August 7, 2005 Archives
Starbucks' Canadian version of the Green Tea Frappucino tastes like shit. They add melon flavouring. Still the same buzz/diabetes-inducing sweetness to it, with an aftertaste like banana-flavoured antibiotics I was taking as a kid.
Otherwise I'm fine. I just came back from lunch in Chinatown with Grandma and parents. Then hung out at Fairview Shopping Mall, in its empty suburbbish vastitude.
In summary, I feel boredom of a city like Montreal seizing up on me. And as I suspect, it's a bit my fault, and a bit of Montreal's, for not being an island of occident in a sea of orient, but rather just a island of some occident in a sea of some other occident. Bleh, whatever, I'm making this up, I'm in denial of my own identity, cue-in identity crisis.
At the same time, Hong Kong is not a place that welcomes me. I am a non-Cantonese speaker, who has lived all his life in North America. Wanting to establish oneself in it comes across more as a fetish, than something "normal". As my aunts/uncles ask, well, if we grew up in Hong Kong, there's a reason we wanted to come back to live. But you, who cannot speak the language, and has no ties with the place from your childhood, why do you want to stay there? And the answer is probably that something different is a lesser evil than continuity, if continuity doesn't satisfy you. Or said in a more happy tone, change is good, and it's not a bad thing to abuse of it.
I hate Montreal. I don't hate Montreal. I pretty much like Montreal. It's great, it's bilingual. It's like being married for too long. The twenty-something questionning. I don't know. And Hong Kong is that new girl you just found, and want to have an affair with, just to get out of monotony.
I don't know. I wanted to come back, because it was going nowhere. Without a job, what can I do in a foreign city (spend all your money by having fun). I'm confused lah.
A few things actually happened in my last few days in HK. There was a Comics Festival in HK, which is at the same time a Game Fair (the dream of any Fan-girl/boy out there - complete with product-promoting chicks and cosplaying). I went on the last day of an event spanning a long-weekend (Friday to Tuesday, last week), and didn't have to queue up for at least an hour (the queue could circle up all the way from the HK Convention Centre to Great Eagle Centre, nearby Wan Chai ferry). I am far from being a fanboy, by any standards possible. But I read/watch manga/anime, and enjoy the culture, as if it was mainstream (which it really is in the Far-East).
In short, b/c I am not a fanboy, the only marking thing I get from the Comics Festival is the experience of being stuck in crowds and crowds of fanboys/fangirls flocking from booth to booth in search of things to buy.
