The Force finally awakens

What a week! We had a fire at the apartment building, a chaotic mess on NYE and yesterday I finally got to see “Star Wars."

Way too easy for Rey to be Luke’s daughter.

But first, the fire, though I’ve forgotten what day it was.

My apartment building has two towers with hallways between them. The sixth floor is where all the action is -- the gym, pool, golf course, movie theater, restaurant, conference rooms, etc.

Whatever morning it was, one of our employees noticed smoke coming out near the gym. He reported it, and the fit hit the shan.

I missed most of it because I head into work a little earlier than most. Coming down my elevator, I smelled smoke. I got to the lobby and one of the doormen/guards ran toward the other set of elevators. Others quickly joined him.

There was one guy at the front desk and I looked at him like, "what's going on?" but he wasn't one of the better English speakers, and I have zero Mandarin skills. So I just went into work. I reasoned that since the people were using the elevators, it couldn't be a fire, right? That's rule No. 1, I think.

But it was. Other people coming in to work after me said they started blocking off the elevators. A guy on the 7th floor said his apartment was filled with smoke. The smoke alarms did not go off in many people’s places. And we have two sets - one belonging to the apartment, and one belonging to the State Department.

There’s a day care in the building and firemen too the kids out, but the school opened later that morning. The building started knocking on doors one by one to evacuate people. The family members my colleagues wound up across the street at Starbuck's "in various stages of dress." Everyone else went into work.

The gym was closed for three days for deep cleaning. It’s open now, but the smoke smell lingers. The pool still isn’t open, and the women’s locker room won’t open until the sauna is rebuilt – apparently that’s where it started.

It seems that someone left it on all night, or something like that. The gym is 24/7, but I think the locker rooms are closed when the pool is, so I don’t think anyone could have gone in early in the morning, so my guess is it smoldered through the night.

But the apartment complex reacted quickly and is fixing things. I’m glad.

Now maybe I can see if I can get my AC back. It is still surprisingly hot but the heat is on. I mean, I don’t have it on in my apartment, but I don’t have the option to turn on the AC.

I might have to borrow a fan or something. It’s just so hot. And polluted. I have a few windows that I can open and it’s marginally cooler outside, but the air quality index is over 200 today – I can’t even see the Canton Tower through the pollution. So my options are to be a bit toasty or to let that air in my house. Decisions, decisions.

NY Eve was great. I went to a nice house party. It wasn't what I thought, it was more of a party for parents and kids, but not a kiddie party. The kids, and this amused me greatly, got into "Return of the Jedi," to the point that they were shushing the parents.

I left 11 p.m. with a friend for the 25-minute walk home and wound up getting back after midnight. The streets were blocked and it was PACKED with people. We got to the block we needed to turn down and it was barricaded. The cops wouldn't let us by. It was very weird and I was starting to get dizzy, sick and claustrophobic. Finally, after my friend pleaded with the guy for 15-20 minutes to no avail, a guy not 10 feet away let us into the underground parking structure so we went the two blocks that way. 2016 rang in as we were down there.

It's just so strange -- some people wanted to go home, but they were barricaded on the streets. (This is a high-end area with ritzy hotels and apartments as the only residences.) And it was just a stampede waiting to happen. I wanted to be home safe before everything unleashed. People weren't drunk or anything, but there were lots of people on rollerblades and bicycles, along with hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of people in the area. If you're not reveling, there's no smart reason to be out there.

And then 2016 sucked because of the FSU game. My Slingbox didn’t work, and in the end, that was probably a good thing. As it was, I dozed on and off and kept checking the score.

But on Jan. 2, I headed to Hong Kong to see Star Wars. Oh, man, that was totally worth it. It opens here next week, but I figure it would be awhile for the crowds to die down and I really did want to see it. I’m glad I went and might try to see it again when it does come out here.

But not next weekend. As it turns out, my Jan. 16 shoulder appointment was canceled because the doctor will be out of town and I rescheduled for next weekend. In a way, it’s good because it’s really hurting me but in another it’s bad. It’s really exhausting to go up and back in one day. I was up at 6 a.m. and completely on the go until 9:30 p.m. last night.

And it’s expensive. For the second time since I’ve been here, they raised the train ticket. It’s also crowded as heck, but I’m going to deal with it.

I’m still going over MLK weekend, because we’d planned on doing Disney then, so basically I am going to HK three weeks in a row.