G** D**mit the "Famous" Egg Tart is Much Better

I had a whole post planned out here for you, team. I wrote it on the one-minute walk back to my hotel in Central from the famous egg tart bakery to which I'd just popped out, single $10HKD egg tart in little white bag. The post was like this:

there are these things that get anointed as the version of a foodstuff that is actually pretty demotic and widely spread out and--while they are good, often, these avatar examples--they are reliably no better than the 'average' example of that demotic foodstuff; in fact, sometimes, because the reason you've heard about them is marketing or whatever, they are less good than the average example you'll find, wandering around on your own two feet.

The post was longer; it had more jokes in it, more comparisons and stuff. But you don't get that post, because that post in this instance turned out to be wrong.

I was not even going to try Tai Cheong Bakery on this trip. Because of the logic laid out above; logic that, I should emphasize, I still stand by IN GENERAL.

you see this egg tart, fam? This egg tart is famous.

Buuuuuuuut -- I was sitting here, working. And it occurred to me that it was 8:29 a.m. And it occurred to me that the activation energy required to slip on my shoes and go downstairs to this famous egg tart-ery that is literally thirty seconds from the front door of my hotel was extraordinarily low; and that this famous egg tart-ery often had lines et cetera et cetera (this is true. I have seen them.); and that I had, in fact, wanted an egg tart this morning -- but laughingly (rightly) passed by some corporate bull$hit that was trying to sell me egg tarts for $25HKD cuz that $hit was written in English or something. $10HKD is high, but what I'd expect for a "high street, super-famous" egg tart. More than that is just nuts.

So anyway yeah my whole point was supposed to be: y'know what, it's delicious, but not clearly more delicious than the egg tarts that're $3HKD from those little tiny places in (say) Kennedy Town. And that being the larger point I would lay out in the post previewed above, and then—

But: stop. forget it. For I must yield to fact. For this egg tart, this famous egg tart from Tai Cheong...was kind of clearly superior to the 'average' egg tart. Low let's be crystal: by 'average' I do not mean some b.s. mass-produced, commercial centralized bakery egg tart. I mean the tiny little bakeries and cha chaan teng that sell egg tarts out their fronts in the mornings — those places. They make them fresh; they are very delicious.

But this one was better. Mainly cuz of the filling; the egg-y custard bit. I couldn't discern a major difference in crumbling pastry 'tart' part; it was good, but not clearly that different or better. But the custard was better. It kind of had layers? There was a flan-ish depth, beneath a top that was not just the very top responding to air, but like a 1cm layer that sort of thickened more, almost like a shell but not. I'd experienced things a bit like this—I guess it's something the custard does—but this one did it more, and more richly, and more notably deliciously.

Years ago, with one of my best friends, I went on a brief tasting tour of wines in Napa. We were both surprised—and, I think, a bit dismayed—to find that we could pretty easily tell the difference between some vineyard's $20, $50, and $90 bottles (I forget the exact price points, but you get the idea). I had certainly conceived of that exercise as a chance to free myself once and for all of the idea that I needed to buy more expensive wine, ever; it was interesting and surprising to have an opposite finding.

This isn't that strong — I did not buy this egg tart with any agenda. I wanted an egg tart, and one with a bit of narrative attached happened to be very close and I happened to know the exact opening time because only the famous places like this that cater to tourists etc. show up on google maps when you search for the stuff that I search for at 4:13 a.m. in Hong Kong. But I did buy this egg tart, and I loved this egg tart, and I tip my hat to it, and to Tai Cheong, for the excellence and distinction they bring to a classic food item.

Sun Hing @ 3:28am Today, March 16 2019

I've been to Sun Hing (this place) twice this trip.

The first was with my colleague F., during daylight hours. I remarked to him that I'd never been there during daylight hours; he asked me, as we were leaving, what it was like at 3 a.m. I had told him over email that I found it (always) pleasantly chaotic; he'd exclamation-mark agreed. F. is nice, and I enjoy spending time with him and his generosity about sharing his city with me.

The second trip was just now; arriving eating and leaving before about 4 a.m. The place opens at 3 a.m. -- that's one of its distinctions.

I want to tell you about my table.

I walked in, said "one" and help up one finger; the lady held up one finger and pointed me to an empty stool next to a lurching guy which had another empty stool to its right, but that one had shortrib bones all over the table in front of it so I chose the one next to the lurching guy. Who got up, shortly.

At my table were four people, together. Students, not college I'd say -- a bit older. I'm going left to right as I sat:

1L -- sort of a Platonic ideal of 'student'; like that character in a Chekhov play who is the quintessence of student, although probably a bit nattier of dress and presentation than that guy in the Chekhov play. White shirt; nifty hair cut -- talking enthusiastically.

2L -- a little older and thicker than 1L; wearing a jacket (blazer); a little less expansive than 1L but as engaged.

3L -- the only woman in their group, and poorly. Slumped in her chair; red-rimmed eyes; visibly 'holding it together'. She wasn't leaning or lurching or nodding off drunk; she looked more like someone with a very bad fever than someone drunk, although I'm pretty sure she was someone (at almost 4 a.m. this is, remember) sort of coming down from having been very drunk and feeling pretty rough about it. I wasn't "literally" worried she'd fall over or boot at the table, but you get the idea.

4L -- the only not-ethnically-Chinese person in the group; he looked Filipino to me, which to me--because of the biases of the narratives I have in my mind about the typical demographics of Filipino folks in Hong Kong, and who they are and the work they come to do--made his presence with these other three, speaking fluid Cantonese (or Mandarin, I suppose -- I cannot hear the difference) interesting. He had a different look, too; whereas 1L and 2L were natty and masculine, and 3L was prim in a "hip student gal" way, he had on a t-shirt and long wild hair. But he was locked in with the group -- I am differentiating him with my outside eye, based on appearance. He and 1L, seated farthest from each other, were also loudest and most engaged, and their laughing loud relays were the backbone of interaction at the table.

I got up to get my food; everyone at a place like Sun Hing is kind of sharp and abrupt -- they're like that with everyone, like in some contexts in New York, and you learn pretty quickly to see distinctions within it. The woman who poked me at a little plastic stool by the bones on the table was abrupt in a nice way; she was friendly and 'liked me' (I actually think she did; that sometimes happens once people see what I'm eating). The woman at the stall where the dim sum is stacked did not like me. It made no difference; I'm just saying. So I got my food (pork shortribs with rice from the little "hot drawers" that I feel very advanced for using; egg buns; chicken feet) and sat down,

by which time lurching guy--who had been to my immediate left--had been replaced by "other dude eating alone"...let's call him SoloDude. I liked SoloDude at once; he was dressed in the same efficient-casual way I was; he seemed to be going about his food in the same way as me (how he'd apparated into that seat, and thus apparated with food, is a mystery that is still and will always be unclear to me); he had an unrushed but 'hey, just here to eat some good food' manner that I felt reflected my own. We made eye contact 0 times during the course of all things.

The bones were still to my right. Then, they put down the wash-your-hands hot water bowl, tea, tea-cup, chopsticks, and spare little bowl for eating/bones/yourcall in front of me; then, the nice abrupt server lady leaned over me and said one word in Cantonese and--seeing that I had started eating without washing my hands and was not going to use the hot water bowl--used it to clean up the bones. So great.

Meanwhile, 3L is struggling. She gets up from the table for awhile, at some point. She goes outside, for cool air or to throw up, or both. She comes back, slumps again. She and I do make eye contact, and I effectively convey, "aw man that sucks, you feel shitty," and she gave me a very sweet rumpled smile that was like, "yeah, I really feel shitty." I was a little annoyed at her three companions for the extent to which they were all still going full tilt, yelping and laughing, while she was, y'know, visibly feeling like crap. 1L did keep refilling her tea, which I think was meant as a nice gesture; she was drinking her tea. She was not eating any more of that pork bun; no sir.

SoloDude and I made no eye contact. But he seemed to notice my food. It was a lot like his. He had pork shortribs with rice; chicken feet; tripe. In fact, the tripe was what I'd planned to have, had I not spotted the shortribs, wanted to challenge myself by going into the "advanced" hot drawer thing, and also felt like some rice. He put his bones in the little dealer's-choice ancillary bowl, which I appreciated about him and emulated as a choice; he clocked the fact that I had chicken's feet, shortribs -- didn't seem that interested in the buns. Interestingly, he seemed to clock that I did the obviously smart thing of putting the very saucy chicken feet onto my rice once I'd had enough shortrib to clear out some space. I like to imagine that he was clocking this with admiration. Perhaps not. Perhaps he literally noticed nothing about me at all.

I ate my food, got up to pay -- with the little chit marking down all the things I had eaten in one hand, and two of my egg buns in the other. I was intercepted on my way to the cashier by the lady who did not like me, who--in a gesture of hostly compassion--held open a plastic takeout bag for me to put the egg buns in. I'm pretty sure what she then said to the older gentleman manning the cashier station was "plastic bag, too" (there is often a small charge for takeout accouterments in places like this;

SIDEBAR
I find it interesting that you pay a little bit for takeout paraphernalia. Not because it's crazy or offends my sensibilities of what one should or should not pay for in a restaurant. Because it makes sense, and yet is also opposite of another different-but-reasonable paying rubric in eateries. What I mean: in New York City (or LA, or Chicago, etc.) -- you pay the same price for food you take out or eat in; you might pay a delivery fee for delivery, for the price for the food etc. is the same. In Hong Kong: you pay a bit extra for the take-out stuff. To which I say, 'sure, why not?' Those are physical things; they do have to supply them. Is it a tiny bit nickel-and-dime-y? Maybe. But these aren't fancy places--like, opposite, really--and whatever if I'm paying ten dollars for an excellent filling meal I'll pay thirty cents for my plastic bag and styrofoam tin. BUT, counterpoint: in London you'll often see two sets of prices: one to take-out, and one for eat-in, and in that market you pay less to take-out. Now, for a long time, I thought this was another intuitively logical thing: that there is a cost to cleanup of eating in, plus you're taking up space in the restaurant, so it behooves venues to just get your money, give you food, and get you out the door. It turns out that's not the case; it's just how VAT is calculated (less on take-away food; more on eat-in food). Except for one of these smart folks on Quora, who thinks that my first intuitive conclusion was correct and the VAT story is just a cover to allow venues to make up for costs of venue management and incent customers to leave tables free. So, who knows! But the point to me is that these are diametrically opposite approaches, both of which--to me, as the consumer--are like, 'muh. yeah, sure. that makes sense.'
END SIDEBAR

so I'm paying and next nice/fun thing happens. It's 83 HKD. I make a show of--well, no: not a show of; I actually do count out to see if I can give this guy something close to that, but I cant without breaking a 500, so I ask him to break a 500 and he does, and right as he's starting to he slaps 3 HKD down on the counter and I see what has happened, and then he plots 410 down in bills so we're good, but I hold up the 3 and say "seven" and he's like "what?" (of course) and--I'm really happy with how this went--I hold up fingers and I say "bill was 3" fingers, "so...7" (coins). And he got it! He paused, ducked his head and made a grunt or a word and put seven up on the counter.

And I left. And there was 3L, again taking in the night air, curled over herself in a dark stoop of the closed shop next to Sun Hing. We made eye contact again--I want to be clear she did not appear to be in duress; she was an adult, kinda bummed out and drunk-sick--and she said "[somethingSOghtingn]Hong Kong". Maybe, "Do you live in Hong Kong"?  And I smiled and for a second had the impulse you have when someone is panhandling you--to be respectful but say "no" and move on--and then I put away that urban reflex and did my best to understand what she'd said and I paused and said, "No just visiting. For work. Feel better!" And she smiled again like, 'oh, wow yeah -- not anytime soon'

and that was that...I walked home with two egg buns left,
the second of which I'm going to go eat now.

HliAT #31: Yeah, You Walk Back to Get the [Thing] WITH BONUS META HliAT

How long it actually Takes to...

realize while walking on Old Street, right here
that you forgot the plastic bag with your workout clothes here
deliberate for a second (that darn Old Street roundabout), and then
"yeah of course" walk back
get the clothes (of course: right there in the bag, on the bench in the changing room)
and get back to the spot at which you realized your error: 12:29.68 sec

This is part of the recent trend (well, two HliATs going) of "yeah, it's not that long but it does take some time." Which I guess is the thing of HliAT, really -- I'd pushed it around to the counter-intuitive position of this commentary usually being about "hey, it's not that long!" But that was an overlay atop the increasingly unspoken assumption: $h1t takes time.

Try not to forget your stuff, therefore; it'll take "about 15 minutes" (exactly what I would've thought) to get it.

That said, if you do forget your stuff...a favored set of workout clothes while traveling -- probably worth "about 15 minutes", yeah?

Onwards.

Bonus Meta HliAT...

post this post, which is based on a HliAT timing you took on February 17, 2018
and which--this post, I mean--in basically this current form
has been in your "drafts" folder since...February 20th, 2018 (why in drafts? why did you not just publish it???): 
325 days, 6 hours, 35 minutes and 28 seconds

I used this handy site to work this out.

Update: I actually think it was a technical issue. Sort of a relief. I was like...what?

HliAT #30: That Walk That's Like ECH But It's Also Like Doable But It's Also Like _ech_....

How long it actually Takes to...

walk, briskly but not rushing
from the base of the steps at the intersection of O'brien Rd and Hennessy Road
in Wan Chai
up the steps then along the overpass/walkway
until you reach, by (I think) the basically most direct route
the lobby elevators of the Grand Hyatt Hong Kong: 09:47.19 sec

The methodology of this HliAT was to start the timer on my phone, then stop it. I was diligent with it! It took the silly thing a second to load as I began, so I walked down to the base of the steps to start clean.

So the point of this one was a thought about disruptions, and the tradeoff between one "big" "satisfying" disruption, vs. sitting there kind of picking away at one's distraction or hunger or whatever, over an extended work session.

And my takeaway is actually: yeah, things take a long time. The context is I was sitting in the perfectly nice, but kind of anodyne and corporate lobby cafe mezzanine area of this very nice hotel, and had been working for awhile, and was kind of wondering about getting some food or taking a break, and weighing the merits of the not-appetizing (all desserts), stupidly expensive snack foods available at this anodyne &c., versus walking into Wan Chai to get some real stuff. And I was telling myself, not incorrectly, that "the walk won't take that long" and if I just do it wouldn't take that long, and etc. BUT, I was also telling myself -- "it'll take awhile. It'll be disruptive."

And my takeaway with this HliAT is: that second thought's right. If you're desperate, or have budgeted an hour-long break: great, take the "short" walk, which sums up to over 20 minutes of walking going and coming, plus whatever time you spend wandering and choosing -- whatever; great, do that if you have an hourlong break, i.e. lunch or a real rest from work. But for just a break? Don't kid yourself. Stretch your legs, eat a protein bar -- stick with it, kid.

Honolulu Cafe, ~6:30am: a Text That I Sent to my Folks [hyperlinks added]

Family cha chaan teng update. Several notable ones near the fancy hotel. The one that opens earliest, Honolulu Cafe, is known more for its baked goods than savory breakfast sets. I wish the one known for its scrambled eggs opened early, but it opens at seven which--even when I'm not traveling--is much too late for the category of meal in question. I go to Honolulu Cafe at 515 and they have this neat thing going on that these places do where the metal screen is still down on the storefront but a small door within it is _open_; I hop in. It's dark and the guy says they're not open till six (I'm highly abbreviating a language-barrier interaction) but gestures for me to sit. I'm crestfallen but go with this; this is still my best bet for an early opening, and i don't want to bail on my cct outing. This turns out to be one of those times when the thwarting of my drive to use every minute of the day efficiently is great; I'm well aware that I'm "too" focused on this, and am good at being like 'hey maybe this is one of those times.' It was. I got work done and sat ina dark cct as the staff arrived, punched punch cards, bantered and complained. No one paid me any mind, after that first interaction. I wrote down the Cantonese that i needed on my work notepad, wanting to be ready to move through my optimal preferences here. At 6 on the dot a waiter came up; I ordered nai cha, bo lo bao, and daahn taht. The egg tart came first of the food, just after the tea. It was _great_; exceeded high expectations.

the egg tart did not last long enough for photographic evidence
this is the pineapple bun and the tea

The bo lo bao met high expectations -- it came out, fresh, about twenty minutes later. I was surprised that, on my running tab check on the table, the two 10s were the baked goods while the 21 was the tea -- I learned this whenI ordered my second tea. I loved every minute and got good work done. I will probably post this verbatim, with pic, but wanted to actually send it you first. Love you all. This isa fantastic city. Xo

Hit It Running [1 of (presumably, we'll see) 2]

It's very cold here in Hong Kong, for Hong Kong, and apparently no one's prepared. On campus today, students took a final exam in full coats and hats. I am sitting in my cold little rental flat, a tiny space heater shaking its head back and forth at my side, because that is the only source of warmth available in the place. This is not because my host is a dingle; he's an excellent host. The city just is not prepared for the 40s, apparently.

I've already fallen asleep twice, radng ths. I'm just going to power through.

This is a post about a reasonably specific: an approach that, I have that I think may be of use as a data point to other people who derive a pleasure and satisfaction from pushing their bodies with physical exercise.

The point of this post is that, when you're traveling, you should ignore the voiehrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Start again.

The point of this post is that when you're traveling you should ignore the part of your voice that says "pull back, wait, give yourself a break" about your morning workout / evening workout / whatever. Here's what I mean:

It's worth refuting, this "take it slow, give yourself a break" mentality -- when you're traveling. It's worth refuting, therefore this blog post is worth writing, because it has smarts in it. This is in distinction to the general "nah" of laziness, mental or physical, that might keep you from doing the thing under everdyae

oh no, okay, wait! I just had a good dream. (I fell asleep for a couple of minutes, in front of this dumb little heater in my lovely little flat). I watched this movie, 77 Heartbreaks, on the flight over. Actually I watched ⅔ of it; jjjjjjjjjjjja

try again! 

Actually, I watched ⅔s of it, cuz the flight ended. But the microdream that I had one falling-asleep-at-the-keyboard ago involved a young couple clearly modeled on / looking like that young couple. And they're somehow....they are constrained by the fact that the borders of the phone screen is cutting off part of the picture on top (this hasn't yet happened in a way that's affected a good game I'm plyaing on my phone, but has happened) and so that's making it hard for decisions to get made

and the thing is he likes this one restaurant on one side of a little Hong Kong street
and she likes others, or one specific other
cuz they're opposites, see

and they can't agree!

and but then they meet in the middle of the street because neither of their respective companions showed up or ghy ol something and so there they are

this young couple

in the middle of a Hong Kong street; him in front of his restaurant

she in front of hers

and they see each other know the moment for what it is,
the Moment That They Met,

and then there's a funny postscript agout not fbeaofeah

ARGH

funny postscript about

"which restaurant will they go to"

as they tug in opposite directions; and:

cut.

That's not what this post is about.

Okay so maybe I should start this again.

When you travel, reader, friend,
and if you--like me--are someone who gains pleasure from physical exercise
Hit it Hard.

You will have a voice that says, "whoa, wait, chillout. Take it easy."
And instead of being weak or whatever this voice might usually be characterized as
this voice will be compelling, worth following, because it contains the truth.
You're treavling, that's tiring; you were flying for whatever like 20 hours.
You need to conserve your strength.
Plus, you have less time, so the general idea of "work smarter, not harder"
don't waste the time of a workout on a second-rate workout
one that you're tired, a bit, during
one that you don't know exactly where the running rout leasd, or hwate0awi

the point is the idea of "taking it easy" might not seem crazy!
It's not crazy!
But:
krush it.
Go. Do the thing.
Do it even if maybe you'll do it crappily, maybe you don't know the running routes yet
you're a bit tired you won't run good spltis
etc.

DO IT.

do. it.

Why?

(1) the nonspecific reason is that, barring injury or rhager yoaummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmms

okay starting again reason 1 is:

non-specifically, "go do the thing" is very good advice. It's not always correct, of coruse,.T BUt htia

okay forget it I'll finish this tomorrow morning promise I will and promise I won't change anything obie ti a

nope! I am back. It is ten minutes later; I washed my face and now I'm in this tiny flat's even tinier bedroom--room for a twin bed and nothing else, the door can't even open properly with this bed in here--and the heater on heating the small space so back to the smart point I'm trying to make.

Maybe, let's review.
I went on a run this morning despite the fact that I had all kinds of reasons not to;
unlike most of the time when you have "all kinds of reasons not to" these reasons were somewhat defensible, since they related smartl yt to444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444m

no i better give up i will finish thi stomorow

Saturday Evening, On and Around Base

Saturday, 8pm

A. and C. are baking. Everyone else is off...doing something. (Bar? Karaoke?)

A. and C. are not baking for us--the All Hands volunteers and staff--but better. It's Saturday night so tomorrow is Sunday, and what they're baking is thank-you treats for the community at the church. A thank-you for putting us up--the All Hands volunteers and staff--in the church's dorm / gymnasium / I-still-do-not-know-what-that-room-normally-is.

Meaning this room--the annex, with the kitchen and tables, in which I have sat writing all of these things--is quiet and empty except for the bustling, cheerful patter of A. and C. baking.

It's wonderful.

The air conditioner hums, loud. White noise. (Actually: brown, I think. Really!)

C. has just asked A: "So what sorts of things do you like to bake?"
A. is responding with a laughing, self-effacing answer. She compliments C.'s superior technical skills.
A. and C. are terrific.

I'm tempted to pipe up, because they are terrific. I want to join in. I'm glad when I don't.

Today, earlier: we finished more "mucking and gutting" at the same public housing. We finished 'late', which actually means pretty much on-time, because Team Rubicon runs on a different schedule from All Hands. So I went for a run straight from the showers instead of showering and heading back to base before a run, because-- logistics, skip skip.

The run was hot, but it felt fantastic. It felt good to move and--this is weird--sweat, freely and out in the open. It's 'weird' cuz I'd been sweating profusely all day. But like: up a ladder! chipping at drywall! with a p100 on! That's an example from the end of the day, and of course part of a complete whole that was, as each day here has been, a gift.

Baking, right now: C. has just told A. that she has "such a love-hate relationship with some of my baking!"
They are having a detailed back-and-forth, with a rich and complex vocabulary, about their own baking foibles. Their baking hangups.
The gist is: the practice is pleasurable, but it incites their obsessive tendencies.
They're laughing about this, and about how they're both introverts, so that's why they gravitated to doing this baking fun-thing together. ("Let's hang out! Up to a point!")

They met today -- yesterday, maybe.

They are improvising a little. Not all of the ingredients they requested wound up coming back to base, with the last shopping trip. But most did. A. and C. are in motion.

Run! Back to earlier! So I'm on my hot, slow, great run. I'm not pushing myself hard on runs, this week. I'm running every day (so far. touch wood.), which I don't usually do. And though the work--mucking, gutting, debris--isn't a workout per se, it does tire you out. It could do worse than tire you out, if you let yourself get dehydrated or are unsafe, but everyone is careful about all that in my experience so far.

As I am running, a beat up old Cutlass cuts me off. Not abruptly, but clearly. Pulls in front of me as I'm moving to cross a street, stops, winds down its window.

I pop off my headphones.
The woman driving has a weathered face, red hair; maybe sunspots (maybe. memory).
At first I think she's just asked, "Do you want a lift home?"
I smile. I don't recognize her. But I have an All Hands shirt on, so maybe she recognizes that. Or is making a joke. "Sorry?"
"—ve seen a little white dog?"
I click into this, after a second. "...A little white dog?"
"Little white dog, not big. I'm up from Corpus Christi and somebody just dumped her."
"No I, I'm sorry. What's her name?" I definitely said 'her'; I thought about it and said 'her'.
"Blacka."
I make the woman repeat the name. I'm pretty confident that I've gotten it right.
"Blacka. Little white dog, big titties like she just had babies I didn't even know she was pregnant. Big ears," she cups her hands to her head: ears, big. "Black patches."
She does nothing that I can convey with my limited language to you here, but: it is very clear that the black patches are on the dog's ears.
I have a clear mental image of Blacka. I tell her I'm sorry. I haven't seen Blacka. I'll look.
She looks sad.
I ask her her name. (Her name, not the dog's).
She tells me. Just her first name, at first. Then, in the pindrop moment in which the futility of all this hangs between us, she adds her last or perhaps middle name, stringing it with her first, which is what she is "on Facebook."
I repeat it, her name. And I tell her I'll look out for Blacka.
I still remember her name, now, sitting writing this.
I continue my run as she rolls down the window.

I look for Blacka, throughout the rest of my run. I see many barking, fenced dogs in the homes around here. Some houses destroyed, some damaged, some untouched. A pair of Chihuahuas really makes an impression, as always: they pace me, yapping like mad from (thankfully) the other side of a fence.

I wonder how many and which of these homes will wake up on Sunday, get into cars for a short drive to church, and arrive within meters of where I am now sitting to find A. and C's baked goodies waiting for them.

Debris; It'll All B O K; Some Shorts

So I almost wrote last night--rather, I did write last night, which is now two nights ago cuz now it's the morning after I started this. But, two nights ago, what I wrote was internal and navel-gazing and did not include much new information, perhaps because I had again mucked and gutted all day (two days ago).

Yesterday, however, we did "debris." And I am animated by novelty of experience and the prick of emotions; I don't even really understand these emotions, of course, because that's how emotions are. But I wanted to share some.

Also, I got some shorts.

Debris

We--the team I am on with All Hands; I have been on the same team every day, a team led by B. and D., both of whom are great and on both of whom more, later; I think I am ride-or-die with B. and D., even though you get to choose a team every day, and even though the Team Rubicon partnership entails slightly longer days.

The board on which I, daily and perhaps quixotically, have thus far done no more than affirm, reaffirm, and re-reaffirm allegiance to B. and to D.

This loyalty is not because other teams or people seem bad, but rather because I like my team and team-leads and with only one week here it seems nice to go deep. Also D. calls me "Shaggy", which, y'know-- how do you not just embrace a man who knows how to use all the tools with precision, is kind and relaxed, and calls you-- and don't get me started on how good B. is at her job, which I've touched on in the last post and will touch on again. Which--

Okay! I'm gonna go ahead and start that sentence again for ya.

We (⇐ where we went off the rails, 'graph above; the sentence did not get far) arrived at the Team Rubicon FOB ("forward-operating base") to learn that there was...a "change of plans." Instead of heading back out to the Section 8 Housing we'd been working our way through the two days before (that was the "gutting and mucking"), we took yesterday to do debris work on a large property.

What's "debris" work?

We arrive at the property. I'm sure you can imagine it, wherever you're from. A broad flat sprawl of green-ish but unkempt land off a small asphalt road. The property has a mobile home raised up on a wood-scaffolded foundation; it has another mobile home, too, off on what looks like a separate lot but is just the lot next to it. It has an RV at the back -- you can't see this, yet, but are not at all surprised when you do. It has a bunch of knotted and gnarled trees, as well as a few tall ones. It has five or six cars, or most-of cars; it would be surprising if any of them worked. A truck out front, which looks like it does run just fine.

Now savage this property with wind, rain, flood.

So what you have is these same things now covered with clotted grass--this awful hay that clings and clumps up and sticks to everything: I don't know which factor of the weather events tears this stuff up and distributes it around, but it's all over so much here, almost any uncleared structure features at least some, maybe as much as a foot deep of it. Those knotted, gnarled trees are now largely knocked over, splintered out of the ground. One of the mobile homes, the one to the left, and also the unsurprising-RV at the back are in catastrophic shambles: their contents saturated and slurried by water, knocked aside and in pieces by wind and water, covered in silt, walls and roofs stoved in, and in some cases their contents ripped from them and spread on the property like the guts of an animal cruelly and wastefully slaughtered.

'Debris' work is...clean all that up.

The work is outside, which is nice! It is also hot, sticky, and that kind of physically draining that no one really likes: not like a good workout, but like a trudge with punctuated moments of effort. It's also very satisfying. Anyone who likes "tidying up" will relate to this. What you are presented with is a big, awful mess. Your mandate and your service is to make that mess better, or at least get it closer to being more manageable.

So, while it's sticky and sweaty--working under the sun, hauling broken toilets and fragments of sheetrock and insulation (which sucks: fiberglass, be careful), the work is very satisfying in itself, before you even factor in the psychological income that comes from the sense that you're maybe helping someone. De-constructing things can be satisfying; making a pile of heavy big things disappear by moving them with a team of people you like is sweaty, but satisfying.

BUT WHO CARES ABOUT THAT ARE YOU CRAZY. I'm serious; and these thoughts kind of live simultaneously through it. Because: that's your story, all that stuff I just said. And your story does not matter at all in all this; or, no, no need to be mean to yourself about it. But, if you are emotionally sane, your story is immediately and completely eclipsed by the real story here: that of the homeowners, residents of this place.

The greatest difference between my day doing doing 'debris' work and the two days before, doing and 'mucking and gutting', was not the work itself -- though the work itself was, in itself, very different. The difference was the presence of the humans whose space and stories you've entered to do this. The situation at the Section 8. housing, where the tenants have mostly vacated, is apparently atypical; in most cases, the residents themselves have petitioned the org (sometimes through an intermediary, local collective) and as such they are present. Which was the case yesterday, as we did the debris work. So, if your story [narrowly viewed] goes like mess ⇒ work werk work ⇒ cleaner! pretty satisfying!, that is quickly submerged by the actual narrative of this place, which goes

home, life ⇒ STORM ⇒ ??? ("oh, my G*d...")

This is so starkly true there's not that much more to say, descriptively speaking. But I'm saying it because I know that I find it easy to lose sight of what we're really reading about when we read, in the news, "X,000 residents displaced" or "XY,000 homes damaged by flooding."

We spent much of the afternoon clearing the remains of one of those stilted-up motor homes. Once we were done, what remained was a ruined stage: the ceiling and walls had been damaged and cleared out before we got going; we had cleared the debris that was left, and now this thing that had been a home was a bare, shattered floor with some hazardous holes (water damage) and the ramp leading to it.

As the bulldozer (which Team Rubicon refers to as one of "the heavies"; they have all this big equipment and call it "the heavies") came in to tear this last remnant down, I happened to walk past K.: one of the home-owners. She and her husband, V.--I'm almost sure they were owners; certainly, they lived here in a structural way--had been present all morning. K., in particular, had been vocal and warm and grateful to us throughout. sidenote: Not that he, V., had not been. He just spoke less English, I think, and also was active with his own salvage activities. end sidenote So I happened to walk past K., just as the bulldozer began tearing into the wooden base of this structure, making the big ripping splintering sound that that makes. And I saw something come over her. A physical shift, a clear physicality like a shimmer through her muscles -- one of those things that when you see it it's not being nice or considerate to reach out, just your body does it for you before you think. So I said, "Are you okay?"

And she nodded, but clearly was feeling something. So I hitched up my step and paused by her and gave her a fist bump. And she raised her fist, bumped mine, said "It's going to be okay," and started to cry. She'd been sunnily and even cheerfully thanking us, all morning -- she was visibly tired, but her affect towards us had been totally giving and generous, despite the ruin of her life all around her. What she was doing right now--sitting in the shade, crying--seemed completely, completely appropriate.

She was sitting I was standing; I sort of moved to hug her and she leaned for it; we hugged for awhile and her tears got on my cheek, they were warm.

I repeated her, saying that it was going to be okay, a few times. She gradually retracted and I smiled at her and...went on working. Once I got out back, where we were clearing debris from the catastrophic remains of the not-surprising RV, I told A. what had happened and said maybe K. could use a little company and off A. went. [The initials are confusing, here, reader-Friend: I'm sorry. You have met this A. before, though. She is not the expert veteran A. who explained about drywall; rather the fellow-noob who started when I did, but is much better than I am at everything. And I'd noticed, earlier that day, that she'd--with ease and immediacy--fallen into chattily empathizing with K. earlier that morning).

A. went off for few minutes. Later, she told me she and K. had had a good talk, about K. and V.'s lives. And about how the work we were doing would hopefully help.

Here, I Have These Shorts

I didn't pack perfectly for this trip.

I didn't pack awfully! I was prepared, packed before, etc. In fact, the main way I packed poorly was in that I overpacked, and in my defense I was just bringing all the things that they said, even though I suspected--and indeed, was correct in suspecting--that they'd have many of these things, in surplus, at the base.

But I forgot a couple of useful things, the main one being a pair of comfortable shorts not for running (brought those), but for hanging out at base in the evenings.

Buuuuuuuut: there is a "free stuff" box! And, on my first day, you better believe that I rummaged right through it. And found--yes!--shorts. They are these; they are perfect. They are a woman's size 10 pair of Old Navy black shorts. The waist is very big on me, and the rest of them are...not so big, so I really need a belt to wear them or it gets little risqué.

The shorts, which I know you'll agree are like perfect.

How To Handle Old Nails When You're Gutting and Mucking

I am sitting in the (I think) annex / community area of a church in Aransas Pass, Texas. I am conscious of the fact that I am being antisocial, maybe conspicuously so: I have headphones on, and I'm writing this, during evening hours that most people are using to socialize. One table over, eight of my fellow volunteers are playing laughing, merry poker.

I am volunteering with an organization called All Hands, which is active at a number of domestic and international sites of natural disaster; they do immediate response and--they emphasize this, so I mention it--more long-term community rebuilding as well.

I spent the day "gutting and mucking" houses in a low-income housing development; we (All Hands) were teamed up with another nonprofit (Team Rubicon) for this work.

It is weird, me at this moment: headphones on writing with everyone shootin' the sh*t. But y'know there's a whole thing here, which I think is in earnest, of 'look after yourself', 'you can't work well if you don't'. I'm a weird, solitary guy. This is how I look after myself. I hope they understand. I think I was an okay team member today, doing "gutting and mucking." I tried to be.

"Gutting and mucking"--I'm sure that my definition is incomplete--is when you go into a house that's been damaged (flood; rain) and basically rip out everything that's inside. You of course clear the house, first; of debris, for example, if there was a major storm that ransacked the residents' personal effects. And then you really just gut it. You rip out drywall and insulation--in case of water damage, like ours, the insulation and interior spaces may be riddled with fungus/moss: blackened with visible spores. If there's a lot of this stuff, you wear one of those full body suits like in movies, just less dramatic and more flimsy.

There's also more advanced work, for those who know better than I do: removing water coolers, gutting plumbing out (bathtubs), etc.

But if you're a grunt, as I'm lucky to be, the anchor of your work will be dealing with the drywall and then doing "QC". Dealing with drywall is very straightforward: you kind of lever behind it with crowbar and hammer, and pull it from the wall in the biggest chunks you can muster. Sometimes you bang through it with a hammer, first, to gain purchase; but the idea is not to just go around hammering out every square inch of drywall (inefficient). "QC", at least as All Hands uses the term, is what you do after the drywall's all gone. I think it stands for "Quality Control"; if I'm right, that doesn't quite make sense to me, as it's really a part of the process. Regardless, what "QC" is: pulling out all the nails. I'll explain! You're ripping out drywall and insulation, right? But not tearing down the house. Not knocking over the wooden frame structure. The idea being that the house has been riddled with (say) moisture and moss, and you need to gut it but not tear it down. The bones are fine; the skeleton of this house will remain, and get muscles and nerve and skin put back on. For example (end metaphor): drywall will be reinstalled. And in order to have--

Sorry, it occurs to me: this blog post is probably comically ill-informed, to many of you. Or that other thing, where someone has just discovered something so it's new to them, but it's not a new thing at all, so the fact that they are explaining it as if it is is either a little bit charming or a little bit embarrassing or sometimes a bit of both. To many of you, my whole explanation here is probably a bit of that second thing! And indeed, I'm writing explain it in the way that I'd need it explained. i.e., veeeery simply.

So, in order to have new drywall properly installed on the preexisting, reclaimed wooden structure--in order to rebuild this house that's been "gutted and mucked"--you have to be able to fit that drywall flush to the existing wood structural elements. Which means, obviously, there can't be a great bunch of gnarly bent-a$$ nails sticking out every which way. The problem being that that's exactly what you are left with, after pulling the drywall: as even I knew, drywall is silly and brittle; it crumbles and breaks much more easily than (say) a well anchored nail into wood, the result being that the drywall as you remove it mostly crumbles off around the nails that had fixed it in place, leaving them there.

So this is a thing that I learned today, then, because I wound up for much of the day doing "QC". What I learned was the trick of getting these nails out. A., who has a movie-star grin and hazelgreen eyes and one of those haircuts where the side is all buzzed beneath a longer top (on one side), and who has been a volunteer for twelve months and is absolutely capable of taking that water cooler out,explained it to us outside. We were all having this problem where the heads of the nails, like the part that you hammer, would PTANG! get torn off when you pulled with your hammer (that back part of the hammer that you use to grasp and yank nails out), so you'd be left with a naked ungraspable shaft of tiny metal stuck deep into wood.

We were outside, on break, wondering why these nails were so annoying: if they were crappy, or just old; if the fact that this is government housing meant that the lowest-bidding contractor did the work; if the fact that this is government housing meant that the lowest-bidding contractor did the work and then perhaps used even cheaper materials than they'd promised to in their bid; etc.

And A., who has been at this stuff for a year, said a thing:

Well, until the 1980s or so, drywall was always secured with nails -- not screws. So a lot these buildings built in the 1960s and 1970s, you see this with the nailed in drywall.

Which was a very tidy way of diagnosing, based on the development of building practices and materials, the age of these buildings and why these (old) nails kept on breaking.

I will note, further: later that afternoon, up on a ladder, ripping some drywall away from wood beams (I did a lot of the higher-placed drywall; I'm tall-ish), I found a note from 10/1/1975 in chalk; it seemed to be marking someone's work hours, C, I think: C had started sometime after 9am and knocked off around noon, and someone else had initialed and OKed this.

I am not claiming this proves A.'s factoid true; I am saying that I do not care to further investigate A.'s factoid.

Let's review:
-- anecdotal evidence of satisfying explanations for things I know nothing about can be, itself, satisfying and compelling to me (esp. up a ladder with a hammer and crowbar)
-- it is way better to get the nails out! if you do not get the nails out, you have to hammer them in so they are embedded in the wood: the point is that the surface must be flat and pretty smooth for the reapplication of drywall. (B., our able team-leader, talked me through this)
-- if you fail to get the nail out with a hammer, you still can remove it, but you have to do this thing with pliers that takes a long time. (winching the stupid nail back, back and forth, denting the wood, watching out for glass (as, once, stupidly, I failed to))
-- but: it's hard to get the nails out with the hammer! Cuz the stupid head of the nail snap right off when you pull it! stoopid old nailz!

In response to all of which, here is what I learned. (A lot of it's in the wrist; I felt that, during the day, my wrist getting smarter.) (I also felt, and feel, my fingers and hands, unaccustomed to some of this work, tightening up). But a lot of it is a consciously replicable and expressable thing:

I initially approached the challenge of pulling a nail from deep wood as being mainly about levering  pressure with that back part of your hammer, using that head of the nail to grip onto. You slip the head of the nail in that v-slit at the back of the hammer, the head catches when you pull, pull against it. voila. Except not 'voila', since as I've said that head of the nail breaks off.

So: you get good at eyeing the placement of the nail, and do a crisp quick motion where CHAKK you drive that backside of the hammer against it; i.e., you jam it in such that the nail itself gets wedged in that biting v at the back of the hammer: you're not using the head to pull up, you've jammed the nail in the bite of the v itself. And you use that torque, judiciously, and

wikkk

pull it out.

It's fast and it's good! You can get many nails removed this way, even ones that are awkwardly placed.

I would not have been able to figure this out, because I would not have known what to do at all, or even how to be safely inside of that house, without the help of B. and A., aforementioned, as well as E., J., C., and (other) A. -- a fellow noob but a more skillful one.

Tomorrow, we're gutting and mucking again. I might learn something new. Might just do more of the same. We'll see.

I'm glad I'm here. 

The "Cherokee Triangle" of Louisville is Great: photojournal

Two people I love got married in Louisville this weekend.

Part of their goodness is generosity; characteristically, they put a bunch of us up in a very nice house in a part of town that is called the "Cherokee Triangle" and/or the "Highlands". I thought these were abutting neighborhoods but per Wikipedia: "[Cherokee Triangle] is considered a part of a larger area of Louisville called The Highlands..."

We were pretty wrapped up in wedding stuff, but I got to do a couple of runs and had a long walk to yoga (solid!) Saturday morning, which gave a taste of the neighborhood. 

Highlands ("The Highlands"? the "Highlands"? anyway)
is a lot like this mural.

I know nothing about Louisville. I've never been here and have no ties or family here.

I really liked it.

Okay so you know how glossy publications that do long-form sometimes throw in pictures with captions that are on the same topic as the overall story but kind of a different thread, thus surreptitiously shoehorning in content that didn't make the main copy? [note: Slimbuttons has no idea if this is "why" they do this. --Ed.] That is how this entry will be: some pictures thrown in, while the words are about two Lyft rides I took.

Lyft #1: B
First of all: both of these Lyft rides were good. Nice, responsible drivers picked me up on time and efficiently took me where I needed to go. Both were friendly; both were chatty, once I signaled that I was receptive to that.

First was B.

B tells me that he's originally from Iraq; actually, as he shortly clarifies, he is in fact from the mountains of Jordan. His mother is Arab is father is Kurdish. He does a thing with his hands, stacking right-to-left: "Iraq, Jordan, Israel". I wonder, as he does this, why he includes Israel, which never otherwise comes up in discussion; if you're going to throw another nation-state in that geographic layout it seems like the comparatively very big one immediately to the south would better anchor the map; I wondered and still wonder if B illustrates Jordan's location in this way because he assumed that I, as an America, would be more familiar with/interested in Israel?

Anyway.

Most of our conversation is located outside the complexity of B's point of origin. It comes up, but glancingly, and in much the same way that my being from Manhattan comes up: we are talking about the upsides and downsides of places like Louisville vs. places like Chicago (rather: we talk about the upsides and downsides of Louisville vs. Chicago, those actual places). Cosmopolitan-ness, diversity, food, nightlife, etc.

I saw this walking to yoga Saturday morning.
F*ck yeah, St. Francis of Assisi Catholic School.

Towards the end of the ride, we gravitate towards questions of how long he's lived here and continue from there. B is excited about America in a contagious way; this has already been made clear in our conversation about cities and comes up again with an assertion he makes that, essentially, people in America from different backgrounds all feel "American", even if they also feel "African-American" or "Chinese-American" or what have you.

Then we loop back more explicitly to his own point of origin and sense of identity. We start talking about the Kurds--with no expressed animus to "the Arabs", he makes it clear that he speaks Arabic because of his mother but that he himself is/feels Kurdish. Once I say a couple of things that signal my interest in and basic awareness of the topic, he dives into the question of Kurdish independence and the position they find themselves in: caught between Turkey's wishes, the current Iraqi government's wishes, and their value as a coalition partner to external actors (not least: America) seeking reliable forces on the ground to assure stability.

B connects this to his enthusiasm for America by saying that, in terms of how he feels, he used to feel Iraqi first, and then Kurdish as a sub-categorical identity. But since the invasion and subsequent fracture of the Iraqi state, B no longer feels "Iraqi"; he seems unsure what that means or to whom he'd be giving allegiance.  It is clear that, while he is enthusiastic about America and living here, he feels negatively about the invasion and its impact on the civilian population. I do not ask how directly he has experienced some of the things that he mentions.

That's about it. We reach no conclusions. It is a "good talk."

B drops me off at the thrift store whose revenues benefit a non-profit that supports individuals infected with HIV; my parsing of Yelp has led me to believe this place will be good. I need clothes for the wedding of these wonderful people -- for a variety of Slimbuttons-typical reasons I have no appropriate clothes even for just like being out and in public, nevermind attending a wedding.

Lyft #2: R
The thrift shop is great! It has a good selection and a friendly gentleman minding the till who is thoughtful--perhaps clocking my appearance--about making sure that I in fact purchase everything a man would require in order to be presentable at a wedding.

I do that. It costs like thirty-three bucks. Thrift stores: great.

Waiting for me upon completion of shopping is R.

I think, from R's Lyft pic, that a young woman is coming to pick me up -- the little pic in the app shows a face with finely plucked eyebrows, light make-up, wide lips pinched in a sensuous moue. The sex of the person who picks me up, of R, is male; R's gender is male as well, but my misunderstanding is not a random accident.

R and I get to chatting and the two-- no, the three things that become clear at once are:

1. R is gay
2. R is young; maybe 20? I wonder what Lyft's minimum age is
3. R is in a place where the transitional process into a public gay life still feels tentative to him

He presents a mix of caution and candor that is sad and inspiring. His Lyft pic is obviously a kind of declaration; as are the rainbow-striped sunglasses he wears. But he soft floats balloons throughout our conversation, and when I'm gentle with them--asking about them, rather than either puncturing them or letting them fly up and away to spare us both what I guess would be the awkwardness of my disapproval--he increases his frankness and specifies his terminology.

I approve this message.

So, for the first leg of the ride we are talking about how Louisville compares to the small town in Kentucky where he grew up. And the diction here is of people "like him", the lack of such people and the negative view of such people and what he experienced as a claustrophobic and judgmental social environment.

Then--just to skip a bit--by the ride's last ten minutes, R is telling me in some detail about his gig in Louisville as a drag queen (!!!) whose name I will not share in case he'd prefer I not do that but which is pretty great, and the freedom of inhabiting that persona and how he is proud that she is not one-dimensional: that he can play with different looks and makeup and songs all within the same persona (i.e., not "playing" a different character, but rather adding layers to this one persona, who is his alter-). And he talks about the "friend" (I'm putting that in quotes, but actually by this point in the conversation I think that this person maybe was in fact just a friend, that R might use a different word if this person were something else; but I dunno!) who kind of swept into R's small-town and helped R not recognize his own orientation (he, R, had had no trouble recognizing his own orientation) but helped R live it and--specifically--introduced R to the drag scene. R says that he'd not even know what "drag" was.

R opines that the drag scene in New York and other big markets is more about extravagance and being OTT, whereas in Louisville he characterizes it as being more about being "feminine" and "beautiful."

It is expensive. "You can't just buy something off the rack"; it's still a drag show -- you have to be a creation, fantastic.

He loves it -- it's clear.

But he's taking a break!

Sometimes, "you know how it is" (it had relaxed R a lot when I'd said that I used to be an actor; that I was unsuccessful but did get some work and share some of his feelings about inhabiting a persona), sometimes R feels a little underappreciated and (my editorialization) the scene sounds kind of political/dramatic. So R, though he loves it, who after all is a freaking kid in a state of identity flux, says that he's taking a break.

An urban place without some measure of picturesque decrepitude
is, at best, a suspect urban place.

Which is perhaps how I had the good fortune to get a ride from him.

We also talked about how nice the houses were getting as we drove towards my destination. Then we got to my destination and parted with handshakes and wishes of good luck.

Hong Kong June 2017 #2

Wut wuuuuuut #HongKong.

I'm gonna keep doing this thing senza sorted thematics.

A Haircut!
So I tweeted about this $100 voucher I got, for the "spa" at the Mandarin Oriental. My first thought was: "awesome, I will get a massage!" Turns out that massages at the ol' MOHK start at about 3x the value of my voucher. But I semi-need/want a haircut; the voucher was good for the salon; I got one! The main differences I experienced between this ~$60  men's haircut and the ~$60 men's haircuts I've gotten in America--my data on these are about a decade old; I stopped getting fancy haircuts awhile back--was that, in this haircut, there was no expectation at all that I'd chat with the fellow who was doing the cutting (M.). M., by the way, did a thoughtful and terrific job -- he was the opposite of some fancy/stuffy haircut guy; he was kind of intuitive and precise. Anyway: he absolutely did not expect me to chat, or try to pass the time with chat. WHICH O MY GOSH I APPRECIATED SO MUCH. A big part of why I stopped getting fancy haircuts, in fact, was the craziness of spending a lot of money to sit in a chair and have to do something I am bad at and don't like: make conversation. M. was very friendly the few times I did say a thing, but for the most part he made the whole thing about my hair; he got me a magazine; he moved around the fact that I was catching up on The Economist Espresso on my phone, gently nudging me where necessary.

Anyway, this was worth it -- a good use of time and the gift of the voucher. Now I'm just a tiny bit concerned that, because my haircut took place in the "barber shop" and not the "salon" despite the fact that I called the "salon" I won't be able to apply the voucher but...that is kind of a dumb thing to be concerned about, obvs. Not that that'll stop me.

Leaving the Hotel omigosh All These People
This was great.

At dinner with the senior colleague with whom I am taking this trip, he had mentioned (he's an old hand at the ol' MOHK) that it was very much worth it to check out how "the streets [are] transformed" on Sundays. I thought that he meant they were totally crowded and, y'know, whoa! Like that. He did not. He meant this:

Chater Road

this:

Ice House Street

and, when I went out again later on in the evening, this:

juxtaposition

Assuming you don't know wut's going on here (I sure did not), let me first just tell you literally what you're seeing.

What you're seeing is major streets in downtown Hong Kong, full of people in tents and in gerry-rigged kind of cardboard...hangouts; the streets are formally closed off, no traffic's allowed on them. The people are everywhere, and there is food all over: packaged foods and meals and also some music playing in the distance. The people are Filipino, pretty much uniformly, and the atmosphere is relaxed and a little festive. Like a Sunday barbecue, or people hanging out in a park on a nice day.

It turns out, that's exactly what this is.

As it was explained to me later by a couple Hong Kong-ers: an aspect of HK that you, reader, may be know and that if you do not know may not surprise you is that Hong Kong has a large population of people who work in various service capacities (housekeeping, home health-aids, etc.) from the Philippines. Now, apparently, (I don't quite get this, because Hong Kong has a lot of parks; I'm not being salty I'm just saying I don't understand) there is either not enough or not enough accessible communal hangout space for these folks to kick back on Sundays -- which is, as in many places, often a day-off. SO, there is some kind of formalized thing where they take over the streets like this; it's not even that rowdy, they're just hanging out. A white guy walking through them taking some pictures was paid zero mind; totally chill.

So, clearly: I loved this. Thanks to my colleague for encouraging me to check it (I thanked him like, actually, too. Not just on this blog).

Mak's Noodle
Readerfriend, I'll be str8: I'm crushing it this trip with the "go to that place you've been meaning to go to." So, in the afternoon, when I sallied forth and encountered the festive tented streets, I marched m'self to this famous noodlery. I bought these shrimp wonton and noodles for $40HKD.

It was good! And I, personally, appreciated the fact that the bowl was not that big. I don't like having a like bucket of noodles thrown down in front of me.

In fact, though: not only was the bowl not very big. An apparently DIVISIVE fact of Mak's wonton is that they are traditionally sized, which means small. Apparently a "traditional" wonton should be able to fit on a teaspoon? Or something.

Turndown Service
Let's stop talking about food (don't worry: just for, like, three seconds).

I am struck by how quickly I'm adjusting to aspects of the preposterous luxury in which I am swaddled, here at this hotel. My first evening, when a woman showed up at my door to do "turndown service", my instinct was that it was obvious she shouldn't come in: I was in a robe, in the room, working. She--in the least pushy way possible; in a very gracious way--seemed to make an opposite assumption: that "turndown service" was a service offering that happened around the guest, to make the guest's time and space nicer. And I kind of went with that, and it was fine -- the little things that they do for turndown (the thing with the bedcovers; leaving a little gift of candy or some personal grooming product) are nice: they do things with the lights and the shades and generally make the room feel nice and calm and evening-y. It weirded me out a small amount when she kneelingly placed the slippers closer to me, as though to minimize the steps I'd have to take without them. But it was nice; I felt weird the whole time, but it was nice.

Anyway my point is that literally by the second evening, I was looking forward to this. I was like, "hey, where's that turndown service?" and was happy when it came, and much more comfortable, and felt much more like, "how nice. someone is so nicely looking after my room to make it and me ready for evening. how nice."

I'm gonna have more to say about all this luxury stuff, but that'll come (if it comes) at the end of the trip.

Lan Kwai Fong: Finding the Right Part of Wellington Street
So, when I wrote in the first entry how Central was different, and I didn't think I'd find the same scrappy, good stuff (restaurants), I felt a flicker of, "well, you don't know where to look." This is a feeling I'm accustomed to, as a New Yorker -- I remember being in the Met Bar in London where my then-girlfriend was a waitress, and having some kind of marketing/promoter guy explain to me how New York didn't have stuff to do at night ("it's shit -- people talk about New York at night but it's shit") and quickly accelerating past angry to, like, wow, dude, you're a knob.

So I knew I was a bit of a knob, saying that about Central. There are places everywhere. Anyway: fixed it.

So a "famous" "walky area" of Central is this distract of smaller streets called Lan Kwai Fong. I knew about LKF from previous trips: it's a thing. And/but because it's a thing, I had written it off. I'd walked LKF, I'd found a couple of places, but y'know it was not as good as the places in K-town that I liked; I assumed that because it's the kind of place with a hundred things on the Internet "100 Things You MUST Do in Lan Kwai Fong," and because so many of the things I apparently 'must' do are like stand on some rooftop and pay $20 (US) for a f#(king cocktail, I was like...you get it.

So that was wrong, also. I just had to walk it.

Specifically, you just have to keep going northwest up on Wellington Street, past the break where Lyndhurst Terrace jukes off and Wellington gets smaller.

where Wellington picks up...

Don't get me wrong: it's not K-town. It's more touristy, more backpack-y, etc. etc. But it's good: a lot better than what I'd been seeing. It's the kind of place where you can find

Goose Web!
So, a little echo of the thing from my first entry of this trip, where I kept thinking that I was ahead of Hong Kong but really I was behind it. Small one but I think it's basically the same thing. I'd seen "Goose Web" on a few menus; it of course caught my eye. I'd tried to order it once but been turned down ("out!"); in my state of denied-ness, I imagined that "goose web" was like the goose's neck wattle (do geese even have neck wattles? also what is a "neck wattle"? deliberately not linking, here), somewhat awkwardly translated onto the English menus.

Instead of being an awkward translation of this thing that I'm not even sure it exists, "goose web" is a perfectly straightforward translation of, y'know, the "web" part of a goose -- meaning pretty much the feet.

goose web!

Culinarily, this was a little bit less exciting. I like eating the feet of poultry--I like chicken feet, a lot--but I've had them before. The webbed-ness of goose feet just adds some skin and (maybe) fat, it's not super-exciting. But they were tasty and knobbly and deliciously sauced.

The place on good-Wellington that finally set me straight re: the web of the goose is called Wah Fung Roast Meat Restaurant [note: I really like how on OpenRice the "didn't like it" emoji is the yellow face crying; it's like: "how much did you not like this restaurant? wow."). It's a lovely place, where the waiter was totally nice. The goose web there is good, as is the roast duck, which I ordered but won't post a picture of here. wtf is this, a food blog?

mission creep

Also--remember, we're on "good" Wellington now--Wah Fung is a place where you can get roast duck + goose web for $206 HKD, which is by no means cheap but is also not crazy: it's basically two meals worth of protein (or kinda protein-ous gristle, in the case of the goose web) for about $26 USD.

I'm just STOPPING when these entries are done because they don't have a point to reso

Hong Kong February 2016 (sic) #4

Don't worry, I'll be clear about time as I do this. I'm writing these words on the date this is posted in June, 2017.

But the rest of this post--I'll be clear, when this starts--is a post that, in draft form, has been sitting around since my first trip to Hong Kong in February 2016. It's kind of weird to think how that was my first trip, not that long ago, and that my second trip was just like a four months ago (no time). Time dilations: the things that have changed and that haven't, etc.

Anyway: here is that post. It's about being a flâneur. Beginstart:

Walking is different from running. I mean, duh. But the specific aspect I'm concerned with here is how differently distance is experienced in each.

A ten-miles run is like, "cool, great, good long run." It's a part of a day. Just a part of a day, "got a run in"; maybe a day with the bandwidth for a longer run, but that's it.

A day in which I walk ten miles is...well it means that that day was about walking.

As my yesterday was, here in Hong Kong.

Here's the path:

wait 2017 slimbuttons breaking in what the f$*K??? Look, here's what I wrote for myself 16 months ago and--

oh no, wait! wait I totally figured it out. It's cool, we're good: I see, reading down, that I actually totally did this a very smart way. I promise I did not engineer this little outburst in green; it's an example of a thing that I constantly do. Not green outbursts; this: I actually usually tend to not f#*k things up too badly the first time I do them. But then I often wind up putting them away for awhile (e.g., this post) before coming back to them; and when I do that I often forget that I've not totally f#*ked them up and so when I come back to them I do redundant work till I realize, "ah, crap. I did that. That was fine." Anyway, sorry for interrupting. We're back FEBRUARY 2016:

Here are the relevant legs that I walk...ed. Okay sorry I'm now--this is me now. 2017. But I'm going to keep going through the 2016 notes, writing out the entry, so it's also sort of recent past tense? I guess? Look we're just gonna have to get through it together.

Between Ursus Fitness and Ching Lin terrace (the flat where I stayed on that first trip). Distance: 0.9km.

Between Ursus Fitness and some place that I felt was sufficient to identify as "cafe", so sorry I can't give you a map on this one because I have no idea wtf I was talking about but I did write the Distance: 0.5km.

Between H-Kore and Ching Lin terrace. Distance: 3.4km.

Between H-Kore and the pier, to take the ferry to Kowloon. Distance: 0.8km.

Wandering around Kowloon; no map here again but in this case I remember: I estimated the distance based on marking out the general path I knew I had followed. Distance (one direction; "out"): ~2.4km.

Okay, so my path was that I walked
from my flat to Ursus
then from Ursus to the cafe -- oh yeah! I met a friend at Ursus to work out, then we had some food and caught up, then I walked home...yeah! yeahyeahyeah:
so from the cafe where I caught up with my friend back "to" Ursus but really past Ursus
continuing from Ursus back to my flat.

Then from my flat to H-Kore -- this was a weird day. WTF was I doing? A class at Ursus and H-Kore? Two workouts isn't weird, but that's a weird way to do it and weird workouts to--o well wutever:
then from H-Kore on to the ferry terminal
then the ferry took me to Kowloon (no walking)
and I walked around Kowloon
walked back to the ferry
took the ferry back
walked from the ferry terminal past H-Kore
and from there back to Ching Lin terrace.

What all that boils down to is just that I walked every "leg" twice ("there and back" in one way or another). So,

2 * (3.4 + 0.9 + 0.5 + 0.8 + 2.4)
= 2 * 8
= 16 km
= 9.94 miles

And the whole day, I remember, was about walking. Even though it was also a very full day: I did these workouts, I saw an old friend, I explored Kowloon some (walking, but a different kind). Nonetheless, the substrate of every thing that day was wallllking and--this is interesting--I was tired at the end of it. That I remember, too; "bone-tired". And in a different way than I am after running ten miles. The psychological wear of that much slower movement attritted on me in a different way.

Why'd I do that? Not the walking, I mean -- that was a smart idea, it was great to see how the city connected and how the Kennedy Town was fluidly contiguous into Central. I mean: write this post, after such a long time? Why was it important to me to do that? I don't know. If you read it -- I thank you. And if not, you're not reading this, so y'know whatever. Merry Christmas.

Anyway: walked 10 miles one day in February 2016 in Hong Kong. Major motion picture adaptation coming Fall 2020.