Everywhere

It was a pretty good night, all things considered. Caught a couple of hours of really good sleep on the airport benches after the last post, and woke up this morning with the dawn breaking outside the windows of the terminal, making for a splendid alarm clock. The thing about Hong Kong's airport is that it's basically one very long pier encased in glass curtains three storeys high, and it's built on the shores of Lantau Island, and these two factors make it a surprisingly good place from which to watch the sky turn from yellow to white. And with runways all around the terminal, it also makes for unparallelled plane-watching. It's a cathedral to aviation, where enthusiasts and acolytes can come to worship those great flying machines.

The problem is that as is usually the case with cathedrals, everything is very grand but not very user-friendly. It seems I maligned HKIA a bit in the earlier post: there are free water fountains here, and there are also free sleep lounges with luxurious-looking chaise lounges. But it is clear that there are to few of both (I assume the lounges are comfortable, but I didn't have a chance to find out myself). And this morning, I blew almost HK$200 in one shot over a shower and hotcakes for breakfast. This place really doesn't show mercy for one's wallet. But oh well - it is an airport, after all, I guess.

I'm going to go onto the aeroplane later and conk out. Yesterday, worked on some updates to the website until I was typing words wrongly, and when I tried to walk to find somewhere for a nap, it felt like I was swimming. And finally falling onto a bench to sleep was the sweetest feeling ever. I was getting dangerously uncoordinated; in this effort to reset the biological clock to New York time, I plumbed depths of fathigue that have not been known since night-shifts in the Army.

At any rate, I am eager to get going for the next leg of the journey, the sixteen-hour flight to New York proper. The planes sit on the tarmac gleaming in the sharp morning light, the kind of intensely clear light that you only get on early mornings and on island seasides. Each one sits uncomfortably on its landing gear, clunky wheels that seem totally out of place on a machine of speed and height. Each plane is a flight of fancy, with an unknown and therefore infinitely various destination, encompassing within its frame a universe of possibilities and within its mighty engines the potential to realise them. And I am going to New York. New York. I roll the name around in my head like a sweet, like an incantation or a prayer. Savour it. New York.

*

Some principles of this new era, then, perhaps.

Firstly, approach everything with a sense of awe and humility: awe that such everyday miracles can happen, and humility because such miracles can happen to someone as ill-prepared for them as I am.

Secondly, don't begrudge other people their good luck, talents or abilities, just as one should not blame them for shortcomings that are out of their own control. The only real shortcoming is laziness.

Thirdly, a problem is only a matter of perspective, and perspective can be enhanced by open-mindedness. Unfamiliarity breeds vulnerability, in that one does not have the everyday markers and conventions that signal what is important, and what is not. One is forced to experience everything as acutely as a critical event. But the best way to deal with this is to embrace the opportunities, rather than to be obsessed by the risks, however real they may be.

Fourthly, always be generous. The more people who can benefit from one's effort, the better. Anyway, it's less tiring to give things away than to safeguard them.

And lastly, remember where one comes from. And remember to hope.