Fever Pitch

The weather is absolutely gorgeous in Hong Kong these days. And, since I’m mostly working from home due to the coronavirus, I’ve fallen into the habit of opening all the windows in the flat, letting the balmy April breeze flow through the rooms. (In case you’re wondering, yes, Fredric still likes to sleep behind me as I work.)

Inevitably, as I’m writing an e-mail, updating an Excel file or making a phone call, you hear it come over the loudspeakers… “May I have your attention please. Please don’t gather." And then, a moment later. “No ball games. Thank you for your cooperation.”

You see, my apartment’s proximity to Happy Valley Racecourse means I am very close to what is normally an extremely popular gathering spot, as people take advantage of the large open space for communal walks, football games or exercise classes. Since all those activities are now banned, the government has taken to recording announcements discouraging people from participating in such romps.

For the past four weeks or so, public interaction in Hong Kong has been limited for four people maximum. That means restaurants can still serve you, but party sizes are strictly reduced. What’s more, tables have to be placed at least five feet apart from each other, minimizing the risk of virus transmission, which most restaurants have accomplished by placing signs on alternating tables, indicating which ones are temporarily unavailable due to the restriction.

All in all, though, it’s really not bad here. In fact, I’ve even started feeling a bit guilty for living a fairly normal life, hearing from friends and family back home about the torture of quarantine and self-isolation, which we’ve mercifully managed to avoid from the beginning. True, gyms, beauty salons, mahjong parlors, karaoke rooms, cinemas and bona fide bars—by that I literally mean establishments exclusively purveying alcoholic beverages, without a restaurant license to serve food—have been temporarily shuttered.

But, to honest, there aren't too many of these venues on my radar. Almost all of my favorite watering holes offer at least some food, and, therefore, have managed to stay open. It goes without saying that I'm not a gym member, nor do I frequent beauty salons or mahjong parlors. And my visits to karaoke rooms are so isolated that I have yet to miss them. So it's really only the cinemas being forced to close that has hit home for me. Still, it’s not put too much of a damper on things, mostly because the weather this time of year is so glorious that it's always slightly depressing to spend time indoors anyway. So I haven't been!

Technically, my workplace hasn’t even formally closed. The company has given us the flexibility to work from home, if we prefer, and the real reason I’ve fallen into the habit is to avoid public transport, which seems much riskier to me than sitting in our sparsely-populated office.

We recently moved from the twenty-second to the tenth floor in the same building, and our new digs, although undeniably smaller, are an exceptional improvement in terms of utilization of space. It also feels so much brighter!

The reason for the change in illumination actually has nothing to do with the move itself, but just that the timing of our relocation happened to nearly coincide with the removal of some scaffolds that have enfolded the entire building for upwards of a year! It’s an absolute delight now to be able to look to my left and clearly see both IFC 1 and IFC 2, while a simply rotation of one hundred and eighty degrees gives me a tunnel view straight across Victoria Harbour to the ICC.

This month should have seen the annual return of our beloved Rugby Sevens, but it’s been pushed back until October. And the Hong Kong International Film Festival, meant to have opened on 24 March and closed on 6 April, has also been postponed, until the summer, they say. But, for all intents and purposes, life has basically returned to normal.

Well, normal, that is, in all but one respect. As of today, it has been ninety-eight days since my last horse race. The evening before I jetted across to Cambodia for Chinese New Year, I went to the track with my friends Max and Celine. There were lion dances and lots of revelry, a perfect Wednesday night. But little did I know that by the time I returned to Hong Kong, the Jockey Club would strictly limit entry to horse owners and their guests only, due to the ongoing pandemic.

Yes, this is by far the longest stretch in the past ten years between races for me. Normally I rarely go more than a week, attending the Wednesday meeting in a perpetual manner. When a Shatin Sunday creeps onto my calendar, it’s only a matter of days between visits. Yes, everything does shut down for about six weeks between seasons, normally from mid-July to early September. But, with my never fail attendance at both the season closer and the next season’s opener, even that gap is normally around forty days.

I miss the races immensely, and you can bet—pun intended—that the very first meeting when the grandstand re-opens to punters, I’ll be among that day’s earliest arrivals. Let’s hope it’s relatively soon.

Actually, it may be. For the past four days, Hong Kong has recorded zero new cases of COVID-19. Six days out of the last ten, as a matter of fact. And on those other recent occasions when we have added to our tally, the increase has been in the single-digits. While it’s important—essential, actually—not to let our guard down, it really does feel like we can see that proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. (Of course, I’m reminded of the saying that sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train.)

So, without Thoroughbred racing to fill my spare hours, I’ve been spending a lot of time in the great outdoors, soaking up the glories of Hong Kong’s all-too-brief spring, after which the humidity really emerges in full force, to linger for many months.

Even last night, after 6pm rolled around, I hopped in a taxi with Fredric and cruised up to the Peak. It had just been such a spectacular day that I wanted to do the circular walk around Lugard and Harlech Roads. And I wasn’t wrong: the view was absolutely stunning, as usual.

With the sun setting, and the harbor and hills beyond, plus the sprawling city spread out map-like below, it was a wonderful jaunt. We are so damn lucky in a place like Hong Kong, where nature is literally right here on our doorstep and a ten dollar taxi ride gives you immediate (and easy) access to it.

Afterwards, the pooch and I plopped down at an outdoor table at Rajasthan Riffles, a new-ish Indian restaurant from Black Sheep Group, that serves inventive cuisine in the most charming of settings. I am in love with their keema anda pau, spicy mutton served with toasted milk buns. And although it was a little breezy on their outdoor patio, a nice masala chai helped to combat the wind.

We walked down afterwards. In fact, after emerging in Central, we almost walked all the way home to Happy Valley before I finally caved and hailed a cab as we neared Ruttonjee Hospital in Wan Chai. But it's just such a nice stroll, first down the steep, curvy path that links the Peak to the city below, then through the Mid-Levels, emerging near the Botanic Gardens, next passing Government House and other historic buildings near Lower Albert Road, and finally arriving down on bustling Queen's Road. 

Last night’s pop up was only ten days after my previous visit to the Peak, two Sundays ago. My friend Gabby wanted to do a hike, and I agreed to join. In a stroke of genius, I convinced her to come up for a quick beer before we headed off. And, as I’m sure you can guess, this turned into hours of rooftop music and suds before we finally made it out.

I managed to turn the “hike” into “walking along Bowen Road.” I don’t make it up to Bowen as often as I should, which is really a pity. It’s a long flat paved road very popular with runners, joggers, walkers and their dogs. And the views out over the city are lovely. So we walked its entire length that afternoon.

Since the western extremity of Bowen Road is an easy spot to catch a taxi to the summit of the Peak, we hailed a cab and went up. And my friend Danijela met us at Rajasthan Riffles, for my introductory visit to the restaurant.

It was actually Orthodox Easter that day, and Danijela, being Serbian, was delighted to be able to celebrate the holiday with friends. After our meal, we took the circular walk, and at a most spectacular viewpoint, Danijela reached into her bag and pulled out three red-dyed eggs, a Serbian tradition she now shared with Gab and me.

Of course, I celebrated Easter the week before, on 12 April. And I think it was the first time in memory when I haven’t actually attended church on the most important holy day of the year. Yes, since public gatherings are limited to four, churches are not allowed to hold services in the usual manner and have taken instead to live streaming them.

Even a week earlier, on Palm Sunday, the rules were already in place so public attendance was not allowed. Still, I made it a point to stop by St. John’s the following day to pick up a palm cross. You see, even though there are no communal masses, churches can remain open for private prayer outside of service times, with temperature checks before you enter and a cap on the total number of worshippers allowed inside at once. It was a good opportunity for prayer and reflection as Holy Week began. 

When my Easter vacation to Moulmein, Burma, was effectively cancelled due to the virus, I made up my mind I was turning my free days in Hong Kong into a veritable stay-cation. I figured I’d take some of the money earmarked for that little break and instead put it towards good booze and food, to augment my holiday here. Think rich golden Sauternes and luscious vintage Ports and frequent calls at ritzy restaurants.

My local bottle shop, Ponti, just around the corner, is even running a special on Italian wines for the whole month of April. So when I stopped by on the first of the month, initially to pick up some sweeter varietals, I also snapped up a magnum of Chianti. To celebrate, once home, I pulled out my DVD of an old Fellini flick called Nights of Cabiria, a favorite Italian drama with a brilliant performance from Giulietta Masina, Fellini’s wife, while sipping away.

In fact, these past weeks, I’ve just been spending money on silly whims much more than usual, my philosophy being that desperate times call for dropping dough to remind you that life is still wonderful. Case in point: there’s a pet shop in Happy Valley called the Bark Department that Fredric absolutely loves. It’s pretty clever on their part, really. But they offer dogs free treats whenever they come into the store. Of course, that means that every time we walk by, Fredric does his best to drag me through the doors, which, inevitably, leads to me buying something.

Well, lo, and behold, earlier this month, we were in there, and I saw the cutest plush toy made to look like a Bloody Mary. I just couldn’t resist it, and I’m happy to report that Fredric absolutely adores it. Now we can both start our days in a similar manner.

Since I was fasting on Good Friday and abstaining from meat, I decided to make my lone meal one for the record books, at seafood-forward Fish Bar in the JW Marriot. There are lots of great restaurants in Hong Kong, and I could write a book about all the wonderful eateries where I’ve spent inordinate amounts of time and money over the years. But there’s something so incredibly special about this place, because even if you’ve come from the office and are heading straight back afterwards, Fish Bar always manages to make you feel like you’re on vacation while you’re there.

Maybe it’s partly because it’s situated beside the hotel’s serene swimming pool, or maybe it’s because instead of facing the skyscraper-laden downtown, it's positioned instead to look upon the nearby mountains. But I always feel I’ve escaped the city when I dine here, even though the reality is that I’m right in the heart of it.

During my lunch that afternoon, I finished A Many-Splendoured Thing, the source material for the classic 1955 Twentieth Century Fox movie Love is a Many-Splendored Thing, which was one of the first major Hollywood productions actually filmed in Hong Kong. Technically a work of fiction, but so heavily autobiographical that the author, Han Suyin, lends the main character her own name, the novel should be required reading for anybody who's chosen to base his or her life in this city. 

I’ve been a big fan of the movie for awhile now, and the more I watch it, the more I enjoy it. But the book had always eluded me, in spite of my efforts to track down a copy. Shockingly, I’ve never been able to find it in a single Hong Kong bookstore, though you’d think it would be right there in the local interest section at the front, alongside Gweilo and Tai-Pan. What’s more, even Hong Kong's  vast network of public libraries does not have any copies available for the public to borrow.

So it was with utter joy that I spied an old, worn paperback in a used bookshop in Kampot in early February. And what a joy it was to read.

While the movie Love is a Many-Splendored Thing is first and foremost a love story, the book encompasses so much more than that. It’s one woman’s keenly-observed first-hand account of life in Hong Kong as the communists are taking power across the border. As a doctor at a local hospital, as a vibrant member of her social circle, as a sharp observer of world politics, as a Chinese citizen who has been educated in the West, she take the opportunity in print form to philosophize on so many different topics. 

Of course, the romance between beautiful Eurasian doctor Han Suyin and dashing British war correspondent Mark Elliott forms a major backbone of the work. But it is so richly filled out with such beautifully written prose that my memory of the work encompasses so many different aspects.

Tempted as I was, I made up my mind that I wouldn’t view the movie version again until after I had finished the book. So the very next day, Holy Saturday, following lunch at Five Guys, I at last permitted myself to switch it on. It remains every inch a classic. And savoring a bottle of Dow’s 1983, courtesy of Ponti, certainly augmented the screening.

After online mass on Easter Sunday, my dad sent me a text to say he was watching The Honeymooners. Having a little bit of time to kill before meeting Danijela for Easter brunch, I switched on an episode myself. I loved knowing the old man and I were separated by oceans and continents but united by Ralph and Alice Kramden’s bickering. There was an open bottle of Prosecco in the fridge that was destined to die a flat, lonely death. Why not indulge in a celebratory glass and put it out of its misery?

As you possibly remember, every Lent I give up an assortment of cravings. For starters, I always forego coffee, soda and swearing as a matter of course. In addition to this trio of stalwarts, I usually add one slightly harder sacrifice, which, this year, turned out to be chocolate.

Well, since Cadbury Creme Eggs are the flavor of Easter for me and chocolate is ingested on an almost-daily basis in my household, this was pretty difficult to bear. But I stuck to my guns and made it all the way through. Of course, I had hoarded some goodies over the past six weeks so I could indulge properly after the holiday arrived, storing them out of sight so as not be tempted until it was time to break my Lenten fast. In a fury, I retrieved them from their hiding place and promptly indulged.

A few days earlier, I had strolled past a pet shop with bunny and egg-shaped cookies for dogs, so I obviously picked them up for Fredric. Let’s just say, if I enjoyed my bubbles and chocolate, he certainly was over the moon with his Easter morning treats, as well.

At eleven, I met Danijela outside Times Square and we cabbed it over to Repulse Bay. You see, in the splurge of splurges, I had made a reservation at the Verandah at the Repulse Bay. It’s long been a dream of mine to indulge in an Easter Sunday feast at Hong Kong’s most mesmerizing brunch venue. And I was elated to secure a window table in the storied establishment, set in the original 1920s lobby of a former hotel that has otherwise been demolished and replaced with a swanky seaside high-rise.

Of course, to celebrate, I brought along a properly-chilled bottle of champagne. I had deliberately booked the table for noon but told Danijela to meet me early. No, I wasn’t afraid of Sunday traffic. The idea was to find a spot on the sandy beach and work up an appetite for the decadent affair.

I am happy to report that Easter at the Verandah was everything I envisioned it would be. I had been to the place only once before, back in 2010, I believe. Lamentably, that had turned out to be a dreary afternoon and we were far from the windows, to boot. Now, we had prime real estate, the enormous windows beside our table flung open wide to the sea.

It was perfectly sunny, with blue skies and billowy clouds, the property’s lush vegetation providing a suitable atmospheric setting for the most opulent of repasts. We’d have been utter fools not to have taken advantage of the free flow champagne package, don’t you agree? And you can be sure I’ll never let a decade pass between visits again.

Usually, the appetizer selection of the Verandah’s brunch is organized buffet-style. But, owing to the ongoing virus fears, that day’s version was instead slightly tweaked. The list of items that would normally have been available from the buffet was instead printed for each table, and you could order an unending array of delectable morsels to your heart’s content.  

We selected our main courses from the menu before again pampering ourselves with a gluttonous overordering of the dessert options, which escalated to the next level when our waiter volunteered that the vanilla souffle was so wonderful that we should order two each! Of course, we took his advice. 

Since Danijela had never been to the Repulse Bay before, we opted to take a walk around the breezy complex before returning to Happy Valley. While I can only imagine what the whole place must have been like back in the 1920s and 30s, it’s very fortunate indeed that the Verandah survives, offering a tantalizing historic vestige for those of us who prefer our present infused with a bit of the panache of the past.

We finished what remained of the bubbles on my rooftop before watching Easter Parade. Can the holiday ever be truly complete without that? And we even headed down to the local French brasserie, Saint Germain, to cap off the day. As disappointed as I had been when I first realized I'd not be able to travel over the long weekend, the whole thing wound up being one of my favorite Easters ever!

Early the next day, Fredric and I visited Happy Alley, our favorite neighborhood café. “One large black ice coffee, Roni,” I veritably screamed as I walked through its doors. Yes, although I had enjoyed my double espresso at the Verandah the previous afternoon, a morning java jolt here is probably the thing I miss most during Lent. And it was great to indulge again!

Shortly thereafter, I met up with my friends Hana and Julien to venture to faraway Tai O on Lantau Island. This is many-an-expat’s favorite place to while away a sunny afternoon. Famous for its stilt houses and pink dolphins, the village is even sometimes referred to as “the Venice of Hong Kong.”

Shockingly, I’d only been the place once before, when my mom had come to visit back in the summer of 2010 and we had gone exploring one afternoon after I took her to the Big Buddha. Let’s just say, there is no way I’m letting ten years go by again before my third visit. The three of us had such a blast that day exploring, and I know I'll be back soon. 

Tai O is a glorious place. The dazzling natural setting, the humble homes of the fisherfolk, the precious bits of old China that endure. It’s amazing that in an uber-modern megalopolis like Hong Kong, life in some pockets of the city continues just as it has done for centuries.

Outside one shop, there was a box of used books with a sign that said they cost HKD 8 each. I couldn’t believe my eyes and did a double take. That’s basically a buck. Although most of the titles were of absolutely no interest to me, I spied one collection of short stories by W. Somerset Maugham, which I quickly snapped up. (Another things I picked up before returning home: a bottle of Amontillado I found in small shop in Mui Wo, before we caught the ferry back to Hong Kong Island.)

As I’ve been making my way through Maugham's stories over the past weeks, a few have really stood out, including “Mabel,” “The Verger,” “A Marriage of Convenience,” and “The Kite,” all of which were wonderful. Apart from movie adaptations of his works, like Of Human Bondage, The Razor's Edge and The Letter, I was largely unfamiliar with the author, so I'm happy to say that's no longer the case.

But it was the fortuitous procurement of another book that added the greatest amount of joy to my post-Easter days. Woody Allen, one of my favorite living movie directors, released his autobiography Apropos of Nothing in the States at the end of March. On Maundy Thursday, I had stopped by every bookstore I knew on the north shore of Hong Kong Island looking for a copy: two Bookazine branches—one in ifc mall and the other in Prince's Building—and Cosmos and JP Books over in Wan Chai. In each location, I left disappointed. 

But then, the Friday evening after Easter, I was duly celebrating the end of the work week with my friends Matt and Ana at the Beer Bay when we decided to pop up to Shake Shack for an outdoor fast food dinner atop ifc mall. (It was a fun night out. The coronavirus case count had dropped precipitously over the previous couple of days, so people were back out on the town. Our friends Stan and Aurelie even chanced to walked by as we sipped a few Asahis near the ferry piers.)

Anyway, as we made our way up through the mall, I spied the words Apropos of Nothing—in that instantly-recognizable Windsor typeface that Allen uses for the opening credits of all of his pictures—sitting on the main counter through the Bookazine vitrine! A few days before, this had literally been the first place I stopped on my hunt. I guess Hong Kong’s stock must have been shipped by sea and took some time to arrive.

The shop was closed by that point in the night, but you can bet I returned to Bookazine's Pacific Place location shortly after it opened the next day to buy my copy, which I almost instantly began reading as I waited for Matt and Ana at the ferry piers, where we planned to head to Cheung Chau.

Apropos of Nothing instantly had me guffawing with its witty style. And I wound up finishing the whole thing—all four hundred pages of it—in a mere six days. But it was just so darn entertaining to read, and it almost felt as though Allen himself were seated beside me, narrating his life’s story. I could hear his voice in my head throughout the book's entire hilarious duration.

In case you were wondering, Matt, Ana, Fredric and I had a pretty wonderful Saturday afternoon on Cheung Chau. Needless to say, we enjoyed a hearty seafood lunch at New Baccarat, but the surprise of the day came post lunch, as we snaked our way along the island’s web of streets towards the beach, when Matt bumped into his and Anna's friend Melanie. Immediately switching gears, we, too, grabbed seats and indulged in perhaps a few too many Tsing Taos overlooking the sea, as we all laughed the day away.

Yes, the month is just flying by in memorable fashion, a true Enchanted April. And with the case count so low, there's even a visible decrease in the ubiquitous presence of face masks, though I'd still estimate around eighty-five percent of the population seems to be wearing them. It's a pretty common occurrence for me to think I recognize somebody's half-obscured face, shouting "Joanne! Joanne!" making a complete fool of myself. Nope, not Joanne, apparently. 

Did I mention that Danijela is actually moving to Germany? She accepted an offer in her company’s Hamburg office and was supposed to fly a few days ago. But, due to this quirk of virus timing, Germany is not allowing new foreign workers to cross their borders. So she’s sort of stuck here. She had to vacate her apartment on Sunday, so she's currently holed up in a hotel in Causeway Bay.

Last Thursday, Simon and I caught the bus over the Tai Po, where Danijela used to live, because she sold us her refrigerator. See, the one in our apartment is but a shadow of its former self. Only a small portion of the freezer gets cold enough to actually freeze things, while the main fridge space basically keeps items only a degree or two below room temperature. It’s fine for bottled drinks and other simple stuff, which is mostly what I keep in my fridge if indeed I even have anything beyond a light bulb in there. But Simon is more of a home chef who genuinely likes to make use of our kitchen for actions more complex than rinsing out a wine glass. So we decided to get this new contraption.

Out in Tai Po, the three of us spent some time in Danijela's flat as she prepared to pack it all up. And then we grabbed a tasty (and uber-cheap) local dinner at a nifty little Cantonese diner, which its owner had decked out with hundreds of action figures and other toys. Lemon chicken, sweet and sour pork and green beans with minced pork, plus lemon teas. These are the local equivalents of chicken noodle soup, and it certainly made for a homey evening.

I think I also mentioned in my previous post that Jimmy’s Kitchen, that classic colonial mainstay of Hong Kong’s restaurant scene—in business since 1928—announced it would soon be closing its doors, before amending the announcement to say it was actually just moving to an as-yet-unknown new location whose opening date is still-to-be-determined.

Anyway, they told me the public's response was so great that their phone has been ringing off the hook with patrons trying to secure reservations! So much so, that they delayed their originally-intended closing date from early April to the end of the month. And, after the furor still didn’t die down, they’ve now extended it until the end of May.

Before we knew of this reprieve, my work team decided we wanted one last visit to the place, so we returned on Friday for lunch, when the special of the day is Beef Wellington. And while we were savoring every bite of Jimmy’s classic fare, the friendly waitress told me they actually had an opening for brunch on Sunday, 10 May. I’m sure you can guess, I quickly snagged the booking, so it looks like I’ll have one final occasion to swing by Jimmy’s Kitchen before it relocates, after all.

I laid low on Saturday, watching a couple of old movies and chilling on the couch. And while I was finishing up The Great Ziegfeld, I was struck with one of those once-in-a-blue-moon ideas that, I must humbly brag, was pure genius!

For quite a long while now, I’ve been collecting old hotel key cards from places I’ve had the good fortune to stay over the years. I’ve also amassed a tidy little sum in banknotes from foreign countries, including out of print Cambodian and Burmese varietals that I bought from second-hand dealers. Since pretty much the day I arrived in Hong Kong, I also haven't been able to bring myself to spend the old bills you can still sometimes receive as change, here, including a few printed back in the 1980s.

These treasures have all been tucked away in closets and drawers, literally, for years, while I've tried to think of something clever to do with them. And then, on Saturday, it hit me… We have a coffee table in the living room with a huge clear glass panel that sits freely atop some red fabric. The glass is heavy but moveable. So I took it off, retrieved all the old key cards and banknotes, and placed them across the tabletop. Once I was satisfied with the design, I replaced the glass, and—voilà—a new conversation piece!

I’m just in love with this. Sometimes I get distracted from whatever it is that’s playing on the television, and just find myself looking down at the table. What do you think?

Sunday, Gabby and I ferried across to remote Po Toi, an island off the Stanley coast. The island is rugged and sparse, with a few beaches, a temple, some trails and an old lighthouse cresting a hill.

It was sheer bliss to wander about exploring a place I’d only been to once, back in 2015, shortly after I adopted Fredric, when a friend organized a junk trip that included a lunch stop at the island. Just like I had vowed upon dining at the Verandah and visiting Tai O, I pledge before God and mankind that I will soon be back again on Po Toi, as well.

Perhaps the best reason for a return visit is that the island’s famous seafood restaurant, Ming Kee, is cash only, and Gabby and I only had a collective HKD 300 between us, which didn’t go very far. Still, our fried squid and steamed vegetables with garlic were sensational, so on our next visit, we’ll withdraw sufficient funds before hopping on the ferry in order to fully pamper ourselves.

Nonetheless, it was a flat-out spectacular day, capped with some Stanley time before taxiing back to Happy Valley as the sun set.

We’re on the cusp of a long, four-day weekend, with tomorrow being the celebration of Buddha’s Birthday and Friday being Labour Day. Normally, as you probably know, I’d head to Cheung Chau for the famed Bun Festival, but the Flying Colours Parade and the bun climb have both been cancelled, so it looks like I’ll be hiking with my friends Myles and Chun over on Lantau instead. Let’s see!

Anyway, as I sign off now, please stay safe and healthy, wherever in the world you happen to be during this wild time. And, like these salted eggs we saw air drying over in Tai O on Easter Monday, keep your sunny side up!