Quite some time back, I had a request in reference to a harrowing experience I had in Hong Kong. Many people love this city, many more dream of coming to visit and never will. As for me I have come to dislike it very much. It is not because they drive on the wrong side of the road, or because the streets are crowded, it rains most of the time, or that it is more expensive to stay here than it is to visit London (a fellow ex-pat from Leeds attests to that one). It seems each time I come to Hong Kong it is for business, not pleasure, and I have been stranded here twice. The first time I was stranded here it was because my visa had been canceled. It seems folks in the US want its immigrant workers to return to their home country to process a work visa. Being it is International Law, the home countries whose citizens we impose these measures on are required to do the same to US Citizens. Fortunately, I had been prepared for this event. I had found adequate housing while I waited out the ten days to get a ticket back to Vegas. On this particular occasion however, I was processing my work visa, and attempted to gain my resident permit. I had spent quite a lot of time and money jumping through the hoops of a five thousand year old bureaucracy and this was the final step. Certain I would be returning to my apartment on the mainland in three days, I was carrying only a small backpack with a few things such as a long sleeved shirt and underwear, my laptop, and camera. When I found out I was stranded again, I was unprepared. I had very little money, $1,000 HK, and that was all I had to my name at the time. Because of some fashion convention in town, the cheapest place I could find to stay was $500 HK per night. I knew from the last time being stranded, it would cost about $100 HK per day to eat. Sleeping in the parks is illegal, but I did not have much choice in the matter, it was either food and subway money for a week, or two nights in a hotel with nothing to eat. On the third night I hid behind a public tennis court in Kowloon Tong, overlooking the city below while Typhoon Megi approached. The wind howled, the air filled with thunderclaps, and rain came at me sideways. I thanked God I had a long sleeved shirt to wear, the mosquitoes were eating me alive and the wind on my wet skin had begun to chill me. My spirits were badly broken, and in despair, all I could do was weep as the battery on my computer had died, as did my cell phone. I began to consider that these might be my last days on earth, and that I might, in fact die in a ditch somewhere on Hong Kong Island. I had looked earlier in the day to find some rope, there were a couple of really decent bridges just down the street, and I had calculated I would need about 18 feet of rope to tie a proper knot which would snap the atlas bone from axis bone so as to sever the cerebellum from the central nerve system. I am not a big fan of pain and suffering, and my pride would not allow me to beg. In the morning, having survived the night and a near miss with the eye of the storm as it went back out to sea, it came to me that in fact, this was not the worst night in my 52 years of miserable existence. Indeed, compared to sleeping in a fox hole up to my knees in water in 40 degree weather with a wind chill of 34, while being shot at; this had, in fact been a walk in the park. Other than being covered with mosquito bites, I was in good health. I had not even caught a cold. I know this image is terrible, but it is the best out of three shots I took during a lull in the storm, as my camera batteries then died. My hands were shaking badly from the chill and arthritic pain, and it was difficult to keep the lens clean of raindrops. I hope you enjoyed the story more than I did living through this experience.