All A Dream

S

eems like a dream. All those years ago. I haven’t been back in a long time. Hong Kong felt like, and was home. I thought that I would always come back. You know how that goes. You promise yourself you’ll be back every few years or so. It happens once. Then, it peters out. And, out and out.

I knew a version of this picture was languishing in my archives. I forgot about this version. Well, not this version exactly. I once made an iteration that was hard, dark and contrasty. They say art reflects the artist. I don’t know what I was thinking when I worked on it, but it doesn’t reflect my outlook today. Not even close.

I lightened the image, reduced the contrast and tossed a glow filter on it. I opened the shadows as much as I could and viola, we have it.

It didn’t take much. Just six years and 17 hours in the air. And, a few minutes working on the picture.

I do keep in touch with one person there. He’s an expatriot (WordPress AI says this isn’t a word) from Great Britain. Birmingham, I think. He and his late wife adopted two Chinese girls. Both are grown. One has made him a grandfather and is about to make him one two times over.

When the girls were younger and everyone lived at home they used to look after me almost every weekend. They lived on Lantau Island, on the other side of the island from the international airport, near Silvermine Bay or Mui Wo. I used to take the ferry and spend the weekend.

Imagine that. Living on a concrete island but being able to spend my weekends right on the beach. It was wet, cooler and much less humid. On the other hand when a big typhoon blew in it was completely exposed. In case you are wondering, a typhoon spins in the reverse of a hurricane.

All of this brings up one more thing.

Transportation. I didn’t ever have a car. I didn’t need one. I always took public transportation. Sometime I rode in a taxi, a car. But, I didn’t drive. Unlike America, there are so many options. You could ride an MTR (subway), a ferry, a bus, a mini bus, a trolley or a high speed catamaran (You took those to Macau, which I used to do to leave Hong Kong and renew my travel visa. Eventually I applied for a resident visa.)

Do you know the famous Star Ferry, the one that crosses Victoria Harbor? If I wasn’t in a hurry to get across the harbor I rode that to Kowloon. If I went around dusk, what a view I had. What a treat. What a wonderful memory.

What a wonderful time.