it's sunday morning, and i'm chilling with my laptop at the starbucks inside the alexandra house. for the first time since i've arrived in hk, i didn't go to breakfast with my mum. no particular reason. probably cuz we had such a big dinner the night before that she wanted to stay in for breakfast. so i decided to head out to starbucks and update this blog for a little bit. and it also gives me a chance to listen to some music since i didn't bring any cds with me. this trip is about minimalism.
i have to remind myself to blog about the turtle story. it's a pretty sad story, but it's one that needs to be posted. but not right now.
friday was pretty usual. other than the fact that it was raining rather heavily when i was grocery shopping with my mother and that some old chinese woman decided to open her umbrella on my shorts, it was the same old thing. since my mother was cooking turtle soup for my dad that day, and yes, hence the sad turtle story, she stayed in and my father and i did the ifc round. went to citysuper and got two yellow kiwis for HK$11.00. we basically did it to get a complimentary peeler and kiwi scooper. so we walked around and my dad talked about, among other things, me contacting jonathan and keith for a get-together. i was a bit non-committal since i wasn't really up for any type of non-familial socializing. but he kept bugging me about it, even at dinner. it was insane.
i'm not sure what kinda cosmic powers my dad has, but the next day, when i was walking from the alexandra house starbucks to the ifc for lunch with my family and relatives, i saw jonathan (and his gf, melinda) in the middle of the elevated walkway connecting charter house and ifc. i mean, serious... what are the odds? did my father make a deal with the evil one? i think maybe he should start thinking of winning the lottery or something.
but as you can figure, the conversation was a bit awkward. maybe it's me... i don't know, but it felt a bit strange seeing and speaking to jonathan after so many years. i also felt guilty for not calling him the last couple of times i was in hk. anyway, he says that i got a lot bigger (read: fatter) since the last time he saw me (true), and i said that he looks pretty much the same (true). he's still very quick with his wit. i told him that i thought he was working in shanghai, and he said that that was three years ago. i said, wow, sorry, my information is a bit lagging. and he immediately replies that it was okay since it had to travel over 10,000 miles to get to me. same old jonathan.
he introduced me to his girlfriend, but then i already knew about her from keith. she seems pretty nice. he told her that we went to the same school, and she seemed a bit surprised. so i said, yeah, unfortunately i do. after some time and a bit of conversation with jonathan had passed, she asked me, why i said it was unfortunate that i'm going to usc. so i explained to her that i went to ucla for my undergrad. i could tell that my original statement about going to usc confused her.
jonathan gave me his number since i had my mum's mobile with me and i didn't know my own mobile number. he joked about me not wanting to give him my number, which was not true, and asked that i give him a call. i sensed he was being pretty sincere, so i told him that i'll give him and keith a call. though i don't know keith's mobile number. after getting his number, we parted ways since i was going to meet my family and relatives for lunch. pretty surreal.
i'm going to backtrack a little bit to say that i had breakfast with my mother on saturday morning and afterwards, went to the hmv that's connected to the landmark...

let's clear something first. since many of you are unfamiliar with hk, you should know that many of the buildings around the central district are interconnected either underground or via elevated walkways. since it gets really hot and humid over the summer here, a number of these elevated walkways are air-conditioned (great!). so the ifc is connected to the charter house (non air-conditioned, elevated walkway), which is connected to alexandra house (ac, elevated walkway), which is connected to the landmark (ac, elevated walkway), so on and so forth.
getting back to my story, the hmv is connected to the landmark, so on my way to the starbucks, i cut through the hmv and was walking around it, conversing with deidra, when i saw a book about the smiths on sale. the smiths: songs that saved your life. i've heard about it when i was in the states, but i never thought about getting it. but anyway, since it was on sale (HK$80), and i was finishing up with "the known world," i decided to get it. yes, i know that i still have "the historian" back at my parents' flat, but it's the smiths... THE SMITHS!
btw, i'm finished with "the known world." i can't say that i wasn't disappointed with the ending ***SPOILER ALERT*** don't get me wrong, the book was great and really interesting. but i was just disappointed that so many characters died and justice did not prevail in the end. i suppose it's a good reflection of life. i just don't like the fact that council skiffington got away with killing mildred and his cousin, john. it's also a bit sad the way slaves/black people were treated back in the day. and yes, i know that they aren't treated too much better nowadays, but for the most part, the book is truly and eye-opener.
okay, getting back to my saturday. after randomly running into jonathan, i went to cuisine cuisine to have lunch with the family (mum, dad, sis) and relatives (grandma, grandpa, aunt jo, and uncle ele). it was good to see sis again along with baby gabe. i still can't believe my sister wants to name her first-born... my first nephew, gabriel. it's not a terrible name, but i don't feel the baby is a gabriel. i like cameron better. but then i don't get to make the decision now, do i?
break: i'm sitting here at starbucks, and it's so funny hearing the workers call out the drinks so customers can pick them up at the side pick-up counter. tal car-fay-la-tay... gron-day moka flapa-chin-no. it's such a different world here. even though the furniture are the same (they even have the checker board tables), the service is entirely different. it is expected of you to just up and leave your mess unattended after you're done. you don't clean up your own mess cuz there's always some starbucks staff to clean it up after you.
after lunch, the group of us walked around the ifc a little bit and took the lifts at lane crawford (an ultra expensive department store) down to the streets so that my relatives can take a cab back home. then my mum and i accompanied my sister to the mtr station that my brother-in-law was waiting to pick up my sister to take her home, while my dad went home to take his herbal medicine. after seeing my sister off, mum and i went back to the starbucks at alexandra house. along the way, i had a little snack since i tend to eat less when i'm dining with the relatives.
at around 6:30pm, my dad met up with us and we took the mtr across the harbour to kowloon (tsim sha tsui), where we were suppose to have dinner with more relatives. as we near "spring deer" (the restaurant is on the second floor of this building, and it's "entrance" was through this souvenir shop on the first floor. very strange), we saw some of our relatives getting out of their taxi. this restaurant is very famous for it's peking duck and apparently it caters to a lot of foreigners. when we got to the table, my grandma refused to sit alongside my grandpa and made a big stink about it. yeah, my maternal relatives are highly disfunctional. who all went, you ask... my grandma, grandpa, granduncle, grandaunt, grandaunt-in-law, uncle bill, uncle ho, uncle ele, aunt jo, my grandaunt's daughter, c c (don't ask), my mum, dad, and myself.
it was a pretty fulfilling dinner. the dishes: cold plate of meats, drunken chicken, shark fin soup, a hole fried fish, fried shrimp, fried shrimp toast, peking duck, steamed "little dragon" dumplings, regular dumplings, bean curd goose (kinda like tofurkey), some sort of fried pastry pockets that you put fried minced beef and vegetables in, and some fried sweet banana for dessert (i didn't eat that). but it was a really good dinner, though my stomach couldn't handle all the fat and grease after eating my mum's cooking for over a week now. during part of the dinner, three japanese guys at the next table started smoking, which annoyed my father to no end.
speaking of which, my grandpa, after sixty years plus of smoking, suddenly decided to quite the habit cold turkey. yeah, tell me about it? cold turkey after all these years. but i have to say he's really a bit healthier looking and color has returned to his cheeks.

after dinner, some relatives took the taxi back home, while uncle bill, uncle ele, aunt jo, my parents and i walked to the bus station at hung hom to take a cross harbour bus back to hk island. on the way to the station, we had to pass the red light district of hk, where i saw a small little cafe named after me. anyway, it was a bit uncomforting walking through that part of the city with my relatives and having my dad tell me about how seedy the neighbourhood is. good times. hahaha. every once in awhile, my dad would say something to the effect of, hey, look. that girl's probably a whore.
oops, i need to go back to my parents' flat to have lunch with the family (my sister just finished taking her exam for the japanese language class she's taking). off i go.