Summertime, and the living is easy...

'Merry Christmas' blinks the building across the harbour each night, it's lights flashing out a series of festive messages into the warm evening air. It reminds me of my first christmas in Sydney with shops playing 'White Christmas' and 'Frosty the Snowman' tunes whilst outside the temperature topped 30c.
It seems to be that i'm having another of those 'perpetual summers' giving that its been summer since June for me now, and i'm really starting to crave some cooler weather.

Despite work being incredibly difficult the living here in HK is incredibly easy. My apartment is on top of a shopping arcade, with supermarket, bakery, chemist, bookstore, obligatory Starbucks etc etc. There is a gym on the 42nd floor of the apartment building, free to all residents. All the shops are open late at night, and all day Sunday and all you need to do is think about needing a taxi and there will be a string of them around the next corner. All this comes with a soft but dependable layer of customer service, for example the dry cleaning service picked my clothes up from my apartment Saturday afternoon, and delivered them right back to my door Sunday afternoon. I have a horrible feeling its going to be tough for me to adjust back to Paris in this respect.

Although the practicalities of daily life are easy actually having a life here is not, especially when work comsumes most of your waking and sleeping hours, and you know you're only there on a temporary basis, making potential friendships incredibly short term on a face to face basis. When I do get time to rest and relax its then that I miss my friends and Paris, where after 6 years of effort life now really is very good, very easy.

So instead of going out and making friends i'm tending to invest more time in myself. That incredibly expensive spa membership takes up a good couple of hours ever Saturday (and its worth every penny of it), i'm continuing to try to learn Cantonese, i've started using that gym on the 42nd floor as often as possible and i'm also spending time researching some of those countries that i've always wanted to travel to. This weekend I also finally managed to get my act together and book some flights for a long weekend in Beijing. Its going to be a flying visit given the amount of time I have and the sheer number of things to see, but it will at least give me a taste of China, and an opportunity to escape HK (and therefore work) for 72hrs. Lets face it, whilst my work-head and work-soul is firmly here in Hong Kong, my real mind, body and spirit is clearly with my friends back in Paris, or preparing to continue that perpetual summer in S America.

K