Mega-post

Megabox is a eighteen floor mall that has MegaIce (about half the size Tanya Harding used to practice on in Portland), MegaCinema, MegaEats and MegaKids (a floor devoted to kids' clothes and toys.)
This is how to get there. You take the MTR all hell and gone out to Kowloon Bay in the New Territories. There, you walk through a mall, through a white sky-lighted passageway that looks like the kind of shopping reserved for the international section of a good airport. Continue out into a cemented plaza planted with palm trees with a fountain ringed by old people taking the sun in parkas and towered over by apartment blocks that look like the projects. Then you duck back into an office building owned by the Hang Seng Bank and follow the signs down an escalator towards a free shuttle bus. You line up in the velvet-roped queue for the bus that every ten minutes takes shoppers along more streets that are either bordered by projects or construction sites.
It is quite a site. Picture a square building all in red except for a circular cut-out on the front that is glass. Inside that section is a video screen, bigger than most movie screens, showing commercials, trailers for movies, or music videos. I wasn't really clear on what was showing; I only knew that whatever it was included lots of soulful looks by very big faces.
Hong Kong is a city of malls, so it is almost reasonable to have an outing to one. I was trying to count on the weekend wondering whether there are more malls per people here or in greater Los Angeles. We have 7 million people in Hong Kong and I haven't been looking for malls. But still, there's the IFC, Pacific Place, Langham Place, Landmark, Times Square, City Plaza, Megabox, Elements, Fashion Walk and Sogo. That doesn't count the plus-15 walkways all lined with stores or the retail spaces stacked five high along the street. It seems like if there are escalators, it should count as a mall, doesn't it?
I'd heard a lot about Megabox because there's a three-level store called Spotlight that has Walmart-like craft supplies and a two-level home hardware store, too. Plus, my boy had been to Megabox for a grade-level field trip and wanted to go back, so reluctantly I agreed. But the place was odd enough that it felt like a cultural experience.
I took a pile of pictures of the public art, ceilings and floor decorations, but somehow. for the first and inshallah only time. when I downloaded them onto my computer, they disappeared. [I know that is not possible. I am only reporting on my perception of what happened. Don't give me any suggestions about this. I'm still bereft.] I wish you could see all the craziness. On the Megakids floor the elevators are decorated like the entrance to the Tikki Tikki Room in Disneyland, all "African" masks and spears. The ceilings are hung with great leaves and fiberglass monkeys and parrots. By the elevators are elephants, giraffes and giant mushrooms for waiting. It is mall-cum-theme park.
I wonder about cause and effect because there are lots of Japanese stores there. In one store there were stuffed pink and grey glittery peace signs on sticks and a silicon sparkle-filled bone hanging on a cardboard dog's face. I didn't think that it would actually survive a dog's chewing on it, so I picked it up to look at it. On the back in the little English print it said that it was a wrist-rest for when you're mousing.
But in that store, with all the other oddities there was something so amazing that I'm still thinking about it. In a wall of shelves filled with pillows and stuffed characters there was a yellow rectangular pillow. Other than its legs on the bottom corners, hands on the top corners and smiling face, it looked like any other pillow. But when I touched it....! You will never know the rapture of my hand as it sunk into that pillow! The resistance was like no other pillow I'd ever felt. It was like the rolling of tiny ball bearings in a frictionless liquid. It was like there was nothing but the suede smoothness of skin inviting my hand to rest. And yet, as I pushed deeper the pillow subtly responded as if to say, "Don't trouble yourself. You're making too much effort. Let me hold you." The pillow was around 45 cm by 35 cm and cost $139 HKD. It seemed like too much, but if I can't get it out of my mind, I may have to go back and get it.
There's a MegaEats food court and we wanted hamburgers. But since the only burger restaurant was too complicated, we settled for sushi. It doesn't seem reasonable that a Japanese burger joint with its elaborate list of possible ingredients to add to the burger, multiple combinations of side dishes and high prices would be harder to figure out than a sushi bar, but we all agreed. We ate more sushi than we even wanted to for $12 USD and got our strength back.
After food we went to the real destination of the day, the floor of vending machines. The vending machines were two-high all the way down a hallway, in two alcoves and filling an entire store. Some of them take coins like any machine; some take Octopus cards, (the all-purpose magnetic-chipped card that is used for buses, ferries, 7-11 and everything else); and for some of them you had to buy a special card-voucher and insert it into the machine, turn the handle and the machine would remove that value from the card. What an assortment of fun there was to buy: Pooh bear key chains, Hello Kitty key covers, anime action figures, assemble it yourself catapults, miniature toy dogs, and on and on. Best of all, it turned out that the pillow turned out to be a character. So now I have a little plastic replica to remind me of what I yearn for.
It might not be enough. I may have to go back for the pillow and the pictures. Stay tuned.