Day 8 - Afternoon in Hong Kong

It's tough to find a place for lunch when you are wet, stinky, and look like like you've been wearing the same clothes for a week.  The first two points were true, but the third is only partially true since only my pants are the same every day.  Still, I probably looked like I hadn't changed in a week.  This rules out nice restaurants.  At the same time, I don't want cheap take-out from chain restaurants because I didn't come to the other side of the globe to eat Burger King (which is incredibly popular here for some reason.)  It took me an hour to find a place that was casual enough to let me in but still had interesting menu items.

Some sort of curry chicken with miso soup.

Let's check out that mango smoothie again.  Wow!

After lunch, I went to the train station to read my map and figure out where to go.  While sitting on the ground in a hallway, Margaret found me.  She wanted to know if I spoke english and my answering in the affirmative, I completely changed the course of my day.  Margaret wanted me to translate legal documents from Chinglish to english so she could file a lawsuit against a hospital in Hong Kong.  I wasn't really given a choice in the matter.  When I started reading the first document, she brought me hot coffee, cold water, and a grilled cheese sandwich.  She insisted that I eat and drink before starting the work for her.  I didn't want to refuse her gift, so I played with the food and drink just long enough to satisfy her.  I thought it was just a single page, but I was in for a big surprise.

She had a sad story about how her mother had died in Hong Kong due to medical malpractice and she was stuck here because she had no money for a lawyer and had to represent herself.  The task would have been simple had I had my laptop with me, but I had to write large blocks of text and then read them to her for critique.  The process was pretty intense.  After finishing, she insisted I take 100 HKD.  That is less than $15 USD.  For her, that was a staggering amount.  For me, it was almost nothing.  My hourly bill rate to clients is $175 an hour.  She got me for less than $4 an hour.  Of course, I didn't want her money and I put up weak resistance, but I knew better than to refuse a "gift" in Asia.  The guidebooks were pretty clear about graciously accepting and giving gifts.

After I finished four hours of translating, she finally led me on an adventure through the train station looking for free wifi so she could send me more documents.  Thankfully, she couldn't find any.  However, she asked for my email so she could continue using my translation services in the future.  She then told me I was so smart for being so young and she would love to have a grandson like me.

It's experiences like these that make a trip.  Sure, I lost four hours of sightseeing to spend it with a woman who could barely communicate with me.  I sat on a hard floor and was rather uncomfortable and hot for quite a while.  But when I look back in ten years, I'll remember helping someone much more than I will remember the Chinese garden I missed out on.

Here is some of my work.

What do you think of my work?

It just kept going and going...

Margaret was so thrilled to have met me.  After this post, I will check my email.  I have a feeling there will be something waiting from Margaret.