The coming days will tell whether Ronald's suspicions are accurate. If this weekend doesn't again Online Cigarettes Store USA draw out the number of demonstrators seen as recently as Sunday, it could be a signal that protesters are growing tired, divided and becoming less of a challenge to the government of the semi-autonomous Chinese territory and its masters in Beijing.
Carrie Lam, Hong Kong's embattled chief executive, will draw further encouragement if a quiet weekend is then followed by her not being besieged by demonstrators when she delivers an annual policy address on Wednesday.Given that Lam isn't expected to announce an amnesty Newport Pleasure for arrested protesters or use her speech to bow to the movement's other key demands, she's still a long way from assuaging the fury that has turned Hong Kong into a powder keg.
And with Lam not budging on protesters' clamors for universal suffrage, an investigation of heavy-handed policing and other demands, any lull is likely to be temporary. The youth-led movement has radicalized a new generation of protesters unlikely to go readily back into their box. Nearly one-third of the 2,379 people arrested since June are under 18 and 104 of them are under 16, the government says.
Fears that Hong Kong is slowly losing its freedoms and is on course to become a tightly controlled city like all the others in China are widely shared and cross-generational. Protesting, from wearing black and spraying graffiti to occasional outbursts of street violence, is becoming Hong Kong's new norm, gradually engraining in its habits like shopping, snacking and the lighting of incense sticks as offerings.
As Ronald turned tail and trudged back to work, 500 meters (yards) away outside the High Court, 300 Newport 100s Box masked protesters chanting "Revolution Now!" and there to support an activist appealing his six-year prison sentence showed that even if the movement is indeed flagging, it is far from snuffed out.
"People can't protest every day," said Roy Tse, among the demonstrators who held five fingers aloft to symbolize the movement's five key demands. "If you protest every day, you lose your creativity."