I wake to drilling outside my apartment. The cicadas, I think. But from the balcony, I spy construction workers down below. I bump into the landlady halfway down the hill. She tells me the ground is sinking. That’s why they are drilling. She tells me in Cantonese loudly and with exaggerated gestures as if we were aboard a sinking ship but, really, she is competing with the cicadas.
I tell her it is no problem because what else? The ground is sinking. Whatever that means. It sounds important. But it also sounds like my everyday. And today it really is.
In the stairwell, the upstairs neighbor tells me her children are preparing for their upcoming exams. It sounds important. But she does not speak Cantonese. Why are they drilling? she asks. The ground is sinking, I say. And for offering that valuable piece of information what I get in return is the look of a woman who has woken up from a bad dream only to find that she really is a passenger aboard the Titanic. At least we don’t live on the ground floor! I call after her. I tell myself not to worry. I am one of those people who always knows where the life-jackets are.