finding a truth in Hong Kong

Hong Kong was fucking cold.

someone warned me it was winter and that it will definitely be colder than PI. sure, and so i brought a jacket. and a couple of jeans. i threw in a long skirt because i do my holidays in dresses. i thought about bringing the boots but i was guessing Zsolt and i would be walking a lot and i don’t really want to walk in a pair of 3 1/2-inch heeled boots. and so i grabbed my flat, strap sandals instead.

oh, how stupid that move was.

the coldest i have been in was in an air-conditioned room in some fancy hotel in Vietnam set at 18C; and that was because i fell asleep way before i could feel how cold it really was. i woke up in the middle of the night, dehydrated. if i took sleeping pills then, i would have frozen to death.

but how do you explain to a lazy, warm-weathered 27-year old Filipina girl how 9C feels like? i knew it was cold but the extent of how i experienced cold was in pale comparison to how Macau or Hong Kong felt like when i went there to meet Zsolt. for that entire weekend holiday, i realized that if i have to leave PI, i would never leave it for its weather.

“baby, you are just not dressed up for the climate.” zsolt told me, grinning. i mentioned that if that was how light winter feels like, i am never leaving PI. sure, i hate the heights of summer just like everybody else here, but freezing and shivering in cold is a less enjoyable state.

but how did we find Hong Kong?

Zsolt loved it. Zsolt couldn’t stop talking about it. we spent the weekend in Sai Kung, crashing at Larry’s place by stealing the beds from his two lovely daughters. now, this town is a different face of Hong Kong. when i think of HK, i think of Kowloon and the stores and the merchants. i think of clothes and haggling and crowds. imagine my surprise then upon seeing how lovely and serene and laidback Sai Kung is. it is tagged as “the leisure garden in Hong Kong” and its understandable. the number of parks, the lovely hills, the laidback atmosphere, the historical landmarks, the back lanes… it is an awesome place to live.

which is actually what Zsolt thought of. “so, baby, how about us relocating here?”

oh! the things we thought about when there is ample time to think about things. it wasn’t the first relocation talk. there was malaysia. there was denmark. not that we were that serious; but we weren’t joking, either. we both know we ought to be together sooner or later. i remember looking briefly to my exposed feet turning bluer every second. i remember wetting my lips for an umpth time that morning just so it wouldn’t hurt so much. i remember shivering in cold thinking about the next time i have to go outside and subject myself to more of those 9C degree weather the rest of the population seems not so worried about. relocate? with zsolt?

it doesn’t matter where, really. it only matters with whom.