I submitted a few photos and a story to the NYTimes opinion pages on a piece they called, “Your Story of Life in High Rises”. They were seeking photos, even of the Instagram quality, that reflect life and culture in the kind of urban setting we live in.  Here’s the story that I submitted:

“How many people do you think we’re looking at?” I fingered through the six photos of our view. We lay across the mattress with hand-propped heads, looking past the device into the light addled night of our neighbourhood.

We peer across at the windows of the neighbouring building. Half of them are lit, a quarter of those with the fluorescence of paradox, and the rest more modestly. “Forty stories times two units per floor times two or three inhabitants - more if you count the dogs - and we have, maybe, a hundred-and-sixty living in a building? I don’t know. If I had to guess, we are probably viewing at least forty thousand people from here.”  

The seals on our windows are tight. When opened, the city pours in: a hundred-thousand air conditioners, cooking vents, the public buses and red taxis, and the polite coo of Hong Kong citizenry. We keep them shut because we miss the silence and open-space of Canada, but mostly it is a luxury, a moment away from Hong Kong’s bustle.