HONG KONG DAY 1

As promised, a proper post. You know it's been a while since you've blogged a proper post when you have no idea how to start.

Why is it that no one pesters Jie to blog when he's the one going around telling people that his blog 'autoupdates'!! *sigh*

As always, I blog in bits. 5 minutes typing followed by a 5 hour break doing something else.
*tsk tsk*
It's no wonder I never get posts done on time! Like for example, now, it's 12.22pm. I just got up from bed but I feel like sleeping for a bit more. Then it's lunch at somewhere at least 10kms away from my house. I'll come back, blog for 10 minutes, fiddle with this and that, then it's out the door again. If only we could blog in our minds. Think of how convenient
that'll be.


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HONG KONG DAY 1
24th August '09


For the first time in this one month back home, I had to get up crawl out of bed as early as 3.45am to catch our flight to HK at 7am. On a normal day, getting up 3.45am would've meant only 45 minutes of sleep.

Grace's dad drove us to the airport. I was trying to stay awake but the cool air from the air con vents and uncle's smooth driving told me otherwise.

At the LCCT, the queue for our flight was too long to be true. Aren't people supposed to be extra paranoid with H1N1 and not travel?? Sheesh!
Thankfully, we checked in online and all we needed to do was drop our baggages off (though some ignorant air asia personnel told us to join the queue despite checking in online. must.write.complain.letter!)


Boarding our flight at 0700.
It's simply too early to pop in our contact lenses, hence the spectacles.

We slept for the first hour or so. I kept waking up every 5 minutes because I have a teeny bladder. The problem was, I had the middle seat, Grace had the window seat and the person on my other side was sleeping even before the plan took off!! (the scary part; she was wearing a mask ) So I had to wait for the right moment to politely tap her shoulder and scoot to the toilet. Twice. *blush*

When we realized our bodies refuse to go into snooze mode, we decided to ...
(take a wild guess)...
...
...
...
draw..


Bet you didn't think we'd be drawing parts of the human anatomy eh?
This was how it all began. Grace and I were talking about how we can't be pilots cause our eyesights are as bad as bats'. Then I suggested laser, because that's what most pilots do.

Me: Laser only la!
Grace: But the say laser is not permanent.
Me: Really?
Grace: Yea, coz laser is just stretching your kanta only. Puan Chew (our Form 2 Science teacher) told us one la when we were learning the eye last time.
Me: Ohhhh...

Then Grace started drawing her version of the human eye. Then the ear, the tongue etc etc. I did my version beside hers. I've to give it to Grace, 4 years of not touching Bio and not to mention hating Bio, yet her drawing looks better than mine.. but not necessarily functional.



This is her masterpiece.

As I look back, I'm quite thankful Ms. Mask beside me was asleep the entire time to not see what monkey business we were up to.


There you go. The difference between a medical student's (L) and a finance sudent's (R) perception of the human body.

I must say, my human looks very off balanced.

We napped a lil while and before we knew it, we arrived at Chek Lap Kok Airport!
The airport was swarming with tourists, esp from mainland China (urgh, more about that in Day 3) and India.

All a sudden, the Malay Language seems pretty useful now when you need to mock the person beside you.


Stanley picked us up from the airport.

Not only was I burning under the scorching sun, I had my specs on so I was suffering from a minor migrain.

We managed to find Aunty JooLee's place thanks to my vague photographic memory of her place from 8 years ago and a few phone calls.

After saying our hellos, how are yous and popped in my lenses, we headed towards Festival Walk for lunch!
It wasn't difficult to choose what to have as I was craving for Dim Sum even before I left Malaysia. So DimSum was it.


Lunch has never been so stressful.
My spoken Cantonese and Mandrin are limited, so don't expect me to read this menu of ours!
Grace is not as banana as I am. Her mandrin is pretty fluent and she can guess a few Mandrin characters. Stanley's Cantonese is better than Grace's and mine combined but he can't read either.

Eventually...
Stanley: *gestures for the waiter's attention*
'ngo dei ho yi tong lei... *pause* teng (wtv order is in cantonese) choi mou? ngo dei um sek tuk..'

To translate, since I'm not 100% sure if my spelling cantonese is right,
'Can we order from you because we can't read the menu.'

But I figured, speaking Canto in HK isn't too bad. You just need to find an English word and Cantonize it, something you'd see very often in Cantonese Dramas. Stanley couldn't remember the word for order, hence the *pause*, but I'm sure if you sed 'or-dar' they'd understand you perfectly.


I honestly can't remember the names of these dishes.
They aren't the best, but no matter how bad the DimSum is in HK, I think it's better than the ones we get in M'sia.
Before any of you gungho/patriotic DimSum eaters in Msia start sneering at me, let me remind you it's just an honest individual opinion.


In less than 3 hours in HK, I'm experiencing yet another culture shock. When I scooped my rice on to my plate, Stanley gave me this weird look.

In HK, you don't eat from the plate, you put bones on them. You eat from the BOWL.
Hey, I'm using CHOPSTICKS! (fyi, chopsticks and I don't see eye to eye) I'm trying to blend in and now you want me to eat from what I'd call soup bowl?

Then, there's a pair of common chopsticks in the middle of the table where everyone uses to pick up their dishes. Apparently the hongkees became uber obsessed with this hygeine gibberish after the SARS pandemic.


Nonetheless, it was quite an experience, eating rice with a pair of chopsticks and the whole culture shock thing.

Next stop, MONGKOK!



*groans*
Out of the comforts of Festival Walk's air conditioning and onto the burning clutches of Hong Kong roads.



So tempted to bring home one of em snuggly soft toys!
*bounce bounce* I want!


You know how sometimes you stumble upon broken english signs and instructions that simple crack you up because you actually know what they're really trying to say?
Well, I have no idea what 'I'm happy to give helping hand to anybody except money' means even after reading it again and again!!!


Easy Drink Easy Go, HK's famous bubble tea stall.
It would've been as easy as the stall's name implied if it weren't for the queue!


Bubble tea lovers.

I had bubble tea 3 times in my entire 21 years. My first experience was horrible, but I gave it the benefit of the doubt and thought I was just unlucky. Second time, wasn't much better but after trying for the third time, I know bubble tea ain't my cup of tea.


Next Street.


Hongkees have this Hello Kitty fettish which I can't seem to comprehend.
And I don't think it's just the younger generation.
A Hello Kitty iron?.. toaster?? Potato peeler??

The heat was so bad, we deliberately stepped into one of the shopping malls to enjoy the air con for a while. There were many interesting yet weird stuff that we encountered so much so we ended up spending more time in there than we'd thought we would!


There were zodiac signs on every floor (it's a very high building) and this is mine, Libra.


Funky names for the many shops in HK.
They're definitely running out of names for shops judging by the names people give their shops these days, eg. princess princess. =.=''

We were dead beat after taking the MTR home.
But dinner was still to come!

Uncle SG took us to this chinese restaurant nearby for goose! (siew ngor! ;p) Apparently I was there 8 years ago but sadly I have no memory of it.


Jacqueline did most of the ordering cause she speaks mandrin more fluently than any of us at the table. She even checked our bill at the end of dinner. Heh!




The food

Everything was delicious! I contantly reminded myself to eat from the bowl and not the plate. =]]

We hit the sheets quite early that night, 1am to be exact. If we weren't that drained, we could have either, option 1, go to Tsim Tsa Tsui or option 2, gossip till early morning!
(hey, it's Grace and I, nothing can stop us from gossiping except sleep ;p)

+.+.+.+

Okay, remember what I said about me taking eons to finsih one post?
I started off with this post on Tuesday 12.22pm.
It's Sunday morning 1.40am.
I'll revive that angelic blogger in me come this October.

Arms aching from crazy pushups at Pushmore with Helena.
Need sleep!
Will be back with Day 2.
*pinky promise*