Seb's Postcard from Home

11th June 2020

The past few months have certainly been strange. I arrived in Hong Kong after 14 hours of transit. The moment I stepped off the plane, I dreaded what was to come – weeks upon weeks of being holed up in a flat constantly running the aircon as the hot, humid summer of Hong Kong began to set in. However, I was delighted to find out that this was not the case. Hong Kong has relaxed most of its quarantine measures allowing me to make daring expeditions into the outside world.

During my escapades into the great outdoors, I have taken up a quest to walk the whole Hong Kong Trail in one day. The trail is 50km long and takes you across Hong Kong’s main island. At the moment, I have managed to fit in about a quarter of the hike in 2 hours. This bodes well for my aspirations; however, I would have to get up quite early in the morning and then finish the trail in darkness. Hopefully by the end of quarantine I will have done the whole 50km in a day; that is if I do not mysteriously disappear into Hong Kong’s wilderness never to be found again.

At home I have enjoyed reading books and playing video games (I am a cliché). For those interested, I am currently reading Letters From An Astrophysicist by Neil deGrasse Tyson, and I am enjoying escaping to my own deserted island in Nintendo’s new hit game Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I have whiled away many hours in my bedroom, sitting and staring at a character take part in a virtual copy of the stock market, where you invest money into turnips - aptly named the ‘stalk’ market. Under normal circumstances I would not find something like that funny, but I have found that spending so much time in the apartment does something to your sense of humour.

I really miss sleeping in a gallery (a dorm room with three others). Sometimes I lie awake in bed waiting to hear shouts and laughter from the room next to me or to hear the shuffling of feet as someone blindly makes their way to the bathroom. Weirdly I now find it hard to sleep without the sounds of the boarding house. What I really miss about Winchester are the little things like that. I look forward to returning to see friends and teachers alike, whenever that may be…

Stay safe, and hopefully we will all be back together soon.