Paying With Your Wristwatch and Other Life Changing Opportunities

I'm just sitting here, quietly, grabbing a few moments at the close of what I think may have been a life changing week, but it's been too much of a whirlwind for me to really be able to tell.  I've just finished an 8 day stint in Hong Kong.  Just pause and think about that for a moment.  Courtesy of international air travel (yes I feel guilty, and cancelled a planned holiday to Bangkok to make up for it).... anyway, in less than 18 hours I found myself transported from a quiet beach in County Antrim to downtown Wan Chai.  And that was only the start.  Eight days in Hong Kong is... Hong Kong is... Eight... Blflezzchmbbub...

Yes.  It does.  Reduce one to. Incoherence.

What struck me?  What reduced moi, la belle dame sans silence, to this??  Its a cacophony, a smorgasbord, a...well...it's:

• being able to buy groceries anywhere in the country with your watch.  Your watch, for heaven's sake!
• More handbags than I knew existed in the entire world, let alone on one island
• Little old ladies sitting playing mahjong by a fish pond in the shade of a container storage port towering above them like a high rise building
  
• Enough escalators to take you to the moon and back 3 times
• The New Territories phenomenon of 7001s, 70 year old men with young Chinese wives and 1 year old children.  All of whom are likely to be widowed in the next 10 years.
• An entire town composed solely of high rise blocks, perhaps 70, 80 or 100 of them, built on what was a paddy field until 5 years ago
• Market stalls piled high with fish so fresh the prawns jump out at you as you walk by
• Mangrove swamps and perfect limpid water
  
• A city so clean you could eat off the streets
• A city with air pollution from mainland industries so heavy that they only saw the sun once in the 8 days I was there
• Dogs whose toenails are painted the same colour as their owners' fingernails
• Lift doors that close three seconds faster than anywhere else in the world
• Vending machines that sell books instead of chocolate in the subway
  
• Eating chicken elbows as a delicacy - delicious yes, but oh so crunchy
  
• Trendy girls who wear boots in the 26 degree centigrade spring weather
• The largest collection of urban butterflies I've ever seen
• Mobile phones that allow you to watch DVDs
• Poets composing verse on park benches...using their laptops
• Smart cards for parking meters so you don't have to fumble for the change
• Rules that oblige everyone with a cold to wear a mask and gloves so they don't infect anyone else - how sensible is that!
  
• Thousands of unique bloom-covered  trees that are completely sterile, and were all propagated from a single mutation discovered by a missionary in the 17th century
• Pork buns decorated with chocolate sprinkles on sale in the bakeries
• Paper ghettoblasters to burn for dead relatives so that they may listen to music in the next world
  

And that's just the start.  Colleagues and new friends in Hong Kong were amongst the kindest, most generous, most hospitable I have ever met.  Anywere.  For coherent thoughts, tune in later....