Recalling Hong Kong

Whenever I eat chanterelle mushrooms, I'm reminded of wandering around a forest in Sweden, searching for the curled orange umbrellas perched on their delicate stalks. There's a certain combination of paint and methylated spirits that casts me back to the river on which I learned to row up in Lancaster; at six in the morning in the middle of a dark winter, we always knew when we were nearing the end of our stretch by the pungent aromas forcing themselves to the back of our throats as we passed by the factory. Considering most of my diet in Cuba consisted of salted plantano chips, my mind wanders back there whenever these appear in my world; tequila sees me on a beach in Mexico, and a particular piece of music whisks me to a club in Buenos Aires drunkenly whirling the night away with a delectable porteno.

I was wondering the other day what would remind me of Hong Kong when I left, or indeed what memories I'll take with me - how I'll remember the city. I guess whenever I see one of those movies that starts off with the camera zooming around city skyscrapers heading towards people beetling off to work in all directions I'll be reminded of walking through the IFC mall early in the morning: the music that plays in each circumstance is one and the same. People walk through the IFC with a jaunty step as if on their way to a movie-set, and indeed in some ways I guess they are.

There are the shops that I daily pass without having a clue what the products are. Neither have I any intention of finding out as the smells emitting from these establishments are toe-curling in their hideousness; strips of dried meat and fish hang stiffly above plastic buckets of alien fruits, dehydrated out of all recognition.

The slightly surreal evenings when I floated calmly on the surface of a luke-warm sea, counting the stars that dotted the sky above a gently glowing power-station - paying particular attention, of course, to the manner in which the staircase wends it way around the building in a curve particularly interesting to those of us who are mathematically minded... And I'll remember walking home up a dark path, leaping three feet in the air every time a leaf rustles beside me as I anticipate a python the size of a tree trunk whipping out to swallow me whole. And I haven't forgotten the evening I plunged headlong into the water, such niceties as bikinis forgone.

Many of my memories are related to the sea. My first sea-rowing experiences, my first outrigging attempts - being tipped unceremoniously into the water as I leaned out too far... Dragonboating while wearing a tshirt so pink it dyed my body for days after. Hundreds of hours spent sitting on ferries followed by the mad stampede to get off them, a stampede that is imitated on all forms of public transport here but unfortunately not emulated on the pavements: people here have developed the art of walking slowly and taking up an entire pavement, however diminutive they may be.

I guess I'll just remember Hong Kong as being the city I never intended on visiting, let alone living in, and how my Lamma retreat helped me survive the unmitigated, frenetic chaos of Central. I came here looking for stability and security and instead found my freedom curtailed, my character restrained, my mind stultified at times. I leave here at the end of November and I can honestly say that I'll have few regrets about abandoning the city that will have been my home for a year. There is too wide a world out there with too many permutations and variations for me to restrict myself to being in one place for such a duration.

'Any existence deprived of freedom is a kind of death'. Oh, how true. I'll have a plethora of memories to be fondly recalled by the time I leave Hong Kong, a moment that will reaffirm my presence on this idly spinning planet of ours. I'm looking forward to feeling alive once more.