La fin, ça continue (The End - it continues) - 2008 update

A photo I took at an airport in Japan on my way home in 2004.

I know it was a shame to leave my blog unfinished. I no less than abandoned it shortly before leaving Hong Kong. I will end it now, but continue it with my visits to Hong Kong, to make it complete a full circle and continue to twirl as such.

I am writing this as I return to Hong Kong after over a year and a half of being away. In summary I've started my career as a public servant in the Canadian Federal Government in Canada's capital, Ottawa. I'm also doing my masters and I'm where I wanted to be, and where I've planned to be. I am on my way to Hong Kong on a 2-week holiday, as my friend Apple is getting married and I wouldn't miss it for the world (luckily I had enough notice to make arrangements). She's my closest friend in Hong Kong, and if it hadn't been for her I can't imagine what my experience in HK would have been like. Perhaps lost. Perhaps associating with the other local foreigners. Perhaps nothing to blog about.

I will not take up too much space here about my experience in the public service, but to summarize:

I did leave Hong Kong. July 10 of 2006. Many reasons led up to it, there was a push to leave and a pull back to Hong Kong. As I tell people when the subject arises, my initial intentions were to stay in Hong Kong for a year - then a year became two when I knew I could push my Chinese further and my work was meeting a change. I intended to stay another 2 years, but I cut that short by a year. I broke even - I stayed a year longer than I initially thought I would, but stayed a year less than I later planned.



Near the end of the 2nd year my level of Chinese had plateaued (went as far as it would) and my career wasn't going any further. My contract with teaching orphans, for mutual reasons, wasn't renewed, and my other work, doing website development and Production of a magazine, wasn't seeing further gains. I considered several options to forward my Chinese - considered with going to university to learn Cantonese (advanced-level courses to learn to be a translator), as it was the only way to push it further, but the costs and time commitment were prohibitive (didn't make it possible). I also considered trying to be adopted by a Chinese family, but I knew after a few months I would probably make the cover of the Apple Daily gossip papers for being the only foreigner going to university kicked out on the street by locals for some reason or another.

Bells rang of my aspirations back home to work in the Public Service of Canada. With international experience and a foreign language under my belt, I was ready to go back and start the rest of my life.

In April/May I started to tie up the strings in Hong Kong, as my Canadiana-rooted patience ran thin. I applied to a graduate certificate program and was sufficiently surprised to be accepted. I had a deadline to return to Canada, and time to say goodbye.

I reflect on Hong Kong with happiness and pain. I left a love best numbed by forgetting. I left friends I knew briefly and well, who in turn left a life-long impression on me. I developed my love for children and working with disadvantaged youth and benefiting the community, and advanced my career skills and developed a language. Half a world away I felt the pride of my father in telling him happy birthday, stung with the pain of being so far away. My grandmother passed away and I realized the basic truth that lives of those you think will live for eternity are better appreciated and the relationships nurtured. I learned from the trials of people on the street can be a testament to the disparity between rich and poor can be as great as the poor and the neglected and ignored.

I recall my last months, weeks and days. My rope had run out and I was out of patience. I could not advance without knowing more Cantonese or risk being the kind of person I didn't like - a socialite who spent lots to keep up and ignore the surrounding - seems so typical for the permanent tourists I met (called Expats). My advantages were plentiful - I had a country to escape to and I could use it whenever I was fed up. I was starting arguments, as you could see in my last posts.

But it's interesting how memories fade, gaps fall to the background, and the sum doesn't capture the time spent, the trials and tribulations that led to learning and discovery. I guess I will recall these as I realize how broken my Cantonese speaking and Chinese reading has become. But more to come. I only have 11 days to fully explore, and enjoy the experience again, anew.

The end, it continues.