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.

Umbrella angst

Today, I hate Hong Kong. Well, maybe not hate. But I spent a good chunk of the day seriously questioning my love for this town (after talking it up to someone in the States). The complaints I have aren’t major things – other than the lack of decent Mexican food. But, these little annoyances have added up over the last eight months, and, today, when FIVE locksmiths refused to make a copy of my apartment key -- including one who made a copy of said key not two months ago (with whom I promptly lost my temper; I kind of feel bad about it now) -- I decided that I had had enough.

Today, I hate Hong Kong.

The rain pushed it over the edge.

This city is absolutely unbearable when it rains. Even if, like today, it isn’t raining very hard. There’s one reason, and one reason only: No one in this city knows how to use an umbrella. They simply weave all over the sidewalk, never really looking at the people around them (particularly this tall white girl who is pretty sure that she will one day get her eye poked out by the edge of an old lady’s umbrella). And, when meeting people coming from the opposite direction, no one tilts their umbrella to either side or moves it up or down. They just barrel through and expect everyone else to get out of the way.

And it doesn’t stop on the sidewalk. Oh, no. Some people (particularly little old ladies) carry this nonsense inside. More than once, I have watched people who have been under cover and completely removed from the rain for several minutes keep their umbrellas up. The chances of this happening increase exponentially the narrower and more crowded the walkway gets or if flights of stairs are involved.

It’s surprising, really, considering how often it rains here. I would have expected there to be some sophisticated, unspoken umbrella etiquette. But no such luck.

There are some other things I don’t understand. Like why escalators are so confusing. Or why people have to rush to get on the MTR before people can leave it.

Soon, I’ll go right back to loving the city again. But I think I’ll just stay inside until it stops raining.