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.