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Notes from theHong Kong Underground
 
Notes from the Hong Kong UndergroundbyMark Nairgylamian@me.com
 
ll I wanted was a little adaptor cable to connect my iPod to myfancy headphones.“Too expensive here!” said Gene, my friend and translator, yank-ing me away from a tiny boutique electronics shop window in the heart ofHong Kong. “I know where it
ʼ
s cheaper!”
Gene peppered everything he said with exclamation marks, as if bythe end of a sentence he was surprised to see me still there listening tohim.
We were in the Causeway Bay area of town, in the thick of the mostexpensive real estate and shopping in all of Asia (if you ask Hong Kong na-tives, they
ʼ
ll protest at this description and say, with strange and perversepride, it
ʼ
s the most expensive in the world). It was evening, but around us,neon signs lit up the thick, low sky with enough juice you couldn
ʼ
t really tellit was night so much as it was simply the time the lights glowed brighter.
There was a chill in the air, a strange March crispness I didn
ʼ
t thinkexisted in Hong Kong. I wasn
ʼ
t ready for it, and as I moved along with thedense crowd with my hands tucked under my crossed arms for warmth,Gene gently guided me into the Causeway Bay subway entrance.
“We
ʼ
ll go to to the Kowloon side!” he said, weaving his way throughthe crush of commuters. Gene lived in Kowloon, an area across cruiseship-laden Victoria Harbor, and he apparently knew where all the big dis-counts were.
Twenty minutes later we popped out of the Yau Ma Tei subway sta-tion and fell into old Hong Kong, with wizened men at rickety tables gam-bling on Chinese chess, narrow shops crowded against each other, and
Notes from the Hong Kong Underground 
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