I'm ready for the plunge

A week back in Hong Kong and I am already feeling like leaving again.  I feel like the convenience of the city  has served as a disguise for a full social life.  One can easily get lost in the shallow relationships - so easy to make friends and so easy to meet, yet no one could give minimally to friendships and relationships and feel like one has so many.  My friends seem to connect with each other much more.  My friend from Shanghai again reminded me that life in Shanghai is much more settled.  I know my experience would be different, having not lived there for a long time.  But I know the settled feeling both there and in the States.

I feel stimulated and distracted in Hong Kong, but little belongs to me.  People come and go and I don't belong to the city ultimately.  I had my fun and my experience but it is now time for something else.  In any case, it'd be very difficult to have a family here.  I know I miss many aspects of the city, its international flavor, its convenience. Yet to everything there is a flip side, the international flavor comes as a weird mix of different people who come together and then leave, and the convenience comes at the price of the lack of commitment and people coming here just to make a buck and leave.  I can hardly think about investing in a bigger place but how could one actually live in a small apartment like this as a family?  Also identity wise, I don't really belong.  In the US, I feel American and can talk to lots of people and in China, I can also talk to a lot of people.  In Hong Kong, I can only talk on the superficial level to the expats passing by and at surface level to the locals.  It's been a long time.  It is time to try something else. In any case, I am not meeting that many new people.  Any place becomes stale after a while.  It needs a jump start.

All I need is to clean up my apartment little by little and put it on airbnb.  I need to sell some old clothes and clean it up a bit more.  Let's see how my tropical fish will do with the automatic fish feeder.  If it becomes a problem, I shall give them away.  They've lived well for over two years and managed to not lose a single one from their company.  I think that's an achievement in itself and a pretty good run for the short lives of tropical fish.

I am ready to take the plunge.