On my first night in Hong Kong, after a long flight, I went to bed around midnight. Being in my own room, but I felt like sleeping in a strange bed. By 4:30am or 5:00am, I got awaken by the traffic noises coming in from my windows. I just lay there for a couple hours and couldn't get back to sleep. I think I have forgotten how noisy Hong Kong is. I can already foresee that I will have a week or two rough night sleeps, and then my body gets really tired, eventually I naturally adjust back to this environment. When I first moved to the US, the silence in the evenings gave ringings in my ears. After a week or two, my body started to get used to it.
I have expected that it will take me a while to get used to the pace of Hong Kong anyway, even though I lived here for 26 years before I headed to study in the US and I have still remained connections with many individuals here over the past few years. However, the lifestyle of Hong Kong is rather different than Chicago's. Perhaps in the whole world, there are really only a very few cities that can compare with the fast pace of lifestyle in Hong Kong. Grab, eat, drink, work, talk, sleep, have fun... all at once. We have small spaces, but with lots of people. When you live here, you begin to create your own space internally to get away from the white noise surrounding you.
I manage to clear up the room a bit, where has stored many "old" stuffs. Both my parents are collectors of "antiques", but not from buying, nor are they worth anything. They are the old clothing and accessories of mine or my brother's, and their own stuffs that they would never use anymore. Actually, they don't throw stuffs away. So, when I moved out, it was just perfect that an extra room became available to store the old stuffs. My old hi-fi has been disconnected and kept at some high places in the house. My room has been repainted, and stuffed with plastic boxes of sheets and old clothes, discolored or with holes. Sounds like why wasting the space, right? Yep! I know, but my parents lived through the old days when they had nothing. I understand why, and usually I just pretend I don't see the boxes, or bags or whatever it is. Only when something's really rubbish and wasting the space I want to use, I just secretly throw those things away. I used to have some hanging shelves in my room, they are all gone now. Good and bad, I guess. I have a tons of books, CDs, DVDs, clothes, and many other stuffs were shipped by ocean fright from the US back here, they will be arriving very soon. I can probably buy the right furniture to accommodate them. However, this will cost some money. Intentionally, I reserve some money from my trip to spend in Hong Kong before I will be able to find a job. I was hoping the money will last me two to three months. But now I am not so sure. We'll see about that.
Find that without my Hong Kong ID card and any local credit card, things become very very inconvenient. I have gone to the local phone company to check the contract of my home land line which has expired for my mom. It was registered with my name previously. Anyway because I am unable to show the HK ID, they cannot provide me with any information, not even with my passport where they can find the same HK ID number shown in it. They say when you registered with a HK ID, you need to show that in order to do anything with the account. It is a privacy protection thing required by the government, but it becomes very inconvenient when I happen to have lost my ID. I try to open a new cell phone account and ask about getting internet, almost everywhere everything here are using credit cards, I mean most of the stuffs, you can still pay cash, but you just don't get any specific offers, extra benefits or have limited plans or options for you to choose. One of the banks I have visited even tells me that I need a HK ID to open an account. That's a freaking joke. The others are ok with a passport. At the end of my first day, I get some idea how I am going to do about my room and check around about a few stuffs such as cell phone, internet and some furniture choices. But I haven't gotten anything or made any solid decision yet.
My goal is to get a cell phone number, set up the internet and make my room more livable within a week, so maybe I can sleep better at nights and might feel more homey here. And my other stuffs should be arriving in 2 weeks, after that, my priority will shift to finding a job. Right now, I don't even have an extra pair of pants or shoes to wear. It is hard to feel like home really, but I try. Just hope the lack of HK ID and HK credit card will not cause me too big an obstacle for the coming days.
