Since I have Wednesdays off everyone was nice enough to schedule a trip together to
Ocean Park and
The Peak on Wednesday so we could go together. Surprisingly I've never been to Ocean Park before and I really wanted to go to The Peak observatory.
According to the website you could buy tickets at Admiralty but you board the public buses in Central. That didn't seem to make any sense, so Bryan gave his cousin Benny a call and it turns out you board the bus in Admiralty. Benny actually came by, he had a lot of free time during his training apparently, to take us to the bus stop. Ocean Park was a blast, but only because of the company. We managed to do quite a few rides. Most of the rides made us so dizzy we had to take breaks. I've got a fear of heights so "the Abyss" totally freaked me out. The ride is actually pretty smooth, but the feeling falling is more frightening then exciting for me. We were pretty goofy in the park and
my pictures tell the story.
The sky was fairly clear these last two nights, so we really wanted to go to the Peak. I bought an $80 HKD tripod like a year ago just for night shots. I wish my camera was better but
the pictures turned out okay using my night mode. When we got up to the peak we took a quick look at the Symphony of Lights. There isn't much to see from above, I think it looks much better when you're along the waterfront. We then tried to find a restaurant to eat. Something that wasn't crazy expensive. We finally sat down and ordered really quick because we were starved. It turns out they forgot our order; I noticed when the table that sat down after us got their dinner first. During dinner I ran into Ben and ,his rumored girl friend, Maggie. Ben's gone in about a week's time. Depressing how these models all come and go. After dinner was finished we complained to the manager about the service and he took off Bryan's dish from our bill and we were satisfied. Pretty tired afterwards, it was quite a day.
Labels: Friends, Hong Kong
Monday night after work Bryan, Kevin, Peggy, and I had dinner in Tsim Sha Tsui. We ended up shopping in Jordan and walking along the
Temple Street night market.
Tuesday we all met up at Olympic City, my gym,
to play tennis. I asked Fred to borrow his membership number and we booked the court for two hours. It was a pretty hot and sunny day so the guys went shirtless and Peggy...didn't want to go shirtless with us. It was fun and tiring.
Afterwards we met up with Bryan's friend at Langham Place. Since I was suppose to be watching a movie there as well, at 8:30, we decided to find a place to eat inside. In Hong Kong, places fill up around 8:00. I think Kevin was itching for Thai food so we went up to Simply Thai up top. There wasn't enough space and they quoted us a long wait time so we ended up walking back down to Thai Orchids. It worked out better because it was right outside the UA Cinema.
We were so hungry, also Wendy and I were in kind of a rush to watch the movie, I ended up harassing the hostess to take our order before we even sat down. Wendy and I swallowed our shrimp cakes and we left. Thai Orchids has a promotion with UA Cinema in which if you have a ticket for the movies on the same day you eat at the restaurant then you get a discount. I made sure every waitress and the manager knew we had a ticket before we left to go watch the movie.
I've been looking forward to watching
Pirates of the Caribbean 3 - At the World's End for some time. I've enjoy the Pirates of the Caribbean series so far and was pumped to see the third one. It was not as good as I had hoped, but it was still enjoyable to watch. The story seemed much more complicated than the previous two and didn't have a consistent flow from the movies before it. It was a bit too epic.
Labels: Friends, Hong Kong
Friday night I had drinks with Evita and Peggy over at Finds. I like that lounge actually. I don't usually go to lounges, but if my friends wanted to go then I usually choose that one. It is located on the 2nd floor of Lan Kwai Fong Tower. The first time I went was a long time ago with Cen and Cherie.
After having drinks I went to meet up with Tiffany and some of her closest friends. The girls made me feel really welcome. They were very nice to my ego as well. We ended up over at the relatively new
Club Privé where The Edge use to be. The old management from
Hei Hei apparently moved over to this new club. Mook was nice enough to get me and the ladies in and we just enjoyed the night inside the club. It was my first time there actually.
I went back again with Peggy the next night. She apparently was dealing with some crap and was pretty upset. Tiffany managed to get her drunk, and I got to take her home.
We had plans to join Priscilla on her
junk boat trip the next day, Sunday, but Peggy couldn't make it up and Evita didn't want to go without her so it ended up Bryan and I.
Which worked out quite well, we had a lot of phone and got to socialize with new people. We made two new friends, Katie and Manda, and hung out with them most of the ride. Memorable times are wake boarding, burying Paul and Katie, and playing crazy eights on the way home.
Usually I take tons of pictures at these events, but luckily Katie is just as much of a picture freak as I am. While we were on the beach it started to rain hard and we left a lot of our electronic equipment at the roof of the boat. We were lucky that someone finally decided to check and they managed to collect all our things. So I don't really have an album for this event, but Katie
does.
I can't wait to go out again!
Labels: Clubbing, Friends, Hong Kong, Sports
We had planned to go to
Festival Walk together as a group.
Shopping and ice skating. The ice skating isn't very good in Hong Kong, but we've been out searching for some things to do.
In the morning I got a message from
Jason who got back from Korea the previous night. He did a job in Korea recently and went back to activate his visa. The guy was nice enough to take an hour long bus into the city to buy a military style cap for me. He was only in Korea for a few hours and he came back to Hong Kong afterwards. So that's the story behind my cap. My friend flew to Korea, bought it and brought it back to Hong Kong for me. I went down to the
agency to meet up with him before he left Hong Kong. When I got to the building the main power had been knocked offline and the elevators didn't work. According to Amy and Sandy, Jason was horsing around with the phone and dialed extension 09. According to Jason, it was something that Amy did so the police were coming for her. We met up with Jason's friends and went back to his hotel room to chill with him while he finished packing his carry-on luggage.
I took off afterwards to meet up with Peggy, Bryan, and Kevin at Festival Walk. We had a meal in the food court, walked around a bit shopping, and then proceeded to the ice rink. Horace asked me a while back if Hong Kong had a
Mexx. I finally found one at Festival Walk. Actually there are a few shirts that I have my eye on in there.
Ice skating was a lot of fun. We were out on the ice for a long time. Peggy wowed us with her grace and I was joking around wrecking havoc in the rink. I don't remember how many people I ran into. Bryan and Kevin received free lessons on how to skate backwards, which they did pretty well with. I had a good time with them and managed to get some practice in as well.
Labels: Friends, Hong Kong, Sports
Miscellaneous Hong Kong Weekend
It wasn't so good a few days before the weekend. I had some problems recently dealing with a friend who, during his moments of exploration and growth, has moved from being introverted to a stressed/forceful extrovert. I should be supportive of this, but this time it came with a cost. I've been spending a lot of time with different groups of friends lately. I love mixing my friends when I think it might be right, I like it when people introduce good people to me, and in turn I like to introduce good friends to other people. Sometimes I introduce not-so-good friends and in those cases I can only say sorry and make the attempt to avoid those same situations in the future.
What happened was that I brought a particular friend out to an outing with my Japanese tennis friends. I haven't seen these girls in at least two weeks, I haven't been playing tennis for nearly a month now, because I've had so many friends visit Hong Kong recently. I met up with Midori and her friend Aki first. Oh I just have to add in that they told me
Nepia brand facial tissues are the best. Since this was my first time meeting Aki, and knowing Japanese people, I was relatively formal in my meeting. At least at first. However my friend came up behind her and covered her eyes freaking her out. Culturally when Japanese people are together they're far from aggressive. My friend seemed very aggressive that night, but to "save face" I decided not to say anything until afterwards. I mentioned how uncomfortable I was with his actions and in return he went on to teach me about how much he knows about the mechanics of dating. This certainly has left a sour taste in my mouth.
Stephanie left on Friday, I met up with her briefly after my dinner with my Japanese tennis group Thursday night. We had dessert in Causeway Bay. There was this cute little girl being trained to work as a waitress by her mother inside. She was bringing out menus and bringing out change. After a week of hanging with Steph it is going to feel strange not seeing her.
Priscilla came back to Hong Kong, like she usually does apparently, and Tiff arranged for us to go clubbing with her Friday night. We had the horrible time trying to get in to Club no. 9 and eventually just ended up paying. We partied hard inside, I met up with John and his best friend who was visiting from New York. The girls picked up another girl who was hanging around dancing with strangers all night. I think there was a guy there who was her boyfriend or at least male friend that she was kind of hanging with, but she kept floating around meeting other people and the guy just stood at the side watching all of this.
To keep things busy, but fun, The day Stephanie left a few more people came into Hong Kong. Wayne called me up that afternoon and later on that evening I literally bumped into Jason and Araceli in the Central MTR station. They apparently headed to Sheng Wan station and ran into Angie right after running into me.
Jason and Araceli are always fun to be around, so Saturday night I met up with Wayne and we took Jason and Araceli out to have some Shanghainese food near Time square. I quickly dropped by Dodo's birthday lounge event just to say happy birthday and we ended up having drinks in Causeway Bay with Jason and his friends afterwards. I took Wayne out to Volar a bit later where after meeting a few of my friends he was over come by weariness and expressed his desire to go home. Partying in Hong Kong is a whole new level.
Labels: Friends, Hong Kong
Our plan for
this trip to
Macau weren't really set. We ran into a few problems right off the bat. I totally forgot to bring my passport, but it ended up that I didn't need it. We asked the lady at the ferry ticket counter and she told me that I could use my residence HK ID card in conjunction with my passport. Kevin had a temporary HK ID paper with him and she told him that he couldn't use that at all so we ended up going back home to get our passports. We had a bit of a problem figuring out how we could save money using my VISA card (each person with the return ticket saves $15) since they claimed that only the person traveling at who those tickets could get the discount. Actually it turns out that they never checked my VISA number.
Macau has a lot of very old buildings with these stone walkways. The signs are all in Chinese and Portuguese.
For not planning this trip it turned out to be pretty smooth. We got to Macau and took a bus (bus number 3 or 10a) to Largo do Senado (Senado Square). From there we walked around until we ran into St. Dominic's Church and the Ruins of St. Paul's. We had a lot of snacks along the way; Pork buns, almond cookies, and of course Portuguese egg tarts. We didn't have a lot of time and a few of them wanted to go back to Hong Kong early so we split up. I went wandering with Stephanie and Bryan, Kevin, and Peggy went back to Hong Kong.
Steph and I wandered into
Grand Lisboa which isn't even finished, but we had to use the washroom. Since gambling isn't exactly allowed in China, Macau is the place for gambling in Asia. I don't really gamble so it was my first time to see a bunch of tables with no dealer. It was completely electronic on a screen.
We had a bit of a problem grabbing a cab. There aren't a lot of taxis in Macau and during rush hour the only hope we had was near the casino. Literally we saw a taxi drop someone off and we took it right after. We went over to meet up with Priscilla and Paul for dinner. We chatted and had a nice meal then took another taxi back to the pier to catch the 9:00 Jet Foil back to Hong Kong. A tiring day, but still fun for me nevertheless.
Labels: Friends, Travel
Monday night I met up with Steph to chat. We had dinner with Cherie and then we sat down at the Starbucks at the World Trade Centre in Causeway Bay until it closed. Stephanie has a character that is easy to get along with. She is just a good person overall, and most importantly she doesn't play around with me; she is just honest. To other people we seem to be really good friends, though the truth of the matter is this trip was the first time we really had a chance to get to know each other. I met her along time ago in Toronto and then afterwards when she came to Hong Kong with her family. We spent some time getting to know each other then, but still it was our second time meeting. Afterwards I met her again in Japan when she took me around, but I was mainly visiting Akira at that time so I spent more time getting to know the environment. Monday night was a good chance not only to get to know each other, but to talk about various problems or potential problems. With all that out and our bond a little stronger I took her to met up with Eugenie before she left for Canada.
We bumped into Janice and Angie on our way to dinner. Angie didn't really stop and nearly knocked me over as she rushed to karaoke. The twins have been pretty distant lately. I know they had dinner with Jamie the other night, but I've been surprised by their lack of communication lately. I suppose they're just really busy.
We had drinks with Eugenie at Shelter, a lounge in Causeway Bay, which also happened to be the first night "spot" that I went to when I first came to Hong Kong. That's when I met Tina K and Alvin's friends and slept over in Causeway Bay. Eugenie entertained us by reading our palms. I'm suppose to have many many relationships that are all suppose to run smooth until I get married. So she claims.
Tuesday we were suppose to go to the beach. I had Ada go and look up all the route information for me already, but in the end Peggy had to cancel out for various reasons and with only three of us remaining we decided to
change our plans. That's why we ended up
going to Ngong Ping via the new
360 cable car. Several people recommended it to me; Horace, De, the girl that works at SJSJ, and Steph's Auntie. I'll recount what I told the reporters that interviewed us in Ngong Ping village (the stopped us while we were taking our silly pictures). The ride is smooth with a nice scenic view of Hong Kong. It certainly beats the bus, though it is a little bit pricey ($88 return ticket). It is worth seeing once though. Joyce took me to Lantau island a long time ago, so this is my second time there. Last time I went I didn't see the "Wisdom Path". We decided to hike together along the path. We were hoping Bryan would take all the mosquito bites, but I ended up having my own fair share.
While we were walking along the path Steph decided to change shoes, and into super silly Steph. Which began our crazy picture taking along the path. It was a great day and we took a lot of nice, and fun, pictures.
Labels: Friends, Hong Kong
Stephanie and Peggy - Bubble Tease in Hong Kong?
It has been a busy last couple of days. Stephanie is visiting from Canada (or from Japan now?) and she brought me cereal for Angie and magazines for myself. We've been hanging out the last two days doing tons and tons of shopping. She introduced me to her ex-
Bubbletease coworker Peggy who has been a lot of fun as well. I love it when people aren't shy about taking crazy pictures, when you look back at a trip those pictures give you the happiest emotions. I've gotten the Mong Kok shopping tour up to a professional level now with Causeway Bay soon to follow. Those are probably the most interesting spots to shop in Hong Kong anyways.
Yesterday we decided to go Karaoke at the last moment. Jamie had a friend from Vancouver visiting Hong Kong; Eva. She's apparently flying out early tomorrow so last night we all wanted to do something that was very Hong Kong; hence the karaoke. Peggy's going to see her roots on Saturday but we'll probably head out to the clubs tomorrow night. Sorry to everyone who I've tried to make plans with. Everyone's schedules are a bit busy these days.
Labels: Friends, Hong Kong, Karaoke
I stayed in Hong Kong for the long
Easter break, so I've been itching to leave Hong Kong to travel a bit more this year. Originally
Shanghai wasn't on my "list" of places I wanted to go to this year, but I had a friend there who was free for
golden week and since I had a place to stay I decided to go visit. I stayed from May 1st to May 6th; six days.
Six days is a lot to write about so I'm going to summarizes as much as I can. When I first arrived I met up with my friend and her first boyfriend in
Xujiahui (徐家汇). They had some other Chinese friends visiting from out of town. Everyone stayed at a house near
Jinjiang Park. We didn't really do anything on my arrival day.
Day 2 we went as a group to
People Square (人民广场),
Nanjing Road (南京路), and
The Bund along the
Huangpu River (黄浦江).
On
day 3 we traveled to the famous
Yuyuan Gardens and
Xintiandi (新天地首页).
For days 4 and 5 I ended up shopping in
Xujiahui and
Nanjing Road. I wandered around
People Square to take a few photos at night. With the new currency difference it is actually more expensive for me now to shop in China using my Hong Kong Dollars. The only things I bought were a pair of fake
G Star Raw jeans (￥200 RMB) and a white custom fit
Ralph Lauren polo (￥145 RMB). The polo I bought for cheap from a shop in a mall called
Hotwind. I have no clue if it is authentic, but it looks and seems real compared to my other custom fit American bought polo. The jeans were a debate for me to buy. I had a conversation with a model before about buying fake name brand jeans, and he reported good results from his own purchases. With an original pair costing around ￥1300 RMB it seemed like a good risk. I'm mainly worried about the colours bleeding, but I was told to soak it in water over night before washing it. The first few washes with jeans are always something to worry about.
Friday night I went clubbing at
Club G Plus. It wasn't a bad club, fairly large with a lot of tables with people playing dice games. The main reason I wanted to go was there was a special event that night with
DJ Dan spinning. He apparently claims the number 5. spot for top DJs world wide. The set was really good, I love a good DJ and it really helped the mood since I hate clubbing alone. Saturday night wasn't as great. I went to check out club
Guandii; the hip-hop club of Shanghai. The venue seemed a bit small. They had girls come out every once in a while to do a bit of a dance show on this little stage in the centre, but I found it kind of distrupted the atmosphere because the songs would suddenly stop and change to accomidate the display.
Special thanks to everyone who helped or tried to help out on my trip. I had tons of suggestions and it really made the difference. Special thanks to Sandra, Wendy, Wendy's friend Vicky, Terence, Aya, Luo Yan, and my mom (she gave me recommendations too).
Hits:
- Big city, lots of space.
-
Shanghai Public Transportation Card. You can use it everywhere including Taxies.
- Shopping. Lots of shops, lots of brands.
- Technology. "3D" video ads inside the malls.
- Clubs with world famous DJs visiting all the time.
- Old traditional sites and Chinese gardens.
- Cheap Taxies.
Misses:
- Lots of very aggressive rude people. Many with some very nasty habits.
- Street crossings. literally the pedestrian lights and traffic lights don't mean anything. People will cross whenever, cars won't stop at red lights. They need to hire people specifically to control traffic at more commercial centres.
- Hard to find good traditional food. I don't know why it was so hard for me.
- Air quality. Surprisingly I think it is worst than HK's. I was clearing my nose constantly and what was coming out wasn't pleasant.
- Expensive shopping with my Hong Kong currency. Damn new exchange rate.
Labels: China, Travel
Monday was a busy day. I woke up early to meet up with De and Horace. Took them around MK to help them with their China Visa and to show them some of the local spots in MK to do their shopping. MK is a busy place, but I think it really is a good spot for visitors to go to see kind of the "real" Hong Kong shopping experience. Causeway Bay is another good place, but there are more interesting areas on the Kowloon side. The main problem is the people. Kerrie came by after lunch and I took her quickly through some of the areas. She had to return a camera she bought the other day at Broadway. I hurried off to work and met up with Kerrie again afterwards.
Kazue has been asking me to help her with some translations and I feel really bad about my lack of time. Even though we went out to talk with her about it, I brought Kerrie along for dinner and it just turned into a conversation. Which I suppose is good for her to at least practice her English. The
big surprise was running into Pamm out side of Tsui Wah. In order to break her traditional ways I introduced her to my friends and forced her to have a decent conversation with them. Actually, she was quite normal and social. Though I don't know what kind of internal conflict she might have inside. I was messaged Jason to see if he had finished dinner and to see when he was heading down to Volar.
What I didn't know, was that it was actually
Image again at Volar. Usually the girls will tell me, I actually asked about it, but I know Angie deleted the email and it probably slipped their minds. The problem is they're a lot stricter with the entry policy. Jamie called me while I was on my way over, and thinking it was a regular night, I asked him to come out. Once I got there I had a hard time waiting for the bouncer. Jamie showed up and was standing along the side. I was texting people inside when the bouncer suddenly just opened up for me and let me in. The manager was right there in front of me. I took a step and walked into the entranced, but turned around to see if I could get Jamie in. The manager motioned me down the stairs and that was that. I sold him out, I feel really bad about it. I heard everyone was leaving though so I didn't know if I should've fought to get him in. He texted me telling me he found some other people to hang with and that's the best I could make out of a bad situation. I still feel bad about it, that's not something a friend should do. I really try to avoid these situations, but I can only say that I didn't know it was Image that night. Even Christine and them asked me why I was so late. As a side note I saw Haru, from my Japanese badminton group, coming out of the club. I'm glad I didn't run into him inside.
Once inside the fun began. Amy was sitting all bored looking in the corner. Karen and Christine were chatting away. I didn't see any of the other girls, Angie told me she had just left. Jason and Araceli of course where there, along with Marell and Ralph. I ran into Terence, Mook, and Celia as well. The usual Volar crowd. I lost everyone when I went to the washroom and they ended up over at Dragon i. I've never been there before, so I went over with Celia and her friend. I messaged Jason to get us in, but apparently the bouncer just let us in. We had a lot of fun chatting away. I met a cool Japanese model and we had a chance to use our Japanese to talk about girls. He doesn't seem to be a player which is a good sign that we can be good friends. A few hours left before my flight to Shanghai. Good luck Jason! Araceli! Also good luck to Marell who's heading to Japan this Wednesday.
Labels: Clubbing, Friends, Hong Kong, Model
