two more weeks

In exactly two weeks' time, I will stop writing for the Post. It 's not so much time for an eulogy but more about uncertainties.
Back to London I go to pursue something that I started almost three years ago. However much I have gained and learnt during my stint as a journalist, the decision to stay in Hong Kong in the summer of 2009 still feels like the greatest mistake of my life that has set me back.
Whether it was really a mistake hinges on my next job offer, at least in a simplistic way.
The past year or so was full of confusion and indecisiveness. The decision that I finally settled with is probably the best, and definitely the hardest. I hope I am not too naive to think that it will pay off when it may not.

Hong Kong is fiercely commercial. Money buys you happiness, full stop. Girls learn to be gold diggers ; old people who can hardly stand up straight scavange cardboard scraps for a living; people of all ages line up for hours to trade iPhones and ipads for quick bucks ; and now the retail chain that trades secondhand luxury products racked up the biggest IPO in the city's history, or something insane along those lines. Worst yet, the biggest selling tabloid newspaper in the city now routinely churns out articles promoting the worst traits of typical young adults of the city - not just being superficial but believing that it's the only way to be.

It has been demotivating to be on a blue collar wage. In the absence of good healthcare, it's damn scary to think that if I may be in a situation where I just don't have the money and die from otherwise treatable illnesses. It makes me wonder if I have been so naive all my life to not aim to sell my soul and make lots of money.

But then today, I saw through a court case where a men who, possibly suffering from untreated schizophrenia, shook his father and accidentally killed him because the old man bumped his head on something. The man was the primary carer of the old man, and was happy to look after him. But the family refused to send the old man to a nursing home so that they would not lose their source of income : the father 's disability allowance. The two men and the old man's wife just lived together in a shoe box until the incident. This kind of things is worth fighting for, and this is where society has failed us.

It's a very sad case. I was just glad to be in the courtroom so that I could put things about life in perspective.