Chapter 95

During this time of limbo, I picked up a habit of jogging as much as I could. My toe had healed in the last week and now that it was better, I intended to push running since there wasn’t much else to do. I ran twice a day. Once in the morning and once around the evening. I only did around 5 km each time, which was a route of just going up and down the HK harbor from my student residence. It was a nice view and the temperature of 19-20 degrees was gentle as well. Aside from that, I spent a lot of my time just hanging out in my dorm and chatting with my roommate….Well…Sort of chatting with my roommate. 

In truth we didn’t actually get that much conversation going because around the middle of the first week of class closures, his American school recalled him. The American University called him early in the morning and told him to pack all his stuff. Then, an unmarked van came to the front door of our student residence and picked him up. No more than 2 hours later, he was on a plane ride to the US. From my perspective, I had gone to sleep as a roommate and woke up as a solo resident. I would’ve thought the police raided us and took him had he not sent me a message on FB telling me the entire situation afterwards. 

I kind of wished that the Waterloo coordinators showed us they cared like the American university. Instead, after a whole bunch of back and forth, I came to the conclusion that Waterloo had the mindset of “We aren’t going to lift a single finger to help until the PolyU officially announces something.” 

The argument could be made that maybe Waterloo thought PolyU would reopen again. But to ignore those who are in HK and even our supervisors was kind of a badly mannered way of going about it. Our HK supervisors had actually told Waterloo that it was imminent that PolyU would be closing its doors for the rest of the term but even then, Waterloo refused to look ahead. They said that the school was officially closed from the 11th until the 17th, so let’s just wait and see. 

While Waterloo was still awaiting an announcement, I looked at my options for the time being. Being in limbo, I could consider moving around a bit. I mean, all I was doing in HK right now was running after all. Not only was it not productive, it was still very close to the protests. As I saw it, I had 3 options. 

Option 1: Just stay in HK.

• Pro: If the clinic does open up again. We’ll be good to pick it up right where we left off.
• Con: The student residences seem to get more dangerous every day. 

Option 2: Leave for Canada

• Pro: Safety from protests
• Con: Not sanctioned by Waterloo as no official announcement was made yet about HK’s PolyU. Uncertainty of placement when back in Canada. Furthermore, if the clinic reopens, I will have to pay for another plane ticket back.

Option 3: Mini Vacation in Asia?

• Pro: Safety from protests. Should school open again, I can fly back for cheap (travel between Asian countries much cheaper than between North America’s). Getting more use of my Hong Kong trip should the school officially close. 
• Con: It is frowned upon by Waterloo Clerkship Coordinators.

Now, if you look at it the way I presented it, it seems like a no brainer. “Just GTFO of HK and go travel. You can use your time better!”. This is a convincing argument. However, the Waterloo Coordinators didn’t like it when I first brought it up to them. Their reasoning? They didn’t like the idea of students taking vacations during their clerkships even if the clinic is closed.

So anyhow, I started planning a mini vacation to Asia.

Officially, the school was announced to be closed from November 11th until November 17th (2 announcements stating closure for November 11th-14th and then another one about November 14th to 17th). On the off chance there was news, it would likely come towards the end of that window of time. That is to say, if I waited until the end of the Nov 14-17th period, I would have the most amount of information as to whether the school would reopen again or not. With that in mind, I planned to buy my plane ticket around the night of November 15th, the Friday night before the end stretch weekend of the official closure dates. 

This has the added benefit that it would be after a floor party that was planned by our student residence supervisor. That was scheduled to be on November 14th and it would be a chance for me to ask my fellow international students what their plans were in case they had a better option in mind. 

As for where to go? I really wasn’t sure. The other Canadian classmates I had made plans to go to Singapore because they had family there but going to Singapore was kind of an expensive plane ticket. If we were to go on price alone, the cheapest ticket by far was for Vietnam. Though I didn’t particularly enjoy the idea of going to Vietnam alone. 

It may seem like I was doing a lot of planning and in truth, that was because I really was. I mean what else was I supposed to do other than research about what the next steps were? I was in HK and locked out of a clinic with a slew of questions Waterloo refused to answer. I had to find all the answers I wanted myself. Now, thinking back, while it seemed frustrating, I did get all the answers I was hoping for. 

Are there clinical sites available if I go to Canada? After asking my classmates since Waterloo refused to look into this, it looked like the answer was no.

Can I share a site or go to another clinic I know and ask them to compromise so that I can still finish my hours? No. Even with the insistence of my Toronto clinic supervisor, Waterloo was not willing to compromise anything.

This was all very frustrating but to be honest, I wasn’t really angry with Waterloo. I mean. They were kind of just giving a hard by-the-book approach to everything. They weren’t giving us any special preferential treatment just because we were in what some would call a “war zone”. That is cruel. Yes. But it was fair in their eyes. Despite the fact that it just looked lazy. 

But my frustrations wouldn’t stay as just frustrations as we closed in on the floor party. This is because, a few hours prior to the floor party, the final announcement from PolyU came out. PolyU was officially closed for the rest of the term. 

The internship at PolyU was over. 

The floor party still happened though it had a bit of a surreal feel to it. Some students were wondering how they were going to get their course credits now that the term ended prematurely. Others were planning their trips home and looking up flights. The Canadians sent email after email telling Waterloo the updated situation and Waterloo said, “Stay put! We’ll work out something! We’ll get started looking for places for you to complete your hours! Also, let’s make a call today to chat about how things are going!”

This pissed me off. You’ll start looking? We’ve been telling you to start looking for a week and a half now. You’ll start looking now? Really? I knew that Waterloo had no placements to give. I also knew that they would not be able to find new placements if they started looking now. With only a month or so left of the term. This was not going to work. I was most pissed that I knew all of this as facts because I had asked around and that I didn’t just hear this directly from Waterloo. Why not just tell us things as is? Don’t we have enough uncertainty here in HK already? 

In an ideal world. The minute the school shut down the first time, our Waterloo Clerkship Coordinators would start to look for sites that can accommodate us and get them ready. Then, if and when the ball dropped and those sites had to be used, we would fly directly from HK to our new locations. Not only would this save us on clinical days lost, the students involved can also save on costs by just paying for one flight directly from HK to our new clinic. Instead we’d been ordered to fly back to Canada (wherever) then await orders. Should a new clinic become available, we would fly out again to that location. All flights to be paid at our own expense of course. All of that and we aren’t even addressing the biggest elephant in the room which is to find a place to live at our clinical rotation sites. 

I’ve had it with our Canadian supervisors and their shortcomings. Instead of calling the supervisors in Canada with my fellow Canadians, I decided on something else. I did some Greet and Meet at the floor party and out of the 20 students or so that attended, I found out that a group of Australian students (and a few Koreans), had plans that night to check out the cityscape on an open terrace on the roof TOP of a local condominium. 

They described it as the perfect time that night because the police were reported to be besieging our school and therefore, won’t really bother our subtle trespassing. Hearing about that, I decided to join them. This sounds like one of those “nights to remember” kind of deals and honestly, seeing as how my journey to HK was about to come to an end, I needed it. 

After the floor party, our little band of recently acquainted Asians of different flavors got together and headed out. The T-shirt-weather of HK in November accompanied our stroll along the alleyways as we made turn after turn into tighter and tighter passages. Eventually. We found ourselves standing in front of the entrance to a garage. The main Aussie leading us turned around and signaled us to wait. Only a few minutes later, a car pulled up and the garage door began to open. As it drove in and then out of view, we snuck in before the doors closed completely. 

The sketchiest part of the night being over, we followed to take the elevator to the 60 floor, the highest of the complex. From there, we trekked a few more flights of stairs until we hit an unlocked door. On the other side? Colder air and open space as far as I can see. We were above most of the other buildings around us. While this was already enjoyable, we didn’t settle down here. The opening was a really nice terrace but we weren’t at the highest peak of the building yet. Accessed only by ladders, there was a cubic structure in the middle of the clearing which housed. This cubic structure had a door that let out a low murmur of what sounded like a generator on the inside. We weren’t going to break in though. We just wanted to be on top of it. There, we would be at the highest peak of the building. Without any walls to intercept our views. With that, we climbed. 

At this plateau, my head got a little woozy. I’ve lived in a condo pretty much most of my life and have also visited countless skyviews before. But even then, this was something else. I think it was mainly because on this rooftop, there were barely any railings to hold us all together. I mean, sure, there were various levels so that even if you fell from the plateau we were on, you’d just fall 1 level to the initial area but even then, the lack of walls around us gave the illusion of standing on a cliff’s edge.

After a little adapting though, you get pulled out of it. Then, you’re left with a feeling of being on top of the world. That night, we also had the benefit of a perfectly clear sky with no clouds. Under the brightly lit moon, we looked at the city and enjoyed the silence that was there. All the protests were far from our district. There were no sounds of cars. Even the highways were deserted. Hong Kong, known normally to be a bustling urban crawl, was now a ghost town where we stood. 

Once our little gang of internationals were done with taking all the photos our phones can store, we sat down and just talked about how strange it was to be where we are. Some of us had been in HK for over a year, other’s for just the term. For me, I landed just under 2 weeks ago. Aaannnddd now we’re outta there. I needed a drink. Though we did have alcohol, I eventually decided against it since a drunken state may not be the best decision when this high up. 

After an hour or so of examining the beauty of an empty HK, we moved to one last stop for the night. We headed to the Hung Hom Promenade. Being adjacent to the harbor, millions of shiny glistening LEDs sparkled the water and filled the area in a light glimmer. We took out our booze and drank it openly since there were no law enforcement agents around, they were preoccupied. 

To be honest, most of us didn’t really drink that much. Tomorrow, we’d all have to get ready to leave HK and with all the police closing in near our residences, it was not the time to get a hangover. Luckily, someone had brought along a portable Mahjong board to the harbor, which became an instant hit with our group. I was kind of sad to see how well I got along with everyone there. I mean, this one evening is all I would get with them. Despite how special it felt, I would likely never see these people ever again.