Emchap's Shit from the Internet 05/1/19 🍠
Greetings from Hong Kong, where I am waiting out the midday heat before venturing out to dinner. (It has been lovely here, I have had a wonderful time, and I am absolutely ready to go home to somewhere will I will not be walking around six miles a day in 80% humidity.)
This is my first time in Asia, and I've been here for a week, which is long enough to sort of drag on and make you think you could see everything if you really worked at it, but short enough that you feel guilty for taking naps even if it is very gross outside. (Because I impulse-purchased the ticket without looking anything up—which is often how I travel, counter to some of the rest of my personality, though as I type this I realize I just impulse-got a tattoo, like I did for two of my others, and am having a small crisis of personality—I managed to arrive at the beginning of summer, which is very much like Atlanta's summer on steroids, and thus a poor time to walk around outdoors.)
When I am on vacation, I am often reminded of this Bullish column, which I read sometime in college:
Who says you can’t spend a week in Mexico City just feeling what it’s like for someone who lives in Mexico City to have a really good week off? I spent six days in Stockholm, and pretty much stayed in the neighborhood of Södermalm. Nothing is blurred in my head: I’ll actually remember where everything is when I go back. (Cool fact: all the public staircases have ramps with tracks for your stroller wheels).
I thought of it especially today, where I went to a very nice movie theatre and saw the new Avengers film, before parking myself in a very calming bookstore cafe next door and eating a sandwich and some cold brew. I felt guilty about it, because I'm very far from home and supposed to be Doing Tourism, but honestly I am tired and I got a tattoo yesterday and so am sore, and it was a beautiful and relaxing few hours in a pleasant physical space, which is the sort of thing that I enjoy very much. They brought me my cold brew in a wine glass for reasons I am still unsure of; it was great.
Hong Kong is an interesting place to travel because it is a very large city + environs (city-state?). It feels in many ways like New York; the friends who kindly hosted me at the beginning of the trip took me to a very buzzy chicken restaurant across from their apartment where we ate many tiny skewers of chicken skin while trying to parse a cocktail list composed of ingredients beloved by a certain flavor of precious bartender (you know, the sort of menu with cocktail names followed by three non-comprehensive flavors? dragon's breath: mint / dragonfruit / tansan). The waiters were hot and vaguely inattentive and the entire experience would have been 100% at home in Park Slope.
But, it feels like I should be doing Hong Kong Things since I am so far from home, even though those are Hong Kong things. If I was a hip 20-something Hong Kong resident, I'd be going to the buzzy chicken place or the mall. The internet/globalization/human migration for folks with money means that there's a shared global aesthetic floating around at a certain income level (light wood, soothing lights, those goofy metal stools), and the sorts of free time, disposable income activities one gets up to in big cities are often very similar no matter where you are. (It's just that here the mall had a Card Captor Sakura-themed dim sum restaurant in it, occupied entirely by me and what appeared to be local teenagers.) I spent a portion of my time today wandering around the little Etude House store on my AirBnb's street because it was fun to look at all of the products lined up in person, even though I already own several of them, purchased online. The chicken place was serving Brooklyn Lager, and a few nights ago I went to a hygge-themed bar down the street.
I wonder if I would feel more urgency about doing traditional/touristy things here if I hadn't spent the last few years in New York and now LA, where I can eat all of the amazing dumplings I want a 15 minute bus ride away from my house. (Like, though I loved eating at Din Tai Fung here, it made me embarrassed I haven't just gone to the location in Pasadena yet, as it is considerably cheaper to get there than here.)
I have very much enjoyed my time here, and not being at work; no matter where you go, the jolt of being in a new place is a useful way to break out of habits that don't serve you and to get a sense of what your life could be like. My flight leaves tomorrow, and I'll likely spend it napping and re-reading Sedaris books in my mother's honor as I cross the international dateline. I'm looking forward to being back home.
Shit to read
This is an old Toast article referenced in the interview linked below, and it is still perfect.
While on vacation I have mostly been reading books. I thought Thick was very good (and worth reading even if you've read the author's work before; the essays have been expanded). I finished Bad Blood, which was fucking bananas. I didn't think I would like The Wangs vs. the World as much as I did, but I adored it and it made me cry while I was in line for high tea at the Peninsula. Alias Grace (an Atwood book) was way more compelling than I'd anticipated, and was legitimately very scary at the end. I recommend them all. Please talk to me about books.
This phone review made me laugh.
I struggle with this very issue.
The Portal is apparently a good device that no one will ever use.
This article on a Sarah Laurence-based cult is WILD and very sad.
Fewer ingredients doesn't mean your food is better for you.
Shit to eat
Fly to Hong Kong.
Find the street stand in between my friends' house and Central station. Get a matcha bun with ube filling and a can of milk tea.
Take a bus to the top of Victoria Peak.
Inside the mall there, order jasmine milk tea with jelly.
At the stand outside, get an egg waffle filled with ice cream. They will put pocky in it because of course they will.
Take the bus back down, and walk to PMQ.
Walk around, buy some earrings, and realize your feet are destroyed.
Wander into the nearest cafe, order an iced americano, and drink it outside.
On your way out, look at the vending machine and discover to your confused delight that Schweppes sells cream soda here. Get some.
Before heading home, wander into a bakery that looks like your favorite bakery at home.
Get a pork bun, something labeled as a lunch pork bun, and an egg tart.
Get home, and eat them while the cat looks at you balefully.
Shit to listen to
I loved loved loved this Danny Ortberg/Nicole Cliffe interview.
Shit to buy
The earrings I bought were from here, and I like them very much. (HKD is about 7:1 USD, for reference.)