The shortcut

When I told the cab driver my destination, he shook his head and clucked a bit.

"Water main break in Wan Chai," he said. "Lots of traffic."

That explained the traffic jam outside my apartment -- on a street that maybe sees a dozen cars in a busy hour. The line of taxis was already stretching toward the hospital when I left for my yoga class at 9:15. When I came home two and a half hours later, the line was even longer.

I left for work an hour after that, and managed to flag down the clucking cabbie.

As we approached the main road, he pointed up the hill. "It will be faster, I think, to go up," he says.

I nod, having no interest in sitting in traffic. I've watched the cars crawl by for most of the morning. I just want to get where I'm going.

He zooms up the hill. Except for a couple of stoplights, we don't stop. Not until we get to Wan Chai, where the water main has broken. The traffic slows to a crawl.

"No worry," my driver says. "I know a shortcut. OK?"

Normally, when a cab driver says "I know a shortcut!" I worry that I'm being taken for a ride. Inevitably, such shortcuts add lots of time -- the meter clicking away all the while. But even the long way around can't be worse than what I can see ahead, so I wave him through. "Shortcut is OK," I say.

A short while later, we're on the highway zipping toward the office. When he pulls up in front of the building, the meter reads $72 -- only $5 more than it usually does when I take a taxi to the office. Considering the zoo we just passed, I see this as nothing short of a miracle.

I hand him $80 and move to get out of the car. It's far, far more than I usually add -- Hong Kong is not a city of tippers -- but if it weren't for his shortcuts, I'd still be sitting in traffic somewhere. "Mgoi!" I say. I wave off my change. "It's OK," I say. "You keep it."

"Is far too much for me!" he says. But I wave and slide out.

He is smiling as he drives away.

The best of Bali

My body has been back from my Bali yoga retreat for a week and a half now, but my spirit is still very much there, sitting on my terrace in a bathrobe, drinking the hotel’s special ginger tea and waiting for the woman from the spa to come get me for my afternoon treatment.

A week and a half later, my part of my mind refuses to believe that no one will gently ring a bell outside my door to wake me up; that the toughest decision of the day will not be which color tank top to wear with my black yoga pants; and that the loudest noise I’ll hear today will be neither the rooster next door nor the laughter of my retreat-mates. (Either of which would be a much-welcomed respite from the constant drilling outside my window.)

And so, to come to terms with the fact that, yes, my idyllic vacation is officially over, I offer you some highlights, which are also illustrated by this set of photos. (And this one, though these were taken by others.)

The hotel itself. It’s a magical place, designed and built by the second prince of Ubud. It’s a place of winding paths through lush gardens. Statues of gods and demons are everywhere – as are offerings of flowers, candles and burning incense sticks. It’s made even more striking by the staff’s attention to details. Everyone greets me by name. When I return to my room after the morning yoga class, the bed is made and the curtains open. After dinner, the curtains are closed and a candle burning. Someone always comes along to turn out the outside lights after I go to bed. There is always fruit available, along with coffee and the hotel’s special ginger tea. You never have to think about anything yourself. It’s impossible to hold onto your outside life, making it that much easier to relax.

Participating in a purification ritual at Tirta Empul, a sacred spring pool. During the day, the place is crowded with tourists, but at night, it was just a handful of locals, a few stray dogs and us. It didn’t matter that I had no idea what the priest was saying or that I had never before been to a Hindu ceremony. It was a soothing, welcoming place, and I left feeling better than I had when I arrived.

Spending a day in silence. Napping, journaling, painting a bit, but not communicating with anyone beyond a smile and a nod.

Doing sun salutations as the sun rises over Mt. Batur, an active volcano, then breaking the silence of the day before at a lively communal breakfast.

Feeling the wind in my face as I race downhill on a bicycle, trying to avoid the chickens and dogs that run across the road. Stopping for a tour of a traditional Balinese village or two, waving to children who ran to the roadside to greet us, and coming upon a town preparing for a mass cremation ceremony.

Wandering through the rice fields, then having lunch at a local organic restaurant. The meal started with fantastic grilled vegetables and baba ghanoush and ended with fried bananas drizzled with coconut sugar, but the true highlight for me was a ginger-mint drink. Light and cool and completely refreshing.

Drinking my first true Javanese coffee.

The best massage of my life: After two and a half hours and a whole liter of oil, sitting and staring at the rice fields while the masseuse washes my feet and legs with flowers. Need I say more?

Sitting around the dining room table during a blackout, drinking Black Russians and laughing so hard my cheeks hurt.

Doing my first unassisted shoulder stand.

Watching a traditional dance class in Ubud.

Writing down the things about my life that bother me on slips of paper, burning them, and sending them down the river with a handful of flowers.

And finally, a Hong Kong highlight: The afterglow. On my first day back in the office, a mere 24 hours after leaving Bali, a coworker looked at me, cocked his head, and said, “You’re glowing.”

I seem to get less caught up in the frantic pace of the city these days. Even in the midst of rush hour, with taxis honking and people yelling into their cellphones, I manage to find a stillness. That alone would have made the retreat worth it.

This is what I get

Why did I ever switch to a digital camera? I've spent most of the day toning and resizing photos from my recent trip to Bali, and, while I've had fun looking at the images, I've started to miss film a bit. I miss running to Wal-greens the instant I return from a vacation. I miss the thrill of opening the envelopes, waiting to see what turned out. Most of all, I miss letting someone else do the work. In an hour. Four hours later, I'm barely halfway through my Bali pictures.

Is it any wonder I still have pictures from China that I took last October sitting in iPhoto? Not to mention pictures from trips to Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam. Maybe the problem isn't that I started using a digital camera. Maybe the problem is that I travel too damn much. If I stayed home more often, I certainly wouldn't have this problem!

But the upside to putting photos online: Flickr stats. I've developed something of an addiction this afternoon. I like seeing how many visitors I've gotten, what photos they've looked at (so far, the two most popular are one of a sunrise at Mt. Batur and one of a salad), what sites sent them to me.

I'd like to take a moment to thank the readers of hair-removal-cream-hairremovalcream.blogspot.com and usabestloans.com for leaving such riveting reading material to glance at my humble vacation photos.

I think.

I'll share actual photos in this spot soon. In the meantime, take a look at my Flickr stream to see them.

Crisis mode

It seems an earthquake off the coast of Japan has broken the Interwebs (or at least the wires I use to access them). My e-mail is down. Facebook is erratic. Google is achingly slow. The new episode of "True Blood" is inaccessible. They say this could last weeks.

However will I survive?

Plus, the elevator has decided to stop working. I live on the top floor, six flights up.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. I'm breaking out a good book and a glass of wine. I'll upload the Bali pictures another day.

Lesson learned

When the rain starts falling horizontally, I start looking for a taxi.

Not that I usually find one before I get to the bus stop, soaking wet. It’s like all the cabs in this town disappear as soon as it starts raining.

And if I have learned one thing in my year and a half in Hong Kong, it is that all bets are off when it comes to getting taxis in the rain. The cab belongs to the person who gets in first. Nice guys get wet.

The Australian woman who called me a fucking bitch tonight as I got into the cab outside the office obviously has yet to learn this lesson.

She left the building soon after I did. We stood several feet apart in the shelter of the highway overpass, umbrellas wobbling in the strong wind. Within minutes, I had managed to flag down a driver. And when he stopped, she stepped out from behind the pillar, obviously expecting she would be the one to get in.

But I got in first, and she started screaming at me. I slammed the door, shrugged at the driver, and gave him my address. She stood there fuming.

It doesn’t matter that, technically speaking, she was farther up the road. I was there first. I flagged him down as soon as I saw the “for hire” light. He stopped in front of me. It was my cab.

Get your own, bitch.

Letting the world in

After a rather blunt reminder that demon summer is on its way, Hong Kong has had a run of rather glorious weather. (Well, at least on the days I’m working. Naturally, it pours on my days off.) Last year at this time, I remember it already being uncomfortably sticky, though not yet blazing hot. But these days? They feel like November.

And so, to celebrate, I turned off the air conditioner and opened the windows wide.

The first few nights, it wasn’t bad. The air was deliciously cool. Perfect sleeping-with-the-windows-open weather.

I’m lucky in that my neighborhood is relatively quiet for Hong Kong. I live directly across from a school, which is dark long before I get home from work. There’s a hospital up the road, and, because of that, there are few apartment buildings on my street. (It’s considered very bad luck to live near a hospital.) There’s a park up the street where several rowdy Chinese teenagers like to play basketball, but they’re long gone by bedtime. Other than the occasional car or delivery truck, there’s very little noise outside.

At least, there’s very little noise outside until I decide to leave the windows open.

The building is surrounded by a pack of feral cats. There are at least nine that I recognize. Normally, I don’t mind them. But three nights ago, a couple get into a roaring fight sometime around 4 a.m. I’m a hard sleeper. Once I’m out, I’m out. I once slept through an earthquake.

These cats woke me up.

After what felt like an hour, I thought about closing the windows, hoping that would cut down on the noise. But that required getting out of bed and stumbling around the apartment, something I’m not generally willing to do before 10 a.m. Instead, I fumbled around for my iPod and shoved the headphones in my ears. Back to sleep I went.

My mom would probably say that the cats sounded better than the music.

The next night, while brushing my teeth, I think about closing the windows and turning on the air conditioning. But it’s cool outside, so I leave them open.

Again, sometime in the wee small hours of the morning, I’m yanked out of sleep by some (presumably drunk) man yelling at a taxi driver on the street in a strange mixture of French and Chinese. This goes on for several minutes. By the time the elevator starts creaking, I’ve brought out the trusty iPod and drifted back to sleep.

Last night, I left nothing to chance. I left the windows open, but I fell asleep with the iPod.

There were no strange noises, but I woke up this morning to discover that Hong Kong mosquitoes find me extra tasty. I am covered in bites. (There were 25 at last count, including one between two toes. How does this happen?)

Hong Kong windows do not have screens, and I don’t live up high enough to escape the bugs. Every once in a while, something will find its way into my apartment – I once woke up to find a bee the size of a small car trying to escape by flying over and over into the unopened windows – but the mosquitoes have pretty much stayed away.

This is what I get for letting the world in? Tonight, I’m closing the freakin’ windows.

On boredom and buses and a mild obsession with Molly Wizenberg

A friend recently called me out for not writing enough on this blog. A slacker, she called me. (It was meant lovingly, I know, dear.)

Well, that friend was right. I am slacking off. Considerably.

But I'm not lazy. Not really.

I'm afraid.

I'm afraid of being boring. Despite my love of food blogs, I do not particularly want to read about what someone had for breakfast this morning. People don't come here for recipes, so I assume that my readers – all five of you – don’t really want to know what I ate this morning, either. (Besides, all of you should know me well enough to know that I’m not really a breakfast person. In all likelihood, I turned off my alarm and overslept and rushed to leave the apartment at 12:40 to make it to the office on time and somewhat put together.) And so, instead of writing something boring, I write nothing at all. It's easier that way.

I'm afraid of being boring.

My life is out there for all the world to see. And I want people who come to this blog -- whether they're loved ones who come here on purpose to check up on me or people who stumble here accidentally -- to like what they read. I want them to be entertained. And, because it's my name up there in lights, I'm the entertainment -- if not with my day-to-day life, then certainly with my perspective of Hong Kong. After all, it's a wildly exotic place for some girl named Anna.

Isn't it?

I’ve spent more than a year waiting for culture shock to hit me in the back of a head with a 2x4, but it hasn’t happened. I expected Hong Kong to be wildly different from anything I’d seen before. In some ways, it is, but mostly, the patterns of my daily life are largely the same in Hong Kong as they were in the U.S. My work is the same. The people are different, but the ones who have a major role in my life here are, for the most part, American. Every once in a while, I’ll see something strange and snap a picture, thinking I’ll maybe write something on it later. But most days, the only sign I live in Asia is the presence of a lot of Chinese people.

Hong Kong is funny like that. The best description of this city I’ve ever heard is “The world’s largest Chinatown.” It looks like China and sounds like China and feels like China – in the right neighborhoods – but it’s not China. China is easy to find here, but it’s just as easy to get away from. My daily life mostly happens in those non-China-like areas. And I've been happy with that, content with the pattern and the routine and ease of using English.

Because of that, I haven’t really made much of an effort to get to know the other Hong Kong. I haven’t even made a serious effort with the language. I’m a creature of habit and routine. Why learn more than basic Cantonese when English works just fine? Why would I want to wander around some other neighborhood when I know mine so well?

I know. Slacker.

Excluding trips to the airport, I can’t remember the last time I made it off Hong Kong Island. And that’s a shame. Hong Kong is a vibrant, exotic city, and I should make more of an effort to get to know it.

I was thinking about that on the bus tonight. I know the route well; I take it home from work every single night. But there’s more than one bus that runs that way. There’s also a minibus. I have yet to ride a minibus here. (See? Slacking again. Mostly, I’m afraid I’ll die in one. But if I live, what a great tale I’ll have for the blog!)

Mostly, I was thinking about Orangette. I’ve been reading the archives lately and loving them. They’re fun because of the subject matter (which often centers on what Molly ate for breakfast. Or dinner. But, since hers is a food blog, I feel like she can get away with that…). But going through the archives this way is even more fun because, after reading several months’ worth of entries, I’m seeing Molly discover her voice and begin to develop as a writer. (A very, very lovely writer she is, too.) I thought about Orangette’s evolution as the bus began to chug up the hill toward Midlevels, and I began to wonder if someday, far, far into the future, some half-crazed fan of mine would be trolling the archives of this blog, noticing the same thing. (If I say hello here to that half-crazed future fan, does that mean I’ve been watching too much “LOST”?)

Of course, for that to happen, this blog needs some, shall we say, um, more substantial archives. And there’s a whole city out there, just waiting to be turned into blog posts.

I’ll try to get on that.

Maybe I should start by taking a minibus.