Mission(s) accomplished

Wo lei si le! (Mandarin for, "I'm so tired, I feel like dying!)

As mentioned in my last post, I was going to dedicate today to running errands. I managed to get everything I wanted done. Unfortunately just not as smoothly as I had hoped. But I had a good day nonetheless. It was 30 degrees here (humidity 75%) so that's the only bad thing.

The following is a summary of my day:

• Leave I-house at 10:00am. Go to Tai Po Market to return some movies I had borrowed. Train is slow, arrive at 10:20 - find out movie store doesn't open until 11am. Decide to come back later. Hop on the KCR train - elect to take the "First Class" car because I've never done it before. Find out it costs a total of $20.70HKD from Tai Po to Tsim Sha Tsui. Vow never to waste that money again.


• From Tsim Sha Tsui, get on MTR and go to Causeway Bay. Register Peggy and I for the Duk Ling ride on next Thursday (no spaces available sooner). Hop back on MTR and head to Wan Chai.


• Arrive in Wan Chai. Try to find the Subway restaurant that I had looked up on the net the night before. Promptly get lost (do a full circle on surrounding streets) and finally find the Subway (after walking past it). Enjoy a delicious Chicken Terriyaki sub. Figure out it's not worth the hassle to ever try to come to it again.


• Head back out to find the Wanchai Police Station for my criminal record check. Get lost again because I can't figure out which direction I'm facing. (I'm worse than the stereotypical man for not asking directions.) Finally find the police station and promptly find out I need to go to Hong Kong HQ instead. ("Uuuh, you mean this isn't HQ? Oops.") Follow policewoman's direction to HQ (located on Arsenal Street... Hee hee.) Manage to walk past the street with the Subway on it (doh! I didn't realize how close I had been to the police station! I managed to walk in the wrong direction!)


• Arrive at Police HQ. Get directions to the 14th floor (Office of Certificates of No Conviction) where a lady with bad English tells me she can't give me my criminal record check because of some reason I don't understand. Mau tries to argue her case, but fails. Lady gets semi-irritated with Mau's waffling. Mau leaves empty-handed.


• I figured the Canadian government would have a way of helping me get the criminal record check done, so I decided to walk from Wan Chai to Central where the consulate is located. Manage to lose the sidewalk I need to get there. Spend 5 minutes on the phone bitching to Jen about being lost, and also planning tomorrow's agenda. Finally find a pedestrian overpass and get back on track.


• Walk into the wrong building for the Canadian consulate. Call Jen again for directions. Find right building. The Canadian Consulate has offices on 4 floors (11, 12, 13, 14) in the building, so I head up to the 11th floor to figure out where I need to go. The office on that floor is closed, so I decide to be a good girl and climb up the stairs to the 14th floor. Do so. Try to exit the staircase... Only to discover the doors leading out of the staircase are locked. Umm... Climb back down the 13th, 12th, and 11th floors before realized ALL the doors leading out of the staircase are locked. Decide to try to use the service elevator to make my escape. Manage to make it down to the ground floor and back out into public area.


• Get back in the public elevators and directly head for the 14th floor. Arrive in Consulate, plead my case, and am helped with much courtesy. Yay help! Boo $345HKD for a letter pleading my case. Anyways, I got the letter from the consulate telling the Hong Kong police to cough up a Certificate of No Conviction for me.


• Grab the MTR back to Wan Chai. Walk back to Police HQ. Have no problems filling out paperwork for the certificate. Yay! Pay fee, get fingerprints taken. (Hope there won't be any problems - the skin on my right thumb has been peeling, so the guy was having trouble getting a print off of it.)


• Convince lady who helped me with my paperwork I spoke cantonese by asking her where the washroom was (I saw she had the keys for the washroom at her desk). She answers me in a smattering of cantonese (none of which I understannd). I then spent 5 minutes trying to unlock the door to the bathroom, and another 5 trying to lock it back up before leaving. Stupid lock.


• Walk from Wan Chai back to the MTR. Find out that from Wan Chai MTR station to Police HQ is about a 15-20 minute walk, but from Police HQ to Admiralty MTR station is only a 5 minute walk. DOH!


• At Tsim Sha Tsui I transfer back to the KCR. I sit down on a seat with great delight, thinking about how great it will be to sit until I reach Tai Po. Train reaches Hung Hom (one station away from Tsim Sha Tsui) when I realize I still need to apply for my Chinese Visa. DAMNIT! Disembark from train and walk to the visa office. 2 seconds in the office and I'm done. Walk back to train. And sleep on it till I reach Tai Po.


• Drop movies off at Tai Po and return to University. Arrive at I-house around 5pm.

That's about the time Peggy taught me how to say, "I'm so I could die!"

So today was a long tiring day, but I got a lot accomplished. I'm really happy about the Canadian consulate. They were very helpful in explaining the process to me.

My favourite part of the story of my day though was being stuck inside the staircase at the Consulate... The Consulate is located in the Number One Exchange Centre... The Centre is about 40 floors high, and as mentioned, the consulate is only on 4 of the floors. So being stuck in a staircase there was pretty funny in my humble opinion.

Now it's time to eat. Toodles!