Eat, Drink, Be Merry

Our foodie friends are visiting this weekend. We have an epic lineup of restaurants on our schedule. These are just a few:
-Yin Yang Private Kitchen
-Bo Innovation
-Fook Lam Moon
-City Hall Maxim's Palace

We also plan to go to Macau on Sunday for a look around and taste the Portuguese-influenced, Chinese cuisine.

Time to break out the pants with the elastic waistband . . .

This is Spooky

I am flying from Hong Kong to San Francisco on Sunday, September 26th. My flight leaves just after midnight. I arrive in San Francisco on the day before - on Saturday, September 25th just before midnight.

Patty's blog

It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who knows her - Patty's Blog is mostly about food.

Tacos and NASCAR

Woke up this morning to watch the NASCAR Sprint Cup race - Bristol under the lights. Yeah, baby! We went to this race last year. Had a great time at the race and ate some fabulous BBQ and soul food in Tennessee.
After watching the race this morning, I went to the Quarry Bay neighborhood to eat at a taco truck right next to the subway stop.

It's like I never left the 'States.

IKEA Overkill

 

Ikea delivered and assembled this night stand today. They sent three guys to do the job. It took them four minutes to assemble.

Cranky Meets Crankier

Our Ikea mattress is terrible. It really is. I've had a better nights sleep in a sleeping bag lying atop a sand bar next to a river. So in an effort to salvage this mattress (which wasn't cheap, in case you are wondering) I go back to Ikea to buy a memory foam mattress topper. This is my sixth trip to Ikea in less than three weeks. The music selection is terrible. Huey Lewis is extolling the, "Power of Love." Mothers and daughters (strangely, it seems every customer in Ikea today is a mother/daughter duo) mill around like they are visiting the Louvre. More importantly, they keep getting in my way as I try to snake through the Ikea showroom maze. Unnecessary umlauts burn my eyes. I stop trying to pronounce the stupid names of items. I just point and let the Ikea employees figure out what I need. I am on a mission. I need to escape Huey Lewis. I need to escape umlauts. I need to get away from mothers and daughters. And I need to come home with a mattress topper. So I buy this thing. It's not cheap. It's a queen-size: 80" x 60" x 3". It's rolled up like a giant cigar. It's kind of heavy and certainly unwieldy. I put this thing over my shoulder and go up two flights of Escalators. For the first time during this miserable Ikea visit, I am able to exhale CO2 instead of flames. The upside of hauling around a 60", 30 lbs cigar is that people scurry aside when you pass. It creates instant personal space. For a split second I consider carrying it around all the time while in Hong Kong.
There is no line at the taxi stand and I lock eyes with the cabbie at the front of the line. His eyes break from mine and fixes on the mattress pad. I give it a squeeze to show him it's flexible and won't beat up his taxi. He asked me where I'm going. I don't understand him. He asks a couple of times and I'm finally figure out and tell him. He looks on skeptically as I push, bend and position the mattress topper diagonally in the back seat. It fits but I can't reach the seat belt because I can't really move. Immediately after we make the first turn a truck stops in the middle of the street and a guy with a hand truck rolls a stack of boxes to load onto the truck. Right then and there, the cabbie drops a couple of F-bombs like he was born and bred in South Philly. This gets my attention. I give him a good looking over. Of course, I only see the back of his head and his eyes in the rear view mirror. He has angry eyes. So I look away to the back of his head. His roots are white. His ends are black. The hair in between is sort of reddish-brown. I think I have some insight on why he's so angry. I would be angry if my hair looked like that. Once we get moving again, he's hitting the brakes HARD. It sounds like the front end of the car is slamming against the road every time he presses the brakes. His driving is as angry as his eyes. We finally get back to the apartment. All in all, it takes less than 20 minutes and the fare is $37.50HK. The cabbie turns off the meter, looks back at me and for a second I can't do anything. The mattress pad has shifted and I am really pinned in. So for a few, silent moments we just trade angry looks. I am finally able to wiggle and create enough space to reach my wallet. I hand him a fifty. He gives me a ten back and glares. I glare back. There is silence. It's not worth it. I just get out of the taxi and yank out the mattress pad. Before I even hoist it back on my shoulder, a resident at my complex hops into the cab. I just shake my head and wish her good luck under my breath.

Brave Worker Back Out

 

The rain stopped and our brave worker is back on the bamboo scaffolding. Notice how he has carefully placed his feet on two thin planks.

In Bamboo We Trust

 

Do you see the two workers pointed out by the red arrows? If you can't, double-click on the photo. They are on the 22nd floor. See what the scaffolding holding them is made of? It's just bamboo, cord, and green plastic mesh. I chanced upon these two intrepid workers when I looked out the window to watch the rain fall. By the time I grabbed my camera to point and shoot, they were climbing back inside to escape the rain.

Night Lights

 

View from living room at night. Tripod hasn't arrived here yet so picture was taken with camera resting on top of $5 Ikea trashcan. The road at the bottom of the photo is Kennedy Road in Wan Chai.

You look like a Yank

Even with my Han Chinese ethnicity, I'm picked out as an American. Why is that? Well, I generally wear shorts, t-shirt and athletic shoes. The only locals who would dress so poorly are students and laborers. One look at me and I'm too old to be a student and too fat to be a laborer. So by process of elimination, I'm a Yank.

The International Commerce Center (ICC Tower)

 

As seen from our guest bedroom looking in a northwestly direction. The ICC Tower is 1,588 feet tall, which makes it the tallest building in Hong Kong and more than 100 feet taller than the Sears Tower in Chicago. It sits on the Kowloon side of Victoria Harbor. It was just completed this year. Framing the ICC Tower on the left is Hopewell Centre and one of the buildings in our complex on the right.

Air shipment arrived today with some surprises

Air shipment was provided to bring to us the things most critical to getting up and running in Hong Kong. We were given an allotment of 1500 lbs. We shipped about 600 lbs.
Think for a second. What items would you need to get up and running on the other side of the world that would say, fit in a minivan?
-Clothes? Check.
-Shoes? Check.
-Computer? Check.
-A few pots and pans and basic kitchen items? Check.
-Ski pants and down jackets? Check. Wait, what?! For Hong Kong?

In the chaos that was our final week in San Francisco, we had all of our clothes packed and ship by air. All clothing of course included cold-weather clothes.

I Live in Hong Kong

In my mind, I have to meet two criteria to officially "live" somewhere. First, I have to pay for housing on a monthly basis rather than daily or weekly (such as for a hotel, hostel, guest house or summer camp). Second, I have to receive mail at the address. By this standard, these are all the places I've lived:

-Taipei, Taiwan (exempt from rule because I was a young child)
-St. Louis, MO
-Savitaipale, Finland
-Goettingen, Germany
-Champaign, IL
-San Francisco, CA
-Boston, MA
-Shanghai, P.R.C.
-San Francisco, CA (again)

Today I received my first letter. It's official. I live in Hong Kong.

What about you? How many places have you lived?

Heat Index

91 degrees F + Humidity = Feels like 103 degrees F. And that's with a little cloud cover.

Likes and Dislikes (to be updated)

Huja Likes:
-The Octopus Card makes paying for things a breeze.
-Inexpensive public transit. Most subway trips cost about 60 cents. I haven't yet spent more than $6.50 for a taxi ride.
-Milk Tea. The tea is strong and it's not too sweet.
-Bakeries. You can't walk a block without seeing one or two of these bakeries that specialize in single-serving treats for the grab-and-go population of HK.
-Delivery Services. You can have just about anything delivered to your flat. I have a case of soda, cooking oil and several jars of condiments coming this afternoon.
-The idea that slapping a fried egg on top of anything makes it breakfast. I've had a fried egg on top of a bowl of egg noodles and a fried egg on top of macaroni and ham.
-That I'm of average height here.
-Seeing people walk their dogs.
-The professionalism of the staff at the apartment complex.
-The location of the apartment complex.
-Spending $3 US for a satisfying meal.
-Finding a cable channel that broadcasts the NFL and NASCAR.


Huja Dislikes:
-The Humidity. Bought two dehumidifiers last night. They were nearly full this morning.
-The Produce. Lackluster selection and quality of fruit and veggies so far.
-Customer Service. A native Hong Kong citizen who spent many years in the U.S. told me not to expect the American level of service in HK. So far he's been right.
-Finding someone new to cut my hair. This is perhaps what I like least about moving.
-Spending $15 US on a box of imported laundry detergent.
-The pollution.
-Having to read labels at the grocery store to make sure food goods are not manufactured in China.
-How late things open. I have not yet found a 24 hour grocery store. The local chain near the apartment opens at 8 am.

The Tower of Babel, Customer Service, and a Wireless Router

You know the origin of the word babel? Well the short version is that we humans tried to build a tower to reach the heavens and God didn't take too kindly to this challenge and gave us a smack down. He knocked down the tower and played a dirty joke on us. Previously, all mankind spoke a single language. Communication was universal. After our tower-building affront, God created a bunch of languages making it difficult, if not impossible for humans to communicate with each other. Hence the verb, "to babble," which means to speak without communicating anything.
Fast forward a few thousand years. I buy wireless router (as previously mentioned in the, "If One Night in Bangkok . . . " blog post. I can't get the damn thing to work right. I find the manufacturer's Hong Kong customer service number. I have no idea how to dial it as it does not resemble any of the 8-digit numbers I've dialed in HK. I attempt to call the operator for guidance. Guess what? Dialing zero doesn't get you anything in Hong Kong. So I have to hunt down the number for the operator. Turns out it's 10010. Not at all intuitive, but at least I'm moving forward. Operator tells me to dial all nine digits of the customer service telephone number. Fine. Whatever. All previous numbers have been eight digits. I dial the number. I get a recorded message - in Cantonese. Dammit. Wait, wait - "For Mandarin, please press 2." I'm translating because this recorded message was in Mandarin. So I press 2 because I speak Mandarin poorly (vs. Cantonese which I speak not at all). Now it gets really hairy. I have all kinds of options, "Press one for . . . press two for" . . . all in Mandarin of course. I just start pressing numbers until I get a live person on the other end of the line. Finally, I get a live body. She speaks English better than I speak Mandarin. We spend 45 minutes talking about things like IP addresses, SSID networks and such. I click on this, I click on that. She puts me on hold to consult her manual. I enter this. I enter that. I close out of this. I reboot that. Our conversation is about 50% English, 25% Mandarin, and 25% silence. Somehow, we got the wireless router up and running (which is obvious since I need internet access to create this blog entry) and I thank her profusely in two languages. I wish I had distilled spirits in the apartment to toast a small victory over God.

View from our apartment

 

Things of note about our view East: 1) We are on the 24th floor. 2) The haze of air pollution. 3) East is the less developed side of town. Most of the iconic buildings (HSBC, Bank of China, IFC) are West of our apartment. 4) It's hard to see but, a portion of the Happy Valley Horse Race Track is visible.

We've moved into our flat!

That is, if you consider living with a few pieces of hastily-assembled IKEA furniture, a TV sitting on the living room floor and an internet connection "moved in." It's stunning how many things you have to buy to make an apartment run smoothly. A "Pardon Our Dust As We Remodel" sign would fit right in.

Moving out of Hotel and Into Apartment

In about 5 hours. I may be without internet for a day or so. I'll be back to blogging shortly.

If One Night in Bangkok Makes a Hard Man Humble . . .

What does 24 hours in Hong Kong do to you?

We touched down in Hong Kong exactly 24 hours ago. The first thing we did was check into an over-the-top hipster hotel called "East" that was written up in the New York Times travel section. It's so hip it's located in an unfashionable part of town. Unfortunately, the mood lighting in our room would not turn off. Try as they might various staff members tried to turn off the light with no success. We were too tired to wait for maintenance to do the job so we simply went to sleep with the lights on. It wasn't a big deal as we were destined to awake at 3am local time anyway. I'm not exactly sure what we did to kill time between 3-8:30am, but the time passed quickly as jet-lag plays all sorts of tricks on your internal clock.
At 9am we checked into our flat with our real estate agent at our side and three representative of our apartment complex explaining rules, regulations and amenities. After the handover (which was lower key than THE HANDOVER in 1997), Patty went off to work and I started my work for the day. I walked around the neighborhood and found three ways to get down to the main commercial street in our neighborhood. I scoped out a couple of drug stores, a grocery store and a electronics retailer. I also made note of the nearby HSBC location. In short, I asked myself, "WWSD" (What Would Smiley Do?). And he would have reconnoitered the hell out of the area despite the fact he was jet-lagged and the heat index was about 100 degrees F. Smiley, please get out of my head.

I made my way down to Wan Chai MTR station and to the Wan Chai Computer Center. It's essentially a crowded little mall that only sells computers, computer accessories and software - a geek's paradise. I bought a wireless router for the home and some 220V power cords. I tried to negotiate down the price but since I don't speak Cantonese, I don't ever expect to land the best price. No problem. I got my goods, a small discount and I was on my way.
By this time, it's nearly noon and I'm just starting to get hungry. I eye many food shops and settle on a hole-in-the-wall that has only two written words of English, "No Smoking." I thought this would be an appropriate first meal in Hong Kong. I thought I was "keeping it real." The one staff member who spoke English was pushed forward to wait on me. You'd think she was the test penguin who was nudged into the sea by other penguins eager to find out if seals were on the hunt. She told me the house specialty was chicken rice and I said that's what I'd have. She asked me if I wanted something cold to drink and I insisted on the hot tea everyone else was drinking, after all I am all about keeping it real. Then this 90 lbs waitress crushed my ego with one simple question, "Can you use chopsticks?" . . .
Really?! Is that what I look like? A gwai lo? A gringo? A wai guo ren? All I could do was to stare her down and nod yes.