when i first moved to hong kong in may 1997, charles and i were had student loans and virtually no capital. his contract was ending at the end of june, and i did not have a job. we each had debts, and prior to the handover, hong kong was an extremely expensive city to live in.

despite having arrived in hong kong from the warmest city canada has to offer, vancouver, i was still overwhelmed with the heat and humidity. i was always thirsty. near poverty does that to a girl.

we ate a lot of pasta and chilli in those days. yes, they were those terrible “C” words…carbohydrates, but they were also another “c” word, which was higher on my hierarchy of needs in those days…CHEAP.
(if you want to know where the cheapness might come from, check out my earlier post…more precious than silver)

this was also at the second stage of my love affair with charles (the first conducted over the internet, the second when we lived in the same city) and was anxious to show him how well i could cook, clean and look after the man i loved. so i did the domestic chores and really, loved doing them. ah, young love, aint it grand.

fortunately, we lived near a park n’ shop, the equivalent of safeway or tesco. there was also a wellcome nearby, but it always had a funny smell and i didn’t like buying anything there. it was about a 10 minute walk to the shops, and 15 minutes home. i did try once taking a bus home, but lifting those bags of groceries on to the bus, fishing out my coins, and the impatient people pushing around me and not wanting to make room for the bags, turned me against the experience. so i walked home with my heavy purchases.

i remember the feeling of the bags digging into my hands. of pedestrians banging in to me and the bags scraping against my legs.

i remember the heat. sweat pushing into my eyes, dribbling down my neck. and me not being able to wipe it away because i was carrying those dreaded shopping bags.

i can remember when the bags got too heavy, leaving two on the ground, and walking 20 metres with the next two bags, then placing them on the ground and walking back to collect the last two. it did lighten the load, but i am so impatient that the concept of covering the same ground twice in that heat irritated me so much i couldn’t continue.

i can remember my throat being so dry and wishing that I had the extra money to buy myself a perrier water. normally i don’t drink fizzy water, but this one day, I had seen a frosted perrier in the grocer’s cooler, and Perrier seemed the height of decadence and refreshment. but i was fresh in love and trying to prove to my man how thrifty i could be, and decided it was a waste of money we couldn’t afford.

a couple of months later, we both had jobs, were beginning to pay off our debts and bought the groceries together after we got home from work. this particular day must have been right after a payday when i was feeling flush, because i asked charles if he figured our finances would allow for me to grab a drink for the walk home. he looked shocked that i had to ask him and said, “sure, could you please grab me a water too.” i bought the still type for him, and surprised us both when I headed right over the perrier. and i bought it with change from my pocket.

the perrier tasted salty and was too bubbly for me, but i drank it triumphantly. the feeling of the liquid drenching my throat was so decadent. i didn’t need the water, we had water at home, but i was drinking this expensive liquid anyway. that bottle symbolized a new level of our financial stability, the time when you can allow yourself little luxuries. for some people, little luxuries are vehicles or snazzy trips, and maybe for us it will be too. but in august 1997, it was a bottle of water.