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!