I’m sitting here on a bench by the Promenade along the seafront of our Siena Park in Discovery Bay, Hong Kong. I’m in the middle of my daily bike ride around these forty acres. It’s 21 degrees C and just 55% humidity, dry for us.
I’m looking due East, toward Victoria Harbour — yes, it’s still called “Victoria”, bless Beijing — and past the harbour, past the Peak, past Central, past Kowloon, to the South China Sea. I think of the history this harbour has seen. Stolen by the Brits in the Opium Wars, wars fought to keep Chinese addicted. Taken by the Royal Navy as the only deep water port along this East China coast. Wondering why the Chinese had ignored deep water for so long and thinking must have done so because their boats were shallow draft junks and sampans. Coastal vessels. Didn’t need deep water. The British had ocean-going craft with much deeper draft. So they were obsessed with deep water. Is that the reason?
A fresh easterly is blowing, off that South China Sea, brushing by Hong Kong island, bringing us clear air, fresh, clean, Covid-free.
People wander by at a regular clip, not a swarm but a regular pass-by, doing what Italians call a passeggiata. Walking. Wandering. Strolling. Enjoying the late winter sun. Some jogging. Most are Chinese, of them about 80/20 Cantonese local vs Mandarin mainlanders. The foreigners, expats, speak Italian, Spanish, French and English. Sometimes Russian. Many have kids and dogs. Many have bikes and scooters.
Friends sometime pass by. And sit for a chat. Sometimes come home to our place for a cuppa. The Koel, a cuckoo, calls his plaintive cry, prepping for his annual act of perfidy.
Most folks are not wearing masks, maybe 90% not. Of the few that are, all are Chinese. Outdoors, in a fresh easterly….
I rang my mother, Mutti, just now, but it was 6:55 pm there in Oz, she was about to sit down and watch the news on the ABC, and asked me to ring back in an hour. It’s entirely possible to live a happy and productive life watching only “Auntie” ABC in Australia, for news. Or only the BBC in the UK, or only MSNBC in America. Mutti is rising 102 and proof of it. But you’ll not know a lot of what’s going on, the stuff that MSM have decided is not good for you to know. Cause you might vote for the wrong person. Again, entirely possible to do that and be happy doing so. And ending with this observation is rather like ending on a conspiracy theory. Yes. Still, I’d rather know a fuller picture. You can never know it all; who can? Just a bit more informed than Auntie and the Beens might have you know.
And I think of son John, over at the UCLA Law School who’s getting ready to go to the Vis Moot in Vienna, as rhe UCLA team of five. 300 teams.More at Wikipedia. Quite a big deal, but he didn’t say anything about it: we learned by accident. Weird.
Time to give Mutti a ring. Time to enjoy the passing passeggiata folk. Time to enjoy the warm late-day sun. Free vitamin D.
It’s a very lovely scene here.
TTFN.
