Hisoka and I had both just arrived in Hong Kong from short flights and long airport delays, so neither of us objected to a soak in a hot tub. I brought a bathing suit to Hong Kong because our new apartment has two swimming pools I wanted to try out. I also brought it to Hisoka's apartment because he said there was a pool downstairs. He never mentioned the hot tub because he wanted to surprise me. And it worked. He surprised the pants off me. Hisoka brought his own tiny trunks, which I never saw on this trip. As private as that hot tub was, he agreed with me that bathing suits would have been gratuitous.
It is worth noting that I see nothing inherently sexual about swimming, or soaking, naked. I have been in thousands of swimming pools, hot tubs, hot springs, lakes, rivers, and general bodies of water without doing anything even adjacent to the neighborhood of sex. Hisoka and I got naked in a Miyajima hot spring on our first real date, and hanky panky was categorically tabu. Not only were we surrounded by older people, but that sort of thing would have gotten us kicked out and banned for life.
It is also worth noting that neither Hisoka nor I had our spices ground for a considerable period of time. The fact of which was vividly illustrated when I got into the water. What is a discreet way to put this? Hisoka shot his load all over the deck faster than a teenager in the back seat on prom night. He was fully erect before he even took off his clothes. Watching me get naked and penetrate the jet bubbles was too much for him. I like to put a positive spin on things, so the good news was that none of his seed spilled into the hot tub. I had no idea how often that thing was cleaned. I only knew that hosing off the wooden deck had to be an easier job.
With sex in the water out of the question, we both sat back and enjoyed a nice soak. Yes, the polite thing for him to do would have been to service me. That would have required me keeping most of myself out of the hot tub, and I wanted to be in it. Besides, we had all day.
We talked about going out to hit the town, but we both had a busy week ahead of us. Sunday was our day of rest. It made more sense to make use of the apartment. Since it was an apartment and not a hotel, we had to go out when we wanted to eat. I like staying in apartments better than hotels, but hotels have room service.
For lunch, we went to Feast, an upscale buffet restaurant on King's Road near Quarry Bay Park. They had a wide variety of local food on tiny plates and local food pretending to be international food, with more soups, salads, and sides than anyone really needs. They even had coleslaw, which is not something you see every day in Hong Kong. I mostly just got desserts, because that is how I roll. Hisoka got several tiny plates of stamina, because he would need it. We both knew that after lunch, I was going to ride him like the Matterhorn. Hong Kong Disneyland has no Matterhorn, but saying I would ride him like the Toy Soldiers Parachute Drop sounds almost insulting.
Hisoka and I are both old fashioned in matters of the heart. I like to wait a painfully long time before I jump in the sack and he tries to get laid as soon as possible. We are more new fashioned in our willingness to find less traditional locations. Hot tubs, for example. Balconies are another. I have always been fond of kitchen coupling. The typical kitchen counter tends to be a nice height. Whoever invented islands was a genius, though quartz countertops can get cold.
Despite being open to several rooms, a few secluded outdoor spots, and pieces of furniture that are not beds, we found ourselves on the bed. Next to the bed was a large, almost floor to ceiling window with unobstructed views of Devil's Peak. I never really noticed the view with Hisoka on top of, under, and behind me. I can say that it was a nice bed, with a bit of give and not too much bounce.. Traditionally, Chinese beds are hard. Pillow tops have only recently made their way to China. You never want anything in your bed to be too soft, while a nice cushion under your butt or knees is good for longevity. What we call queen size on this side of the world is smaller than what I consider queen size. That queen size was wide enough for two, if a little on the short side. I am probably much shorter than anyone in the NBA, yet I have spent countless nights with my feet hanging over the bed.
I may have misspoken about the view. I seem to recall looking at the hills while we were pressed together on the tiny bedroom balcony. Though I suppose, technically, that was not in the bedroom.
Hisoka brought a box of condoms to Hong Kong. That might sound presumptuous, but it is far better to have something you might never use than to not have something you desperately need. He brought them from Japan instead of buying them in Hong Kong because he says Chinese condoms are too small. This is where things get interesting, and probably more than a little offensive to a couple billion people.
According to Hisoka, condoms in China are smaller than condoms in Japan. I cannot verify such a thing, but my first boyfriend in Hong Kong, who was not even a little Chinese, also claimed they were too small. In his case, he was making a mountain out of a molehill. Despite not wielding a katana himself, he assumed Chinese men were all holding a tanto. Hisoka, both on the other hand and using the other hand, has a more realistic self-image. He has seen enough porn to remain humble, and spent enough time in hot springs and locker rooms to boast. When he says Chinese condoms are too small, I have to consider it theoretically possible. Yet I cannot ignore that Durex and Trojan are in more than a few stores, and I know they come in more than one size. Several Japanese brands are widely available. It seems unlikely that those Japanese companies are making extra small sizes for the Chinese market. Unless it was for purely mocking purposes.
On what has to be the most important hand, a typical condom can stretch more than enough for almost every man. Unless you are exceptionally tiny or exceptionally huge. I would imagine more men have difficulties with condoms that are too loose. The funny thing is, I have never heard of a single man in the history of the universe say that condoms are too big.
Which brings us to a question that every man I have ever known has asked me. Does size matter? To men, yes. It absolutely does. To women? I don't know. I speak for only one woman. But I know that even if Hisoka were hung like an elephant, spraying the pool deck would have still been useless to me. It is not simply the motion of the ocean that counts, but how long it takes that boat to dock. A cabin cruiser that makes it to shore is a million times better than a giant oil tanker that spills crude 3,000 kilometers from its destination. The good news is that after Hisoka's blue balls turned beige, he had far more control. The other good news is that he had a box of condoms. Just one would not have been enough for the day. Though I still say what he could get in Hong Kong was sufficient.
Before dinner, we spent more time in and around the rooftop hot tub. November is not the best time to lie out and get a tan, and Hong Kong is not the best tanning city. Not that it matters. My skin goes straight from alabaster to lobster. But that particular deck had ample sitting and/or lying room, and the sun, such as it was, still felt good on my skin. Especially on a rooftop with a soft breeze and no one staring at me. Or at least only one person staring at me.
For dinner, we went to Frites, a Belgian restaurant just off King's Road near Quarry Bay Park. Or at least a Chinese version of a Belgian restaurant. Hisoka picked it because I used to work in Belgium. Except, I have never worked in Belgium. I was a little disappointed that he thought my time in Amsterdam was actually Belgium. Then I realized that we rarely talk about our jobs. I told him I was going to Amsterdam when I did, but that was three years ago, and I might not have mentioned it since. I would be surprised if I have never mentioned Amsterdam. It is a wondrous city. I would be equally surprised if we had any meaningful conversation about my work in Amsterdam. He tells me about places he goes for work, while I only have a general idea of what he does for a living.
Having never worked in Belgium, I cannot say anything about how authentic the Frites menu is, but they had falafel quesadillas, which I support wholeheartedly. You can put falafel in anything, and you can put anything in a quesadilla, so why not falafel quesadilla. Being a Belgian restaurant, maybe, they also had a large beer menu. So we got a bottle of wine. We also got some frites with mayonnaise because when you go to a place called Frites, you have to try the frites. If I went to Mejores Tacos del Mundo, there is a pretty good chance I might get a taco.
Hisoka has always known that I can taste absolutely nothing. He still likes to show me restaurants that he thinks I would have liked back when I could sense flavor. I am more than used to going wherever whoever I'm going out to eat with wants to go, so I let Hisoka find all of our meals. Revealingly, he never suggested anything American, Chinese or Japanese. During business meals, he mostly eats Japanese. On his free time, he likes to try new things. His assumption that I would like to avoid American food is both sound and unnecessary since I rarely come in contact with American food.
Back when I had a boyfriend and an active sex life, I often looked at past travels in terms of food. One of my favorite things about going somewhere new was eating something new. I never reminisce about the places we knocked boots. Now that food is only something I eat to survive, I might start looking back at travel in terms of whether or not I got some action. In a few months, I will forget all about the restaurants on this trip. Without the coleslaw, our lunch would already be forgotten. What I will remember most are the naked bodies twisting around each other. And that rooftop hot tub. If you can put a hot tub on your roof, I highly recommend it. Unless you live in a gabled house.
The whole point of keeping the Ma On Shan apartment rather than renting it out was to have a place to stay whenever we are in town. I spent the first night somewhere else anyway. Lily spent the night in the new apartment, along with our tenant/Kevin's friend. I can pretty much guarantee that they had a patently different night than Hisoka and I. But there is no need to feel bad for Lily. She lives with her boyfriend. They can do all the deviant things Hisoka and I did any time. But we have no hot tub at home.
Friday, December 10, 2021
Wednesday, December 8, 2021
My Birthday Present part 1
The day before my birthday, Lily and I went to Hong Kong. We were always going to spend a day or two together. At the same time, we are both fully capable of entertaining ourselves without the other. I knew I never had to worry about her when I made other plans for Sunday.
Hisoka and I met in May 2018. Our second date was six months after our first. You could say we have been taking things slowly. We had not seen each other in person since 2019, though we keep in contact via the technology of the day. In early 2020, his country was hit hard by the popular virus that was making the rounds. That put an end to his business trips to Hong Kong, or anywhere else. When the Japanese government blocked visitors from China, we knew we would not be seeing other again anytime soon. I moved to Kaohsiung in the middle of 2020. Taiwan was practically unaffected, and to keep it that way, they restricted visitors and quarantined the few people they let in.
Long distance relationships blow. I had a boyfriend who moved to Fuzhou while we lived in Hong Kong. The two cities are in the same country, less than 700 kilometers apart, about the same distance as New York to Raleigh. But you have to fly, go through immigration, and deal with Chinese airport bullshit, which is much easier than American airport bullshit, though still unnecessarily bureaucratic. I would never fly from New York to Raleigh. I can drive it in 8 hours, or two 4 hour drives if you spend a night or two in Washington. Driving from Hong Kong to Fuzhou is not much of an option. You can take a few buses, which would take all day.
Fortunately, Hisoka and I are not in a long distance relationship. We live over 2,000 km apart, and are not anywhere close to monogamous. He is free to do whatever he wants, though he says work keeps him too busy and the virus makes dating harder than ever. I am free to do whatever I want, though I say work keeps me busy and I have minimal interest in Chinese men.
Since I'm white, I am required by the horrendous history of my people to point out that it is not a racial thing. I take far greater issue with the socioeconomic role of women in Chinese culture. I find Hisoka attractive. He is Japanese, which is not at all Chinese, though my people can rarely tell the difference. We tend to think of all East Asians as one giant homogeneous other. More often than not, when people from my country talk about people from East Asia, they simply call everyone Asian, adding India, Israel, and all the -stans into the giant mix. We get upset if people don't know the difference between New York City and Upstate, because they are so different, while blindly lumping all 5 billion Asians together.
Eventually, China made it easier to move around and Japan got their problems under control. By the time Hisoka started going back to Hong Kong on intermittent business trips, I was mostly in Kaohsiung, a much smaller city not frequented nearly as often by foreigners in suits.
Then came our trip to Disneyland. It was timed for my birthday, and not for Hisoka. His presence was a coincidence, and not especially fortuitous. All of his big meetings were during the week Lily and I returned to Taiwan. If Hisoka and I were going to see each other in Hong Kong, it would have to be the weekend before. I had to work that Saturday. The earliest I could go was Sunday, and we were both busy all day Monday. Lily and I were always going to fly to Hong Kong on Sunday. Monday was a big day, so we wanted to get in the day before. Hisoka was originally going to arrive on Sunday, but changed it to Saturday, giving him time to prepare and rest up. While he still had some work to do on Saturday, Sunday was his day off, so he could devote it entirely to me. As it should be.
When Lily and I landed on Sunday, we went straight to our brand new Ma On Shan apartment. Now that I have spent some time in the apartment, I can see how nice it is. Since the estate opened this year, everything is new and clean. Hopefully, they will always maintain the grounds and greenery up to the current standards, but it will never look as new as it does right now. Eventually, corners will get dirty and tiles will crack. Chinese culture does not frown on treating your surroundings like a giant trash can. That the estate is closer to the rich end of the spectrum than the poor end is irrelevant since rich people are no less likely to be slobs here. They simply have more people cleaning up after them.
We also saw how inconvenient the apartment's location is to most of the city. To get to our previous apartments from the airport, we simply took the Airport Express to Kowloon and took a taxi to the apartment. When we lived in Yau Ma Tei, we could walk from the station. For the new apartment, we took the Airport Express to Kowloon, took the MTR to Wu Kai Sha, and walked to the apartment. It was only one MTR line, but it took an hour on top of the 30 minute train from the airport. The Airport Express to Kowloon and a taxi to Wu Kai Sha would have taken an hour total. We quickly realized that the best way to get to and from the airport is directly by taxi. It takes about 45 minutes, depending on traffic, and taxis are dirt cheap in Hong Kong, compared to other international metropolises. I always liked the Airport Express, but it looks like I will not need it anymore.
Hisoka also had new accommodations in the city. His company used to put him up at the Harbour Grand Kowloon, which has a wonderful swimming pool, great views of Kowloon Bay if your room is on that side, and happens to be in one of my favorite neighborhoods. Between then and now, he got a promotion. Instead of business hotels, he stays in a serviced apartment.
Meeting at my new apartment would have been inconvenient for everyone. So we met at his new apartment in Aldrich Bay, near all the government buildings. The neighborhood faces Kowloon Bay from the opposite direction and is otherwise unfamiliar to me. The apartment is an average sized one bedroom that looks new. I doubt it is as new as my new apartment, but it can't be more than five years old. As with most newer apartments in Hong Kong, the bedroom is tiny. Most of the space is reserved for the living room. A unique feature in the bedroom is a little sitting alcove out of sight from the bed. A more common feature is the tiny balcony just big enough to stand and watch the boats go by, or for two people to stand on if they press together close enough to feel each other's warm, athletic bodies.
The kitchen is large by old Hong Kong standards, which is the new standard. Everything in it is new and shiny, just like every other new kitchen. The hardest thing to find the first time I hunted apartments was a decent kitchen. The Hong Kong market has finally realized the importance of a good kitchen. Since only business travelers are going to stay in this apartment, at least as long as Hisoka's company has the lease, the kitchen might be the least important room. Most of the transient tenants will be eating out for the duration of their visit.
The bathroom has a full bathtub, which is rare in Hong Hong, and a separate but connected shower in the same enclosed space. You can rinse off before soaking in the tub, or vice versa, without getting water all over the place. It also has a waterproof TV, because we live in a time when people need constant electronic noise and distraction.
The best feature of this apartment, by any measure, is the hot tub on the roof. They call it a penthouse apartment, even though there are several in the building with roofs at different levels. Each penthouse has a stairway that leads to its portion of the roof. Our Ma On Shan apartment has the same thing. I think it might be the latest trend. But our stairway leads to an empty roof deck, at least until we put some outdoor furniture up there. The stairway in Hisoka's company apartment leads to a roof deck with a large hot tub and a couple of soft chairs to sit and watch the boats go by.
The roof deck is completely private, if you ignore the thousands of other apartments across the bay. From this building, it is impossible to see onto any of the other decks without climbing up those stairs, which are only accessible from inside the apartment. That makes the hot tub as private as you can get outdoors. It also means any maintenance people have to go through the living room to get onto the roof. Since no one is in the apartment most of the time, that is unlikely to cause any problems. If a family lived there rather than the occasional businessman, that could be disruptive.
It was probably not designed to be a serviced apartment leased out to a private company, but it does the job pretty well. Our Ma On Shan apartment could easily house business travelers, if they did not mind sleeping an hour away from all their big meetings. More importantly, Hisoka's apartment has that hot tub. Few things are better after a long day of corporate bullshit, or a long day of airport bullshit, than soaking in a hot tub up on the roof. Except maybe having someone to soak with you.
Hisoka and I met in May 2018. Our second date was six months after our first. You could say we have been taking things slowly. We had not seen each other in person since 2019, though we keep in contact via the technology of the day. In early 2020, his country was hit hard by the popular virus that was making the rounds. That put an end to his business trips to Hong Kong, or anywhere else. When the Japanese government blocked visitors from China, we knew we would not be seeing other again anytime soon. I moved to Kaohsiung in the middle of 2020. Taiwan was practically unaffected, and to keep it that way, they restricted visitors and quarantined the few people they let in.
Long distance relationships blow. I had a boyfriend who moved to Fuzhou while we lived in Hong Kong. The two cities are in the same country, less than 700 kilometers apart, about the same distance as New York to Raleigh. But you have to fly, go through immigration, and deal with Chinese airport bullshit, which is much easier than American airport bullshit, though still unnecessarily bureaucratic. I would never fly from New York to Raleigh. I can drive it in 8 hours, or two 4 hour drives if you spend a night or two in Washington. Driving from Hong Kong to Fuzhou is not much of an option. You can take a few buses, which would take all day.
Fortunately, Hisoka and I are not in a long distance relationship. We live over 2,000 km apart, and are not anywhere close to monogamous. He is free to do whatever he wants, though he says work keeps him too busy and the virus makes dating harder than ever. I am free to do whatever I want, though I say work keeps me busy and I have minimal interest in Chinese men.
Since I'm white, I am required by the horrendous history of my people to point out that it is not a racial thing. I take far greater issue with the socioeconomic role of women in Chinese culture. I find Hisoka attractive. He is Japanese, which is not at all Chinese, though my people can rarely tell the difference. We tend to think of all East Asians as one giant homogeneous other. More often than not, when people from my country talk about people from East Asia, they simply call everyone Asian, adding India, Israel, and all the -stans into the giant mix. We get upset if people don't know the difference between New York City and Upstate, because they are so different, while blindly lumping all 5 billion Asians together.
Eventually, China made it easier to move around and Japan got their problems under control. By the time Hisoka started going back to Hong Kong on intermittent business trips, I was mostly in Kaohsiung, a much smaller city not frequented nearly as often by foreigners in suits.
Then came our trip to Disneyland. It was timed for my birthday, and not for Hisoka. His presence was a coincidence, and not especially fortuitous. All of his big meetings were during the week Lily and I returned to Taiwan. If Hisoka and I were going to see each other in Hong Kong, it would have to be the weekend before. I had to work that Saturday. The earliest I could go was Sunday, and we were both busy all day Monday. Lily and I were always going to fly to Hong Kong on Sunday. Monday was a big day, so we wanted to get in the day before. Hisoka was originally going to arrive on Sunday, but changed it to Saturday, giving him time to prepare and rest up. While he still had some work to do on Saturday, Sunday was his day off, so he could devote it entirely to me. As it should be.
When Lily and I landed on Sunday, we went straight to our brand new Ma On Shan apartment. Now that I have spent some time in the apartment, I can see how nice it is. Since the estate opened this year, everything is new and clean. Hopefully, they will always maintain the grounds and greenery up to the current standards, but it will never look as new as it does right now. Eventually, corners will get dirty and tiles will crack. Chinese culture does not frown on treating your surroundings like a giant trash can. That the estate is closer to the rich end of the spectrum than the poor end is irrelevant since rich people are no less likely to be slobs here. They simply have more people cleaning up after them.
We also saw how inconvenient the apartment's location is to most of the city. To get to our previous apartments from the airport, we simply took the Airport Express to Kowloon and took a taxi to the apartment. When we lived in Yau Ma Tei, we could walk from the station. For the new apartment, we took the Airport Express to Kowloon, took the MTR to Wu Kai Sha, and walked to the apartment. It was only one MTR line, but it took an hour on top of the 30 minute train from the airport. The Airport Express to Kowloon and a taxi to Wu Kai Sha would have taken an hour total. We quickly realized that the best way to get to and from the airport is directly by taxi. It takes about 45 minutes, depending on traffic, and taxis are dirt cheap in Hong Kong, compared to other international metropolises. I always liked the Airport Express, but it looks like I will not need it anymore.
Hisoka also had new accommodations in the city. His company used to put him up at the Harbour Grand Kowloon, which has a wonderful swimming pool, great views of Kowloon Bay if your room is on that side, and happens to be in one of my favorite neighborhoods. Between then and now, he got a promotion. Instead of business hotels, he stays in a serviced apartment.
Meeting at my new apartment would have been inconvenient for everyone. So we met at his new apartment in Aldrich Bay, near all the government buildings. The neighborhood faces Kowloon Bay from the opposite direction and is otherwise unfamiliar to me. The apartment is an average sized one bedroom that looks new. I doubt it is as new as my new apartment, but it can't be more than five years old. As with most newer apartments in Hong Kong, the bedroom is tiny. Most of the space is reserved for the living room. A unique feature in the bedroom is a little sitting alcove out of sight from the bed. A more common feature is the tiny balcony just big enough to stand and watch the boats go by, or for two people to stand on if they press together close enough to feel each other's warm, athletic bodies.
The kitchen is large by old Hong Kong standards, which is the new standard. Everything in it is new and shiny, just like every other new kitchen. The hardest thing to find the first time I hunted apartments was a decent kitchen. The Hong Kong market has finally realized the importance of a good kitchen. Since only business travelers are going to stay in this apartment, at least as long as Hisoka's company has the lease, the kitchen might be the least important room. Most of the transient tenants will be eating out for the duration of their visit.
The bathroom has a full bathtub, which is rare in Hong Hong, and a separate but connected shower in the same enclosed space. You can rinse off before soaking in the tub, or vice versa, without getting water all over the place. It also has a waterproof TV, because we live in a time when people need constant electronic noise and distraction.
The best feature of this apartment, by any measure, is the hot tub on the roof. They call it a penthouse apartment, even though there are several in the building with roofs at different levels. Each penthouse has a stairway that leads to its portion of the roof. Our Ma On Shan apartment has the same thing. I think it might be the latest trend. But our stairway leads to an empty roof deck, at least until we put some outdoor furniture up there. The stairway in Hisoka's company apartment leads to a roof deck with a large hot tub and a couple of soft chairs to sit and watch the boats go by.
The roof deck is completely private, if you ignore the thousands of other apartments across the bay. From this building, it is impossible to see onto any of the other decks without climbing up those stairs, which are only accessible from inside the apartment. That makes the hot tub as private as you can get outdoors. It also means any maintenance people have to go through the living room to get onto the roof. Since no one is in the apartment most of the time, that is unlikely to cause any problems. If a family lived there rather than the occasional businessman, that could be disruptive.
It was probably not designed to be a serviced apartment leased out to a private company, but it does the job pretty well. Our Ma On Shan apartment could easily house business travelers, if they did not mind sleeping an hour away from all their big meetings. More importantly, Hisoka's apartment has that hot tub. Few things are better after a long day of corporate bullshit, or a long day of airport bullshit, than soaking in a hot tub up on the roof. Except maybe having someone to soak with you.
Thursday, December 2, 2021
International Thanksgiving Birthday
We were back in Kaohsiung before Thanksgiving Thursday. This was our second Thanksgiving in Taiwan, and as usual, we did nothing Thanksgivingish. On Friday, Lily and I saw Chen Hsin Yi's Ten Lines of Poetry to NK at Weiwuying. A multimedia performance, Ten Lines of Poetry to NK is based on the poetry of Chiang Tzu Te and combines the Neo-Classical Chamber Ensemble playing a score by Fang Szu Yu and Yang Chien Ru, choreography by Zhang Ya Ting, and a film by Zhao Chien Ming. There were shows on both Thursday and Friday, so we could have seen them on Thanksgiving, but I got tickets for Friday.
Friday night's dancers were, in order of who has the better agents, Zhang Hsin Yu, Huang Ya Mei, Chiang Chieh Hsi, Hsueh Yu Hsi, Shih Min Szu, Kao Hsin Yu, Su Wan Chu, Tseng Ting Kai, and Wong Tsan Kai.
The Neo-Classical Chamber Ensemble was conducted by Chen Hsin Yi, with Huang Hsin Pi on piano, Tsai Keng Ming and Huang Huan Wei on violin, Wong Yin Jin on viola, Hsiung Jui Hsien on cello, and Chen Yang on percussion.
Ten Lines of Poetry to NK
Act 1: Beauty of the Purest Sense
Act 2: An Autumn Without Lust
Act 3: The Flags of Pretension
Act 4: The Mandates of Mazu
Act 5: The Boiling City
Act 6: Beauty of the Purest Sense II
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