Airport Jail to 7-Day Quarantine (Part 1)

So let me start off this impulse-driven blog by saying this; I’ve always been quite a private person and the last thing I like to talk about is myself. Not tryna be “mysterious” like The Weeknd when he first dropped House of Balloons and nobody knew what he looked like because he didn’t do any interviews, but I just never liked my business being out there for these online wastemans with buttsweat stains on their office chair to chat shit about. And it’s scary to think that everything on the Internet never dies like cockroach bloodlines. But at the same time, I have always had a real passion for writing - so much so that I was offered a full-ride scholarship from York University which I turned down only to be close to my grandparents in Japan (which I don’t regret one bit). And as some of you may know, I more or less write for a living whether it’s copywriting or writing raps. AND I’m currently in a government-mandated 7-day quarantine at Best Western and what else is there to do but push-ups, overthinking, and creative writing. So yeah… welcome to my blog? LOL yuck.

I don’t really know how to preface this because it’s gonna have no format whatsoever and it’s gonna be typed like I talk; best believe I have perfect grammar and spelling skills but they may not exist here. Fuck it, I paid $160USD for this Squarespace subscription and domain so Im’a do what I want. I’m gonna drop a sick yakisoba recipe in the middle of a political rant. I’m gonna make a list of top 10 things bartenders hate and then drop a haiku. And nobody can tell me shit about it. This post is gonna be a cross between my whole ordeal getting back into Hong Kong and a hotel review on Best Western Sai Ying Pun with all the fuckery in between. I broke it up into two parts because I’m not even sure people are gonna read this and I have a 10PM with YouTube cooking tutorials later anyway.

THIS MF ALREADY LET ME OUT THE CITY. Okay let’s begin there. According to Carrie, COVID only came out to wreak havoc after 6PM which meant evening dine-in and drinking was non-existent and legitimately illegal in the city of Hong Kong. To a bartender who literally makes a living off of nights, this is equivalent to Kim Kardashian never dropping a sex tape. So despite the ridiculous flight prices, the jail that you pay for on top of your taxes aka the quarantine hotel, the stacks of paperwork necessary to file for my Japanese visa, (yes, on paper I am a total foreigner from Canada) not to mention the literal 24 hour transit time, I decided to go see my mom and grandma in Japan after 2 and a half years. After much anxiety and extortion-price printer ink wasted, I was finally let out the city and I safely made it to Japan and I had a tearful, movie-like reunion with my mom at the airport. Let me repeat - I WAS FINALLY LET OUT THE CITY AND I SAFELY MADE IT TO JAPAN. 

Okay, skip my Japan trip here but just know I ate a lot of コロッケ (Japanese croquettes, google it) in various flavours such as edamame, beef curry, etc., made my grandma laugh til she cried (nobody in my family is funny.. honestly between us, they won when I was born) and had double-digit panic attacks in those crowded-ass trains. I felt like a frog in the bag of frogs at the wet market in Mong Kok. Anyway yeah. 

I reach Hong Kong AFTER BEING LET OUT THE CITY ALREADY. There’s like 10 or so COVID checkpoints and I manage to get through all of them - I was paranoid I caught Omarion a second time because on the flight my throat felt a bit itchy but all good, I pass the PCR test after getting nose-fucked by a part-time meth cook in a blue hazmat suit. I’m getting to immigration to pick up my luggage that has a 24-pack of Yebisu beer in it for the kitchen staff at Yardbird because Japanese people always bring back omiyage and I take out my HKID. Lightwork baby, I’m from this city, fuck that long-ass visitors line. Tata.

Now if you’re from HK you have two options; you can use the sick likkle automated gate ting where you slide your ID card in, scan your fingerprint then be let out into baggage claim. Back when tourism was still rampant, we used to flex on all the foreigners with that and give them a real cocky look like, “Oh, your prehistoric city doesn’t have this does it?” then skrt past their long line on some 007 shit. Or you can hand over your ID card to the immigration mans who always has a fresh fade for some reason. My ID card is cracked because one time at my friend Radha’s birthday my Filipino youngin’ Sypaul was doing mad backflips and all of us got so hyped that I threw my wallet and it did siu siu damage to my cards but that’s another story. So I go up to the counter and hand him my ID. 

He processes it and everything is fine and I’m thinking about the traffic fuckery that I’m about to experience because it’s 5:00PM, just in time for rush hour traffic at the Cross Harbour Tunnel (the cheapest tunnel to cross the harbour in Hong Kong). Then he makes a face like this mf just saw y=mx+b printed on my ID card. I still don’t think nothing of it though, because despite my hand tattoos, at the end of the day, I like cats and I cried in Toy Story 3 and I don’t have shit to be worried about. I mean what’s more wholesome than fighting all odds just go to see your mom and grandma right?

Now this mf with an unnecessarily fresh fade keeps looking at my ID like it has the Pythagorean Theorem printed on it and starts writing on a green piece of paper. Now, I got anxiety so I’m thinking, shit…. am I about to get arrested for parallel importing the beer? Is that even a thing? What do I tell my friends if I go down for such a weak ass charge? I’m praying that the immigration team likes Japanese beer at this point because as much as I love the kitchen staff at Yardbird, I’m not about to go to war with these immigration officers and they somehow plant a brick of heroin in my fannypack. I don’t even own a fannypack. 

Minutes feel like hours and he making mad phone calls like he in the trader’s office in The Wolf of Wall Street. Several other unnecessarily fresh faded mfs come by and from the bits of Canto that I do understand, there is definitely a problem and it ain’t the fact that all of ‘em parted their hair in the same spot If you Google “cut from the same cloth”, these mfs gonna show up somewhere on page 11. I get pulled out of line, right in front of these adorable Japanese babies who I kept waving to on the flight; now all those waves were for nothing because their parents DEFINITELY think I’m a hand-tattooed criminal if they didn’t already. I could almost hear them whisper “I knew he was Yakuza, must be chinpira though since he got his hands tattooed.” I’m sat right where people enter baggage claim so literally all the babies that were on the plane have to see me sitting there next to a new immigration officer, looking mad shiesty like “look child, stay in school or you’ll end up like him.” SMH way to fit a stereotype. I had a scholarship to every school in Toronto ho.

This new immigration officer is looking at my ID like it’s losing Mark Six numbers and finally I get escorted past a bunch of gates into an area that I never been before in the airport and now I’m in some customs office. I’m pretty sure this is where they bring mules who just got busted with liquidised meth in Grey Goose bottles and here I am, my amateur ass still thinking I’m getting busted for a 24-pack of beer. Now this new immigration officer is looking at my ID like it’s got his taxes written on them and he’s definitely getting overcharged. I’m sat next to a photocopier and this new mf - no fade tho - is printing mad documents - MY documents - but won’t tell me what the fuck is going on. I mean, if you’re gonna photocopy a man’s visage several times I think it’s right to tell him what for. I’m here for an hour and I’m actually chillin’ though; I don’t have shit to be worried about and yay I’m ducking the rush hour. 

Then the police show up. And you know how they walk; like there’s an explosion behind them on a movie set and the director told them “Ayo, walk like a badmon, still”. 3 of them, and I’m gonna name them - Ed, Edd, and Eddy. Nah I’m playing, that’s too confusing without visual aids so I’ll call them Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Hermione is a dude btw. NOW I’m shook because the sight of police gives me PTSD (more on that, one day maybe) and the room ain’t big and I’m claustrophobic. Harry asks me in Cantonese if I know why I’m here and I said, honestly, no, not really, and then he says “You’re wanted.” NOW I know exactly what he’s talking about.