Thursday, September 15, 2016

Big House 2016

Every year, generally at the end of summer/beginning of autumn, Kevin's boss takes a vacation and leaves town for about a month. He has a beautiful house overlooking the South China Sea at Clear Water Bay. To keep burglars away, water the plants and “not let the maid get tempted”, Kevin looks after the house. His boss might not be the nicest guy in the world, and there is probably more than a little race and/or class prejudice toward the maid, but it is no great hardship to live in a 4 bedroom house on a cliff near the ocean for a month.

Kevin, Lily and I all started staying there when we lived in tiny 1 bedroom box apartments. Now that we live in a decent-size apartment with enough room for everyone, we don't really need to stay at the big house. But we do anyway. It's a really nice house. We don't need the space, but the kitchen has everything and there is a large outdoor deck overlooking the ocean. Best of all, the house has a swimming pool.

Hong Kong has dozens of public swimming pools spread out all over the city. Hongkongers definitely love to swim. They also love to treat their pools like toilets. It is as disgusting as it sounds. The first time I saw a mother hold her young son's penis while he stood on the ledge of the pool and let loose in the water, I was horrified. The first time I saw an adult man do something even worse, I knew I would never go back to a public pool ever again.

The swimming pool at the Clear Water Bay house is entirely private. That means it is clean and will remain clean. I plan on using it every day. I'm sure Lily and Kevin will use it as much as they want. We might invite a few people over to use it as well. I guarantee that none of us will treat it like a toilet.

Today is the beginning of the Moon Festival. Tomorrow is the official holiday. It is also Friday, and we are at the house, so we are having a party. That pool deck is a pretty good place to host a dozen friends. The view is amazing and spilling alcohol outdoors never hurt anyone. There is a typhoon headed our way, but it's not supposed to hit Hong Kong. We will have to wait and see how it affects the lanterns.

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