LAST ORDERS AT THE FCC There was no champagne countdown at midnight, just a group of friends taking a moment from partying to sit round a television, and watch the flag-swapping.
'It's so much smaller than the Chinese flag,' Terry squealed, as his bauhinia flag was raised officially for the first time. 'Watch this,' a mother urged her seven-year-old, shaking him awake.
I looked around at the group: male and female, children and adult, local Chinese, overseas Chinese, expatriates, visitors. Most of us ready to shiver, yet somehow still feeling as if reality had not quite touched us on the shoulder.
After Prince Charles and the Pattens had left the Convention Centre, many of us escaped the moronic TVB commentary and rushed to the roof of the Hankow Centre. We watched the Britannia pull away across the water.
Earlier, we had seen the Tamar ceremony and fireworks (how inspired to have apple-shaped red and green fireworks during the William Tell overture) from the 13th floor of Hutchison House.
And much later, after a short stop at Statue Square at 2am to watch camera crews interviewing drunken revellers about their political views, the end of the evening was spent in the Foreign Correspondent's Club.
At 3am it was crowded and noisy: some people were sleeping at the tables. 'I saw it all,' one excited journalist said. 'Tamar, Britannia leaving, the PLA coming in,' he ticked off happily.