Doing my civic duty

I volunteered last night at Democrats Abroad, calling people to check if they’d received their absentee ballots, and telling them how to vote if they hadn’t. Good times. I’ve always voted in federal elections, but this is the first time I’ve done anything more than that. I felt quite virtuous.

Jeannie, the woman in charge of voter registration, happens to be someone who left my firm six months ago, so I was curious to hear her version of events, because I’d heard it was not a friendly divorce, as it were. But she was quite restrained, and after a few pokes and prods, I gave up in the name of dignity. (I can do that, you know.) (Sometimes.)

It was just Jeannie, her friend Sun and I on our phones in Jeannie’s firm’s conference room for an hour. After we called all the people on the list, we went out for a light dinner.

Sun is a quiet, save-the-earth type who’s been in HK for just over a year now. She thought HK would be fun, but hadn’t found it to be. “I thought it would be glamorous and cosmopolitan,” she said, “and it is, but in a very superficial way. People are all about how much money they make, how many miles they have, how incredibly important they are in the social scene. That’s all!”

I asked Jeannie if she liked HK, and she replied, “I like it for what it is. I don’t have any illusions.”

They were kind, and invited me to go to brunch and a hike on Sunday, to help me get plugged in, but I think I’m going on a hike with a coworker, so I had to decline. But I added their two business cards to my slowly growing pile.

One must try, and I am trying, dammit.