Jan 31 - The Zoo, HK Park & Won Ton Soup

Jan 27 to 31 – readjusting to HK:

I’ve been back almost a week & have felt kind of lost. It was strange being back here & it took me a few days to feel like I belonged. I guess some of that was jet lag & some because I’m not really working full-time at the office, so I feel a need to find some direction.

We had a quiet weekend. Saturday I was up early, but felt pretty tired all day & useless. I did go visit the concierge desk in the apartment building & learned all about the Chinese (Lunar) New Year. I had forgotten how nice they are at the desk. They are always volunteering interesting information on customs & culture.

Chinese New Year:
The buildings are all decorated up for the New Year (which is Feb 18). It is a huge deal, but the decorations are not as over the top at for Christmas. There are red lanterns hanging all over & fake strings of fire crackers. Lots of red ribbon & pigs (this will be the year of the pig). Also, peach blossom branches are traditional decorations. Everything here is for good luck & good fortune. I was told that I needed to go to the flower market & get 3 kinds of plants: peach blossom, narcissus, and kumquat, these all bring your house good luck.. You also give out red packets (envelopes) with money in them to everyone you see (I think people you know) over the New Year time (it lasts about 2 weeks). I guess it doesn’t have to be very much, but everyone expects it, it brings them good fortune. People are very excited about the red packets & you can buy the packets everywhere. The greeting you say for the New Year is: Kung Hei Fat Choy (which I guess means good fortune to you). When someone says this to you you are supposed to give them a red packet.

On New Year’s Eve (Feb 17) everyone goes & has dinner with their family at 7pm. At 8p I was told everyone goes to Victoria Park for New Year’s shopping (it is a national pastime here, I swear). New Year’s day everything will be closed & people spend time with family & play mahjong. The day after New Year’s there will be fireworks in the harbor. Many stores are closed for several days & the offices are closed for 4 days. In mainland China everything is closed for 2 weeks so people can travel home to see family. The say the air really clears up during this time because all of the factories are closed. That will be nice!

Sunday:
Sunday I talked John into going out to the gold fish, flower & bird markets. It was a nice day, cool finally, but still t-shirt weather. Sunday is not the day to go to the markets, too many people. I think I’ve talked about the gold fish market before. They have plastic bags of fish hanging outside of the stores. Looks pretty uncomfortable for the poor fish. There are lots of different types of turtles for sale also in a variety of sizes. We went to a 2nd floor store that had all reptiles – turtles, lizards, snakes. It was pretty interesting. There were some really large turtles.

The flower market was packed & sure enough they had lots of the 3 plants I was told I needed to get. We didn’t buy any. My luck with plants is not good. We didn’t end up buying any birds either, although it is tempting when you see how beautiful they are & how crowded into those little cages they are.

We ventured on to the electronic market (another street in the area, just over from the Ladies market & the sports market, this is all in Mong Kok). John wanted to see if he could find a guitar for a video game we’d gotten for Christmas. The boys hooked us on guitar hero. I have never liked any video games, but this one is fun. You actually play a guitar to some great rock & roll tunes. It’s like that dance dance revolution game, but with a guitar. We went into a ton of stores, but no video games. They finally sent us a few subway stops to a computer arcade (multi story electronics mall). This was absolutely nuts. The place was packed so full of people that you literally could not move. The only way you got anywhere was by wedging yourself between 2 people & you got pulled along with the sea of people. When you saw a place you wanted to go to, you had to push yourself away from the crowd & escape to the desk. I’ll not go back there again on a Sunday. After going to about 8 booths, each one saying they were out, but the next booth over definitely had them, we found our guitar & got out of there.

The subway home was amazingly crowded, as bad as weekday rush hour. This is why I go hiking on Sundays instead of shopping. We stopped on our way home & had dinner at the little Nepalese restaurant I’ve been to before. We were not disappointed. They did have a new beer (last time it was Everest beer) from Nepal, Gorkha. See if you can find that at your local store? I’ve decided to start collecting beer bottles from all the different countries I’ve been to (actual or virtual – via restaurants). I have Poland & Nepal so far.

Mon:
Monday John left for Bangkok & Malaysia. I unpacked & grocery shopped & just kind of organized myself on Mon & Tues. I did a lot of thinking about what I will do with my time now that I won’t be putting in 50 plus hour weeks for Cadmus. Several things came to mind: cooking classes, language classes (although I’ve been told by many people that Cantonese is a very difficult language for westerners & unless I’m going to be here for many years, probably not worth trying), yoga classes, herbal medicine, acupuncture, volunteer work. I’ve been interested in Heifer International lately, especially since I helped (very minimally) my sister-in-law, Kathleen, raise $19,000 last year. She was really an inspiration to me & I felt like that was an organization that makes a lot of sense. I found their office in HK & called them. I arranged for a meeting on Wed. I was feeling like I was getting some direction.

Tues:
Although it isn’t really cold out, 60’s is a bit chilly for inside for long period of time. At night it is getting into the 50’s. I thought our A/C units were also heaters, but they are not. So as it turns out, our apartment has not heat. This is very common, very few building are heated. After being really uncomfortable Monday evening I went down to the mall to the big electronic store & purchased a little portable heater. I also found myself a yoga mat. I’ve been doing a yoga DVD that I really like & the mat makes it a lot easier. So that was a successful trip. I had planned to go to the post office also, but the only one I knew about was across the main road & I couldn’t figure out how to get to it. Typical of large cities, sometimes there is just no easy way to get from here to there. I postponed the post office for tomorrow. Just to get those few items took me the best part of the afternoon. Taking the bus & trying to find the right building, then the store, then the item. It can be really confusing & time consuming. I was much more comfortable Tuesday night in front of my little heater.

Wed:
By Wed. I was starting to feel some cabin fever, felt the need to walk. I have to say, it is so funny to see how the people here deal with their winter. I don’t think it has gotten below 60 & people are wearing ski jackets & hats & gloves & scarves. When I went into the office the other day, they said “See Becky, it does get really cold here. You see how cold it is today?” I was wearing a light blouse & sweater. I said, “last week I was skiing & it was 4 degrees, I’m sorry, but this is NOT COLD to me!” They agreed that I may not find it as cold as they do. Then there are the people who wear ski jackets & have sandals on their feet. It’s just so funny.

After doing some reading on finances (I’ve promised to start keeping better track of our finances & hopefully venture into some investing so that we can retire before we are 80) in the morning I headed out to the post office. I decided to walk through the HK Zoological & botanical park. John & I had been there once before, it isn’t but about a 20 minute walk from here. I enjoyed watching 2 really long armed & legged monkeys swing around in their cage. They would hang from a rope with one arm & twist the other arm behind their back & the wipe it around so they would twirl really fast. It looked like kids on a swing. I went through the green house which had lots of orchids. Then I crossed the street to HK Park. I had been here only once before, to the aviary. I pass this park every day on the way to work, so I have been anxious to see it. It was wonderful. They have a visual arts center (I need to go back & see the exhibit), the aviary, a conservator with herbs & plants, 3 large ponds (they call them lakes), a few water falls, a tower you can climb, a memorial to health care workers who died working with SARS patients, many gardens, a children’s play area, & lots of fountains. It was very peaceful & right next to down town. I’m glad I finally got there, I’ll be back.

I found a post office on my map that was between the park & the office, so I walk to it. The post offices are really confusing because they do more than just mail. I think people can pay bills & take care of lots of other business. I’ve never been to one that wasn’t very crowded with long lines. From the post office I walked to the Heifer International office (a few blocks beyond the Cadmus office).

They greeted me joyously. I’m guessing they don’t get many volunteers. I completed an application & before I was done, they already had me signed up for a project. There is a program called “Read to Feed” that they sponsor. They partner with primary schools & the kids raise money from family & friends for every book that they read & the money goes to sponsor a Heifer project. The school gets to follow the project. There are many projects in China so it is a good connection. What they want me to help with is going out to the schools & promoting the program. They asked if I liked working with children? I almost laughed. It seems like a perfect fit to me. I’m going to accompany the woman who is in charge of the program to a school on Feb 16. I said I only speak English & they said that is fine, most of the schools are international schools & the Chinese schools like to have English speakers come visit. Guess I’m in at Heifer. I felt really good about doing this. I think I’ll enjoy it.

I went into the office after that to meet with Sophia to go out for dinner with her. She’s so sweet. Whenever John is traveling, she always asks me to join her for dinner at least one night. She took me to a craft store. There are not many of these in HK. They have classes, so maybe that is another thing I can do. We had dinner at a small won ton soup place along the street. It is the type of place you wouldn’t even notice if you didn’t know it was there. They seat you at any empty seat, so we were at a table for 4 with 2 people we didn’t know. Sophia ordered me soup with fish balls & sea weed. She wanted me to get fried fish skin with it also, but I passed on that. I told her maybe next time. For my drink I got water cress & honey with lemon. I had no idea what it was but it sounded good. It turned out to taste like southern sweet tea with lots of lemon in it. It was really sweet. The soup was good, but I think I’ll pass on the fish balls next time. They were white fairly tasteless spongy balls. They were almost the consistency of very firm tofu. The woman at our table get fish wedges that were a yellow color. I was asking Sophia about them & she offered me a taste of hers. How nice is that? I refused gracefully & said I’d just get them next time. I will say the won tons were superior, whole shrimp & diced pork. The noodles were good too.

After dinner we went to the western grocery store, City Super (remember that one?). I needed to get some pumpkin & pie crust. Meenawat (our man in Bangkok) is coming next week & he has requested that I made some pumpkin pie. Got to keep the employees happy!!

By the time I got home, my feet were killing me. I’m not sure how many miles I walked, but it was a lot. Got to get back into my city walking mode. I got lazy over the holidays. I was ready for bed & didn’t even need to put on my heater.