So I spent Chinese New Years in Singapore (funny how this is my 4th CNY after I moved to HK yet I’ve still only spent one CNY in HK) and as expect everything closed. There was abit of food places open the eve of and on the day of only because I lived in the city, but it was pretty dead the first day as everyone was busy with family events etc.

While I was on the subway to the airport to pick Ema up, some woman’s snot landed on my hand… so that was a not so good start to my year.

The rest of the holidays were spent sightseeing in SG (as this was Ema’s first time) and we watched a few movies (Shaolin and Burlesque). We also walked to Sentosa Island and randomly went to Universal Studios… which was SO TINY. Most of the rides are just the same ones found at other Universals. I think we walked around the park 3 times and preety much went on every ride.

before Lo Hei

In Singapore, there is a tradition called “Lo Hei”. Its like taking this salad … with lots of different veggies, sauces and salmon sashimi, thne lifting the said salad as high into the air as possible, creating a huge mess as a result. I got to do this twice at work (once was for my department and the second one was company wide)… my hand… was covered in sauce!

end result

my hand

Oh and cheat sheet of what you are supposed to say when you add a certain ingredient to the salad… not that I can read it.

红萝卜丝 : 鸿运当头！
青木瓜丝 : 青春永驻！
三文鱼条 : 年年有余！
胡椒粉＋五香粉 : 五福临门！
一碗香油 : 来啊、财源滚滚来！
酸柑汁＋酸甜酱 : 大吉大利、甜甜蜜蜜！
干果＋花生碎＋碎饼 :  金银满屋、遍地黄金！
起筷捞生 : 捞啊！捞个风升水起啊！捞出运气、福气和财气！
然后大喊三声 : 发啊！（发啊！）发啊！（发啊！）发啊！（发啊！）

Spent the day bowling, playing pool and walking around chinatown today. The picture above? Yeah, from some bakery in chinatown.

So I had mentioned earlier I have internet. Let me tell you something, STARHUB SUCKS. I’m on their mobile prepaid boardband (7.2 mbps) and I can’t even browse Facebook nor check email without being disconnected every 5 minutes (lets not even talk abot how I can’t Skype).

What infuriates me the most is that I went into their customer service counter today the conversation went like this (and by the way, the rep didn’t believe me when I told her what kind of plan I had. She was like “sorry sir, we don’t have that plan?” and I couldn’t convince her I was on theplan until I showed her the leaflet HER OWN COMPANY puts out”) :

“Hi, I’m on the mobile prepaid broadband and for some reason my internet is really really slow”
*10 minutes trying to convince the CS rep that I had a 60 day prepaid plan. She kept insisting I could only get a 7 day plan from Starhub*
“ok sir, so what is the problem?”
“my internet is really really slow and disconnects me every 5 minutes”
“did you bring your modem and laptop?”
“yes”
“ok I’ll have  a tech look at it”
*10 minutes later*
“Sir, everything seems to be fine, it can connect”
“I know it can connect. I’m just saying it is so slow I can’t Skype and I have trouble even browsing!”
*I go to google. It can’t reach google. I hit refresh 3 times before it works*
“See!?”
“Sir, there’s nothing we can do about that”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“I’m sorry sir, there’s nothing we can do”
“F*ck this, I’m going to use SingTel next time”

So yeah… use SingTel

That’s it for now. Proper post about something more interesting soon? Maybe.

I was in Taiwan for a quick long weekend trip, it was pretty relaxing. Didn’t do anything special: ate alot, slept alot and free wifi in the hotel room!

As per my usual custom, I went out and tried alot of strange drinks:

• Ice cream beer floats : Ice cream is yummy and beer is not bad either. You would think putting those two together would be a good idea. It is not. Actually the beer was just really bad beer, maybe if it was in something a little more … fruity, it would totally work (I’m gonna have to try this).
• Asparagus juice: sounds bad but tastes pretty amazing (kind of tastes like sugar cane juice)
• Yogurt flavored green tea: uhh gross (apparently it tastes like Calpis, which I hate)
• Yogurt flavored lemon juice: uhhh gross x2

Other things that happened:

• Almost missed my flight (boarding was at like 7, flight was at 7:25. I didnt get to the airport until 7:18)
• Saw fireworks in mid-flight en route to Taipei
• Taipei 101
• Binge eating
• Night market
• Taxi driver felt up my friend
• Also, bought some stuff

The hilight for me was definitely the night market:

Full flickr set here:

My favourite ones were these Yoda ones~!

Its autumn! You know what that means? American Sitcoms, cooler weather and hockey season is just around the corner. But yesterday was Mid-Autumn Festival. You know, mooncakes, lanterns and such? Yum.  I was out near my apartment and attended the famous Tai Hang Fire Dragon / 大坑火龍 (I’ve seen it on TV before, always wanted to go).

It is pretty much a very long (75-100 meters?) dragon covered in incense. SO MUCH SMOKE. But so pretty.

Setting up incense (this is the dragon’s tail)

All lit up and ready to go!

Lanterns!

RAAAAAAAWWRRRRR (or whatever noises a dragon makes)

They had the kids hold lanterns and walk in circles. There’s probably some symbolic meaning in that.

Looks heavy~

It was really intense, trying to get the rest of the dragon’s body to keep up with the head. The whole dragon took over 35 people to operate and countless more on the side directing where and how the body should be moving. And the whole time, burning ash is falling onto the people carrying the dragon!

More photos can be found on my flickr stream

It’s a boring pet game for kids UNTIL I SAW THE ENDING!

Good now that we got that out of the way… I’ve been rather busy as of late. Unfortunately that means my life has gotten pretty boring and it doesn’t really take much for me to be entertained. The good news is that I actually have something blog-worthy this weekend. So 4 of us, 2 cellphones with GPS and 3G plans. And we get LOST. I’m talking like, “this is so bad, we probably shouldn’t tell anyone” but hey, there’s a hashtag on twitter for when I fail at things for a certain reason, right?

1. So we got out of the MTR (blue dot) and we walked though a mall (even stopping to ask a lady in the mall for directions). She told us to go out of the other exit and turn left… and something about an HSBC. We followed her directions got to the HSBC… and turned right. 15-20 minutes later, we ended up at the red dot (it actually wasn’t that far, but we stopped a few times to check our maps).

2. At this point we were too hot (it was really humid) so we gave up and hailed a taxi. The taxi took us to where we wanted to go but….

ARRGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH IT WAS RIGHT THERE.

Fail. Other things I did this weekend:

• watched all of The League Season 1 Sunday night (it is only actually only 6 episodes). Hilarious stuff. I mean it is set around a bunch of friends who are in a(n American) Football* fantasy league, but there really isn’t much football talk (I don’t watch any football except the occasional Superbowl, but I still loved the first season)
• learned that macking is apparently a Canadian slang. Mindblown.
• since our skittles vodka turned out .. uhh pretty decent(?) we made (well actually, my friends made) Chili Vodka… I would claim I “supervised”, but I was too busy watching The League (see first bullet point). Gotta wait a week before we can try it … can’t wait

*Yeah I started calling “football” American Football now. Meh, not that I really care about football (both American and European) in the first place. Now foozeball, THAT’s a real man’s sport.

We also stopped for dessert at a yoghurt place that just opened near the office.

Theres also a photo of me holding two plates of these… but I’m not going to post that

Edit: cant seem to be able to upload media from my phone atm.. I’ll do it later tonight when I get home

Anyway, we got downstairs and our plan was to call these people. Apparently, they will drive a van over and pick your stuff up and drop your stuff off. They aren’t movers, no, you load and unload your belongings yourself, but they’ll give you a ride. We gave them a call and they told us that there weren’t any vans available at the moment and that we’d have to wait.

“How long?”
“Umm.. I’m not sure”
“Oh great. Bye”

Next, we tried a taxi. Of course, all of them refused to give us a ride with all the stuff we had. What did we end up doing? We lugged half the bed back instead. Now this all took place in Causeway Bay. It is absolutely crowded (Not to mention today was crazy humid). It must of taken a good 45 minutes to get back (we also had to stop for breaks and stuff). Lesson learned? Oh god, there were so many I don’t even know where to start. I’ll start by passing out on my bed.

This week looks to be a busy week, I gotta marathon more seasons of The Office, give a training presentation in Cantonese (incase you didn’t know, I’ve always given my presentations in English) and pack because next weekend I’ll be in Europe! So … yay! My friend also lent me his 50mm f/1.8 Nikkor lens to play with for this trip~

me: Dude, there was another acid attack today
ColdSoup: Oh did you know..
ColdSoup: … wait, WHAT?
me: Yeah some guy threw acid off a roof into a crowd, again!
ColdSoup: Uhh wow. AGAIN!? I was just gonna tell you about how there was a shooting down the street from me, but … wow.
me: I miss shootings and stabbings. It sure is a whole lot less scary sounding.

So my point is, I’ll try to talk more about the randomness I see here in Hong Kong. Now I know… Hong Kong is not like Japan or Korea where they got some crazy stuff happening every other day, but Hong Kong can be interesting too!! I was down in Causeway Bay yesterday when I saw these huge crowds under this bridge so I went to check it out. Apparently it was a special day for something I only know how to say in Chinese. Its a form of voodoo I guess, and what happens is you write a name on this paper and then the lady will smack it to oblivion with a slipper, set it on fire and … yeah. Kind of crazy if you ask me, but hey, I don’t judge.

Down the street from the bridge, I was in this alleyway market and got stuck there for about 15 minutes because infront of me was this lion dance, and behind me a crowd had formed to watch.

Oh and I got an R2D2 bag from UNIQLO! Their clothes maybe as plain as vanilla ice cream, but I love their paper bags!! And I actually, I <3 clothes from UNIQLO …

And huzzah! for Big Bang Theory season 1 was on sale at HMV. Couldn’t resist ^__^y