Imagine getting on the subway at 5:30 p.m. on a rainy Sunday afternoon to find that your particular car has been invaded by a petite brunette singing and playing the ukulele to accompany her long-legged friend, swinging around one of the poles in a way that can only be described as “acrobatic.” The rest of their companions are acting as back-up dancers, clapping their hands and swaying to the melody in between sips of beer. The final member of this drunken sideshow emerges from the crowd of bystanders and comes towards you, smiling. It’s only when you see the Jameson promotional hat in his outstretched hand filled with change that you realize this MTR circus act isn’t a free show at all.
I know what you’re thinking.
The answer is no, I have not resorted to busking with fellow starving, creative types out of desperation to keep my apartment, put food on my plate or feed a secret crack addiction that will eventually make me homeless. Surprisingly, life as a semi-professional temp can still get enough bitches to pay my bills. In cash.
My participation in this malarkey actually had nothing to do with chasin’ that sweet paper. It was for a photo and video scavenger hunt around Hong Kong, all to celebrate the birthday of my BFFL (bro for freaking life) Steve’s girlfriend, Hayley.
I haven’t known Hayley too long but she is seriously one of the coolest, most interesting chicks I’ve met. She’s lived in Prague and Barcelona. She plays the banjo and the ukulele. She is also the only other person I’ve met who knows of and likes Throwing Muses, a band I’ve been into since I heard them on the soundtrack of the film Empire Records in ’95. Long story short: If some random f**k-up in the karmic synergy that brought these two kick-ass kids together ever does occur and they break up, I will be utterly devastated.
For her birthday this year, Hayley decided that she wanted to celebrate getting older by spending the entire day acting like kids again. The game plan? A city-wide scavenger hunt. We gathered on the rooftop of the IFC (International Finance Centre, which you probably recognize from The Dark Knight) on Sunday afternoon, armed with umbrellas to brave the crazy ass rain. Names were drawn out of a hat to determine teams. Hayley passed out lists of items and activities—each worth several hundred points, depending on the task—that we had to photograph or take videos of in the next four hours. Bonus points would be awarded if a different beer was included in every photo. Each person in the group was also asked to write down a specific photo challenge on a piece of paper, fold it up and place it in the hat. These bonus challenges were picked and assigned randomly, at three per team. One of our team members decided that writing down “playing cards with domestic helpers” would be a perfect way to throw the competition, since it would be awkward to interrupt a group of women (out of the hordes who gather around Hong Kong’s Central district every Sunday) on their day off to ask if you could be photographed with them. Guess who got that challenge.
This is how our team—which we early on christened “Team Cumpleaños” because Hayley was with us—ended up giving the subway passengers headed towards Chai Wan what was probably the most exciting five-minute train ride of their lives. We even made 30 bucks.
That one was my favorite, but there were a few other challenges worth mentioning, which I think we totally nailed the shit out of:
• “Is this seat taken?” I asked a man sitting next to an empty armchair at a Pacific Coffee in Sheung Wan. He said yes, he was waiting for a friend.
“We’ll only be a minute,” said Hayley, as all seven of us proceeded to squeeze into the chair, sitting on top on each other. Hayley then handed the stranger her camera and asked if he could take our picture. He was a good sport about it.
• Three of us each had to cradle a smelly, spiky-as-shit durian in our arms.
• “I have a strange favor to ask you…” Rick said to two guys on their way to the bank. “Would you dance the cancan with us while we take a picture?” They said they were in a hurry, but obliged anyway.
• Jack had to take a bite out of a raw onion as if it were an apple.
• The entire group had to pose with a public sculpture, which turned out to be an electric blue replica of Michelangelo’s “David” (like if he had a lovechild with Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen) we found outside an art gallery in SoHo.
• We started to panic during the last half hour because we still hadn’t convinced a stranger to try on an item of clothing several sizes too big or too small and take a photo with us. Felicia then ran up to three American tourists (who all looked like they could bench press a mastodon) walking by, explained what we were doing, then took off her Led Zeppelin baby tee and volunteered it for one of them to try on. Rick lent her his shirt to cover up with so it wouldn’t be weird. I still think she earned us extra points for that.
When time was up, we all congregated back in Central to share photos, videos and stories. At that point though, I think people weren’t so much interested in tallying up the points. Hayley decided that everyone deserved prizes so she threw them up in the air, for random people to catch. I guess in the end, winning stopped mattering. Maybe it was because we’d been running around Hong Kong all afternoon while drinking beer in the rain. Or maybe it’s because fun doesn’t really go by a point system. Either way, I know who I might ask to plan my next birthday.
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Email the author at Francesca.ayala@gmail.com. She accepts bookings for Team Cumpleaños, in case you are interested in having them perform at your next function.