Broken bottles, broken plates,
Broken switches, broken gates,
Broken dishes, broken parts,
Streets are filled with broken hearts.
Broken words never meant to be spoken,
Everything is broken.

Seem like every time you stop and turn around
Something else just hit the ground

Bob Dylan, of course.

Two weeks ago, fuel pump on the car died. And my CPAP machine started beeping non-stop and coughing up a “E-23″ on its display ($5,000 for repair vs. $15,000 for a new one). Last week the hard disk crash on my computer. Yesterday the refrigerator started spitting up blood but was able to get a repairman to visit today.

Sometimes getting people to the house isn’t so easy. It’s in an out-of-the-way place, and down one of those one-lane-but-two-way roads. I can give directions, and can give all the street names in Cantonese – though often as not I get the tones wrong, usually I can get it across though. It’s confusing because there are two streets that lead into the village (an Upper and a Lower) and like many villages, there’s a common car park out front and then a cluster of paths and houses beyond with no signs or markers aside from the village name. I generally tell people to call me once they reach the car park – easier for me to come out and get them than describe how to go that last 100 or so feet.

The refrigerator repairman couldn’t find the house. I wasn’t home, I was in Central at a doctor’s office. They called my helper and asked her to come out to the main road (a walk of maybe half a kilometer or a kilometer, up and down hills) to look for the driver and guide him to the house but she refused. At least that’s what the repair service lady told me on the phone. And finally she said, “he’s spent an hour looking for your place and can’t find it, he’s got other appointments, we’ll send someone else tomorrow.” But this was a full refrigerator and freezer, god knows how many $$$ worth of food that was going to spoil, I gave her the directions again and she called the driver and somehow he decided to try one more time and found the place.

Anyway, I’m reminded of the first place I lived in Hong Kong. It was in Happy Valley, 20-something floor of a new-ish building with a partial view of the race track. There was a a floor above the car park with a sitting area and a pool roughly the size of a bathtub. The building’s entrance was on Shan Kwong Road. But if they used the Shan Kwong Road address, it would have been Number 4 Shan Kwong Road. And of course you can’t have a 4 in an address, so unlucky. So they used the address from the back of the building, making it Number 3 Village Road.

This simple change due to medieval supersititions wreaked havoc with my life for the 14 months I lived there. Any delivery at all – “What’s your address?” “3 Village Road – but the entrance is on Shan Kwong Road.” Generally they’d stop listening after the first ‘road.’ Food deliveries, appliance deliveries, you name it, no one could ever find the building. They’d go to Village Road. There would be the back of a building where number 3 should be, with no sign posted. And take whatever they were bringing to me back to wherever it came from (mobile phones were not yet ubiquitous in HK). Sit home all day, wait for a TV to be delivered, call at 6 to ask what happened, “Oh, they couldn’t find your building so they came back, we’ll deliver again tomorrow.”

Oh, yes, by the way, things with me are broken as well, though I won’t go into that. Except to say that the doctor said to me, “Oh yeah, if you’re stressed out or you’re not sleeping well, you can get that.” “Guess what? I’m totally stressed out and not sleeping well at all.” “Yeah, so this is what happens.” On the drive home tonight, my gf turned to me and said, “Your face looks haggard.” Gee, thanks honey.

Honestly, I have no idea why I haven’t started drinking yet.

Hongkie Town
Share