A Leisure Walk on the Promenade

It is now 4:13pm and I have had lunch with a friend in Central, back home, and finished reading online newspaper already. 

You may think: what’s so special about it? 

Well, I usually get up after 1pm. By 4:15pm, I probably have done nothing but having lunch. It is exceptionally productive today. I met my friend, S, in IFC at around 12:30pm and had burger together at Triple O. S has a meeting at 1:30pm so we bid farewell after lunch. And considering that I’ve spent an hour to travel to Central and spent $20 on transport then $60 on lunch, it would be such a waste if I didn’t spend more time walking around Central so I spent about 30-45minutes on window shopping in IFC. As I walked around the shopping mall, looked at those price tags, I felt so poor. I know, I know, many of you are saying ‘what? Poor? You?’ Yes, I’m poor in these couple months – exam period in schools and so some students are taking the month off, and a trip to Dhaka…so and so, all means less income but more expenditure. I am poor…for now…only…hopefully.

Then I took a ferry to cross the harbour. As it’s quite early and I wanna save some money, I chose to take the bus home. The bus stop is right outside the New World Centre and so I took a walk on the promenade. Good weather today, a bit warm and with gentle breeze, I took my time and leisurely walked along that short promenade between the pier and the Centre and enjoyed my solitude among the pupils who were doing a survey on the tourists and the tourists who were busy at taking pictures. 

It was really a leisure walk, so leisure that a group of three students from CityU thought that I am a tourist. They approached me introducing themselves with Putonghua (honestly, their Putonghua is understandable but still got rooms for improvement). I was kinda puzzled and told them that I’m a local Chinese. Then we switched to Cantonese and they still wanna chat with me. I had time so I chatted with them for a while. I thought they’re doing some kind of project but one of the girls said that they’re actually a group of Christians. ‘Oh! Campus Crusade?’ ‘How do you know that?’ ‘Well, I’m a Christian too.’ Very nice young Christians – and I appreciate that they’re earnest in spreading the gospel. ‘May God bless you’, I said and we parted. They went on looking for tourists (they tried with locals but the locals gave them cold shoulders) to share the Good News. 

On my way back home, as the bus went pass Taiwai area along the river, I saw a white gull standing in the middle of the water, just by itself. The water was clear (kinda surprisingly), so was the reflection of  the gull. The gull didn’t move. It just stood there, enjoying its solitude. 

This is a beautiful day.