Champions League final: Juventus 1 Real Madrid 4
 
Parcly Taxel: Such was the scoreline of the football match I was anticipating for a whole month. I was not a diehard fan of either side, though I was slightly more for Juventus than the defending champions, and it was too deep in the night for me to watch anyway. There was tragedy at a viewer’s party in Turin, not because of the loss but because of firecrackers.
 
Spindle: Oh come on! This isn’t a football fan’s journal, this is a travel journal!
 
Parcly: OK, OK, Spindle. [feels a small piercing coldness in her heart] So the weather forecast you mentioned at the start hasn’t played out, right? It’s been generally cloudy, but no rain.
 
Spindle: Indeed. The weather of Hong Kong is less predictable than other towns and cities, with a sizeable portion of the uncertainty stemming from geographic features in the wider Pearl River Delta. There are more extreme phenomena that can appear; typhoons are by far the most common, but they can be predicted/tracked some days in advance and no warnings were currently active. Interestingly enough, I can whip up a windstorm that isn’t a blizzard if I sense more friendship in the area than hatred – the feelings have uniform effects on all my magic.
 
Parcly: I took a quiet stroll to the Chrisly Café for breakfast. Despite the Sunday conditions, which are a little less hectic than other mornings in Hong Kong, a queue had formed outside. From a complimentary coupon provided by the Dorsett, I had the same breakfast as the previous day, macaroni and ham with egg on toast and a cup of tea, but here the egg was scrambled instead of sunny side up. I could still hear my tummy growling, and Spindle was feeling a bit weak, so I ordered more egg-on-toast and the “Principal’s Sandwich” (from the nickname of local singer Alan Tam) with mushroom and melted cheese.
 
Around this time the street markets and outlets were setting up, with the first customers of the day already waiting at their preferred locations. Their ephemerality, as compared to the objects they were buying, stirred me to reflect on the immortality of myself and all the genie friends I had in Pinkie’s dimension. What did it mean to be a pony in the servitude of strangers yet standing still in time? Applejack doesn’t like her form, having lost her apple-bucking legs to the bottle, so usually only grants wishes from her master Apple Bloom. Rarity on the other hoof seems to have no qualms with her confinement, even breaking into signature melodrama when she refuses a wish. What about me?
 
Spindle: Don’t doubt yourself, genie. You’ve far surpassed the expectations you held at the beginning, and few would believe that you twist wishes for your own gain. Here, have a tail massage!
 
…wait, my own tail behaves much the same way. Let me try it- oh, ahhhhh…
 
Parcly: At noon we wandered onto Sai Yeung Choi Street, which was pedestrianised for the day. In place of cars and their billowing smoke were buskers amusing the crowd with their performances. One stallion was juggling heavy and odd-shaped objects between his head and his limbs. Others were playing off tunes on synthesisers that reverberated between the adjacent buildings, while classical texts were on sale as they have been for centuries.
 
Spindle: We had a bowl of turtle jelly (龜苓膏) to keep us in good spirits for the afternoon. While powdered turtle shells were indeed used in its preparation in the past, conventions on endangered species have since stopped its use and herbal ingredients are now the dessert’s main draw. Afterwards, we headed down Nathan Street, a prominent shopping throughfare, to Mong Kok MTR; we got off at Tin Hau.
 
Every train on the network has a set of small monochrome dot-matrix screens on which news and promotions are displayed; I was keenly watching them as we travelled on the Island Line. Their resolution is just high enough to present a cute little picture or headline of a story, but not so high (like the Tokyo metro systems) that tired and cheesy graphics can result.
 
Parcly: Lunch proper required some searching, since many places close on Sunday, but we settled on a corner shop selling omelette rice – I had it with pork. It was just one of the thousands of one-family one-location diners in Hong Kong, a fragmentation stretching all the way back to imperial China. While it was clean inside, the alleys behind it were littered with piles of used cardboard boxes, other scrap materials of all kinds and a few flowerpots.
 
After a slow walkaround to appreciate this side of the city, I returned to Central at four in the afternoon, only to notice my belly bulging from excessive food consumption over the preceding three days. It rocked from side to side whenever I moved, pulling me with it, and I could even bounce a few times on it.
 
Spindle: If she was Rainbow Dash she’d be screaming out her lungs. Fortunately for Parcly, windigos are also associated with hunger and starvation, draining their potential victims of energy before deciding whether to force transformation. All I had to do was corral her into a wall and take a deep breath…
 
Parcly: …and I was back to lean in ten seconds flat. If there were more friendly windigos I could start a slimming service. As for us, we simply returned to the Dorsett to discuss our nighttime plans. Going out again we had wonton noodles at a famous restaurant around Central, then a cup of milk tea with pearls to finish our food attack for the day.
 
This leaves the question of how fast the metabolism of alicorns is. Twilight has been recorded downing a dozen hayburgers in one sitting without any discomfort, yet the food I accumulated over the first half of my trip was ultimately overwhelming. Celestia, Luna and Cadance can all reserve a feast for twelve ordinary ponies to themselves and remain thin as they are. However, everypony here is flying and casting powerful spells all the time, which naturally requires very high metabolism rates. Sometimes, I may be the exception because I expend far less energy when sleeping bottled up than when sleeping solid.