Software Update 2
The Move is Official
Note: I drafted about 99% of this post prior to the fire in Tai Po. If you have the means to donate to any charities here to help the affected residents, families, and domestic helpers, here is a compendium from SCMP.
As of last week, I’ve officially dropped the moniker of “tourist” and officially become an immigrant in the eyes of Hong Kong’s government. By this I mean I finally attended my long-delayed appointment for an ID card and I’ve had everything else sorted for at least a month.
After spending my last six months in the US dealing with paperwork, government offices, and other stupid legal bullshit I was most certainly shitting my pants at the idea of doing that again for my ID card. Luckily, getting an ID card here is not the hell of a passport card (on a federal level) and definitely not the epitome of banal suffering that is any state’s DMV. With the ability to pre-fill all the required forms online months in advance, it was just a matter of shambling into the office and showing my documents. Even the photo was less painless. Obtaining the proper physical copy is a bit trickier thanks to my work schedule, but it has been done. Now, I finally feel all settled…at least until tax season comes up.
In the weeks leading up to gladly eschewing my tourist status, more so out of personal pride rather than any meaningful day to day change, my wonderful neighbor decided to indulge my whims and took me on a sightseeing day on Hong Kong Island. Thanks to the public holiday that week, she had the week off and I had a two consecutive days off. While she has an extra year living here under her belt, we both had some touristy stuff we wanted to do that would feel slightly shameful to do alone.
Most of the day was spent all over Hong Kong Island. I do mean all over: I hit nearly quintuple my move goal on the Fitness app. Some of the highlights from the island were Victoria Peak, although the tram up and the walk down both caused some physical pain in the days following, and the Monster Flats featured in many a Wong Kar-wai film. We also stumbled across the Hong Kong Botanical Gardens which straddle the line between zoo and garden. There were an honestly comical amount of monkeys compared to any other classification of animal, and it was awesome.
Apart from the trip quite literally all over Hong Kong Island, I’ve kept up with my weekly promise to stop off at one new MTR station and walking around the area. This has worked to some success and some less than success. So far I’ve knocked off a few more areas of the island, Causeway Bay in particular has been a favorite, and a good chunk of eastern Kowloon. I celebrated said neighbor’s birthday in a very nice Lebanese restaurant in Central where I was brought out of my “pro” dancer retirement twice. Shoutout to the dancer on staff that night. Although Tsim Sa Tsui was the first place I ever got truly lost in Hong Kong thanks to the labrythine K11 Musea Mall, I’ve been back more than a few times to walk around the bay and stare at pretty buildings (and make my amends with K11).
Other goings-on basically amount to the horrors persisting (partial job relocation), building furniture, finding the wonders of Taobao, and going to another anime exhibition. Without a weird mid-fall holiday to create a barrier between Halloween and Christmas, it’s been slowly morphing into the holiday season here. I will surely have more notes about this in the next update: spending the holidays literally 13 hours away from where you normally do. For the record, I forgot Thanksgiving was coming up until people back home were posting about being home for a holiday.