beware of unreal things

the avenue of stars - view of hong kong island













anders, me and blue clifford at the temple of 10,000 buddhas in shatin






the girls after pasta night at lotte's







i know, i know, no posts for a while... i've been taking advantage of the good weather to really enjoy my last week in hong kong!
rodrigo arrived from shanghai on friday and we did the ladies market, walked through kowloon, stopped at knutsford t., hit the avenue of stars for the evening light show (15 minutes of my life i'll never get back. ooh. green lasers moving back and forth in the sky... so tacky!) then off to temple street for some sketchy but delicious seafood! at this point, i think my stomach can handle anything i throw at it... knock on wood!
saturday, had our cross-cultural management presentation, then hopped over to mong kok for hot pot with wesker... ate things that i still can't identify and ended up at a crazy locals bar with dennis throwing dice all over the place. managed to stay out later than the youngsters who went clubbing! there's a first time for everything!
sunday we thought dim sum would be a fantastic idea and clarissa had a line on a local place with an authentic hong kong atmosphere and cheap food. unfortunately, part of the atmosphere included rats running around in teh restaurant. holy crap. and we didn't see them until we had already eaten. i was pretty proud that the boys didn't freak out - euros can be sensitive! the other customers thought it was hilarious that we were taking photos of the rats and would shout and laugh and point them out to us when they approached. i still feel kinda sick thinking about it. ugh. we were all so grossed out that we had to go sit in a fancy hotel and drink fancy coffee for a few hours after that. then i went down to the art gallery to check out the "artists and their models" exhibition that is in from the centre pompidou in france. wow! it was great!
monday - what the heck did i do on monday? i feel like it must have been pretty relaxed... ah! i met rodrigo in causeway bay and walked through the streets and markets then came home. needed some r'n'r.
tuesday we had class downtown and went out in knutsford t and temple street afterwards. i can't believe i'm leaving here now that the temperature is perfect! sitting outside at 2am,eating seafood and people-watching in mong kok is something i'm really going to miss! not to mention the taxi ride home. i love that drive.
yesterday i started packing - am leaving here on sunday for beijing. then went out window shopping with clarissa. found tons of things i wanted, but i refuse to buy anything until i hear from prospective employers and know how much room i have in my luggage. it's gonna be bad.
we hit felix, the bar at the top of the peninsula for a quick drink before dinner - mostly just to see the nice washrooms. and, indeed, recommendable! and a good choice before an adventure dinner at the chungking mansions. i was really looking forward to eating there...kind of a culmination of my two lear long fascination with the building. the elevators and hallways are not nice places, but once we got upstairs into the restaurant, it wasn't so bad! i went with my hk mantra "just don't think about it". there was even a fridge in the middle of the restaurant. odd. but the food was great (aloo gobi, chaat, pakoras, chicken masala, palak paneer, and so many other good things!). met my little italians after dinner for a drink at ned kelly's then headed home to prepare for potential stomach problems. so far, so good.
today i studied a bit, packed more and am soon heading to lamma island for more seafood! i can't wait to get home, get christmas over with and stop eating. maybe my jeans will fit again by february.....
so, last exam of my degree on saturday, the off to beijing and hopefully tibet. more soon!

advice.

note to self: phone interviews at 5am - not a good thing.
back to bed. maybe i'll wake up in two hours and forget it ever happened.

ugh.

it's 640am and i just finished a phone interview. i think i did ok - at the end of it, when they asked me the time, they were shocked at my cheeriness. haha! fooled them! i'm not cheery at all, i was just smart enbough to borrow frederik's french press before bed last night... one more at 8am - we'll see how it goes.
man, these selection processes are rough... initial phone interview, panel phone interview, business case analysis and presentation, then 1/2 day management testing. it all makes me want to go back to bed. and now i will.

rain rain go away.

today was a bit of a waste....but i'm getting really excited to go back to canada!
just spent my whole day messenging with friends in NA and realized how much i miss them! then i spent an hour with alle, clarissa and a whole pile of m&ms, talking about christmas traditions in different countries... now i want to see the trees at the 4 Seasons and go to the botanical gardens! and i want a peppermint latte! and mulled wine! and some christmas cookies! and i want to go the christmas decoration floor at the bay in vancouver!
i think we're all missing home cause it's rainy today, and we all feel like we should be in our own apartments drinking hot choco and watching movies.
soon enough. soon enough.

the venue is fo tan.

running on six hours of sleep today... i'm too old for that. i like to get a solid eight.
went out with about 20 people to sky platform, a restaurant on the roof of our suburban town hall. nice view, overlooks the river... is only actually about 4 storeys up. dinner was a nice western style set menu, then we went outside and sat on the patio until we got kicked out. any brought some italian friends who are studying in guanzhou... they are loud. very, very loud. by the time the restaurant locked its doors, everyone was ready to go somewhere... but where? the boys decided that street food and drink in fo tan was just what we needed. and so we hopped on the kcr and headed one stop over. hit up an outdoor restaurant and generally caused a ruckus all over the place. the boys ate giant snails, we all shouted a lot and took taxis home at 2am. gotta love the international crowd - the italians were shouting and singing all over, the frenchman was crooning edithe piaf songs in the corner and the canadians were behaving perfectly - of course!
got night class tonight, then the italians want us to go out again... yikes.

pei pa koa is delicious!

went over to kowloon tong - what a great place - to meet with ivy about our dell in china project for marketing yesterday and discovered a great store full of useless but super cute housewares! what a great mall. ivy also convinced me to try a chinese cold remedy called pei pa koa. it's loquat extract.... and delish! we'll see if it actually helps...
went to cooking class with some of the girls last night. interesting... the instructor made some great chow fun, the other girls made a chicken stirfry and i got to make kung pao chicken. i think the others were kind of jealous. mine looked cool. loads of chilis and peanuts but no other veggies and TONS of oil! again, looked cool, tasted great but couldn't have been more unhealthy. unless i put the whole tupperware into the deep fryer. or maybe just topped the dish off with some lard. my god - no wonder my jeans are getting tight. good times though.
today, i'm supposed to be working on group projects but mostly i went for breakfast with dennis, lunch with kelly and made frederik make coffee for alle and i. ooh. i drank coffee at both breakfast and lunch too. my head is spinning as i write this.
oh yeah - had to recharge my phone yesterday, which is always an adventure. the first time i recharged the sim card (pre-paid), the service somehow switched from english to mandarin and i haven't been able to switch it back. everytime i need to addd value, i have to find a mandarin-speaker to do it for me. now, in hong kong, people who speak mandarin are kind of few and far between... at least in my limited experience. so, the first time, i got a law student to do it, the second time, i got one of the receptionists at our downtown campus to do it, the third time... i was in the mall. i asked ivy to help me cause she speaks cantonese, but she couldn't understand and we ended up with a group of people standing around our table in the coffee shop, looking confused and talking about my crappy phone card. it reminded me wayyy to much of living in japan and trying to ask about switching over my driver's license. that took 9 people to figure out. so yesterday, i told everyone i was ok and headed to an electronics store to quietly ask them... my goodness... how can such a simple thing get so complicated. i guess i really shouldn't be surprised... oh - and in the end it turned out that i had done everything correctly, but couldn't understand the phone service voice! i need to learn more words than thank you and bridge.
tonight we're all heading to the rooftop patio of the sha tin town hall for drinks with the 1st years and mba office staff. should be good. i'm hoping to maybe hit up a karaoke box after the 1st party. it's been a while...

hoops - this one's for you

escalatore!

i can't believe that i'll be leaving hong kong in less than a month! looks like i'm finished school on the 2nd, so will probably leave the next day or so for beijing. am planning to travel around in china a bit - head across to tibet from beijing, then back to sichuan and down through guanzhou before hopping over to japan for a few days. should be a lot of fun! i'll get to see sammy and joyce up in beijing, and maybe meet mei in guanzhou!
it's been a busy week. apart from being sick, i've had to keep up with my rigorous social schedule and get some schoolwork done. got three group projects and an exam to go! not much left at all! i can't believe that i'm graduating!!! speaking of which - i need to apply for graduation... i've also been dealing with the demise of reese and ryan and britney and kevin. gotta say, it's hard dealing with the pain of celebrity break-ups without anyone else who cares.
friday, i had a little meeting with an HR Manager of LVMH. not surprisingly, their offices are much nicer than my dorm room! it was a good meeting, and she was really helpful! i didn't realize how much i had been needing to talk to someone about career options. that's probably my biggest caveat about exchange.... losing focus on real life.
went kowloon tong - the new shatin - with frederik for a baked potato and headed back for a walk with anastasia. we've taken to sitting outside on the patio here, meeting people as they come and go. it's really nice. funny that it took us about two months to really bond, and now we only have a month left to enjoy each others' company. so, clarissa and alle came by, and anders was already out there in his socks.... we need a living room!! jeez. so, turns out - euros find white socks with shorts more offensive than black socks.... cultural difference. we were gonna hang out and watch the first season of grey's anatomy on dvd when the italians dragged the lot of us off to lotte's place in central for pasta. deicious pasta, good company and a downtown rooftop patio - who could ask for more??? oh - and the italians were trying to convince me that the word for escalator is "scala mobile" not "escalatore". as if.
yesterday was not nearly as exciting - class... until the evening. clarissa convinced a girl from chungqing to cook sichuan food for a bunch of us! it was soooo good! and not nearly as spicy as i anticipated! it was nice to hang out at home, eating good food and hit the sack early.
today is all about work, then a meeting, then cooking class! i'm gonna have mad cooking skills when i get home! erin - get a few litres of vegetable oil ready and we'll have chinese food! i'm so excited to cook non-greasy food in my own kitchen.... heaven!

a good alternative to nothing, dottorino!

ugh. not feeling too hot today. there is a cold going around here and i think i caught it. boo! am taking a day off sightseeing to recover. sitting in my room, doing laundry and reading academic papers about women in management. the reading is making me think that naptime is a-coming soon!
did some more sightseeing on monday. was all set to spend the day in front of the computer when i got a call from clarissa. she's holding me to my promise of spending my days off actually getting out in the world instead of wasting time on campus. so, we decided to check some walled villages in the new territories, thinking that we'd have a historical, cultural day capped of by a seafood dinner with a bunch of other exchange students. lot of seafood this week, now that i think about it.
took the train to fanling, got on the minibus out to the lung yeuk tau heritage trail - had some pretty high expectations! i found it on the internet - it was supposed to take us through 5 walled villages and 12 different settlements... got off the minibus and - no tourists. a couple of signs about the villages but not much fanfare. kind of suspicious, but we were still stoked about out day out. as we walked through the door of the first village, we were confronted by underpants! turns out the villages are all still inhabited, so laundry was hanging everywhere. gotta say, felt a bit creepy to wander through the compounds, basically lurking in these people's yards, taking photos and peeking in windows. and the villages were not exactly my definition of villages... maybe enough room in each compound for 5 small houses. so, as we walked past the first houses in the first village, i looked up and realized that there was a brand new apartment building in the middle of the compound! what a contrast to the 300 year old walls around it. turns out, the heritage trail is mostly just the road and the villages were all much like the first one. the highlight of our walk was a little girl walking with her grandmther turning around an secretly sticking her tongue out at me. what a jerk! i didn't like her, but didn't get her back 'cause her grandma looked pretty tough. it was pretty interesting though. i realized that i always assumed that everyone local must live in a giant highrise. when you stay in the malls, you don't see the real suburbs... mercedes and bmws out front of sketchy looking buildings, old ladies peeking out at you from tiny stone houses that can't possibly have indoor plumbing... good to get out in the world.
stopped at fo tan market for some noodles, thinking that our seafood dinner probably wouldn't happen until late. mistake. i should have fasted for a week or so. ivy (one of the canadians) has a local cousin who took us out to yau tong to a restaurant in a fish market where we chose seafood out of giant tanks and 16 of us sat around a giant table.
what did we eat? what DIDN'T we eat would be a better question! i swear to god, the ocean is empty now. we started with boiled shrimp, then on to scallops, lobster, giant prawns, mussels, squid, geo-duck, crab...i can't even think about it without getting in to sweatpants! we were all so full! when we got home, i went straight upstairs to change into expandable apparel and heard voices speaking english outside my window... messaged any to tell her how loud they were being and got convinced to come down and drink some beer on the patio with the others. a good night. never need seafood again. mmm...

mi ciamo robin. ce un dottore? allora va bene.

me as ange-lindsay...
ahhhh... sunday night. 730 pm. full of seafood and veggies. ahhhhh.....
had a great weekend. once again, it's gonna sound like i don't actually go to school at all, but remember people, i'm on exchange... cultural events are an important part of my trip! i can't believe that i'm basically leaving here in 4 weeks. feels like i just hit my stride.
spent friday in shenzhen, shopping up a storm. will be going back there in a couple of weeks to pick up my stuff at the tailor. it's either going to be fantastic or terrible, but nowhere in between. also picked up some jeans, an extension cord and a couple of pairs of shoes. came back and went straight to the supermarket with frederik, clarissa and ben to pick up food for a party. it was so nice being at lotte's apartment - i can't wait to have more space than a little dorm room! i was the only north american for a long time but then another vancouverite and a girl from victoria showed up. good party. ani, jacob and i headed out early, but not before allesandra had a few drinks and i learned more italian.

saturday was all about writing a paper, researching projects and swimming. ahhhh.... november and the outdoor pool is still heavenly. a bunch of us headed downtown to the night markets to take in the sights and get some food. we went to a really local restaurant which was delicious and cheap, but used toilet paper for napkins. it was the first time someone ever asked me to pass the toilet paper during dinner. after dinner we walked down to tsim sha tsui to get a drink at the turkish bar then caught the last train home. oh man, i will not miss running through kowloon tong station in hopes of catching that train.

today, clarissa, anders and i visited the temple of 10,000 buddhas in shatin. it was a beautiful walk past ikea, through a rural looking village and up a moutain. unfortunately, the temple area is full of gold-painted plastic buddhas. not very inspiring... fortunately, the day was saved by a trip to starbucks and a seafood dinner.
two of the scandinavian guys i met here somehow convinced one of our building's receptionists to cook them a seafood dinner. she told them that if they went out and bought food, she'd prepare it. lucky us, clarissa and i managed to snag invitations by promising to bring beer. that's right - when canadians and germans work together, the result is beery goodness! crab, fish, veggies, fried rice. full. full. full.
time to work on actual school-related assignments. crazy.