The Visa

August 29, 2019 to August 30, 2019

The flight landed in Hong Kong and everything felt eerily quiet right from the start of passing immigration. Normally the queues are massive. This time I just walked right up while they were all waiting on their smartphones to process passports. The train and MTR ride to the city center was empty and the hotels were quoting rates that were cheaper than Thailand. The whole place was a ghost town.

This is Kowloon, slam packed at the best of times. It felt surreal

I didn't waste any time applying for the visa. It was a complex procedure. Still I gave them everything they wanted with the massive pileup of papers I had accumulated. They said "Your case is complicated and we might need to call you" and they sold me a SIM card just in case. But I had a good feeling about this application. This time I thought it smarter to say I was self employed and made a living buying and selling condos. It would be true if it weren't for losers and cheaters like Prateep who rankled things up.

I got chatting to a Chinese American woman in front of me trying to replace a work visa while outside of China. I dared not tell her I was trying to do the same thing but circumventing the process with a tourist visa. All the stuff she told me was a total nightmare and this was what I didn't want to go through. So I wisely kept my mouth shut, wished her well, then went about my day.

It was just surreal walking around and seeing how empty things were.

Normally a bustling restaurant. Tourism was taking a massive hit these days

I tried to make the most of the day. Part of that was doing another F45 high intensity class that was brutal but totally worth it. Then I met a friend for coffee and she tried to give me a local perspective on all the recent protests and the reason for the ghost town feeling.

It was an interesting conversation and I would definitely side with the Hong Kong protesters. It got me wondering what kind of massive changes were happening globally as we could see similar themes of local unrest and unwanted change happening all over the globe.

[Update November 2022: Whatever those changes were, and we still have no idea, they were only going to accelerate with covid and then later the war in Ukraine]

Even so, I really appreciated the feedback I was given. It turns out my friend snuck up on me on purpose at the Starbucks table for whatever reasons. She just came in without greeting and sat down nearby me to see how I would react. She later said I acted very guarded, moved my phone over and protected my belongings. I didn't even know I did this, so apparently this was somewhat of a streetsmarts improvement. Either that or I was totally engrossed in my phone that I didn't even see her walk in.

After that interesting conversation, it was soon time to pick up my visa and well, it was ready. The woman in front of me the previous day was also there and she got her visa too. We both quickly shared success stories on our cases before I had to rush off in a taxi.

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