Amoy Garden in Ngau Tau Kok
Lower Ngau Tau Kok Estate
It was the bustling Ngau Tau Kok district where we lived in 1988. On my second day in Hong Kong, i.e. on the 15th July, my colleague Zita told me that she is going to take me to YCS office in Hong Kong. Zita is a tiny woman who spoke fast, walked fast and did everything in a sort of hurry like she is late for something. She was filling me in too fast that i was not getting half of what she was saying. I was more interested to observe the place I now called my new home–Hong Kong. My first bus ride was from Ngau Tau Kok to Boundary Street by bus 1A towards Star Ferry. The bus was a double deck KMB bus. There was no air-conditioning in buses in Hong Kong then. Son in the middle of the summer, it was very hot and humid inside the bus. I have a faint memory of occasional double deck buses in Colombo. But, they seized to exist many years ago in Sri Lanka.
We got of at the bus stop next to St Teresa’s Church along Prince Edward Road. She took me across the Prince Edward Road through the foot-bridge towards the church. We then walked past the church to arrive at the ground floor of the Caritas Building situated on the Boundary Street. The ground floor had the sign Caritas Lodge and some modest accommodation was available on the top floors, I think, above floor 8. We took the stairs to the 1st floor to take the elevator up to the 6th floor where the offices of HKYCS and HKFCS (Federation of Catholic Students) was situated. The first person I was introduced to was Christina Yuen, who was the president of Hong Kong YCS during that year. I also met Father Joseph Fan, the chaplain of HKYCS. They both wore thick pairs of spectacles. In fact, many I met in HK wore specs. After a brief meeting to prepare for the forthcoming Asian Session, Zita and I returned to Ngau Tau Kok. Then, I saw Lek sitting in front of a computer by one corner of the living room/office. She gave me a quick orientation on how to use this computer. Put the 5 ¼ inch floppy disk labeled boot disk to A Drive and switch on the computer. After few minutes, it would boot and and when the prompt appear on the c:, replace the boot disk with the disk labeled Wordstar and type ws to start the Word Star word processor. Drive B was to store data. There was no hard disk! It as a bit like Greek to me. But I was keen to learn and I learned quickly without trouble.
In the evening, Zita told me that she would like to take me to IYCW office. She took me to MTR, the underground metro of Hong Kong for the first time. We started our journey from Kowloon Bay Station, passing Choi Hung, Diamond Hill, Wong Tai Sing, until Lok Fu, where we got off. MTR really fascinated me as I have never been in a metro or underground mass transit railway before. Although the MTR was no longer underground at Kowloon Bay until Kwun Tong (in fact it was over ground on an elevated concrete railway bridge along that section) when you travelled towards, Yau Ma Tei direction, it soon went into dark tunnels right after Kowloon Bay. MTR was so unique that i could see from one end to the other end from within when the train was travelling on a straight line. And it was fascinating to see the train taking bends like a long metal electric worm.
After arriving in Lok Fu, Zita tried to orient me on how to get to the YCW office situated on a hill. After hiking for about 5 minutes, we arrived at the old colonial style house made of granite blocks. There I met new friends like Soosai from South India, Samydorai from Singapore and Stephan from Australia. Soosai was a dark man with a dark mustache who spoke with thick South Indian Tamil accent. Samy was also Tamil origin, but was from Singapore and was told, had a beard and wore round spectacles. Soon after we arrived he and Zita engaged in an argument and I then realized this Samy person is not an easy person to get along with. He was brash and irreverent. Stephan, was a short and relatively quiet white man from Australia, who was always sitting in front of the computer. Soon it was dinner time and we all, together with some Chinese YCW members, walked to infamous Kowloon City to have lunch. There was a kind of Dai Pai Dong type simple restaurant where there was circular table and stools around it. There was a big metal cup in the middle filled with plastic chopsticks. Someone ordered food and they arrived in a few minutes. I do not remember exactly all the dishes but one was prawn fried with eggs. For me, this was the first time I used chopsticks. They told me how to hold them but I continuously failed to any food between my chopsticks. They were kind to serve some food on my rice bowl and I struggled and managed to eat using plastic Chinese spoon. I enjoyed the food, but not the chopsticks. But I knew that if I have to survive in this new city, there is no way without knowing how to use chopsticks.
Later on, in around 1992/1993 I would go back to Ngau Tau Kok–this was when I started studying at City Polytechnic (now City University) of Hong Kong (CPHK). Although I have been living in the area and walking pass the Lower Ngau Tau Kok estate, I have never been inside. At the CPHK I got to know a group of life-long friends (I should write a different section to write about that very important period of my life). One of them was Cliff/Rix who actually lived with his mother and brothers at the Ngau Tau Kok Estate. I would go there often, few hours before handing in assignments to work with Rix to prepare them, print them, have a quick dinner at the small shop which sold amazing yet simple Cheng Fan–steam rice in metal pots, go to Kowloon Bay MTR to head towards Kowloon Tong.