I’m Hong Kong bound again, eight weeks into my China contract, for a mixture of business and pleasure. My China one-year multi-entry visa expires on May 4th, so by stepping outside of China and into HK, I can renew it from there.
The weather is dour, peeing down hard in a distinctly British style. In fact the precipitation has kept me company for most of the visit so far, a marked change from any previous months; a premature and pro-longed rainy season.
I have mixed emotions about coming to HK. I’ll be alone here for the best part of four days. I’m very much looking forward to a change of scenery and to gingerly stepping out and about, but I don’t really know the place, and already feel a little melancholy. It’s a holiday treat for my birthday last week, but as a family man, it’s an experience that should be shared and not imbibed alone. But here’s to a glass half-full and to making the best of it; it’s time for another adventure and a further bit of character building.
The ferry trip goes well, and within two hours, I find myself on HK territory. As the rain is lashing down I take a taxi to my hotel, rather than going on foot. I booked three nights at the BP International on Austin Rd, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, very near to the ferry terminal. The taxi was there in two minutes, and I apologised to the driver for wasting his time; but I would have got soaked.
I checked in at about 6.30pm and came face-to-face with a life sized statue of Lord Baden Powell – hence the BP. I was in a 25 story tall scouts hotel. I never found out the background story to the hotel or the connection to the scouts, but it is a good four star hotel, with a nice standard bedroom, costing £80 per night, excluding breakfast.
I’d done some homework prior to coming, and had got some personal recommendations for sightseeing. So off I went to find a cash-point and then to find a road Knutsford Terrace. I’d got in on my street map, and when I got fed up of peering at it through the rain and darkness, I stopped and asked a policeman. He had no idea where it was, so off I went again, and literally proceeded to stumble up the stairs to it, around the corner. Knutsford is a 400m strip of western-style restaurants and bars.
I had a beer to start off my long weekend, and being only 7.30pm I was the single customer. The bar staff were pleasant Phillipinos. I ended up next door at Pellegrino’s, an Italian and sat outside under the awning, watching the heavens continuing to open. I ordered olives, pizza a beer. Again I wondered if I was doing the right thing coming to HK for four days, and I was wishing I had cut it back a day. It seemed a long time ahead. It was very quiet in the restaurant, apart from a chap sat on the next table, tapping away on his Blackberry. When he finished he turned towards me and started-up a conversation. It turned out to be the most amazing conversation I had ever had and took away all those dark clouds.
I thought the guy was Italian from his style, but he turned out to be a bona-fide OMG, Sex in the City New York character, called Steve, who was a dead ringer for Jerry Springer. He told the most woppingly big stories I have ever heard; much bigger than my mum’s. He entertained me for the next 90 minutes with a fabulous mixture of fact and fiction that had me laughing out loud. He was worldly-wise, funny, charming and self-effacing, and the biggest fibber in history. Basically, he was a buyer, importer from China to the states (toys, etc – and I believed that part), and also a product placement marketing consulting “you know the scene in so and so, where Jack is sipping Evian form the tall glass? I put the Evian in that. You know so and so film (I had never heard of them) where (I never heard of him) is driving the Ferrari down Mulholland, I did the car”. He knew everyone and everybody: Jack, Barbara, Fergie, Andy, Andy’s mum. He said he had lived in London for a while and that he knew Jill Dando as well.
But it was the Andy story which won the Grammy for best porky that night. His opening line was, “you know Andy is deaf in his left ear, right? I met him in the waiting room in an Ear Specialist. We got talking in the waiting room, and exchanged cards. Later that day I bumped into him in Harrods and we got talking again. From that I met Fergie. On one occasion Andy said “you must come and meet mum”. I said what shall I bring her as a present. Andy told me that it wasn’t necessary, but I insisted. You know Andy’s mum has six corgis right? So I phoned my toy maker in China and ordered six soft toys – a beefeater, a red telephone box and so on. When I met Andy’s mum, I gave her the presents. She was so surprised, that she couldn’t speak and said nobody had ever done that before”.
Meeting Steve was a great pick-me-up and put me in a great mood. We had serious conversations as well about life, Obama, loneliness and he could sense my state of mind. We parted with him trying to work out how to get one of “my rugs” into one of his next big films.
I went for another beer at “All Night Long” and watched the policeman who had never heard of Knutsford Terrace, walk by on patrol.
