Renovation Horrors
“Are you awake?”
I don’t get too many texts like this at 2:30 in the morning, and if I do, I usually ignore them. But this one was from my roommate who was just one room over from me.
“Yes.” I texted back.
“What does that sound like to you?”
I tuned into the noise I had been trying to tune out (my nocturnal, jazz-loving neighbor had trained me well).
“Sounds like hammering.”
“It’s driving me crazy! I can’t fall asleep with all that banging.”
“Yeah, it’s kind of a strange time to do construction. Where are they anyway? On the roof?”
This exchange went on a few nights ago. Roomie and I debated whether we should call the security guard and then realized we didn’t have the security guard’s number and then decided we didn’t care enough to go down twenty-some floors to find them. They stopped hammering. At some point in the night.
Renovation. This is one thing that you can never avoid in Hong Kong. It will find you. It will follow you. You will never be able to escape. Even as I type this, I can hear the rumbling of heavy machinery, but at least there are a few floors in between us to cushion the sound.
When I first moved to Hong Kong, exhausted from my college senior year and finals week, I was looking forward to sleeping in and resting up while I job hunted. The workmen renovating the flat underneath my bedroom had other ideas. After I couldn’t take my vibrating bed any longer, I would jump out of bed and try to be productive while listening to the irritating roar of (what I assume was) a jackhammer.
Later when I moved out of my parents’ and into a studio, I was very pleased with the peace and quiet of my new living space, only occasionally punctuated by fire truck sirens, drunken singing, and the shouts of my warring neighbors (thin walls). And then. I came home from work to see the tell-tale bamboo piled up in front of my building’s entrance. Renovation was coming, and it was coming to my building.
They started on the lobby. If this had been a nicer (by this I mean richer) building, most of the residents would have gone to hotels to wait for the literal dust to settle. But we contented ourselves with tramping through a construction site every day to get to our lift. I got hopeful when it seemed like they were close to finishing the lobby and the exterior. Maybe life would get back to normal again?
That was not to be. One afternoon, after getting off a bit early, I was riding the lift up to my floor, looking forward to getting home. When the lift doors swung open, I was blinded by gray smoke. For a split second, I thought there was a fire, but when it hit my nose I realized the “smoke” was actually cement dust. Choking, I pulled my shirt up over my nose and squinted my eyes shut. I slowly walked into the gray, feeling my way with my feet. I could hear a jackhammer, and it was near. As I neared my door, the jackhammer fell silent, and the dust cleared enough to see the door to the small hall I shared with a few neighbors. A shirtless workmen stood next to the door holding a jackhammer. Sure enough, he was making a giant hole in the wall. I gingerly climbed over the pile of cement chunks and rubble to get to my door, and he nodded sheepishly at me as I squeezed into the hall. My other neighbors had already seran wrapped their doors. I groaned as I opened the door. A thin layer of gray dust covered everything.
Welcome home.
(To be continued)
I don’t get too many texts like this at 2:30 in the morning, and if I do, I usually ignore them. But this one was from my roommate who was just one room over from me.
“Yes.” I texted back.
“What does that sound like to you?”
I tuned into the noise I had been trying to tune out (my nocturnal, jazz-loving neighbor had trained me well).
“Sounds like hammering.”
“It’s driving me crazy! I can’t fall asleep with all that banging.”
“Yeah, it’s kind of a strange time to do construction. Where are they anyway? On the roof?”
This exchange went on a few nights ago. Roomie and I debated whether we should call the security guard and then realized we didn’t have the security guard’s number and then decided we didn’t care enough to go down twenty-some floors to find them. They stopped hammering. At some point in the night.
Renovation. This is one thing that you can never avoid in Hong Kong. It will find you. It will follow you. You will never be able to escape. Even as I type this, I can hear the rumbling of heavy machinery, but at least there are a few floors in between us to cushion the sound.
When I first moved to Hong Kong, exhausted from my college senior year and finals week, I was looking forward to sleeping in and resting up while I job hunted. The workmen renovating the flat underneath my bedroom had other ideas. After I couldn’t take my vibrating bed any longer, I would jump out of bed and try to be productive while listening to the irritating roar of (what I assume was) a jackhammer.
Later when I moved out of my parents’ and into a studio, I was very pleased with the peace and quiet of my new living space, only occasionally punctuated by fire truck sirens, drunken singing, and the shouts of my warring neighbors (thin walls). And then. I came home from work to see the tell-tale bamboo piled up in front of my building’s entrance. Renovation was coming, and it was coming to my building.
They started on the lobby. If this had been a nicer (by this I mean richer) building, most of the residents would have gone to hotels to wait for the literal dust to settle. But we contented ourselves with tramping through a construction site every day to get to our lift. I got hopeful when it seemed like they were close to finishing the lobby and the exterior. Maybe life would get back to normal again?
That was not to be. One afternoon, after getting off a bit early, I was riding the lift up to my floor, looking forward to getting home. When the lift doors swung open, I was blinded by gray smoke. For a split second, I thought there was a fire, but when it hit my nose I realized the “smoke” was actually cement dust. Choking, I pulled my shirt up over my nose and squinted my eyes shut. I slowly walked into the gray, feeling my way with my feet. I could hear a jackhammer, and it was near. As I neared my door, the jackhammer fell silent, and the dust cleared enough to see the door to the small hall I shared with a few neighbors. A shirtless workmen stood next to the door holding a jackhammer. Sure enough, he was making a giant hole in the wall. I gingerly climbed over the pile of cement chunks and rubble to get to my door, and he nodded sheepishly at me as I squeezed into the hall. My other neighbors had already seran wrapped their doors. I groaned as I opened the door. A thin layer of gray dust covered everything.
Welcome home.
(To be continued)
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