Happy Chinese New Year!

Here's a couple of cultural things I forgot to mention in my last post:

• At the end of my hot pot experience, I learned that it's considered bad luck for girls to cut a cake and cut all the way through to the bottom of the pan. If she does cut all the way through, she may never get married. Luckily at our party, none of the girls potential marriages were ruined because a guy grabbed the knife away to make sure.
  
• Kraft Dinner is not a staple of the world, only North America it seems. I bought my first box of it in like a year and Peggy had no idea what it was. When I gave her a taste, she seemed happy to keep it that way. :)
  
• There was more, but I forget what they were.
  

Anyways, Happy Chinese New Year! Today's the official start of the new lunar year. It's now the Year of the Dog. Apparently, if you're a dog, and were born in the Year of The Dog, you'll have extra bad luck. I would have thought it was the opposite, but Peggy was adamant that it's this way. Who'd have thunk it?

I won't be doing much for the New Year. We wanted to go travelling, but ticket prices for packages or even plain old flights have practically doubled if not tripled! Instead, we'll be chilling around Hong Kong, checking out the festivities. I'm pretty psyched, even if my chinese friends aren't. At least this is all new to me!

Today I'll be heading out with Jen and Peggy. We haven't hung out together in awhile, so we'll be going shopping (well, Jen and Peggy will shop - I'm just going to follow them as usual) and then going to the Flower Market in Victoria Park - a special New Year's thing.

Besides visiting the fireworks and parade, the only other plans I've made is to visit Lantau Island for a couple of nights. Several friends and I (err, last I heard, it was 14 friends) have rented a flat on the island for 2 nights. It's only costing us about $130HKD each ($18CAD) for the entire two nights. Swank, no? We'll be visiting the Big Buddha again, going hiking, biking, and BBQing.

One of the problems with my group of friends is that I seem to be hanging with a mostly Asian crowd these days. I find this mostly amusing (when you look at pictures, it's always easy to see me first because I'm the tallest and only white person) but it can sometimes be a bit awkward.

For example, last Sunday when I was at the BBQ with the Dim Sum club, I was one of two white people. As we began the BBQ, the other white guy left. I don't mind being the only white person, but that also means I was the only non-Cantonese speaker. The others all chattered away in Cantonese and I just sat there, focusing on my food. If it was Mandarin I wouldn't have felt so awkward (once in awhile they'd translate the occassional joke or let me in on the conversation), because at least then I could try to practice my mandarin skills, but cantonese is beyond me.

Nonetheless, I still always have fun with my pals, no matter how lost I may feel. And this particular group for New Year will be even more amusing - it'll be like our Singapore trip all over again. Things will need to be translated into English, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Japanese - who knows, if the Korean guy comes, maybe sometime else will be able to speak Korean with him. At least this time I'll know the one Japanese guy doesn't speak any English, and I'll stop trying to talk to him. :)

Approximately 90 days

So out of curiousity, I just did a rough calculation of how many days I have left here in Hong Kong. Only 90??? I've been here for around 140 days thus far. Those numbers sound so surreal and unrealistic. I've actually been here for a lifetime - wait, no make that a few mere seconds.

Nothing terribly exciting has happened lately, but a lot of small things seem to have occurred. In the past week I've gone to the I-house welcoming dinner, a new random temple (not the one I wanted to go to though), gone shopping crazy, went for a special Hong Kong dinner, skating, and went for a chinese BBQ.

The I-house welcoming party was an event so we could welcome all the new students living here this term. It was fun, but in the end, you didn't actually meet that many new people because there were too many. I met lots of people, and remember lots of names, but I can't put the them together. The party planners also produced ink and red paper for the upcoming Chinese New Year. Apparently it's tradition (or at least fun) for people to write down good wishes on paper and hang them on their doors until the New Year. Right now Peggy and I have "Good luck" and something else written (in Chinese of course) and hanging upside down on our door. (It gets turned right side up on the first day of New Year.)

The next day, Peggy and I joined some new girls (Allison, Paige, and Brianne from an earlier post) in attempting to find the Temple of 10,000 Buddhas in Shatin. We found a temple, but it wasn't the right one. (And of course, Peggy and I left before we found out it wasn't the right one.) It was pretty, but otherwise not terribly interesting. I've reached the point where a temple is a temple. I don't go out of my way to seek one unless it's super famous.

Peggy and I left earlier than the others because it turns out that it wasn't really a temple after all - it was a place where people went to pray to their ancestors. (Where they keep their ashes - do they keep their ashes here in China?) We weren't too comfortable walking around there while there were people praying to their departed ones. (The others students did end up finding the real Temple of 10,000 Buddhas after awhile.)

Peggy and I ended up going to the Shatin mall. She wanted to buy a nice winter jacket... And thus commenced our 10 hour shopping ordeal. We went through EVERY single floor of the Shatin Mall (6 floors - each floor bigger than the Heritage Place mall and with mostly clothing stores). NEVER AGAIN I tell you! After the first 7 hours, we couldn't find anything in Shatin, so we went to Mong Kok and found another upscale mall. Queue another 3 hours of shopping with no results.

The following morning, we met up with Limin and went skating in Kowloon Tong. Peggy had never skated before, and Limin hadn't skated in like, 10 years. It was fun, and Peggy tried her best to learn, but even I have to admit, it wasn't that much fun. The rink was over crowded, the skates so dull that they probably wouldn't even be considered a weapon on an airplane, and the ice was terribly rutted. We ended up leaving after only like 90 minutes.

The most amusing thing about the skating rink was watching a bunch of little Kung Fu kids trying to skate. (There had been a demonstration earlier that day in the mall and I guess they decided to go skating as a treat.) None of these kids knew how to skate, and you could tell. Despite all the falling they were doing, they all wore happy little grins. I guess they truly do know how to put mind over matter. (Cue the groans. :))

We ended up continuing our search for Peggy's coat afterwards. I felt bad for Limin, because she didn't realize what a mission we had embarked on. You could tell she was kinda bored. Once again we went back to Mong Kok (to finish off the mall we didn't finish the evening before). I could weep now when I think of all the fruitless walking we did. One of the real aims of our expedition this time though was to waste time - we were waiting till 8pm so we could meet up with Jen and go for dinner.

Thankfully the time finally came, and we went over to Fo Tan to meet up with Jen, her boyfriend Bryan, and lo and behold - Allison, Paige, and Brianne! (Random meetup, but a fun result.) We then headed out to have "Dai Pai Dong."

Dai Pai Dong is supposed to be a special way of having dinner in Hong Kong... I don't know why it was so special though. It was like eating in China. In the middle of a road there were a bunch of tents set up with tables and stools... Despite being located on a closed down road, it was a generic chinese meal. We ate soooo much. Oh, and there's that favourite photo of mine again! :) That's me with squid hanging out of my mouth. Mwahahahaha.

On Sunday I had made plans with the "Dim Sum Club" (a group of people I go for lunch with once a week) to go bicycling and for a BBQ. More fun ensued.

We took a bus out into the New Territories and found a nice little area on the waterfront where we could rent bikes for $10HKD for the day. I felt bad for the American guy in our group - he's over 6 feet tall and had a hard time finding a bike that would fit him. We ended up going biking for about 2 hours. One of the trails was along a rock barricade connecting the mainland to an island - it was pretty, but filled with bugs.

After biking, we walked over to our BBQ site... I swear, the Chinese are masters at wasting time. After my hot pot experience, and now this BBQ, I'm certain they've perfected the ability to prolong things.

The BBQ was fun, but terribly inefficient. You know how we roast marshmellows back in North America? Well, instead of spearing a marshmellow or hotdog, these guys will toss an entire steak on their stick and roast it for half an hour before eating. It was fun, but infuriating to have to wait for eat piece of meat! It was interesting to see just what you COULD BBQ though - I toasted everything from streak and chicken wings to octopus. (I droped my octopus on the ground though half way through - 20 minutes of roasting - wasted! :( ) We even toasted our own bread. Yeesh. Crazy man.

Thus ended my evening of procrastination. I have class in an hour and haven't eaten, so I shall go now. Toodles!

More fun in Hong Kong

No time to write right now, but I had to post this picture because it amuses me so. :)

Turn that frown upside down!

It's always a pleasant end to the day when you realize that the morning from hell turned into a nice evening.

In case I croak before I finish writing this post, I'd like you guys to point out to the coroner that the cause of my death is probably the 3 month expired salad dressing I ate. Damnit! I thought the funny taste was just because it was a Hong Kong version of caesar. *burps*

Anyways, my morning started off a little badly. I didn't sleep well (courtesy of a messed up sleep schedule ever since my nights out in Lan Kwai Fong), getting only about 3 or 4 hours of sleep. I woke up at 7:20, thought, fuck it, turned my alarm clock to 8:20. I wake up officially at 8:20, rush through my shower and crap so I can catch the 9am shuttle up the mountain. At 8:50, I realize there's a shuttle at 9:20 so I slow down and relax, giving time to make lunch. At 9:15 I head down to the shuttle stop only to realize my clocks are 5 minutes slow, so I now I have about 5 minutes to walk up the freaking mountain to my tutorial. Half way up the hill I realize I forgot to write down the room number for my tutorial. Again, fuck it runs through my head, I'll pop into random class rooms looking for my tutorial.

I get into the tutorial 5 minutes late, but it's cool because half of the rest of the people are still missing. I then spend the next 30 to 45 minutes waiting with the rest of the people for the stragglers to attend. We were waiting because some of the people there said their friends had told them they were coming. Again the word "fuck" comes to mind, but this time coupled with "-ing hell." I spend the time staring at my tutorial sheet (which was provided in an email earlier) and foisting off the TAs attempts to chat with me. (Okay, his attempts were appreciated because I was the only International student in the class, and no one was talking to me, but I was too frickin' irritated and tired to listen to him say the same stuff over and over to me - the stuff that was on the tutorial sheet.)

Turns out the entire tutorial's purpose was merely to divide into groups for the presentations we have to do. Everyone knew each other in the tutorial, so they divided into teams leaving me the odd person out. Luckily one of the people who didn't show up had a valid reason, so the TA assigned her and I together. Then, to be fair, the TA assigned a lottery system for choosing the presentation dates and topics. Of course, to put the cherry on my cake, I got the last number, giving me last choice. I got the very last presentation date, and none of the topics I was remotely interested in.

By now I was frothing at the mouth and ready to go beserk, but luckily we were allowed to leave at that time.

I then got to go to the lecture that the tutorial was for. That's when my day began to show a bit more promise. I met a new exchange student there and we chatted for awhile.

Then a miracle occurred. I learned something at school. *blink blink* It's shocking, but true. This lecture was my Intro to Comparative Politics. Admittedly it promises to be very dry and boring, but I'm 80% sure I'll actually learn something in it. The prof is a French lady who speaks chinese (sending the class into twitters whenever she said something). Anyways, I took notes and lost myself in the pleasure of working my atrophied brain back into shape.

I even got out of class a bit early, giving me time to grab a sandwich at the United College canteen. (I have no lunch breaks on Mondays.) I ran back over to the building I had just vacated and made my way to my mandarin class.

Mandarin was a fun class today. I got to meet another student (although he was year long student, not a new exchange student). We had fun chatting and I was able to rock the lecture despite not having reviewed or anything. I also got elected as Class Rep even though I didn't volunteer. Silly Mallory pointed at me when the prof asked for volunteers and before I knew it, I was voluntold to be Class Rep. :) (Luckily I don't have to do much except for the Chinese Language Centre tour, in which I'll have to count class members and the like.)

After Mandarin, I scurried off to my History of US-Sino relations class. I had fun chatting with some students (new and old) and once again (I'm surprised the shock didn't kill me), I learned stuff! *weeps with joy* I didn't have to take notes because the prof was going to send out the slides, but honestly, I was too excited about the knowledge not to take it down. I was even happier when I saw my pal Mayumi (from the Singapore/Malaysia trip) enter the class. Yay!

I got to flee home for food afterwards and my evening was made complete by cooking fajitas. Mmm. Salsa, just what the doctor ordered. I then placed my lard ass in front of the computer, watched old Spiderman cartoons and played computer games.

Tomorrow's plans are to wash my bedding, go to main campus to have dim sum (there's an actual "dim sum club" now) and maybe go skating. Booyah baby!

Must minimize vocabulary usage

Note to self: When you have a roommate who wants to learn more English, and will ask you what certain words you use mean, you should limit the words you want to explain. For example, don't describe something as orgasmically delicious. Jen and I (well, me more than Jen since she was laughing too hard and too embarassed) tried to explain the word as best we could before finally sending Peggy to her dictionary.

Another one bites the dust

Well, I bade the last of my first term friends goodbye last night. Antonette caught her flight back to the US this morning at 8:45am. But once again, it's not a goodbye... It's a "see you later."

We did manage to squeeze in some last minute fun though. She invited us over to her old flat for some hot pot. For those of you who don't know what hot pot is, it's a traditional chinese deal where you boil a pot of broth, toss in a gazillion random bits of food (e.g. mushrooms, meat, dumplings, etc.) and then grab as you want. I have to admit, the concept of hot pot seems very inefficient to me. It took forever to cook the food and so on. Later on, Peggy explained why people want to do hot pot at all (it's mainly popular among people who don't have access to cooking facilities, like students.)

Nonetheless, it was fun! I got to meet more people and they were amused by my complete lack of knowledge about hot pot. We had a blast just yapping away about everything and mocking Antonette's name. (Most students have a hard time pronouncing it, until they're told that's it's kinda like "Internet.")

Therefore the evening was a lot more productive than my afternoon. I just wasted time playing on the computer and then taking a short walk down to Residences 10 and 11 - the apartments further down from I-house. In my entire first term, I never walked further than I-house... And now that I have, I don't intend to again. Walking down meant having to walk back up later. Not cool when you're tired.

So that's that. I already feel bereft without my buddies... Not that I need to do anything today - but it's not a happy feeling knowing I can't just call 'em up and say, "Wanna hit up Mong Kok" or something similar. :( And although I've met a lot of new students, I'm not comfortable yet calling them up (not that I have their numbers). Oh well, maybe this will mean I'll do homework this term. *snicker*

P.S.
As for my night out to Lan Kwai Fong, my story sounds more impressive than it actually was. After leaving Edge, we didn't have another drink until about 6am. So I was in quite fine shape for breakfast. :)

Name dropping

On a completely unrelated note to my exchange here, and with less relevance to most of my readers, I wanna mention a little something I found on the web.

When I was working in Vancouver last winter, one of my coworkers would draw little chicken cartoons on post-it notes, whiteboards, everywhere he could. I used to take great joy in reading them while I was waiting for stuff to load, things to process etc. Well, I happened across the website http://www.savagechickens.com/ - he made a website for his cartoons! And it's popular!

Silly, I know. But I'm a fan of webcomics, so finding his stuff on the web, and seeing where he's been mentioned is rather cool. It's like meeting the staff of a celebrity. I dunno.

Just like orientation week!

Wow, lots has happened in the past week. Classes, new people and new experiences.

Classes seem promising so far. Of course, that's what I said last year before the cruel truth revealed itself. Ahem. This term I'm taking:

• Beginner Putonghua 2
• History of US-Sino Relations
• Introduction to International Politics

And I don't know what else. I'm trying to sign up for Introduction To Comparative Politics, but I'm not showing up on the class list, so I guess I'll have to try again. I have to admit that I'm pretty psyched about the International Politics class. Well, maybe not about the class, but about my T.A. He's freakin' hawt! (For mom and dad who need a translation from cool-speak, that means "hot" :P)

I also made a new personal mission for my first few weeks of the new term. I'm working hard to meet the new exchange students. It's a bit tough for us old students because we didn't participate in the second orientation week, so the new students don't know us and have kind of clumped together.

However, I did manage to infiltrate a few groups. After the first day of classes, Peggy told me about a "Tea Party" for new students at main campus, so we headed down there to take advantage of the situation. Well, turns out it was a tea party for the new students and their hosts, but they let us in anyways. (Yay free food!) I sat with a random group of girls and ended up going out to Ikea and Shatin with them the next day. They invited me out this afternoon too, but considering what I did last night, there was no hope in hell that I was going to do anything else. (Don't worry, last night's details will be covered further below.)

I don't really remember what I did the next morning, but as mentioned, I hit up Ikea and Shatin with the girls, had dinner with them, got mocked for pimping Mong Kok so much (I really need to stop spouting how much I love that area) and so on. Antonette was with us too, but we ended up having to leave around 7:30 because we were expected back at I-house.

Why did we need to flee back to I-House? That's because there was a snack party to go to! What's a snack party? It's a smorgsdaborg of food. Hee. Because all of us had just finished a plethora of travelling, we decided to get a bunch of snacks together and gorge. (It was Ida's idea first because she brought a bunch of snacks back from Finland.) We had cheeses and goodies from Finland, candies from Thailand and Taiwan, candy from Sweden, cookies from Malaysia, Pringles from Singapore and so on. It was so fun. More pictures from the snack party can be found here.

The snack party is also where I met Becky, another new exchange student. I volunteered to take her out the next day and show her where she could get her Chinese visa, so off we went with her friend Emmy after the next day of classes. Unfortunately the office I took them to didn't process American visas - apparently only their consulate can. Whoops. We ended up going to Mong Kok afterwards.

As mentioned many times before, I love Mong Kok. But I have to admit, it was refreshing to see it with new eyes. We wandered down the Women's Street and Emmy and Becky loved it. They need to work on their bargaining a bit more though - and learn their exchange rates. Becky was pissed because she bought 4 cheap cardboard street signs of HK areas for $45HKD each... Meaning like, $4USD - a major ripoff in my opinion. Oh well, we all make dumb purchases once in awhile. (Mine was a brown purse with a sequin dragon on it - I found them for cheaper and better quality at a mall 15 minutes up the road.)

That night we went to Lan Kwai Fong. I'll admit that I had never been to LKF before - I'm not a huge clubbing person, and I therefore I missed out on a lot last term. I decided to rectify the situation by latching on to Becky and meeting her friends. Anyways, we got to LKF around 12:30 and it was a freakin' GHOST TOWN. (Of course, it WAS a Wednesday, so it shouldn't be too surprising.) To make a long night short, we ended up not finding a place to dance, not having anything to drink, and going home by 2:30. The bonus of the night was meeting a french guy from our campus and chatting with him. I never knew him that well but we had a good time on the taxi on the way home.

Luckily the next night was better. Thursdays are Ladies Night's, and Antonette wanted to go out to LKF for one last time before returning home to America. Once again I got to meet some new people (although they weren't literally new - I had just never met them the last term). Waiting for everyone at the KCR station was amusing though. So many other exchange students were going out - we filled up half a KCR car! I think the locals were afraid of us.

Anyways, LKF was fun. We were such a large group (seriously at least 30 students went out) that we split up. Our group went to Edge for some free drinks at first. Hoo boy, we sure drank quickly. We only stayed at Edge for like an hour because it was too crowded, but when we left, I was dizzy from guzzling my alcomohol. (And if I was dizzy, can you picture how the little asian girls I was with were feeling?) We stumbled our way down to Hei Hei, a slightly more higher class club (err, in comparison to Edge), trying to sober up a few members of our group.

I have to admit, I much prefered Hei Hei to Edge. Hei Hei had a nicer ambience and was less packed. They also had a cool lounge on a balcony outside (a novelty in the urban HK jungle). I met a nice Canadian guy who just finished his semester here in Hong Kong. Nothing terribly exciting happened though.

We then decided to go over to the Wan Chai district and meet up with some of our friends there. Well, Wan Chai at night is very different from day. Our frickin' taxi driver took us to the furthest possible location that we wanted to go to just to rack up our fare and it took us probably around 45minutes to locate our friends. This is when we met Mischa and Max, two guys from Germany, both thoroughly wasted.

We moseyed on down to a place called Strawberry. If you're ever in Hong Kong and want to pick up a hooker, Strawberry's the place to go. They were there in droves. There was also a live band. We mainly just sat with some alcohol, but after awhile, Mischa decided to get up and dance. Well, try to dance. Or maybe he was only stumbling around and pointing at the floor. Let's put it this way - no one knew what the hell he was doing. Even the hookers were avoiding him. Amusingly, but also not, one guy approached Antonette and proposed to her. (Err, in the hooker fashion, not the marriage fashion.) We dunno why the hell he'd approach her when there was an entire table of prostitutes at the table beside us. Aiyah.

But the time we left Strawberry, it was 7am. Peggy wanted to have breakfast, so we bid Mischa and Max goodbye (poor Annelie had to help Mischa stumble back to campus) and found a cheap noodle house. [Edit: Apparently on the way back to campus, Mischa kept asking people if they had eggs.] I felt bad for the guy who ate with us. He's super friendly and kept wanting to chat, but I was so exhausted, I couldn't focus on his conversation.

I ended up dozing most of the way back to CUHK (by now the trains were running again) and sadly, had to walk half way to I-house in my heels. The walk had awakened me slightly, so I decided to have a shower before going to bed. :) So now I've woken up (around 2pm). Yay for lack of sleep and disturbed sleeping schedules. The plans for tonight include relaxing and going for Hot Pot (cook your own meal/chinese deal thingie) with Antonette.

Toodles!

P.S.
Oh, I wanna show you guys this picture. It's a huge wasp/gnat/creature that I saw on Limin's window sill. I swear to god this thing was nearly the length of my thumb. If I didn't see it fly up and land, I'd honestly have though it was a rubber insect or something. It was creepy!

Singapore and Malaysia Summary

Well, as you should know by now, I recently returned from a 4 day trip to Singapore and Malaysia. I was both satisfied and unsatisfied by the journey, but overall it was a fun time.

Pictures can be found here.

The plan was for 9 of us (1 Singaporean/Hong Konger, 2 Canadians (me included), 2 Taiwanese, and 5 Japanese) to fly to Singapore, hang there for 2 days, grab a bus to Melaka, Malaysia, crash there overnight then go to Kuala Lumpur and then finish off with an overnight train back to Singapore for our flight.

What did I think of the two countries I visited? I dunno - I didn't get to see much of them. 9 people is a large group to move around. It's kinda like herding cats. You're ready to go, only to find out one person has disappeared. One person goes to look for them, and then the original person returns and you have to wait for the latter. You get the picture.

Besides the large number of people, the other problem was that none of us had planned for the trip. We unkindly left the planning to Bernard, who had grown up there. Most of us had been travelling and too busy to figure out what we wanted to see in the countries so we arrived with no clue as to what was special about either place. This meant Bernard was our tour guide, and I'm not a fan of tours. :(

Despite my apprehension about not knowing what was going on, we did have a good time. We got to see Burgis Village (a market-y area) and the Singapore waterfront... And apparently that's all there is to Singapore. LOL. Seriously, Singapore is like a smaller version of Hong Kong, but much less exciting.

The most amusing things were the "no drug" warnings on the immigration cards, no smoking signs on the streets, and the giant durian (a theater that accidentally looks like the giant stinky fruit infamous in Asia).

The next day we went to the small island of Sentosa. Upon seeing the beautiful beach, I immediately wished I had my bathing suit with me. (We didn't know we were going to the island or anything and even if we had known, we didn't have time to go swimming.) We ended up splitting up and going our separate ways in small groups.

Peggy, Limin, Ayako, Mayumi and I went to see some of the free shows and walked around the island for a bit. (The walking part was unintended - we got lost looking for an herb and spice garden.) It was a beautiful park.

The whole discouraging thing about Singapore was that it was so expensive! Correction: It wasn't actually expensive - it was Hong Kong prices, but when you exchange $1000HKD and only get $200SGD back, you feel like crying. Even more so when half of it gets taken away for the hotel expenses.

Anyways, the next day we grabbed a bus to Melaka, Malaysia. Cue more stress for our trip. Limin and Peggy knew they could apply for a visa at the Malaysian border. Well, nobody mentioned how long it would take. To make a long story short, they disappeared to some other building while the rest of us waited on the bus. 1 hour later, and 2 people gone looking for them later, the bus driver is threatening to leave without them. We finally decide to go on ahead and hope they can catch up later. They did manage to catch up with us about 3 hours later - they caught a ride with another Taiwanese lady to a bus station.

Our hotel in Melaka was so swank. It was a 5 star hotel with a nice pool and comfy beds. Plus the all you can eat breakfast buffet was faboo.

Anyways, in Melaka, we didn't do much either. We hit up a Church of some sort - I think it was a Confucius church, which was its unique feature. Nothing terribly exciting about it though. It was just a set of walls and a light house the British built upon taking over oh so long ago.

That night we went to "Satay Sentral," a satay house. Can I say cool? The food didn't taste all that great to me, but I did enjoy the novelty of the meal and the variety. Basically it was a "do it yourself" restaurant. You walked along and pick up various sticks (each stick held some kind meat or veggie on it) and brought it back to your table. There, you stuck your stick into a pot of satay sauce in the middle of the table. The sauce was really sweet though. But I really did enjoy the liver sticks and the okra sticks. :)

The next day we left for Kuala Lumpur (called KL from now on). Immediately upon arrival we hit up the strange toilet I mentioned in my previous post. :) Then we met some of Bernards friends at the KLCC mall (which 4 hours later we discovered was actually the base of the twin towers of KL. The best thing about the mall was hanging with Limin and eating Cinnabon. :) We also played Jenga (the tumbling tower game) in a park nearby. How many people can claim that? (Don't ask who would want to.)

I think my writing seems funnier/wittier to me right now because it's 4am and I'm exhausted. Anyways, continuing...

We had to catch a train back to Singapore, so we decided to go to the train station and hang out there until we had to depart. Well, I've never been so bored in my life. We walked aorund the train station, outside the train station, to nearby markets, but there was NOTHING there! Once again we had to rely on each other to remain amused.

The train itself was very similar to the one I took in Thailand, but it was much cleaner and quieter. (The Thailand train did have the bonus of luggage racks and hooks to hang your purses on at night.) We had more fun by playing cards and constantly shushing each other when we laughed too loudly and were trying not to wake the people on the train.

Singapore was still raining upon our arrival, so we dumped our luggage off at Bernard's friend's place and headed out to get food. We went to one of the random outdoor cafeterieas that I grew really fond of. You could buy so much different types of food and just chill outside. Unfortunately after our food, we split up and decided to meet at a certain time and place. Well, the time came and went, and everyone except for Peggy appeared. Uh oh.

30 minutes later, Bernard's friend found her - she had been waiting for the others (who had actually returned to the meeting point) outside the market they had been shopping at. Life was good and we managed to return.

Throughout the entire trip though, the one girl, Miki, was absolutely sick. I felt so bad for her. I think she had the flu because she was coughing, achy, constantly tired, and so on. On our last day, she had a bit of a fever (we think), but we managed to sneak her through the health checks in Hong Kong. (You walk through heat sensors upon leaving the airport.) She's doing better through now. :)

So as you can guess from my trip, I didn't see many cultural places in Singapore and Malaysia, but it was more than made up for by hanging with these people I didn't know too well and now enjoy immensely. :)

That one's new...

Woohoo! Another quick bathroom story! Don't worry, there will be more on my Singapore and Malaysia trip later, but I felt the need to share this with you first. :)

Immediately upon arrival in Kuala Lumpur (capital of Malaysia), we ran off to a subway and found a bathroom ($0.20 entrance fee) to use.

Peggy was first in line and she saw a stall at the very end open for use. She walked over, walked partially in, stopped and then retreated with a haunted look in her eyes. All she said was, "I don't recognize that kinda of toilet!" We start laughing and since I was the next in line, I decided to brave the unknown and walk into the same stall.

The toilet was very thin and mounted on a wall about the same height as a western toilet bowl. It was kind of banana shaped - like a big thin scoop. All I could see was a sign on the side showing the proper usage of the bum hose (all bathrooms in Singapore/Malaysia are equipped with a hose with which to wash your privates after use) and another sign beside a random button on the wall saying "Built-in Beday."

Anyways, I just followed western style usage for this toilet by hovering, doing what I needed, then wiping. I then left the stall for the next of our traveller friends (who was also surprised by the appearance of the porcelain God) and went to meet the rest of our friends outside.

We then had a fun 5 minute conversation about the various types of toilets in the world and discussing each other's respective country's toilets. They were shocked to find out Canada didn't have squatting toilets, and that I had never used one until I came here.

So there you go, another life experience for Mau. Hee!

Happy New Year's from the future

I'm currently living in 2006. You are still in 2005. Mwahahahaaa. Time zones amuse me.

I didn't do much for New Year's eve. Antonette and I went out and got mulletized by a local hair salon. (I distinctly remember telling my stylist that I only wanted about 2 inches off all of my layers. I did NOT mention a single thing about half my hair, weird angles, or mullitization.) We wandered around Mong Kok and got a suitcase for her to finish packing with.

We then fled home whereupon we watched movies and stayed up to watch the countdown on TV. (Well, at least she could understand the countdown, I just watched the crowds and pretended to understand the Cantonese commentary.)

It's now 1:00am here and I'm exhausted. I kicked Antonette out and am going to crash now. Enjoy your New Year's!