Feb 2 - 7, 2007 Super Bowl & other fun things

Feb 2 Friday – New Office

We took the MTR to the new office. It is on Kowloon-side (instead of just saying HK or Kowloon, they always say HK-side or Kowloon-side, goes way back). The MTR stop is pretty far out, but John will not have to change lines, so that is good. He will catch the MTR at the first stop on the way in, so he should be able to get a seat. I’m going to miss my bus ride, but it will give me a chance to learn about a new area. The office is just 2 blocks from the MTR station which is great. The area is definitely not as nice as where we are now, but the building is nice. Karen & Ruby were excited because they said there were lots of HK style restaurants nearby. They said that meant noodle & soup places.

We are on the 15th floor & the windows look out on a hill-side, but there is some construction & a highway between the office & the hillside, so it isn’t really very scenic. At least there are windows. They had to sign lots of contracts & then we went & they picked out furniture. We were going to rent furniture for a month or 2 until some stuff is delivered from the states, but it turns out it is cheaper to buy it then rent it.

I noticed a nice plant/flower store a block from the building, so maybe I’ll get some plants for the place & liven it up. Our current office doesn’t even have any pictures on the wall.

When the business was finished it was quitting time so we headed home. We get off the MTR & then have to catch the bus to our apartment. Between the MTR station & the bus stop we have to pass through Pacific Place which is a large mall. Most stuff there is very expensive. In fact I checked out a real La Sportsac bag like the fake one I got at the street market for less then US$10 & it was US$80. How ridiculous!! It was dinner time & John was in the mood for Thai soup & I wanted just Chinese soup. The mall has a food court that we’d never been to before so we tried it out. Turned out to be pretty inexpensive (US$4.50) for our respective soups & they were really good. This is why I don’t bother cooking very often.

Feb 3 Saturday – Peak & cooking

John had to go into work in the morning, so I took the opportunity to do my Morning Trail walk again. I did much better this time, but still sucking some wind going up. It was a gorgeous day & I had nothing to do so I decided to just take it easy. I spoke to a man from Holland who was here for 2 days on a stopover from China. He sells agricultural additives for cows. He said it is horrible how the Chinese don’t care anything about the environment. This seems to be what most foreign business people say. John read something that said of the people who die each year from pollution related deaths, half are Chinese. I think HK is trying to improve, but Mainland just doesn’t care I guess. I guess that it how it is with developing countries, they are more interested in the immediate results & income, not the long term effects of their actions.

Saturday was much busier than previous days especially at the Lung Fu Shan Park. Since it was lunch time there were lots of people with picnics and kids all over. It was nice to sit there & enjoy the families. I met a young woman who was also on a stopover from Australia where she’d been studying for a year. She was German and we had a great conversation. She was surprised how nice HK was & glad she had 3 days here before going back. She was especially enjoying the warm weather because it is very cold where she was heading in Germany.

When John got home we decided to try our hand at some home cooking. John is obsessed with this Thai soup called Tom Yam Kum. It is a hot & spicy & sour seafood soup. I had a recipe from a book & when I went to the store, they had a packet in the produce aisle that had everything all in one package with a short recipe on the back. I thought that was pretty cool. We also decided to try our hand at some Japanese cooking. Our favorite Japanese restaurant here makes 2 things we love. They both are very thin slices of beef that get stuffed with either straw mushrooms or chives & roasted garlic. I got the ingredients, but I’m sure the beef was not the quality of what they use at the restaurant. We spent the evening cooking & the results were not good. John said the soup was missing some very particular flavor that makes it so special. The beef rolls were OK, but nothing like the restaurant. I’m sure they use lots of butter & special sauces to make the great flavor. It was fun trying.

We spent some time playing guitar hero. If you haven’t heard of this video game, you need to check it out. The boys had it over Christmas & it is a blast. It is on Play Station 2 & your controller is actually a guitar that plugs into the system. If you’ve ever seen the dance game (Dance Dance Revolution), it is like that. On the screen notes come up & you have to press them down on the fret & strum the strum switch. The songs are mostly good old time rock & roll tunes that are really fun to play. There are several levels, so even us old folks could be successful on the easy level. We did find out that you only start out with 5 songs (out of a possible 47) and you have to unlock the other songs by “beating” the first songs. For every 5 you beat you get 5 more. BUT to unlock all of them, you have to go to Medium level & that is a lot harder. So we are having fun being rock stars. If you have kids that are teens or young adults, I’m sure they know all about this and have probably mastered the expert level.

Feb 4 Sunday – Flower Market

Since Sunday is the only day John gets off, we are usually pretty lazy in the morning. I made omelets & we read the paper & drank coffee. John had to meet someone coming over from Thailand who is going to spend the week here, so I called Sophia (my friend from the office) to see what she was up to. She & her boyfriend, Eric, were heading to the Flower Market to get New Year’s flowers. I was just there last week, but I never turn down an opportunity to go somewhere with Sophia. Being a local, she always makes the experience special. This also gives me a chance to ask her all the questions I have about everything. She is so patient & fun.

We met at the MTR station on HK-side. I had to wait quite a while in the station for them & while there I was looking at a poster about places to see in HK & what MTR station gets you there. One of the locations was the Kowloon Walled City Park. I thought I’d been to this when I was here last April. There is a park near the harbor along Nathan Rd, called Kowloon Park & I thought they were one in the same. WELL, they are NOT! I was very glad I had the time to look at this poster to realize I’d missed one of the key parks in HK. I added it to my MUST SEE list.

We took the train to the flower market. The first thing Sophia did was to get a sweet potato from a street vendor. I have been fascinated by these guys, but always afraid to try one. They have these huge cooper kettles filled with hot coals & they roast yams & nuts & sell them in bags. I guess they have a cooker or something under the kettle to keep the coals hot. It always smells so good when you pass them, but they look kind of sketchy, so I never was sure it was safe. Sophia assured me they are very safe & that I needed to make sure to get the purple yams, they are sweeter. I have never heard of purple yams, but that is what she got & we shared it. It was delicious. I also bought what looked like roasted almonds, but they didn’t taste anything like almonds. They were not too good. I should have gotten the chestnuts. I started to eat the skin of the yam & Sophia scolded me & said that it probably wasn’t a good idea to eat that since the outside might not be clean. I figured since it was so hot, the coals would burn anything bad off, but I didn’t want to upset Sophia, so I didn’t eat any more skin.

I got to ask her all about the special flowers for the New Year. Pretty much anything gold color is good luck because it is the color of money (yellow & orange are considered close enough to gold to be lucky also). Round & gold is especially lucky. So the plants you need to get are little orange trees covered with oranges (kumquats I think are what they are & little mandarin orange trees). Also, forced bulbs are really popular. I’m sure they are paperwhites or daffodils. It is the year of the pig coming up, so there was lots of pig planters & figurines to buy. There is this one fruit that is bright yellow & very strangely shaped that is especially lucky. I got a small bunch of these in a little pig pot for our apartment. Sophia approved. She got some bulbs, Eric paid. He is so nice, but very quiet. They are really fun to be with.

They were telling me about New Year’s traditions and what to & buy. If you recall the guy at our apartment said that after eating New Year’s Eve dinner people go to Victoria Park to New Year’s shop. Well, Sophia & Eric said the same thing. They said if you wait until the vendors are about to close you can get really good deals. They said last year Eric got a great deal on a plant because he went to the vendor at 3:30am. They said people will stay up shopping all night & the shops don’t close until the wee hours in the morning. I think I can manage without getting a deal like that. I enjoy this street shopping thing, but not enough to stay up that late, but we’ll see. I’m wondering if it is like New Year’s Eve in the USA where people stay up & party all night. I thought that was really funny.

After walking around for a few hours Eric was off to have dinner with some friends. Sophia wanted to do some shopping along the huge street market in Mong Kok (which I was not in the mood for, even with Sophia, just too many people), and I was heading back to have dinner with John & the guy in from Bangkok. We met at the escalator and he ended up choosing a Vietnamese/Thai restaurant that I’ve read about in the restaurant review magazine, so I was glad to go there. I tried a dish called seafood laska. Jim said it is a Malaysian dish, but often eaten in Vietnam. It was good, but had lots of coconut milk in the sauce. I’m not a huge fan of coconut milk, a little too sweet for my taste. We had some great Thai spring rolls that are wrapped in rice paper, very thin wrap & filled with nice crunchy veggies. Passed on the desserts.

When we got home I decided to make a pie that I had promised to make for another guy (our Cadmus guy) coming in from Bangkok, Meenawat. Meenawat lived in the states for 15 years (he’s only 27) & was telling me how much he missed pumpkin pie. His birthday is later this month, so I promised him I’d make him a pumpkin pie when he came. He is only going to be here Mon. & Tues. so I didn’t have a lot of time. I bought a oven thermometer while I was at home in the US, so I could better regulate the temperature. As it turns out the conversion & the actual temperature were way off. Not sure if you remember last time I tried baking pies they took like 2 hours or more to bake. This time I had the temp right & they took the normal time. Glad I got that part figured out.

Feb 5 Monday – Super Bowl, pie, Cadmus Dinner

If you are wondering why I made the pie last night & not just wait until the morning, it is because we had a date with the Super Bowl. Being 13 hours ahead of the eastern US, the game started over here at 7:00am. I had noticed last week that our favorite British Pub just around the corner from the office, Delaney’s, was opening early & showing the Super Bowl live. Since John hadn’t seen a football game all season, he was anxious to go. I had gotten to see several of the playoff games, so I had sort of gotten to know the teams.

I got there a little early because I thought it might be crowded, it wasn’t. Many tables were filled, but there were still some good ones left. They were serving a British breakfast (lots of meat & grease), so I opted out. Most people were Americans & were having liquid breakfast (bloody mary’s & screwdrivers & beer). We had tea & coffee. We are so boring, but John had to go to work afterwards & I must be getting old, but alcohol from breakfast just doesn’t appeal to me.

It was fun watching the game with a crowd. The group was fairly evenly mixed between the Bears & Colts, but the Bears fans were louder, well until it became obvious they were going to lose. We were cheering for the Colts, so were happy with the results.

Monday night was the company New Year’s dinner. We went back to the Korean BBQ place that we went to for the company Christmas dinner. I guess everyone liked it. That was the dinner where a few employees consumed mass quantities of sake & put on a good show from the crowd (that would be Steve, who is back in the states). This dinner was also very fun and got pretty loud as well. This time I think it was the plum wine & not the sake that was at fault. I know that was what did it for me. I really need to remember that I should just stick to beer. It was fun & there was more food than we knew what to do with. I’m not sure how this Korean BBQ works, but they just keep brining more & more platters of food. We had a lucky draw, which is door prizes. There were enough for everyone to win something. I brought out the pumpkin pie with candles & a crown for Meenawat. Everyone seemed to think it was excellent. It is so easy to please people who can’t get pie. I just used the recipe off the can & premade crust – how much easier can it be? Hopefully we made all the right toasts for the New Year so that Cadmus will have a lucky year. There was a lot of toasting going on!

Feb 6 Tues – More pie, the Peak, the bank

Despite the late & drunk night before, I was up at 6am & went to the store to get apples for an apple pie. This was Meenawat’s other request & since he was leaving tonight I figured I’d just get it done early. I met up with my friend, Sarah, at 11:30am. She is the woman I met at the Delhi, India airport & we’ve become friends & have had several lunches together. We have been in touch via email & she has to return to the States next week for a trail (she’s a lawyer) that she thought would settle out of court, but now isn’t. She’s been working non-stop on this case, but needed a day away, so wanted to try my new walk to the Peak.

She is in much better shape than I am. She didn’t seem winded by the climb. She explained that her last apartment (they just moved Feb 1) was 7 rooms & 7 stories, so she did a lot of climbing all day long. The apartment was also on a hill, so to go anywhere she said it was all up & down. We had a 1pm reservation at the Peak Lookout restaurant. This restaurant has been in the same location for I think 60 years. Neither of us had been there before, but it is a big tourist place. We had an outside table & it was a very pleasant afternoon. The service was very slow, but we were not in a hurry. Amazingly enough we never run out of things to talk about. We are a lot alike & found out we are even the same age. I think we were destined to meet.

The menu was culturally very varied. We both opted for soup & salad. Got Thai spring rolls to share. I got asparagus cappuccino (strange name) & spinach salad, she got a spicy Thai salad & mushroom soup. I only mention what we got because the bill was so ridiculous. When you are converting currency sometimes it is hard to realize exactly what the conversion is until after you’ve paid. I realized that it came to about US$30 each for soup & salad. We won’t be going back there any time soon. Maybe with some special visitors. The funny thing is, there isn’t even a view because the trees are grown up so high. It was fun & I’m glad we did it. We had a nice walk down & I showed her our apartment. I’m really bummed that she goes back home next week & will likely be gone a month, maybe more. We are getting to be such good friends. Guess I’ll just have to find some other friends.

I headed into the office with the pie & got some ice cream on the way in. Everyone enjoyed it. I didn’t have any. I had an errand to run for the office. I am the Cadmus delivery/fetch person. They needed me to go to the bank (Bank of America) to pick up some checks. I wasn’t completely clear about exactly what I was doing. I thought I was to get some checks that had been delivered to the bank, sign them over & have them deposited into our account. The only time I’ve been to the bank before it was to deposit checks. So I went to the bank, it is about 20 minutes away. I was told to go to the 9th floor. I went to the 9th floor & tried to explain what I was there for. They said I needed to go to the 17th floor. That is a different elevator, so I had to go back to the 1st floor & get the other elevator to the 17th floor. When I got to the 17th floor, they didn’t know what I was talking about. I called Karen at the office to have her explain what I was doing there. It turns out that I didn’t understand my mission. I guess we don’t have checks that we can write against our account, so the bank has to do them for us. I was there to pick up checks being written out of our account to pay our vendors. The woman on the 17th floor called someone on the 9th floor & then said to go back down there & they would know what to do.

Back to the 1st floor to catch the other elevator to the 9th floor again. I went to a different desk which looked more official. I explained what I was there for. This woman had no idea what I was talking about. I called Karen again & she explained. The woman went away for a few minutes, then came back & sent me back to the desk I’d been at the very first time (still on the 9th floor fortunately). They had no idea what I was talking about. Called Karen again. Thank goodness for cell phones & Karen. She explained AGAIN & they finally knew what I was there for & they were very very apologetic. They gave me a stack of checks, which is when I realized exactly what I was doing there. We speak the same language, but sometimes the ideas just don’t get across because things are done so differently that it just isn’t in my mind set to think of this.

This is funny to think about afterwards, but it is very frustrating when you are trying to make yourself understood, trying to describe something you don’t really understand. I find that happens to me a lot. I am sent on errands with what I think is all the info I’ll need, but it isn’t. There is something missing so I can’t accomplish the task successfully. It gets discouraging & extremely frustrating. Things are just done differently, guess that is the cultural differences that cause problems between cultures.