Happy Birthday Amy! My Plans And Other Things

It's Amy Beluga's birthday today! Have an unbearably embarrassing video:



ANYWAY. Just a couple of interesting things lately:

Me and my friends are trying to see if we can survive on 40 HKD a day (for food), which is about $5.25 USD. It's totally doable if you eat all of your meals on campus, or at the cafeteria in the hospital near Patrick Manson. It's just not very fun. HAHAHA. Pretty crazy, huh? Back at home you'd have to pay that much for just a McDonald's meal or something. But here I'm getting a full breakfast (toast, egg, bacon, and soup) for 2 USD and then rice and BBQ stuff for 3 USD. The only downside is that I'm gonna get tired of BBQ pork...

Hong Kong students are either very disciplined/clean, or the janitors are very efficient, because there's never any gum stuck under the desks in lecture halls, VERY unlike UCLA. Back at home, it was a pleasant surprise to have a desk that DIDN'T have gum.

There is a TON of all kinds of pollution in Hong Kong. There's the cigarette smoke and smog (of course) but the light pollution at night (especially in Central) is pretty crazy (I was there at 9ish and it seriously looked like the sun was up), and then the noise pollution when the construction people start working at 9 AM EVEN ON SATURDAYS. You shouldn't do that.

Instead of saying the color "pink", locals (or maybe just the professors) prefer to say "pinky color". HAHAHAHA.

That is all for now. I am hungry.

Monkey Park!

Actually called Kam Shan Country Park off of Kowloon Reservoir. We took the 81 bus from the Yau Ma Tei MTR Exit A1 (for future reference). Honestly, I really really really liked it. The weather was a bit hot, but the sun was out, and I <3 sun.

At first the trail seemed a bit shady, but after hiking up some really steep steps that eventually led to nowhere, we found the right trail and started seeing monkeys. I was a little scared that we weren't in the right area since we only saw a couple of monkeys, but THERE WAS NO NEED TO WORRY. I probably saw like, a hundred monkeys. Most of the trail consisted of walking on the side of a mountain, which alternated between really steep stone steps and two-feet-wide pathways surrounded by trees and the occasional waterfall:







As you can see, I picked up a stick. Which was useful when the trail got really steep, or when a monkey would come too close. No joke, I loved my stick, and was sad that I had to leave it behind at the bus stop. I also love foresty, non-uniform stone steps. So picturesque.








There were SO MANY MONKEYS. At one point we were walking on a road for cars, when we noticed that all of the monkeys suddenly started running in the same direction. Think fifty monkeys minding their own business, and then out of nowhere there is a MASS MONKEY MIGRATION. Turns out this shady white van comes by (probably regularly) to hurl around bags of food. I don't think this is legal, because there are signs around the park saying "Do not feed the monkeys, there is enough food for them in the forest". But yeah, this was probably the scariest part of the trip, because 50+ feeding monkeys are hard to avoid. I also saw a huge warthog, but couldn't get a picture because it fled into the forest.



The trail heading back to the bus stop led us to Kowloon Reservoir, which looks really nice because the water is so still. It was really nice to be outside in the nice weather, and even better to get some exercise, since I eat 23984 times a day because food here is so good and so cheap. Amy sent me a link with other HK parks and stuff, so I'll probably be going hiking more often in the future. Thanks Amy Beluga.

Quick Update Before I Forget

Let's see...Thursday I went to a Chiu Chow restaurant for a friend's birthday celebration. Things started off pretty good, with some kind of BBQ duck or something, but there were also some weird things that made me uncomfortable, like this fried slab of crab/apple mixture and this noodle cake that you pour vinegar and sugar over (the trend here is that I don't like mixing sugar/sweet stuff with things that you shouldn't mix with sugar/sweet stuff). I still ate it all though; I'm a changed person.



On Friday I ended class at 3, took a nap, and then had dinner with Allen's friends. We had California Pizza Kitchen (HAHA), but it was still an experience. Peking duck pizza with cheese, mushrooms, and onions sounds kinda gross, but since I couldn't taste the cheese at all, it was fine. Also, I learned that locals like to use thousand island dressing in place of tomato sauce on their pizzas. That seems really unhealthy.



On Saturday we went to a local dim sum place for lunch. On the way there I spotted two people, a man and a woman, hunched over a really small table on the sidewalk. I think there was a fortune reading going on, cuz the lady looked really engrossed in what the man was saying, and the man had his finger in an empty turtle shell. That was weird.

At home, a good dim sum place has to have a B or lower (well, actually I wouldn't go any lower than a B), but this place was prettttty dodgy. We got seated at a table two feet from the bathroom (but they were nice enough to kinda conceal it with a wooden board). And in Hong Kong, it's not out of the ordinary to seat strangers at a table together when they don't have any spaces left, so two middle-aged Chinese guys were seated at our table about 3/4 into our meal. They started talking to us, and we learned that one of the guys grew up in Bombay (because of a war between China and India that I've never heard of) because his father worked for the consulate, so he speaks really good English. With an Indian accent. LOL.

So we left, and while we were paying our bill, I noticed this guy:


Who still uses an abacus to add up the bills. HAHAHAHAH.



So then we took the ferry to TST (yeah, I've been before, but a member of our group hadn't yet). First we had to get to Central to take the ferry so we took the ding ding (and it's called the ding ding because it ding dings at every stop, I think), a double decker bus thing that runs on...two lines in the street? I don't really know how these things work. So yeah, after the ferry ride we walked around TST for a while, and then I met up with Allen's friends again for some Korean BBQ.

And today we're going to the travel agency to see if we can book a tour package to Thailand, and then we're off to Monkey Park!

An Update Cuz I Feel Like It

I own 7 times tables now.

Skipped two classes Tuesday morning (at 8:30 and 9:30). Too tired...Went to Fortress Hill for dinner and ate at a Taiwanese place. I keep forgetting to bring my camera :(

Today: went down to Wan Chai to get my China visa. It's kinda weird going to the same places (the China Resources Building, and malls and stuff) I did three years ago during my first Hong Kong trip. Why? I have no idea. Also, I got lost getting to the visa place, so I asked a lady, in Cantonese, where some street was. So yay for me! But her English was good so she didn't explain in Cantonese...That makes me sad :(

So after I did my visa stuff, I got some dessert at some French cafe. I got some chocolate/hazelnut mousse thing called "The Temptation". The first bite was good, but then it got disgustingly sweet.

Empty plate after I demolished that sucker.

Some espresso and cream I got with my dessert. This was DISGUSTING.

Then I went to Mong Kok for some more shopping...I'm so bad...Spent too much money; how much, I don't want to say...Then I karaoke'd for a couple of hours, came back pretty early, and now I'm gonna sleep pretty early so I can go to the classes I missed on Tuesday. I feel a sickness coming on too, so I should go to sleep ASAP.

Oh! When I was shopping I managed to save my friend 60 HKD on a jacket hehehe. And one of the shop keepers even said my Cantonese was good for being in Hong Kong for only three weeks. Too bad I grew up with it T_T

So I've been here for three weeks already, but it feels like FOREVER. It wasn't until yesterday that I realized how much I like being here. I mean, I've been here before, so I knew exactly what to expect (well, there are some things that required actually living here for more than a week to notice and take in, I'll elaborate later): I already knew how crowded major shopping areas would be on weekends, how often you can get cigarette smoke puffed directly into your face, how nasty bathrooms can be, etc...So at first, I was very unimpressed. Well, I wouldn't say VERY, but I was pretty indifferent. But I realized just a couple of days ago how different life is here than back at home, and how I'm really happy that I get to be here. Also, Hong Kong trees are way cooler than California trees.


Being on your own in a different country is definitely different from being on your own an hour and a half away from home.

Shopping and Stuff

Pictures after I shower cuz I stink.

Food pictures!

7 dollar all-you-can-eat conveyer belt sushi. It tasted like 7 dollar sushi.

Who puts pork sung in sushi? I don't remember if it was good or not; probably means it was bad.

First dim sum in Hong Kong! Honestly, it just tasted like dim sum at home, except not as good because everything was ordered for us. No ha gao :(

Hong Kong street food. Looks really unsanitary and contains all sorts of animal parts I've never heard of. Also smells really bad thanks to stinky tofu.

I took this picture for G'aw, who wanted to know what I ate for every meal. I had this cheddar cheese bun for lunch. It was pretty good.

I ate McDonalds for dinner today HAHA. It's only the second time since I've been here, I swear! But I've been a little more adventurous with food since I got here, and even tried pork blood (it didn't really taste like anything), and ate a shrimp at hotpot that was still moving on the stick. That was the best shrimp I ever had, probably flavored by its tears as it was boiled alive.

Here's the Facebook album for a lot of my pictures; uploading them onto Blogger is really time-consuming, so I try to choose the more interesting ones to post here.

More Pictures!

I also uploaded the pictures of food from Yoshi's from when I was in Berkeley, so click here if you wanna see all the yummy food I was fed.

Taking It Easy Tonight

Went to Lan Kwai Fong last night to try it out, since I shouldn't say I don't like things I haven't actually tried. But yeah, tried it, didn't like it, and I probably won't go back there ever again. So getting back kind of late last night + class at 9:30 AM this morning = staying in tonight to read/write down some thoughts since all I've been doing is posting pictures/etc...Sooooo

Things I like about Hong Kong:
Clothes shopping
Egg sandwiches
Chocolate Vitasoy
Bakeries
HKU's Campus
Cheap food
Asian food in 7 Eleven/Circle K
Nice malls
MTR (Subway system)

Things I don't like about Hong Kong:
Clothes shopping (I want to buy everything T_T)
Cold weather
Unabashed starers
HKU's course enrollment system
The absence of down escalators on campus
Having to pay for and take the bus to school everyday
Tiny bathroom stalls
Inefficient bathroom hand dryers
Inefficient clothes dryers
How every single mall BLASTS the air conditioning

Hopefully tomorrow I'll be going to see some more scenic tourist traps, instead of walking around the more commercial tourist traps for rich people (malls filled with Coach, Burberry, and Armani stores). Be back later with more pics and stuff.

Random Things at APM

I ended class at 10:30 on Wednesday, so I took a trip to the APM mall at Kwun Tong. Hong Kong sucks because everything is so cute so I want to buy it all -_-

Chinese New Year decorations already.

APM has like, 8 floors.


I don't know, it was cute.

What is up with the fascination with poo?

Should I get it? It's actually not that expensive, but I guess there could be problems bringing it back...

Cuuuuuute.

Shrimp Mos Burger for dinner. It was pretty good.

Asian style food court.

Anyone want some sandwishes? I have two other new posts below this, just in case you missed them...There's 56 views on my first video...too many people saw my embarrassing video :(