The lunar new year holiday is underway here in Hong Kong and for most children and parents it meant at least a 4-day holiday and at most a couple of weeks away from school. For me, there is no class this week and while I had grand plans to read for my dissertation all week....just me and my books and papers on war crimes trials....but the chilly and rainy weather has made me motivated to do little more than watch the Olympics on TV and stay in my warm bed because there is not indoor heating in HK and the temperature was 9 degrees C last night.
In a 24/7 city such as Hong Kong, it was amazing this weekend to see life come to a standstill....few cars on the roads, almost no people out walking about, and most shops closed. The South China Morning Post (leading English newspaper in Southeast Asia) even shut up shop for two days and did not publish a newspaper. The got me to thinking....I don't know of any other major newspaper that stops publishing for say New Years or Christmas, so lunar new year must be a fairly important holiday. Afterall....good and bad things do not stop happening merely because it is the lunar new year.
When I was living in California, I craved days where the sky was cloudy. Those days were few and far between. However ever since I came back to HK from winter holiday, the skies here have been so gray and the weather so grim. Now all I want is some sun! When my flatmate and I went to the flowermarket over the weekend for new year celebrations, we got completely soaked in the rain....no one wanted to stand next to us on the subway-ride home! I guess my cravings for first clouds and now sun make me a fair weather weather lover - always seeking something I cannot have. At this moment I want sun, and LOT of it.
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