I took this picture in Hong Kong at the end of August. However, this was not the first time I took this picture. Back in 2009, when I made my first visit to Hong Kong, I took pretty much the exact same picture, so when I went to the same place in 2012 I knew the scene would make an interesting photograph.

Hong Kong life

If you live in Hong Kong you’re used to confined spaces. A typical apartment in the city-state is tiny by most western standards. The living room of the apartment I stayed in barely had enough room for the small two-seater dining table, motorized massage chair, and flat screen TV. One side of the room there was a large window and air-conditioning unit, and on the other was the small kitchen.

The building pictured isn’t the apartment building I stayed in, but it’s very similar. I asked Catherine, my couchsurfing host, how well she knew her neighbours. “I hear him sometimes, and I occasionally meet him in the lift,” She told me as she pointed to one wall. “He is nice. His name is,” She paused for a few moments, looking up in though, then she concluded. “Actually I don’t know his name.”

I can’t really cite that as something to decry though. Back in the UK, I only knew that the neighbor to my left was called Dougy. I had heard he was an artist of the unknown variety and I knew that he was not particularly bothered by the sizable holes in his roof. (Holes that allowed rats to get into my roof!) But beyond that I knew nothing of him.

This picture didn’t make it onto 366 pictures in the end. Instead I chose one of the Ngong Ping cable car that took me into the clouds on my way to the big Buddha statue and the Po Lin Monastery on Lantau Island.

Maybe I’m somewhat strange, but I find the picture of the apartment building quite captivating. The sheer number of uniform windows is almost overwhelming in its monotony, but still I search them looking for something to break the visual drone of concrete and glass. It’s a picture that is limited by the computer screen because I think it will work so much better when blown up to a large scale.