Sometime last week Joyce and I went by
Quicksilver / Roxy to pickup our new bikini and board shorts (respectively). July being the month of sales in Hong Kong, they had a little promotion where if you buy two pieces you receive an 80% discount. Sandra lent us her VIP membership card and we managed to score tickets to an event they held down in
Pui O.
We took the ferry from Central pier to
Mui Wo and then took a taxi over to the beach. Actually the offered free shuttle buses at certain times for the event, but we ended up going fairly late, around 3-4 pm. Lucky for us since there really wasn't much to do there when we got there. The tide was out, people were obviously on the beach sun bathing, but there just seemed a general lack of enthusiasm on the beach it self. Everyone waited around for the fashion show at 5pm then promptly left afterwards. The event was in conjunction with a promotion Sony had going on for their movie
Surf's Up. They had a trivia contest for the children, and the adults that were children at heart.
There wasn't much to the fashion show, but I was surprised to see
Rosemary Vandenbroucke and
Ana R. there. I knew Angie was in Taiwan, so I wondered which of the girls would be with Ana today. I turns out she was working by herself.
After the show there wasn't much to do but enjoy the beach. I helped pick out a few nice shells and Joyce and I managed to find this pink bike in the middle of the beach by the water. It was basically this pink Quicksilver bike. We couldn't resist and just had to take pictures with it.
Labels: Fashion Show, Friends, Hong Kong
Thursday I was out with Vanessa having dinner. We've been going out swimming together down at the Jockey Club. After dinner I headed home. I thought I was done for the night, but as soon as I walked in the door I got a call from Aaron.
He was out with Tiffany and Sandra down near Soho drinking. I forgot he was leaving the next day. I didn't really want to go back out to LKF right after getting home, but with a little convincing from Tiffany L. I went straight back out to catch the MTR down.
Aaron introduced me to his friend Leon, who I found out later knew about 14 of my other friends. We went over with Tiffany N. to Prive and Club No.9 afterwards. We made plans to meet up early tomorrow before his flight, but of course that never happened. Lazy people can't get up early enough (myself included).
A lot of stress and planning came up over
Hiroko's birthday party which took place on the 22nd. Originally Kazue was putting the plan together, but I was a bit stressed over the organization of it all. With a little help from Ted, Kazue managed to pull off a nice event. We had dinner at
Habitu's Ristorante in Causeway Bay. Hiroko had a few of her friends visiting. One of the girls I introduced to her in the past, but we don't seem to get along with anymore due to some previous history so that made things a bit awkward. Diana and I picked out a limited edition heart shaped
Christian Dior Pretty Charms Lip Gloss for her present. This was a gift Flora helped me get for Angie sometime ago.
The cake for the night was baked by Joyce. She spent the whole morning making the cake for the party. Lately we've all be representing
Diesel and
55DSL at our events. Ted had just picked up a new Diesel dress shirt that he was sporting that night. Looking good people.
I have to say, I've never seen Hiroko look so happy. We did good.
Labels: Birthdays, Clubbing, Friends, Hong Kong
Sunday was my
second boat/junk trip this week. The difference is that I knew more people on this boat trip.
Actually I was still a bit tired from the Saturday trip. The theme around this trip was Patrick's birthday. I saw a couple of familiar faces on this trip. We ran into a couple of problems right at the beginning with people canceling. I have to warn you, if you're talking about planning events in Hong Kong, it happens all the time. I had brought a few people myself, but even then we ran into some problems. Some how no one could contact Priscilla and I had to go bother her at home. Kazue ended up at the Central pier, probably because we met there for our last boat trip.
Kind of a rocky start, but it ended up to be pretty good. We had a pretty nice boat, and we ended up taking the row boat out to ferry people to the beach. We anchored pretty far from the shore, I managed to swim there 3 times, but it was pretty tiring each time. The beach sucked though, it was full of rocks. Half of us were bleeding all over the water from those rocks. I was surprised we didn't lure any sharks over. I was on the verge of a sun burn from my Saturday trip, I managed to keep my burn to a minimal after this trip which I'm pretty proud of.
We had kind of a mini reunion as well. Kelvin, Ricky, Raymond, and I met 10 years ago. We jokingly said we would meet again in another 10 years.
Labels: Friends, Hong Kong, Sports
Friday I met up with Joyce for lunch and a dip in the pool. She spent some time with me afterwards looking for a hair salon that Hiroko had recommended. The Salon's name is called Aoyama Hair Design (1/F, J-Mall, No.3-6 Granville Circuit, Tsim Sha Tsui tel. 2368 3001) in Tsim Sha Tsui. I thought it was in JD Mall in Jordan, but there's nothing really in that mall and I had to call Hiroko to get the exact address. I really don't know what to do with my hair, but because I had a Japanese hair stylist, I figured I would let her and Joyce decide this time what I should try. It was a nice experience and it even included a quick shoulder massage at the end. I think my stylist, Maya Nakao, did a good job. She was friendly to talk with and gave me a good chance to practice my Japanese with a complete stranger. After we finished there we headed over to Quicksilver/Roxy in TST to look at some bikinis and board shorts. I went swimming Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday so far this week. I'll be on a boat trip Saturday and Sunday this week. I figured I could use another pair of swimming trunks. Joyce wanted the black version, but they didn't have it in stock at the store so we asked them to bring it in and put the stuff on hold. Sandra has a VIP card so I want to pick that up to get the discounts for us as well.
Saturday Evita invited me out on
a junk trip with her and her co-workers at Li & Fung. I met up with her bright and early in Mong Kok, and her other school friends; Alan and Eric. It was a pretty good trip, even though we didn't know many people. We started off by jumping off from the top deck. Actually it was just me and two girls, all the other people with us were chicken. They had two boats for wake boarding as well, so everyone who wanted to go wake boarding had a chance to do so. I did okay out in the water. They had about 8 Nintendo NDSes out playing Mario Cart on our way home. I ended up with a mild sun burn on the back of my arms and my shoulders. I hope I won't make it worst tomorrow on my second boat trip this week.
Labels: Friends, Hong Kong, Sports
Friday I met up with one of the twins who needed to help her friend mail some picture books to a group of
Fahrenheit fans. I was in no hurry, but my friend took half a day off just to get this done. I had picked up the books for her previously and
Namie Amuro's new CD as well for her. The guy at the shop packaged all the books in a box and then included a bunch of puzzles and posters. The box was a decent weight with all the books and because I had to carry the posters in one hand I only had one other hand to carry the box which made it a harder to move around. I met up with Janice at the new McDonalds in Langham Place, but on my way I somehow managed to drop her Namie Amuro poster. She thought I was kidding, I wish I was kidding, I had to separate the poster from the rest of the Fahrenheit posters and it must of slipped out from the whole roll while I was walking and moving the heavy box between my hands. So the first stroke of bad luck was that she lost her Amuro poster. We took the box to the Mong Kok post office and decided to get a bigger box to package all the books in. When we took out all the books to move them from the one box to the other we noticed that we were missing one book, but we had an extra copy of some other guy's picture book (Keita Tachibana). We tried calling the shop to ask them to send someone to deliever the book, but obviously they refused and that just annoyed the hell out of my friend. With the blistering Hong Kong heat she was starting to feel fairly emotional. We took a taxi back to the shop, but where the taxi driver dropped us off wasn't exactly close to where we asked him to. We had already paid him and he just took off. That just added more fuel to the fire.
We quickly got things exchanged at the shop and tried for I would say nearly half an hour to get a taxi back to the post office. There was only one taxi that would stop for us. The taxi that did stop, was the dumbest taxi driver in all of Hong Kong. He had no clue where the post office was even though it was literally about 5 blocks down the street. He told us that we needed to find another taxi and we just ended up walking it instead. My friend was complaining bitterly at this point and told me to go home and she stormed off towards the post office angrily. It pretty much looked like a lovers quarrel, everyone was staring at us. Eventually we ended up getting to the post office and getting the package all fixed up and sent. Her bad day didn't exactly stop there though, she took a taxi home so that she could take a shower before coming out again, but found out she didn't have her keys on her.
Saturday I met up with Evita again for some Tennis. Afterwards I went clubbing. I tried to meet up with Aaron at Prive, but the line was annoying and it was so hot so I ended up going to find Cheryl and her friends at Sugar. We ended up going to Prive afterwards and met up with Aaron, Joyce, and their friend Debbie. There were a bunch of issues happening that night. I learned that not only are men generally unfaithful in Hong Kong, but the girls are quite unfaithful as well. Sorry I shouldn't generalize like this, obviously this isn't the case everywhere, but I've just seen it more here.
I went to Terence to play tennis on Sunday. He's just getting back into the game. He managed to break his tennis shoes on the court and ended up going home before we started our games (we practice for about 2 hours). It was a really hot day though, but I think we both got a good work out.
I went to Wan Chai on the 11th for
Hong Kong Fashion Week. Which is just something that happens down at the Convention Centre. I guess it is put on by
TDC, a competitor to
Global Sources, and show cases different garment manufacturers. I went with Joyce and her co-worker Ruby. Strangely enough I ran into friends there. Marcio the Brazilian model was walking in at the same time we were. Cherie was there doing some buying and sourcing, Rudy was there apparently working at a booth. There really wasn't much to see there. It was more of a training session for Ruby who works for
Diesel.
Labels: Fashion, Friends, Hong Kong
Since I've had a lot of time this week I signed up online sometime ago at
Juice Online for one of their parties. Juice throws some of the best parties I've been to in Hong Kong. The event that I ended up going to Thursday was the
Miskeen Originals Asia
Launch Party.
There was a live performance from Fugees' Pras Michel and some body painting from some of Miskeen's US artists. It was pretty much a hip-hop event night. I've never been to
JJ's before, but it is quite nice and spacious.
I thought I might be bored at the party, just because I didn't think any of my friends were coming out. I thought I was just lucky to get on the guestlist. I recieved the email that morning actually, I totally forgot about the event.
It turned out okay. When I got there I ran into a friend, Rob, and he introduced me to his co-workers and some of his friends. Some of which work at Juice apparently. Afterwards I ran into Angie and her friends, Josieba, Marell, and Ralph. I ended up enjoying my night at the party. Afterwards I headed to
Volar with some of the girls from
Juice. I ran into Chris at Volar, who turns out to be one hell of a dancer.
Labels: Clubbing, Fashion, Friends, Hong Kong
This is one big party weekend here in Hong Kong. Thursday night was Image at Volar. Friday night I went out just to meet up with friends. Vanessa was leaving for the UK Saturday and so we spent some time Friday night hanging out so that I could get to know her better. We met up with her friend at some restaurant on Hollywood Road and sat and chatted for a little while. When we left it started to rain. I was going to go to Sugar to meet up with Cheryl and her friends, but I decided to duck into Dragon Eye to hide from the rain for a little bit. There we ran into Erez and some of their mutual friends.
When we left Cheryl and her friends were heading over to Prive, so we tried to get in with them. It turned out to be Cheryl and her two boys and me with one other girl and that ratio didn't hold well with the bouncers. We decided to hit up Club No.9 instead of going home. I think we managed to have a good night there. One of the boys, Lennie, had fun dancing and holding onto the girls.
Saturday was my last work day for this school term. Summer classes are starting soon and I've decided to take their offer to teach mornings at Readership. Some of my kids I'm really going to miss and I hope to see them again. I met up with Vanessa for a late lunch after work to chat, which lasted a while so I didn't quite get my nap I thought I would get for the afternoon. I was running on about 3 hours sleep already for that day. Aaron called me and warned me that we had dinner plans around 7:30 with Priscilla. I mnaged to miss it entirely. I fell right asleep as soon as I got home, waiting for the hot water to boil for my shower. Instead I went down to meet them at Time Square in Causeway Bay to have dessert around that area. After dessert I travelled back to Central with Aaron and his girlfriend Tiffany. I went to meet up with Evita and her friend who were attending the Canada Day/UBC/UofT party at LUX. I ran into Clara there, I almost forgot she was from Vancouver. Also outside we ran into Ted and Kazue. Ted apparently had a little role planning the Canadian get together.
Cheryl, Carol, Sue, and Lennie were on their way down to Sugar so I hung with Kazue and Ted at Pi for a little bit first. Afterwards I went over to Sugar to meet up with them and Cheryl got me in. Ever since Hei Hei closed down, Sugar has been packed. Lots of people that night. I ran into people that we went to the beach with, like William, Crispy, Queenie, and Marvelous (that's her name actually). There's a few more, but I keep forgetting people's names.
So after partying in Lan Kwai Fong, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night, Sunday was going to be a day of rest. Tennis started at 3 am. I thought it would rain so I didn't plan to go. Denise called me up around 12, woke me around 12, asking if I planned to go. I felt bad because I promised to take her and the previous weekend I had a boat trip so I couldn't. The weekend before that it rained so I didn't go. After messaging Midori to see if more than one person was going to try to go to tennis I decided to meet up with Denise at Lam Tin. I found that if I get enough sleep, I can do okay at tennis. There weren't many people that day so we had a lot of court time. I tried practicing with Dennis, who I must add has been taking lessons, but it turns out she's worst than me. I think that's real compliment to the Japanese group for teaching me the basics and practicing with me. Even though she's been going through private lessons, every time she hits the tennis ball it flies off at some odd angle. There were a number of girls getting lessons that day from the Japanese people so I think it was good for her because she basically got free lessons that day. That's how I started myself anyways.
I spent the greater part of the day with that group. We had dinner in crowded Tsim Sha Tsui at a Chinese restaraunt in the Miramar Shopping Centre. The meal was a bit expensive, which tends to be the case eating with this group. Afterwards we went to a lounge called "Where", also in TST. I've been there one other time with Diana and her friend Chamyto (this is also really her name). There were two other recent members to our tennis group, one of the girls is actually from Hong Kong, but studied in Japan for about 4 years. Her Japanese is so fluent I am so envious at her level.
Monday I ended up giving basic tennis lessons to Evita and her friend. The girls were cute and they gave it their best so we're going to do it again next week on Saturday. I met up with Joyce and Aaron afterwards to wander around TST shopping. I finally found the fake 55DSL t-shirts. The only problem is shopping with someone who works for Diesel, and who can spot the problem with the logo, I don't want to get the fake one anymore. Status and practicality are so hard to balance sometimes.
Labels: Canada, Clubbing, Friends, Hong Kong
