In Hong Kong

29. My friend picked me up with her friend and we took a bus to the flat where I was staying for 6 nights. I was happy to see my friend and excited to be in another place, though really confused about adjusting to another language. I kept speaking to her in Japanese and apologized that I would probably do that for a couple days until my brain remembered to use Cantonese. The studio/office was really big and had three sort of beds. So I picked a small one but stayed up for hours talking to my friend and looking at email and having a shower before I finally slept. My friend also stayed there, on the floor for some reason, for the first night. It was a good area and strange to be in such a big room. There was a problem with the toilet, but it worked with some manual adjustment. Overall a good accommodation, and I just paid a hostel price to cover utilities there while the tenant was out of town.

30. My friend made a cosy area in her studio for me. It's next door to the now non-operational artist residency where I stayed before so I was happy to be in a building and neighborhood I was familiar with after all this traveling. After a couple nights there, the elevator was scheduled for repair for a few days, which meant if I wanted to leave the building I had to use the stairs. The studio is on the 14th floor which is the 16th story of the building because there is the street level and ground floor in HK... Also there is no shower in the studio, so I was using one at a friend's studio on the 7th floor. I paid a little to cover the utilities in both studios. Around this time, a typhoon started up and everything was closed, so I didn't really have a reason to leave the building anyway. Of course the elevator repair men had a day off and extended the time the elevator was out of service. haha. I enjoyed being a hermit and wasting time online too much. I felt really tired in HK, sensitive to the pollution and crowds more because I had been in the countryside so much on this trip. Maybe because of the changing seasons or pollution, I developed a cough too. I got to experience going to a Chinese medicine doctor and drinking the bitter tea. (under $25 US for the full visit and treatment) American health care has it all wrong. The little "Dr. office"/herb shop had a couple of friendly cats and I know playing with pets is good for your health. One of the cats crawled onto my lap while I was squatting and petting him. I like that neighborhood (Wan Chai).

31. Experimenta loft. My good friend in HK is amazing at finding random creative spaces I can stay in while I visit there. Hong Kong is known for having tiny living quarters and a housing shortage. During the time I was there I heard that hotels were all full so I was very lucky to have a friend to figure out my housing for me. Experimenta is another good size space I got to myself. In a quiet (for HK) neighborhood on the ground floor. There was a small sleeping loft above the office in the back of the gallery. The gallery had no windows other than double glass doors at the entrance. I piled up the yellow cushions in the loft to make it like a tiny cave within a cave. It smelled a little moldy in the space and was really hot and humid. I had little motivation and had a bad cough, so I just wanted to sleep a lot. I didn't really make any art during this time even though it was set up to be a short artist residency. I focused on seeing friends and getting healthy.

P.S. to give you an idea of what the showers I used in Hong Kong are like, here are shots from the studio on the seventh floor's shower and the Experimenta space shower, respectively.

Next: Enough of This