Have I seen you somewhere before?

I went to the immigration building in Wanchai today to pick up my good-for-another-year visa. Becoming a legal immigrant in Hong Kong, unlike in the United States or in Brazil, is a rather painless process, one I'll need to expand on another time. Because even after I totally fucked up my previous application, missed the renewal deadline and was taken to the dreaded back room in front of my husband's co-worker while we tried to make our way to Macau, all was forgiven after I wrote an essay on unlined paper to "Dear Immigration Officer" and said I'd never ever make that mistake again, so please let me stay. And they did. Fools.

One of the things that I hate about Hong Kong is how relatively small the ex-pat community is. It seems large when you look at the sheer numbers, but it's like living in a small town where everyone knows everyone else and their business because many of us are clustered in one area. As soon as I encounter a fresh ex-pat face, even if it's just passing him on the street, I will see that person everywhere I go.

At the immigration building, about 30 of us were waiting to pick up our visas. I have a habit of scanning and memorizing faces. I'm not sure why. Maybe because I often tend to attract drama involving weaponry, I want to ensure I can describe to the police who almost shot me. One guy caught my attention, not for any particular reason other than most of the people waiting were Southeast Asian and he was white.

He left about 10 minutes before I did, and after picking up my visa, I went to a coffee shop across the street (much like there is a 7-11 on every corner here, there is some coffee chain outpost on one too, and across from the immigration building is the holy trinity of Starbucks, Pacific Coffee Company and Caffe Habitu all in a line). I killed about 45 minutes there before catching the subway back to Central.

One hour and three subway stops from when I first spotted him, whom did I see on the escalator from the platform to the station but the guy from the immigration building. I swear, I think I've stumbled upon some secret Chinese cloning experiment.

Give me a home where the jumbo shrimp roam

About a 10-minute walk from my apartment is the oldest outdoor urban wet market in Hong Kong. It's where I go every other day to buy fish, grapes, broccoli, mystery meat, and whatever else is in season because the price is cheaper than the chain grocery stores and the produce is better quality.

The meat sits outside for hours, even in the oppressive heat of summer, and might cause some to question its edibility, but I figure I've been eating melamine-poisoned Snickers bars for more than a year and I'm sure I ingested a fair share of Mad Cow Disease in the US, so how much damage can it do?

What differentiates a regular market from a wet market isn't what's being sold -- typically fresh produce, meat, herbs and seafood -- but that a wet market is regularly hosed down with water. It can get a bit messy, and many vendors have the good sense to wear rain boots. I learned rather early on that long skirts aren't the smartest fashion choice for shopping amidst assorted animal innards.

In existence since 1841, the Graham Street wet market faces possible extinction due to the Hong Kong government's infatuation with urban renewal. They love to knock down old, interesting shit and replace it with shiny, new shit. Because the increasingly diluted culture could use another mall, more high-rise apartments and, one hopes, at least 10 more 7-11s.

As an outsider, of course, it's easy to romanticize a culture that isn't one's own because it's exotic, but after spending the better part of my life buying my groceries in Acmes and ShopRites, I don't think I'm being one of those starry-eyed ex-pats when I say that I'd rather buy my meat and vegetables from ancient Chinese vendors that likely have owned their stalls for their entire lives. After a while, one starts to build a rapport with them, and there's something reassuring about knowing where one's meat is coming from -- even if PETA would disagree.

Can't-onese

I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I'm not making much effort to learn the language of my current homeland, and this is why: Cantonese is a tonal language that can make even the most dedicated linguist cry, and a simple word like "hai," depending on the intonation, can mean something as innocuous as "yes" or as vulgar as a slang word for "vagina." And I know that I'd answer every question with the wrong intonation.

"Ni sik ng sik guangdong wa?" Pussy!

The only similar example I can think of offhand in Portuguese, the language I've been studying for the past two years, is "pão." Said with a nasal intonation, which can be difficult for an English speaker to master, it means "bread." Said with a flat tone ("pau"), it literally means wood but it's also used as a slang word for "dick." When I first moved to São Paulo, I made myself very popular by committing the cardinal sin of asking for dick at the local bakery (Benjamin Abrahão, how I miss you), and until I conquered the correct pronunciation, I pointed at what I wanted. Você quer pão? Pussy!

Men are from Eternia, women are from Rainbowland

Over a lovely Italian dinner on an outdoor patio, my husband and I discussed a similar event from our childhoods and how we responded. When I was 7 and came across a dead bird in my backyard, a friend and I gingerly picked it up, placed it in a Barbie lunchbox with a tissue covering its carcass and gave it a proper burial. When he was 8 and came across a dead bird, he and his friend blew it up with an M-80. I think that about sums up the differences between little girls and boys. Or I married a sociopath.

Leers of War

Family is best in photo albums and on an MSN contact list. Enough distance that the bad memories start to fade but close enough that you remember why you moved 12 time zones away.

After a one-year separation, my mom and I reunited last night in Hong Kong International Airport, and, well, she taught me if you have nothing nice to say, move on to photos of half-naked Chinese girls promoting the early release of the sequel to a popular video game.

When I'd nearly run out of activities to kill time with before heading over to TST to see the light show, I decided to drag her to Times Square for window shopping and a coffee. Times Square is a mixed shopping/office complex in Causeway Bay, and during weekends and evenings, the public open space on the ground floor attracts performers and promoters.

As we walked up the steps to the open area, I noticed a group of photographers gathering and followed them to see what was so fascinating. Everyone has a camera in Hong Kong and everyone is taking photos of everything, so sometimes you luck out and stumble across a worthwhile photo opportunity and other times, you walk away confused because you don't know why a garbage can attracted so much interest.

This time, we came across an official X-Box 360 promotion to announce the release of Gears of War 2 at Fortress, Hong Kong's version of Best Buy. Too bad I sold my X-Box 360 (and GameCube and Dreamcast) before coming here and am now stuck with the bastard stepchild of consoles, the PS3, and the best dust-collector ever, the Wii.

The girls and the Delta Squad soldier tried to access the mall portion of Times Square, but a very angry manager yelled at them and made them go back downstairs. Then the gaggle of pervy photographers followed them, to continue taking close-ups of tits and asses. And here's my contribution.

Life's no fun without a good scare

Halloween's roots lie in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, and Irish and Scottish immigrants brought this legend of the day when the line blurs between the living and the dead to the United States in the 19th century. Since the 1990s, the holiday has caught on in other countries because of the saturation of American pop culture, although participants often are unfamiliar with the history and that the pre-Christian nature of the celebration sparks controversy in religious strongholds in the US.

But with its own traditions, such as the Yue Lan festival, that mesh well with this belief that spirits can rise from the dead and wreak havoc among the living, Hong Kong is now trying to promote itself as the Halloween destination in Asia.

Last year's Halloween celebration in Lan Kwai Fong -- sort of the Cancun of Hong Kong, attracting foreign visitors and ex-pats who want to get drunk and get laid -- was low-key compared to this year's. While I was able to walk from my apartment and join the parade into LKF without a problem last year, I couldn't get near LKF for last night's partying because the police cordoned off the streets feeding into the neighborhood. Instead, to reach the bars, police forced thousands of revelers to snake through several blocks at a slow pace and then loop around as they closed the district to more partygoers.

It was inconvenient, but Hong Kong police tend to go overboard in crowd control after a stampede in LKF killed 21 people during a New Year's Eve celebration in 1993. But I did manage to take some photos.