Feeling Surprisingly Normal

I'm typing this on my phone while riding a TurboJet boat in the middle of the night from Macau to Hong Kong. That sentence makes my life sound much more exotic than it actually is, and I like that! What did you do last night? Oh, I just hung out under the starlight in the middle of the ocean in Asia on a TurboJet speedboat! Anyway, this has been a very exciting week for me, and not just because of the fancy boats I got to ride on!

I'm happy to report that after over three months of living in Hong Kong things are finally starting to get more normal for me in many different ways. One of the biggest changes is that in about an hour I will finally be in Hong Kong legally! I now have a work visa and should even be getting my Hong Kong ID card soon!

In America we always hear about illegal aliens and the “trouble” surrounding them. I never thought I would be in those shoes. I always pictured the life of an alien as being much more precarious, hiding from the authorities and sneaking to and from work in the dark trying not to get caught. But it turned out, at least in my case, to be surprisingly easy. I just went along with life as if nothing was different. I shopped, went to restaurants, and have even asked police officers for directions.

I’m not saying my life here has been all smiles and sunshine. I have had a crushing amount of stress these last few months. Whether I would ever find a job, if me arriving in the country too early would threaten my chances of getting a work visa, what I would do when my bank account turned red, and just what the hell I was doing here at all haunted me every second of every day. I can honestly say that the first two months in Hong Kong were probably the most miserable and stressful of my life. Being unemployed in the US was hard, but this was a serious test of my mental stability. A test I came close to losing.

But now that my work situation is more stable I am also feeling better mentally. The next step is for my body to adjust to a normal life in Hong Kong. Part of coming here with no job and no direction meant also having no money for food or furniture. For the first 2 or so months I lived in somebody else’s empty house with only a folding mahjong table, a small stool, and a cheap bed on the floor. In the kitchen I had one cup, one bowl, one spoon, a water boiler, and a pair of chopsticks. No refrigerator, no pots, no pans, and no microwave. My diet consisted of cup noodles, tea, crackers, and peanut butter. Every single day was spent job searching from morning to night, and I would only leave the house if I had to meet Leona for dinner or if I ran out of cup noodles and crackers.

During this time I lost about 20 pounds. I think this could be the next Atkins! For those of you trying to lose weight, all you have to do is give me all of your money, cut out all nutrition from your diet, mentally destroy yourself with stress, and move to China. It’s that easy!

There is one more element missing from this diet plan, but I think it may be specific to me. When I travel I almost always end up getting, very much against my will, a tour of the many bathrooms throughout whichever country happen to be visiting. I know this isn’t a nice subject to talk about, but this is my reality. Maybe I'm allergic to rice, maybe it is the stress, I don’t know. If only they marketed shirts that said "I went to (insert country name here) and all I got was diarrhea".

I had to deal with this every time I went to Europe, when I went to Australia, and even when I moved back to the US. It usually lasts only a day then goes away, but in Hong Kong it lasted for 3 months. Yes…MONTHS! This brings me to another problem. One of the most exciting parts about moving to Hong Kong was being able to travel to other nearby countries that I would otherwise never get to see. What will happen if I go traveling somewhere like Mainland China or India, both notorious for their spicy and bowel disrupting cuisine? Food in Hong Kong is generally clean, safe, regulated, and cooked very well. To be honest I've loved almost every meal I've had since moving here, even if they haven’t love me back, but if it treated my body this badly I can only imagine how sick I would feel in some of the other countries around here!

As if this problem wasn't troublesome enough, the countries that are most likely to give me food poisoning are also the most likely to lack amenities I've become accustom too like toilets and toilet paper. Kind of ironic, don't you think? Maybe this isn’t as big of a deal as I am making it out to be, but as a spoiled American I have always believed that it is a persons inalienable birthright to have life, liberty, and a plentiful supply of toilet paper in public bathrooms. I am actually offended when it isn't offered free of charge and in great quantities to me every time I need it. Never in my comfortable life in America or Australia did it occur to me that such a thing might actually be considered a luxury. What a humbling realization.

But I'm not here to ramble and speculate about the quality of international bathrooms. When I finally build up the guts to travel I'm sure I will, probably against your wishes, post about it at great lengths. For now I am just thrilled to finally be feeling more normal again. I can eat almost twice as much as I could a month ago, my diet is healthy, I’m exercising regularly, and my pants are finally starting to fit again! Looking back I guess I should be grateful that I went through this stressful and sick time of my life in a place with laser motion sensors on the toilets. It is nice to be able to relax and look forward to getting my visa stamped instead of wondering what the bathroom situation will be like once we dock!