Hot in the 852

Thirteen signs that the Hong Kong summer is finally on its way.

1. Longhair busts out his Che Guevara tankini and goes tanning at Deep Water Bay: the People’s Beach.
    
2. Pizza Hut launches a cooling menthol stuffed crust pizza, with Thousand Island dressing.
    
3. The DAB’s summer fundraiser features a sexy carwash. Flamboyant interior designer Stephen Hung pays $10 million for his car to be buffed by a second-tier Beijing Liaison Officer.
    
4. You are looped into an increasingly aggressive email chain to organize a junk trip, and are forced to choose sides between your divided friend group. Decide wisely—remember JunkTripGate 2013? The one that was half “The Wolf of Wall Street,” half “Lord of the Flies”? No one wants that again.
    
5. The office aircon battles begin. “Arctic Misery” or “Hell Freezes Over”? YOU DECIDE.
    
6. The Hong Kong Government has revised its “Elderly Death Watch” criteria from “Cold Weather” to “Hot Weather.”
    
7. Your ice dealer starts to push this stuff called “ice,” made of frozen water. And methamphetamine.
    
8. Hong Kong edition of Tinder renamed “Squelcher.”
    
9. Increasingly shirtless Crossfit goons roam the streets in wild, perfectly sculpted packs.
    
10. The mildew in your cupboard becomes sentient and moves in with you, but never covers its half of the rent.
     
11. You’ve started supplementing your “have you had dinner yet” building guard conversations with “Wow! It’s so hot today!” *grin inanely, desperately await lift*
     
12. Like a perspirational Spider-Man, you develop a supernatural sense of how many armpits on the train are directed straight at your face.
     
13. You find yourself looking at the spring birds who’ve returned from the migrations, and your thoughts drift to to memories of the first girl you ever kissed. Amy. You realize that wherever she is, she is not as she was when she was 15, her auburn hair radiant in the summer light; when you were also 15, and your whole life was ahead of you. That is all gone now—long gone—and you may only have what, 20 more summers? If you’re lucky. 20 more chances to relive this memory, before the long, cold nothingness. Amy, man...