Various disjoint sets of thoughts:

On a Shayar at a popular expat joint in HK-
OK, I must first place the disclaimers and the sweeteners. That place serves good food. Its lunch buffet allegedly has more than 50 items. At least 10 of them are tasty. Heck, even their table cloth was tasty - or was I that hungry?

Now. There are two people on the dais there - one singer and one musician. The singer looks like he is waiting for the Indian shop next door to deliver a packet of ENO.The other one looks around waiting for the next ransom target. Meanwhile, people eat delicious food and wait for the intermittent breaks between songs.

There must also be those Indians who have been living in HK for decades and haven't had time to visit apna desh for quite some time. Their 'Hello's have become 'Whaai's and 'Offo's has become 'Haayaa's. You could possibly hear them say - "Hey, in that song, is it Sagar or Saygar? I can't remember. Never mind, he sings so well. And that is a Grammy-potential musician".

Its a Saturday evening and I am free - and alone. Had met up with a bunch of friends from college over lunch. The one who hosted was nice enough to do all the arrangements - from cleaning up his apartment in advance to buying all the food items. Its a pity that it has been raining so much and even the wind is so freezing cold. Every time I feel the slap of cold wind on my face, I am reminded of the plight of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese travellers who are stranded at various places.

It is a deep contrast you can see in Hong Kong if you venture to spend your mind on anything more stimulating than interest rate curves and investment banking pitches. There are the odd BMWs and Porsches. Then there are also the long queues in front of money transfer agencies every Saturday - these are the housemaids who have come from various SE Asian countries and want to send home some money for their families. There are these Dunhills and LVs where you can find bags worth more than 10,000 HK$. And there are shops nearby where you can find similar looking bags for 100-150 HK$.
I thought such ostentatious difference in people's wealth could lead to crimes. This is a theory many people talk about when discussing the rise of crimes in Indian metros - especially crimes spurred by migrant population.
But in HK, that is not the case. Crime levels are low, except the odd stories - a fiest in Starbucks for instance.

It is easy to notice that there are a lot of taxis in HK (except when it is raining). It is such a well-connected place, people don't really need a car so much. Having a car effectively means you have more money than, say 60% of the junta. On an empirical observation of ~60cars, I found out that taxis comprise 75-80% of the total cars in HK.

I have become very lazy and the frequency of posts here is a clear proof. I wouldn't even have written this but for the nice words from a friend from college about whom I have a great opinion. Thanks bud!

Song for the day:


By the way, I have been to the place they show in the song above.