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Lunch Break
A summer afternoon in the life of a Hongkonger.
It was time for Kenny’s lunch break. His bony buttocks, which had been parked in a cheap IKEA swivel chair since 8:35am, felt numb. His eyes ached, and when he closed them, he could still see the bright light of his computer screen emanating from the back of his eyelids. The photo of his wife and two young children, thumbtacked to a corkboard in front of him, was lopsided, so he straightened it. He dislodged himself from his cubicle and made his way out of the building.
The company that Kenny worked for occupied the first five floors of a modern steel and glass skyscraper in Wan Chai. Too shiny and unblemished, the silvery tower looked misplaced amidst the tired, mold-and-grime-coated concrete buildings surrounding it. The office was the Hong Kong headquarters for a large, multinational IT business, helmed by half a dozen British men in tailored suits, who would saunter along the corridors whenever they visited the Wan Chai office, flashing neat rows of white teeth as they shared private jokes.
As Kenny walked towards the elevator, he passed rows of desks filled with dark-haired busy bees — systems analysts, UX designers, software engineers like himself, sales executives, technical support staff and others, hypnotized by their desktop screens, headsets attached to their ears, some watching Korean dramas dubbed in Cantonese…
