I’ve been to Hong Kong for five years. During the years I have moved several times, but always around the same neighborhood. My first room was at Water Street. I found that tiny room on-line before I came to Hong Kong for my graduate school. Back then I’ve never been to Hong Kong before and of course I didn’t know there were so many hills and climbs on Hong Kong Island. I saw the apartment was pretty close to my university from the map but only to find it’s all the way up from my building to the university. And to be fair it was a pretty steep climb. After I graduated, I moved to Sheung Wan, close to my office in Central. Then I moved to Sai Ying Pun and have lived there for almost two years and a half.
I’m not sure if a connection is developed organically or is more of a man-made product. SYP has quickly grown in me once I knew a lot of close friends lived here. I even moved from Second Street to High Street to be even closer to them. Now Viv, Mina and Will are across the street; Dany is 3-minute away; Tony is 4-minute away; and Nat and Alex are like another 4-minute away.
I love going to Viv’s place. She came to Hong Kong around the same time like me and we once worked in the same company. She kept her place very homely. There is a cabinet full of wine and liquor and a huge fridge stuffed with some most delicious home-made food shipped all the way from her mom and sister back in Malaysia. In the durian season, her kind sister would even pack some wild durians in the vacuum package and send to Hong Kong. Lucky for me, Viv loves sharing and durian is my no.1 fruit. Dany once joked that Viv is like a mother to me. I guess to certain degrees it’s true. Besides all the amazing food I enjoyed at Viv’s place, another thing that makes me like being around is the fact that she would call me out if I’m not in my best behavior. My mom is a care-free person and couldn’t bother to interfere with any of my decisions. I had my freedom growing up but there were no people stepping in to teach me doing anything. My mom is always very proud of her free-range education style and I did attribute some of my qualities like independence and risk-taking to her. But when Viv told me “make yourself useful in the kitchen”, I suddenly felt “this feels nice”.
On the same floor with Viv, there live Mina and Will. They altogether take the entire 4/F. Just like in Friends, in such close proximity, we talk, drink and laugh. We hold corridor party on 4/F and invite all our friends. Over half of them also live in SYP.
It’s like a small eco system. People who are friends start to move to the same neighborhood, sign up for same activities and eat out at the restaurants no further than 10 mins walk away. We cabbed together to Stanley Beach during the dragon boat season for our training or to any starting point for our weekend hike in NT. It got to a point that we started to think it’s impossible to organize the logistics with people who didn’t live in SYP. Lars once tried to justify his previous hookup life style, “Life in Hong Kong is so hard. Sometimes you just need some warm bodies.” This way SYP would be my warm body.
Two weeks ago I wouldn’t even thinking about leaving SYP in the foreseeable future. Then on the night I met Tony and Viv for a drink after my last day in the office, Viv told me she just handed in her resignation letter. She would travel and rest for a year and hope to find out what she will do next. After 10 years in a same company, she was no longer happy and satisfied at her job. She wanted a change. I only knew she found the job repetitive, but I never expected she would quit and leave Hong Kong. Trying to make the coming goodbye easier, Viv said she will be back for a corporate job in Hong Kong after a year if she couldn’t find what she wanted to do. As much as I would love her coming back, I hope she won’t. Then I heard Mina took a job in Tokyo starting from September and Will will gradually shift his life to Tokyo too. Having heard of their future plans every now and then in the past two years, I was never prepared for this. It is hard but I respect them even more. They have an idea, talk about the plans and make them happen. So when my landlord’s agent called me the other day to let me know that the landlord has sold the property and I can choose to move out any day before the tenancy expires. I quickly made the decision that I will move out before I head to Peru. It is good timing.
Then I realized it’s not SYP that I have a connection with. It’s my dear friends who happen to live here.