Queen's Road Central, Hong Kong, at 8:50AM

 

Over fifty people stood on my side of Queen's Road Central. Another fifty or so people stood on the opposite side. The pedestrian traffic signal turned green. This was the signal we were all waiting for. Our camp moved speedily and the opposing camp also hastily approached us. The two camps merged in the middle of the crossing. Not a single pedestrian smiled, said anything or engaged in eye contact. The well rehearsed moves allowed non-contact merging of the two engaging streams of office workers hurrying off to their nine o'clock start. I did something less than perfect and ran into someone's shoulder. She gave me a dirty look. I failed to reach the other side of the road before the red signal came on and had to wait in the middle of the road for the signal to change again. I faced my penalty, standing at the back of a mile-long queue in the lift lobby. I could see my boss standing at the front of the queue. He also saw me. Instead of smiling at me, he pointed at his watch, with an expression which was an abbreviated version of shaking his head and addressing me with his gaze, "Good morning, Mr Loser."