canton-glish

i'm back at the starbucks, it's almost 6pm. my mum and i had just dropped off my sister at the hung hou mtr station and rode back to central. since my sister lives somewhere up in new territory and it's a waste to spend two extra fares to drop off my sister, we trick the mtr into thinking that we only traveled between adjacent stations. this is what we do: we get on at one of the stations on the hong kong side, take the mtr all the way up to the hung hou station (which is about 11 stations and a line transfer away), then see my sister off without exiting the gates, take the mtr back to either central or admiralty and pay the HK$3.80 fare for traveling one station. my sister, unfortunately, has to pay the complete fare (about HK$13.00).


oh, i forgot to mention that there this really awful trend here of "hip" asian men putting up the collars of their polo shirts. it's the most disturbing thing i've seen so far on my trip, and i've seen some pretty nasty things... poor turtle. i took a picture of one of these people at lunch yesterday. since i don't have the picture up yet, just picture some asian guy wearing a florescent pink polo shirt with the collar flipped up. yeah, nasty shit.


it's sunday night, which means that i have only one full weekend left (nice) and 12 full days left in hk. across from the front of the starbucks is a wall with a several large rectangular screens and everyday it loops the same clips from various valentino shows. part of these clips have guys (some that hitler would be pretty proud of, i might add) wearing really short shorts and even worse, strutting in gray briefs. just not the kinda advertisement i would like with my morning tea.

***up on the rectangular screen are the pretty boys in their gray briefs***

i think i've seen more white people this year than i did last year. i don't know why. maybe cuz i didn't really come out to central as much last year. as i was walking back to my parents' flat today for lunch, i saw a family of four white people sitting on the step of a closed shop snacking on some freshly baked bread. for me, it's really strange to see white people west of central. it really is. and it's not like hk is segregated into whites only regions, but just the fact that white people venture into places like sai ying poon surprises me.

this reminds me that the other day, my dad and i saw some white guy on the lift of the building where my parents live. my dad, ever the conversationalist, got him to talk about how he's really into martial arts (in fact, he was coming down from the roof of the building after practicing) and how he originally was from san francisco and has been in hk for a year now. it's was really comical for me. i think i'm a bit skeptical when it comes to white people and marital arts. reminds me of chuck norris.

where can you have three children, one white, one chinese, and one of persian (or indian) decent standing together, playing, poking at the screens promoting valentino but in hk.

i really need to bring a notebook and pen with me because there are many times within the last week and a half that i wanted to write stuff down, but since i don't have the necessary equipment with me, i couldn't. and all my brilliant thoughts and observations are wasted, never to return again.

i've decided as a way to solve my language problem at starbucks, i'm going to use part english and part cantonese when speaking to the people working here. the problem isn't that they can't speak english, but rather, i feel so snobberish when i order from them in english. that way, they can better understand me and i feel better about getting some tea and a lamington.

me: aaah, mgoi bei ngoh yat bui cha and yat gor lamington.
starbucks staff: ben jon cha? (what type of tea?)
me: earl gray, mgoi.

why am i so uncomfortable in my skin here? why? WHY?!! dim gaai? DIM GAAI?!!

on friday, this is what happened on "the happy inn." the girl decides to go on a date with the doctor guy and the guy broke up with his g/f who still has the desire to be an actress. she tells him that she's not the only one who cares for him and that the girl likes him too. he is incredulous about that. the girl tells the doctor guy that she's not really dating him because she wants a relationship with him, but rather, she's trying to make herself feel better because the guy that she likes is dating someone else. the guy sends the actress back to beijing to shoot a movie. the girl and the guy decides to fire the annoying g/f of the third partner.

yes, i'm that bored. :) but i'm looking forward to reading the smiths book. can't wait.

peking duck

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.

it's raining, it's pouring...

it's early friday morning, and it's been raining all morning. t-storms and lightning. so i'm still at home, not wanting to leave the comfort of my parents' flat. i took two pictures which i'll put up once i get home. nothing too exciting now.

my mum is making the pickled ginger, pigs feet, and eggs for my sister. it's sort of a tradition dish that you make for women who are pregnant. i love the smell of the sweetened vinegar, and i totally love the pickled eggs because the egg whites absorbs the vinegar, making it sweet and a bit hard. yum.

vocabulary

i saw the word, shroff, today at the hospital. i've never seen that word in my life and according to m-w, it is defined as:

(n.) a banker or money changer in the Far East; especially : one who tests and evaluates coin

it's interesting that it specifies 'far east.' anyway, the sign read to line up to pay the shroff. interesting, eh?

pricey meat

i should clear something up from yesterday's post. actually, not ALL buses are US$0.40. some are more expensive like if you take the ones that go through the underwater tunnel... i'm not sure what exactly they call it... wait, trying to find it online... cross-habour tunnel. yeah, so those buses are slightly more expensive, but probably not to the extent of those in la. the buses i usually take are about US$0.40 - $0.50.

today, we took dad to the hospital for his check-up and a scan of his bladder, which entails shoving a fiberoptic camera tube up his urethra... not too appealing. the doctors told him he's doing fine and that he should not worry about his cancer too much. not knowing my dad obviously, they don't know that he'll probably worry until his next appointment (and the appointment after that).

afterwards, we took the bus down to central and had a late lunch at the can teen. then we took a walk through citysuper... anyone know how to do an upside-down exclamation mark? apparently, the 'i' in city is an upside-down exclamation mark and well... i don't know how i can do that. anyway, we saw a piece of australian beef (sirloin) for HK$130 for 100g. we worked that out to be US$75 per pound. there's about 450 grammes in a pound. so at HK$130/100g, we multiply the price by 4.5 or HK$585/lb. the exchange rate is about HK$7.8/US$1, so the final price for a pound of that beef is... US$75. crazy.

we settled at starbucks again, and after 40 minutes, my parents left. about 20 minutes later, they called me saying that they were locked out cuz my dad gave me his keys earlier in the day and my mum didn't bring hers along. so i took the bus back. it started raining in the afternoon and i didn't have an umbrella with me... or so i thought. apparently, i had one in the backpack i was carrying but i thought it was in my mum's bag. so anyway, long story short, i ended up walking in the rain from the bus stop to my parents' flat. funny thing, it feels not at all different than any other day in hk. humidity sucks.

just some random stuff... there's this show on tvb, a tv channel station in hk, that has this program that basically is the entertainment tonight of hk called, k-100. on tonight's episode, they had an interview with vivian hsu (who, i'm sure, mark is pretty familiar with). i'm not exactly sure what the significance of it is, but she was interviewed and she had her hair done in cornrows.

we are currently watching this show on tvb that's called fantasy hotel (but roughly translated it's called "the happy inn"). since my cantonese isn't that great, i'm pretty much catching about 70% of the dialogue from the show. anyway, the story goes that this old man gives his inn to three friends. the female, who's divorced, is starting to fall for one of the friends. however (and isn't this just like life), he's starting to get involved with this actress who decided to quit being an actress (btw, she is a terrible actress in real life... just horrific). the third guy has this girlfriend who's a money-grubbing bitch and is really annoying and no one likes her. so after about 14 episodes, here's what's happening: the guy gets the actress, the girl finds out and is now depressed. the old guy is getting married to this woman he's known for a long time, her son is trying to hook up with the girl. all the meanwhile, they are trying to run this inn. the girl looks a very similar to sammi (the singer/actress).

there's an advertisement running here that is starting to bug the fuck out of me. i don't know what it is selling, but there's this chick with a stuff teddy bear and she's running around in a top and a pair of panties... and then somewhere in the middle of the advert the voice-over goes blah-blah-blah, birthday par-ty, blah-blah-blah. (blah being what's being said in cantonese.) anyway, the way she says "birthday parrrrr-ty" bugs me.

on sunday night, tbv has this show with some actress that i really like*. she was on some show i talked about last year. now this year, she's on a different show, and a pretty risque one at that. anyway, she's mixed (probably white and chinese), from somewhere outside of hk (probably from one of four places, US, england, australia, or canada),and came back to hk to start an acting career. i'm trying to find a picture, but have yet been unsuccessful.

edit: found a picture (8/12/05)

on another note, is it me or are there way too many chinese people here? should i be worried that i don't feel at ease? i don't know. i feel like i don't really fit in here in hk. i can't really communicate with people too well since my chinese is not great, and i don't have any reasons to talk to any white people. ugh. that's the way it is i guess.

oh, some guy felt sorry for his ailing mother so he decided to push her into the harbour. good stuff.

* note: i don't like, like her. i just think it's really interesting cuz she's obviously mixed and she speaks cantonese. i heard that she's in the same boat as me... meaning, she can't read, but she can speak.

yeah, it's still a bit warm

it's been a week (gosh, only a week!) since i've arrived in hong kong. for some reason, it definitely feels longer than that.

today, i went to the book store and purchased the historian by Elizabeth Kostova. i'm not sure how good it is yet, but reviews have been pretty positive, so i'm a bit excited. it cost me HK$160, which basically is a little over US$20. i'm sure i got ripped off, but since it has 642 pages, i'm sure it'll last me until the end of this trip. another cool thing is that it has a different cover than the US version, which is always a plus for me.

currently, i'm reading the known world by edward p.m jones, which won the pulitzer prize last year. the book is a portrayal of the american south in the late 1800's, early 1900's and how free black slaves were allowed to own black slaves. i don't recall ever studying that back in high school or college, so i'm very fascinated by the topic. so far, i'm halfway through it, and though it's going a bit slowly right now, it's still very interesting.

i haven't been doing much in hk. my parents and i have gotten into a basic rhythm for each day. my mum would wake up at 6am-ish in the morning to go do tai chi in the park, i would meet her around 8ish for breakfast. we do our daily grocery shopping after breakfast and sometimes i would go to starbucks (this time, it's the one at the alexandra house in central) until 1pm, when i would go home for lunch. after lunch, the three of us would take the bus to ifc, walk around city super (a western style market), walk to the starbucks at alexandra house. my parents would read the paper, and i would read my book. at around 6pm-ish, my parents would go home, my mum starting on dinner, and i would leave the starbucks at 7:15pm and get home at around 7:40pm.


the one thing i really like about hong kong is that it costs US$0.40 to take the bus here. the double decker buses are pretty much all air-conditioned, which is essential for travelers the last several days. it's incredibly warm here... let's take a look at the tempature. (looking above) so it looks like today had a high of 96 degrees... lovely.

luckily, there was a nice warm breeze today, which made it a bit more tolerable. i swear i'm going to bitch about the weather for the rest of my trip here. it's insane. anyway, i'm getting really sleepy so i think i'll stop here.

note to self: talk about starbucks and the pastries, pickled ginger, mobile phones, having lunch with the sister at cuisine cuisine, and having dinner with my relatives. i'm sure there are other things, but i can't remember anything else right now.

damn, it's hot.

i was checking on yahoo, and i have this to look forward to for the next few days. but what you couldn't see is the fact that the humidity is at around 70% now. during the day, it's like at 90-80%. good times.