Last night I took Rui out to the
DKNY Fashion show hosted at the
Adrenaline bar. I had a lot of fun, I have to give a special thanks to the sisters Angie and Janice, and the girls over at
Dreamodels. We started off with dinner at UCC Cafe. Sorry Janice we were all so late, but I think Alman should have the most blame since we waited the longest for him.
Highlights from that night, I got to talk to a few models, some whom I've seen before.
Marell was there again and another male model whom I remembered from
Fred's Watering Hole event. I saw some famous people and of course I got to spend time with a lot of friends in a really nice venue. A few names that where there; Galie Lok (樂基兒),
Raymond Lam (林峰),
Amanda Strang, and ex-America's Next Top Model
Elyse Sewell.
Labels: Fashion, Fashion Show, Model
I was pretty unproductive at work yesterday. Rui stayed over the night before and in the morning I had to wait for a repair man to come by to fix the switch that turns on my hot water heater. The fuse in the switch keeps blowing. I think whoever did the original renovation for my room really cut corners. Rui had a cold shower last night and I waited to have my warm shower this morning, but by the time I was done it was pretty much 11am. I'm suppose to be working full time on a new project with Phoebe but yesterday I was totally unproductive. I met up with Rui since he was down in Wan Chai picking up his China visa and I went back with him to my work place in Tin Hau. He stayed for a bit and I introduced him to my co-workers but I sent him off to Pacific Place to wait for me. I had another surprise call the other day for a casting at some "Red Cactus" production house. It is located on "Sun Street" which was one of the hardest streets for me to locate, I had to ask quite a few people before I even could find the general area.
I was asked to wear a suit again, this casting is apparently for some enterprise company. With Rui and my tie in tow we walked in pretty much on time. I was greated at the door by the production manager, Cameron. There was a cute girl just on her way out. Cameron was nice enough to let Rui stay to watch and I proceeded to put on my tie and jacket. I made a few mistakes, it was embarassing to have the photographer ask me to not "smile as hard". I swear smiling right for pictures is just the toughest thing. Aside from that it all worked out well. I had to hold a phone and strike various talking poses for him. This is actually the first casting I felt good about. I got along with the production manager pretty well. He told me they're shooting in November and asked if I'll be around then. It would be nice if this one goes through. I guess I'll find out in November. So because of various reasons it looks like I won't be able to head home until maybe Christmas. I noticed that there's a Tremblant trip coming up. That's caught my interest.
This month is the month of birthdays! Happy Belated birthday to Sunny and Yoshiro.
PS: If you see Rui's new "Good Luck Charm" make sure you get the story out of him about the Indian guy near
Pacific Place.
I was lucky this past Monday to have been introduced to twin sisters Janice and Angie. They're sweet, fun girls who took me out with their coworkers to
an event at Volar. One Monday a month at Volar they host
Image @ Volar which basically features people from the fashion industry getting together to socialize. Angie works for
Dreamodels and even go to introduce two pretty models to me.
Marell an amazing girl from
Estonia, the first person I've ever met from there. I've heard about Estonia previously in Canada but I was surprised to find a model from there. She is just the nicest person though. I hope she enjoys her stay in HK. Next up is Canadian girl
Niki. She was open and funny and just great to get along with. We chatted about just life downtown around Dundas Square. I also ran into Germaine, and the organizer from the wine tasting event Erez at Volar. I left kind of early, but it was a Monday night and I had a class early this morning. I enjoyed the networking that night and I hope to go out to similar events in the future.
Speaking of life downtown, I was lucky enough to travel to Japan with one of my best friends Simon, I have another best friend visiting me in Hong Kong who use to live downtown in that area. Rui called me up yesterday and demanded that I stay in Hong Kong for the two weeks in which he will be visiting. He should be here today.
Labels: Fashion, Model
Japanese Creative Director
I had a hard but fun weekend. It started off with Hiroko asking me Friday morning if I had time to take her friend out on the town. Her Japanese friend, who as you can guess works as a creative director, was visiting for 4 days and was scheduled to leave Saturday morning. Not a lot of time to plan but I couldn't just refuse since it was his first time in HK and I always try to help out my friends if I can. His company has worked with
Elle Japan and my favourite Men's Joker. We had a late dinner and ended up in Lan Kwai Fong walking around. We tried to get into Hei Hei but due to a timing problem we just couldn't get them in. Specifically when my friend showed up to bring us inside, they were at Tsui Wah using the toilet. Oh well, at least I made another Japanese friend.
Labels: Friends
Fred's Watering Hole
The title is a little misleading. First off this is about my friend Fred. He's a singer and actor for
TVB. He asked us out to an event on Wednesday being held at a pub called "Watering Hole" in Tsim Sha Tsui. I don't know if this is a famous pub, but it was a little hard to find. There was a model show, but only 4 models, that night and Fred was schedule to sing right after them. Jamie and I showed up but we didn't even get seats. We stood by a railing and took pictures and videos of the event.
Today has been a busy day. I've been pissed off recently because of the poor event planning that's been going around HK. Another friend of mine is helping his girl friend host a party for her birthday. Actually, they told me last Sunday that they were planning on booking a table at Volar but it was only Wednesday night that my friend asked me to help him book a table. Well it is a little late, and all the tables are booked so I'm waiting to hear their plan B. It doesn't matter, We've got a
wine tasting event down near Lee Gardens, and possibly a
Louis Vuitton Party later on. Literally while Cherie, Germaine, and I were walking on the street we were stopped by an American who invited us to this wine tasting event. We went to see
The Banquet that night. Oh, a quick review of the movie, it is beautiful and tragic but when people started dying I wanted to die with them. Sorry girls, I thought
Daniel Wu sucked in the film. He did some modelling shots for
Men's UNO that I was impressed with but his acting could use some improvement.
Labels: Friends, Model
I had a crazy full day of teaching on Saturday. It was also Jamie's first full day there. It went fairly well except for one particular problem child. We ended the day at the gym. I was suppose to wake up early to go hiking with Kendall Sunday morning but my schedule was already pretty full and when I woke up that morning, I had an over powering urge...to sleep in. Meh, what can you do? 8:00 am is a little early on a Sunday.
So I got up at my regular time, around noon, and messaged/called people to tell them the plan for the afternoon. Karaoke, 5 pm, Do Re Mi. The day was suppose to be for my Japanese friend Hiroko, and her co-workers. It ended up being something different but not totally off from the Japanese theme. The Karaoke spot of choice for the Japanese is Do Re Mi in Tsim Sha Tsui (+852 2366 1399). They have a comparatively large selection of Japanese songs. The roster originally was myself, Jamie, Iris, Hiroko, Kido sensi, Tsujimoto sensi, Natalie, Gloria, and Gloria's new co-worker Leo. I had invited my friend Pak To, and he ended up sending his group of girls over (Iris, Clare, Diana) so now my group of 9 turned into a group of 12. A To gave up on his work after he heard how much fun we were having and showed up with his girl friend turning my party into a group of 14. This is partying in Hong Kong for you. It was pretty fun, I believe everyone was able to enjoy themselves, and had a chance to socialize and meet new people. I hope the Japanese people didn't feel too isolated, since there were a lot of Cantonese songs sung that night. We did manage to get a few Japanese songs in bringing a couple of smiles to our Japanese guests. We sang until about 9:30 and had ramen noodles at
San Pa Chi (さんぱち) in Tsim Sha Tsui. For some decent ramen in Hong Kong I highly recommend this place.
My partying wasn't finished there. I made a friend last week at
Mooch and she invited me out to her friend's birthday Karaoke at Neway. I met Isabelle, Tammy, the birthday girl Momo, and Money (really, that's his name ... this is Hong Kong so anything goes). We sang until 1:30 and that was the end of my day of Karaoke.
A couple of birthday shoutouts. Happy belated birthday to
Doris back in Canada, Phyliss my co-worker at Readership, and
Pansy's friend Momo who was nice enough to invite me out to her karaoke event.
Labels: Friends, Karaoke
Birthday at Mooch
Recently I had another friend drop by Hong Kong. This time instead of a male friend I had a girl, Christine. She did the sweetest thing for me, she went to Japan on a tour with family and managed to lug 3 heavy magazines back for me (Men's Joker, Fineboys +Plus:Hair, Gainer). Japanese magazines are really expensive in Hong Kong. Recently they released Men's Joker in Hong Kong but I have yet to compare if the contents is the same inside the magazine. It was nice to see Christine again and to chat.
Just this past weekend we celebrated Ally's birthday at Mooch in Lan Kwai Fong. It was a busy night with some poor event planning, but I still enjoyed myself. I think Ally, Cen, and I are all fairly social people and we brought quite a number of friends out that night. My group again was a little uneven but mainly because several of the boys that I asked to come out sold out at the last minute. I had a surprise call from my ex-student/friend Pak To, who brought out his girlfriend and two other girls. So it kind of worked out. Ally setup a guest list for her two tables but I decided to setup a separate guest list for my friends. When you book a table of course there's a minimum charge, I had the feeling someone would over look that and I didn't want myself or my friends to be responsible for the table. My gut feeling was right on, at the end of the night they were over $1000 HKD short on the minimum and Cen had to talk to the manager to get the amount discounted. I met a lot of new people, some of which I might not remember but at least we all had a lot of fun. Ally looked like she had a lot of fun that night so the event overall was a success. Her real birthday is coming up soon so I'll wait to wish her happy birthday.
I'm starting to look for a plane ticket back to Canada. Either I try to buy one now so I can come back early October, or I wait until December when there is more to do, but might affect my job hunting (I need to bring back a lot of my original certificates and documentation). Phoebe was nice enough to work out a deal with me to work at
Readership for another school term, but she is intentionally keeping my schedule free in the morning so I can concentrate on looking for work.
Labels: Birthdays, Clubbing, Friends, Hong Kong
To start off I want to welcome Jamie back to Hong Kong. He'll be staying with us for a while so I wish him the best of luck. I've been hanging out with him, showing him around, and taking him to the gym. I just found out last night that Fred, the guy who works for TVB, also works out at waterfall so we're planning on going together.
Last Sunday we had our Aberdeen boat trip. Ada's friend Henry booked the boat through his law firm so again it was super cheap. The girls prepared food for us again, paying attention to the potential for spoilage, and we had wakeboarding thanks to Ada's friend Couger. Total cost for the boat trip was an even $100 HKD.
Actually I was tired before the boat trip started. I was out with Cherie, Cen, and his friend Julie the night before singing Karaoke. I ended up having 2 hours of sleep before running over to Causeway Bay to have breakfast with Kendall, Jamie, Gloria, and her friend Alex. We managed to get to Aberdeen with plenty of time to spare.
The weather wasn't the greatest but we had a bit of sun towards the end while I was waking. Because there was very little sun out I neglected to apply sun block. I ended up a little burnt at the end of the day, but not too much so it was just about right. It was a fun day, and a great way to end the summer.
I was exhausted at this point but we still had about 2 hours to go before we were to meet up with Priscilla and Tiff for dinner. We ended up at the Central library and I basically crashed on the couch. I was completely out for a good 20 minutes or so. We had great Shanghainese cuisine down in Tin Hau and I ended up sleeping very well that night. In the morning I noticed I missed something like 6 phone calls, sorry!
Edit (2006.09.11): Thanks to Horace for keeping on top of my English. Now if he would update his own blog...
Labels: Friends
