The ones I think are most accurate:
You confuse Welcome with Wellcome.
You started singing karaoke when you were five.
You always have the latest mobile phone.
You call a lot of your friends Fei Jai.
You’ve dyed your hair before.
If someone buys something, you brag about how its cheaper in Hong Kong.
You show off your mobile phone that you got in Hong Kong “for cheap.”
Owning a Mercedes Benz means you are well off, but it’s nothing compared to owning a lawn mower - the ultimate status symbol.
You say aiya! and wah!.
People think that PK stands for Penalty Kick, but you know what it really means
Shaolin and Wu Tang actually mean something to you.
You shat your pants before the 1997 handover.
You’re in another country and you try to make a local call, but wtf? you have to pay for it!
You know at least three people named Alan Wong.
You can twirl your pen around your fingers. (wish i could do this DX)

The ones I think are most applicable to David Wong:
You prefer Sony.
You have many credit cards.
Your Chinese handwriting really sucks.
You have a collection of model robots, built or yet to be built.
If someone buys something, you brag about how its cheaper in Hong Kong.
You have a Walkman, Discman and Minidisk player that you don’t use anymore because you use an MP3 player.
You know someone who can get you a good deal on electronics.
You own a Snoopy toy from Mcdonalds.
You look like you are sixteen.

Probably true but applies to lots of other Chinese too:
You have more than 30 cousins.
You play badminton.
You eat instant noodles too often.
You never order appetizers at a restaurant.
You build a mountain of salad when you eat in Pizza Hut.
Your stationery has pictures of your favourite cartoon character.
When having dim sum, you rinse your dishes in hot water before you eat. (Malaysians do it too)
You spit bones and food scraps on the table.
You have heaps of shoes and slippers blocking the entrance to your home.
Your kitchen is coated in a film of sticky grease.
Your cook top is covered with tin foil.
You miss the drinks and snacks that you can only get in Hong Kong.
You have a Walkman, Discman and Minidisk player that you don’t use anymore because you use an MP3 player.
Your luggage is near empty when you arrive in HK (or relevant country), and it’s full when you leave.
You’ve had a Tamagotchi.
When there is a sale on toilet paper, you buy 100 rolls and store them in your closet or in the bedroom of an adult child who has moved out.
You use Park ‘N Shop bags as binliners.
You have a piano in your living room.
When you go to a dance party, there are a wall of guys surrounding the dance floor trying to look cool.
You feel like you’ve gotten a good deal if you didn’t pay tax.
You beat eggs with chopsticks instead of a fork.
You have Tupperware in your fridge with three bites of rice or one leftover chicken wing.
You starve yourself before going to all you can eat sushi.
You never discuss your love life with your parents.
You turn bright red after drinking alcohol.
You have more than five remotes in your house.
You wear (or need) glasses.
Your grandmother lives with you and your family.
It annoys you how shops close at 5pm in other countries and you expect them to be open.
You have a 40 lb. bag of rice in your kitchen.
Your parents still tried to get you into places half-price saying you were 12 when you were really 15.
Your parents compare you with their colleagues’ nerdy kids.
You make a list of things to do and buy when you get back.
Your parents expect you to be best friends with nerds.
You have way more technology than your foreign friends.
Your family always cheers for the Asian athlete on TV.
The furniture in your house never matches the wallpaper, the carpet, the decorations, or any of the rest of the furniture.
All of your [western] friends ask you to translate whenever they see Chinese characters.
The vast majority of the people related to you wear glasses/contacts.
Your parents have either made you play the piano, the violin, or both.

??????:
You’ve lost a lot of money on the Mark Six.
You know what it means when you call someone inch.
You try to avoid pork chops. And i’m not talking about the food.
When you go back to Hong Kong, the last thing your smoking friend asks you is to buy them a carton of Reds.
You’ve owned a pair of Bak Faan Yu.
You use Bak Fa Yao.
You read “tsing tao” instead of “world journal” or “china press.”
You party at Club 7-11.

Don’t know about this but it sure does remind me of C:
If you’re a guy you are keen in military stuff (guns, aircraft, tanks), but you’re too pussy to be a soldier.

- original, unabridged list from the “You know you’re from Hong Kong when…” facebook group

I’m living at my aunt’s house now, which is just one apartment block away XD. I’m very grateful to her for letting me stay there, it’s a really nice place ^_^

Anyway, I currently do not have an internet connection, and anyway I have really limited time in HK so my priority is enjoying the remaining time I have here, not updating this blog >_>.

I’ll take a stack of photos and maybe one day I will blog about them

At the moment, I don’t really have a fixed land line either and my mobile has run out of credit and it will be a waste to recharge it since I don’t really have that many days left in Hong Kong. Basically, I’m VERY UNCONTACTABLE. Which is a major pain when the courier company REFUSES TO DELIVER unless they can contact the deliveree beforehand!! When will my ipod dock and camera connector come~~~~ >__>. I guess I’m also afraid it will get stolen in China. I’m worried enough about my ipod i guess…

Anyway, the best way to contact me is through email at the moment. Or you could leave a message on this blog - I get email alerts when a comment is posted anyway. The hostel I am staying at in Beijing has internet access
I don’t know about the hostels in the other cities though …

My itinery:
10-20 June> beijing, shanghai, suzhou.
21> shenzhen for the amusement park
23-26> bangkok
30th> singapore
sometime between 1st july to 18th> taiwan
18-22july> KL
22> back to australia!

25th july> uni semester @ adelaide uni starts T_______________T

Anyway, that’s the plan at the moment.

Oh, and for the next few days…well on Sunday I went to Lantau island, and tomorrow I’ll see if I can go to Macau. At some point I will go to Ocean Park too. Since it’s easier uploading photos….well maybe you should check my Flickr photo blog (see the link in my sidebar) for photo updates of the places I go to…

My last exam was today. I am free at last! Soooooooooooo freeeeeeeeeeee~~~~~

There was a huge downpour after the exam though. Amber warning thunderstorm. It was sunny when I left hall…thus no umbrella. Got totally drenched trying to make my way back to hall. Spirits utterly *dampened*.

Anyway, I’ve got my desk all cleared up…my desktop is so spacious now that all those pesky notes and books are gone XD

Eating cucumber and cherry tomato salad with my favourite Paul Newman’s caesar salad dressing. I have absolutely nothing to do. I don’thave to feel guilty doing useless stuff like reading all my newsfeeds, installing UserJavascript into Opera …finding more cool geeky bookmarklets…Oh yeah I should get cascding style sheets to format my rss feeds too…..

Anyway, ahem, its impossible to procrastinate now because I have nothing to do anyway ^_^

I have fallen in love with this cube mp3 player! I first saw it in the ?Next Cantonese language magazine. It is so cute!

It is retailing for:
HKD1890 1gig
HKD1490 512mb
HKD1190 256mb

It supports mp3/WMA playback, has built in FM radio and FM radio recording. OLED blue backlight, and 15 hours of non-stop playback.

Supports multi language in the display, has a built in Li-ion rechargeable battery . Connection is through USB 1.1 (that really SUCKS!!) and has 5 preset equalizer modes: rock, classic, pop, jazz and normal.

It charges through the usb port…which uses the same port as the headphones.

Dimensions: 25W x 25H x 25D mm
Weight: 18g
Accessories: Stereo earphones, Neck Strap, USB cable, Carrying Case

Another page with plenty of cute cube photos: here

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EDIT:
I forgot to say that the JNC SSF 8100 is a re-brand of the MobiBlu DAH-1500 (from Korea). All they did was wack on the JNC name XD

=====
14.09.05 UPDATE:

I didn’t end up getting the jnc. I got a 30gig ipod photo instead XD. I think i made the right choice. like the ipod nano, the jnc is cute, but the convenience of having your whole library in your pocket is nothing to be sniffed at. Also, while travelling having the photo upload function on the ipod photo is invaluable!! And if anyone wanted to see what i got up to, i can just whip out my ipod and show them my photos of china, or any random photos i took. i sync my “my pictures” directory to my ipod so any images i have is on it too. my photos document my life pretty well XD

anyway, i’m very happy with my ipod. function over form. not that the ipod isn’t a remarkeable example of engineering design!

Livehouse gigs - poster for the event
Originally uploaded by tr[n]ty

Last Saturday I went to live gig at Kwun Tong. Apparantly it is the place to go for live gigs. Well the venue was kind of …freaky. It was in an industrial complex. It was huge…many corridors…like in a horror movie and you’re running around in circles, lost, while some masked scythe-wielding monster is after you…

Or perhaps one of those warehouses where the eyewitness has been kidnapped by the triad, and they are about to rape and kill her >_>

One could seriously imagine triad executions being held behind those heavy metal doors…

Well, of course all that just made the place more interesting XD
It has added to my ‘Hong Kong experience’ of course.

We watched 4 out of 5 bands. They weren’t particularly good…except for the 2nd one I guess. The singer had a nice mellow low voice.

band#3

The third band wasn’t too bad. The singer had a rather …unexpected voice. In the sound check his voice was quite normal, but when he started singing he put on this…smashing pumpkins/wheatus high pitched voice. I guess I got a bit disappointed. But his fast songs a bit later on in the set were not too bad.

band #4

The fourth band had the most style. The female guitarist and bassist had fashionable mullets. Made me want to get one too! And the lead singer had the most awesome wrap-around glasses. It would be so cool to get a pair of those. The ?lead guitarist also had those rock moves XD

However, that is not to say they sounded good. The singer here too adopted an extremely jarring, high-pitched wailing scream thing. Wheatus on crack.

After that band, we decided to not stick around for the 5th band. Oh well. Oh and I had a really nice chocolate mousse cake that I got at the MTR station for $8 only.

All the photos from that day are here.
Slideshow for that day: here.

====

EDIT: BTW, I added in a bit of stuff in the previous entry. So at least it describes the new touristy experience I had and not just to movie XD

===

EDIT 2:
BTW, it was great fun being able to see clearly even from the back. In Australia, the people are taller. Here, the girls are so short than I’m average, nay, often times above average height! It’s a great feeling!

Oh, and how is the new altered layout? It may not look like much but I’ve spent many hours on it -_-
I removed a bunch of images and transparent .png images too. So it should look almost fine in MSIE as well (urgh msie! support standards!!)
At least I learnt alot about cascading style sheets. CSS is great. no need for tables!

I watched Star Wars III last Friday XD

I was kind of dreading it - the first two just didn’t rub me the right way. SW to me is a reminder of my childhood. It is a nostalgic thing of the past. When i was a kid, I used to hum Darth Vader’s theme while parading around the house with my green blanket around my shoulders ala Darth Vader’s cape XDD.

Anyway, such a memory does not belong to the present, which may be why I don’t like the new SWs…

But oh well. There was heaps of cool fighting, so it made up for the talking bits. I didn’t have much sleep that day - if the movie wasn’t full of so much action, I’d have slept for sure XD

You know that scene where ?woodu (the black Jedi master) was trying to arrest Palpatine and Palatine is acting all weak and helpless? OMG, it was so fake! Anakin was an idiot to fall for that >_>

Yoda is so cool. R2D2 is cute. Amidala’s hair and dress isn’t as fantastic (disappointing, really).

I like Yoda.

========

EDIT: We watched SW at IFC (International Finance Centre) in the Central district. Its the tallest building on HK island. It’s also quite stylish…

Anyway, the cinema there was really cool. You can book you tickets online via credit card. Then when you get to the cinema, there is a kiosk outside; you just swipe the credit you used through, and it will print out the tickets that you have booked.

Alternatively, you could book then and there and pay via Octopus card too. (Octopus card is like a cash card)

Very high tech…(or am I just a country bumpkin?)

Oh and I just had to add this: the Darth Vader ‘NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!’ scene at the end was just soo……..BAD! Unbelievablly so.

[mouseover images for photo captions]

Hong Kong people are quite superstitious. Exam time is taken very seriously. There was a jing guo (勁過) [loosely translated as "superpass"] festival held in the last week of lectures. Even businesses cash in on it. I received free samples of Brand’s chicken essence (Eastern equivalent of Redbull) and Brand’s chicken essence and gingko biloba tablet supplements. I also got a superpass present: a hello kitty massager (for those sore backs one suffers when studying too hard with bad posture…)

The other day, alot of floors at St John’s decided to have their 勁過 dinners. It’s a special dinner held before the exams…

One of the traditions during the 勁過 dinner is to cut a whole roasted suckling pig. If you do not manage to cut your piece cleanly in half, that means that you will fail, so they say. Yes, the poor little pig was killed just for this…

I asked a mainland student from Beijing about the practice. Apparantly Northerners don’t do such odd things - it’s a southern Chinese practice.

I’m glad to say that my floor didn’t procure a pig just for this. We got watermelons instead. Maybe the feel of it is just not the same as having a pig…but at least my conscience felt better. We actually *ate* the watermelon after too. So at least the watermelon didn’t get hacked to bits for nothing…

After that, we went back to our floor and wrote fai chun (literally: waving at the spring). Good luck messages are written in calligraphy with ink brushes on pieces of red paper. And whatever message you write has to end in 過 (pass). There was quite a scholarly air - people were sitting around discussing witty phrases which fit the proper format (ending in guo and if possible, rhyming.) and writing in their best calligraphy.

My best calligraphy is quite ordinary “>_>
Actually I do better when I have a proper sample in front of me so that I can copy off off it…(just an excuse!)

More food and fai chun photos from that day: here. the slideshow link (which i recommend) is here.

The next day I went back to Cityplaza and bought more stuff from Uny ~_~.
So I guess my toy expenditure total from that weekend is more like $350. I’m going to run out of money soon >_>

The Nyanko in the main photo here is also part of the Dagashi-ya series …same as Melon Nyanko Ice (bought the previous day). The one in the main picture is Orange Nyanko Gum XD

So cute~

It’s $14.90 at Uny supermarket in the basement. Slightly cheaper than at Siu Man Centre in Mongkok. Well, minisculy cheaper (10c), so I guess it doesn’t matter.

I’ll go back to Cityplaza this weekend. Apparantly, the Jusco there has a large range of san-x products. Also, I missed out on the bookstore section of Uny…
Another chance for me to eat the takoyaki at Uny!! Yippee~

Oh yes, I also bought a nyanko onsen face towel, a nyanko matsuri (festival) hand towel thing that you can hang up, and also a small nyanko lunch bag.

It’s actually pretty cheap at Uny. The two towels and the bag only costs about HKD25.

Anyway, the rest of the photos are here. The slideshow is here.

Last Friday I went on a toy spree T_T
I spent about $320 on toys - nyanko products and shogukan (toys in boxes with candy).

I went to Taikoo Shing City Plaza Two’s UNY - a Japanese department store. By the way, they have THE BEST takoyaki there. Kind of pricey though - $30 for a box of 8. But worth every penny.

I got two Nyanko keychains/mobile dangley thing there (mouseover for descriptions):

UNY is a pretty cool jap department store. They had a reasonable selection of Japanese tableware ( sooooo cute…I inherited my mother’s love of tableware I think, lol). They had soba sets on sale…the soba serving dish with mat, and matching soba cups…..AHHH so cute~!~!! CHI SIN! Disgustingly cute!! But I can’t buy because I already have too much to bring back T_T. Maybe I’ll get some from Takashimaya in Singapore next time when I have a chance…At least it’s easier to bring stuff back to Australia from Singapore…

Then after that I had Shanghai noodles at a family friend’s noodle shop.
Laden with red bean pancakes and Szechuan soup, I toddled over to Mongkok.

My aim was to purchase the new series from Re-ment:

It’s another puchi food shogukan series~~ and it is cho kawaii! (Unfortunately, it’s not out in Hong Kong yet).

My second aim was to get two particular sets from Re-ment’s ‘Room’ series:

Well, my first stop was Vision Shop in the Chic building on Soy Street in Mongkok. It’s my favourite shogukan shop - the prices are good, they carry Re-ment products, and best of all, all the boxes are opened so you can choose exactly what you want.

(Normally, the boxes are all sealed and you don’t know what particular toy in the series you are getting; people normally get duplicates or the one they don’t want, so they have to buy more, and it’s very annoying.)

Anyway, I found out that it had closed down!! I was so PISSED!! CHI SIN!

I went to Sino Centre in the hope of finding a shogukan shop. Well, it mostly sells pirated anime/dramas/games and manga. I thought shogukan, being Japanese, was related and might have a showing there…you never know…perhaps Vision Shop moved there (fat hope)

Well…as expected there were no shogukan shops carrying Re-ment. -_-
Mostly, if they sold toys, they only sold anime figurines. But I did find this shop on the ground floor with a closing down sale…

I was so pissed that I couldn’t spend any money on shogukan that night I went to buy one whole carton of Machikado Album (?Street Corner Album). I’d seen the series in the past, and it was reasonably cute. A whole carton of 10 was going for $150, which was reasonable for Megahouse brand I guess (for Re-ment, one carton is typically ~$230 - better quality):

Anyway, 1 carton has 6 different sets, so you’d get 4 duplicates. The duplicates are in alternate colours though. Still, when I got back home and opened them up, I found that the ‘alternate colours’ just meant the cats were in different colours -_-. I didn’t like the series *that* much anyway. So I managed to sell 3 out of 4 of the duplicates to a floormate who loves cats. Yeah! $45 makes a big difference!! Let’s see if I can sell off the last one too. The last one is the one of the dog sleeping while listening to the radio. It’s pretty cute so it shouldn’t be too hard I guess…

I randomly asked that store whether they knew of any stores that sold puchi food (an ardously difficult task - had to speak in my very un-fluent canto…had to describe what puchi food was in canto…XDD “sai sai go …fan?”). Miraculously, the store people understood me and they referred me to this building nearby.

It turned out to be a whole building devoted to toys!! Wow! You can never tell by the outsides of these small shopping buildings in Hongkong -_-

There was Gashapon (those toy capsules) and shogukan (and various other toys and figurines - but not interested XD).

I was able to purchase the Re-ment Japanese room pre-opened, yeah!

Unfortunately, the shopkeeper refused to sell me the retro room, for some funny reason (she was speaking in canto, not worth it trying to understand because it was very clear that she meant ‘No’). Oh well. At least I got the jap room ($40), neh?

There were other shops selling the room series too, but unopened. Because the other sets in the series besides the ones I like are really duds, and each box costs more than an average shogukan…well I didn’t want to risk it -_-.

I also spotted the Nyanko Dagashi (?cornershop) series biscuit + toy thing! I didn’t know it existed but whee! It pays to be observant! It’s not exactly normal shogukan because the ‘candy’ is actually substantial and not just a token gesture. Normally you just get one Ramune flavoured tablet. This was like… quite a few chocolate-filled biscuits. Yum. Also, they actually tell you what keychain is inside. Eliminates the guessing element, yay. I also spotted a complete set from the nyanko burger series. But they were selling for $200+ -_- What a rip-off, especially as each box is relatively cheap - $15.

I got this one:

Other photos from that day are here: slideshow and normal view

Had to wake up at 6.30am today. My head still feels as though its about to fall off.

Today was floor photo day. Everyone dresses up nicely in formal clothes and takes lots of photos. Took about two hours. Lots and lots of photos. It was quite fun. At least I’ll have photos of all my floormates now to remember them by.

It’s a break from all the squashed mosquito photos eh?

Here are other photos I took from today. Mouseover for comments:

I really love the banana leaf one. I got it off devart. It’s my current wallpaper. It matches really well with my white widescreen laptop XD. It’s not too distracting and yet not too plain. I find it quite masculine actually. Masculine power executive. Maybe its because of all those parallel straight lines…all…strong in their own way, always alone with no hope of meeting other lines. Feminine is frilly and curly and excess. This is minimalist; using the least to say the most.

I really like taking close-ups of photos. It’s wonderful to see the tiny details get blown up on the monitor. Like with the beetle above, I would never have noticed the detail on it if i hadn’t taken this photo with flash. It would just be a rather large squirming beetle. But this photo imprisons the image of the beetle; freezing it for a moment in time. The fur edging, the exoskeleton detail on its pincer-like claws, how its legs aren’t smooth but have tiny little indentures, much like crab shell (see front right leg)…

I only wish I had more skill/a better camera so that every little part of that beetle can be sharply in focus.

I like any subject I can take a closeup of. Flowers get too girly and stale (that’s why I try to photograph other angles rather than the front - alas not many decent photos yet). Beetles, mosquitos and other insects are interesting - there are so many details to look at. Also, they gross out those with weak stomachs - always a pleasant side effect (tickles the bully in me).

Other photos for today are here. This time its a slideshow! Check it out!

Last night I heard a mozzie buzzing around. I covered my whole body with a sheet but I must have covered the mozzie too. Because I found #8 resting on my bed this morning.

It was so gorged fat on blood that it didn’t try to fly away; I thought it was dead at first. Its abdomen is the fattest I’ve seen so far this month.

It was very satisfying to squash this one. There was a clear ’squish’ sound. Mini puddle of blood ensued.

The best thing? I don’t seem to feel any new itchy bites.
Wonder where it bit me…

Other new photos (mouse over for comments):

Why am I posting up so many mosquito photos? Why am I so obsessed with them? Well, I’ve been cooped up in my room lately (assignments and all), so mozzies are probably all I have left to photograph XD

Other photos for today are here.

Well, this is mosquito corpse #5. I quite like this photo - you can quite clearly see the fresh blood (although it somehow looks pinker on my screen than in real life). You can just imagine the blood bursting out from its abdomen when I squeezed it, splashing the surrounding paper…

Despite what it may seem from the overwhelming uploaded mosquito photos to normal photos ratio lately…I *have* been doing stuff other than mosquito-related antics.

There was a birthday celebration on my floor the other day. Winnie, cheesecake-making extraordinaire, made a mango cheesecake and a mango pudding. It was disgustingly good. Her boyfriend is so lucky. He’ll probably get fat soon…

Anyway, here are some photos. Mouseover for comments.

Link to all the photos from this batch (and extra commentary) here. Oh, and flickr has this really cool option Ray and I just discovered. It’s ‘note’. You can actually select particular areas of the photo to comment on. Have a look!!

I hate mosquitos. This one was biting my wrist as I held a cup of hot cocoa. I promptly slapped it, notwithstanding the danger of spilt cocoa.

This is mosquito corpse #3. It is a tiger mozzie, though it doesn’t come out too well. (I need a camera which can take better close-ups.)

I really enjoy squashing mosquito corpses. The feeling of satisfaction that courses through me as I feel the slight ‘crunch’ of the exoskeleton give way to the pressure from my fingertips…

I also took a photo of the huge wheal that came up after it bit me. It was huge, considering it didn’t really take that much blood out of me. I’ve squashed mozzies with higher blood content before. They were more satisfying to squash. In addition to ‘crunch’, there were ’squish’ sounds.

I did some quick research on the net. It is the mosquito saliva that causes you to itch. So until it breaks down, you;re left still itchy. Apparantly, the saliva must be acidic because all the remedies recommend basic/alkaline treatments - washing area with soap, rubbing soap on, applying a baking soda paste. Well I washed this wheal with ALOT of concentrated detergent. And it hasn’t itched that badly. But there’s a better itch treatment out there

Anyway, the rest of the photos are here.

Bonus photo that you cannot miss! click here.

YES!! I killed another mozzie! It’s only my second one though >_>

The mosquito is only stunned in the photo (like, when you slap it in mid- air and then drops down to the ground, stunned. And if you wait awhile, the mozzie’s legs start moving slowly…and if you don’t totally squash the bugger into obliteration, in a few minutes, it’ll be up and flying and sucking your blood again.

So, I duly squashed the mozzie into paste (should have taken ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos).

(No, that is not my skin. I’m not that dark and hairy. It’s my ‘mousepad’ - a recycled brown envelope)

For the last few days it was really warm. Temperatures were around 28°C.
I remember saying “wow, the hot days must be here to stay”.

About an hour after I said that, the clear sky became overcast, cold winds blew and a light drizzle started.

It’s now 18°C

Mosquitoes in Hong Kong seem to be especially crafty. More devilish than Malaysian, Singaporean and Australian (Australian mozzies are the easiest. They are fat and sluggish) mosquitoes, they are $%#$^#$ hard to kill. Somehow they sense you’ve spotted them and then they’ll vanish before your eyes. I’ve only intentionally killed one mozzie during the few days of hot weather. During that time, I was averaging 13 mosquito bites on my body at once, so it’s not like I lacked mozzies to kill…

Oh and I say intentionally because I spotted 2 crushed-up bloody mozzie carcasses on my bed sheet. Must have rolled over them while they were biting me in my sleep. Serves the little buggers right.

And the bites I get are small, red, hard and horibly itchy. If I have to get bitten, I prefer the lumpy type of bite. Don’t ask me why…

I heard that while the mozzie is in the process of biting you, and if you squeeze the skin around the bite, the mozzie’s tube sucky mouth thing is trapped inside your skin. And then if you squeeze harder, the mosquito will burst because of the blood rush. I would like to try it but … those sneaky HK mozzies! I never see them in the process of biting me!

ARGGGGH I’ve never had so many mozzie bites at once in my life…

All because the College is too stingy to put in fly netting.

All the mozzie bites on my face is just making my already-bad skin worse…
And by the way this is pretty much the first time I’ve had bites on my face…-cry-

At least with the cold weather those mozzies have disappeared…bah.
I’m so going to go out to buy mosquito coils now. My hall doesn’t allow the coils, so I’ll just hang it outside my window, hohoho…

And I refuse to use the air-conditioning because….I just don’t like a/c

Oh, and the photo on the right is of my new cha pan~.
It was a gift from some family friends. It’s from Xiamen (in Fujian Province). I would love to visit the place. I hear the scenary is great, the food is cheap and good, and living standards there are now one of the best in China.

As a poor student living only briefly in HK, I can’t buy furniture. But I’m getting more creative in using boxes XD. As you can see, my new laptop’s box now makes a handy stand for the chapan. My external HDD is also sitting on a used tissue paper box. Oh yeah and my desk here is pretty small compared to what I’m used to home (1 fairly decent computer table with convenient shelving, and one rather large zataku - about twice the table top area of what I have now). And now with two laptops tabletop space in HK is getting quite rare.

Oh, and speaking of stingy student standards…my filing ’system’ is such a joke. It consists of one big pile of paper. No, no, it’s actually quite organised. The papers are grouped according to subject, and then they are laid at 90° angles to each other so at least I can tell where one subject pile and the next ends…

Hopefully that pile doesn’t ever get tipped over…

And it’s a really big pile…can I bring it back to Australia? Such a waste if I throw everything away…I can tell further on down the line I’ll need to do some assignment and I’d b kicking myself for not keeping the notes…

Blah. assignments.

I took a few photos of where I’m staying - the so-called 10th floor: ‘Liberata’ at St John’s College of the University of Hong Kong.

I really only took these photos…..because I was bored I guess .

View the rest of the photos here.

Oh yeah, and a big part of my everyday life is watching this hugely popular Korean drama, Dae Jang Geum (大長今Š). I really like the music. It’s kind of weird, I’m starting to like OSTs more n more these days. I’m switching from heavier rock and pounding electronic to softer, more soothing music. You can’t get anymore soothing than the My Neighbour Totoro (story version) OST. I must be getting old…(no wait, I’m already old).

To get back to the point, which is the Dae Jang Geum OST….well I got it somewhere and here it is. It’ll expire in a few days, so get it now.

And by the way, if you happen to be in Malaysia, just get the genuine copy. I hear the DJG OST Plus has special interviews and stuff. When I go back, I’m definitely going to try and track a copy down.

[The DJG OST Plus is available
at the S&M(KL) beside Kotaraya, at the lower level (basement), for RM15, which is about HK30. Cheap, how can you not get it?]

One of my floormates, Silvia, randomly decided to cook a big pot of dessert.

It’s fragrant china li pears boiled with white fungus in sugar. Very yummy.

I’m not sure, but I think the “li” on the labels is just ‘pear’ (梨) in Chinese.

Oh and I’ve just recently added the flickr photostream to the sidebar. Nifty, neh? LOL and Ray and Dave have just decided to copy me. Hoho. You saw it here first~

On the topic of food, I’ve also recently been introduced to Calbee’s Crispy Bean snack by Jamie. This is so yummy!! Highly recommended. Various varieties of crispy beans can be purchased from supermarkets and convenience stores, but research has proven that the Calbee brand is the best.

Browsing is slower than a slaughtered turtle. Uploading is impossible. This entry is composed in an effort to do something more productive than twiddling my thumbs while waiting for pages to load.

Today, a whole bunch of girls from my floor suddenly returned. Paper was drawn on, paper was cut. It seemed to be very busy. Girls were noisily running up and down the hallway. Then suddenly everyone on the floor disappeared.

Very Mysterious.

I think I need to write a bit about the hall culture at STJ.

It’s entertaining, amusing, laughable, weird, cult-like, busy and noisy. Very strange. It’s certainly very community-focused. An uninitiated outsider is left pretty much on her own. Which isn’t too bad if it means avoidance of those mysteriously long floor meetings. (By the way each floor has a floor song which is sung after all floor meetings o_o.)

A *proper* St Johnian will find his spare time (and un-spare time, too) completely sucked out by the multitudinous hall activities and meetings going on. The enthusiasm they have for STJ can be unnerving at times.

(Not all halls in HK are like STJ though. Generally, HKU is probably considered to have the most cult-like halls. And out of all the halls at HKU, STJ is one of the most cult-y.)

I was trying to be open-minded and tried avoiding being unnecessarily cynical about the hall culture at STJ, but haha, I’ve given up.

I’m sure they’re all very nice people once you get to know them well enough though. ^_^

The 13th was the day before we left HK for Singapore. We met up with Ray’s mother for a bit and we also went to church on Nathan Road. I went to Fortress TST looking for an epilator but ended up paying the deposit for the NEC Versa 3000 (a 12″ laptop).

I’m quite looking forward to buying that laptop at last. I went to Causeway Bay today and found out I could get the same model for HKD9980 but with only 256mb RAM. But they do throw in a 512mb ipod shuffle.

At Fortress, I’m getting it for 10440HKD, 768mb ram and a usb camera.

I want to see if Fortress will give me the same deal as all the other retailers in CWB. Otherwise I’ll have to see if I can get back all my money…it kinda sucks though. Very 麻煩 to cart so much money around…

Mongkok MTR station is plastered all over with ipod shuffle ads.

TST MTR station has a whole row of NEC Versa 3000 ads.

Hmm. Something is trying to tell me something.

Anyway, photos (with commentary) from the 14th up on my flickr album.

Tutoring for those English conversation classes is quite fun. It’s done after classes are over, and there are normally a lot of kids still hanging around doing their extra-curricular activities. It seems like the Chinese orchestra club is stationed just outside my classroom. The strains of the Chinese flute (…and all those other traditional instruments) normally float into the room, making it all just emphasise the “asianess” of the atmosphere even though the tangible walls and architecture around us all yell out BRITISH!

Anyway, here’s a video of a boy playing the Chinese flute just outside.

The other day ray’s mom and her two friends came to visit him. It was very fun, going out with them. I also got to eat as much as I wanted without worrying about how much my meal costed.

At the end of the day, we went to an Lan Kwai Fong which is the expat-bar area in Central. It was quite packed. It probably also has the highest concentration of Westerners in the whole of Hong Kong.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be flying off to Singapore. I’ll be taking a bus straight away to KL. I’m going to be so tired. I hope I’ll be able to do *some* homework during my one-week mid semester holidays!

anyway, here’s the rest of the photos.

p.s. I bought a laptop from Fortress today. It’s the NEC Versa s3000. HKD10449 for 40 gigs hdd, 512+256mb ram, comes with port/charger stand, wireless, comes with flash card slots. 12″1 widescreen, no bluetooth. It has an international warranty, yay~. I wonder if it’s a good deal…