In The Rain

Owing to my family’s circumstances, I did not go hiking for more than two months. I missed the beautiful, transient spring in the countryside. I finally joined some friends for a short hike in Sai Kung on Tuesday. Unfortunately, the weather was unstable, and it had been raining on and off since Friday. How frustrating!

On Monday morning, the rain started again. After some exchanges of views over WhatsApp, we agreed to wait until 7 o’clock the next day before making the final decision on whether to continue with the plan. Anne, living closest to the hiking route, volunteered to give us the latest weather update on Tuesday morning.

I went to bed after 2:00 am on Tuesday morning and got up at 6:30 am. Peeking through the curtain, I saw that the sky was packed with clouds, but there was no rain. I checked the weather report on the observatory app, and it forecast a 40% chance of rain in the next four hours. I was indecisive about whether I should suggest calling off the trip.

Anne sent us the whole observatory forecast report at 6:51 am. At 7 o’clock, I sent out a message that it was not raining in my area, and asked if everyone would like to continue. Nobody replied. I hesitated for a while but reminded myself I needed the trip. So, I got dressed, took my camera and put it in a plastic bag, and left for the bus stop to catch the 7:15 bus.

A Present for 2026

I wonder if a person’s internal clock changes as they grow old. The year 2025 went by so quickly, and I now have one year less to live. I aimed to finish this piece of writing before the 2026 countdown, but it is now thirteen minutes past two on New Year’s Day.

Many things had occurred in 2025, yet I can only remember a few in detail. When the events of daily life begin to repeat themselves, our brains stop registering those memories with permanent addresses, and we start to forget and gradually resign to accept life is boring and, at its worst, meaningless.

The Name of Life

Last Wednesday, I returned to the neighbourhood where I used to work for twenty-five years. Down the main road, where I used to walk every Monday to Friday evening, except on public holidays, the noon sun was harsh, but the breeze kept the air light and fresh.

Several old shops have been replaced by new cafés or food takeaways, while some seem to fight on with new branding. I felt unfamiliar with the whole area, but nearly four years have passed since my last evening walk down the road from the office to take a bus.

Le Voyage

A colleague introduced me to hiking about ten years ago. Although I am not a keen enthusiast, I try hiking once a month, except during the summer. Most of the time, I am a follower in a hiking group made up of colleagues from work or their family members. Knowing my own limitations, I never challenge myself to conquer famous peaks or dangerous spots in pursuit of this hobby. Instead, the unique periods of solitude with nature during a journey are the motivation that keeps me in this pastime.

A Lady I Met At Qinghai

May is not the perfect month for traveling to Qinghai, a northwest province of the country, but I did not hesitate to accept the invitation from a friend to go there for an 18-day semi-independent tour.

I tried to invite other friends and family members to go with me. They declined outright because of their worries about their physical fitness and the risk of altitude reactions during the long journey. I guess another reason is that it is not yet a popular tourist destination. A friend has asked, ‘It’s so economically behind there; apart from deserts, what else is it famous for?’ Quite true, I knew nothing about the province either.

After a Rainstorm

This is the second rainstorm in a week. Better than the last one, the observatory issued the black rainstorm warning before dawn. Last week, I had to turn back home when the black rainstorm warning was issued after 9:00am. This time, I could have an extra hour’s sleep. Inevitably, the volunteering service session that I always enjoy has to be cancelled. It is disappointing.

Heavy rainstorms and flooding news reports have been frequent on TV for the past month. Nobody will argue that the weather has been extreme and unpredictable this year. I am not particularly interested in the causes of these extreme high temperatures, torrential rains, and thunderstorms, but getting around in such kinds of weather does cause a lot of inconvenience. Wearing a pair of wet shoes around is at the top of my annoyance list. Plans for hiking have been cancelled because my hiking friends are becoming very safety-conscious. I often end up spending the hiking time at McDonald’s having the unneeded food.

Forever is Now

Ecclesiastes 3 is my favourite chapter of the whole Bible. The beginning reads:

To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted…

The poetic list spells out the inevitability of the different facets of life. I think it is beautifully written but is dark and sad. I hate when people quote the twentieth verse in funerals: All go to one place: all are from the dust, and all return to dust.

3 for HK$100

It was almost 7:00 pm. I was glad that the shop was still open; otherwise, I would have had to come again for the third time the next day.

I was browsing and overheard the shop lady, likely the owner, having lively chatter about her commodities with a middle-aged woman.

“This one is better than the others, and it’s more expensive,” the shop lady explained to the middle-aged woman while pointing her finger in my direction.

Ebbs and flows

My hiking friends have teased me about my compact camera for the last few years. One of them, who used to be a photographer, reminded me that the camera was discontinued in 2016. I mocked him that I had made a very good decision to buy it in early 2015 then. Another one remarked that nobody would use such a ‘historical’ camera anymore and suggested I get an iPhone or the new HUAWEI, as they produced images better than the real thing. I chuckled and told her that I could not convince myself to spend that kind of money on a mobile phone.

In October 2023, during a hike, the shutter button of the camera occasionally failed to respond. I was embarrassed because my friends had to hold their poses whenever it misbehaved, and I had to restart the camera. I finally announced that it was going to retire soon. This camera had served me well, beyond my expectations, and it was about time to get a new one.

The Last Photograph

Finally, I got a WhatsApp message from a Miss Chan from the funeral parlour this afternoon. It came at the right time, and I was grateful for that.

This morning, I thought I had done something really stupid when I looked at a photo on the computer and was thinking about deleting it for good. Miss Chan was asking for a photo. It is the photo of Uncle Nine, the only photo I took for him when I visited him at an elderly home.

Last lotus of summer

Procrastination is my hallmark. I heard people talking about a special lotus festival with an exhibition of more than 8,000 pots of lotus at Po Lin Monastery starting from 22 June and saw some beautiful lotus flower photographs taken in the exhibition in some other blogs. Though the exhibition reviews were not particularly positive, I thought it might be an unusual day out. Yet, I had not gone there when it closed on 2 July.  

The Survivors

When I was much younger, people always said this city was a concrete jungle. Not anymore now, as many high-rise blocks are built of steel and glass. These days, caged homes, butchered rooms, and shrunken flats are the fashionable local terms in the media to describe the living space of many. Something should have been done for that, but I feel despondent, and hopeless about the whole situation. Hopefully, this is only my pessimism.

Worse than the concrete gridlock of dwellings is a rigid belief in inevitability and unchangeability. Some people, having a nomadic mindset of following whatever sustains their survival rather than waiting for the return of the rain, may suffer less from such a belief system. For others, to survive such a sense of unchangeability seems futile; living each day becomes forced labour, and the future becomes today.

Last Monday, after staring at the ceiling for over 30 minutes, I decided to go hiking in the nearby reservoir. I took the easy catchment trail because it rained the night before and the dirt paths might be hard to walk on. The fact was that I feared I wasn’t up to that after a long period of laziness, and the catchment trail was flat and well-paved with cement and asphalt.

Not A Revenge Travel

 Revenge Travel was a trendy term in 2023 after all COVID-19 social and travel restrictions were lifted at the start of the year. Unfortunately, I’m not quite infected by this post-pandemic condition and don’t have much desire to fly expensively to places where you don’t feel like being abroad-people yelling in the same language, bargaining in the same manners, abusing food in the same greed, and taking photos in the same pose. I did travel to two places, but the journeys were more like spiritual pilgrimages, with few delicacies to fill the belly and lots of walking but plenty of time to mull over things.

Pieces of Memories

I recently returned from a 19-day journey to a ‘developing’ area in the northwest of the Country. Most places I went to were much better than my expectations, and it might be because of the swift tourist industry development in the whole province. Along the main roads, restaurant foods were tasty, and the cooked rice grains were all in full shape without sand and husks. The shops were abundantly stocked with goods and produce from all parts of the Country. I could even find several brands of ‘moon-cake’ from the city I live in. Of course, most owners of the restaurants and shops spoke the Language with a non-local accent.

Spring meets Winter

 Had been terribly busy in December and the weeks before Lunar New Year, unfortunately on something trivial from hindsight. Just feel I owe an apology to those I care and love.

Building up a healthy lifestyle was one of my resolutions last year and I failed to achieve it with the rest as usual. Hope that I can do better this year. Well, the bottom line is so low, so I remain positive about achieving it this year.

Finally, I got a free day for myself on the second day of the Lunar New Year, so I went for a solo hiking in a country trail after having a late breakfast at 10am. It was not a beautiful trail, but the cool air and serenity along the path was rejuvenating, even the dogs were on holiday – not a single bark!

Standing at the start of the trail, I was amused by its name – matching the time well – 送虎迎兔！At the end, I realized that spring was at the door step already! Leave this photo collection here to remind myself of such a brief and transient encounter, and to hold on to things I treasure while they still exist.

Pictures at an exhibition

I haven’t been to a museum or art gallery for some time. A long time ago, I used to spend a lot of time visiting them, especially during weekdays and those that did not charge you anything for entrance. Free entrance and weekday visits often mean you can spend a lot of undisturbed time with the art pieces you like.

Being a mediocre art appreciator, I am always attached to a limited number of European artists whose works are often “commercialized.” Most of them are not contemporary but thrived in the modern art age. For those modern and contemporary local, Chinese or Oriental artists, I owe them an apology for being apathetic to their hard work. Very often, when there are traces of resemblance to some “great” artists in their works, I judge them as an imitation, or worse, a copy. I must admit I cannot help seeking out those traces whenever I notice the artists’ names are likely to be oriental. This is indeed my problem.

An old man and his music

Six months had passed since my resignation from the job I had enjoyed for over two decades, or a request for early retirement that I always told others. So, I was not fired.

No dream to fulfill and no desire for a later reemergence, I told my ex-colleagues, who politely best-wished me more wonderful days to come. A few told me it was too soon, but they respected my decision – those were the best farewell words for me.

I was the last one to leave the office for the last time at 10:15 pm. I did not miss it badly, but the feeling was strange and eerie, and the same 10 minutes’ walk in the cold down the hill to the bus stop made me feel unreal.

The trail traveled

29 August 2020 after a long mental struggle at McDonald’s, I stuck to the plan I made the night before.

Thinking that some solitude into the countryside could soothe my soul and clear my vision, I headed up the hill through a run-down village whose people did not like the passing by of hikers who seldom respected villagers had their own life too.

The tide of hikers had long gone at 10:15am and the path was quiet but the heat was building up fast. Deep into the village, I froze at the hearing of the distant barking of a dog that was echoed by another one from the left. Damn! I made the wrong decision to start late and missed the crowd!

青 豆 角

Colours of Winter

I woke up at 10:00 to a bright sky. I forgot the curtains last night.

After eight hours’ sleep, I still felt exhausted by the five-day holiday to my father's hometown. 

At 10:30 on this twenty-eighth day of December I decided to look for winter that seemed to have lost its way to this disturbed city. Or, the city was at a loss.

While stuffing myself with a lousy breakfast at the McDonald’s, photos of autumn leaves popped up from the junk messages on my phone. Red maple and yellow ginkgo leaves they were, beautiful of course. Yeah, friends had been talking about the huge crowds of people gathering around the strips of maple trees with their red leaves last year. The scene was on the television too; not this year though. Well, I could do that, to look for the red leaves and the long waited winter.