Morning in Tsim Sha Tsui

Prompted by my daughter A, I have been running in the mornings before going to work, most of the time along the waterfront in Tsim She Tsui East.  I have been averaging 40 kilometres a week, typically 20 km on Sunday, 10 km on Wednesday and then another 10 km on Friday, for a month now.  I am not sure how long I can keep it up.  If it does help me control my blood sugar, I might.    

In any case, it has enabled me to see TST in a different light.  The news stand at the pier does not carry many newspapers anymore.  People are just not buying paper newspapers anymore.   There are still a lot of things to sell.  Just not newspapers.  

In the mean time, the free newspapers are abundant.  But do people actually read them?  I know a lot of them go directly to the recycling shops.  Yet you still have to pay quite a bit to advertise in them.  Except for certain newspapers published for political purposes.  Come to think of it, perhaps most of them are.  That is why they do not care whether they are making money, or even whether people are reading them.  Their mission is simply to be able to claim that a large number are distributed.  

The trees along Haiphong Road outside of Kowloon Park are majestic.  But most people are hurrying to work, and not paying them attention.  

Canton Road is empty.  But window cleaners are already busy at work.  

So are the sweepers on the sidewalks on Nathan Road.  

So are the sidewalk cleaners and the pigeons near the bus station.  

Nathan Road is equally empty.  I was tempted to run on it, just like the days of the Standard Chartered Marathon.  

So much cardboard had been collected. 

As well as foam boxes.  I heard that they are just as hard as plastic to decompose.  Why was that lady picking her way around them?

Along the Hong Hum waterfront, several people were swimming.  

I couldn’t help thinking back several years ago, on a Saturday morning, when I saw one of them drown at that same spot.  I hope it does not happen again.