Territories AB-NORM

Was woke up by the scent of PM2.5, as usual. Sunny. Lying a few levels up from the terrain and was lightly shaded away from the strong heat by, ironically, the thick smoky air. Looking out and as expected, I did not see many people at this point as almost everyone, including myself, would soon be escalating down to the NORM, for work, for school, for life.

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Everything was so breathlessly grounded in the NORM. Flipping my granddad’s diary, knowing that there had been substantial need of land for affordable living space in the city where they used to live in. This had been problematic for years in the very old days but was not managed nor resolved properly by the government. New landfill was once a popular strategy enforced by the government. Refurbishing dated factories to form new homes? A lot of new housing typologies were also suggested by the experts. Never mind. At the end, the very bottom root of the problem was that there was simply shortage of available land for affordable spaces. Years and years came and gone. The city ultimately came to a stage that did not crave for land anymore. Everything, everywhere, had gone through upended changes.

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My dad told me that he used to have a question to my granddad, all the time, when only the NORM existed. “Daddy, will there be one day that we can escape from the ground and climb up to the sky? I want to live up high… “Who would want this dream to come true?

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Will there be, or when will there be an end for anything, everything, for this once starring city, Hong Kong?

Hong Kong, PRC