Living in the MTR

The MTR stations in Hong Kong are never just an MTR station. Often, they are part of a much larger mega-mall complex. Or they might have a 40-story housing complex built above them. In the very least, every MTR station has several shops inside.

Our Shek Mun station is just such an MTR station. No mega-mall. No high-rise. Just a 7-Eleven (of course), a couple of ATMs, and a mom-and-pop gift engraving store. Etch your name and anniversary date on a silver plate -that type of thing.

I know it’s a mom-and-pop shop because every time we walk past, we see the mom or the pop or both in the store. We have also deduced that they have one middle-school-aged daughter. How do we know? Because just about every time we walk through the station she is sitting at a computer on the opposite side of the table from her dad. Weekday. Weekend. Afternoon. Evening. It doesn’t seem to matter.

One day, I pointed out to my daughters that this girl is always sitting at her desk in the shop in the MTR. With an eleven-year-old’s penchant for logic and exactitude, Elise called me out and protested “Dad, she isn’t always there.”

I, of course, don’t like being challenged or proven wrong –in particular by eleven-year-olds I’ve spawned.

So now every time we walk through the Shek Mun MTR, I walk a few paces ahead of my family, turn to face them, and as we round the corner I declare slightly louder than necessary “Aaaaaaand, there she is.” I of course can’t actually see whether or not she is there until the moment I announce it, but I have yet to be wrong. She is always there.

I’ve been doing this about once a week for two months now and it's getting pretty obnoxious even by my standards. But no matter how many times my daughters say “Okay, okay, Dad, you are right. She is always there. We should have never contradicted you. Now please stop.” I can’t.

Your mother gets to be right all the time. I get to be right so infrequently. On the rare occasion that I do get to be right, I have to milk it for all its worth.

Girl at the Desk in the Engraving Store: We only have four months left in Hong Kong. Don’t fail me now. If one day, you are not at your little desk and I am proven wrong, I don’t think that I could eat that much crow. Is four more months so much to ask? Could you just stay put until we leave? Thanks.

-Jack

P.S. After all this endless studying, I hope you make valedictorian of your class.