Know Thyself

With the warm winter sun shining through the cool, crisp, dry air, we kept running almost forgot that mum and dad were there. With so many brethren of ours doing the same and a few of their owners holding bite-size treats, we were literally out of control. Chasing, smelling, wrestling each other, snatching tennis balls from others, we had a great time time in the Wan Chai Dog Park managed by the SPCA near the entrance of the Hong Kong Island end of the oldest and busiest cross harbour tunnel. The area has improved since its opened over 2 years ago and it's now fenced off into 2 sections. So now even if we get hurt, it would be from fighting with another dog rather than being run over by a speeding vehicle. Sorry no photos, none taken, perhaps we will be there again next week and get some of our pictures taken while we run wild and enjoy ourselves.

Most of the dogs in the park were well behaved. They might run, they might roll, they might play along. But there were no bullies, or more like, all the bullies were on tight leashes. The same cannot be said about kids and teenagers that walk around terrorizing the streets in Hong Kong. Rude without even the bare understanding of manner, perhaps best described some of the current crop of young Hongkies. A tight leash will certainly be helpful for some of them!

Mum and dad went to see The Christmas Carol 3D Version in Pacific Place AMC cinema in the afternoon on Saturday just before taking us to the dog park. While driving down to the park, they talked about the impressive effects and the magnificent screenplay in 3D constantly marred by this not-so-little girl of maybe 10 incessant kicking of the back of mum's seat. Sitting at one of the back rows in the cinema, the girl kept kicking every now and again whenever she felt like, despite mum having repeatedly asked her politlely to stop kicking. This went on for the whole length of the movie!! When they departed from their seats, they looked at the girl's parents who sat either side of the girl, half assuming that they would at least make an attempt to apologize. But then you can't expect the wrong parents to breed the right kid. The two stood there seemingly oblivious to what happened right beside them. Bad blood stays in the family.

Then last night, mum and dad had dinner in Time Square with a couple of their friends. While waiting for their turn for the table, a teenager wearing an "Indian Piggies" jacket, yellow-rim glasses with dyed-yellow hair walked straight into dad from behind and knocked his iPhone off his hand on to the floor. The guy kept walking with his girlfriend with a pony tail glancing back. Not bother even to utter a word of sorry. They went straight to the counter to get their place in the queue. While waiting for the table, dad just kept staring at them and they would just look away avoiding eye contacts. Cannot even imagine what their parents would be like.

These incidents are of course nothing new and probably a by-product of the modern day Hong Kong education, or the lack of it some might say. This blog title, "Know Thyself", is an Ancient Greek Aphorism promoting the ideal of understanding oneself and by extension understanding of others. One effective way to see more clearly is in the eyes of outsiders. "Concierge" is a free magazine in Japanese distributed in Citysuper among many places. The October issue was about knowing Hong Kong people in the eyes of Japanese. There were some funny and insightful observations worth sharing here in another entry.