thieved!

hk air con-ditioned bus. little tvs with ads and promos. it's like going to an american movie theatre early.

hola everybody.

i'm at the hk central library again. it's been a busy couple of days and i couldn't get my hands on a computer with internet access. but i'm finally back.

first thing's first. i think time goes really fucking slow in hk. i'm serious. it's the 27th today and i've been here for about two weeks. feels like 10 months. i'm thinking if the 7th will ever come. actually i wouldn't mind if the 14th was here so i can get back to the states.

like i said, it's been a crazy couple of days. busy wandering around from one end of hk to the other end. the funny thing is that all the days seem to melt into one another, so i have no concept of what happened on what day. i was really good earlier in the trip when i kept a little notebook on what happened each day, but then i got lazy.

yesterday, i think it was monday, i went to tung chung on lantau island. i've never been there before. well, not that i know of anyway. but since i started coming back to hk during my high school years, i've never been. so we took a double deckered bus to the ifc, which is in central, and then took the tung chung line of the mtr (the orange line on the map) to tung chung.

as you probably had noticed, tung chung is on a different island than hk island. the mtr runs under bridges that they'd built to connect kowloon and the island just to the left of it and lantau island. as well as the airport, which is on and island that's been reclaimed (they basically piled a lot of dirt and sand and stuff to make the island bigger so they can fit the airport on it). so for most of our journey there, we were above ground rather than underneath it.

so if you click on lantau island on the above map, you can see that on the island just to the left of kowloon, is a place called tsing yi. a lot of people moved to that island and commute to hk island to work. so as you're riding the mtr to tung chung, you see a great number of residential highrises. it's incredible and a bit scary having these concrete monstrosities jutting out of the floor of a small island. i guess it's also because they are so close together in proximity. you can literally hand someone in the next building a can of coke.

another thing is that the cost of going from central to tsing yi is only about HK$11 (approximately, US$1.40), which is quite affordable for those who commute daily to hk island for work, HK$22 roundtrip. however, if you were to live in tung chung, the cost of one trip is HK$20 (approximately, US$2.50), HK$40 roundtrip. it may not seem like much, but the salary that they get paid would make it cost-ineffective to live in tung chung. so for the most part, tung chung is like the florida of hk, mostly retired people.

the reason why my parents and i went to tung chung was to visit a friend who we haven't seen in over 14 years. he is a retired priest from lincoln city, oregon that we met once on the way to washington state. father michael is his name, and he was a friend of the priest (friend, father peter) that we were traveling with. and no, i was never molested by either of them (you people are sick). so we spent a couple of days there at his house, and it was really one of the most fun times i had as a kid.

i think we saw them again once after our trip up north. after that, we kinda lost touch. actually, i should say that he and my parents lost touch. his personal assistant called my parents several days ago and they set up a date to meet. at first i was really reluctant to go with them. i hate when i have to entertain my parents' friends, especially when i have to get my ass out of the flat to do so. but i'm glad that i went because it seems like we never fell out of touch. we talked as though we've been having dim sum with them every week. so it went quite well. i paid for afternoon tea, and his assistant paid for dinner. by the time we got back home, we missed half of my favorite tv show.

the day earlier, i was pickpocketed. i was kinda pissed, but what can you do? luckily, all they took was my octopus card, but it had about HK$330 (approximately, US$41.25) on it. we went to sai kong, which, if you look at the map from above, is on the right hand side, located in new territories. what my father failed to mention was that there are a lot of kids who are taught to pickpocket tourists (since it's a touristy area), which i was miserably one of.

my sister and father were standing along the railings running along the side of the bay, watching fishermen selling fresh seafood from their boats. and apparently, a kid bushed up against me and took my octopus card. the kid then tried to steal my father's wallet, but he had it in the back pocket of his pants, buttoned. when my father looked down to see what's touching his pants, the kid ran off. since at that time, i didn't know that i'd been pickpocketed, we walked around the beach area and had some dessert.

a little segue, for dessert, we had mango and durian pancakes. when i first heard of pancakes, i thought literally, pancakes like what they served at ihops or denny's. but it's actually pieces of the fruit with whipped creme, wrapped in a piece of crepe like pastry. it was really good, especially the durian one. it smelled horrendous, but tasted heavenly. we also each had a bowl of pudding (i'm not sure what the english equivalent is called... but in chinese it's called tong suai, sugar water). i had tapioca with slices of mango. yum.

so as we were getting out of the cafe, i discovered that i lost my octopus card. after searching for it at the cafe, we concluded that some fucking little punk took it out of my pockets. it was highly annoying, but what can i do? adding to the frustration was that i had just added money to the card the day before. HK$300. arrrgh!

on the way home, my father said that he saw an b-level actress riding in the same van as us. my mother and i were a bit skeptical, but my father insisted that she was some actress on some tv drama. oh well. but then the other day, we actually rode in an elevator with an actor i recognized. he's actually on some sitcom that's running at 9pm on channel one, so that was kinda cool. he was with some asian chick going to see a movie at the ifc mall. see, the ifc mall rules. toilets with sensors, starbucks, and stars with asian chicks. what more could you ask for.

today on the bus ride to the library, i saw on the tv (they have tvs on the bus with ads or little shows running) that some japanese pop star (chick) is called BoA. i'm trying to think if she realizes that her "name" is the same as bank of america. i mean, seriously... BoA? that's just pitiful.

several days ago, while sitting at starbucks, my parents actually chatted up this girl. it's incredible how my parents could do stuff like this. just shocking to me. remember how i told you about strangers sitting at the same tables? well she was sitting there eating her cherries when my dad asked her how much she got them for. that snowballed into them finding out she was going to oxford in the fall to get her masters in social administration or something like that. apparently, it takes only a year to get a masters in england. lucky them. i could never do that.

crap, i need to go now. my mum's aunt-in-law is taking me out for afternoon tea and dim sum. i'm actually running really late. anyway, i'll try to write more later. as usual, i hope you're all doing well and happy.

i miss you all, but i miss my girlfriend deidra the most. yes, i wanna go home. i miss milty, durgha, zoefvig and yoshi. i miss kt. ciao.