It won't stop raining. It's been going on two weeks since I have been homeless on the streets of Hong Kong, thirteen days to be exact. There must be another typhoon or monsoon or something crazy. If I could understand the weather report or read Cantonese, I would probably know this. It is crazy to think I have been living here for almost one year and have not picked up much of the language at all. I think it has been raining non-stop for fifteen hours straight. Yesterday was about the same. And the wind is bad too. I have broken three umbrellas in the past two days. I have very little money left so I cannot afford to keep buying them.
Tonight I am sleeping in a different location. I am holed up in the Tin Shui Shopping Center. It is kind of an open air mall with no windows that centers around a courtyard and a fountain. The main anchor is a Park N Shop grocery store and it features many small gift, electronics, and VCD shops. The main part of it is two levels with a rather large Chinese seafood restaurant on the top floor. It has your required Mc Donald's and a convenience store in the form of a Circle K. Surprisingly enough there is no 7-11 here. Circle K takes the place of it. There is a big open stage area in back which is mainly used for whatever events the tenants of the numerous residential towers host. But there is no cover there so it doesn't do me any good. The nice thing for me is the security guards here are not so strict.
I made an attempt to stay inside the Kingswood Ginza Shopping Center last night. That place is more like what you would picture a traditional mall being like. Nice, clean, air conditioned. It would have been a halfway decent place to crash in away from the rain and wind but security ran me out of there. So now I am taking refuge in this dirt mall. I am on the second floor with big openings across from me. Only sometimes the rain blows my way. I would try to sleep on the long flat red benches. All of the ones away from openings were taken by other people. There are a few open but they are being pummeled by rain. I am already soaked from running over here, angling my last umbrella so it won't break on me. So I sit against the wall on the filthy floor. If you have been here or live near here, you know how dirty the walls and floors in areas of here are. As I sit crouched against the hard concrete wall, trying to fall asleep upright, I think about my life. I think about the state of things in my life. I contemplate on how things got this bad. Not too long ago my life was incredibly fun and normal. Now I am sleeping in a park, not being able to shower for sometimes days at a time, stuck on the streets of a country where I do not speak the language, and almost going hungry. How did things get this bad?
Just only weeks ago my day to day life was what you would call fun and exciting. I was taking a big step and doing something on my own for once in my working life. I had been working on starting up a clothing line. I was going through the process with my friend and business partner Toya. I also made plans to open a café. I had some really great ideas and designs for it. In the meantime, I was teaching English to little kids. It was the most common and easiest job for a native speaker to get in HK or anywhere in Asia for that matter. Now it is all gone. Every single penny I had invested is gone. My dreams and hopes are all gone. My plans crushed. Now I have a new day to day life to adjust to. I am completely broke and homeless. I am sleeping in parks. My life as I knew it has been turned upside down. I can think of only one good thing in my life now. Shirley.
1
Shirley is my new girlfriend. Hard to believe that a homeless bum would have a girlfriend but I do. I thank God I met her when I did because there is no way I could have had her fall in love with me now in my current state. I am a royal mess. I am scraping the bottom. I do not have much further to fall. This is the lowest point of my life. This is the point of no return. Many people would just give up. She has honestly saved my life. When this first happened I wanted to end it all and kill myself. I am completely defeated. I have lost all hope. She came and saved me. And for that I am grateful. She has given me the courage to go on. I intend to fight back. I intend to win.
Here I am out in Hong Kong, one of the most exciting and fast paced places on earth. Life is truly twenty four-seven here. This was my wonderful new life. My best friend, roommate, and business partner had to go along and ruin all of it. He crushed my dreams. He took almost everything away from me. Most of my friends I had back in the USA did not feel I should come out here. The most vocal was my brother. As it would turn out, they were right. I still have my life. I still have my love. I feel like a giant burden on her. She constantly proves that she loves me. She goes out of her way to help me. I tried to break it off with her, when this first happened, but she would not accept it. She would not leave me. She loved and cared for me too much to let it end. Good thing she was so stubborn.
It is because of her that I am still alive. When the events that led to this first occurred, I lost all hope. My train of thought then was my life is ruined. I have no way to come back from this. The police were no help at all and Toya got away clean. He had me fired from my teaching job. It felt like the world had ended, or at least mine. Near one of the parks I mainly sleep at is a sewage treatment area branched off from the main river that surrounds Tin Shui Wai. Where they meet is a rather large area with choppy and swirling water. There are large signs posted all around in Chinese and English warning people of the dangers of swimming or fishing in there. It has a potential drowning hazard. Sink or swim. I wanted to go to the bridge nearest to the area and throw myself off. Right into the danger zone. If I survived, then I go on with my life. If I did not, then that was the end. Sink or swim. I would let fate decide.
Thoughts of what I had planned to do hurt Shirley very bad and made her worry about me. Especially with her leaving to go back to London for a week to sign papers at the school she decided on attending. When I seen how I had made her feel, I could not go through with it. In the short time we were together, I had fallen deeply in love with her too. She was always there for me. She made many sacrifices to help me daily. She blew off her friends to come see me or do things for me. She would constantly call to check up on me. She did not attend events she wanted to go to. She spent large sums of money to buy me clothing, food, and even paid for minutes on my mobile phone. She would rent a hotel room out for me so I could shower and have a soft place to lay down if only for a short time. She used money she received from a Chinese holiday in a red envelope to help me instead of doing anything for herself. No wonder why I cared for this girl so much. She showed me people still care no matter what you have had happened to you.
2
As I sit and watch sheets of rain continue to blow sideways followed by deafening thunder and enough lightning to make it seem like daytime outside, I wonder when it will end. Maybe more life than the storm but both are a concern for me right now. I am so tired but I cannot sleep like this. Last night I hardly slept again too. After being chased out of the Kingswood Ginza shopping center, I tried to take refuge in the Tin Yu shopping and residential complex. It is not too far away from the Ginza and set up very similar to what the Tin Shui center is like but it does have a 7-11. It does have a park set up in the middle of all the towers. The nice thing about the park is that the benches are covered. However on this night, most of the homeless in the area had gathered there.
The benches there are made of a long red one piece metal frame. There are four of them placed back to back in a square formation. I spent the remainder of the night and a better part of the day sitting there squeezed in between three other people. One guy did leave around eight AM, so then it was down to me and two others. All of them were older and of course of Chinese decent. I was the youngest one there and the only foreigner around. The cover above up helped shelter us from most of the rain when it came down straight. It did not help us when the rain would blow sideways or wind would blow random bits of rubbish at us from a trash can it would knock over. It was more uncomfortable than I have the words to describe.
About the only really nice thing about today is I am not hungry. Inside my backpack which is drenched from all the rain, I have snacks and a can of beer wrapped inside of two plastic shopping bags. In the bad shape I am in, I still have ways to get alcohol. It is very ironic. I had met a very nice man from the area named Martin To Shing. I have seen him many times around the Tin Shui Wai area. I mainly see him using the computers at the Yuen Long Pok Oi Research Center. That is where I go to use a PC to update my blog on MySpace to let everyone know I am doing ok and to tell about how my daily life as a homeless person is going. Martin overheard my situation from some people there plus he had seen me sleeping in the park before. He insisted I accept his help. The other day he took me for fried rice and cans of beer at a local eatery. Yesterday it was fish balls, shuimai and cans of beer from a 7-11.
Despite how bad the weather has been, he comes out daily to find me and help me out. Dinner tonight was a pizza from Pizza Hut and more cans of beer. Before dinner, he took me to a local public sports complex. They have tennis, outdoor and indoor pools, basketball. While we walked around, some teens from a nearby school had a volleyball game going. He showed me entire complex top to bottom and to the real point of taking me there. There are open public showers available. This is something I wish I knew about weeks ago. Then Shirley would not have had to cuddle with me while I stank like a garbage heap from days in the hot sun and no deodorant. I would go to use them right away but all the rain has washed me off. Martin bought me several more cans of beer after dinner and took me by taxi to the shopping center where I am currently staying. He refuses to take any money from me and tells me he will see me tomorrow. With all the bad things that have happened lately, I cannot believe I still luck out and meet some really nice people.
3
When you are homeless, you really have nothing to do but free time to kill. The days and nights are long and endless. I have not really had a good night’s sleep since everything went bad. It is due more to the stress and worry about my situation. I really want to stay in Hong Kong. I have grown to love it here. I cannot face readjusting to life back in the US anymore. It will be worse than the readjustment I had after living in Japan in summer of 2002. I had reverse culture shock. It will be ten times worse now. I really did not have a plan for returning. I sold my home, car, and just about everything I owned to stay here. I did at one time think about it, but there were different circumstances involved. I would have had at least $20,000 to start over with. Now I have nothing. Once again the worry and fear of the unknown set in. This will prevent me from sleeping again tonight. Also fear of now that the money for my investment is gone, my visa will not be approved and I will have to leave Hong Kong. I think way too much. I am over thinking things through. I will not be able to sleep again tonight.
If I had to rate myself, I would say I am handling the life of a homeless quite well. I tend to adapt to things very quickly. When I was living in Kyoto in 2002, I had almost no period of adjustment. When I first moved here over a year ago, I did not adjust at all. I hit the ground running. I was prepared despite how different the Chinese and Japanese lifestyles are from my own. There is not a manual or a wiki or even a For Dummies book on how to live this way. I make it up as I go. I have help. I am in a foreign country where I look different; I do not speak the language, or understand anything and I am getting by. Even with my current emotional and mental state.
When I had first wound up on the streets, I had only the clothes on my back, the phone in my pocket, my backpack, and the shoes on my feet. Toya blocked me from going to the house for many days. Shirley bought me a few changes of clothes. But now I am a little more prepared. I think of it as camping to make myself feel better. I have several changes of clothing now. I have my favorite baseball cap. I have an umbrella. I have my Gameboy Advance SP with several games. I have a contact lens case and a small bottle of solution. I have a stick of deodorant and several other supplies. I have a book to read. I have an mp3 player and a full charged sim card in my phone. This is the extent of my belongings. This is my rational way of dealing with all of this.
I know where I can go to use the internet for free for periods of ten minutes to as much as three hours. I know where I can go to charge my mobile phone battery for free. I know a spot I can sit down at and run a power cord undetected to charge my personal electronics. I know how to hop on a ride the light rail train system for free. I know a market I can go to and easily swipe food to eat. I know a supermarket that gives out free samples on a certain day so I can get a small meal when my money runs out. I know a mall that has a comfortable chair and air conditioning to sit in out of the heat. I know a route that takes me only thirty minutes to walk from the boredom of Tin Shui Wai to the livelier Yuen Long. I know where every water fountain is so I can refill my bottle I carry on my backpack. I know where I can find showers for free so I can stay clean. I know the trail back to Mong Tsuen in case I can get into the house to get more of my belongings. All these traces of things in life to make me think I am somewhat normal again. This is what my life has become. It is survival. Day to day. Hour to hour. For how long no one knows.
4
My phone has not rang in 3 days. Shirley usually calls me several times day and night to check up on me. At the moment, she is back in the UK deciding where she will go to school and finding a place to live for herself. I am really glad she is not here right now. If she seen how badly this storm is, she would be worried sick about me. She would cry and feel terrible about me having to sleep on the floor of a filthy mall or the fact I had to huddle with several other homeless people and sleeping sitting up. I do not want to worry her anymore than I have to. And I am already taking a toll on her. Her sleeping patterns are off and she is not doing anything fun for herself. Every day she seems to focus on me. She doesn’t even buy a new book for herself due to she feels awful that she is out spending money and I am near starving or I have nowhere to stay. I write her everyday but I do leave out the little details. I do not mention the storms or some things I have had to do. Just the little details to save additional stress on her.
I cannot hide the fact that I miss her so much right now. We have only been together a short time but I feel like I have known her forever. We do have a lot of differences between us but we get along so well. As I huddle, I think of how much I miss her. I miss holding her in my arms. I miss the sound of her voice. I miss kissing her soft lips and looking in her dark brown eyes. I feel like I maybe acting crazy but I repeatedly listen to the last few voice messages she left me. The sound and tone of her voice are very soothing. It comforts me and makes me forget about all the bad shit in my life right now. Just like when I am around her, she makes my worries disappear. I am surprised I have not worn out my voicemail feature from how many times I listen to it. She should be back in a few days. It has been almost a week but it feels like years. I cannot wait to see her face again and hold her in my arms. I listen to her last voicemails too many times a day. It’s one of the few things that get me though the day. I can feel how much she cares for me from the tone of her voice. Only days to go until we are together again.
Tomorrow I will write her another email, this time with good news. I will tell her about how nice this Martin guy has been and how he has been helping me and showing me around. Probably the best news is about the showers. She said how bad I smelled sometimes did not bother her. But she worries about my hygiene. The thing she did that one day still makes me wonder what she is thinking sometimes. Does she love me THAT much? When she came to visit me, she would bring me a bag of supplies to clean up with that she just bought at a Watsons or a Mannings she stopped at on her way over. Sometimes she would bring me new clothes she bought for me. I had to adjust to washing up in washrooms or just toilets (as they call them here) in train stations and shopping malls. She would come in with me and watch while I had to use soap and water from the sink to try wash up. Or how I had to shave or wash my hair in there. She would sit in the corner and break down and cry. “You’re the only guy who has been nice to me,” she said. “And this is how you have to live.” I would hold her and tell her that I am ok and I have her and that’s all I need. She would feel useless because she couldn’t help me more. Sometimes she sat outside the washroom and waited for me to clean up and come out. I liked it better because I hated for her to see me that way. The result was still the same, shaking, her cheeks streaming with tears. I would hold her until she felt better. Things will not always be this way. I promise her they will be better and I will not let this get me down. Sometimes I am a terrible liar but I truly do believe that.
5
So here I am out in Hong Kong and so close to touching bottom it is not funny. My feet are scraping it. How the hell did I allow things to get so bad? It just goes to show you how fast life can turn the tables on you. I have no idea how I will get back to the US. When I do get there, what do I do? I sold my home and car. I sold almost everything for my new life here. The place I worked at closed down. That is really the last of my worries, I can always find another job. This was supposed to be a permanent move for me. I was not supposed to go back. All my plans for opening a café are gone. All my plans and designs for the t-shirt company are sunk. The police have said the only way I could get my money back from Toya was to sue him in a court in Hong Kong. They told me up front it will take much money and many years to accomplish it. I would have to come back and forth to HK to do it too. My evidence is solid but the time factor will hurt. The other problem is I have to get this done before I leave HK. So that idea may be down for as well. I want my life back!!
Right now I can only take it one day at a time and try to keep my head up. At least I still do have some great friends and a loving girlfriend to get me through this. I am still not completely down or dead yet so that factors in my favour. I once read in a book and seen it in the accompanying movie adaption that it is only after we have lost everything that we are free to do anything. The cluttered table or desk that was my life has been suddenly cleared. I can handle living like this. I am now free. I try to stay positive. It is only a temporary setback. I will turn this around. I have hope. I do not want Shirley to come back and see me as a total mess. I believe in karma. And I have so much to do yet…..
6
© 2008 Dan Latham
