liberation day

At the age of 75, I shouldn’t expect to be doing something for the first time in my life, but I’ve just spent the last 21 days in a single room, never once venturing beyond its door. That door was never locked, but had I decided to leave the confines of this 3×4-metre box, I would have been liable to a fine of up to HK$25,000 and imprisonment for six months.

At least the room has a good view, because it overlooks the western approaches to Hong Kong’s harbour. Consequently, with little else to do, I’ve been taking quite a few photos. A short selection follows, starting with a general view looking northeast:

Ferries make up the majority of traffic on the water, and there are three, operated by different companies, in this image.

I took the next photo to record the cloud nestled around the summit of the mountain in the background. This mountain is Tai Mo Shan (‘big mist mountain’), the highest in Hong Kong at 957 metres (3,140 feet) above sea level:

This photo also shows the spectacular suspension bridge that connects Stonecutters Island (on the right) and Tsing Yi. Incidentally, given the shortage of building space in Hong Kong, you may safely conclude that the buildings in the foreground of this image are a government facility. They are in fact part of a wholesale food market complex.

The next two photos were taken with my camera’s telephoto function to show more details of the bridge:

Hong Kong’s container terminal can be seen behind the right-hand approach to the bridge.

I took the next photo to show a ferry overtaking a barge carrying shipping containers, but it also shows Lion Rock, the imposing summit cliff on the rightmost hill in the background:

The following two photos were taken late on the same afternoon, looking east and west, respectively:

…while this photo was taken on a subsequent late afternoon, looking northwest:

However, this is my best sunset picture:

…while this is another view of the bridge, taken a short time later:

Notice that the weather, as reflected in all the above photos, has mostly been fine, but a tropical cyclone, Typhoon Kompasu, passed 200km south of Hong Kong a couple of days ago. And this is what the view to the east looked like at one point during this event, which prompted the issuing of a #8 typhoon warning (gale force winds expected, all schools closed) by the Hong Kong Observatory:

Finally, this is a view of a section of the food market at 5 o’clock in the morning:

Notice the line of red taxis in front of the food market. I initially thought that this was an odd place for a taxi rank, but the taxis are in fact queuing for the specialist filling station that you can see on the right—all taxis (and minibuses) in Hong Kong run on natural gas!

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As you can probably imagine, being confined to a single room with no freedom of movement whatsoever is extremely boring. The relentless tedium of the past three weeks has been punctuated only by the meals provided, which were, for the most part, something to look forward to.

Although the lunch/dinner menu changed every five days, the breakfast menu remained unchanged throughout our incarceration: a choice between an ‘American’ breakfast; a Chinese breakfast; and a ‘healthy option’. I was not impressed by the last of these, but this is a photo of a typical ‘American’ breakfast, which I chose on several occasions:

However, my breakfast of choice was the Chinese breakfast, even though the dim sum selection, in particular, was barely lukewarm by the time it was delivered to our room. The chicken congee (rice porridge) came with both peanuts and preserved vegetables:

Every meal option (breakfast. lunch and dinner) also included a fruit salad consisting of chunks of honeydew, cantaloupe and watermelon, and occasionally dragon fruit, except for the ‘American’ breakfast:

Six items were listed on each lunch/dinner menu, three Asian and three Western dishes. Here are some examples:

pan-fried salmon steak and Singapore noodles

grilled chicken breast with mushroom sauce

pan-fried snapper and fish curry

spaghetti Bolognese

Thai-style duck curry and baked pork chop

pan-fried sole and Yeung Chow fried rice

All the Asian dishes except noodles came with a generous portion of steamed rice (not pictured), while all the Western dishes except pasta were served with mashed potato. I had all the pictured dishes more than once, and the salmon four times!

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So what else have I been doing to while away the time? Well, regular readers will know that I like word puzzles and games, and I came up with quite a good one. The idea is to find three, three-letter words that, when strung together, form a valid nine-letter word. This is the only one that Paula could think of:

CAN–DID–ATE

Here are two further examples to show how this works:

CAR–PEN–TRY
GOD–FAT–HER

I’ve managed to think of fifteen other examples, and if anyone wants to try their hand at this game and can think of a word that meets the criteria, please leave a comment below.

Another challenge that I set myself was to see how many five-letter, three-syllable words I could think of. I managed to come up with more than 50. I’d originally thought about four-letter words with three syllables, but I could think of just five, and I don’t think there can be many more.

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In case you were wondering about the reason for spending 21 days in a single room, it’s down to Hong Kong’s anti-covid quarantine arrangements. I must say that I consider this to be overkill, especially given that Paula and I have both had two jabs of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Ten days would have been sufficient to determine whether either of us was carrying the virus (we’ve had to undergo PCR tests every three days, in addition to a test at Manchester Airport before boarding our plane and another upon arrival in Hong Kong). Apparently though, the reason for the exorbitant isolation period is the news that fully vaccinated people arriving in Hong Kong were testing positive after more than two weeks. This does seem implausible, but I think I have an explanation: all the tests we’ve undergone since arriving in Hong Kong were not carried out correctly. The swabs used to collect samples for testing were not inserted far enough into our noses and throats. All I can say is this: thank goodness we haven’t had to endure a literal translation of the word ‘quarantine’, which derives from the French word quarante, meaning ‘forty’!