If one door opens when another door shuts, you have a ghost problem

How do you put your finger on why you like/love a place so much? How do you define what it is that keeps bringing you back?

A few things in the last 10 days have helped me answer those questions, but not achieve my ultimate goal: to understand why I like/love Hong Kong and its permanence.

I'm in HK at the moment, on holiday. I'm busy buying up local films on DVD or blu ray and going to the old haunts and hang-outs. I'm getting souvenirs for people back at work in Manchester, and just people-watching and navigating public transport (mostly on autopilot).

I'm going to dinner with friends and having a great time - we like the same things and having access to the places or clubs they go to is a bonus. I am aware that if they weren't here, my holiday would be very different. I would probably sleep later and miss half the day, but be up all night. I would probably spend one or two days just in my temporarily adopted home instead of going out - and then I'd miss out on being in HK.

Knowing what I do, this may be my last holiday to HK for a while. I'm surprisingly ok with that, as I have had time to deal with it and realise that I need to get all the things I need to right now, as I won't have access to them later. I do at least have a chance to do that.

It's also been brought to my attention that 3 people I come here to see may not be here in a few years. Retirement, ends of contracts, changing politics - all these have an impact on ex-pats and if these 3 close friends do actually leave HK to relocate to a calmer place to retire, then what am I coming to HK for?

And there we have it. Something I once wrote about a long time ago, but am now only just grasping: it's not the place, it's the people in it.

Every time I've left a job and got a new one, I haven't missed the job itself or the town or place it's in. I have missed a select few people with whom I used to work, but nothing more than that. And with the slow rise of social media and connectivity over the years, this is nowhere near as big a problem as it used to be.

With me leaving HK, perhaps for good this time - no take-backsies, no do-overs - and them moving on, then perhaps it was never really the city for me. Perhaps it was the people who made the city, and my life here, so exciting. I could come back here, get a job, start going out and doing all the things I like, but where would I find more people like them? And would I want to?

I've always had a certain flexibility with time, and especially emotions that go with it. I'm not good at emotions anyway, and it takes me a while to understand what I should have been feeling yesterday when something went down. But in the grand scheme of things, time and place are relative and if these people should end up in another East Asian country, then that's where I'll head out to for my next holiday. I'm not good at trying new things because I stop and think it through, and see the ending where I get it wrong or mess it up somehow. But knowing someone is there for me to see, and I have a goal, is different. I should be fine with it.

And I think I am. Perhaps HK is over for me. Perhaps I've got one more visit before everyone leaves and my time here is well and truly done. But what does that mean for the part of me that's still always here? Who am I when you take away the mish-mash of languages and culture and humour and context that came out of me living here for 11 years?

That's the problem I have. Will everything I know and do and say slip away, or change, with the passing time where my subconscious processes the fact that I'm done with HK? What's going to replace everything I lose?

And that's the thing. I may live in Manchester and have access to thousands of bars, loads of nightlife, and lots of different cultures, but I don't have my circle of friends with me to pass the time.

It looks like I'll just have to get some. How and where, I suppose time will tell. Once I have the all-clear from the chiropractor, I'll be looking at several clubs in the Manchester area (kickboxing or wing chun? Private or field archery?) and probably something will come out of that. It won't be HK, but it'll be a newer version of me, I suppose, coming out of what I want to spend my time on. I've been out to Manchester every weekend since November when I moved there, and I've still only scratched the surface of places to go and things to see, so I'm pretty sure there's something waiting for me, something that will become my new favourite thing. Until then I'll just keep on keeping on, and something will happen.

And that's all the news that's fit to print, I think. Until next time.

Soopytwist.