See You Next Tuesday

Who knew the first time I was called a "cxnt" would happen in Hong Kong? Although its Cantonese equivalent is commonly used as a curse word among ma-lud-los and teenagers, this English word is simply unheard of among the Chinese population. (Except for those cases where people mispronounce words like "account" in phrases like "Everybody needs account.")

Surely, I wasn’t being called “account”. A seemingly well-educated young Chinese man wearing suffocating cologne yelled “cxnt” in my ear in perfect American English, along with “fxcking bxtch” and something along the line of “If you don’t leave by the end of this movie I’ll send you to a fxcking morgue.” His bursting out was a clear indication that he was well aware that his talking (not whispering) was too loud and that his turning The Banquet into a Q&A session with his girlfriend was annoying the hell out of the rest of us. He just didn’t expect anyone to actually speak up and tell him, the almighty king, to keep it down.

Is this Hong Kong? I’ve come across too many rude people (not discourteous, but so outrageously rude it leaves me in disbelief) in the past few months to believe there’s still hope. It’s almost embarrassing to be part of this city.