Sandy's life as a small potato in Hong Kong (March, 2003)

Just click on any of the following underlined dates and you can get to know what's going on with me that day.

March 3, 2003 (Mon)

Moving out

My elder brother moved out of our home into his new flat. I longed for this day to come for a long time. Not that I didn't like my elder brother or I found it difficult to get along with him. It was just that I could have more space after he moved out with his stuff. But in fact there seemed to be still a lot of things in our flat after he had moved out. Maybe I better sort out my own stuff again?

As my elder brother moved out, I might be the last one to go to bed in the evenings...

March 4, 2003 (Tue)

Seminar

David Li had a talk in another university this time. The topic was more relevant to my further study, about use of Cantonese and English in daily life of university students. The room was full and the students seemed to be quite interested in the topic.  The findings were interesting but the talk was a bit long. It had been two hours when I had to leave and hurried back to my office for interviews.

March 5, 2003 (Wed)

What a gov't!

Life would be tougher. The Financial Budget Plan was unveiled and in the coming financial year we'd have to pay more tax! What a bad news!! The government always said the deficit was becoming greater and we all had to find ways to narrow down the deficit. But sooner or later we ourselves would have deficit too if the salary was to continue going down while we had to pay more taxes.

March 8, 2003 (Sat)

Flooding home

Initially I was happy that mom and dad had gone on a two-day trip to the Chinese mainland as I could be alone at home, eating whatever I liked and watching whatever channel I wanted to. But it turned into a disaster in the end. I went back to the office in the early morning after mom and dad had left home. When I arrived home, I found some water flowing out of our flat. At that moment I knew something must happen. When I opened the door, I could see the floor was wet. 'Oh, no!' Our next-door neighbours came to my rescue, telling me they had switched off the water supply when they found some water flowing out of our flat.  It was suspected that there was water leakage from the newly installed water pipes.

I was standing like a helpless girl while my neighbours helped me to clean up the floor. That evening I couldn't switch on the tap and had to rely on a few buckets of water given by my neighbours.  I couldn't sleep well as I had to dry some of the stuff that had been the victim of this flooding.

Mom & dad, where are you?

March 9, 2003 (Sun)

Aftermath of the flooding

I went to my cousin's home for a hair cut and shower, after a flooding had taken place in my home yesterday. I told mom we could not switch on the water tap until the leakage got fixed. She was of course angry and dissatisfied with the service quality of the installation of new water pipes and couldn't wait until tomorrow to have a shower. So, she went to the next-door neighbour's home for a shower.

March 11, 2003 (Tue)

Problems solved

Finally the problem with the water pipes got fixed but my mom thought she should have rights to claim compensation. Happy to get a new contract today, which was an extension to my current one.

March 12, 2003 (Wed)

Some people out, some people in

A girl sitting next to me came back today to pack some of her stuff as her part-time contract had ended, to give the desk for new part-time staff.  But I wondered how often I'd see the new part-time staff as part-time research staff in our office were rarely seen.

March 14, 2003 (Fri)

I do look young?

Got asked if I was a student who was going to enter the university when I went to a shop to buy a new bag. Hehe...

March 16, 2003 (Sun)

a spoilt mom

Today's mom's birthday. To be honest, I can't afford to buy her something very expensive, such as jewellery, which she likes and whenever we walk past the jewellery shop she'll stop to have a look at the shop window. I know mom is not a greedy woman and she won't mind if I can't buy her jewellery. But it's really difficult to think of what to buy for her as she's got everything, except for money and jewellery. This year she received some precious presents from my two elder brothers and their girlfriends.

March 17, 2003 (Mon)

The end of the world

It seemed the world was in a mess. While a war was about to start in Iraq, in the other end of the world the Atypical Pneumonia was spreading quickly in the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong.

Anyway, we were still safe here and this afternoon I listened to Chris' interview, in which he said how afraid he was about his trip to New York for a charity show and he hoped the trip would be cancelled!

March 20, 2003 (Thur)

The War started

Within my expectation, the war started.  No matter what the US and the UK government said, they were gonna start the war; it was just a matter of time. The more quickly the war ended, the better. Hope for peace...

March 21, 2003 (Fri)

N95

The threat of the Atypical Pneumonia was felt more and more strongly. People paid more and more attention to the N95, a face mask as a preventive measure for the disease. But so far everything seemed to be fine.

March 22, 2003 (Sat)

'Island Theory'

What's 'Island theory'?  It's a theory proposed by my friend and me, who think people living on the Hong Kong Island tend to be more educated and be nicer. I don't know if it's got anything to do with the fact that people with a higher income tend to live on the Hong Kong Island. Sometimes we met people who looked nice and when we asked them for direction they were always patient to answer our questions. Of course our 'Island Theory' is based on our informal observation only and we went hiking on the Hong Kong Island far more often than in Kowloon annd the New Territories.

The European Education Exhibition was held today. How could we miss this opportunity to get to know more about studying in Europe while getting some souvenirs like pens from the exhibitors?!!  Sometimes I think it's good to study in Europe as the tuition fees are lower (or in some countries it's free of charge!) and the living cost is not as high as in the UK; and also we can learn a European language. But it was too late for me to change my mind and turn to study in Europe...

March 23, 2003 (Sun)

Siblings' gathering

Planned to buy a computer with my eldest brother but finally decided to wait until later. Went to my elder brother's new home for dinner in the evening. It was a nice home; not very big, but enough for a couple (as he was going to get married in May) and the location was good, close to the MTR station. My future sister-in-law was the cook for the dinner and the taste of the dishes was okay but my elder brother seemed to be quite picky. : )

March 26, 2003 (Wed)

A boring seminar

Attended a talk at a local university. It was in Mandarin. There were quite a lot of attendees. A bit boring indeed... zzz...

March 27, 2003 (Thur)

SAR = SARS

Has the world come to an end?  Is a new fashion coming to HK?  SAR (Special Administratvie Region = Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome)

The news about atypical pneumonia continued to hit the headlines of the newspaper and it has become the hottest topic of late, as it continues spreading in the community and, I think, has caused some sort of panic and worries in the whole city.   New cases of inflections are reported every day.  The people’s behaviour tells us how serious the situation has become (or how frightened people feel about the disease).  More and more people were seen wearing masks to protect themselves from the infection on the street.  I wonder if soon or later wearing masks will become a fashion and those who insist on not doing so will be considered abnormal!  A sense of insecurity is filled in my body as it looks everyone has a chance of becoming the next victim!  It’s more frightening than the Iraq war, which is taking place miles away from Hong Kong and HK doesn’t take part in the war directly (at least).

The Iraq war has gone onto the 7^th day but it isn't likely the war will end soon.  Sometimes it’s really boring to hear the same kind of news headlines time and again every day.  Iraq war, atypical pneumonia, deaths, panic, fight, warning… etc.  All are negative stuff! 

To be honest, my life so far hasn’t been affected much by what’s happening in that I haven’t changed my habits nor have I done anything to protect myself against the disease or the war (of course, there’s nothing I as a small potato can do about!).  I just try to keep myself healthy by trying to eat regularly and have enough rest, which I think is the best way to protect oneself from any disease devil!  But I can’t deny that I’ve become more sensitive when I go onto the street and when I find myself feel unwell, fearing that I may have any symptom of Atypical Pneumonia.  Also, my trip to Shenzhen with my friend to visit a friend of us has been delayed a few times and we don’t know when we will do it as South China is one of AP high-risk areas. 

What’s the world become??

My mom looks very worried about the disease and she tries to protect herself by having Chinese herbal medicine.  I can expect a bowl of Chinese herbal medicine, which she heard can be helpful for resisting the infection, to be put on the table awaiting me to drink!  She’s been getting ill frequently since the end of last year.  Sometimes I wonder if she is over-reactive toward any sign of illness as the first thing she thinks of doing when she feels a bit unwell is see the doctor.  I think she looks much older with a weak body.

Dad seems to be more cheerful now than when he was still working.  Perhaps his work caused him a lot of pain and fatigue; he used to have a long face when he came back home from work.  He always lost temper then and I didn’t like that.  Even now he still loses his temper from time to time and keeps silent when he’s unhappy about anything (sometimes I can’t figure out the reason why he’s unhappy!).  His behaviour and the behaviour of my colleague’s husband has increased my understanding of men to some extent, though I wouldn’t say I know much about men!

March 29, 2003 (Sat)

Exercise to keep ourselves fit against the disease

That's the greatest challenge we ever had!!!

My hiking with a friend of mine wasn’t affected by the virus.  Instead, we used SARS as a support for our activity as we can strengthen our lungs against the virus.  There were lots of people on the hiking trails and some of them were families.  Masks were rarely seen.  It was considered the most difficult hiking trip we ever had because it was out of our expectation.  We followed the same hiking path as we had done the previous week but we tried a new one after finishing it. We hadn't expected much difficulty but it turned out that we had to walk on a few mountains before getting to our destination.  When we were out of breath, trying to progress as much as we could, we really had no idea when we would get to our destination because we saw nothing but the mountains ahead of us (plus the fog that affected the visibility).  I had great relief when we got back to the trail we were familiar with and got to know that we didn’t need to walk upward in the rest of the trip (it was really tiring to walk upward! I’d prefer walking and even rolling downward).
 

March 30, 2003 (Sun)

Fear

I stayed at home all day long.  Atypical Pneumonia was one of the main reasons.  I also took this opportunity to recover from the fatigue caused by hiking of the previous day.  I stayed up late the night before in order to watch the qualifiers for Euro 2004.  The game between Leichtenstein and England kicked off at 1:30a.m. (HK Time) but I fell asleep while watching it on the sofa.  You could imagine I was still sleeping while the game followed between Holland and Czech Republic took place.  Despite that, I still woke up late at 11 a.m. and had an afternoon nap for three hours!  The 'small potato' came back - I was like a pig doing nothing but eating and sleeping.  My mom still went out with my dad to have lunch at a Chinese restaurant and didn’t go back home until the sunset (when I just got up!), although she was more scared than me about the Atypical Pneumonia.

Staying at home all day long increased my fear about the disease because the only way I got to know about what’s happening outside - TV and newspapers – kept reporting the news about AP and all was about the increase in the number of the patients.  Mom also increased my fear by showing me her worries about the disease and kept telling me to wear a mask when going to work the following day.

So I was in fear for the whole day!

March 31, 2003 (Mon)

An unusual HK

The fear of Atypical Pneumonia didn’t disappear but instead increased as the number of people infected with the virus continued rising.  TV News reports and newspapers were all about the disease.  I got to understand how powerful the media can be in persuading people to believe something, whether or not it is true.  Somehow I felt relieved when going to the street because I got to know that some people like me still didn’t put on a mask, which suggested the situation was not at its worst (it’d really be scary if EVERYONE did put on a mask!), while staying at home, as I did yesterday, I felt increasingly scared and worried, wondering if the situation was like what the news reports and my mom described.

I went to work earlier than usual so as to avoid any crowds on the bus and on the street, which was one of the ways we were told to protect ourselves from the virus.  The streets and the campus of the university where I work were obviously much quieter, not just because it was early in the morning (around 8:15a.m.) but also because classes at all levels were suspended and many people were afraid to go out these days.  It was not the city we used to know.

This page was last updated on Saturday, 18 October 2003.

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