Tai Chi and apartment hunting

March 12 – Mondays & Fridays are the days they have Tai Chi classes at the community center down the street. I’ve been trying to go for a few weeks now, but something comes up or I forget. I’ve now put notes up all over the place to remind me to go. So this morning being Monday I finally got dressed & out the door in time for the class. When I got to the building I didn’t really know where to go, so I followed a man who looked like he was dressed for exercise. I ended up following him to the government tax office – oops. I went back downstairs & to the information desk at the back side of the building. I asked the young man were the Tai Chi class was. He had no idea what I was talking about. There was a cleaning lady there also. Both looked completely confused by my question. I repeated it more slowly “Where is the Tai Chi class?” Still blank looks. He said show me what you mean. So I did my best at demonstrating Tai Chi moves. He said “You mean Kung Fu?” I said “No, Tai Chi.” and did some moves again only very slowly. They both had a light go on & said “Oh, you mean Tai Gey, no Tai Chi.” He said, “Yes, Tai Gey in that room there, but not today, it cancel for today for some other thing going on.” Wouldn’t you know it. I finally get out & get there & find the place & it’s cancelled. Well at least I know where to go next time.

I went home & did my yoga CD which I figured as a fairly good substitute. I went into the office later in the day & asked them about the difference in the name. They said yes, he was correct, Tai Chi is English, in Chinese it is Tai Gey. I have a feeling the “Englishman” who came up with calling it Tai Chi, thought he was using a Chinese name. Oh well, now I know & so do you!!

While I was in the office Ruby asked me to help her with a project of finding a service apartment for visiting sales people. The lease on the corporate apartment we have now will be up in a few weeks, but people will still be coming over. There won’t be enough people often enough to need to have an apartment available all of the time, but they will be staying for a few weeks, so it is pretty expensive to go the hotel route. I thought this sounded like good project for me. She had a list of places & wanted to know if I would visit them & see which ones looked acceptable. This meant looking around new places that I’ve not been before, right up my alley.

I found one place that is only 2 MTR stops from work, the same stop I had to go to pay the electric bill for the office. For some reason John just got the first bill & it is a shut off notice. I guess there was some miscommunication somewhere along the line. They will not take credit cards, only cash. So I get this mission. I found the place just fine & the woman was very happy to take my cash (almost $1,000US). This area is called Shim Shui Po. John & I went here before to get the guitars for our Play Station Guitar Hero game. We did not walk around the area, just went straight to the mall with the video game stuff then home.

So this time I had a chance to check it out, being a weekday & not so many crowds. From the power company office to the service apartment I was looking at was probably about 10 blocks. I had to walk back to the MTR station & then 7 blocks in the other direction. This gave me a good opportunity to see what the area was like. The only way I can describe it is very very local. There are outdoor stalls selling everything from food to jewelry to shoes to pajamas. It is classic Hong Kong. There are mostly HK style food shops, that means noodles & fish balls. I didn’t see any other westerners there at all. It was fun to look around & see everything you can imagine for sale. There were even some old women emptying out bags of used stuff to sell. It was like a yard sale on the street.

As I got closer to the apartment building the area got more & more local looking. It was actually kind of dirty and run down. The apartment building itself was very new and nice, a sort of oasis. Right across the street was an elevated high way, that goes out to the airport & beyond that a park. I looked at the apartment & it was nice, but it made a big difference what side of the building you were on and how far up. Of course the higher floors are more expensive. I collected the managers card & told him I’d call.

I remembered that this area had a mall with an ice rink in it. This is one of the rinks where the youth hockey team plays. You know me & hockey, I had to check it out. The mall was about half way between the apartment & the MTR down a side street. It is called The Dragon Center & it has a huge lit up dragon on the front. It is a very tall building (I learned later it is 10 stories high) & circular. It took some looking but I found a directory & saw that they ice rink was on the 9th floor, interesting – guess they don’t worry about melting & leaking. I took the escalators up so I could see what else was here. This shopping center seemed to be a maze of tiny shops selling just about everything you could imagine. Mostly fashion accessories & clothes & food. The rink was on the next to top floor. It was relatively small with a low ceiling. The most interesting thing about it was the bright yellow track that wound around the ceiling. I figured out that this was part of the indoor roller coaster that starts at the top floor & winds around the top 2 floors. It was not working when I was there, but I’d sure like to see it. The hockey shop was the size of a large closet (like most shops in HK). I asked if they rented hockey skates & after some confusions about what I meant the answer was yes. They said there are certain times when you are not allowed on the ice with hockey skates though. That didn’t really make sense to me, but I guess they have their reasons. So I’m happy now, I’ve seen all the rinks there are in HK (that I know about anyway). It figures that they play hockey at the worst one. If you live in Charlotte, I can only say that this one makes the rink at Eastland Mall look really good!

When I went back to the office the next day & told the women where I’d looked at the apartment, they were horrified. They said it was not a good area because that is where the prostitutes from mainland China live & work. They said it is OK during the day, but it would be a very bad place to have any people living in an apartment. They laughed that I liked it & spent so much time wandering around. They said the only good thing about the area is The Dragon Center & that is not very nice anymore. I guess that area is known for it’s accessory markets & haberdashery (ribbons, buttons, thread) shops. At least I got a chance to explore another part of HK.