taking off

I'm currently sitting by Gate 66 in the Hong Kong International Airport. The flight departs in less than 2 hours. I know I'm a tad bit early, but I had nothing else to do so I thought I might as well just come and chill at the airport, where there's free wi-fi.

there aren't many people sitting around me. maybe it's still early. or maybe the flight is just not that full. I can see some Japanese people, a few Brits (one old lady reading the Mail) and other caucasian-looking tourists. Sitting opposite me is a businessman (guessing from his suitcase) asleep and wearing a pair gore-tex boots.

Some random Chinese tourist (sounds like Taiwanese, but he could be from a southern province of China - except for Guangdong - I'm guessing from his mandarin accent) just asked me to take a photo for him, in front of the plane. Random. I love how he just assumes that I speak

Mandarin. Luckily my Chinese was adequate to cope with this photo-taking situation. This also happens in many East Asian countries. People have spoken to me in Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Thai, Shanghaiese dialect, and Taiwanese dialect.

But the most annoying thing I find is not being spoken to another language in East Asia, it's when some idiotic people in Britain comes up to me and very enthusiastically say "ni hao!". I'm like "piss off. We're in Britain, and I'm British, just speak English will you?".

this another random Chinese tourist (maybe about 50-60 years old) who is sitting next to me is now curiously staring at my computer screen. he seems fascinated with my computer and the internet. I hope he doesn't understand English and doesn't realise that I'm typing things about him right now. (He's speaking to his friends in a Chinese provincial dialect that I don't recognise) This is sort of creepy.