A few months back I was helping Gloria try on clothes for
an independent film she was helping with. The fruits of her labour was shown on the 9th and the 10th at the
Culture Club down in Central. The production was an independent film called “The Autumnal Equinox” (未央歌). Starring
Wong Yi Hing (王貽興)and another friend I met through Gloria Ma Yi Wei (Peggy).
That Saturday I met up with Cherry and her clubbing friends to take them out around Lan Kwai Fong. I ran into Phoebe as well outside club Avenue and the 7-11, which is the club her friends are usually at. We stopped by Pi first and then headed over to Volar. It was a pretty casual clubbing experience, but fun because I was out with some new friends.
On the 15th I had to say goodbye to another special friend. Hiroko headed back to Japan. Her next destination is actually Sydney, but she was going home first to visit family after finishing off her work contract in Hong Kong. Hiroko has just been one of the best of friends in Hong Kong. She's both smart and talented, I wish her the best of luck and hopefully I'll have a chance to see her again soon either in Australia or Japan.
That night Christine invited me out to the
Fashion TV boat party. Everyone was under the wrong impression that it was related to the
Hong Kong fashion week. Personally I think the party wasn't very good. It was a
large boat (f.Diamond), but when I showed up there were very few people there. Limited free drinks, and no
ATM made the party a bit dull. I suppose we were suppose to break out the credit cards, though there weren't many incentives to do so. There seemed to be a lot of merchandising going on as well. I ran into Ted there and his friend. There were a few girls floating around, but we suspected they were only there to meet rich guys. I suppose it was interesting to just go. Some drunk guy came by to take a picture with me outside of the washroom. Afterwards we heard him step into the washroom and drop his drink.
I forgot to wish Christine a Happy Birthday, but I went out the next night with them to go
hot pot (火鍋) over at the
New Star Sea Food Restaurant (新星海鮮酒家) in Causeway Bay. I found out that Amy and I have totally different tastes in food. From now on all my
tofu goes to her. On the 18th, Joyce and I went the
Neway in Causeway to sing with William, and some of Joyce's friends, Karen, Jimmy, and Sue.
I totally want to learn to sing Chinese songs, but I'm just finding having the energy to go and remember the Chinese characters isn't easy. Once in a while I can listen to
a few songs online to try to learn, but I'd have to do that a lot.
On the 22nd I setup a
yum cha event with a few of my friends who work down near
Cheung Sha Wan and
Lai Chi Kok. I called out Fred and Kelvin, who work over at
TVB but seemed to have the day off, and my friend Evita, who works over at the big
Li & Fung.
Pretty much for the rest of January I became ill. I had the
common cold, and also ended up with a mysterious ongoing persistent cough that doesn't seem to want to go away.
Labels: Clubbing, Friends, Hong Kong
Time to catch up on January. After the New Year I was busy with friends coming and going. Aaron and Leon left, and a few of my Japanese friends needed to leave as well. It is too bad really since the few Japanese friends I've become friends with in
Hong Kong have really come to love HK.
On the 2nd I met up with Kanae for a little bit. We've just recently started getting to know each other more and started to see each other more, but now she's already leaving back to Tokyo. I went to their teachers resident early on the 4th with Hiroko to pick up her luggage and send her off to
the airport. I was surprised that even at the airport I could run into people (it was a pretty early flight) but while we were lining up for the bank machine I ran into Dodo, who was on her way to a conference in
Vietnam.
That night I went out with Joyce to meet up with her San Fransisco friends in
Lan Kwai Fong. We partied it up at
Beijing Club. I think we managed to give them a good night out, people seem to be enjoying themselves.
On a personal note I decided to experiment with facial hair. Something I wanted to do for a while but in the past whenever I don't shave for a few days my mother complains that I look like a sick cat. 2/3rds of grooming is to look attractive for the opposite sex so I was out to get opinions. My cousin, Yvonne, flew in for a long layover on the 5th and I decided to give the facial hair look a try.
Actually, she didn't comment on it at all. I guess she's alright with pretty much anything. She's actually really against anything to do with this whole unnecessary beauty thing, despite getting into plastic surgery. Well, truthfully she does
pediatric plastic surgery.
The first thing we did in the morning was meet up with my mother's cousin (my 表姨妈/母) at
Choi Hung MTR station. We went to
yum cha (飲茶) nearby and afterwards we decided to travel to
Mei Foo to find the apartment our grandmother use to live at. Yvonne and I both had vague memories of our time there, but my mother's cousin (I suppose my aunt) remembered.
The thing is, back when I was staying there I remember the water, quite possibly the ocean, right near our apartment. That area has been completely filled in now creating this artificial land mass and literally changing the scenery in that area. They built
Lai Chi Kok Park right ontop of the water it seems.
After our stroll through the park we went to meet Yvonne's cousin (from her mother's side of the family). This is the first time I met Yvonne's cousin, Herbert. Apparently he works as an Architect for Symantec. We walked around
Maritime Square (青衣城) for
a bit before Yvonne rode the
airport express back to take her flight to the Philippines.
My day wasn't over yet. I rushed home to quickly change and to head out again to
Central. I stopped by first at Tiffany's wedding and then headed over to Terence's apartment for his much delayed housewarming party. We all headed over to the recently renovated
Volar to party the rest of the night.
Comment's I've gotten so far about the facial hair.
Christine - "It's not bad, you can try it"
Pinkie - "It makes you more man"
Joyce - "You look more Japanese"
Phoebe - "Eww, No. I hate facial hair"
Vivian - "I hate facial hair"
Labels: Clubbing, Friends, Hong Kong
Happy New Year 2008! Actually New Yeas Eve was a lesson in frustration. The thing that makes Hong Kong so great for partying is also it's downfall at times; too many options. I'm not saying that I have too many options. It just seems that everyone else has too many options, and they always try to keep their options open until the last moment.
After the frustrations of Christmas Eve and Christmas day I was hoping we would be more organized as a group about finding a spot where we could count down together. After all isn't
NYE about counting down with friends? After Christmas Priscilla ended up going to
Osaka to visit
Natsumi. I introduced them to my friend
Takeshi virtually via email, and apparently they ended up hanging out quite a bit. Which was good for Takeshi and good for them. Prior to her leaving we talked about possibly having our friends gather at the
New Years Eve party at Adrenaline Bar & Lounge, mainly because it is one of my favourite night spots in Hong Kong. I just don't go there that often.
My only firm plan that night was a house party at Christine's place. She had just recently renovated and it was her chance to unveil her clean and tidy
Hello Kitty apartment. It was a fun night with catered food. I got to meet some of her friends, and to see Alan (who was already drunk coming into the party), Joyce, and Lynda again.
I spent half of dinner making calls to people and keeping Priscilla awake trying to find out what our plan was and to see if everyone would be able to party together. It just wasn't going to happen, by the time we had a plan to meet at Causeway Bay, Henry House, I had about 40 minutes to get down there. Aaron and Leon already ditched to spend New Years Eve with some other of their friends in
Lan Kwai Fong. I figured it really wasn't worth the hassle of rushing off to a spot, trying to beat the clock to count down with some friends, when I'm already surrounded by friends in a warm a comfy house watching
the fireworks on TV. I heard it was the first time they had fireworks at the
IFC 2 tower.
Afterwards I actually ended up in Lan Kwai Fong. I was suppose to meet up with everyone, but my
cell phone ran out of battery due to the excessive amount of SMSing that night. Like always the
mobile networks were flooded with messages. I sent my messages out about 4 minutes before midnight, but people were getting them about 30 min or more afterwards. I was getting messages well into the next day from some of my friends.
I took a brief walk around LKF and ended up meeting up with Joyce and Daniel to go to
Club No.9. I was already doing pretty well that night keeping my expenses down, and luckily because of Joyce's friend Gary we managed to get in without incurring additional expenses. There wasn't a lot of people inside surprisingly, and we all seemed a little tired so we ended up calling it a night early.
It was freezing heading home, the temperature has been pretty cold the
last couple of days in Hong Kong. I hope everyone has a better year in 2008.
Labels: Clubbing, Friends, Hong Kong
