My people

I find them on escalators, walking up the left side. I find them in our building’s stairwell. I find them somewhere in the long, multi-level stairs of Hong Kong’s Central station, breathing a bit hard in the air-conditioned quiet. I find them in the Apple Store’s full floor stairs, a useful shortcut in Causeway Bay’s Hysan Place. I find them walking beside the travelators in NRT and HKG, in ZRH and HEL, intent on their destinations and the pace of their approach. My people are an odd bunch. They are constantly fitting backpacks into overhead bins and below economy seats, traveling sans roller bags. They bicycle to dinners in Tokyo or Paris or Dongguan, and never rent cars unless on long road trips. They swim in the public pools of Hong Kong, remembering 5 HKD coins for the lockers. My people, they’re weirdos: they walk to the Lyft lines at LAX rather than wait 20 minutes for a shuttle bus because time is time with people. They know it’s possible to be in a friend’s downtown Taipei…