The Great Affair

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go.  I travel for travel's sake.  The great affair is to move. – Robert Louis Stevenson

Look out at the Hong Kong skyline with me while I tell stories.

Maushumi stumbled in around midnight last night with three suitcases, slightly flustered.  I, of course, had been passed out for hours, succumbing to the first wave of jet-lag; and since she only expected one other roommate, whose belongings were clearly present but not herself, she peeked into what must have been the empty third bedroom but was, in fact, my room.  Introductions were made.

In the next twenty-four hours, as we collaborated to produce between us a single functioning hairdryer and straightener, an Ethernet cord, and a converter/adapter, we found more in common than a commitment to SCAD, a passion for travel, and a hopeless inability to read Chinese menus.  Over mediocre iced coffee drinks, we spoke of past relationships, good and bad; we drooled over the unparalleled facilities of SCAD – Hong Kong, a cutting-edge fusion of historic value and breakthrough design technology; and we wandered about Sham Shui Po with SCAD guides who were our age but had the benefit of having lived in Hong Kong for half of their lives.

SCAD students frolicking in the first-floor lounge

The beautiful building has incredible work inside ...

... outside ...

... and everywhere in between.

Click here to view my photo tour of SCAD – Hong Kong.

• • •

As we walked through Sham Shui Po, we passed a restaurant — which I fully intend to visit — where you can pick out a snake, and they make it into snake soup for you!  Far more interesting than lobster, in my opinion.  One of our guides, Anne, whose family moved here from Canada when she was eleven, made the following contribution to our discussion of slimy edible creatures: shortly after moving to Hong Kong, her mother was crossing a street in the city when out of the shopping bag of the woman in front of her emerged a tentacle.  A tentacle, followed by an entire octopus.  The octopus crawled out of the woman's shopping bag and onto the street, fighting with all it had not to be made into fried octopus that night.  A valiant effort, to be sure, but the woman scooped up the octopus, dumped it back in her bag, pulled the drawstring tighter, and went on her way.

• • •

Nothing slimy for lunch today, just a Turkish meal of soup, chicken wings, and rice at Dragon Center, a 9-story-high shopping mall in Sham Shui Po with an indoor roller coaster and ice rink.  Tomorrow, a friend and I are making a day trip to Macau to see what we can see.  Incidentally, I will be returning to Macau when my Art History professor takes a group of students for a field trip — on April 20, my twenty-first birthday.  Also this weekend, I hope to go shopping in Mong Kok, and at some point I'd like to hit Ocean Park on the southern part of Hong Kong Island.

Here's to seizing the day.

eb