First Impressions of Montreal

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.