luxury

speaking of luxury... here's a bowl of shark fins soup. yes, sharks died so i could enjoy this. but sharks are evil. what? you dont' agree? you must not have seen open water.

i really didn't want to wake up this morning for a run. i'm not exactly sick right now, but i am waking up with some phlegm in my throat. i'm not too happy about that. but then my mum turned up the telly really loud trying to get me out of bed, which initially failed, but since i was awake, i decided to go ahead and join my parents at the park. i ran around the soccer pitch only four times today, but since it was nonstop, i decided that it was good enough. and then i walked the perimeter several more times with my father.

afterwards, i went to dim sum with my mum and grandma. i keep telling my mum to get some congee, but she refused, saying the meats or thousand year old eggs may not be cooked thoroughly. what they do is pour boiling congee onto the meats and such as to cook them with the heat. i didn't really put up a fight, though i really, really love congee. so instead, i settled for chicken feet and spare ribs cooked with rice in a small bowl. good stuff.

i had a really odd dream last night that i've forgotten. but it involves me going to buy something with two other people... actually, it's not worth mentioning since i don't remember who was in it or what happened. but it was a weird dream.

went to the sai ying poo district market today. said hello to the fish lady. apparently, she has an indonesian maid who's on a months vacation. every two years, they get a month-long vacation, which is pretty nice. they get to go home and visit relatives.

for those of you unfamiliar with maids, hk is full of them. use to be they come from the philippines, but now it seems like they come from all over southeast asia. i'm trying to remember what's the pc term for maid, but i can't exactly recall what it is. something like 'dependents.' it's really bugging the hell out of me. oh, 'domestic servants,' that's what it is. okay, so these domestic servants get sundays off and they gather around in large groups in central, among various part of hk, to hang out.

a great deal of wealthy and middle-class resident of hk have domestic servants. it's just a part of hk culture and life. my college friend, jonathan's family, had three maids (his family is extremely... er... EXTREMELY weathly), a driver, and a person taking care of their boat in the marina. it's insane. as mark could attest, jonathan's family owns a bentley, a lexus and a land cruiser. not to mention the house that we stayed in, which was either four or five stories, with a two-storied bay window overlooking parts of repulse bay. it was incredible. we had eggos and oj everyday for breakfast, and hot dogs at night after coming back from bar hopping.

and the boat, good god. it was a temporary replace boat for the one that got stolen. i don't know much about boats, but if the replacement was that awesome, i can't imagine how good the new one is. apparently, it was being built in taiwan. but that's about six or seven years ago.