Even though Thanksgiving is not an official Hong Kong holiday, don’t think it passes without notice here. American expats all over the world get together to mark the wonderful occasion, and often invite an international circle of friends to join in the fun, spreading the warmth and joy of one of the best days of the year… And Hong Kong is no exception!
This year, the celebration was doubly special for me, since it also happened to coincide with my twenty-fifth birthday. My birthday always falls around Thanksgiving, and once every five or six years, it actually falls on it. (The last time this happened was in 2005, my freshman year at ‘Nova. The next: 2016, when I hit the big 3-0.)
This year, when it came time to plan my birthday festivities, friends asked what I wanted to do to commemorate the big day. Since I was unable to go home to the US for Thanksgiving, like I was last year, my number one idea to mark my first ‘quarter of a century’ was to get everybody together for a communal feast here. My wonderful HK-friends put the whole day together, and I’ll never forget the celebration! But before the evening repast, there was another, less cheerful occasion for which I will also always remember my twenty-fifth birthday: having to move apartments.
I lived at 272 Jaffe Road for almost two years. The cross street was Tonnochy Road, or Tollochee Doe in Cantonese, and that sort of became the apartment's unofficial nickname. I moved in December 17th, 2009, and it was a true turning point in my life here. For my first six weeks in Hong Kong, I had lived by myself in a ritzy serviced apartment in the Mid-levels. Lovely but isolated, the apartment made it hard for me to meet new friends. As soon as I moved into Tollochee Doe, with two new roommates to kick start the friend-making process, I really began loving my new life halfway around the world.
Since then, as a diverse group of roommates filtered through the doors of the apartment, I’ve stuck it out in Tollochee Doe and loved every minute of it. I've had four French roommates, two Swiss, two Dutch, one German, one Italian and one Brit with whom I have shared the place, and it's where Jamie, Tak, Lisa and Kristen all stayed when they came to visit. So I have many memories there and will always keep a special spot in my heart for the place. However, our landlord sold the apartment and gave us our month’s notice. We had no choice but to move some place new.
To make things easy for us, the landlord offered us a new flat only a few minutes away. It's a four bedroom apartment on Wan Chai Road, and although it’s a wee bit small for four people, I think it will do just fine for the next couple of months. Remco will finish his internship at the end of February, so we’ve all signed contracts to take us up until then. Once he has gone, Rich and I can decide what to do, whether we extend our time in this new place or try to find a different apartment elsewhere.
Anyway, because of a quirk of timing, we had to move out of the old place and into the new one on November 24th—Thanksgiving Day and my birthday. After a few days of sorting through two years' worth of items, I managed to pack up all my belongings. Luckily the landlord arranged for some movers to come by and physically transport our belongings over to the new place, which made the process very easy for me.
The only good thing to come from the otherwise unfortunate timing was that it gave me a perfect excuse to take a personal day from work—so in the end, I got Thanksgiving off in true American style.
Once I got to the new apartment to start unpacking my stuff, I met Ally, the occupant of the fourth bedroom. A teacher from the UK, she has lived in Hong Kong for the past year and had moved in a few days before. We had a nice, long chat, and as she had no plans for the evening, I invited her along to the rooftop feast.
My friend Amy lives in a beautiful apartment in Happy Valley. With a huge private rooftop overlooking the city, the flat has become a sort of meeting spot for our circle of friends, for all manner of celebrations. In fact, it was the scene of a surprise party my friends threw for me on my last birthday and where I celebrated my first Christmas Eve in Hong Kong back in 2009. When the weather is nice, it can’t be beat, and thankfully, the weather was perfect on Thanksgiving night.
We arrived at the apartment just before 8pm, and Amy had set the table with candles, golden pinecones and autumn-colored flower centerpieces. The attention to detail was incredible. It was pitch-perfect, and I was extremely impressed with the effort Amy—a Londoner—had taken to create such traditional American décor.
There wound up being fourteen dinner guests, and we were treated to a meal to remember. Our international Thanksgiving crew consisted of people from the United States, England, Wales, Italy, Holland and Germany. And with the exception of me, my American friend Eleni, and our British friend Alex who went to college in the US, it was everybody’s first Thanksgiving experience.
Amy started it off with a butternut squash soup—thick and tasty, it was full of the flavors of the fall and was just right to begin the festive meal. Of course, no Thanksgiving is complete without turkey, and that’s what came next. Cranberry sauce, two types of stuffing, two types of gravy (American and English), assorted vegetables and creamy mashed potatoes accompanied the meat. It’s hard to pick a favorite—each and every dish was spot-on and delicious. In a testament to the perfection of the Thanksgiving meal, we were all so stuffed by the end that we could hardly move. Obviously there was more to come…
Another essential element of Thanksgiving is dessert, and we had a perfect ending to a perfect meal that night. Amy made an apple crumble, and Eleni, a pie specialist, contributed two masterpieces, a traditional pumpkin pie and a honey pecan pie. If it hadn’t been for the beautiful weather, city skyline, and international crowd, we could have been in the heart of Central Jersey, the meal was so impeccable.
Thanksgiving is a time to be grateful, and with the collection of new and old friends, heaps of delicious food, and my successful arrival at the age of twenty-five, I was reminded again just how much I have to be thankful for. "This and Other Adventures Before the Age of Twenty Five," a phrase gleaned from a modern art exhibit I saw at London's Saatchi Gallery, has been a sort of mantra for me for the bulk of my Asian adventure. Now that I've reached that milestone, it's really hit me just how much of an adventure this "adventure of a lifetime" has actually been. I am so lucky to live in an exciting place like Hong Kong, and I am truly blessed to have such wonderful people to share the experience with. I owe them all my gratitude for the success of my twenty-fifth birthday. Thanks Amy, and everybody else, for helping to make it such a great night!
...This and other adventures before the age of twenty five
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