This is a month where too much sport is barely enough as Roy & HG would say. It started with Mr Shallot doing a sprint distance triathlon on the Sunday we moved in, followed by an Olympic distance triathlon the following Sunday at Disney, today was the Discovery Bay fun run which we both did (with the dog making her second appearance to the cheers of the onlookers) and next weekend is the UNICEF fun run. We’ll be doing the 10km run but the dog misses out.

These events are generally really well organised but every now and then, something goes slightly pear-shaped. Aside from issues with the marshalling, for the second year, we’ve had a bizarre conversation at the ITU Hong Kong Triathlon. The first year, it was the sunglasses. This year it was the car park.

Picture us in our new second-hand car (yes, we bought one – a burgundy 1996 BMW convertible) with the top down, a bicycle in the back seat and driving around Disney as that is where the triathlon was to be held. We were looking for the car park as there were quite a few there and we knew we needed a specific one.

We came to a roundabout and saw a Disney official. The conversation went as follows:

Us: “Can you please tell us where to park?”
Disney guy: “yes”.
Us: “and…”
Disney guy, pointing behind him “over there”
Us: “so we go back around the roundabout and down there?” pointing to behind him.
Disney guy: “no you can’t drive down there”.
Us: “ok, so how do we park the car?”
Disney guy: “you park it here”, pointing in front of us to an official car park.
Us: “so we park in here?”
Disney guy: “yes”.
Us: “thanks”

This is a typical HK moment that illustrates if you don’t ask the exact right question; you don’t get the right answer. He was technically telling us where to park, but he was referring to where to park the bicycle ie the transition area, rather than where to park the car.

After nearly two years here, you would think we would have learnt!

* Thanks again to Corey Hart for the title to this post