Grey Mornings

Pretty grey kinda morning, isn't it.

But in Hong Kong, you never know how the weather for the day will turn out - it could start like this and end up being super sunny. I have a rule for dressing here - I look at the humidity first. If the humidity is/will be over 80%, it's summer dress time. If the humidity is under 80%, only then do I pay attention to the temperature.

For example, today, according to Google Weather, will be 91% humidity at 11am. Ignore the fact that it is 20 degrees - a dress and jacket will suffice. However, know that if you do follow my rule and wear clothes that won't have you sweating profusely, you will stand out. (Well, more than I already stand out as a non-Asian). All the local students will be in jeans and puffer jackets of the kind similar to those worn by trendy Koreans during the snowy Korean winter. I guess if you have always lived with humidity, you don't feel it so much. But I, who have only ever known Adelaide's dry heat (bar one ridiculously humid week in Panama), am just not used to it.

Movie Night

So, Wednesday night is movie night here at Morningside College, and tonight we watched that seminal American tale One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I read the book years ago, and while I was in high school the year 12 drama students did a performance of it, which was absolutely brilliant. So, seeing the movie for the first time, finally, was excellent.

In the Tower Block (where I live) on the Upper Ground Floor we have a TV Room with lots of comfy sofas and armchairs and a big flatscreen TV. Anyone in the college can use the TV room, unless it has been booked for an event.  Once Lavinia (an exchange student from Melbourne) and I tried to watch a movie from her hard drive (because the TV has a USB port), but we couldn't quite get it to work. The TV has regular HK channels, but there is information circulating about the possibility of getting cable channels, depending on the cost and if the college can find the money for it. The package being considered is the NOW TV Sports package, which has the rights for the English Premier League and the FA Cup, as well as other channels like Discovery Channel and Al Jazeera English. So, perhaps by the time next semester rolls around, you'll have cable!

The guy who organised the Movie Night, Edwin (a local student, pretty sure he's a graduate student...) bought a DVD player and a speaker to play tonight's movie, so I guess that's the most reliable option. And because he applied for funding for the movie nights, we had snacks (chips, Pocky, Maltesers etc), plus juice, and even a bottle of red AND a bottle of white! Of course, those who didn't think to bring wine glasses drank red wine from plastic cups. After the movie he asked us that if we had any requests for what we would like to watch next week, then just send him an email and he will try to find it. He gets the DVDs from United College's Media Library, so it's all legal and above board for the college to have us all sit around using college property to watch movies.

Normally I wouldn't be able to make the movie night because I have Kung Fu lessons on Wednesday nights, but I didn't go this week because I am sort-of getting over/sort-of still in the midst of a cold (blocked sinuses, in case you were wondering), so two hours of martial arts was just not going to happen.

Back soon!

Look what I bought at New Town Plaza today! Very excited...



So, I didn't intend to buy a computer today, but I'm glad I did. Today I planned to meet my friend Aimee (we did Japanese together at the beginning of the semester before I got politely kicked-out) for lunch. So we went to Sha Tin and had takoyaki and omraisu, and talked about how she wants to transfer out of Bachelor of Business Administration (pretty much the most popular degree at CUHK) into.... Bachelor of Lingustics!

Anyway, after we had a good chat, we went window shopping and I came across this little Vaio in Fortress (kinda like the Hong Kong version of Harvey Norman or Dick Smith) for $3,980 (just under $500AUD). Although it just has a 1.75GHz AMD processor and a smaller-size keyboard, I was pretty sold on the other features: the 1-Year International warranty, 500GB HDD, the fact it is pink, the fact it is Sony and therefore durable/reliable, and the fact that the main reason for buying a laptop is for me to write essays and watch drama - nothing more. By going with a local, Aimee also helped me to get two document holders (why they are 'The Little Prince' themed I don't know), a laptop sleeve, an 8GB USB, and a set of speakers - just casually THROWN IN FOR FREE! So I'm glad I didn't end up shelling out over $1000AUD for a replacement MacBook, and after my little Vaio is up and running, I'll get back to posting regularly.


Macbooks and Taxis at 5am

The main reason I haven't updated this blog in a week is because my Macbook, after 5 years of failthful service, has finally given up the ghost. I killed the battery about a year ago by leaving the poor thing on standby for a week, and on Monday night the hard drive died. After making an appointment for the Genius Bar online, I took it in to the Apple store in Causeway Bay (Exit F1, and you WILL have to walk down a long corridoor underground with no ventilation - not good when humidity is at 85%). The store is open until 11pm on weekdays, which is extremely convenient, and you can make appointments up until 9:45pm. The 'Genius' sales assistant said they could replace the battery and the hard drive, give it the new Mac OS (what is it now, 10.7? 10.8?) for $3300, which I thought was pretty reasonable. But then I pointed out that my Mac has only 1GB of RAM, so wouldn't the new OS chew through that pretty quickly, leaving exactly no room for Apps? "Oh yeah. Well, you'll have to buy new RAM then" says the Genius. But he was nice about it and recommended I go to 298 Computer Zone on Hennessey Road and buy it there (which I later walked to and found it is a huge electronics building with lots of tiny shops and lots of good deal to be had... if you know exactly what you are looking for). And if I wanted I could also buy the hard drive there, and Apple would install the new OS for me and only charge for labour. The thing is, my Mac currently has trouble playing videos over 720dpi, so I would have to look at a new graphics card too (if that is even possible).

BUT, my Mac is the 2007 second generation Intel-procesor WHITE Macbook. Today, all Macbooks - Air or Pro - have the most boring, most impersonal, grey-and-black colour scheme. So... if I have time time and inclination, I might try and source some parts to just keep my darling alive, but when I return to Hong Kong I'll go to Computer Zone and see what I can find in terms of light, fast netbooks that can play all my movies (that I keep on my external hard drive) and that I can use for uni work.

Which brings me to my next point... I might not update for the next week because I'll be in Japan! For family who read this, I'll be posting on Facebook while I am away. But one last note about Hong Kong before I leave.

Next week is Lunar New Year - the one week of holidays I have all semester. I had booked flights to go to Japan before I left Australia, because this THE busiest time of the year to travel in north Asia. Last year I was in Korea in January and I had to change my flight to return home earlier than planned - ALL flights on Cathay Pacific that week (it was Lunar New Year) were booked out - except Business Class. But that's another story! So, knowing my flight was leaving HK at 8:30am, meaning I had to be checking in at 6:30, I decided to book a taxi for 5:30. The long and the short of it: because I had been told there are no taxis really available that early, I booked a taxi to pick me up at the Taxi Stand of University Station at 5:30. I was at the taxi stand at 5am. I stood there for 15 minutes, and in that time 3 taxis showed up. By the time a fourth taxi (a green one - the ones that are cheaper because they only service the Airport and the New Territories), I called the taxi company to cancel my taxi and just got in the one available.

SO, moral of the story - taxis are available, but I would suggest just get to a MTR station taxi stand early and wait. There will be taxis pulling in even at 5am.

OK, I'm off to Japan. Happy Lunar New Year everyone!

Veggie Dinners - Herbivores

On Friday night Emilia, Maria, Rebecca and myself had dinner at The Herbivores, a small vegetarian/vegan place in Central.

It was realtively easy to find, but note that walking from Central Station to Herbivores will take you up several hills at a 45 to 55 degree angle. If you are wearing shoes like this:

make sure to bring someone to hold on to for the walk.

(I swear I actually saw a lady wearing these shoes the other day!  They could have been imitation Louboutins, but with two concept stores and 11 retailers in Hong Kong, I'm inclined to believe they were real).

This review notes that Herbivores is small - and it is. When we arrived at about 8:30pm, the inside table (tables? I didn't venture inside, but the shop is quite narrow and I only saw one long table in the middle of the shop with about 10 people) were full, so the four of us sat at the single outdoor table.

The food was good, but the prices for a main meal started at $148. When you live on campus and a meal and dessert and a drink doesn't even total $50, you forget what the price of a 'normal' dinner is.

I ordered a rice omelette, made with mushrooms and served with a pasta-style tomato sauce. The parsley belonged back on the tree though, not on my plate.

We spent dinner talking about the finer points of second language acquisition in bilingual environments (like Sweden) as opposed to monolingual environments (like the US or Australia), and about how burnt Emilia got on her hike that day.

Although the dessert options were tempting, we walked back down the hill to one of my new favourite places - Yoppi - for make-it-mix-it-yourself frozen yoghurt.

Closing remarks: I had bought the bag earlier that day from H&M. I would like to revise my earlier comments on shopping - if you go to the H&M at Sha Tin on a weekday as soon as it opens (at 10:30), you won't have to wait for a changeroom. I bought two dresses and a bag within an hour. Excellent.

Tai O and the Big Buddha

Today IASP had organised for us a tour to Lantau Island to visit Tai O village and to have a vegetarian lunch at the Po Lin Monastery. We had to meet at the Pi Chu Building at Central Campus (a 10 minute walk from my dorm) at 9am, which was not so easy for a Saturday morning. All the tours organised so far have used consistently nice coach buses (sometimes the air-conditioning can make the bus resemble Antarctica) but this time our tour guide talked REALLY loudly on her microphone the whole 1.5 hour trip to Tai O (our first stop) so only the very determined managed to catch up on some sleep.

Some things I learned from Hilary-the-tour-guide's LOUD talking.

1. Lantau Island is where the Hong Kong Airport is, and where the world's smallest Disneyland is (actually, I knew this already. Actually, we all knew this already. Tour guides just like to remind us.) 

2. Hong Kong comprises 236 islands - Lantau is the largest (which I found surprising because I thought Hong Kong Island was the largest... but I was wrong)

3. Statues of the Buddha have him with one hand facing palm outward (like waving 'hello') which means "do not fear", and the other resting on the knee with palm up meaning "peace to all the people of the world".

4. There is only one bridge going to Lantau Island, and even the Airport Express has its own area of the bridge. If there is a typhoon, the upper level of the bridge is closed (because cars can get damaged) and only the lower level is open. If the typhoon is category 10, then the whole bridge is closed and the only way to the airport is on the train!

Tai O is a tiny tiny fishing village on the west coast of Lantau Island. Here are some photos.

The residential area of Tai O, where people live in houses on stilts because they feel closer to the sea (says Hilary)

Korean Megan (민경) who is also my neighbour at Morningside, and Finnish Katrin.

We had about an hour and an half to look around, so we did, but didn't buy much. There was a lot of live seafood, and a lot of dried seafood, and a lot of pickled seafood... you get the idea.

Trying to be artistic, I took this photo because I liked the contrast of the 50s-style glass engraving on the window as contrasted against the iron sheets.

While walking through the market I heard some distinctly French piano-accordion music, and when we investigated we found a cafe - "Cafe Solo" 86 Kat Hing Front, Tai O - with some tables looking over the water.

I had the red bean and green tea cake, and Katrin had the cheesecake.

The view from the cafe. Because Chinese New Year is in less than two weeks time, there are red lanterns and red banners everywhere.

After Tai-O we got back on the bus to go to have our lunch at the Po Lin Buddhist Monastery. It was quite nice - typical banquet-style vegetarian Chinese food, but with circular tables of about 12 people and no lazy susan in the middle to move the food around, it was kind of awkward. 

At the monastery there is the Big Buddha.

And yes, I did walk all the way up there, but I don't have any good photos closer to the Buddha because the sun was behind the statue.

This is one of the six smaller statues facing the Big Buddha.

There is a 3-level exhibition hall inside the Big Buddha, and many old doors leading inside that are no-longer used.

Although there was a ton of people all visiting the Buddha, sometimes you get lucky and get a photo that makes it look like you are the only one there. (Thank you Megan!)

By 3pm we were all exhausted, and thankfully Hilary didn't talk on the bus on the way back to the University. Most of us slept.

So, although it was a little touristy, I did enjoy today's excursion. I also highly recommend that if you do want to go to Tai O and the Monastery, go with a tour because the area is really isolated and there isn't much public transport.