he’s lugging a huge DSLR. To my right, a man in a plaid shirt, not an attractive one — it reminds me of a 紅白藍 bag — and he carries a dog. The dog scene is really strong here in Stanley.
More sightseeing couples spill in. There are So Many Today!
Anyway, I’m going to Nathan later. I’ll probably start learning the next new thing for AB Calculus. And then I’ll see Izzie later for some sushi, or something. Genki? She’s cabbing down with Adrian and Colman. And then I don’t know what I’ll do for dinner. But I’ll wait until then to figure it out. I don’t get to do that often. Be spontaneous. Not overplan. I’ll treasure today. Not that I haven’t already been doing so.
Back to this Murakami book. I’ll finish it soon. But no promises.