Creative Writing - Semester 1

Because we lived on a island, all the roads occupied the narrow band mountain and sea, and there were two ways to get anywhere. Usually that meant a short way and a long way, except when one was unluckily enough to be as far away as possible from his or her destination. The way I took to the local primary school was the long way. That was even though the classes were always on Saturday mornings. I left home early, to catch an early bus to a busy station where I could catch an early train to a desolate station. We met at Meeting Point C of Chai Wan station, the last stop of the yellow line, which I never took except to get to HKUGA. I never learnt what the school’s name actually stood for, but that would never strike me as odd. In a place where in the local language each character is a word, a fondness for acronyms is universal. Even the country’s name did not escape that fondness: HK, SAR of PRC was infinitely more common than Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China.

I never figured out my reason until the program was over.

stop in

And they did.

accommodate a sumo wrestler, or two Americans. Maybe three Frenchmen.

I had managed to waste four minutes getting to the Room 412

You always hear stories about how doctors told some celebrity or other that they would not live past five years old, that they would never sing again, that they would never walk again. I guess they fixed that, because they were spot on about Grandma.

My phone had been confiscated earlier that morning, and I only got it back after school and after standing in line to the principal’s office. She was the slow deliberate kind with the long emphatic pauses in her speech. Great for oration, sure, but not very efficient for someone who needs to talk to a couple dozen students each day. I considered making a run for it; I knew where they kept the phones. Everyone did, anyway. She didn’t know how to turn them off, so the other students make sure to call them and let them ring until their batteries died. Choosing one’s ringtone was less a personal choice and more a strategical battle decision in that war. In any case, I had to go in and explain to her the entire situation before getting my phone back. She tried to keep on the cold mask of lawmakers and law enforcers, but it slipped a couple of times, especially certain words. Hospital, cancer, dying. At times it was like she wanted to tell me something, offer one of her stories in return.

within my head