Cultural Convolution

I lived in Hong Kong most of my life in a concrete and steel building of 26 floors. The worst weather we have had in the past like, thousand years, was typhoon signal #10. And I remember on that day, my dad pulled the window closed, locked them and that was the end of it. You couldn’t even hear the wind hiss. We watched TV all day and did nothing. Couldn’t even feel it.

Therefore, I was entitled to be terrified on that day.

However, it would make a pretty good case for psychological study that I decided to go out a second time after my first traumatic experience driving in the storm. I wanted to drive to Nate’s place which was like some 15 miles away from me where there was no electricity too.

I guess I was more afraid of being alone than being killed.

I knew it would be pretty stupid for me to go out already and it surely won’t make much sense for me to come back at night or the next morning to change (if indeed I need to go back to work on Monday) So I packed my work clothes and my heels into a bag and ran out of the apartment.

“WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU ARE GOING?!” Some asshole living across the street from me yelled. “It was only a tree!” And then I heard some nervous laughter after I ignored him. Apparently he was utterly uncomfortable at the thought that his fellow neighbor was trying to ‘evacuate’ (which wasn’t really the truth– I kinda suspected that my house was just as safe as Nate’s).

With difficulty, I got to my car, turned the car keys and looked ahead and, shit…

The windshield of the car parked right in front of me was completely smashed by the force of a fallen branch.

Smashed into shreds.

I had recently replaced my wind shield about three months ago (cost me 500 dollars of blood, sweats and tears) because of a tiny nick that spread into a threatening crack overnight most likely caused by rocks being kicked up on road while I was driving back from Columbus to Cincinnati after my DC trip.

Although my windshield was still intact, seeing how I was one car away, yes, one car away from being smashed, my heart just totally sunk. I pulled out of the spot as fast as I could with my clogged mind and shaking hands.

I’m sure you could imagine how the road conditions were like already. 70+ miles/hr wind (imagine something faster than a car on the highway constantly beating against your surrounding), broken trees, shifted road blocks, leashing cables, slanted lamp posts, dead animals and live animal going crazy (a friend of a friend hit a deer), broke-down cars, out of order traffic lights and grouchy drivers — I would say that made a decently deadly combination. I was pretty brave driving out in that kind of weather given how only one day ago I was daunted by the mere look of the roller coasters in Kings Island and pulled Nathan out of the theme park after our arrival only a moment earlier.

I got to Nate’s house at around 5 safely. His neighbor was having people cutting down her half fallen tree at the moment. I took extra caution to park in a safe spot.

But of course, nothing ever goes the way you want. You get to your destination and you find out that you never should have come.

So without a word to Nate, I hopped back on my car and drove back out in the storm for the 3rd time of the day. If I was not trying “getting myself killed”, I was definitely “die trying” . I was really working at it.

I don’t even want to recount the arduous journey out. It was just…arduous. And I wasted a lot of gas.

Back in the safety of my own home, I faced a mortal challenge that I hadn’t thought about when I decided to drive back —— I have NO FOOD at home!

I mean, I bought two packs of frozen food together with some old microwavable pizzas, a jug of milk, an expired yogurt and 2 slices of frozen pork chop which at the moment was defrosting itself grossly in the upper compartment which I didn’t want to open in case of being attacked by deadly fumes or clever flies that found their way in while I was away. As I do not have electricity, I could not cook or reheat anything.

Oh wait! I have a cake in the fridge!

I have a cake from a week and a half ago when my friends came visit which I still haven’t finished. I’m telling you…it was the best cake I’ve ever eaten in my life. (Well, I wasn’t really that desperate…until about like 9-ish — if you haven’t realized, I haven’t eaten anything in that whole day. By 10pm, my dignity was all gone. I honestly would eat tree bark if that’s what it comes down to.)

Without internet (almost want to smash my computer when I realized that I couldn’t watch the Steelers game that night), DVD player, TV , electric piano …I could only do one of the following: waste all my cell phone battery talking/messaging people (at that point I still don’t know when the power would come back up) or sleep. I decided to waste my cell phone battery and called all around the world. I called people in HK, I called people in New York and I called people in Germany. If I have friends in Japan and Monocco and Zimbabwe I would probably called them too to explain my plight. The thing was I was just not used to not being in touch with people. Normally I have facebook (I realized that I belonged to the 10% that checks facebook 5-10 times a day recently in a teenage culture research by our company) but now that it was stripped away from me, I felt utterly isolated.

Then I really wanted to kill myself (as a figure of speech). I sworn to God if I live through the storm I will never live in a place where no one cares if I’m alive or dead. It was one of those times when you really need your “support network” and you realized that , sure , you do have many friends here and a few good ones, too. But no one will ever be like your family or relatives who would care more about you than themselves.

And then Maxine messaged me.

Oh god I love her.

I fell asleep exhausted that night. The next day I woke up, went early to work to check out WHBC, got barred from going up Winton Road by a fallen tree. While I was getting lost trying to find a way around it my boss called to tell me that most sites were closed and I could go home (I wouldn’t have known since I didn’t have TV and internet access).

Go home. Go home….

….to the land of no natural disaster, terrorist attacks and random school shootings.