In Vancouver
It was early in the summer, so it was still be bright outside. After sending a frisbee flying into the air, I stood and marvelled at the orange-red that the sunset painted into the sky. A dog ran hurriedly by with a ball in its mouth and dropped it when he approached his owner. He raised his nose and gazed at the owner expectantly. When I sat down the grass felt warm against the cooling air. I looked at my watch and was surprised by how late it was. I couldn't help but smile at the extra hours that we stole from Daylight Saving Time. Then I thought about all the dark hours we'd have to spend in the winter in return. "Oh well," I thought, "make good use of the time while I can and stock up on this great summer feeling so I can last through the winter months. Summer will be back again before I know it." (Though of course, with the way time speeds by, the summer months will be gone again before I know..)
In Zambia
The sun had set almost 4 hours ago and darkness had slowly swallowed the village we lived in. There was little light save the fires that some people have started near their houses. Some children had a fire to themselves. On the horizon, you can see the the faint glow of lights from the cities nearby, like transparent domes that protected the city dwellers from the pitch blackness that engulfed the countryside. Nkwazi, though only a 10 minute drive from the second largest city in Zambia, had no electricity. By this time the team had retired into our house. Exhausted from a day's work, most of us were already sound asleep. A few of us stayed up with their headlights or flash lights on to scribble down our experiences throughout the day in our journals. I lied in my sleeping bag on the cement floor, sandwiched between two other teammates. Feeling satisfied and content, I drifted into sleep to the soft chirping of the crickets.
In Edinburgh
I was back in my hostel, ready to go to bed. I looked out the window and the sun had no signs of setting anytime soon. It seemed a little too early for bed, but I was already tired. Still on Zambia schedule perhaps, asleep by 10pm and up by 6am. I talked to an Australian lady who stayed in the same room. She was in London for her son's wedding and thought she'd come up to Scotland for a bit. She already went through Glasgow, Stirling and the Lochs. I was insanely jealous because I saw pictures of the Lochs and Scottish highlands earlier that day. Though the truth was I was still hung up on one place, and if I could go anywhere at that moment, I wouldn't hesitate for a second and make my way there.
In Budapest
My buddy and I were sitting at one of the streetside cafes enjoying our last bit of dinner. We had spent the better part of the day roaming around the city. We forgot to keep track of time and only realised that it was almost 9pm when we decided that we had enough for the day as the street lamps came on. At the same moment we also realised how hungry we were. We sat down at a restaurant near the hostel and inhaled our dinner. We felt that the waiter wasn't particularly pleased by our presence so we decided to go somewhere else. We wandered the streets in the area. All the shops were closed so we stopped at another cafe. We sat down and ordered a couple of drinks. We used to be best friends but kind of drifted apart in the past few years. We were in different places and lived different lives. We started to fill each other in with the ups and downs of our separate lives, the lives where one was completely missing from the other's.
In Hong Kong
"Dear customers of Page One, our store is about to close in 10 minutes.." My sister found me in the Biographies section, where I was flipping through a book that was a collection of speeches that Martin Luther King Jr. made. "Let's go pay for the book now." We went to the line. The cashier started to process our purchase before the receipt of the customer's purchase before us was even printed. "Next please," she said, when ours was being printed. We went out into the streets and I was surprised by how many people there were. It was busier than streets in Downtown Vancouver in the middle of the day. Some shops were closing, though most were still open. After we got home, my sister received a call from a salesperson at Esprit. She called to tell her that they didn't have the pair of pants that she wanted in stock anywhere else either. I looked at my watch and saw that it was 10:35pm. Only in Hong Kong.