Last Afternoon/With Catie

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We kept hearing about Pizza Hut being really good in Asia and there was one in the port mall so we decided to try it.  I was going to ask Spencer to join us but never saw him, so it was just Catie and I.  She got a chocolatey thing to drink and I just got nothing and wouldn’t drink the water.  We ended up splitting a large pizza, which was supposed to be half pepperoni and half plain, but ended up being half pepperoni and half ham.  It wasn’t bad, but I didn’t particularly like it, and ended up picking it off my pizza and it took up like half the plate when I was done.

 

We had a really nice conversation over lunch.  I got to know some more about her family and her experiences in high school and lining up to go to the Air Force Academy and how that didn’t work out and how St. Mary’s ended up being where she went instead.  She asked me some more about my family so I told her about mom and dad and Jess and Ryan and Sam but didn’t mention my cats or Gauss really but I think she’s seen pictures of Cocoa.  I also told her about Thon and how awesome it was (this was, amazingly, the first time I had told her) and totally teared up a number of times.  Definitely once when talking about who gets to be a dancer, and again when talking about how they hold up the total at the end.  I think there may have been other times too.  I think it happened again when I thought about the end of last year’s line dance when they struck the symbol’s pose and the overall shouted “HOLD IT!  HOLD IT!  HOLD IT!” but I don’t think I ever got around to telling her about that.  Maybe that was for the better.

 

It was really really cold and it took forever to get the check, and we were excited to get out to where it was warm after we got it.  She owed me $5 US and was just going to give me back the bill that I had given her earlier in China.

 

We took the ferry to the other island, and just as we were about to get off a guy came up to us and asked if we were with the student ship.  He said he knew a bit about it because he had talked to two girls from Clemson the day before.  I didn’t know who they were but I think there’s only two on the ship, so I’ll check the stalker board at some point.  He asked us what we were doing, and we said that we didn’t really know except that we wanted to go the IFC building to find the observation deck and maybe a bookstore.  He shook his head.  No, no, you can’t do that right now.  But I can get you to a café on the 48^th floor that you can only get into if you’re a member.  Do you want to come?

 

He was wearing a business suit and expensive Rayband sunglasses and other name brand stuff and nice shoes.  He told us he was from Ohio State and was a gymnast then about fifty years ago and had been to Penn State only once and the gym coach pushed him off the balance beam.  We couldn’t believe he was 74 years old.  He looked like he might be sixty at the absolute oldest.  He said he really watches what he eats and he exercises every day and he’s only gained like an inch or two on his waist in fifty years and maybe ten pounds in the last fifty.  He also had a full head of hair.  He was basically an advertising executive and sold spaces (I guess?) in a number of magazines.  Newsweek used to be one of them but not anymore.  He was very well traveled (Argentina, South Africa, Bangkok to name a few) and energetic.  He said he used to spend a lot of time in Aberdeen, which is a swanky ex-pat marina in HK.  His name was Herb, and we introduced ourselves as well.

 

Anyway, he took us into the exchange building and then up the elevator to the 49^th floor or so, part of the HK America Club, which he’s a member of, and then lead us out onto a nice café on the balcony.  He told us what all the things in the view were, and then said we could get something if we wanted or we could just enjoy the view.  We read the menu, which was funny (Could this be the best burger… in the WORLD?) but didn’t get anything.  We talked about how nice the seat cushions were, and how we couldn’t believe how cool Herb was, and how we were upset we didn’t get a business card or know how to contact him at all, and we made jokes about how this was On The Itinerary, which we always make jokes about, because we hate itineraries and never have them.

 

We went downstairs and eventually found our way to a series of bookstores.  I was looking for a copy or two of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.  I kind of want one for myself to read again, but I also wanted to give one to Catie because I think she’d really like it.  She says she’s backed up with books for her English classes, but EL&IC is definitely way more important and way more of a learning experience than anything in the reading classes here.  It was sold out in all four book stores that we went to.

 

We got to the last one by looking for the longest escalator in the world.  We had to ask a couple of people in suits where it was before we found it, and it wasn’t as great as we thought.  It was more of a slanted people-mover and it was broken up into a number of parts.  But we did get to ride on it for two sections, and I took a video, and we found a Circle K right before it so we were drinking chocolate milk in the process, which was great.

 

Once we got off the second stop, we look around.  Right below, about fifteen feet, were two white businessmen having coffee outside an upscale coffee shop, with a number of similar shops to its right.  To its left was an alleyway about five feet wide, and a door on the left side was for a “massage” parlor, which means a brothel.  Down the alley about twenty feet was a slum building.  It was amazing to see all of those things in literally one frame of reference.  Three worlds within twenty-five feet of each other.  We considered going down there to look a little bit more closely, but never made it.

 

We found another book store – used this time – and decided to check it out.  It was small and totally loaded with books.  I couldn’t even find anything by the author, but I happened upon a copy of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and pulled it out to show Catie because I’ve heard it’s pretty hilarious/smart.  She read one page and said she liked it – I read the same page, and it was actually pretty good.  I opened it up to the rules and showed her that, because I’d read them before and they were pretty self-depricatingly funny.  She actually decided to buy it, and got in a bit of a conversation with the clerk while I was looking in one last place for EL&IC.  I ended up giving up and just going to join the conversation.  He was Australian, and we talked about politics for a while, and how a more conservative party had surprisingly taken hold in Australia recently.  I also asked about Adelaide, which he didn’t seem to have much of an opinion on, which is fine.  I don’t have much of an opinion on St. Paul, you know?  He talked about Obama and how he wished that he had done a better of job making demands in the beginning of his administration, but that he still supported him and thought he was lightyears ahead of Bush.

 

A woman overheard our conversation when we told him about SAS and said, “Wow, good thing you guys weren’t that Brazilian ship.”  We didn’t know what she meant.  We listened to her and checked it out later.  It was true.  A Canadian study at sea program had a sailboat off the coast of Brazil about six days ago.  A microburst hit it, and the ship was on its side within a minute.  (Microbursts!  God damn).  Each side of the boat had enough life rafts for everyone on the boat, so they were all able to board “comfortably,” and actually not a single person died out of the nearly 70 on the ship.  Within 20 minutes of the burst, the ship was underwater.  Within about 30 hours the distress signals had been pieced together and the kids were picked up by helicopters or nearby navies, and they had mostly been flown back home by the time the article was written.

 

But don’t worry mom and dad!  This isn’t a sailboat.

 

I checked my watch and it was 50 minutes before on-ship time.  Usually I get back more than two hours before.  I told him I was really sorry, but we had to go, and we asked him where the nearest red line subway stop was, and he told us where to go.

 

We got a little confused and couldn’t find it.  We went too far and asked for help.  We overshot again and made a turn and asked for more help and went the wrong way and asked for more help and finally found it.  Part of the reason I hang out with Catie is because she’s a runner and I knew that if I ever needed to get anywhere quickly with her, we could just book it.  This was one of those times, and we booked it through that subway.  We only had bills on us though, and we had to literally run AROUND the station to get bills into coins, get to the machines, and get back in.  We made it into the subway train literally seconds before it took off, and thanks our lucky stars we’d made the decision to run.

 

We got off at the next stop.  We got out.  I kept track of which way was West, toward the ship.  There were no signs for the Star Ferry/Harbour City when we got out.  We asked a white guy in a suit where we were.  Hong Kong Island.  Wrong one.  We booked it, back to the station, back to the ticket booth, ran back and slammed our way into a subway car with literally seconds to spare once again.

 

We got out at the next time and this time made SURE that it was TST instead of some other stop before we got out.  I kept track of direction, and we booked it once again.  She had to go to the bathroom REALLY badly and looked like her purse was giving her trouble.  I knew we were on the right path this time when we got out and started running west.  I took her purse from her because I thought I could bob and weave with it a little more effectively, and got to running again.

 

We probably ran something close to a mile and a half to two miles.

We made it onto the ship with exactly six minutes to spare.

If we hadn’t run, or hadn’t gotten on any one of those trains right when we did, we’d have gotten three hours of dock time in Vietnam.

 

Which wouldn’t be so bad.

 

But anyway, if any of ya’ll get some postcards with pictures of HK from a post office in Vietnam, now you know why.

 

She ran to the bathroom, and we went to the seventh deck to recover after saying hello to the people who joined the ship as interports for Vietnam.

 

Whew.