Other tidbits

My parents emailed me a couple of photos from Ontario a few days ago. I couldn't believe how much snow there was. It kinda drove home how I haven't mocked you all over the weather yet. So here goes. I'm currently in shorts and a t-shirt. Last week was cool enough that I needed socks, but now we're back to a humidex of 30+. I have my fan on right now. Mwahahahaa.

Also, if you want to shop for fresh food, Asia is the place to go. When Peggy and I went to Jusco, I was wandering around the seafood section. I'm used to seeing live fish at a more traditional market, but Jusco is the closest thing to a Western grocery store (well, selling all Japanese goods at least) I can find here. Anyways, watch this film! You can't see it too well, but in the one package, one of those tiger prawns are flailing its legs like there's no tomorrow. That's right. The thing was packaged alive. I was a little blown away by that one.

There was something else, but I forget.

Confirmations and mystifications

Much has happened since my last post! Birthdays, farewell parties, lost money, plane ticket purchases. Have I peaked your curiousity?

Well, for my birthday I didn't do anything terribly special. I woke up, made myself some pancakes. (It's nice to find things that I can make without an oven that remind me of home.) Then Peggy and Wenli burst into the kitchen and wish me a happy birthday. (Well, burst is maybe too strong of a word. Peggy was still half asleep.)

They and Jennifer had pitched in and bought me this adorable little Egg person I saw at a store a week earlier. It had been too expensive for my taste so I hadn't wanted to get it... But now I have it and it sits there and looks cute. You know, like me. One of my other pals from Beijing gave me a silk scarf... I finally own something made from 100% silk! Woot!

Anyways, Wenli and I had planned to go to Tai Po Market station to do some grocery shopping at a Japanese grocery store.

While we were on our way over, my entire family phoned to wish me a happy birthday. (Of course, I had to be a pain and remind them that technically it wouldn't be my birthday until noon due to the time difference here.) There was one creepy incident where the first person who phoned me turned out to be no one I knew. I saw the caller was "Private Call" and assumed it was my parents because that's how they always show up. So I picked up my cell and started singing Happy Birthday to myself in French, then I wondered why my parents weren't interrupting me so I asked, "What's up?" After doing the mandatory "I'm doing good - just headed to the station blah blah blah" I realized I couldn't recognize the woman's voice, so I asked, "I'm sorry, who are you?" And then the lady hung up. :| I'm disturbed by that. I have a stalker!

Unfortunately when Wenli and I got to Jusco, the stupid store was doing inventory. Doh! So we couldn't do our shopping. Instead, we wandered around the not-so-"Mega" mall and ended up going home empty-handed. It was nice anyways though, because the walk to the store is really pretty - you need to walk along a waterway and it's very pleasant.

That evening, Peggy, Renee, LiMin and I went to Mong Kok to go shopping. That was my "treat" - because I love going to Mong Kok for any reason. :) I ended up buying 2 books, a Japanese CD, headphones, earrings, and an S-Video Out cable for my laptop. I think my books were my best purchase. :) I read them in two days! (Both were around 600 pages.) It was a fun night, then again, any time in Mong Kok rocks my world.

The next night was the IASP farewell party. This was our official goodbye to all the students who will be leaving at the end of the term, and there's quite a few of them. It was a bittersweet night for me. I had fun, but for me, there was an overtone of sadness because most people will be going travelling soon and leaving. The night was supposed to be a masquerade theme, but very few people wore the masks that were provided. (I'm convinced that the feathery masks looked like they had monkey noses.)
Photos from the rest of the night can be found here. For the party, we went to a fancy restaurant north of Shatin called The Little Egret Restaurant. It was pretty swank. Some people weren't dressed up at all (well, only like 1 or 2 people weren't), but the rest were pretty damned formal. There were some girls there who looked like they were going to an opera or something. The outfits were gorgeous. Other amusements of the evening included watching the games (people had to run around trying to collect various items from the crowd - one Italian girl had to find a waiter... So she dragged one of the buffet staff up on to the stage) and the catwalk. (We got to witness two chicks having an impromptu kiss on the stage - one of whom was my good pal. That was unexpected, but fun.)

Some of the people went to Lan Kwai Fong after the party, but I didn't. I'm both disappointed and relieved I didn't go though. Apparently on the way home, Peggy, Wenli, and Antonette had a problem with their taxi driver. They had agreed on $120 to get back to campus (it's common to bargain for a taxi here). However, when they got here, the taxi driver tried to make them pay the full fare. They argued and he called the police (they said okay, thinking they were in the right). Unfortunately the police had to take the taxi driver's side (he did tell Peggy that he believed their story), so now my roommate has a record or something here in Hong Kong. :(

Silly friend story: Peggy told me that Wenli would come over to our apartment before the party so we could help her do her makeup. Well, we were supposed to meet the buses at 5:30, and by 5pm, there was no sign of Wenli. I finally phoned her and was greeted by her frantic cries of, "Maureen? Oh god! Can you come over and help me? I just got back from Mong Kok, and I'm nowhere near being ready! Can you bring your makeup and hairdryer???" I started laughing and reassured her I'd be over in a few. When I arrived at her apartment, she had just gotten out of the shower, so while she was putting on mascara, I had to blowdry her hair, help her with her clothes and so on. I've never seen anyone so frantic before.

The next day was the Swedish Party. (Kristin will kick my ass for calling it that. The Swedes were holding a party, but they didn't want to call it the Swedish party in case people only thought Swedes were invited. However, everyone began to refer to it as "The Swedish party that isn't a Swedish party.") The few photos I took can be found here. It was amusing - I'm glad I went, if only to finally see the United College bar. It was pretty cool in there. There were Swedish candies (bought from the local Ikea) at each table. They were so good, I bought a bag for myself today. :) It was there that I tried Tsingtao beer for the first time. I normally don't like beer, and this proved to be no exception. That was some nasty shit man.

Amusing anecdote: I hadn't done my hair the day of the party, so I had to quickly wet it down and blowdry it to look slightly presentable. Unfortunately my blowdryer was at Wenli's, so I grabbed Peggy's instead. Her hairdryer is a lot smaller than mine and I'm not used to it. In a nutshell, when I flipped my hair over to dry it, some of it got caught in the intake fan of Peggy's dryer! I started freaking out and turned off the dryer and had to tug a knot of hair out of it. LOL.

After the party, I had to go back to the apartment to meet with my pals to discuss our Thailand trip! We finally settled it that we were going to go to Thailand from December 12 until the 22. (Well, we actually decided to stay until the 23rd, but the flights were sold out, so we have to leave on the 22.) We still don't know our official itinerary, but the tentative plan is to go to Bangkok for two days, take a train to the Northern part of Thailand and visit Sukhothai and Chiang Mai. The only things we really want to do is see a Muay Thai boxing match (well, that's my wishlist), and go on a jungle/elephant trek. I'm psyched about it! So this morning we booked our plane tickets.

Pain in the ass of the day: After getting back from the travel agency, I went to the ATM to get some money to pay Limin for my ticket... Unfortunately the machine didn't spit out the money all the way, so I only got $100HKD out of the $1400HKD I tried to withdraw. So I had to go to the bank and file an investigation request or something like that. *sigh* No worries though, I still have cash courtesy of my birthday gifts from family. :)

Another happy thing is that I'm going to Singapore and Malaysia in January! My friends Bernard and Minnie invited me to go for 5 days before classes begin. I'm pretty psyched because there will be 7 of us (Bernard, Minnie, Peggy, me, and 3 other Japanese people I don't know) and we'll be staying at one of Bernard's friends, so we won't have to pay for a hotel room while in Singapore.

I can't get over how cheap it is to fly here. My roundtrip tickets to Thailand and Singapore are only like $190CAD. Roundtrip!!! Gah! It costs more than that to fly from Toronto to Vancouver and back!

That's all I can think of for now I guess. Stay tuned for your next update!

I am the dumbass you think I am

There's a lot to report so let's get started.

First of all, on the 16th, some friends and I went to Causeway Bay for dinner and shopping. Well, first of all, Pei-chin, Wen-Li and I got lost trying to find an Esprit Outlet store. To make a long story short, we walked around Tsim Sha Tsui for at least 40 minutes looking for it, but when we found it, it was literally a 2 minute walk from the subway station we had exited from. Whoops.

In Causeway Bay, we went for dinner at a delicious Japanese restaurant. It was fun and we all got big girlie alcholic drinks. Good friends + alcohol = Good memories.

After the Japanese restaurant, we moseyed around the corner to a place known as the "Cat Cafe." It's famous in Hong Kong because literally, there are cats wandering around loose in the store. The kitchen part of the restaurant is of course segregated - there's a big glass door keeping the cats from escaping into it. There were probably around 12 cats in the restaurant. It was nifty. They could come and sit on the chairs with you or be on tables. Of course, as nifty as this place was, you couldn't help but wonder about the hygiene... Cats shedding everywhere, litter boxes located underneath tables, the definite smell of cat throughout the restaurant. All in all, it was fun though.

Pictures from my night in Causeway Bay can be found here!

Now for the more exciting news. Yesterday I went to China. Again. My Chinese History in the field class went on a field trip to Guangzhou, China. It was much better run this time (although we did get lost several times - I actually became familiar enough with the scenery to be able to pic out the same subway station each time we passed it). There were some other kinks, but they weren't really the Prof's fault.

Anyways, we visited 4 areas while in Guangzhou. (You can see all my pictures of the trip here.) Our first stop was the Nan Yue's King's Tomb. It was nifty, but a lot smaller than ancitipated (both in height and width). There were some rooms of the tomb that you couldn't even stand up straight in because the ceilings were so short. Outside of the tomb were a bunch of exhibitions showing the items they had excavated from the tomb. Now that was a cool museum. The artistry on the jade and metals was amazing. And unlike Beijing museums, this one was very well-kept.

Our second stop was the Museum of Guanzhou. This museum wasn't as nifty. Everything was written in Chinese so we had no idea as to what we were looking at. And it was a lot of pots. Pottery in my humble opinion, makes for a very boring exhibit. Oh well. I think the top floor was my favourite. They had a bunch of beautiful chinese silk screen prints, as well as carvings and other forms of art. The big thing about the museum was its actual structure. It's 5 floors high and historians can't figure out how they built such a tall structure... Or at lest that's what my prof said. I think he might be a bit confused there.

Cue stop #3. We went to the Guangxiao Buddhist Temple. By this time we were running behind schedule due to getting lost and whatnot, so we only had like 15 minutes to visit the temple. I wish we could have had more time at this temple because it was gorgeous. It was also a lot bigger than anticipated. Anyways, since I don't know what a lot of the things in there meant, you can simply check out my photos to get the gist of what I saw. It was also neat seeing real monks wandering around, doing their thang. I sometimes see monks in Hong Kong, but very rarely.

Our final stop, and by far my favourite was the Cheng Ancestral Hall. I could spend all day there trying to see all the details of the hall and not succeed. Every surface of the hall had a different carving or picture. It was gorgeous! But once again, we only had like 10 minutes to wander around because it was closing. So sad.

Now comes the fun part. My cousin Robyn is teaching English in Guangzhou right now, so we had made plans to meet after my field trip was done and go for dinner. So after the Cheng Ancestral Hall, I bid my class adieu and went down into the nearest Metro station to find a McDonald's, our meeting point. (FYI, Guangzhou's metro system is exactly the same as Hong Kong's. Cool.) I pulled out a book and began to read while waiting for her.

I look up, and there's Robyn! Yaaaaay! I haven't seen her in 2 years! It's so COOL that we finally saw each other again, but even cooler that it's happened in China. Anyways, she guided me over to Beijing Street, a big pedestrian area. It was very pretty. Same as Hong Kong though. We were accosted by like 10 men, all trying to sell us fake watches. Ha.

We had dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant with her boyfriend and one of their co-workers. I love Vietnamese. It was so tasty and fun. We chatted about random things and did the generic "fill me in on each other's family" lines. It was very relaxing. Afterwards we just wandered around Beijing Street again - I only had like 30 minutes till I had to start going to the train.

Robyn and Curtis escorted me back to the station (or were they trying to ensure I would leave China ASAP?). From there, I managed to go to the wrong area. I had gone through a security check and then approached a worker - I shoved my ticket into her hands and asked, "I go where?" in Chinese. LOL, with a lot of finger pointing I finally ended up at the right train part.

The train back to HK was fairly uncomfortable. The seats were padded, but their backs were at like a 90 degree angle, meaning you couldn't rest comfortably. Despite this, the excitement of the day wiped me out and I slept for most of the train ride.

Amusing anecdotes of the trip:

• While waiting at the station for all the students to gather, one of the French students realized he didn't have his passport. He did the EXACT same thing during our Macau trip. You'd think he manage to remember this time after the Macau fiasco. He ended up having to go back to his residence, get his passport, go to Shenzhen, buy a train ticket to Guangzhou, and then get a taxi to the tomb. Yeesh. (He was also usually the last one on the bus at each location... I've heard of being slow, but this is a new low. ;))


• On the way from the Guangzhou Museum to the Guangxiao Temple, I was gazing out the window. Suddenly I see a young girl running beside our bus. I take a closer look and lo and behold! It's Euna from our class! I guess we had left her behind at the Museum! Oh my gosh! LOL, I started yelling "Professor! There's a student outside the bus!" and we managed to stop and get her on. Ha ha.


• This is by far the BEST part of my trip. I figured that since I'd be taking a train back by myself to Hong Kong, I ought to bring a text book for a paper I'm writing along for the ride. I carted my book around all day, randomly pulling it out here and there and reading it. It wasn't until I was going through customs on the way back to HK that I realized my error. First of all, you aren't supposed to bring printed materials that may damage China's reputation in or out of the country (I saw a bin for newspapers which is why I remembered the potential problem of my book). Of course, when I was going through customs, I had pulled my book out beforehand because it was making my purse uncomfortably heavy... So here I am, walking through customs with a book in my hand. I started freaking out, but tried to maintain my nonchalant attitude while passing the guards. I must have succeeded because no one tackled me from behind. What makes this story even worse is that the book is about state violence. LOL. That's right, I was carting a book around that was criticizing state violence (of course, this book was critiquing violence in Serbia and Israel, but I'm sure they would care whatever country the book talked about). Luckily nobody asked me all day what book I was reading, nor did I try to show it to anyone. If you ever needed proof, there it is: I'm a dumbass.

Farewell Renee...

First of all, I'd like to point this out. I finally progressed from Easy to Medium puzzles on Sudoku. This is probably my best score so far on a medium puzzle. Yay! Average time for solving a medium puzzle is like, 12 minutes, 5 seconds. Soon, with a bit more practice, I'll be into Hard puzzles. (If only I put as much effort into my schoolwork as I do into Sudoku.) (And oh my gosh, so creepy! I'm in the library right now and Minnie just messaged me (she's a floor above me) and yelled, "Stop playing Sudoku!)

More amusement. My Swedish friend Kristin (chinese name: Ke-si-ting) and I randomly chat on MSN all the time. However, most of our conversations are in chinese pinyin. (Mind you, we slaughter the grammar.) Here's an example!

Kristin says:
ni zuo shenme?
莫琳 says:
wo zai tushuguan, buguo, wo bu xue.
莫琳 says:
ni ne?
Kristin says:
ni zai tushuguan? hao!
Kristin says:
wo zai jia
莫琳 says:
jia? home?
莫琳 says:
Xianzai, ni zai nar?
Kristin says:
yeah i'm home! give me some credits!
莫琳 says:
oh. Oooh. I got my verbs mixed up. I thought you meant you were going home.
莫琳 says:
Ha.
莫琳 says:
I suck.
Kristin says:
skip class too often...
莫琳 says:
Shaddup.
莫琳 says:
You should come to the library. I'm going to be here all afternoon pretty much. Minus some lunch time fun.
Kristin says:
zoutian, ni zuo shenme le?
莫琳 says:
wo bu zuo anything.
莫琳 says:
wo xue shao (I studied little?) he wo qu main campus chi fan
莫琳 says:
oh, then wo kan TV
莫琳 says:
and add a bunch of "le"s in there that I forgot
Kristin says:
xiawu, wo xiang (think, not like) qu tushuguan

It's the small things that amuse us.

Some sad news though. :( My good friend, Renee, from Canada, has decided to go home at the end of the term. She was supposed to stay here for a year but since she's originally from China, HK isn't that exciting to her, and at least if she's in Canada, she can get a part-time job. So she'll be abandoning me. I'm bummed out by this because Renee's my movie buddy. Oh well, we'll see each other again sometime while we're both in Canada.

Last night Pei-chin and I had another language exchange. I walked into the room and she immediately pinned me down with questions about when we use the words "oops" and "ouch." Those two were easy to explain, but then she asked me to think of other words like that that we use... And the only one I could think of was "yikes." Dudes, can you guys think of a situation when you say "yikes?" God knows I couldn't.

She also asked about when to use "What the hell"... Now THAT was fun to explain. I told her it was either a way to say "Let's do something without worrying about the consequences" or to express confusion. It was so much fun having an excuse to say "What the hell are you talking about?" or "What the hell, let's go to Lan Kwai Fong!" Language exchanges are so much fun. (And yes dad, I'm also learning chinese through her. I learned how to say "Hao ke ai la!" meaning, "So adorable!" And it's come in handy quite a bit lately.)

This morning I made pancakes for the first time. I managed to buy all the ingredients this weekend. They were so tasty. I need to find real maple syrup though. Wen Li brought over some Golden Syrup stuff... I don't know what the story behind IT was, but it wasn't as satisfying as the real stuff.

The plan for tonight is to have Wen Li (why are all my friends only here for a term? :( ) over for dinner and I'll be making Chicken parmigana.

Today I woke up with a bit of home sickness. Well, not really home sickness, but I missed home a bit. It's a rainy day here, and all I wanted to do was wake up, go flake out on a couch with a blanket and watch TV and have my mom and dad make me dinner. 6 months to go...

Missy no likey!

I finally hit up Shenzhen, the Hong Konger's equivalent of Americans jumping over the border to go shopping in Canada. Getting there was a bit of a pain though, because immigration was confusing. In a nutshell, I went to the wrong section of the Immigration line (I have an HK ID, so why did I get sent to the "visitors" line???) Anyways, I made it finally.

The day was long. And exhausting. And annoying. But totally worth it. While it's not particularly exciting or necessary to know, I'll tell you now that the second you cross the border into China, you're immediately back in a land of no toilet paper or soap.

Wen Li and I decided to "first" go into the Lu Huo (or something like that) mall which was a mere 5 minute walk away from immigration. We arrived in Shenzhen at 10:30am. We left at 8pm. We were in the ONE mall for 10 HOURS! I spent less than $60CAD during my entire time. Wen Li on the other hand, averaged $15CAD every hour. OMFG.

You wanna know what the sad thing was? Every bloody store in that mall sold the same thing. All the purse stores had the same names/styles, all the shoe stores sold the same styles, every jewelry stand had the same earrings. Within an hour, I was experiencing a continual sense of deja vu and couldn't remember if I had been into this store or that one.

One of the more annoying things were the sales clerks. They sat outside their stores and the moment they saw a white person, they jump up and start yelling, "Missy! Missy! You want LV wallet? Gucci handbag? You come in. Missy!" (I don't know why they insist on saying Missy, but it's really aggravating.) If you were in an especially crowded hallway, they would also grab your arm and try to drag you into the store. At times like that, I could think of nothing but the lack of soap in the mall's washrooms.

I think the most exciting thing was ordering some pants to be made. For those of you who don't know, I've lost weight since arriving here and my pants are becoming saggy... Unfortunately I'm still too big for the "larger" sizes here. (Large meaning instead of having needle thin legs, you have pencil thin legs.) Well, Wen Li and I started asking quotes on clothes and one woman gave us a lower quote than the others, so we went into her shop and started looking through clothing magazines finding things we liked.

Essentially they were high-fashion magazines and the tailors will just duplicate it. I saw some of their finished work and it was amazing. It was even more encouraging to have several foreigners pass by and whisper some advice to us about tailoring and to give thumbs up to our choice of tailors. Apparently "Daisy" is really professional.

Wen Li and I randomly met an old-CUHK exchange student at Daisy's shop. It was cool because she could remininsce about the good ol' CUHK days. She also gave Daisy a thumbs up but warned us against getting jeans made there. We ended up exchanging email addresses and the like. I now have a place to crash in Shenzhen if needed. :)

Anyways, I found some groovy pants in a couture magazine and so Daisy took my measurements and off we went to choose fabric. My eyes hurt from all the patterns and colours. I ended up choosing a brown/tweedy looking colour. I'm very excited about going to pick it up - it will be ready in about 10 days. And best of all??? The tailoring and material only cost me $120HKD!!! That's like $17CAD for a custom pair of pants. Of course, this could all backlash 10 days from now when I get them and find they're crap or something. But I don't anticipate any problems.

There were some amusing mishaps through the day.

• I wanted to buy a new memory card for my digital camera. At one of the first shops I went to, I bargained the guy down to $100HKD and then down further to $80HKD. Just as I was pulling out my wallet though, the prick jerked it back up to $100. I was like, screw this and left.


• At another shop selling memory cards, I again managed to get a guy down to $100HKD. However, in my attempt to get him even lower, I tried to tell him $80HKD... Unfortunately my mandarin number skills are crap. Instead of saying $80, I accidentally told him $800. I immediately realized my error and started laughing hysterically. The guy was practically falling over to sell me the card by this time. "$800 okay~da! I sell it to you for $800!" LOL. I don't know how long it will last, but at least for a while I hope.


• Upon entering one store, a lady said hello to us. I responded with a mandarin greeting and suddenly she started spouting out all this stuff in mandarin. I just stared at her with a deer-caught-in-the-headlights look and told her (in mandarin) that I didn't understand her. Wen Li and I immediately left the store. Apparently the lady had asked if I could speak mandarin. And here I am, speaking to her in Mandarin, but telling her I don't understand a word she was saying. Hmm. Maybe this was funnier in person.


• Gah. Apparently you could get a cheap manicure in Shenzhen. My frickin' tour guide book needs to be updated. I guess it's more of a case that you can get a manicure and listen to an infomercial at the same time. We had been quoted $25HKD for a manicure and pedicure. Well, upon entering, they try to sell you a gazillion other things as well. They would randomly make one nail prettier than the others and tell you, "Missy! See how beautiful nail is? All others - only $80!" And frickin' hell the bastards were persistent. They kept pestering and pestering me to do all these things. Then they'd lower the price even though I kept saying no. They didn't understand "No" in either their language or English. I even tried putting on an angry face (not hard at this point) and growling no. Towards the end, I was even yanking my arms away from them to emphasize that I didn't want anything. This happened despite Wen Li's telling them I didn't want anything. Grr.


• At the manicure place (my nails are slightly crooked looking now because my manicurist was too busy watching tv to pay attention to my hands) I did accept a massage ($30HKD/hour). Well, half way through my massage, the hands suddenly began to migrate to the front of my neck, and slowly descending lower and lower. I casually turned to Wen Li and asked her if my masseuse was a guy or girl. Wen Li was like, "A girl, why?" I responded with, "Because I'd be a bit more concerned if it was a guy, because whoever they are is getting damn close to second base!"


• At one shoe store, I picked up a random sandal and asked the shopkeeper how much it cost. He comes over and first thing he says is, "Ah, Gucci shoe! Very good!" I started laughing my ass off. The shoe says some frickin' no name brand right on it, and here he is trying to convince me it's a gucci shoe. I'm not bloody blind man. Afterwards, everytime Wen Li and I saw something for sale, I would ask if it was Gucci or Prada. "Gucci apple? Louis Vuitton emery board???"


• While trying to bargain a guy down on a wallet for Wen Li, I told him (in my fabulous mandarin) my favourite bargaining line, "We're students! We're poor/We have no money!" Sadly he seemed to think I wasn't being serious because he responded, "Ah, you make good jokes!" That wasn't a joke buddy. You made me sad by thinking so. :P

Going home provided me with a way to work off my stress. First of all, Wen Li had issues getting through immigration this time. She forgot to fill out a form, was sent to a different line, yelled at for not having something she didn't need to have, and to top it all off, had her bags searched even though no one else was being looked at.

Well, getting on the train was a stress reliever in itself. There was a huge crowd waiting to board the MTR. And getting on the train here comes with a "Kill or be killed" attitude, and by this time I was ready to do the former. (One can only hear the word "Missy" so many times before cracking.) Anyways, when the doors to the train opened, an older gentlejerk tried to shove (literally - both hands were used to shove) me out of his way to get a seat on the train. Well, Mau wasn't having none of it. I shoved back and somehow pinned him between the train door and me. I'll have you know that Wen Li and I secured seats beside each other for the entire ride home. (Okay, that sounds a lot more violent than it really was. But there was much shoving involved, but I was more shocked by it than actually party to it.)

So what did Mau buy today other than food?
- A new wallet (an Anna Sui knockoff - or at least we think it's a knockoff)
- A souvenir for a sibling
- An SD memory card
- Tailored pants
- A crap manicure

A jaunt around the block

Since it had been awhile since my last HK adventure, I decided to use Tuesday as a "Get lost in HK" day.

Emily and I ventured out to the big ol' island of HK to try and find the "Botanical and Zoological Gardens of Hong Kong." (Pictures are here.) My tour guide book merely described it as a 15 minute walk from the Central MTR station. They neglected to inform us that it was a 15 minute walk uphill on a freakin' mountain. To make matters worse, it was another hot and sticky day, so unsurprisingly, Emily and I were gasping for air by the time we reached the gardens. (Happily we managed to get there without getting lost - not bad for not knowing where the hell we were going - I just kept walking up the steepest road I saw.)

The gardens were pretty nifty! It was novel walking around a garden and being surrounded by nature, but still able to see the skyscrapers peeking out overhead. I was amused by a sign warning visitors that spitting in either a gutter or even into a garbage can was an offense and punishable by a fine of $1500HKD. Spitting into a garbage is fine-worthy??? What the hell man?! Better to spit in a garbage than on the street. The logic of these people eludes me.

The gardens had quite a few zoo displays. There were orangutans, lemurs, reptiles, birds, and even a jaguar. Emily was like a kid in a candy store - everytime I turned around, she had disappeared and at the next display. I could barely keep up! I think my fave part was the monkey/other arboreal creature areas. There was nothing special about it, I just had fun watching the little monsters.

After the gardens, we wandered over to Hollywood Road and walked along there. Hollwood Road is known for its antiques stores. It seemed more like a tourist area for those people who want to buy something seemingly authentic and be able to brage about the high price it was worth. We popped into a small art gallery and wandered around for a bit.

I had told Wen Li that I would meet up with her in Causeway Bay (she had never been there before) after she was done her exam, so Emily and I started to head in that direction. However, Emily decided to go home instead, so I ventured onwards. (All my instincts told me to go home as well - my legs were tired from our mountain climb earlier, and shopping with Wen Li is an endurance sport.)

I'm glad to didn't succumb to exhaustion though. I had a good time with Wen Li and Pei-chin. We just wandered around clothing stores and the like. I was their personal tour guide, even though I don't know Causeway Bay that well. I've always been lucky to have a good sense of direction in strange cities, so I'm able to guide people around and make sure they don't turn down the wrong street or something like that.

I've also discovered another food/treat thingie here that I'm unable to resist. At the roadside food stalls they sell waffle/eggo thingies. When you buy one, they smother it in butter, peanut butter, sugar and condensed milk then fold it in half and shove it in a bag. It's so yummy! I think I unconsciously drift towards stalls selling these things because I always manage to find them when I go shopping.

Another exciting thing that has happened recently is that I went to a classmate's birthday party last night. (Pictures are here.) His name is Morgan and he's in my Mandarin class. I had a lot of fun! He had chartered a boat to take us around the HK harbour for 4 hours, and also hired a caterer to provide us with food. Soooo yummy!

I got to meet a few of his friends including another Canadian. (It's always fun to start talking with a stranger, ask where they're from and suddenly realize you're both from Canada.) Don't know what to report about the party. It was just a relaxing night chilling on a boat with some random people.

Lani and I spent the last hour goofing around with her camera and trying to find a setting on it to take good pictures of the Hong Kong background. Most pictures we took look like we're on a wacky acid trip. :)



So tomorrow I'm headed to Shenzhen with Wen Li. Pei-chin wants to come with us, but she can't afford it - as a Taiwanese citizen, she has to pay $150 (dunno what currency) to cross the border into China each time.

I'll let you guys know how it goes tomorrow!

P.S.
Chinese billards! And Bruce Lee wristwatches!

I'll stick to space invaders

The great ant migration of 2005 took place tonight. I was innocently wasting time playing Sudoku when I heard a timid knock on our door. I opened it up and there were two of my flatmates. They asked if I had any pesticide/bug spray. I replied that I didn't and they showed me the reason they needed it.

In the middle of our living room floor were over 400 ants. Yes, the ants returned. Let round 5 of Mau versus the pests begin. DING!

It appeared as though they little freaks were moving their nest. They were grouped around little white things that I assume were eggs. They were randomly scattered in groups all the way from outside our door to the door to our apartment. GAH!

The two girls went to the office downstairs to see if they had any RAID or stuff like that. But I couldn't wait for them to get back. Innovative Mau got some pieces of paper, threw them down on top of the ants and began jumping up and down on them like crazy. (It's a great way to relieve some stress.)

Anyways, we managed to sweep up the remained and spray bomb our apartment with pesticide. Note to self: Make ant traps into a fashion statement and cover every surface of my apartment with them.

That was the most excitement I had all day. My morning didn't start off too well. I started the day with an "I hate Hong Kong" attitude. The weather was super hot and sticky (humidex 40). That made me miserable and therefore everything pissed me off. i.e. People didn't move out of my way on the sidewalk (a normal thing here), people bumped into me in the cafeteria without saying sorry (also a normal thing).

But luckily my sense of irritation ended by the end of classes. I had a good time in my Mandarin class today. About a third of the students were missing for some reason. We still had a good time though - lots of laughter. For my own personal amusement, I recorded a small section of my mandarin class today. If you want to listen to what our class sounds like, you can check it out here! (The quality of the recording sucks though.) (The gist of this recording is that one person reads the character on the board, uses it in a sentence, then we repeat the word, then go on to the next character.) (Also, at about 30 seconds into the tape, you hear the prof ask "Molin" to answer... That's me! Telling the class that "I don't want to buy the person's ticket" and then identifying the next character as "Dui bu qi" which means I'm sorry.)

When I got back to my room, Pei-chin and I were uber-lazy and just flopped out on our beds to relax. We had a good time and began to joke around about different things. Then I started to speak to her in Mandarin. And suddenly, she was quizzing me on Mandarin. It was lots of fun, and she helped explain some things I didn't understand before. She also taught me to say useful things like "My country is better than yours" or "I'm prettier than you." :)

My eldest sibling is about to phone me, so I shall end off here. :) Toodles!

Finally miss Canadian prices!

Well, my plans to study study study for the past few days have gone as is usual - meaning not at all.

Last night I went to Mong Kok with Pei-chin, Wen Li, and Jen. I've gotten over the stage of having to buy something while I'm out. Therefore the only thing I bought (besides food) was a barette for like $1.7CAD. The others bought over $300HKD worth of clothes and the like.

I was very amused by our dinner. Pei-chin and Wen Li wanted to eat somewhere really cheap... So we ended up going into one of those shifty chinese restaurants. Everything was in chinese (no pictures), so they had to translate for me. I helped narrow it down by telling them what kind of meat and noodle I wanted. The rest was up to them. The establishment was very, err, not clean looking. And half way through our meal, I watched them moving a giant bucket of soup base into the kitchen. The same soup base I was currently eating. The soup base looked like dirty dish water.

Well, the next day we decided to hit up Central. Wen Li had been wanting to cut her hair - it was down to her hips! It was so heavy, she couldn't even use regular elastic bands to hold it up anymore. So we looked up a bunch of hair stylists to check out.

It was fun, but tiresome at the same time. There were 5 of us this time, and each of us wanted something done to their hair - hair cut, perm, straigtening, colour, etc. In a nutshell we travelled all around Central all morning and couldn't decide on anything - we were too big of a group to accomplish anything.

Well, finally Pei-chin, Wen Li, Jen and I went back to the Mong Kok mall (Pan had to leave for a class). We went for lunch and on our way out, saw a sign for a salon in the mall. We decided to check it out, and within 10 minutes, I had decided to get my hair done there. (Mainly because they could speak decent English there.)

Soon Jen and Wen Li had decided to join me. One one hand the place rocked, but on the other, I felt like rolling my eyes and tapping my foot. Let's start with the bad then move on to the good.

I think my biggest problem with the place was the amount of staff they had working there. I was getting a regular old perm - something that would only take 60-90 minutes in Canada. I was there for nearly 3 hours! And in that time, I had 4 different people working on me. What the hell man? How can these people run a cost-efficient business when you have two people cutting someone's hair - one to wield the scissors, and another to hold the non-ready-to-be-cut-hair out of the way. My other issue was that things just seemed to be slow in general - e.g. they were drying my hair from sopping wet to nearly dry with blow dryers (this is when I appreciated having two people doing it - if only to speed up the process). It took forever to get done.

As for the good part... My perm looks fabulous (actually, it looks better than it normally does when coming out of a salon in Canada - but this is just temporary - it'll look different when I style it myself). It was nice to see that the people were doing EXACTLY what I told them. They didn't argue and they asked continual questions to ensure they were doing it correctly. (E.g. they originally thought I wanted a spiral perm, but then the lady asked how they normally do my rollers in Canada and realized that I didn't want a spiral perm.) It was cool in that respect.

Another bonus: I got to wear a funny black Japanese robe thingie. That was too narrow for my shoulders. I looked like a sumo wrestler fitting into a kimono. An amusing, but not pretty image.

Sadly perms here at a relatively decent salon (and even non-decent salons) cost an arm and a leg. :( In my hometown, I'd pay around $80CAD for a perm, or even around $110CAD in a nicer salon in a larger/upscale city. Here, I paid $150CAD. :( And that was cheap. Most salons charge around $1400-$2000HKD. Oh well, at least I got what I paid for.

Oh, and Wen Li got about 15 centimeters chopped off the back of her head, and even more in the front. Her haircut looks fabulous! Very cool.

Broken fears, shirts, and sleeping schedules

Last night was Halloween here in HK. It's not a big thing here in this city. Most stores didn't do a single thing for Halloween. Some did put up a few decorations, or would wear devil horns/witch hats, but that's it.

My plans for Halloween were to go to Ocean Park, HK's amusement park. The original plan was to go with Pei-chin, Wen Li, Bernard and Minnie, but upon arrival to the park, we ran into another group of CUHK students, so we hung out with them too.

Photos (taken by Minnie) can be found here!

First off, you know how it's a common thought that if you pay a lot for food, it must be very good? Does the same apply to McDonald's? LOL. You couldn't buy combos at the Ocean Park McDonald's, so I bought a chicken burger, chicken nuggets, and a large drink. (The nuggets were cheaper than french fries.) The bloody thing cost me $47HKD... A normal value meal here costs $23.50. Gah!

Ocean Park was so much fun! It was completely revamped for Halloween! The worker's costumes were so cool. They all had amazing makeup. The best part was that they remained in character no matter what. Even if you were getting a photo taken with them, they would try to scare you unexpectedly. I saw "Dracula" scare the hell outta some chinese girls. I was also amused to see a "tribal man" chasing one visitor around with his spear. Very fun.

The most amusing costumes I saw all night though belonged to these guys! I first saw them from the bus as we were pulling into the park, but lost them upon unboarding. I just thought it was so funny to see people dressing up at Natives here... I got Minnie to ask them in Cantonese if I could get a photo taken with them. Hee. Thanks for letting me take a picture!

Anyways, for those of you who don't know... Before last night, I hadn't been into a Haunted House for like, 10 years, if not more. I was slightly traumatized by one when I was little (I just remember seeing a mummy then running away crying). After that, I avoided them like the plague. Well, I signed up for the Ocean Park Halloween Bash before realizing there were haunted houses involved. Damnit!

I'm proud to say that I'm officially over my Haunted House phobia. :P The haunted houses were so good here! Each had a different theme - The Freakshow (medical theme), The Asylum (fun house/clown theme), The Legend of the Peking Opera House (spirit/opera house theme), Fright Factory (construction site theme), Tribal Revenge (jungle theme). I think my faves were the Freakshow, Asylum, and Fright Factory. Now as mentioned, I don't have a lot of experience with Haunted Houses, but I think the ones at Ocean Park put on a good show man.

One of the guys in our group, Wocky from Japan, got to be the unwilling leader in each house. The poor guy was more frightened than the rest of us. LOL. I remember in the second house, he actually fell down and cowered when one worker jumped out at us and "attacked" us. LOL. I know they got a few screams outta me. (Especially one worker who unexpectedly jumped out of a fake wall - he was attached to an elastic harness and immediately got snapped back into the wall. Very cool man.

Amusing anecdote: We went to see a dolphin/seal show. It was the regular show they have everyday, but they played halloween themed music throughout it. I was amused to listen to all the Rocky Horror Picture Show songs, Monster Mash, then have some Avril Lavigne close the show...

We all grabbed a bus back to Mong Kok, but from there, things went sour. We couldn't find the mini-bus that would take us back to CUHK. People kept giving us directions, even though they didn't know where the hell the buses were! We literally (no word of a lie) passed the same store at least 3 times. I was amused by it, but some of the others were so exhausted (it was like 1:30am) it wasn't funny for them anymore. :) But luckily we managed to find it finally.

It's time to leave my computer and get ready to meet Wen Li for lunch. To the shower!