Fire Exit (Hong Kong)

Since I was fifteen and my father’s grocery store burned to the ground, I have had a huge phobia of my house or my apartment catching on fire at night while I am sleeping. That’s why I usually always wear lots of clothes to bed – shorts, sweat pants, or pajama bottoms, and a t-shirt because I am afraid that the building would catch on fire and I would be stuck outside naked.

Or if I burned to death, my body would mesh with the debris of the building because I am only flesh. By wearing clothing, I wanted firefighters to be able to distinguish my charred remains from the walls, the floor, the pipes, and other ruins.

I have always been afraid of ultimate disaster and I have always mentally prepared myself for any escape.

I have prepared for a world wide nuclear war and how to find transportation and what country I would go hide in and how I would make contact with others. I have two people designated right now who would take over SoulParking.com if I were killed. They have the administrative passwords and details to post the last blog – to let everyone know I am dead. These two people have been also asked to close out my social networking sites – because I don’t want to have my Facebook and MySpace profiles up if I am not living.

I do search out and find the fire exits when I go into buildings. Especially the IFC, because I was in New York the week after September 11th – and saw the destruction at Ground Zero after the twin towers fell. And I was also in New York City a year before, took pictures inside the Twin Towers and took an amazing shot against the wall looking up – showing the magnificent height of the building. Seeing and experiencing this before and after just added to my phobia. I even wrote a short story / poem about being trapped in Tower One during the initial impact. And so if planes hit the IFC, I know how to get out or have an estimated guess.

When I am in the MTR and the train hits its brakes hard, I start looking around preparing how I would get out of my compartment and ultimately tunnel if it should collapse when I am deep below Victoria Harbor.

Since the aftershocks of the Taiwanese earth quakes the day after Christmas in 2006, I mentally visually my escape to the top of my building if a massive earth quake should hit Hong Kong.

One morning I woke to the smell of burning wires, I jumped up, backed all my vital belongings – mostly electronic equipment – HD cameras, laptops, and hard drives – and ran down the stairs to the ground floor only to see the Chinese security guard looking at me funny. I called my apartment management office and told them about the horrible smell and my fear that the apartment was on fire. They called me back to tell me that the guy who lived above me was welding metal.

I even plan the escapes out of my relationships if a disaster might happen. And sometimes during this planning, seeing the possible scenarios unfold in my head makes me afraid. I become absolutely terrified. And out of no where, I escape out my own self-made fire exit.

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