(import - may 6) Exhausted

I think the non-stop social activities, outings and interviews following exams are catching up to me. And the fact that all my friends except for a few are a thousand miles away. So all of a sudden, I feel emotionally and mentally exhausted.

The sight of girls in school uniforms make me feel nostalgic. I wish I went to a school that made us wear uniforms.


My high school


I don't feel like writing too much today, but here are some random things I snapped recently.

"No touting within this office." I have NEVER seen this sign in my life till now.


A random "self serving Sterilization Station" on the wall at the wet market.


Turtles at the wet market. Do people eat turtles????


Foldable chopsticks


And... sleep time. : )

(import - May 5 09) - The Dept Store

A trip to the HK dept store yielded merchandise of overwhelming variety and proportions. Wrist pads for example, came in tofu, tissue-package, sausage, hello kitty, and other interesting designs. Trays ranged from jumbo sized to mini, in every other colour. Seriously, a shopper's paradise! No wonder HK people's lifestyle is "eat, shop and work." I think I can spend more time browsing stuff in one room than an entire Bay at Eaton centre. So many pleasant surprises!



Crocheted items were on sale!!!!!! (at exhorbant prices too... I should consider starting an online store for my crocheted goods.)



Shameless self-promotion: check out my amigurumi on my DeviantArt account: http://tainted-white.deviantart.com/art/Assorted-Amigurumi-119934077

HK people really love Hello Kitty.





And they use umbrellas in the sun to block out UV. I saw a woman wearing one of those huge visors today.

I don't know if you can see it, but the sign says, "UV protection" and the package contains an umbrella.



Because of swine flu (and SARs scare from before) it's common to see random pedestrians wearing face masks, signs stating that "this elevator is cleaned every hour" and hand sanitizing stations.



As you can probably tell, I'm very much entertained directly and indirectly at the department store.

(import - May 4, 09) - A Beating Fish Heart

2% milk is actually skim milk with the fat added back in.... so I'm told by a friend of a friend who works in the milk industry in Canada. I think I'm convinced after drinking the milk in HK. It's REALLY good for a lack of better terminology (sorry, I'm still jet lagging).

I went to the wet market as well. Since HK people are paranoid about the swine flu and personal hygiene, the food is actually really clean and amazingly fresh! Chickens are killed and plucked on the spot. Here's a beating fish heart:

I really like green tea. The abundance of green tea inspired products convinces me that perhaps it's a HKnese thing?

Green tea hand cream on the left, and Myoflex on the right as a premptive measure against cramps induced by the amount of walking required in HK to get to places.





My lunch below (green tea noodles with chicken in peanut sauce):


And other strange flavours that I'm not eager to try (the below picture reads: wasabi flavoured sesame and bamboo charcoal flavoured sesame)



And of course, the magical slide-out drawer mentioned in my previous entry.


I met my cousins at the restaurant and they showed me their new toys. Yo-yo, a tamagochi-esque thingy (virtual pet) and a snowman...with legs.



Right next to the restaurant was a capsule toy palace! Unfortunately I didn't have time to look at anything in detail but I did snap a few photos of the rows-upon-rows of capsule toy machines.


Just one case out of four more full of mini capsule toys:

(import - May 3 09) Fascinated

I went shopping today to buy some essentials for the house. Since space is gold here, merchandise is packed into a little space.

This is Loblaws in Canada, and as you can see, there are rows and rows of the same thing. They obviously can't afford that here, nor do people have the space to store things up in bulk.



Also... cute overload -- cuteness is embedded in the culture and merchandise. You can get dish-washing sponges in the shape of a cat or pig. Things are cheaper too when divided by 6.5 (prevailing exchange rate). Oh, and no tax!

Interestingly, and I suppose not surpisingly, considering HK's history of Britain rule, there are hints of Western culture everywhere. I heard Frou Frou's Breathe in Japan Home Centre. A green-yellow mini van played I'm Yours (Jason Mraz).

HK people are so random. I heard "gah gah dei wor" (translation: looks kinda fake!) at the wet market concerning a $20 bill. I'm not sure why but I found that absolutely hilarious. There was a kid squishing a ball singing "queen of the east, queen of the west..." nonstop at the dept store before randomly screaming hysterically. The parent came and dragged him away. I tried to catch a vid of it on camera but didn't want to seem impolite and missed the good part.



Wow, that's a lot of fries, kid.

oh, and random animals. When I was small, I was taught that cats should be coloured orange, but when I went to canada, I never actually saw an orange cat except in the show Fruits Basket. Well, here is one!! It's cute in an ugly way.



Other surprises:

I ordered shark ball soup noodle (as opposed to fish ball soup noodle) and the ball had filling!!



Then my mom helped herself to napkins and utensils from a drawer that slid out from our table. Ingenious!

Arrival in HK

I am loving the weather! After living in a 17 degree room (the air circulation was really bad and the heater my landlord provided broke and he wanted me to pay for that let alone give me a new one like he's supposed to, but that's another huge story that I won't get into), this is WONDERFUL.



It's 25 degrees with light wind, something I haven't felt in an excruciating long time. I am so sick of chasing after buses in bulky clothing and backpack with wind whipping at my face.

We've settled into our service style apartment at Kwai Chung.




Unfortunately, the place didn't come with plates and bowls so we ended up eating out of pot lids at dinnertime. I also crocheted some coasters too.



First impression? Everything, from people to shopping carts, are smaller in size.

(import) Farewell, Canada!

Toronto looks stunning from high above (ignore the ooohs and aaahs of my parents):

I'm in Korea waiting for the flight that'll take me to Hong Kong. It's the middle of the night, so nothing's open except for a little snack shop selling rice balls and overpriced coffee in a paper cup. The cup reads: "COFFEE: every day I down street with coffee. I smile. Very happy and sunshine."

My mom said it was a spendid poem and that it made perfect sense.

So I made it here relatively healthy and not losing anything. Actually, two hours before my flight, I came down with nausea and upset stomach. I think it might have been due to the strange mix of foods I consumed that day: taro toast for brunch, almond bubble tea and 'egg in milk' at a chinese place for snack. The "milk" was watery, and flaked with yellow bits. It was probably a culture of salmonella, as Prof Butler might say. (And no, I'm sure I didn't get swine flu and helping it spread around the globe).

Luckily, the pepto-bismol worked within hours and my stomach was in great condition when the bi bim bop arrived! But the next meal was an even better surprise--green tea congee! GREEN congee!

Overall, I feel very blessed to have had the chance to see so many people within a span of 7 days. People were really flexible and willing to come down to see me or drive me since I didn't have a car. Thank you!! I really appreciate all the gatherings and surprises... thanks for the english-chinese electronic dictionary (although I'm wondering how I'm going to use that since the menu and instruction manuals are all in chinese). Thanks for the HK guidebook...

I'm happy that I also got to see some people I haven't seen in awhile. I think I really am an extrovert. Even though I was in and out all the time and rush-packing (and throwing things out), I felt energized just from chatting with and spending time with people. So overall, I think I'm ready to start the next stage in life!

Importing my blog over...

xanga doesn't have RSS or other fun features, like labels and HTML : (

So after 2 weeks of blogging on xanga, I decided to relocate. I don't think there's a quick and dirty way to do this (xanga allows x-posting to facebook only) so it'll take me awhile to import all my photos etc etc in here.