Departing Hong Kong

10.30 pm, 16 March 2017

Crafting up to the last minute when my ride takes me to the Kowloon airport express station. A prayer, a kiss and a hug. A promise of souvenir shopping. A door closes and a car pulls away. I watch briefly and go inside.

It's a budget airline, so the nice Cathay Pacific lady asks me to check in at the airport, which means I have to wheel my luggage away onto the train. No frills. DIY. A sign announces that it will come in 5 minutes. Soon enough, it arrives, picks up its trio of passengers and sighs along the rails, dots of light flashing past beside it blinking into oblivion as a tunnel envelops all the carriages, and then more spots of light, some in pairs on the front of lorries and cars. It is night.

I think of Kyoto and wonder if the language will flood my senses on the early breath of morning that will greet us when the airplane door swings open. Anyway, it is the day and age of Google Translate and instant interpreting devices smaller than a mobile phone. Rusty language skills will fail to inhibit or bar. Still, it has been too long: years of the best intentions to keep in touch with old friends and build up words to have been arduously gleaned from pages of printed script. Yet the reunions will have to be put off for a few more months. This time, this weekend, is to be a sweet respite spent almost as a tourist, and not so much as a visitor...

Coffee, snacks and kicking back.