Weatherbox, David Sylvian (Virgin DSCD1, 1989)

For most of the 17 years that it has been out in the market, I've been searching for David Sylvian's "Weatherbox". Released in 1989, it's an achingly beautiful limited edition boxed set featuring the albums 'Brilliant Trees', 'Alchemy', 'Gone To Earth', and 'Secrets of the Beehive'. Each of the CDs is covered in gold paint and the booklet that accompanies the CDs is so wonderfully textured your fingers tremble as you hold it. When I was younger, I couldn't afford to buy it when it came out, but also my love of Sylvian's music only grew much stronger in later years.

So since the early 90s, I've been on the hunt for something approximating to a Holy Grail of sorts in my CD collection -- a reasonably priced Weatherbox that is still in reasonable condition. But as the existing sets in the market get older and rarer, that has become more and more difficult to do, unless one wants to just throw money around carelessly. With the average set now selling at about US$320 on eBay, I've always been dead jealous of the fact that K.L. managed to secure one, at the original price of S$80 or so, when it first came out.



Then on Sunday afternoon, I found one in a tiny shop in the basement of a little-known mall called Sino Shopping Centre in the middle of Mongkok. It was right there on the cashier's counter and I nearly missed it. When I unwrapped it from its plastic case, I found it to be really quite exquisite despite its age. Better still, it was the Japanese edition (even rarer than the UK version) that comes with an extra booklet, just as beautiful, of Japanese-translated lyrics. The shop owner said that a collector had sold it to him some time ago and that was the only time he had ever come across a set. At HK$860 (S$173), I couldn't get to the ATM fast enough to get the cash.

That's the story of how my 17-year search for a bunch of handpainted CDs came to an end in, of all places, Hong Kong.

And it is perhaps also the story of why I'm considering moving there.