You make the weekly drive to the supermarket. As you debate which packet of dumplings to purchase you can’t help but notice the nutritional label has been covered up again by a modified label. On closer inspection, the labels of all your groceries have been covered, even down to the toilet paper. The labels are in a script you will not understand. You dare not look beneath them.

Another residential project starts work in the area. They were sparse at first, but towers now loom over your small apartment complex. You can’t help but feel as if they are getting closer every night. At night, red lights appear in random windows in strange patterns.

The harbour is getting narrower. You can feel the ocean getting restless as trucks pour sand into the depths. Soon the seas will be the ones to reclaim.

You wake up to the sound of typhonic rain. The roads are barren of pedestrians. The unrelenting torrent of water fills the drains, forcing leaves, garbage, sodden photographs of your birth up from beneath the ground. The earth swallows them back up as the rain subsides, letting people roam the streets once more.

The Observatory’s air pollution index reads a negative number today. You stay inside and wait for the air to return.

Some people name their children strange things. Apple Chan. Candy Wong. Fanny Pang. Your new coworker raises no suspicion when they begin to refer to themselves by your name. You cannot remember yours.

The family of expatriates your grand-aunt always calls gwailo are looking more transparent today than usual.

You take the minibus from Mong Kok. The Octopus meter beeps as passengers board, rhythmically and without stopping. You look up as the bus remains at the stop for far longer than it should. You see yourself holding your Octopus and standing at the meter, which has been replaced with a heart rate monitor. You cannot remember the last time you refilled your card.