If a week is already too long in politics, 10 years is an infinity. There is a Chinese saying that people and events go through changes several times in a decade. That could not be a more apt description of Hong Kong since the handover.
Who would have anticipated that, having witnessed a million people take to the streets in 1989 in the heyday of the prodemocracy movement in China, we would once again see hundreds of thousands of people joining a march?
Would anyone have been believed had they predicted the first chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, would have to stand down halfway through his second term, and that one of the reasons would be a sore leg?
And who could have imagined the government would find itself on the verge of scrapping the Hong Kong dollar's peg to the greenback in 2002, as Mr Tung revealed last week had been the case?
When Antony Leung Kam-chung quit a well-paid banking job to join the government in 2001, he was widely seen as a future chief executive.
Who would have thought he would have to step down in disgrace two years later because of his purchase of a luxury car at the wrong time?
The blitz of media reports over the past few weeks about the headline events and the movers and shakers of the past 10 years has served as a grim reminder of the highs and lows, the volatilities and the absurdities Hong Kong people have witnessed since the sovereignty changeover.
