which is what Kman said to me in response to my comment that his little belly made Johnny Ramone’s face on his t-shirt look like it was in 3D after the big breakfast we had.  Smart kid.  I had it coming.

The kid’s asleep beside me after a very long and interesting day, our first full one in Hong Kong.  We started off early after this insomniac had an unusually intense five hours of sleep.  I awoke feeling refreshed and in the mood to take on Hong Kong.  It was pouring outside, but we thought maybe our breakfast buffet would kill enough time to make Mother Nature change her mind.  We were wrong of course but breakfast was awesome. Our fancy hotel without any amenities put on a lovely buffet – we enjoyed ‘gelatinous rice dumplings’, which was a sticky rice steamed inside banana leaves and also had perfectly creamed spinach.  We might have tried the ‘cheese weiners’ had they not looked so much like cheese weiners.  Kman isn’t being as adventurous as we’d hoped and instead headed straight for the white food table:  pancakes, bread, croissants, buns, and latticed french fries dusted with paprika.  Not surprising considering that most of the hotel guests are North American and Australian, but we were disappointed the little guy only tried the rice after we had to bribe him (yes, we bribe him).  We complimented the highly processed, saturated fat bits with lots of fresh fruit – big juicy chunks of pineapple and watermelon which we dove into this heartily until we remembered all of the dire warnings given to us about not eating ANY uncooked food.  Oh well, we thought, thank you Dukarol and then toasted each other with a fresh glass of tap water.

It rained last night when we arrived and it rained today again, all day.  Apparently it rains a lot in Hong Kong and its natives take their rain seriously. So seriously that my little purple U of T umbrella put me to shame (and so it should – it only covers the top third of my body but I suppose that’s not the umbrella’s fault).  The rain is not the miserable cold dampness that gets into your bones, but rather the hair-curling Indochine kind of rain that Catherine Deneuve’s tortured Eliane would have found soothing and familiar.  Yes, gentle and misty and warm, the kind of rain that encourages lots of long, lush foliage from above and big bugs from below.  But it doesn’t stop the movement of the city.  People go about their business, from chic shops to dollar store to open markets – it’s a busy place and with the exception of colliding umbrellas on the narrow sidewalks and markets, it might as well be a sunny day.  Every shop has a stand at the door for you to park your umbrella and they line the outside door handles of the buses and trams.  Umbrella sleeve dispensers greet you at the entrances to malls and office towers, lest your accessory leave stray droplets of water on the ubiquitous marble floors.

Marble floors are the reason, I’m sure, that no one in Hong Kong wears Crocs.  It’s because they’re hideously ugly, but more importantly, they’re slippery.  Poor Kman almost pulled a groin twice today.  He only cried the second time more out of embarrasment than pain.  I cried the second time too because of just the pain.  I can’t lift my left arm up higher than my elbow  because I tried to save him from falling.  Can you imagine the visual?  I’ve grabbed Kman’s backpack loop in my left hand trying to keep him from falling, I’ve got my newly purchased faux Jimmy Choo lime green bag (IT’S REAL – IT’S LEATHER – IT’S NEITHER!), and in my right hand I have my little, useless, Canadian umbrella. Anyhow, it might have been better had I broken the umbrella because then I would have had a good reason to buy a fashionable Hong Kong umbrella. They’re colourful, unique, and most importantly, very large.  None of those little multi-hinged things that fit in small bags – no, these have sleeves with ergonomic shoulder straps.

They’re big, they’re beautiful, and most of all, they keep you dry.