Boss was away for a week, and I was put in charge which I hate. This time was better than the last since he organised the week for me. However, there’s still a shit-ton of work to do and decisions to be made. Decisions my (least) favourite thing. 12 hours days. Joy (not).

At the end of which, I had dental surgery to remove the bone graft (that hadn’t taken in bone that had been eaten away by abscess that I left in my upper gum for too long) and put in a screw with some more cow bone or summat. I’ve been in the dentist chair since I was eight for something painful or other – cavities, root canal, impacted molars, tooth gone bad – and I’m honestly over it but suspect there’s more to come boo.

The second half of the month was dedicated to the kids exams, which we all survived without entirely losing our minds, although Mimi developed a cold. I was on the verge of not sending her for the first exam, but she said she would power through (much in contrast to her brother when a similar situation arose during the unit tests for him). She later told me she was inspired by a friend who was sick during the history exam, went out to puke, came back and finished the exam. I told her to call us if she felt sick and we’d come pick her up, exam be damned, though I appreciated her pushing herself to go ahead with it.

Towards the end of the month, there was a massive fire at a public housing estate in Hong Kong. When I went to bed on the night of November 26, the death toll was 13 and President Xi Jinping had sent his condolences. When I woke up, the toll had hit 65, and the fire was still raging. What started in one tower, spread to seven. Today, the toll stands at 159.

The buildings had been under renovation and immediately suspicion fell on the scaffolding and the netting used to cover it. The use of scaffolding and such netting is ubiquitous in Hong Kong but they are supposed to be fire-retardant. When government investigators went in, they initially said it turns out the netting was fire-retardant. But later, it was found that the contractor had replaced some netting during a typhoon and strategically replaced it with cheaper, less retardant material. Also, Styrofoam had been used to cover the windows, which acted as an accelerant.

What mystified me is not that one tower caught fire, and at speed, though that is unusual enough in Hong Kong. It’s that seven towers caught fire and people were trapped in all of them. It turns out the fire alarms didn’t work, and because of the covered windows people didn’t realise what was going on. Many elderly live in such estates and they may have been napping when it all happened. That the fire alarms didn’t work is shocking to me, because when we lived in Hong Kong, there was fire alarm testing more than once a year. It was quite annoying actually. So did this estate never test the alarms?

There are reports that they were turned off so the fire doors could be kept open to let the workers involved in the renovation use them unimpeded. And that complaints about workers smoking on the site had gone unheeded.

Meanwhile, our building in India has fire extinguishers on every floor, and fire sensors, but we’ve never had a fire alarm test to my knowledge and I have no idea if the sprinklers will work. The extinguishers do because once when there was a fire near our building our security guards took the extinguishers from 20 floors and put it out themselves. Apparently, they didn’t want to wait for the fire brigade. And we did have a fire drill once, and some dude gave a talk (which I missed because I was going for book club. priorities), so there’s that.

In Hong Kong, there are questions being raised about government oversight. The Labour Department did 16 inspections of the site since June and issued warnings (including, but not just, for fire safety), but the netting they tested seemed fine and that is all they’re allowed to do. It may emerge that government departments looked the other way with regard to the netting. But I have my doubts. This kind of low level corruption isn’t widespread in Hong Kong.

Moreover, the government is quite proactive. When the flat below us complained of a leak from our bathroom, the government actually got involved, sent someone to test for the source of the leak, and insisted our landlord fix the leak, which involved a major renovation, and they had to redo it when their initial fix didn’t work. All this Omicron Covid wave.

However, there is a limit to how much the government can monitor, and like governments everywhere, there are manpower restrictions to keep costs under control. Now, of course, things might change and they might step up inspections and might be less tolerant to pressure from the big contractors.

This pressure includes the pressure to keep bamboo scaffolding. In the aftermath of the fire, when questions were raised (again – because this has become a matter of some debate in recent years), many people defended the scaffolding, pointing out that it wasn’t the cause. Actually, we don’t know what the cause is.

Some months ago, I had looked into this after someone pointed out that Hong Kong should stop sentimentalising the use of bamboo scaffolding – it’s seen as part of the city’s cultural heritage – because it poses fire safety and other risks. The mainland has already moved on to metal. I found that there is indeed a risk, although the government has tried it’s best to improve safety standards. The problem is also that the old masters are retiring and there aren’t enough skilled workers for this kind of job, even though efforts are being made to bring in young blood. The government itself has moved to 50-per cent metal scaffolding for its projects. But apart from its cultural attractions, bamboo scaffolding is cheaper, and that is why the business sector at least wants it. So in a weird turn, big business and grassroot activist interest cohere here.

That said, the government is so skittish about any criticism. They sense that the opposition will use the fire to stir up dissent – which to be fair there seem to be some signs of – and so have arrested people for inciting hatred against the government, a vague offence under the national security laws. Western media hasn’t helped with its speculation about how the fire is the result of lack of democracy (when sorry no). Clearly there is now low tolerance of criticism that the government deems too much but I don’t think democracy would have helped prevent this or provided greater responsiveness in the aftermath.

Nearly 160 deaths might not seem like a lot, but in Hong Kong it’s unheard of. A few years ago, there was a fire in an old tenement, and seven people died. The city was shocked and there was a lot of reflection on what could be done better. The rules are pretty strict. So that a fire of the scale of November’s could happen means standards are slipping.

At a personal level for me, it makes me feel even more insecure. If this could happen in Hong Kong, I shudder to think of our safety here. A few days ago, I walked past an electric pole where I could see a small spark and a buzzing sound. A driver sat under it in his auto oblivious (not to the sound, he could surely hear that, but to the danger). Today, I drove past a small fire near an electric pole on the side of the road.

A few days after the Hong Kong fire, I realised I had some gold jewelry in my cupboard, and went to the bank and put it in a locker. But when I asked the bank staff if the locker room was fire resistant, they had no idea. All they could tell me was that they had insurance. V told me to sell all the gold and buy a fund. There’s an idea.

And just like that, we’re in the last month of the year.