hk2004

i'm back

2004-08-15T21:38:00.000-07:00

i'm obsessed about the toilets in hk. here's the one at the ifc that i was raving about earlier on my trip. this is also a pretty good photographic metaphor for how i spent my summer. no, i guess that's not exactly true. anytime you're not doing hard-labour in some god-forsaken prison chain gang is good.

flew into la about 40 minutes late. on the plane next to me, some old, fat guy named chuck started talking to me about being in the korean war and how kids are stupid. i ended up having to just put on my headphones and watch iron chef. the stewardess thought i was a resident. NO, damn it. do i look like i just live in america?

food wasn't very good. i think the food going to tokyo is way better. it was chicken for dinner and then sausage, eggs (if you could call it that) and waffles for breakfast.

slept some on the flight back, but it was horrible sleep. i kept sweating a lot for some reason and so my shirt got really sticky.

good o' LA. traffic on the 110S. gotta love that.

went to sizzler's for lunch. at 7pm, went to see the bourne supremacy, fell asleep right after the previews and woke up to him kicking some guys' asses. talked to jenny for a bit before the movie, but my reception at the theatre was really bad so i had no idea what she was saying.

came home and went to the market and had marie callendar's for dinner.

had a lot of sex to make up for the month of self abuse.

woke up at 3am. watched sportscenter. watched the extraordinary league of gentlemen. went back to sleep at 6am. woke up at 9am to do laundry with deidra.

went to yoshinoya for lunch. took a long nap in the afternoon. woke up. put notepadded blogs into blogger.com.

had to jump start my car because someone didn't do it once a week like i told her. cleaned up the kitties food area. fresh water.

had a nice conversation with mark.

going to get dinner at subway.

maybe i'll upload the pictures i took. great fun.

last day

2004-08-14T16:58:00.000-07:00

my aunt linda, playing dog.

saturday. 8:36am. i'm back.

i feel like dying, but i'm back.

god, i feel like shit. i feel like i want to puke and then roll over and puke some more. and i want to cry. i feel so sad now that i'm leaving shawn and taeko and also my aunt, who has taking really good care of me the last four days. but i'm happy finally to be going back home to see my sweetie and also my friends.

japan's been incredible. i'm glad is over though. i don't think i can take much more of this debauchery. have i ever drank so much in my life? i don't think so.

i'm now watching the opening ceremonies of the athens' olympic in japanese. snoopy peed inside the house again, but i'm just too tired to even bother with it. the united states contingent is now walking into the stadium and i'm tearing up. i miss my home. it's good to be american. some female wrestler is the flag bearer for japan. i saw on tv that before she left, her dad was yelling at her to do well. it was insane, he was barking at her and she was like "hai, hai" and then she started crying. good stuff.

so as tired and uncomfortable as i am right now, i need to finish this blog up. mid-afternoon on friday, i went back to isezaki-cho to buy more gifts. i actually wanted a yukata (robe) for myself, but i didn't find one i liked so i ended up getting two sake set and some chopsticks. i was walking around hoping to find a toy store, but the one i found didn't have anything i think joshua would like, so i'm still pretty screwed right now. shawn told me to get it at the airport, which i don't want to, but most likely i'll have to.

so i came back to my aunt's condo at around 6pm and took a shower and got dressed. i was suppose to meet shawn at the dog statue outside the shibuya station at 7:30. my aunt was running a little late to give me a ride to the subway station, but i ended up only about 5 minutes late because i took the ultra super express, which made like three stops from motomachi-chugakun (yokohama chinatown) to shibuya. after meeting up with shawn, we went back to his apartment so i could check my email. then we went back to the shibuya station to meet up with charlena to head out for dinner (she didn't know where the restaurant was). since we were rushing a bit, we ended up going the wrong direction. we soon fixed that problem.

we were having tempura for dinner at a restaurant near to where jacqueline lives so we ended up meeting her there. the dinner was excellent. we had egg plant, shrimp, eel, lotus root, two different types of fish and yam tempura. and for appetizers, we had the shrimp heads and a salad with this dried up little fish. everything was delicious. we also had three bottles of sapporo along with our dinners, thus starting the pain early.

i should really be packing right now. leaving in about 2 hours. anyway, we went to the ebisu station to meet up with taeko, who had dinner with one of her friends. i found out that it's collen's birthday tomorrow so she wanted to be out drinking by the stroke of midnight to celebrate the occasion. so we went to shawn's company's (goldman sachs) tower in roppongi to meet up with colleen, yoshi, a friend of hers, and carol for drinks. shawn and jacqueline took us up to the 45th floor and the view of tokyo was breath-taking. incredible. the lights, the traffic, the towers. it was really beautiful.

the group of us then walked several blocks to a bar called suki. it was a pretty nice place. very mellow. so we set up camp in the middle of the bar and started ordering drinks. i think i had two vodka tonics and four beers in the spand of 3.5 hours. sydney came a little bit after us; he lived several blocks away. we toasted colleen, who i found out tonight went to college at carniege mellon in pennsylvania. i thought she went to waterloo with the rest of the hk-canadian crew, but she's from jersey.

after a bit, colleen and yoshi (also from carniege mellon) left. we stayed another couple of hours when people started getting tired and wanted to go home. the total bill came to be like $26,000 yen. shawn paid for my share again saying this was my last night.

after seeing the other people off, it was almost 4am in the morning, shawn, taeko and i took a cab ride to shibuya (i think) to this bar called insomnia lounge. the place was painted red, the seat cushions were red, the menus were red. it was red all over. we were waiting til 5am in the morning so we can take a cab to the fish market so we can get some fresh sushi. so i ended up having 2 beers there and took care of the tab of 4000 yen (roughly, US$40) was was pretty much nothing since shawn's been paying for a lot of my food and drink on this trip. it's the least i could have done.

so a little after 5am, we took a cab to the fish market. i came out of the insomnia expecting it to still be dark, but when i came up (the bar was in the basement), it was light out. it was the strangest feeling though. we were only in there for one hour. it wasn't even that long. as we were pulling up to the fish market, the cab driver reminded shawn and taeko that today was a nation holiday honoring the dead. shawn was like, "oh shit. no." but, yes, the fish market was closed. shawn was pretty pissed off at the driver for not telling us earlier, but since we were there, we ended up having sushi at some 24 hour place.

it was the worst sushi shawn's ever tasted. i couldn't tell very well. taeko said it wasn't very good as well. shawn was a bit disappointed that we couldn't have fresh sushi, and i was a little bit as well, but we had a freaking great night and a little bad sushi wasn't going to ruin it for me. we took the subway back to shawn's in shibuya. along the way, i said goodbye to taeko, who was going in a different direction. it was sad, but i was a little too drunk and a little too tired to feel anything by then. she plans to come back to LA in april so i'll see her then.

we went back to shawn's apartment so i can pick up my bag. by now it's a little pass 7 in the morning. since shawn was dead tired and his stuff from the states just cleared customs and will be arriving at his apt by 9pm, i told him i'll go to the shibuya station by myself. so i took the bus and then the train back to motomachi-chugukan. on the way back to my aunt's condo, i bought two 500 mL cartons of OJ. i was dying of thirst and it was getting really warm, even at a little pass 8 in the morning. when i came back to my aunt's place, i took a nice hot shower and sat down to write this blog.

i'm now going to pack. i'm tired but not really sleepy. i'm going to miss this place. oh so very nice. so goes the end of my trip. i pulled the tokyo all-nighter. i had sushi almost everyday. i had great curry and tempura. i had mickey d's twice and denny's once. i drank like a fish for three nights that i've been here. i cleaned up dog poo once. and i keep saying, ah so... so des ka.

it's about 11:35am. i'd just finish packing. i'm thinking about going down to chinatown to pick up a thank you card for my aunt. it's freaking hot though. okay, i'm going. bbl.

it is now 4:11pm, saturday. i'm at the terminal now. my head hurts and i'm tired. anyway, i had lunch at the sushi place again today. that's five times in a roll. so all i had today is sushi. hahaha, totally crazy. so after lunch, my aunt drove me to the ycat limobus terminal. about a minute before the bus was suppose to leave, i began to get a sick, probably from that sushi we ate in the morning. oh i'm so glad i stayed up for it. hahaha. so i went to the restroom at the terminal and on the bus. it was nearly impossible to do it on the bus because the toilet was so small. it was literally me taking a shit with my knees in my face.

on the nearly two hours drive to the airport, i think i slept for about an hour. i feel very warm right now, but that could be because i'm really tired. i get hot when i'm tired. the limobus dropped passengers off at terminal 2 first, which is where JAL is. i got into the terminal and there weren't too many people waiting in line. my check in was pretty simple except for the fact that they had to go through my suitcase. it was pretty painless and the guy did a good job with putting everything back together. and i'm actually glad they did it because since the suitcase was opened, i got my immodium out and took one for the plane ride ahead.

oh, yeah, and i found out that this flight is being delayed for a bit. i'm watching the olympics at the airport right now. it's showing women's judo in the 48kg weight class. i have no idea how judo is scored. some chick from russia beat some chick from some african country. it was kinda boring. but supposedly japan has a really good chance to go for gold this year. after checking in, i went upstairs to the shops to get a gift for joshua. the toy section of the upstair shops had a pretty bad selection. after milling around for several minutes, i ended up getting these dinosaurs puzzles inside these plastic eggs. oh well i tried. i'm horrible with getting people gifts.

so i'm like sweating right now just sitting here. either the air con is really weak or i'm really feeling the effects of my tokyo all-nighter. i want to say i had fun, but i'm really paying for it right now. ugh. i'm going to stop now and just watch tv. can't wait to get home. i feel like i'm in a stephen king novel.

motomachi

2004-08-13T16:05:00.000-07:00

moto-machi in the early morning. i remember it being really fucking warm.

friday. my last full day in japan. i woke up at around 9:30am and decided to take a walk to motomachi to check out the sights. when i left, the weather was perfect. it was overcast with a tiny hint of humidity. it did eventually get hotter with the clouds dispersing to let out the sun. when i got to motomachi, which is only an eight minute walk from my aunt's condo, the first thing i saw was a talbots, pretty strange to see that here in yokohama. since i was there kinda early, most of the shops were still closed. those that were opened, were just opening with people cleaning the glass and getting their displays ready.

it is now the official summer holiday for japan. there were a lot of people visiting yokohama chinatown and motomachi yesterday, and i suspect today as well. anyway, i walked all the way down motomachi and found a starbucks, where i had a large ice tea and a cinammon scone. i sat there reading a little of flowers for alergnon and people watch. motomachi was starting to get busy by the time i finished my breakfast. so i decided to walk back down motomachi to the tower records that was across the street. by now it was getting really warm and humid. gotta love humidity.

along the way i stopped by this shop that sells toys and plastic food displays. my friend andrea wanted me to get her several sets, but i couldn't find any that were in sets. instead, all they had were really big ones like they have in front of restaurants in japan. i was tempted to get one, but then they were really expensive, so i didn't bother. without stopping, i walked to the start of motomachi and crossed the street where the tower records was located. after thirty minutes i came out with a dion and the belmonts cd and a BoA cd costing me 3197 yen (roughly US$31.97).

after walking to where my aunt and i usually have sushi, just several blocks behind the tower records, and taking a picture of it, i went back to the condo. it was getting to be a little to hot to be comfortable walking around. in about a half hour, i'm having lunch with my aunt again at the sushi place and this lady i met last time when i was here. my aunt called and told me that she wanted to have lunch with us, but i don't remember who she is. maybe when i see her. it has been a long time.

i've been really lazy about blogging these past couple of days. i need to go back and add a few things to each day. the humidity does get people lazy. hahaha. i'm going to finish up some past blogs and then going to lunch. i might come back to the condo afterwards to wait until it's less hot to go over to the isezaki cho mall. i'm stopping here for now.

it's about 4:09pm. i'm meeting up with shawn for dinner and partying tonight. i'm really tired. damn humidity. so anyway, i'm thinking of heading out to isezaki-cho to pick up some more stuff. then come back, shower, get dress, have my aunt drop me off at the station and meet up with shawn at around 7:30pm.

my stomach isn't feeling too good right now. i remember the girl at lunch. she reminded my aunt and i that we all went to play tennis once last time i was here. oh, that's right, i remembered. i didn't really talk to her last time because she looked kinda mean. but she seems very nice now. she's pregnant with a baby due in december.

okay, so i'm going to head out now. lunch was good. finally took my camera so i took pictures of the sushi place and the chef making sushi. i also took some pictures of the sushi i had. apparently, tradition japanese sushi restaurant don't make salmon sushi because in the old times, eating raw salmon could give you a very bad time because of the bacteria. so the only salmon you would eat are ones that have been salted.

okay, leaving for isezaki-cho.

gifts, food and companions

2004-08-13T00:24:00.000-07:00

yeah! we all need to get some oriental passage once in awhile.

thursday. it's a bid warm today. i was woken up at around 9:30 this morning by snoopy scraping against the door that separates the living/dining room and kitchen from the rest of the house. i'm not sure why he did that, but since i was sleeping in the bedroom nearest to the living room, i heard it. my aunt woke up late today, she was suppose to be in the office by 9am, but didn't wake up til half pass. hahaha. good thing she's the boss.

oh, before i forget. i wanted to note that in japan, the toilet is separated from the rest of the bathroom. so what they have is a toilet room and a bathroom. japanese toilets are pretty interesting. if you take a shit, you flush one way and if you take a piss you flush the other way. it's a very practical way for conserving water. instead of having one knob for the hot water and one for the cold, you have a knob for setting the temperature and another to turn on the water. it's pretty efficient, i think.

so continuing the story of what i did yesterday, wednesday. after lunch, i was going to go back to the condo, but instead i decided to go for a walk to see if i could find the bookstore that i went to when i was here the last time. along the way, the first thing i saw was yokohama stadium, home of the yokohama baystars of the japanese baseball league. after taking some pictures of it, i continued on this street that looked vaguely familiar to me. i had no idea where i was headed but it felt like i was going in the correct direction.

after walking about 15 minutes, i saw to my left the place i wanted to go to. isezaki-cho mall, a street consisting of shops, restaurants and pachinko arcades that stretches for a number of blocks. located near the beginning of the street mall is yurindo, a japanese book and stationery store. it was much bigger than i had remember. actually, i didn't realize that it had 9 stories. the foreign books were located on the 7th floor, so i climbed the stairs and found a small section of english books and magazines. books in japan are pretty expensive so i just got one, flowers for algernon. i heard it was a really sad book, but definitely worth the reading.

after paying 902 yen for it (roughly $9.00), i left the bookstore and walked down isezaki-cho. i went into a lawsons convenient store for a bottle of oolong tea and continued walking until the end of the mall. since by now, my feet were a little bit weary (i probably walked about a km), i decided to head back to the condo. along the way, i spied a gift shop, and debated if i should go in. i decided at the very last moment to go check it out. it was a pretty nice shop with japanese dolls, japanese bathrobes, samurai swords, sake cups, tea cups, banners, etc., etc., etc. surprisingly, the prices weren't all that bad, so i got a couple of gifts for people. the lady working in the shop was probably in her mid-50's and spoke english reasonably well.

she told me that further down isezaki-cho there's a building called, "the landmark," which has shops and is the tallest building in the area so you can check out the scenery. i told her that's great, maybe i'll go there later. after spending about 7200 yen (roughly US$72.00), i walked out of the shop saying maybe i'll be back later to get more stuff. oh, that'll be great she said. generally speaking, if you pay cash in japan, you don't have to pay the tax. i didn't pay the tax. so with my bag of gifts in toll, i headed back to the condo.

we decided to stay in for dinner tonight. my aunt made rice with chicken and a fried egg. it was pretty good. my aunt isn't much of a cook, but she's been trying to make this dish for a japanese friend of her's who just had a baby. in hk, and i'm guessing canton as well, after a woman has a child, she's suppose to eat this dish called "ginger vinegar" (literal translation), which is made from cooking ginger, pig's feet and eggs in black vinegar and sugar. unfortunately, they don't really sell black vinegar here in japan, so my aunt had to improvise and use white vinegar with some black coloured beans. it turned out pretty good, except that it's really freaking sour. oh, you don't have to be pregnant to eat this either. the funny thing is that both my aunt and i agreed that the eggs are the best part of the dish.

after dinner, i went to the market and picked up some more eggs for the ginger vinegar, two types of popicles and a pack of almond tofu. that was the extend of my day. i spent a lot of time on the laptop typing up my blog, playing games like freecell and listening to music. went to bed a little after 1pm.

back to thursday.

i don't think i did much today. had lunch with my aunt at the sushi place again. everyone says that i look a lot like my uncle ellie. the sushi bar was full today. one of the patrons there who knew my aunt and uncle said, oooh, he looks so much like ellie-san (in japanese, of course). i didn't really do much today, not that i can remember (i'm writing this part on friday). i think i was sitting at the condo watching tv and playing games because it's too hot to walk about.

my aunt told me that she's taking some people out for dinner tonight and that i should come along. i was a bit apprehensive since i don't know these people, but they turned out to be one of her employees and her mother and daughter. i don't know the employee very well, but had seen her several times. she seemed pretty nice so i went along. i don't know what the name of the restaurant was (have to ask my aunt), but it was located a couple of blocks from isezaki-cho.

my aunt said that when my uncle and grandfather come to japan, they like to go to this restaurant for dinner. she said she likes it as well. when we got there, they told us to use the back door, where there was an elevator to go upstairs. we went up and they reserved a room for us. it was really nice and unfortunately, i forgot my camera. but it's a typical japanese room with tatamis, a short wooden table and pillows for you to sit on. under the table, the floor sanks so you can just sit normally without having to cross your legs. shortly after we were seated, the meal began.

the meal consisted of small portions of each dish. some of the dishes are in english cuz i don't know what they were in japanese and some my aunt asked the hostess so they're in japanese. sorry. anyway, the meal started off with two appetizers, green beans in sesame sauce and sesame tomato tofu with caviar and wasabi. the sesame tomato tofu is a bit strange, but the green beans were delicious. then came a cold potato milk soup with vegetables and shrimp. since it contained milk and i didn't bring my lactaid pills, i took a tiny sip of it and gave it to my aunt. it was a little sweet, surely wasn't what i expected.

next came a plate of sashimi. i expected to have rice with this, but i guess in traditional japanese meals, the rice comes last. there were three types of fish, toro, tai and kanbachi. i believe one of the fish is talapia, but i'm not sure. they were really delicious though. the next course of the meal came in a little basket. it contained some fried fish called camasu, tsubu kai, saikgu miso, sazae kimoshizo, tamago cheese and yamamomo with honey. i think i got that right, but i should check with my aunt about this section. the tamago cheese was like bits of shrimp mixed inside this block of cheese. since i'm not going to have it regularly, i tried it and it was pretty good. cheese and shrimp. interesting combo.

next, we had a bowl containing eel wrapped in bean curd, some sort of chinese melon, taro and egg plant with a little bit of broth. it was really good. i especially liked the eel wrapped in bean curd. then came the tempura plate consisting of two pieces of asparagus, one piece of lotus root and two pieces of tofu with ofu. the taro i thought was a bit hard, but i liked everything else. following the tempura was a cold dish that had scallops and sako (some sort of shrimp) with sliced vegetables in vinegar jelly. it's a very strange dish, but the sourness of the jelly went well with the seafood and vegetables.

last came the rice and miso soup. the rice had some dried ingredients on top of it to give it some flavor. it was excellent. after the meal, we had watermelon and ice-cream along with a cup of tea. all together, it was a great meal. i was hoping that i could have had rice along with the different dishes, but it was not meant to be. it was truly a great experience.

the dinner conversation was pretty good. even though my mandarin isn't so great, i could understand some of what's being said. the little girl ended up playing patty cake with me. i spoke some mandarin, but my aunt had to translate it to the employee's mother. hahaha, yeah, my mandarin is that bad. they asked about how it is living in HK and the US. overall, i think i set a pretty good impression. didn't embarrass my aunt, which is good. the grandmother invited my aunt and i to visit them in shanghai. thank you very much i said in my not so perfect mandarin.

after dinner, while driving them home, i think we passed by the redlight district of yokohama. there were signs with women on them and one of the buildings had a sign that said, "tonight's companions" with at least 20 pictures of various women on it. then there were many girls just hanging about on the street. yeah, companions.

i went to bed not long after coming back home from dinner.

sushi

2004-08-12T00:37:00.000-07:00

yes, i ate there for like four days straight for lunch. the soup was awesome; made with real fish stock.

wednesday. woke up at around 10:30am today. i've been having some weird dreams here in japan. yesterday, i dreamt that michele, an old rn who is also a supervisor for the adrc project ran into me at the movies and started asking me questions about the project. it was so strange. last night i dreamt that i was being chased by some japanese gangsters. and i had to hid in the bushes so they couldn't find me.

yesterday i felt so lethargic. my aunt says it's the humidity. today's somewhat cloudy but still humid. i don't feel so tired, but it's hard getting out of the house. i'm now watching the twins play the mariners and listening to chinese music while i'm typing this up. snoopy is sitting next to my legs sniffing my feet. it tickles. hahaha.

today i'm suppose to have sushi with my aunt at around 1pm meaning i should just about get ready to go. i'll write more when i get back. i'm also going to walk around yokohama for a bit to see if i can get a book. i know that there's a bookstore called yurinda around here somewhere. and i want to get my neighbours at home some tea, kimmy and joshua something and of course something for deidra.

i saw a little store selling cat stuff which is interesting. oh well, i should go get ready. it's now 1:05pm.

5:03pm. i'm back. today's been pretty good, i actually got a chance and strength to do some tourisy stuff. for lunch today, my aunt took me to have sushi across from motomachi, which is a shopping little area next to chinatown. we walked from the office to a restaurant called dai sushi, which consisted essentially of a sushi bar seating only 10-12 people and a two seater with a tiny table at the back. not much room. my aunt and i arrived at 1:50pm, just before the afternoon closing time.

the sushi was really fucking amazing. so fresh and tasty. the sushi chef was a very friendly old man. my aunt told me that when my uncle comes to japan, he would come to dai sushi four or five times a week for lunch. that's a lot of sushi, especially since my uncle is a very big guy. the sushi chef started our lunch by giving us each a cup of hot green tea. then he placed two large leafs in front of us with some pickled ginger and radish. we started off with some fatty tuna (toro) and a fish called isaki, then sweet shrimp (amaebei) and another type of shrimp called sako, after that came the salmon roe (ikura), eel (anako) and sweet egg (tamagoyaki), next he made small mussel (kobashira) and finally a tuna hand roll (tekamaki). he also gave us a bowl of miso soup made with shrimp heads and shells with some shallots. delicious. he finished it with a cookie from a bin he keeps above him.

it's after midnight now. i'm a bit worn out. i'll continue tomorrow.

change of scenery

2004-08-11T02:43:00.000-07:00

allow me to introduce to you, snoopy and mr. no-neck. gotta love this picture. don't i look like the father from the family guy, except with longer hair?

tuesday. i'm now in yokohama chinatown, sitting in a dining room table with my laptop typing up this blog on notepad because my laptop doesn't have msword on it. on the tv, nightline. most likely from last night since japan's a day ahead. i'm at my aunt's condo right now. i got in on the train/subway last night which was a bit nerve wrecking because it was the first time that i've been alone on japanese public transportation. luckily, no one complained about my suitcase, but then again, i wouldn't have known what they were saying.

shawn came back around 7:20pm last night from work. he said that he would have been home earlier, but he was stuck on the bus for 40 minutes because of traffic. i am now watching the seibu lions play the fdh hawks in the japanese baseball league. besu boru, as they call it. the lions just scored on a single by some guy, who went to second on the throw home by the outfielder. anyway, shawn told me my aunt called him earlier and that i should call her back. i did and told her that i'll be coming over tonight and i'll call her with what time my train will leave when i'm at the shibuya station. some guy just hit a 3-run homer for the lions. the pitcher for the fdh isn't doing very well, giving up four runs in the first inning.

getting back to my story. after calling my aunt, shawn and i took a bus to this japanese curry restaurant for dinner. it was a pretty small place, probably seating about 20 people at most. when we got to the restaurant (the pitcher finally got the final out to end the inning), we got a seat immediately, which was great since we were both starving.

flipping channels. i'm now watching this show that talks about seafood at hapkaido. the host is eating some sort of crab and he's like fucking having an orgasm or something. oo... ooo.. ooo... oishii!!!!! (i'm not sure if i'm spelling this correctly, but it's japanese for delicious). he's now at a sushi restaurant. probably wanting to cum again. the food must be really fucking good. i need to stop getting side tracked. hmm... now he's making sounds like he's constipated. good stuff. i have to say that the sushi looks pretty damn good.

UNI! he's now at a place that specializes in uni, i think. well actually, it looks like a sushi shop, but he's asking especially for uni. i keep hearing uni, uni, uni. the guy behind the counter is talking. no idea what he's talking about. the host looks pretty excited though. okay, so he starts out with some squid sashimi for about 800 yen (roughly US$8). now he has some stewed fish for 1500 yen (roughly US$15). damn, now he's eating a bowl of uni rice. the whole bowl is covered with uni. god, that must be good, and very high in cholesterol. advertisements. how this guy is still alive, i don't know.

i think at the last restaurant he was asking where he can go for uni, now he's at an uni restaurant. a set meal. bowl of uni over rice. good lord, it looks amazing. a piece of salmon, eight little bowls of pickled vegetables and various appetizers and a bowl of miso soup all for 2800 yen (roughly US$28). advertisements.

okay, sorry, back to last night. shawn and i ordered the pork cutlet curry, i didn't really want to spend time looking at the menu for something else since i couldn't read it and i was a bit hungry. shawn said that this was the only restaurant that has a 5000 yen plate of curry. yeah, that's right, curry for Us$50. insane. but they do use a special type of meat in that dish. we chatted for a bit about life in japan and the people i met the previous two nights. we also talked about how he felt like shit earlier in the morning because he was hungover. the funny thing was charlena, the girl who was drunk out of her ass, went into work still. that's pretty amazing. she looked really bad the night before. couldn't even walk on her own.

after a bit, the food came. it was really good. i'm not a big fan of cutlet curry, i hardly ever get it at LA's curry house. but i really liked the pork cutlet i had last night. it had the right amount of spiciness, and the curry tasted somewhat different from what i've had in LA. the curry came boiling in a heated ceramic pot and the rice and cutlet came separately on a plate shaped like a banana boat. they served beer, but after drinking so much the two nights before, we settled for water. we made fast work of the food.

wow, was flipping the channel, and saw a clip of a mudslide in japan that took apart a 120m stretch of a road. it was kinda strange, everything was sliding from the upper left corner of the shot to the bottom right. tore some telecommunication cables as well. awesome clip.

we sat at our table for a little bit after we ate since there were people waiting inside the restaurant for tables. after paying for dinner, which came out to be 1365 yen (roughly US$13.65) per person, we decided to walk back to shawn's apt to see what's around his neighbourhood. there was a ramen place that shawn finds disgusting and questions why it's still in business (shawn's going to be shawn no matter where he is, hahaha), a big supermarket that's too far to be useful, and a beer shop that only had draft beers. along the way we also saw people getting stopped because they were riding their bikes with out proper headlights (one woman used her mobile, which was kinda hilarious). you're suppose to have headlights when you ride your bike in japan.

we got back to shawn's place around 9pm. i didn't realize it was already so late. i grabbed my suitcase, as well as a box of goodies (shawn helped carry this to the station), my laptop and backpack and headed out to the shibuya station with shawn. we walked around the corner to the bus stop and got on an empty bus without having to wait. within 10 minutes we were at the shibuya station. we headed upstairs to where the toyoko line platform is. the toyoko line starts from the shibuya station and goes all the way to the yokohama station at the end. to get to where my aunt is, yokohoma chinatown, you have to stay on the train (which turns into a different line) for four more stations. a pretty simple train ride in certain respect.

however, let me interject something here. for a foreigner like myself, i think the japanese railway/subway system is incredibly complicated to decipher. there are so many lines going everywhich way and sometimes it's hard to figure out which platform the train is at. there are certain trains on the same line that only goes up to certain stops, meaning they don't always go all the way to the end of the line. the maps of the different routes aren't any much clearer either. luckily, i have shawn there to help me out. oh, and then there are normal trains, express trains and super express trains to further the confusion. basically the express and super express trains don't stop at all the stops. maybe i'm just stupid, but shawn says that after being in japan for two months, he's sometimes confused by them as well.

the express train for yokohama chinatown was schedule to leave at 9:45pm so i had to hurry to get all my stuff through the ticket gate and down the platform and into a sparsely populated cart. i quickly said goodbye to shawn and said maybe i'll see him friday. after a hardy handshake, i turned and walked through the gate. shawn wanted me to go partying with him and his friends friday night and experience what is known as the tokyo all-nighter. trains in japan stop running thirty minutes after midnight, so those who live outside of tokyo either have to stop partying before then or just stay in tokyo until the trains start running again at 4 or 5 in the morning. in many cases, people just stay and party until the trains start running again, thus the tokyo all-nighter.

in addition to staying up and partying, shawn wanted to go get sushi at 6 in the morning at the fish market. i have to say that intrigues me more than the partying bit. to have sushi at the fishmarket, that's like having bread right out of the oven; having sushi from fish that were caught hours ago. however, i'm still on the fence about this because i don't want to have to lug my suitcase back to shibuya on a friday night. it's crowded last night, which means it'll be horrendous on friday night. we'll see if i'm up for it. partying is a lot of freaking work, not to mention i have to leave for the airport around noon on saturday. hahaha, i'm tired thinking about it.

when i got into the yokohama chinatown station, the train had thinned out considerably. a lot of people got off at the yokohama station probably to take other rail lines home. when i got off the train, i was trying to figure out which way i should go. the platform wasn't very crowded and i saw some woman running towards me. my aunt. she had talked the ticket counter agent into letting her go down into the platform to meet me. she's a pretty smart one, my aunt linda. she said that when she got to the station, she discovered that there were many exits. since i don't have a cell phone with me, it would have been a pain in the ass to try to find each other. after getting my luggage up several escalators and through a ticket gate, we got them into her car and took off for my grandfather's company's office located about half a mile away.

after calling my parents to tell them that i was in yokohama, we went to the market to grab some bread and ham for breakfast. oh, yeah, my aunt has a little dog named snoopy. it's the cutest thing, but the thing he does that's really annoying is that he barks at male strangers. so he's already barked at me several times. oh, and he's already tried humping my leg. it wasn't very pleasant. he likes getting all the attention and loves playing with people. a very cute, good-natured dog. my aunt got him for free from one of her clients who paid 130,000 yen for him, or US$1,300. that's mad. thirteen hundred dollars for a dog.

we drove to her condo building which is about two blocks from the office (that's where she parked the car). the condo is really nice. it has three bedrooms and a pretty large living/dining room. i have my own room with a bed, which is really nice. after giving my aunt some stuff from aunt jo and uncle ellie and myself and a quick shower, we went to bed. it was already 12:30am and she has to go to work in the morning. it took me awhile, but i was able to go to sleep for about seven hours.

i woke up in the morning, but didn't want to wake up my aunt with snoopy's barking, so i stayed in my bedroom for several hours reading digital fortress by dan brown. i finished it this morning. a pretty good book, but i think the da vinci code is his best book yet, followed closely by angels and demons. so at around 9am, i came out and played with snoopy for a bit until my aunt got up. she cooked me breakfast of some noodles with veggies and chicken meat. after breakfast, she headed off to work, and i watched the yankees/blue jays game on tv then went into the bedroom for a quick nap.

several hours later, my aunt called me on my cell phone (she gave it to me so she can reach me and vice versa) asking me if i was hungry. it was around 2:30pm and i wasn't too hungry so i told her i'll call her later when i am. she also mentioned that my parents had called and that they were having lunch with my sister. i think today was my father's full body examination. poor guy, he wasn't allowed to eat anything 12 hours before the examination. she said that they might call my cell today but they never did. after watching some more tv, i called up my aunt and we went to have lunch at denny's. not many places were opened for lunch at this time. most of the restaurants were getting ready for dinner so they closed for several hours in the afternoon. after lunch, we went back to my aunt's work and i took a walk around chinatown. took some pictures and went back to the condo where i started typing up this blog.

that was about 9 hours ago. currently it's about 2:38 in the morning. in between, i've had dinner with my aunt. she bought home some okonomiyaki, which is know as japanese pizza. consisted of some fried eggs with some meats and noodles. it was pretty good. it came with some gyoza, fried sweet potato slices and octopus tenticles. pretty good meal. then we talked for a couple of hours about terrorists, the election in november, school and finally driving accidents. she's gone to bed now, and i'm about too as well, it's getting late. i've been bitten by mosquitoes several times since i've been here in japan. mostly on the right leg. it's funny, but snoopy keeps licking one of the bites. i hope his saliva won't infect the bite.

anyway, goodnight and until tomorrow.

moment of loneliness

2004-08-09T18:11:00.000-07:00

not exactly mickey d's, but then again, i didn't take this picture for the fast food resturant.

i left shawn's apt and the came back. let me just say that the train system in tokyo is really freaking complicated. i started walking in one direction on this one street, fearing to walk no these little side streets cuz i will never find my way back. so i walked and walked and got to the shibuya station. the crossing in front of the station is suppose to be the 'time square' of japan. it was a bit crowded especially for a monday afternoon.

it was sunny and somewhat humid. i was sweating a bit. i was also searching for a place to have lunch. at first, i figured i should just run into an am/pm and grab a sandwich from there. but then, i decided i wanted something warm. btw, there are a lot of am/pm's by where shawn lives. the other night when we were coming back from ramen, maybe within a mile, we saw four am/pm's.

i walked by a lot of shops, but then i really wouldn't know what to get when if i were to go inside. so i continued on, walking into the shibuya station to see where to go for the toyoko line (tokyo-yokohama line). walking out of on the other side of the station, i crossed the massive intersection and saw a very familiar sign... macdonald's.

yeah, so i had macdonald's in japan. i got some reading in as well. after awhile, i backtracked and went to the am/pm around the corner from shawn's and got him some popicles and a bag of chips. and came back. that was about two hours ago. i was reading articles on espn and the la times websites, when i decided to take a little nap. i just laid on the floor of shawn's bedroom, which is carpeted, and closed my eyes.

i just read that the lakers how traded payton and fox to the celtics for chucky akins, marcus banks and chris mihms. so let me get this now, the lakers signed vlade diflop to replace (and i'm using this word very, very loosely here) shaq and signed mihm to be his back up. ah... okay. how bad are the lakers going to suck next year? it's scary.

anyway, i feel like crap right now for some reason. i'm extremely home sick. i want to either be in hk or in the states, not in japan. i don't know why. i think it's probably cuz i've been away for so long. i'll be happy to see saturday afternoon.

time to breath

2004-08-09T13:40:00.000-07:00

"so you want to go to the beach, eh? well you take the orange line, then switch over to the red line, then to the gray line. get off and take the lime green line, at which point, you take the mustard yellow line to the ocean green line. after that walk about a mile and then you'll hit the damn beach! oh, and it's $10."

so it's about 11:37am, monday here in japan. i woke up at around 8 this morning after getting in late from karaoke the night before and chatting a little bit with shawn. so about 10 hours of sleep the last two nights. i'm not sleepy, but i'm a bit exhausted. the last couple of days/nights have been extremely surreal. let's talk about them.

friday. this was my last full day in hk. weeks ago, i was really looking forward to this day because i just couldn't get my ass outta hk fast enough. but then the last week went by so quickly i didn't really get a chance to adjust myself with the thought that i was leaving hk, my parents, sister, relatives, etc., etc. i think i gotten so used to the routine of waking up, going to breakfast with my mum and grandma, taking the bus to the library, the mtr back to the ifc, then taxi ride with my parents back to their flat for dinner. some people would probably call it boring and bland, and maybe it is, but i enjoyed the hell out of it.

it was raining when i woke up at 6:30am. of course, i wore my sandles and shorts in the rain, but the streets were pretty wet so my feet and sandles were pretty much soaked when i got to the restaurant. i had three types of breakfasts when i was in hk, at home, at dim sum, and at a western cafe-style restaurant. on this particular day, we opted for the restaurant because we'd been dim summing all week long.

after breakfast, and hastedly going back home to pick up my camera so i can take pictures of the districk market, i went to the library to jolt down some info for my upcoming trip to japan. i blogged a bit i think, i'm not too sure, and i'm too lazy to go check. anyway, i left the libary at around 1:30pm and called my mother cuz we were going to go shopping. i was hoping to be able to get a cd of this 80's canto-pop singer and maybe an mp3 player for my marathon training. i got neither. apparently one of my father's friend wanted to have afternoon tea (dim sum) and so i went there instead. normally, i would bitch and moan about having to go eat with my parents' friend, but i've known this guy, uncle francis (and yeah, i think i was named after him), every since i was a kid and since i hadn't seen him at all on this trip, i went.

my parents planned a dinner later that night at 7pm, after getting some noodles for my aunt and candy for friends back home, my mum and i went to the ifc to meet my dad. they stayed there and i went back to the flat to drop some stuff off and get my stuff together so i can pack after dinner that night. of course, i was late getting to the dinner because i had to go to the ifc to get my father (mum already went) and walk back to the restaurant where dinner was. anyway, dinner was great. the food was excellent, and my uncles were funny as usual. people gave me lucky money in red pouches, wishing me good luck with school and such.

after dinner, i walked my aunt to the bus station and waited for her to get on her bus before i left. on the way home, i caught up with my mum and uncle, who were walking to get something for my aunt in yokohama at my grandfather's company's office (which is right below where my grandparents and uncle live). while i was there, my mother and i looked through some photo albums, several of my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary (yeah, i know carlin, it's not really an anniversary) and one of my mother's uncle's funeral. it was terribly sad. there were pictures where my mother's cousins (three boys, or rather men) were sobbing uncontrollably at the coffin. it brought tears to my eyes.

so after getting some stuff from my uncle (who, btw, bought me a cd that night when he was walking back with my mum), we went home and i packed. there certainly was a lot of stuff so i ended up packing some stuff in a cardboard box. went to bed around 1:30am.

saturday. woke up by my father getting ready to do his morning exercises at the park at around 6:30am. good stuff. hahaha. my mum and grandma went with me to the airport check-in in central an hour later. that's the great thing about hk. you can check your bags in at several locations within hk and not worry about lugging stuff to the airport. on the hk side, the check-in is below the ifc mall, which is incredibly convenient for us since my parents live fairly close. after checking in the luggage, we went to the canteen at the ifc for breakfast. i had macaroni in broth with a fried egg and ham. i love that stuff. my mum and grandma had sandwiches.

my dad came by shortly. so we sat by the window overlooking hk harbour and had breakfast together. at around 9am, we took the escalators down to the airport express, and we said our goodbyes. i miss my parents immensely. they are great parents, they really are. sure my father is stubborn and strict, but he means well. it was hard sitting on the train staring at them through the glass not knowing when i'll see them again. it's a horrible feeling. i guess as you get older you think about how you don't have very many chances to see you parents. they're not going to live forever. but that picture will alway be on my mind, them standing behind the partition and waving goodbye to me. (my eyes are tearing up right now. thought i should share.)

so anyway, i got on a plane and flew to japan. the flight was good, i read and slept a little bit. didn't bother with watching tv, there wasn't much to watch. had eel with rice for lunch. after passing immigration and getting my luggage through customs, i went to look for the limousine bus counter. after getting my 3000 yen ticket (roughly US$30), i went to search for a phone to call shawn and my aunt. after letting shawn know my bus was schedule to leave the aiport at 6:05pm (my plane landed at 4:08pm), i called my aunt to let her know that i'd arrived safely and to let my parents know as well.

at around 5:35pm, i went outside the terminal to wait for the limo bus at gate 17. what i didn't know was that the limobuses run every five minutes. so when i handed the ticket to the lugagge guy, he told me (in somewhat broken english) that there are five more buses ahead of me. so i sat and waited. at 6:05pm, my bus came and i climbed on. shibuya. the ride was longer than what i had expected, but the bus finally pulled in to the cerulean tower hotel in shibuya at around 7:30pm.

as i was getting off the bus, i heard my named being called. i turned and there was shawn and taeko. SHAWN and TAEKO, friendly faces of people i know. perfect timing shawn said, as they had just gotten there. and taeko was smiling saying how happy she was to see me. it's good to have friends i always say. so after getting my luggage from the bus compartment, shawn took me to his apt. taeko was headed to a dinner, which shawn an i later attended. at shawn's place, i quickly changed into a pair of jeans and socks and shoes and we headed to dinner.

dinner was at this brazillian churrascaria restaurant. MEAT! finally i have meat from a cow. the dinner was for this girl named crystal who was leaving japan this week (thursday i think) and her friends all gathered to have this dinner for her. the food was good, meat was delicious. we got the all you can drink special as well so i had about three gin and tonics and two beers. well over making up for the cost of the dinner, which was a whopping 6000 yen. but shawn paid for my dinner, which was really nice of him. i told him he didn't have to, but he kept saying it's tradition and stuff. thanks very much.

after dinner, they decided to go meet up with some more people at some bar. we didn't actually go to the bar because when we got there, they started coming out. it's really strange to see these chinese, white people in japan. i'm really ignorant of the fact that there are foreigners working in other countries. *sigh* durrr! the group ended up splitting cuz some people wanted to go karoake and others wanted to go to this lounge place. at the lounge, we kept drinking and after awhile, shawn, taeko and myself left to go back to shawn's apt. apparently, we were going to wake up early because shawn wants to go to the beach the next day.

before we headed home though, shawn suggested we should get some ramen in us to absorb the alcohol. sure, we said. so we had some ramen, and after a 15-minute walk, we were back at shawn's. his apt is really nice. one bedroom. very nice. so i was the first to shower, and then taeko and shawn was last. we stayed up a little longer to talk. finally went to bed at around 3:30am-4:00am. i was really tired and i think i fell straight to sleep when my head hit the tatami.

i should also mention that at the dinner, i met some hk-nese people from canada. most of the them went to waterloo and i think one of them went to university of toronto. oh, yeah, most of them are from toronto, the hk of canada. i thought it was vancouver that was the hk of canada. oh well, we're everywhere.

sunday. we woke up at around 8am. we were suppose to meet up with more of shawn's coworkers at 9am. so we hurriedly got dressed and left shawn's apt. taeko wasn't going to the beach with us because she was going to see her friend dance the flamingo. but since that wasn't until 1pm, she waited with us at the train station. we waited for over an hour. apparently, they changed some plans and someone called everyone (except for shawn) to say they'll meet at 9:45am. hahaha, good times. at the station, i saw mendel, who i met the night before and met eric, sydney, jacquelin, carol and two japanese girls whose names i can't remember.

so we set off for the beach a little after 10am. it was rather expensive going to the beach. like about 1000 yen (roughly US$10) to get there and about 1300 yen (US$13) to come back. at the beach, we met up with jonathan, who i met the night before, and colleen. we got to the beach i think a little big after 12 or 1, i don't wear a watch, so i never know the time. we had lunch a macdonald's and at around 6pm we left the beach. the sand is really disgusting and sticky and since i was really windy, sand was blowing everywhere.

after the beach, they were deciding what to do. i think i would have liked to go back to shawns and stay there to rest. there were talks of hot springs and going to yokohama for dinner. finally, after walking to the train station from the beach, it was decided that we're going to karaoke at shibuya. i was definitely fine with that since it was where shawn's apt was. so we took the train back to shibuya, which took about an hour. we were all really hungery by then.

at karoake, we met up with audrey and her friend lawrence, who's this chinese guy from paris, france. i met them last night as well. and another friend of theirs', charlene (i think that's her name, i can't be too sure). so we all went to karoake, which was in this big building specifically for karoake. i mean it was like 14 floors of karoake rooms. incredible. the karoake place had dinner and drinks so we ordered a lot of stuff and basically had the all you can drink plan.

i was really fucking tired on the way there, but after some food and alcohol, it was great. charlene and sydney were drinking sake. and they were all playing is chinese drinking game where you basically use your hands to make numbers. basically you have four hands. if you have them all balled up, that's 'closed' or 'turtle' (i'm not sure about the latter), zero. if someone opens up their hand, that counts as '5', two hands that's '10', so on and so forth, until you have everything opened, which is 'all opened.' in this game, you yell out the numbers to see if the hands matches. you win when you get two in a roll and you lose your turn if you get it wrong.

after several vodka tonics and beers and sake, i was in a great place. charlene was in the restroom for the last 45 minutes puking her brains out. some people left early to catch the train. we left at around 1:30 in the morning. the bill came out to be 65100 yen. US$65o for karoake, dinner and alcohol. crazy night. came out to be US$70 per person. that's a lot for karoake, but it was fun.

monday. shawn's at work now. i'm in his apt. i'm planning to leave for my aunt's tonight because shawn wants me to come back on friday and do a tokyo all nighter. which basically is you party until 4 or 5 in the morning and then take the trains back to wherever you live when they start running again in the morning. shawn also wanted to go for sushi saturday morning at the fish market. i'm totally up for that since it's suppose to be really fucking fresh. so that's the plan. i'm now going to shower and get some lunch. it's about 1:39pm now and all i've had was half a bag of chips, a nectarine and two popicles. breakfast of champions.

so until i get another chance to blog, see you soon. i'll be back on saturday.

i love you, sweetheart. and i miss you dearly.

japan

2004-08-09T02:04:00.000-07:00

shawn and his lovely abode. notice the lack of proper furniture.

hello everyone. i'm now in japan, staying over at shawn's.

he's fucking killing me. i've been out late the last two nights. on saturday, we went to a friend's of his's fairwell party. lasted til 2:30 in the morning at a club and then we (shawn, taeko and myself) stayed up until 3:30 in the morning talking.

at 7:30am sunday morning, shawn woke me up to go to the beach with a bunch of his co-workers. we're finally back in his apartment at 1:30 in the morning. we were at the beach somewhere near yokohama and then we came back to shibuya to karoake. it was really fun though. i guess i'll blog more tomorrow when i have more time since shawn's going to be at work.
i just want to say, i'm about to die here in japan. i don't think anyone speaks english and i'm going to have to go to my aunt's place by myself. i've been drinking like a fiend the last couple of nights, i'm buzzed right now in fact.

i've met some of his co-worker/friends, and they seem to be really nice people. pretty much the people he hangs out with are chinese canadians who mostly went to waterloo university in canada. there's actually a girl who's grandparents i think live in south pasadena. what a crazy small world.

so tomorrow, i'm going to try to go to yokohama by myself. i hope i don't have to talk to anyone since i don't think i can. there's a girl i met tonight at karaoke who got totally wasted on sake and according to everyone isn't going to work tomorrow. i can't believe how much these people fucking drink and hang out over the weekends.

anyway, more tomorrow. definitely indepth. going to bed now. ciao.

last day

2004-08-06T13:40:00.000-07:00

my farewell party consisted of my father (standing), my grandma, and my mum.

what a busy week... totally flew by.

anyway, today is my last full day here in hk and i'm in a bit of a rush. came to the library to jot down some of the info i'd be needing in japan. next i'll probably head out to wan chai to look at some electronic stuff.

i bought, or rather my parents did, a toshiba tecra laptop. we went to a electronics supermall, which is basically two floors of various stores selling pretty much anything you can imagine. the stores are really small though, so it was really crowded. i think probably a fire hazard. anyway, these stores are legit of course, but they only accept cash or ets (just like an atm card in the states). i certainly didn't come prepare with HK$9900, so my parents got it for me instead. i guess i'll reimburse them later. i also bought a 30 GB USB hard drive. might as well, better than getting a floppy drive for the lap top. so all together it was HK$10,650, or roughly $1,350 (yikes!).

on the same day, we went to a street know as "female street." i was looking to get deidra a purse and something chinese, but just came away with a t-shirt saying "i survive hk" with a map of the mtr and one of those chinese looking thing you see women wearing on tv. not a full length dress, but just a chinese looking thing... i don't know what to call it. but god, it was horrible. the weather was freaking humid and i was sweating like a pig. my shirt was soaking in sweat.

i saw a stuffed spiderman doll, one of those with the big heads, and wanted to get it, but where will i put it on the flight back? so i didn't. there were also soccer jerseys but i didn't get them cuz i'm not really going to wear them and they weren't authentic. and i didn't want to spend money anyway. i did barter though which was really cool. there was a chinese looking purse i wanted to get for deidra, but i didn't know if she would like it, so as my sister and i were leaving the stand, the lady said, "okay, sell you HK$70." that was from a sticker price of HK$129.

yesterday, my mum and i went to my sister's house at the university where my brother-in-law works. it was really nice place, three bedrooms with lacquered wood floors and a balcony overlooking clear water bay. and it's university housing so it's not very expensive, by outside standards. (my BIL is a physics professor at the U). anyway, i was there to see if the wifi was working on the laptop. afterwards, we went to have lunch. my sister drove her car, which is kinda scary since one, she's an asian woman and two, it's hk. i hate roundabouts, they are horrible.

my mum and i left after a late lunch and went to the ifc to meet my dad. i was talking pictures of the starbucks and got yelled at by the manager because they have a policy about people taking pictures of their products. fucking bitch, but not that i care since i'm leaving hk in a couple of days anyway. so after that we went home for dinner.

this morning we had an amber alert for rain and thunderstorms. it was kinda nasty since i was wearing sandles when i rushed out to meet up with mum and grands for breakfast. i realized as we were walking out of the restaurant that i forgot my camera back home and i was hoping to take some pictures of the sai ying poon district market for y'all (things i do for you guys) so i went back home in the rain again and grabbed my camera and rushed out to take some pictures of the stalls and such. took some of the fish lady and found out her name is mrs. chan. good to know. last week, she mentioned how she was going to give me some candy when i was leaving hk, and today she kept her promise and gave me some candy. really nice woman.

so now i'm ready to go look around to see if i can get a small mp3 player for cheap. and tonight my parents are taking me and other relatives out for dinner at the same place that i got the roasted goose. yum. i didn't think i'll miss hk when i leave, but i'm kinda sad that i'm leaving. it's been a bitch here the last three/four weeks, but it's really nice though. i'll have to remind myself, never come visit during the summer, it's no fun. too humid and too hot.

well, hopefully, i'll get some internet access in japan. if not, this is the end of the hk line, passengers exit from the left. do-do-do...

in the news.

2004-08-03T17:40:00.000-07:00

dinner time. from l-r standing: my uncle ellie (named after the elephant), handsome me, my mum's uncle, my aunt jo, my dad, my brother-in-law, my sister. from l-r sitting: my mum's aunt-in-law, my mum's aunt, my grandpa, my grandma, my mum, and my father's sisters.

GOOD LORD!

the sox trades away NOMAHHHHH to the cubs. the CUBS?!? granted, nomar wasn't going to resign with boston, but still, when you think about the sox, you think about nomar and vice versa. it's going to take some getting use to. but then it's good to see that the dodgers are doing everything in the power to lose their grip of first place. how can you trade away lo duca and mota for essentially brad penny? for the marlin's fifth starter? i'm surprised they didn't trade away gagne. yeah, and good luck with hee seop choi.

i guess i shouldn't be surprised when even the lakers traded away shaq. what sadness. i see that the angels didn't do anything before the trade deadline. they could have certainly gotten a solid starter, but at least colon is actually pitching well (just in time for escobar to pitch like shit). and it's kinda funny cuz i picked him up on my all angels fantasy team. hahaha. it's going to be a tough summer with the a's and texas playing so well. madness.

i know that i'm going to get into deep, deep trouble with what i'm going to talk about next. and i know if i have to preface the following paragraph(s) with the preceeded warning, i shouldn't even talk about what i'm going to talk about. in addition, it's certainly a clear sign, when the computer you're using to type this crashes on you so you actually have to start all over again. now is there a more clear sign than that for you to stop what you're going to talk about and talk about something else?

i guess not. let's just say that for a certain someone wearing a tight white polo t-shirt and a pair of short jean shorts, it was really cold in the library. certainly i can't get into trouble for that, can i? probably. *sigh*

i was watching the entertainment news last night and apparently william hung, yes that william hung, was in hk over the weekend. i can't believe this guy is still alive. i mean come on, what the fuck is going on? how is this guy still getting press coverage? anyway, i can see that he's gotten a little fatter and uglier (hey, i lost 3 lbs in hk damn it!). he's such a fucking dork. and he was singing some chinese song on the telly, which wasn't any better than his heinous version of she bangs. i can't believe i'm talking about this loser.

there are a lot of adverts for the upcoming ms. hong kong beauty pageant (aug. 13) and the sept. 12 legislative council elections. i don't care too much about the beauty pageant cuz i not at all interested, but i think the elections is pretty interesting. unfortunately, i haven't registered and i'm not going to be here in hk so i can't vote. but it's certainly fun watching various candidates setting camp outside mtr stations with their little microphoned bullhorns talking about the issues, with tons of people milling about trying to get to certain places not caring. i actually saw the candidate my dad's planning to vote for several days ago outside the tai koo mtr station. about the only thing i got from her speech was that people need to come out to vote as she was eyeing me and smiling. i guess i don't look like i vote much.

i am certainly going to vote this november. it's certainly pretty depressing when i'm voting for kerry only because i can't vote for bush. i think the only way i'll ever vote for bush is if hitler was running against him. and even then, i'll probably feel a sense of dread for having to vote for the bastard. it's really too bad we can't bring back bill. so he got his cock sucked whilst in office by an intern, what's the big deal?. was it wrong? sure. was it immoral? definitely. was it worth all the trouble and taxpayer's money to impeach him for it? no. people talk about character and integrity, as if politicans have much of either. let's just see if they can get the job done, and if they can, why should we care about some sexual escapade. do we really want our president to be making decisions while suffering from blue balls?

i see that the ryan seacrest show is being taken off the air later this year. FINALLY! for fuck sakes, how much longer do we have to subject ourselves to watching piss poor tv? ryan seacrest is utterly worthless. he and entertainment tonight's billy bush. we can certainly do without them for a long while. and how is it the number one song in america is by jessica simpson's sister? how is it that american music has gotten to be so bad the last decade or so? i mean come on, ashley simpson? can someone do something about this?

what's up with the manager/supervisor or whoever made the dumbass decision to lock all the doors of that supermarket in paraguay? what exactly was the thought process there? hey, we have a fire. but then if people start running out of the store, they'll be stealing from us. maybe if we lock the doors so they can't leave until they pay for the goods. yeah, great idea. hmmm... it's getting really smokey in here and a little warm. why are people breaking our windows? come on, how stupid can you be?

yay! i see that oil prices hit a new record high. can't imagine how much a gallon of gas costs now but i'm sure i'm not going to like it much. how is it that if we went to war with iraq over oil, and we supposedly won this war, the price of gas is still over $2.00 a gallon? i mean whatever happened to the glorious days when to the victor goes the spoils of war? damn, american lives were lost fighting this war, so why is gas still so expensive?

it is tuesday evening right now, so i have three more full days in hk. i think the next three days will consist mostly of walking around and shopping because my sister is finally finished with her work so she can hang out with us. so hopefully i can get some time to email and blog, but who knows what will happen. i'll try to blog at shawn's or at my aunts when i'm in japan, but no promises.

so if i don't get the chance to say it later, i bid you all adieu. take care and i'll see you in eleven days. woo-hoo!

love.

HOT!!!!

2004-07-31T16:16:00.000-07:00

isn't the ifc nice? it's certainly cool for that matter.

note: i didn't get a chance to publish my blog from yesterday, so there's an extra one below in case you missed it.
i just checked the weather forecast for hk and it's going to be insanely hot. highs of 92 degrees F for the next three days, with wednesday's kicker at a mild 90 degrees F. so yeah, it's going to be pretty fucking hot. it's actually a little warm today as well, but the high's only at 89 degrees F. my final week in hk, and it'll be a scorcher. many thanks to the weather god. thankfully, the humidity isn't too high.

yes, finally, the ending is in sight. next saturday, i'll be on a flight to japan and the saturday after that a flight back to the states. i want to say that i won't miss hk, but i probably will. probably miss my parents, my sister and other relatives as well. i'll miss having dim sum with my mum and grandma after morning exercises. i'll miss watching the hilarious detective sitcom. i'll miss my mum's homecooking. and probably miss doing nothing all day. i think i'll miss taking the mtr and walking around the stations because it's so clean.

speaking of the mtr, in between my last trip and my current trip (probably around 3 or 4 years, though i can't be sure), they installed protective plexiglass dividers on the edge of the platform in the majority of the stations. i guess they were a little afraid of people accidentally falling down or getting pushed into the subway tracks. it took some time for me to get use to the fact that there are plexiglass (or maybe plastic) dividers with sliding doors. i guess i don't like change much.

you can still see the adverts on the tunnel walls across from the platforms in each station. but now they actually have some flatscreen tvs on the walls displaying adverts with the sounds coming out of speakers placed directly overhead of the platform. i'm really a big fan of the mtr. one of the thing i remember most about my youth spent in hk is the smell of the mtr. it was and still is so sterile.

yeah, i think i came down with something. either that or the air's been so bad that i'm producing a lot of phlegm that i'm not getting out. the air in hk is pretty bad in the summertime depending on where you are. along the coast it isn't too bad. and air conditioned buildings are always good. but it's down on the busy streets where the air could be pretty bad.

even though the high-rise buildings in hk create one of the most gorgeous night skyline in the world, when you have so many high-rise buildings, they act like insulators, keeping the exhaust from cars, lorries, and buses down on the streets. mix in the heat, humidity and muggy weather, you have air that's not exactly clean or crisp. i think it was worse several years ago when the smog started killing people. it's pretty bad, and i live in la.

last monday, when i was visiting with father michael, he was telling me about the real estate bubble bursting and the housing authority. i thought it was pretty interesting so i'm going to write about it now. granted, this is something i heard from a 73 yr old man, and it's being reproduced via my memory and translation, so take it for what it's worth.

years ago, before the economic down turn, when everyone was happy and was able to work for a living, people purchased flats either for residence or to let (rent). all was good and well. but then, the real estate bubble bursted, flats were depreciated several times their initial worth. for instance, a HK$500,000 flat was able to devalue to HK$200,000 overnight. unfortunately, people still owe the bank or lender loans on the flat, which most likely were much more than the value of said flat. in addition, the economy turned bad and people started losing their jobs, which created the problem of them not being able to pay their mortgages. good times, eh?

then there were the real estate speculators. oh, poor, poor chaps.

the housing authority. many of hk's residential high-rises are grouped together in what can be described as villages. some are owned by real estate companies while others are owned by the hk housing authority. back in the old days, housing authority homes were pretty wretched places to live. the housing authorities' mentality at that time was to put as many families into shelters as possible, which meant that several families shared communal bathrooms and kitchens. so privacy and any sense of human dignity were thrown out the proverbial door.

but now, a more modernized and humane housing authority have homes which are incredibly nice according to hk standards. families don't have to share kitchens and bathrooms anymore. at least in most cases. there are your backwatered housing authority homes that still subscribe to the old way of living. how sad is that?

father michael lives in a flat that's a little more than 600 sq. feet in size. it's basically a typical american bachelor's pad (layout-wise) with a bathroom and kitchen. in hk standards, it's a pretty good size flat for a family. you can of course, build partition walls to make separate bedrooms. hk is a small place, so it's people are used to being squished close together.

i went to jusco (a shopping center) with my mum yesterday. that's why i didn't have time to publish my blog. anyway, the first floor of this shopping center contains a market (just like the westernized ones), a food court, and a electronic dept. after having a quick lunch at the micky d's there, we went up to the third floor (toys) to use the facilities. one of the displays in the toy department had a mannequin of a little girl with her eyes closed, slanted head tilting upwards, and her mouth open. i don't know if it's just me being really disgusting, but if she was on her knees, it would almost look like she was...

hey, i'm not too far from bangkok. who knows.

anyway, so my mum and i were walking through the market and the smell of durian permeated throughout the first floor. in the produce section, they had a worker opening durians, taking out the meat, and putting them on a styrofoam plate, wrapped in plastic wrap. oh, but the smell is much too powerful to be held in by just plastic wrap. so it was all over the place. and i LOVED it. arrgh.... forbidden durian.

okay, i have to run. mum just rang. hugs and kisses to all.

luxury

2004-07-30T15:49:00.000-07:00

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.

computer crashed

2004-07-29T16:18:00.000-07:00

the fish section of the district markets. my mum frequents this stall because the fish- mongtress is really nice (fish- mongtress?).

i went to the ifc yesterday evening and had a club sandwich along with a bottle of orange juice that i sucked up through a straw. it's kinda strange, people use straws here for bottled drinks. it's just the way it is here i guess. i much prefer drinking it straight from the top. much easier.

we've been going there so frequently that most of the starbucks staff recognize us. i guess they're wondering who we are and why we're there so often. yesterday, we met a very shy, soft-spoken young man who worked there. his name is stephen. as he was leaving to change at the end of this shift, my mum motioned him over and asked him about the brownies that they have. we got to talking and he asked who i was in relations to my mum. it was quite hilarious really. i like him. quiet and gentle. yeah, weird way of describing a man.

i asked my mother if she thought i was older or younger than him, and she was like, "please n*gga, of course you're older." first of all, she didn't didn't really say, "please n*gga" cuz ,well, she wouldn't know what a n*gga is. but second, she said it so matter-of-factly that, i'm getting a little worried about my age. i can't believe i'm 28. i feel so immature to be 28. i should be 23. yeah. i should.

oh, and then this morning, after our morning exercises, my mother and i were having dim sum with my grandmother. so grands was saying how my uncle ho was 50 yrs old. and then mum says to her, "shit bitch, even he (gesturing towards me) is 28." my mum sure uses a lot of bad language.

speaking of morning exercises, i'm really out of shape. not surprising of couse. but still. i can't run worth shit. i think i'm going to blame the weather her in hk. muggy. humid. rainy. i could only run three times around a soccer pitch at a time. how pitiful. it's kinda interesting that the majority of pitches in hk isn't made of grass, but rather harden clay. i can't imagine playing soccer on such a hard material. certainly, there's no slide tackle. right?

i'm listening to janice long on the bbc radio 2. good stuff. just now, she played an old talking heads song, road to nowhere. and the only reason why i would even know of that song, given that i'm not a big talking heads fan, is that the song was in the movie, reality bites.

so about markets. there are three types here in hk the first kinda is just like what we have in the states. places like citysuper, wellcome, parknshop, where you walk in and it's clean and everything is placed neatly in front of you in shelves and aisles. there's a citysuper in the ifc mall, and it's incredibly nice. i actually saw a piece of meat from australia that cost nearly a hundred dollars a pound. it's insane. HK$141 per 100g. it's really marbled though.

they also have a hot deli food section there, which is almost unheard of in a hk supermarket. well, not that i've seen anyway. citysuper is of course the creme de la creme of the hk supermarkets. and since space is rather limited, not all the supermarkets within the same company are the same size. near my parents' flat, there's a parknshop that is about 1/8 of the parknshop we saw in tung chung the other day. so there you have your high-end, westernized markets. clean and well air-conditioned.

then you have your district markets, which is less glamourous than your supermarkets in hk. there are 18 districts in hk, so i'm guessing there are about 18 district markets. the one that i usually go with my mother is the sai ying poon distict market. i've seen or been inside several othere districk markets (western, wan chai, central, sai kong, etc.). i guess one of these days i could take a picture of the sai ying poon district market so you can have a better idea what they are like.

generally speaking, district markets are located in a building that contains several floors. on each floor, vendors sell similar goods and produce. for example, at the sai ying poon districk market, there's a floor that only sells vegetables and dry goods, two floors for fish and various seafood, one for meats, and yet another for poultry. the sai ying poon market is a little different because there's a skywalk to another building across the street where you can get eggs (chicken, thousand year old, salted, quail are the several i've seen) and clothes. oh and yeah, it's not normally air conditioned and since the drainage system is on the ground, the floor tends to be quite wet, which equates to being very dirty.

then the third kind of hk markets are the open air markets. during the daytime, most of the open air markets are stalls selling different types of vegetables and produce like tofu. there are some that sells toys and clothes as well. but at night, thats when things get really interesting. on the famous temple street, you have venders selling goods from zippo lighters to pornography vcds under strands of lightbulbs. we know a little something about that don't we mark? ;) there are stalls where they have photo albums of girls, which i personally think is a catalogue of hookers for you to peruse. if you're hungry, there are dozens of street venders willing to feed you fish balls on skewers or bowls of noodles with slice meats. then when you're through with that, at the end of temple street sits fortune tellers waiting to tell you your fortune.

my favorite street vender food is the sweet sheet of bubbled pancake made from egg batter poured into this two-sided iron contraption cooked over an open fire. each side of the iron contraption has connecting semi-circles so that when it's done, it looks like a sheet of bubbles. it's delicious, but my stomach probably can't handle them anymore. the story of my life. damn weak stomach.

and my grandmother, who's about 75 or so, played mahjong until 6am this morning. that's some crazy arsed shit.

okay, time to get some lunch and meet my parents at the ifc. i hope it's not raining too hard outside.

talk to you all later. hugs and kisses.

note: my computer crashed so everything i had after the third type of hk market has been rewritten.

from such great height

2004-07-28T16:15:00.000-07:00

if hk is my home away from home, then the hk public library is my home away from home away from home. it's damn ugly on the outside, isn't it?

i'll give y'all a guess as to where i am today?

i'm back at the library. there are so many computers here that on the weekdays, you can just sit down at one and use it until you're done. however long it may be. on the weekends, when there are more people milling around, you have to sign up for hour-long blocks, two hours max per session.

it's wednesday today. i'd totally forgotten that the library opens at 1pm today, not the normal 9am. i got there around noon, and was a bit perturbed by it's closage. is that even a word? closage. oops, it's closure. hahaha. thank god for merriam webster. so anyway, i decided to go to the hmv in causeway bay (i tried to find the hmv hk site, but it's not readily available to me), which is only about a 10 minute walk away. for some reason, i don't feel the need to buy cds or dvds anymore. in past trips, the only thing i wanted was to get more cds and dvds. but this trip's been different. maybe i'm all growns-up and all growns-up (thank you trent), but i think it's more that i rather spend money on things that i need now. like a laptop and tuition.

therefore, i basically window shopped, looking at cds and dvds on sale. there were dvds selling at HK$20. that's like about $2.50 in US dollars. and they weren't like crappy dvds either. they were actual movies, and no, they weren't pirated copies. then in the middle of my window shopping excursion, my mum called to say that there's a storm warning and that i should head back to the ifc (which is in central for those keeping notes). i said okay, but headed to the library anyway. the internet cafes at the ifc are okay, but i couldn't have spent 2-3 hours there without someone pressing the damn timer.

i just got a called my mum and she was wondering where i was. the library, i whispered, since i was at the library. we'll meet you out there then, she whispered back. my mum's funny. also, i was fucking around with my chair and now the back of it is lifted up and it's sitting really ackwardly under my arse. i would feel so stupid if i were to get up to "fix" the problem and i'd feel even more stupid if i ask someone to fix it for me. so for the time being, i'm sitting very, very uncomfortably. damn, some library staffer walked by, but i couldn't catch her eye in time. damn. i hate sitting here. i could switch chairs though...

aaaah, i fixed it. now i'm comfortable.

there are so many things i want to write about, not that you care, or maybe you do, but it's more for myself, so i can remember what i saw and experienced on this trip. generally, i think of things on the bus ride over, but i keep forgetting the topics when i get to the library. it's really annoying. so i'm just going to sit here and think about it until i remember what i wanted to talk about.

for example, while on the bus today, i saw an old man who had a hunched back dragging a pretty large wickered basket behind him walking along the electric tram section of the street.

segue: i could never drive in hk. it's like impossible. a six-lane street is considered a major thoroughfare. yes, i realize that a six-lane street is considered big, but let's consider that streets are a bit narrower here. in the middle of the street (i think it's called de voeux rd.) two lanes are taken up for the electric trams. and not to mention that there are lorries (trucks) parked on the side of the streets half the time with people loading and unloading goods. then you have pedestrians who basically cross the streets regardless of what colour the traffic light is at. you have an incredible number of double deckered buses, mini-vans, taxis used for public transportation. it's maddening. btw, i took the bus today for HK$3.40 from sai ying poon to causeway bay. so damn cheap!

correction (7/29): i rode by it today and it's actually a six lane road with a middle section for the electric trams. but that's only near the pacific place. from sheung wan to central, it's pretty much as i had described it above. actually, it turns into single lanes near sheung wan.

back to the old man. if only i had taken a picture, eh? :) his poverty and physical deformity juxtaposed the modern and ultra hip pacific place, an opulent shopping center containing stores like louis vuitton and prada. anyway, all i could think about when i saw this man was, i wonder if someone like him could get laid. and if he does, he's probably always on top right? i guess there's doggy and numerous other positions, but seriously, is he getting laid? i'm kinda annoyed that i have a one track mind. christ, i should really take pity on this man or at least be thankful that i don't have to go through what he's gone through in his life. nope, i think about such trival things.

did anyone know that edwin starr passed away last year? i didn't either. and no, i don't know who edwin starr is either.

if i have time today, i'm going to talk about the markets here in hk.

i wonder why a large number of women in hk have highlights in their hair and some even dye it outright. so i asked my father about this and he said that people are bored and they see that it's the american thing to do, so they do it. just to get as close to the US as possible. this americanizing of the world is really annoying. if i wanted to see women with highlights i would have just stayed in the US. looking around the library now though, most of the workers at the library don't have highlights in their hair. i guess it's just wannabes who dye their hair and not nerds like us.

speaking of the library, i actually saw a white chick just now walking by my computer terminal to the service and information desk up front. the only reason why i would mention this is that i thought she was going to take my computer away. this is the only computer set to english, and hell if was going to give it up. but i guess it wasn't that because she's gone.

there are mccafes here in hk. mcdonald's owned cafes, with freshly brewed coffee, specialty sandwiches, and i think desserts as well. i think there are cities in the US with mccafes as well, but i can't be sure. in hk, i've only been to one so far, at the ifc.

another segue: good lord! i was just looking at the ifc website and i didn't know that the hotel that they're building is a six-star hotel . i mean what exactly is a six-star hotel? i don't go out much, but isn't the max four stars? what exactly makes a hotel six stars? do they bend over on command? do they drop to their knees if you ask? (there's my one track mind, rearing it's ugly head, no pun intended.) i have to do a little digging. give me a sec.

according to an article in the internation herald tribune, the designation [of a six-star hotel] should go to hotels that maintain "champion status," with exquisite personal service, unparalleled location and genteel exclusivity. uh, maybe this paints a better picture, according to Ricci Obertelli, global development director of the Dorchester Hotel Group, whose luxury properties include the Dorchester in London, the Beverly Hills Hotel in California and the Meurice in Paris,

"if you were a wealthy entertainer and you came to the Dorchester in London," he said, "and let's say you just finished your show and you wanted to have a five-course meal at two in the morning, you'd expect a chef to be there to prepare it. And that expectation would be met."

so pretty hardcore. but at between $700 and $800 a night, come on.

okay, getting back to mccafe's. i was watching one of those newsmagazine shows last night and they had this little section on how coffee drinking is becoming more and more popular in hk. so mcdonald's in hk decided to get into this cafe business. when i went, i didn't have coffee, but i had one of their specialty sandwiches, crawfish with egg salad. it wasn't too bad, but i didn't like the bread. my uncle joked (though, i'm not sure if it's true or not) that you can bring food from mccafes to mcdonald's but you can't bring food from mcdonald's to mccafes. kinda funny, don't you think? further on the section, the newsmagazine was showing other cafes as well and there's this one that has 15 cats inside. the owner said that she couldn't very well leave them at home when she went to work, so she brought them to the cafe. and cat lovers from all around go there to talk about their love of cats. (deidra, you would totally love it. hahaha.)

god, it's almost 4pm and i haven't eaten lunch yet. and my mum's been calling me on the mobile; the last time, i was chastised by a librarian staff. how rude. i couldn't very well leave the computer, could i?

okay, i'm going to get something to eat at the ifc. probably, most likely, at the starbucks. i'm famished. i hope it's not raining. remind me to talk about the markets and people still wearing surgical masks. oh, espcially about how the fish lady at the market is really cool and adores me. oh, and about my mum's brother ho. (at this point, i can imagine mark sitting there thinking about, a better tomorrow.)

as always, i hope you are all doing well. for those of you who are reading this, say hi to those who aren't. and for those of you who aren't reading this (like tony... how is japan? what the fuck is that?), fuck you. i'm kidding. no, i'm not. yeah, i'm kidding.

no, i'm not.

yeah, i am.

no, i'm not.

love you all.

yeah, i am.

thieved!

2004-07-27T14:03:00.000-07:00

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.

bedshaped

2004-07-23T12:46:00.000-07:00

this is a picture of the mtr (subway system) in hk. i guess they were showing arthur when i was there. the one thing i love about the mtr is that it's ridiculously clean for a subway system in a major city.

i'm at the library again. i froze a computer earlier so they decided to move me to one that has windows and is in english.

after i left the coffee shop yesterday, my parents wanted to eat out. they tried calling my grandparents to see if they wanted to come along as well. my mother couldn't reach them, so we decided to go home for dinner. on the way home, my grandmother called and said that she was in the showers earlier. a little later we all got into a taxi and headed out to dinner at some chinese restaurant.

it was very good. they had sliced pieces of roasted goose and some small oyster fried in eggs, two of my favorite dishes. we also had some pig intestines which was interesting. after dinner, we rushed home to catch the detective show. at this point, the detective is investigating some cult that forced girls into prostitution by giving them "holy juice."

my dad went to see the doctor yesterday. every since his operation, where they removed a kidney and part of his bladder and urethra, he's been complaining that different parts of his body hurt. so finally we got him to go see a doctor, and the doctor told him that he's doing fine. that he should do some light exercises like walking and swimming. maybe some jumping jacks as well. but nothing too stenuous. my dad has this fear that he's going to die because the surgeons didn't get all the cancer out. but the doctor yesterday told him that he shouldn't worry about that. medically, they've done everything they could in getting all the cancerous junk out, but who knows what will happen. he continued by telling my father to just enjoy life and not worry about it any longer. i guess that gave him a new outlook on life.

on our way home, he mentioned that he wanted to go on a short trip to singapore, malaysia and indonesia with my mum and i. it's kinda weird having that coming from my dad. i would much rather they take the trip by themselves and not involve me. i'm perfectly comfortable being in hk rather than having to travel to southeast asia. we'll see.

it's kinda funny how i'm blogging more than i do when i'm at home in the states.

i don't think i can survive here in hk if i have to live here the rest of my life. i don't know how people do it. i look at the all the foreigners out here and i think to myself, boy, i can't imagine having to live here for money. i mean, can anyone really honestly say they love living here? it's hot, humid, crowded and dirty. sure there are good parts about hk. it's not like completely horrible. but if i had a choice, this wouldn't be the place i would chose to be living in.

it's time to go have lunch now.

one little thing...

2004-07-22T18:30:00.000-07:00

to tell you the truth, i have no idea where this is. if i have to guess... i think it's of wanchai cuz i think victoria park is just to the bottom right of the picture.

okay, that fucker's finally off. anyway, i just wanted to add that i just saw some white girl... probably just out of high school, wearing a white dress in the coffee shop just now. she walked up to the section where they have the bottled drinks, your snapples and various juices (watermelon, strawberry, honeydew, etc). the wall behind the section contains a bright fluorescent light. she was wearing a really thin white dress.

needless to say, it was basically seeing her nude from the waist down. she was wearing a thong and you could see both of her ass cheeks. i was almost ashamed to look... but you know me, i like to absorb everything around me.

just something i observed on my trips to the ifc.

i'm now reading angels and demons by dan brown. he's a really good writer. usually, when i have to read descriptions of things in a book, i get really bored by them and would have to read them several times because my mind would wander. but with him, i would just have to read it once. it's great.

the only reason why i'm still at the coffee shop is because i'm waiting for my parents to come by. it's getting to be around dinner time and i think we're all going to take a taxi home. earlier this week this tv series premiered on tv and it's really hilarious. okay, so i don't understand half of what is said, but it's still really funny. it's about a detective who solves crime in a ridiculously funny manner.

okay, my parents just rang, so i'm off. until next time.

the weather's better

2004-07-22T17:40:00.000-07:00

starbucks at ifc. i got scolded for taking these pictures. fucking corporate mofos.

hello, america. i think i might have SARS.

maybe, maybe not. i'm not sure. i did however cross over the border into china.

yesterday, in the middle of a rainstorm, my mother and uncle took my aunts back to china. my father was too weary to make the long trip to shenzhen, which is literally a skip, hop and a jump over the hk border. first we took a taxi to the hom hung train station on the kowloon side. then we took the kcr (train) to the very last stop on the hk side, lo wu. then after passing through all the immigration and customs, we arrived at shenzhen.

i actually saw black people there (no need to get too excited jenny. - smiley face). i don't know why i'm surprised at anything any longer. i was sitting at the starbucks at ifc the other day, the place i like to hang out cuz it's as close to home as anything here in hk. some chinese woman, maybe a little younger than me, came up and asked me if anyone was sitting next to me.

i guess i should explain the culture her in hk. as i had explained in the entry before, hk isn't a very big place. so you have about 6 million plus people being stuck in one city the size of... i don't know... la? not a very big place. anyway, it is really customary to sit next to total strangers at a table. i, of course, is completely not used to it, but what the hell, when in rome right?

so there i was, sitting at the starbucks, on a couch, and this woman comes up and asks me if anyone was sitting there. before you get all excited or pissed, the place was packed, so it wasn't like she was hitting on me or anything like that. she said it in chinese, so i thought nothing of it. i said, no, go ahead (in chinese). next thing i knew, several of her friends came by, two guys. and they started speaking in hk english.

see here's the thing, i like hk english. but only in small doses. it bugged the hell out of me when they had a 20 minute conversation in hk english. it's so annoying. it's like english english, but rougher. like more accented. anyway, so i was like, shut the fuck up already. they did eventually leave. thank god.

i don't know what it is, but there are some really attractive asian women in hk. maybe i'm getting soft in my older days, but i actually find some of them attractive. and i don't even have to mention the mixed population. hot damn! the other day, i was taking the tram from central to sai ying poon to have dinner with my relatives and who walked into the tram but this really elegant-looking woman. she looked white, but with a dash of asian in her. it was incredible. i'm not writing this to piss anyone off, but it was just one of those things.

earlier today, i was taking the bus to the hk central library, and i saw this woman who was the splitting image of kathy, but older. then further on the line, i saw someone who looked a lot like me when i had really short hair. what a strange world.

i'm sitting in the internet cafe at ifc and some fucker just pushed the 15 minute timer to my computer. what the fuck? i'm going to sit here until my 15 minutes is up. i mean i can't believe this fucker is actually doing the timer thing. yeah, i know it's there for a purpose. yeah, i know it's the only fair thing to do. yeah, i know, etc., etc., etc... but still, who the fuck does this? how fucking rude.

i just saw my second uncle on a whim. i was at the library and i saw him walking around. i wasn't sure if it was him or not, so i walked by him and stared at him. he was like, who the fuck is staring at me, and then a look of recognition hit his face. it's a bit ackward because i didn't call him when i got to hk. i don't know why. my parents didn't feel the need to do so, so i didn't call him. anyway, i'm suppose to have coffee with him next week. weird. i wonder if he'll try to hit me up for money, like he did my sister. kinda funny since i have none to speak of. poor guy.

i now have about 8 minutes left on the timer. i'm just hoping that the people next to me, who've been here much longer than myself, will leave soon. it would be rude of me to press the timer button on them wouldn't it? anyway, they're foreigners visiting hk. i don't want to give them a bad impression of hk. though it is really sticky.

i still can't believe that the lakers traded shaq for odom, grant and someone i don't remember. it's terrible. apparently, and i'm not exactly sure about this, but they call shaq big mac here in hk. it's kind of a cool nickname i think. i can't believe texas is still in first place and that the angels are 6 games out. it's the pitching, it's not very good. i feel so out of touch without the internet in front of me everyday. or espn. or the food network. i was thinking of writing to $40-a-day and tell them to send rachel ray to hk. $40 is the equivalent of about HK$320, and you can get a good day's worth of food with that.

i now have about 3 minutes. the foreigners haven't left yet. they're still sitting in front of the computer, typing emails to people back home. i guess i'll write again later in the future. i hope this entry finds everyone well and happy. for those of you who want to read a book, tuesday with morrie is a good one. i miss y'all.

love you, d.

life and death

2004-07-20T17:07:00.000-07:00

this is where my p. grand- mother is chilling. from l-r is my mum, my father's sister, my father's brother, and my father's other sister.

i went to visit my paternal grandmother's grave yesterday. it was a pretty emotional experience. one that i didn't expect to be so emotional. after all, i haven't really bonded with my father's mother as i have with my maternal grandparents (not that i've bonded that much with them, either). mostly because she was in china and i wasn't. i did, however, visited her three or four times when she was alive. the last was a number of years ago.

anyway, my mother, a paternal uncle and two aunts made the trip to this temple like place that serves as a resting place for a lot of people. given that space isn't a luxury we have in hk, well, i guess if you're really rich, you could afford to buy a lot of space. but since space is limited, people basically get cremated and interred at special sites around the city (i have no idea what they are called).

before we left, we bought a lot of paper money, clothes, shoes, etc., etc. to ensure that my grandmother will have lots of month and clothes in the afterlife. several days after my grandmother was interred, my father had a dream of her telling him that she doesn't have clothes to wear. so my father took some paper clothes up to her resting place and burn them in the incenerator. we also bought some oranges and a piece of roasted pork for her to eat.

it's kinda interesting. this ancestral worship. my mother wouldn't even go near the buddha statues because she's catholic. it's kinda funny, she would follow the specifics of ancestral worship to a tee, but if you were to go bow to buddha, she wouldn't do it.

the final resting place is in sha tin, which is in kowloon. it was an incredibly humid day yesterday. we had early morning showers, actually just after we left the flat. but by the time we got to the "temple," the rain had stopped. but in it's place was the torrid humidity. i sweated through a button up shirt. and being next to the incenerator didn't help either.

of course, it was an experience i wouldn't have missed. this was one of the reasons why i came back to hk in the first place. to pay my final respect to my grandmother. my father's two sisters came from china for this purpose as well. so the three of us had the pleasure (if you could call it that) of giving our respect for the first time.

there were a lot of incense burning and some sobbing. i didn't sob, but i did have some tears in my eyes. like i said, i didn't know her very well, but i still loved her cuz she was my grandmother. after a while, we took some pictures and left. it was a good experience. really interesting from a educational standpoint.

i finished the da vinci code earlier today. it's an incredibly good book. so interesting in fact. later ,when i have the time, i would go investigate all this crap. i'm going to go ahead and get the prequel to this. he's a very good writer, dan brown.

i was watching a chinese sitcom with my parents last night and this white chick was speaking perfect cantonese. i mean, if i wasn't watching the television, i would have thought that she was chinese. it's incredible. i don't think the notion that white people could speak chinese will ever cease to amaze me.

anyway, i have to run. i'll write more later. today is dinner with my relatives. shark fin soup night. sorry d, i've gotsta eat it.

2004-07-18T04:45:00.000-07:00

some of my maternal family and i at dimsum. from l-r, my mum, my mum's aunt-in-law, my mum's aunt, my mum's uncle, your's truly, and my grandma.

it's hot again. and humid. i'm now sitting a the hk central library typing this entry. it's cool and given that it's a sunday, there are a lot of people milling around. i had to reserve computer time which doesn't bother me too much. it gave me time to read more of the da vinci code. it's incredibly interesting and there are many facinating details about things i didn't know. PHI!

i had dim sum again today with more relatives. my mother's uncle came out from his house in new territory to treat us. he was married once, but his actions make me think that he's pretty fucking gay. saw my mother's aunt, her other uncle's wife (her husband, my mother's uncle passed away recently) and several of my cousins. it's pretty wicked trying to figure out who's who amongst my cousins. i don't know them at all.

i continued with the row with my father today. it's incredible how stubborn a person he is. makes me wish i can come back all the sooner. i miss home, deidra, my friends, my parental-less life. it would be so much better when i go back to school so i don't have to deal with all the familial drama.

hk has lost it's appeal to me. i think the only way i could stand to be in hk is with friends or deidra. it's just not so exciting anymore. i much rather go elsewhere.

my mother figured out that i'm living with deidra. it wasn't too bad. she accepts it as fact and hasn't bother me about it. it's a nice reprieve from what's going on with my father. we had breakfast this morning in a chinese cafe. i had a cornbeef and egg sandwich, coupled with a small bowl of macaroni and ham soup. that's like my favorite meal in the whole world i think... the macaroni and ham soup. and only in hk style. it just isn't the same in the US.

i'm about a 1/3 of the way finished with the da vinci code. it's an incredibly fast read. i think i'll get the prequel to it entitled, angels and demons next.

damn, the lakers traded shaq. damn, kobe signed a freaking seven year deal. damn, druggie lamar odom is a laker. damn, washburn and colon won in the same week. what in the world is going on? i can't believe it. shaq isn't a laker any longer. fucking kobe. i hate the lakers now. i really do. i have no nba team. no more.

it's kinda weird and a bit exciting to find out news like this. i feel like i've been hiding in a cave somewhere for the last couple of days (feels like months, actually). i wonder what else is going on. how's everyone. you people should leave a comment... well if you're actually reading this.

so i finally quit my job. as of july 31, i am no longer an employee of the university of california, los angeles. i'll be a bum. a bum looking for a part-time job. i'll also be without medical insurance, which is really great. but at least i'll have a good amount of cash to hold me over until i find a job.

i'm getting a bit hungry now. i think i'll go get something to eat somewhere. i hope you're all doing well. can't wait to get back to the states soon. i think hk should be a domed city with controlled temperature. it's ridiculous how uncomfortable the outside is. ugh.

it's raining, it's pouring...

2004-07-17T20:15:00.000-07:00

this is a picture of victoria park (named after the queen) and people actually play football on the concrete. in the lower left corner sits a statue of the queen.

i'm sitting at an internet cafe today. people are smoking behind me and it's actually annoying the fuck out of me. it's no fun sucking up the second hand smoke if you're not actually doing the first hand smoking.

anyway, there was a category 8 typoon yesterday. but then it wasn't too bad, just a lot of rain and wind. it beats being in about 29 degrees C and 93% humidity. it was actually cool, which makes the high humidity tolerable.

since it was a cat 8 warning, i basically stayed indoors all day. yes, it was pretty fucking boring. especially when hk tv only carries 4 stations. two cantonese and the other two are the english equivalent. and no, my parents don't have cable. and... AND, they don't have internet access. not even dial-up. woe is me.

this morning i woke up at about 5:45am. stared at the ceiling for about 40 minutes and when there was enough light, continued to read the pelican brief by grisham. it's the only english book in my parents' flat, but it was a good read. finished it later in the day, so i went and got a paperback version of the da vinci code. hopefully it'll last me a while.

around 8ish, i went and had dim sum with my grandma and uncle with my mother and two of my father's sisters. afterwards, we were suppose to go visit my sister along with my father. but then on the way, i got into an argument with my dad, so i ended up just hanging out by myself the rest of the day. it was actually pretty good. i wanted to hang out by myself anyway.

i ended up at causeway bay and walked around the hmv there for about an hour. took the mtr back to admiralty, hung out around pacific place for the rest of the after noon. around dinner time, i took the mtr to ifc - international finance center. ifc 2 is the tallest building in hk now. it has really nice toilets. i took a dump there today. and i think i'll go again when i'm done here.

met up with my mother and my father's two sisters for dinner at the spaghetti house. it wasn't too bad, but i much rather eat something that won't cause me number 3. my father showed up, but when he saw me at dinner, he left. hahaha, it's so sad. i mean christ, i'm not 12. he needs to treat me like a freaking adult already.

i think i'm done for today. the smoke is getting to me. now that i know there's an internet cafe around and that it's not too busy in the evening, i can blog more often. yeah, it's free.

first day

2004-07-14T23:40:00.000-07:00

this is a picture from hk island. across the bay is kowloon. looks to be a pretty nice day.

woke up early today so i could pack before my 2:30pm flight out to hk. 6:30am, which is really messed up. i wanted to sleep more, but deidra told me to get my ass up so i could pack. i was sleepy.

we decided to go to starbucks to get some coffee and breakfast. it's always a good idea to not get anything oil/fried/mickey d's before you travel. it's a hassle to go number 2 on a plane or in an airport.

packed. your basic shorts and shirts, shoes, undies, socks, toiletries, chocolates for the relatives and shawn's perone (tequila). i don't think i left anything that i need for this trip unpacked, but who knows. it was a short amount of time as i was leaving at around 11am for the airport.

deidra drove me to the airport. it was kinda weird cuz i haven't flown anywhere after 9/11 so i wasn't exactly sure what the security is like. first i waited in the WRONG line because some airport security person told me to go to the incorrect line. then i have to wait an 1:30 minutes to get my luggage through. but overall it wasn't too bad. i was smart and wore sandles instead of shoes... just in case.

the plane ride wasn't too bad at all. i sat in the middle section of a large boeing 747 with the personalized tv screens. since there are four seats in the middle section and only me and this other person sitting there, i had a lot of room. the flight was about 10 hours to tokyo but it seemed shorter than that for some reason. maybe it was cuz i slept a little on the way.

the in-flight movies weren't that great. 50 first days with adam sandler and drew berrymore, some japanese movie called quills about a guide dog and his unsure owner, torque which i didn't watch at all, a french film called, chaos about a woman helping a prostitute get away from her pimp, peter pan which i didn't watch, some chinese movie that i didn't watch, and charlie's angels which i didn't watch either.

the meals weren't too bad. i do hate the smell eminating from the kitchen whenever they start cooking, oops, i mean heating up the meals. lunch was curry rice w/chicken, a red bean bun for snack, and dinner was ravioli w/ cream sauce (i took a lactaid pill) and fruit. on the tokyo-hk leg of the trip, i had another meal consisting of chicken w/rice and fruit jello.

i waited for about an 1:30 minutes at narita and then took a smaller plane (more crowded and less room) to hk. met mum at the aiport express station in central. walked outside and it was incredibly humid. i was sweating heavily by the time i arrived at my parents' flat just a little before 12 midnight.

my parents told me that i looked fat.

took a shower and had some congee, called deidra to tell her i've arrived safely, then went to bed. slept for about 8 hours. saw the scars from my dad's surgery and they looked pretty fucking gnarly. big cuts.

now it's about 3pm on the 15th of july. just had lunch with my sister (noodles and little dragon buns steamed) and is typing this at her work computer. i should get off now. not sure when i'll have a chance to blog again. my parents need internet access. what the fuck is that about? no internet access.