brief encounters

I arrived in Hong Kong with high personal hopes, expecting to immediately reach some kind of epiphany about my identity. What I ended up with, though, were weeks overwhelmed with meeting new people I never saw again, exploring tourist traps, and staying out late drinking in LKF. It was a lot of fun -- Hong Kong, this freedom to do as I pleased, everything was so new to me -- but I also felt a void in this mindless, exhaustive fun that I was having. It wasn't enough. It took a little while to adjust, but HK began to feel familiar, and I began to appreciate and love it for less obvious reasons. I spent more time with my aunt, I heard more stories about my mom, I began to wander around alone more. And I began to feel at home again.

Well, my time here is almost up, and I'm moved by just the mere thought of the whole experience, and the fleetingness of it all. We've come to live in this place for three months together and now share something that only we will understand the significance of -- shared motifs, if you will. We flew across the world and briefly touched the lives of each other, and we'll remember a lot of it as something almost surreal when we return and resume our lives at home. I'll vaguely remember my Cantonese teacher who made me laugh so hard I nearly cried during every class, and the lady who works at the counter in CC canteen who always knows what I'm going to order. I feel like I'm living in some kind of film, where all these different characters' lives get intertwined, and then leave each other, changed somehow. I am going to say goodbye to a lot of people I will likely never see again. And gradually, they're going to fade in my memory, to the point where I'll question whether they really existed as I remember them. And the thought that our paths may cross again one day is so overwhelmingly bittersweet.

I suppose it's something that you feel when you end any chapter in your life, but this one especially so, because these are people who come from such different backgrounds as me, but with whom I've managed to relate and share so much with. These are people who spent their lives across the world, living in an entirely different culture as me, and yet it has been so easy breaking down that barrier to find shared ground -- not in our favorite music or movies, but in in our shared sense of humor, our willingness to learn from each other. I know I'm a total cheeseball, but it all really goes back to the very core of what makes us human -- our capacity to feel...and to love.


A shot of my favorite short in Paris Je T'aime.