No Moneys, No Honeys...

New temporary location!

2009-09-14T22:14:00.003-04:00

Hi Everyone,

Because my board of education is annoying and uses a proxy that filters URLs at all the schools I:m in (blogger, gmail sometimes, facebook, twitter, etc), I:m temporarily posting my random thoughts and experiences at a friend:s blog.

Here:s the url

http://www.freepantsonline.com

Go! Go now!

Catch you on the flipside.

Cheers

Time to disappear for a while

2009-08-04T15:54:00.003-04:00

Hi All,

In less than 3 hours, I'll be leaving Tokyo to my host city Hokota in Ibaraki. Of course, that means no Interwebs for a while. I hope I can get a phone with a data plan so I can continue to broggu away but who knows! And I may have to cave in and get a Facebook account. But I'll resist until the very end... lol

Anyway, I have tonnes of stories from Tokyo Orientation (mostly good ones) that I would love to share with everyone but unfortunately, I don't have the time (or patience) to do it just yet. For those that are dying to find out about my life in Japan, be a bit patient. It's going to be a while before I get Internet at my new place. For those that aren't, well screw you!

In the meantime, please enjoy a panoramic view of the 47th floor of Keio Hotel.

Reminder to myself: I seriously need to get a new camera...

Ciao!

Combini!!

2009-08-03T15:12:00.004-04:00

Hi All,

It's 4am and I'm still jet lagged. I've never had jet lag quite like this. Anyway, I just want to say how awesome conbini's are. Yes, at 4am in the morning.

Well, I want to say they're awesome because I just came back from one, food in hand (ramen and onigiri to be exact) cause I was damn hungry. I didn't eat much at the reception last night.

So, what is a combini? It's a convenience store, duh! Can't you tell by the butchered Engrish that's katakana? I guess not. Well, here's my a haul from Lawson's, the combini I went to.

Bonus: Look closely at the bottle of water! :)

The Miserable Flight and Tokyo Orientation Night 1

2009-08-03T07:06:00.001-04:00

Hi All,

In my last post, I mentioned some in-flight shenanigans. Well, lots of shenanigans but probably not the same shenanigans that you're thinking about.

First thing in the morning was check-in at the airport. There, I met some JET volunteers and my interviewer Otsuka-san, who's a high ranking Japan Education official. I was very surprised when he approached me and told me he remembered interviewing me back in February. I thought that was pretty cool. What wasn't cool was that I wasn't able to use the quick check-in machine for my e-ticket. I suppose it didn't matter much as I needed to go to the counter to check in my baggage and get my miles. Meh...

After checking in, it was off to customs and the metal scanner. I passed through without any problems but I managed to rip and lose a part of my belt and one plastic in-ear piece for my IEMs. I found out about my belt and earphones much later. Slightly upsetting but not really terrible.

Around noonish, the airport announced that our flight was delayed and we won't be boarding until 2. I found Lora (a girl I met at the Toronto JET orientation) and there were lots of other JETs so it was pretty lively at the gate waiting area. Again, slightly upsetting but not really terrible.

Here's a picture of Lora, Han (my seat partner) and 2 other JETs whose names I can't seem to recall at the moment.
After boarding the plane at 2, we all got seated and moments later, the pilot announced over the PA system, there was a problem with the oxygen on the plane and some weird electrical problem. At this point, I was a bit irritated but stuff like this happens. And to be honest, I'd rather wait for the flight crew to fix the problems while the plane was grounded than to have the crew find out about the problems when we're 30000m above ground.

So, another hour and a half passed and only the oxygen problem was fixed. The plane still had an electrical problem. Because of the time it took to fix these problems exceeded the pilots' legal flight hour limit, they had to be switched out. Ugh... Seriously... Of course, they couldn't be switched out right away. That would have been too easy. We had to wait for the pilots from another flight to replace our pilots. And our pilots had the balls to tell us they're going to fly to Frankfurt to have sausages and beer while we're stuffed in a stuffy plane cabin. What jerks. Another hour and a half later, we got the electrical problems fixed and our crew replaced. Finally out of Pearson and off to Tokyo.

...

My seat partner, Han and I were fortunate enough to have an empty seat next to us so we got a bit more leg and storage room. Han moved over to the window seat so the middle seat was empty and we both put our crap there. Seating arrangements were optimal and Han wasn't the type to get up every 10 minutes. Woot! In fact, he only got up 5 times the entire flight.

...

I had a game plan for the 13 hour flight. The plan was to get pissed off my rocker and pass out on the plane to pass the time. The plan was sound and I proceeded with inebriation. It worked for the most part and I did pass out after watching Star Trek (highly recommended!!). However, this was the beginning of something really, really bad. REALLY BAD.

I think I had passed out for about 30 minutes before my stomach started churning. I ignored it thinking it was indigestion. I mean, the in-flight meal that was served sucked ass. I continued with my game plan and went back to sleep. I passed out for another 30 minutes or so and woke up with a really bad "hangover"(?). I reached out for my glasses and put them on. Big mistake... Very big mistake... My body reacted to this in the worse possible way. I put my glasses on and my vision was completely blurred. My head was spinning and I felt super nauseous. Within 10 seconds of putting on my glasses, the blanket I had covering me and a part of my sleeve was completely covered with a mix of chicken, rice and alcohol. I was extremely lucky I had that blanket covering me else I would have been completely covered with Nasties. I spent the next half hour in the toilet cleaning my shirt with hand soap and water. After cleaning myself up, I went back to my seat but there was still the aftermath that needed to be taken care of and ended up "discarding the evidence" in the bathroom. The entirety of the flight I will be forever known as Hangover Hell.

...

We finally touched down at Narita at 6:30pm local time. I didn't sleep a wink and still felt like shit. (I still feel like shit now as I'm typing). I quickly grabbed my luggage and proceeded through customs. It was so quick and painless. The customs guy was so nice. He asked me if I was part of the JET programme. I replied, smiled and he let me through without checking my luggage (not that I was smuggling any illegal contraband into the country).

All the JETs were greeted by JET volunteers. The JET volunteers were wearing bright purple t-shirts and they all made a line that pointed towards the bus to Keio hotel. I wish I had taken a picture of some of them. They were really cool people. I was going to become part of this community and that made me really happy that I made the decision to become a JET.

Along the way to the bus to Keio Hotel, there was a JET that made sure we use the bathroom before getting on the bus. She had told us that we were only to bring 1 carry-on and 1 personal article on the bus and the rest were to be shipped away. That completely contradicted what was said during our Toronto orientation. We were told that we were allowed to take an extra luggage on top of the carry-on and personal article. Ugh... I had to do some repacking as I packed away my suit and shirts in one of my big luggages. Of course, the worst possible thing happened. I couldn't find my keys to the locks of my luggages! Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck with a capital Q. After I found out about my key situation, I told the bus directing girl. She turned to another Japanese speaking girl and they proceeded to make phone calls to help me out. After a few phone calls, the Japanese girl told me to proceed to the bus and told me the volunteers along the way to the bus can help me out. At this point, I had to trust her so I proceeded to the bus.

On my way to the bus, I bumped into a volunteer coordinator and he asked me what the issue was. After giving him a quick summary of what had happened, he let me use his phone to make a call back home to check if I had left my keys there. I woke my parents up and asked them to check if I had left the keys at home. No dice. They said the keys weren't there. Ugh... The coordinator person asked me to check my luggage again and low and behold I found my keys! They were hidden deep in my carry-on. One disaster adverted. Whew.

When I got to the bus, I was greeted by more purple volunteers. I swear to god, they looked and acted like a bunch of Barney's all genki and everything. I wasn't really in the genki mood after that insane flight. Anyway, I was directed to repack my luggage. It sucked because I pretty much made the bus full of people wait for me as I repacked.

After repacking, I got on the bus and sat down took the front seat. I took the seat but it was for the bus MC (another purple shirt) so I ended up sitting next to Jessica, another girl I had met at the Toronto orientation. The MC gave out water and snacks and I spilled a bit of water on Jessica. More ugh... I could see she wasn't too happy about the spill even though I only spilled a few drops on her. I apologized but I could see she was irritated. I didn't say much else during the bus ride, plus she put on her headphones so there was no way to chat with her.

The bus ride from Narita to Keio Hotel was surprisingly fast. It only took about 75 minutes! Not bad considering it was supposed to take 90+ minutes. Sweet. On the way to the hotel, my headache got worse and worse. I asked the MC about medicine and she told me to go to the Hospitality room right after the bus ride. As soon as the bus door opened, I grabbed my backpack and went straight for the Hospitality room. Of course, I had forgotten my ... LAPTOP bag afterward. I went back to the bus to look for my laptop bag and ran into the MC girl. She told me she gave it to another person and she didn't have it anymore. She reassured me I'll get my laptop back. And she was right! I went up to the Hospitality room to some headache medicine and my laptop was there! OMG!!! Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy... I took the medicine and laptop and checked into my room.

After a quick shower, my roommates and I went out for dinner outside the hotel. On our walk around the hotel, we met up with some other Toronto JETs in a rice/ramen fast food place. I ate some curry rice with bacon and egg. It wasn't that good. The food was a bit cold and the egg didn't cook on the food properly. Everybody there had a good time. Most of us walked around some more and even went to an arcade! I played the Big Taiko Drum game for 200yen with another JET. Here are a couple of JETs (I have to remember names better) having an awesome time with the Taiko drum sticks.

After the arcade, the remaining 5 (me, Tim, Andrew, Ylisa, Shannon) of us walked around looking for a bar to go drinking. The search was very unsuccessful. We then bumped to Chris and Satoshi, another 2 Toronto JETs. The 7 of us ended up going to a conbini, bought beer there and drank on the street. It was awesome. We drank and walked around Shinjuku drinking and taking pictures until 2am. Here's Chris, Andrew and Satoshi chilling outside Shinjuku Station.

Ylisa, Shannon and I went back to the hotel soon after. The other guys went out to Kabuki-cho but ended up back at the hotel soon after us.

Night 1 in Tokyo, end...

Edit: Added pics!

Alive in Tokyo!!

2009-08-02T16:54:00.004-04:00

Hi All,

I'm alive in Tokyo! Woot! 17 hours and 182739121 miles later, the plane touched down! Let the insanity ensue! Ok, there's no insanity but I'll think it. And there was definitely insanity on the plane. I'll get to that in my next post but first, let me show everyone the view outside my room (Room 1365) at the Keio Plaza Hotel in Shinjuku at 6am in the morning.

As you can see, it's pretty bleck outside. Overcast skies a bit of rain. There's really nothing to see out there. And there's nothing to really see in here either except sleeping roommates. lol

Alright, gotta go and get ready for breakfast and a whole day of "orientation" again. Be back later with some stories of my in-flight shenanigans.

Horseshoe Valley Weekend

2009-07-27T16:07:00.001-04:00

Hi All,

It's been a few days since I wrote anything on my blog. I've been swamped with school work and this "leaving for Japan" business so I haven't really had much time to write anything lately.

Where to begin...

Two weekends ago, I went up with Susan and her friends to Horseshoe Valley and did some Treetop Trekking. What the heck is that you ask? Well, Treetop Trekking is where you climb up really, really tall trees and "trek" from tree to tree on thin wires and unstable, wooden bridges! What fun!! No sarcasm here. It actually was pretty fun (and intense).

Those that know me are familiar with my intense fear of heights. I mean, I get sweats thinking about roller coasters for god sakes! But here I am, doing what's thought to have been improbable and actually enjoying it! Oh how I've grown. Oh how I've grown...

Anyway, here's me on a zip line going from treetop to treetop.

This zip line was like 50 meters tall, hooked up between HUGE Redwoods. What's that over there? A flying squirrel?? OMG!! Ok, I lied. It's actually about 3 feet off the ground but it was scary nonetheless. This was the precursor zip line to all the big, tall zip lines that I'll be going on later that day.

After graduating from the beginner courses, it was off to the crazier (and more dangerous) advanced courses, where the bridges are higher off the ground and much more unstable. Here's an example...

This bridge was completely fubar. The wooden planks twisted on every step and the knots that crisscrossed the wires made the bridge impossible to keep flat. I had a pretty hard time getting across.

As you can see, I got completely pwned by this bridge. Ow, my ass... Thank goodness for my harness, else I would have been declared "dead by stupidity". Anyway, a few scratches and a sore ass later, I made it across. Whew...

That same night, the girls decided to go swimming at the pool. I was reluctant at first because I needed to mark some tests but was "convinced" otherwise. Well, I ended up playing chess with this hardcore chess guy instead of doing what any normal, sane guy would do (aka, hang out with girls in swimwear). Seriously, what the hell was I thinking... Someone hit me over the head with something hard next time you see me.

After spending the night at Horseshoe Valley, the bunch of us were off to Wasaga Beach. I haven't stepped foot on a beach in X^120893712 years. Nothing terribly exciting happened though we had an interesting run-in with a Nestle taste-test patrol group. They were giving away free samples of their new flavoured water but was eventually shoe-ed away by The Man. Damn the Man. Damn the Man... Before they left, we were given free bottles of water because we (me and Joel) were awesome.

On our way out of Wasaga, we saw a Go-Kart track that claimed to have a track that was over a mile long! We simply had to go on that. You can't deny pure, unadulterated outdoor Go-Kart racing on a warm, sunny day. As an added bonus, they had batting cages! Here's Susan smoking a ball to right-center.

I took the pleasure of taking a few hacks at some slower pitches too. I swung too hard on a pitch and my helmet popped off. lol

Oops... Screw the helmet! It was going to pop off again anyway. I continued to take some hefty swings at slow pitches. Swinging a bat and crushing some balls made my day.

After the batting cages, it was off to the tarmac! Surprisingly, it was Wendy's first time being behind the wheel. I was shocked! Well, at least I can now say I was part of Wendy's first time... Go-Karting. lol! We only went on the Go-Kart track once as it was super expensive but meh. It didn't matter much to me as I was driving the van anyway.

On our way back to Toronto, we stopped off for lunch at this small fry shop called The Fry Guy. Their slogan was "Small to Honkin' Buckets" as you can see...

Let me tell you. THERE WERE NO HONKIN' BUCKETS!! THEY ARE BIG, FAT LIARS!! AND THEIR FRIES AREN'T EVEN THAT GOOD! Their "buckets" were the big, styrofoam take-out containers and the "and more" were hot dogs, burgers and chicken fingers. Sheesh... Here's me with a fry and a chicken finger. Please ignore my wickedly, stuck up hair...

At this point, hunger overruled the brain and any logical thinking so we bought stuff from there and ate it. It was "ok" but I expected better from a place called The Fry Guy. At least the view from the gazebo was nice.

Well, that's pretty much the trip in a nutshell. Next time I make an entry to my blog, I should be in Japan sucking up sake and eating sushi off a naked chick! (minus the naked chick part).

Adios.

Edit: Blogger is stupid and screwed up my post... ugh. Stupid blogger

The awesomeness of Nappy Time

2009-07-16T19:41:00.000-04:00

Hi All,

Another productive day at school today. I'm really getting to know the class and the class is really getting to know me. It's generally a good thing. At times, however, I needed to quell the inmates and show my students who's boss. I'm going to see about making them slightly uncomfortable again. Maybe I'll put on an angry face tomorrow and pretend to be miserable so I won't have to put up with some of the stuff that happened today. That's completely opposite from what my real personality is so we'll see about that.

Anyway, what I wanted to reflect on today is the awesomeness of Nappy Time. Yes, you heard me right, Nappy Time.

Remember in kindergarten when teachers made us take naps in the afternoon? I remember! It was great! That mid-afternoon nap was the second most wonderful thing in the world back then. (Recess was the best) Teachers would say "IT'S NAP TIME!" and we as little kids... take a nap! I mean, you can't not NOT listen to your teacher when you were little. They were like parents and you can't disobey them, right? Oh how naive we were as children...

Anyway, as a teacher, I have to practice an early to bed, early to rise philosophy against my will and I can't sleep as much as I would like. However, because teachers leave "work" earlier than normal folk, we get time to do things in the afternoon. Things like shop, go to the bank, mark homework (ugh) and ... TAKE A NAP! YEAH!! Bliss.

You see, I love sleep. Sleep is my 1A. It's not that I'm lazy (or maybe I am and I'm in denial). It's that my body NEEDS sleep to function properly. Me lacking sleep is generally a bad thing. I mean... If I don't get enough sleep, I can't focus and think properly and in extreme cases, I start walking into walls and poles. Don't laugh at me because it happens to me a lot. Basically, I'm a brain dead vegetable when I don't get enough sleep.

Ok, going back to Nappy Time. I <3 Nappy Time. I took a nap today and it was wonderful. I highly recommend practicing the art of Nappy Time whether it be at home, at work or in the park. Take a nap in the afternoon! Book a meeting room and lock yourself in it for an hour. Go out to your favorite park and doze off underneath a tree. Read a book and put the book over your face and rest! You'll thank me for your Nappy Time when you wake up.

Owned by interest

2009-07-14T14:55:00.000-04:00

Hi All,

Every now and then, people (like me) gets busy and forget. Forgetting is normal. In fact, if we didn't forget, we'd probably go insane and Columbine everyone. It sounds a bit crazy, but I'm just saying how I would feel if I suddenly got a photographic memory. I'm not entirely sure how I would sort and process all the information that we receive from every little detail in our lives everyday. I would probably go nuts. In short, I'm very grateful that I forget things. You know, like forgetting people's birthdays, forgetting to buy toilet paper, forgetting to stop at stop signs, etc,. One thing I'm not terribly happy about is finding out that I forgot to pay last month's Visa bill. That was a couple of weeks ago. So story time... Get some popcorn ready.

Last month, I was pretty busy with prepping for summer school, interviewing and doing all this JET bore-ientation stuff. Lots of stuff happened last month. It's only natural to forget a few things when you're busy with a billion things on your plate. Even so, I try to keep myself organized and keep important things close to me so that I do remember them. For instance, I keep my Visa bill next to my computer so that I'm always reminded of the that Visa bill's due date and SO THAT I DON'T FORGET TO PAY THE DAMN THING! Well, that would have worked if the bill was next to my computer. I found the bill underneath a pile of papers on the floor, 3 days after the due date. Of course, I was like "SHIT!" and paid it off right away. Here I am sighing a huge sigh of relieve thinking that I wasn't really that late with my bill, only having to owe a minimal amount of interest. WRONG!

This month's Visa bill came and it shows all my transaction records including my bill payment for last month. This is what the statement reads:

Your Payment
---------------
Trans Date - Jul 4
Post Date - Jul 7

Your interest
-------------
Trans Date - Jul 10
Post Date - Jul 10

WTF?!?!?!?!!? So, even though I "paid" Visa on the 4th, I'm paying an extra 7 days of interest at 19.5%?!?!?!? Pardon my English but... HOW THE FUCK DOES THAT WORK?!?!?! I can understand there may have been a holding date (from Jul 4-7) and I have to pay that interest on that but I can't rationalize WHY I HAVE TO PAY INTEREST ON 3 EXTRA DAYS BETWEEN THE 7TH AND THE 10TH. DOES IT TAKE 3 DAYS FOR SOMEONE FROM VISA TO CLICK ON A BUTTON THAT SAYS I PAID MY BILL!??! Or are they like Verizon and they're math challenged.

Seriously, Visa. That's bullshit. I hope someone from Visa is reading this and comments because I simply don't get it. Or at least refer me to the clause in the End User's Agreement so that I CAN understand why I've been charged an extra 3 day's of interest.

Anyway, as the title says... Owned by interest.

No marking today! Unbelievable!

2009-07-13T17:12:00.000-04:00

Hi All,

I can't believe it's day 2 of my blog resurrection! And all this comes because I have NO MARKING to do today! WOOOOOOOT!

Let me take a moment to speak to (rant) marking. Marking is the bane of all teachers' existence. First, it's mind-numbing. It's tedious and boring. I'd rather watch paint dry. At least I might have the off-chance of getting high off the paint fumes. Second, you have to go through your students' TERRIBLE handwriting. God only knows why penmanship is no longer taught in our elementary schools. Third, you get to see your students' "effort" or the lack of "effort" in their studies. This is good and bad at the same time because as a teacher, you really want to assess and evaluate your kids and see what they know. At the same time, it's really depressing when you find out 90% of your students' fail your first unit test. Do you blame yourself for not teaching them well or do you blame the students for being "intellectually challenged"? My ego isn't all that big so I would say student failure falls under the first category more so than the second. But I digress... I'm not ranting about my insecure self but rather ranting about marking. To summarize, marking sucks donkey balls. If you readers ever decide to become teachers, be prepared to lose a few years of your life marking papers and tests.

YEARS THAT YOU WILL NEVER, EVER GET BACK!! Be prepared...

Ok, so back to reality. NO MARKING TODAY! Why, you ask? Because I was awesome and did all my marking in class. I obviously need to do this more often. In fact, I'm going to do it for tomorrow's quiz! Let's hope I have a productive day tomorrow like I did today.

Bye for now.

Cask Ales, Coffee, Work? Whoa?!?!

2009-07-12T19:04:00.000-04:00

Hi All,

It's been more than 1/2 a year since I've blogged about anything related to my life but I thought I should start it up again. I mean, I'm sure everyone is just dying to know what's been going on with my life recently, right? Right! Well... okay, not really. But if you're reading this, either a) you've stumbled upon this blog by pure coincidence while looking for ales, coffee, work, money or honeys (damn that Google caching), or b) you're a friend who is actually slightly interested in what I do with my life.

By now, people from category a) should have left to pursue other, more useful websites so I bid them farewell. As for my friends, sit and stay a while. On with the show!

Today, I was invited to go to a local Cask Ale Festival at a local watering hole in Toronto called Victory Cafe. I met up with a group of friends and together, we drank some really, REALLY good beers (and some not so good ones), ate some really REALLY good bratwurst and ate some really REALLY good strawberry rhubarb pie. We chilled out on the patio of the drinking establishment for most of the afternoon just having good, drunken fun. Did I mention the beers were REALLY good? One thing I noticed that stood out was that many of the people there had little black books and were jotting down notes about the beers. Crazy! Talk about beer aficionados. I like beer but I don't think I would ever be "that" into beer. Maybe... But it totally makes sense to do it because I have completely no idea what I drank. Anyway, everyone that went got a little commemorative glass. Here's my glass for what it's worth...

Not really a "good" drinking glass but hey, what do you expect. After a little drunkenness, some of us decided to walk down the street and get some coffee. We ended up going to Manic Coffee on College and Bathurst. I have to say, they have by far the best coffee in the city. that Clover coffee is superb. It's too bad that Clover has been bought out by Starsucks. The coffee that I had was a delicious Papua New Guinea coffee blend made in a Clover coffee machine. The coffee was SO SO good. We sat down at a table and next to us were a couple of young ladies studying for something. I think we grossed them out when we started talking about our hangovers. Classy! They tried to move to another table but I'm not sure what made them stay. Maybe it was my charm and charisma... Maybe not.

Alright, so what am I doing now? Summer school! After lots and lots of job search grief this year, the only thing I was able to come up with was a summer school job teaching Grade 11 math for 1 month and ... JET! That's right people! I'm a JET! I think everyone within my circle of friends know that already but hey, it's worth mentioning since I don't speak with everyone on a regular basis. It's definitely a good thing that I have a job secured for this coming school year but it's far away (Hokota, Ibaraki Prefecture) and I'll be uprooting my life for this job. I'm still a bit indifferent about this whole JET thing but I believe I'll make the best of it if I go. I'm still banking on landing a job here in Toronto. We'll have to see.

Alright, keeping this post short(er). Adios.

Busy busy busy...

2008-10-17T00:23:00.000-04:00

Hi All,

It's been a LONG while since I've posted anything here. It's been a busy, busy, BUSY month since I last posted. Personal life just seems to get in the way of good ol' bloggin'. So what have I been doing you ask? LOTS of NOTHING! I shouldn't say that because I have done lots. It's just that I've seen very little results from my hard work so far...

My job hunting is still ongoing (yeah, I'm still jobless) but I'm going to remain positive and hope for the best. I have a couple of interviews coming up with Interac and ECC, both big names in the Japan language teaching world and I'm in the process of applying to JET, which I'm desparately trying to get into. I think the chances of me getting into JET is pretty high since I'm not like most applicants (recent grads that have no clue what to do with their lives or people who are there for the ticket to Japan). I actually have a real goal to accomplish if I were there! What takes priority over maid cafes! I mean, come on! Maid cafes! lol Just kidding... ;)

On a more serious note (can I even be serious??)... I went to Susie's wedding last, last weekend. The bunch of us Waterpoo folk went to Calabogie Peaks Resort just outside Ottawa for a weekend wedding getaway. It was like Waterpoo all over again which equates to AWESOMENESS! I saw most of my Waterpoo friends including Andrew Ma, a person that fell off the face of the planet since first year! (For me anyway). Apparently, he's getting married this weekend. Good for him... I saw Greg, whom I hadn't seen in like a year. I saw Erin Lester whom I hadn't seen in like 1092318 years. And of course, we all saw Susie and Eric (the bride and groom). So much people seeing...

The wedding ceremony was interesting to say the least. The pastor was saying all this stuff about sex during his speech. I found that pretty funny... At least, less lame than most wedding speeches. I know I shouldn't be saying that but they ARE pretty lame. There was this super, annoying brat of a child that wouldn't sit still and shut up during the ceremony. Man, I was ready to go ballistic on him. Note to anyone that's attending weddings. Leave the children at home... Seriously! Get a baby sitter or leave them to a relative or something. Ugh...

The reception was pretty decent though I wish I had gotten more food at the buffet. The staff at Calabogie took the food away so fast. I had a really small first plate and really wanted seconds. I ended up filling my stomach (aka drowning my sorrows) with wine and eating lots of cake and desserts. Not the healthiest way to fill my stomach that night IMO... lol But then again, my stomach (and liver) was practicallly on death row anyway with all the drinking over the weekend so I guess some sugar and more alcohol didn't really matter.

Somewhere in between drinking and the wedding was a nice little hike up Mt. Calabogie (or whatever that hill's called). Greg, Rob, Susan and I took a little hike up the hill. It was pretty cool... The lady at the resort was raving how awesome hiking was so we went up. We were pretty sold and we were pretty motivated to go up anyway. So... The hike was very naturesk with trees and dirt and stuff. The path was wide and it was pretty easy to climb. That was until we reached the Escarpment of Doom! Ok, I'm over exaggerating a bit but it did manage to slow us down considerably. We had to break out of mountaineering skills to get up past that super steep part of the hill. I think we all got a bit dirty going up that part of the hill. When we got to the "top", we were supposed to have been able to see a view of the resort... Nyet, nuddah, zilch, zero... NO DICE! The view was covered with this stuff called trees. Disappointed, we made our way backdown the hill.

Oh yeah, I mentioned drinking, stomach and liver damage... Nuff said about that... There was a bonfire at some point during the trip. Smores and beer were had... GOOOOOOOOD TIMES!

And pictures!... I still have to upload my pictures. And get Rob's wedding pictures too. It's in the works! You're going to have to wait until next time for them.

CNE!

2008-09-12T13:57:00.000-04:00

Hi All,

I've all but disappeared the last few weeks because I've been trying desperately to find a teaching job in September. Well, September is here and I'm still jobless... Bleh... Time to go back to doing mundane QA work. If you know any temp positions available, give me a shout. Talk about NO SHAME!! I've also posted for some English teachy jobs in Japan so many I'll be flying over to the "Land of the Rising Sun" soon. Maybe I'll be able to meet my favorite J-Idol while I'm there.

Anyway, I did manage to have some fun at the CNE a few weeks ago. (I'm so late blogging about this) I went with Susan and Wendy. We ate so much stuff! I think my favorite was the corn dog. CNE is like the only place in Toronto that sells corn dogs outside of crap Pogos. Here's what it looked like.

There's something about eating a breaded hotdog on a stick at a festival that appeals to me. lol We also "shopped" there for a good 410283216764126 hours. OMG! My feet were so sore. That convention centre floor was so damn hard and there were so few places to sit down. It made me very sad even with comfy shoes on.

Oh yeah, we played some games at the Midway and got an awesome pink hat!

It's so sexy! It really brings out the colour of my eyes. haha! Anyway, you want pics right? I mean, who doesn't want to see pics of me? haha!

Click here! or go to http://picasaweb.google.com/willchau/CNE#

Maybe I'll have a job next time I post. Or maybe I'll be in Japan!! Who knows...

Until next time.

Buskers! And a shameless plug...

2008-08-24T22:49:00.000-04:00

Hi All,

Before I go off on my usual rant, I would like to say kudos to John and Deanna for making it out to Justin's new place Friday night. This needs to be mentioned because John and Deanna hates Toronto. I'm not really sure why they hate Toronto so much but I think has something to do with the water in Guelph. Or they suck... lol... Also, it was also Deanna's birthday this past weekend so I want to wish her a happy 100th birthday. She's so going to kill me next time she sees me... haha! Anyway, it was really nice to seeing them again. Oh yeah, Chris was there too. I haven't seen Chris since the beginning of the month so that was nice too.

So, what did we do Friday night? Rock Band, of course! But before Rock Band, I went out with Susan to Toronto's Buskerfest. So what is Buskerfest? Well, a busker is a street performer (who earns his pay through tips) so Buskerfest is a festival of street performers! Isn't English a great language? lol... This was the first time I've been to Buskerfest and I have to say it's definately worth coming back... Especially since it's free (sort of). There wasn't any entrance fees unlike the Ex (bleh) and you don't "have" to pay to watch the shows. If you're a cheapskate, you could go to Buskerfest, buy some vendor food, watch the performances and leave. But, you'll probably burn in hell if you don't tip the buskers so since they worked so hard to put on a performance. Please don't burn in hell. This is my warning to you.

Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me and I had to use the crap that's my Nokia 6300 to take pictures. Many of the pictures I took looked craptastic on the phone so I basically gave up taking pictures. I don't think I'll ever use the camera on this phone ever again. Anyway, here are some of the pictures that came out "okay"... Here's a clown on stilts.

The clown walked over the kid in the orange shirt. The kid went in between the clown's legs and was all shocked and stuff. The kid had a pretty stupid face on him when he realized what had happened.

Here's a busker balancing a wobbly, metal pole on his chin.

That was not terribly interesting but his performance was pretty good. He used the pole to show off his incredible strength and agility. He would climb the pole, hang upside down on the pole, hold himself up horizontally (yes, horizontally) on the pole but the best was when he did this...

Holy craziness Batman! The dude did a handstand on top of the wobbly, metal pole! Amazing! Seeing that was worth the price of admission!! Ok not really since admission was free...lol... Susan and I gave him 2 bucks after his show. It would have been 5 bucks if he didn't strip down to his neon green tights. haha!

Foodwise, there were lots of variety but we settled for lamb on a stick, a smoked meat sandwich and chicken fajitas. Susan really wanted to try the fried chick peas but when we got back to that vendor, we were both pretty full. I think it's better that we didn't have the fried chick peas anyway. Think of all the carbs we would be eating at 9 in the evening!! (Sorry Chris... lol)

So, all in all, Buskerfest was pretty awesome. The food and entertainment was super and you can't really beat the price of admission. Next year though, I'll have my camera ready. And maybe some more people to go with.

Oh yeah, playing 12987319273 hours of Rock Band over the weekend made me suck at Guitar Hero 3. Ugh...

Until next time.

There's ants in my pants... or mah belleh!!!!

2008-08-21T20:08:00.000-04:00

Hi All,

It's been a few days since I wrote about my job hunt misfortunes and so far, nothing to report. Even though I remain jobless, I must stay positive. I know I'll get a job soon. It's just a matter of time.

Anyway, my friend Sonya and I attended a New Teacher workshop offered by PDSB the past couple of days and it was pretty fun. I got a ton of resources and books and PDSB swag. How can you not like swag. We saw some other of our teacher friends there and we basically hung out the two days we were there. It's so much more fun being in a workshop with someone you know rather than being there alone. I don't think I would want to go to any future workshops by myself.

On our way to the first day of our workshop, Sonya and I were talking about snacking and Carlos's name (Sonya's husband) came up. She mentioned that he brought back some snacks from their Mt. Shiasta trip, one of which were ... smoked ants! Sonya described them as smokey, salty, disgusting and gross. Of course, being the food aficionado that I am, I had to try it. I love trying new things.

Well, today she brought me a small plastic ziplock bag containing 3 gi-normous sized ants. This is what one of them looked like.

So, so appetizing... When I first saw them, my first reaction was OMGWTFBBQ. I opened the ziplock baggie, took a sniff and I instantly started to gag. The smell was skunky and foul! I couldn't believe the smell these 3 dead ants made. It was pretty overwhelming. Of course, Sonya laughed at me the entire time I was experiencing this. This is Sonya afterall. I expect no less from her. Anyway, I took one of the ants out of the bag and popped it in my mouth. It was very crunchy and had a salty taste to it. I had to play some mind games with myself before forcing the "food" down my throat. It seriously felt like Fear Factor... Eating an ant has to be one of the craziest things I've done in my life.

So, what about the other two ants? Well, here's one of them...

It's probably making it's way out the other end now... I still have one more in the plastic ziplock bag. If anyone wants to try it, ping me.

Until next time...

Want to enroll to Little Gordon's Memorial School of Hope

2008-08-18T13:25:00.000-04:00

Hi All,

I've been pretty crappy these last few weeks. I'm jobless and carless still. There are no job postings to speak of in Peel and I'm starting to get stressed out over September. I guess I can always go back to IT if I can't find a job for September. I really hope the job market picks up this week. It's been pretty bad.

Anyway, I've been keeping myself busy in the usual way... Sleeping, job hunting, chatting on MSN and playing my DS! I've been playing a ton of FF4 on my DS and I'm on my second playthrough (the messed up my first one and restarted). I've gotten to the point where I'm hunting for Pink Tails. I've lots interest in the game after farming that thing for a crazy number of hours. I think it's time to move on to something else.

Once in a while, I would have something "special" to do. I helped my friend Justin move into his new place this past week. I'm not quite sure how he lived in that little condo before moving to his new place. We moved so much stuff out of his old place. Anyway, he's got a much bigger and nicer place now so good for him. The extra space will be good once the new baby comes. He should be having a housewarming soon. I can't wait for that.

Last weekend, I went to a BBQ! It was lots of fun. Good food, good times. The bunch of us started the day by going shopping for food at TnT. We bought all sorts of meat and veggies to grill. Steak, pork chops, chicken legs, zucchini, eggplant were among our staple... Deeeeeeeeeelicous! We hurried to my friend Cecilia's place right after shopping so that we could marinate our food and make it for our "Eat by 1 or bust" plan. On our way there, we picked up another friend Wendy at the Whitby GO station.

When we got there, everyone went to work. Here's a picture of some of the stuff we made.

Kabobs and salad for all!!! We actually made too many kabobs and didn't eat them all. That's ok. Cecilia's family can benefit from our extras. Some of us started eating while food was being cooked.

It looks like everyone was enjoying themselves. Well, the food was pretty good so I don't blame them for eating first. I would have done the same if I wasn't cooking/taking pictures. After the BBQ, we were all stuffed. We all ate so much. I felt like I was 3 months pregnant afterwards. I think we ate non-stop until mid-afternoon.

This was the end result of all of our eating... Yeah, I know... We're pigs... lol

After the BBQ, we watched a movie to help us digest. It was a movie called The Decent. Summary of the movie: A group of women went in a cave, got stuck, encountered few "setbacks" and havoc ensues... I think I enjoyed the company more than the movie. The girls were "entertaining" to say the least. Much more entertaining than the movie itself.

So... what the heck is Little Gordon's Memorial School of Hope? The night before, the bunch of us stayed over at Madeleine's place and we were talking about this HK television extra and how she donated money to build a school in China. Well, Gordon got this idea to build his own school in China under his name and he named it "Little Gordon's Memorial School of Hope". The running gag was that he would build the school super strong in an earthquake zone (like Sichuan) and when all the schools in the area collapses, his school would be the only one standing! When disasters strikes, there is always Hope... We made a motto for the school too. "If Little Gordon can do it, so can you!". And this school would be a chain of schools so that there's Hope everywhere. ROFLMAO! Well, it was at the time... It's one of those "you had to be there" moments...

Ok, that's enough blogging for now. Maybe I'll have more luck finding a job next time I post. Wish me luck.

Schools out for the summer for Mr. Wong.. I mean Chau!!

2008-07-31T20:18:00.000-04:00

Hi All,

Wow, it's been a crazy couple of weeks of blood, sweat and tears but I finally made it through my summer school class. I think I need a LONG vacation after these 2 weeks. It's been totally insane. I've been completely focused on teaching everyday from 6:30am in the morning until 11:00pm at night. I'm not one to complain much (yeah right...haha) but if you do the math, that's 7.5 hours of sleep every night. YUCK! I'm the kind of guy that likes getting 10 hours at a minimum so you kinda have an idea what summer school is doing to me. :(

Anyway, my first taste of summer school teaching came when my friend Sonya needed to take a few days off. Supplying for my friend Sonya's Grade 9 class was simply UGH! They were the worst of the worst. Grade 9 Applied failures... I think I've already mentioned them in a previous post. The kids in that class made me want to go postal on them. It seemed like every kid in that class had some sort of behavioural issue. Not surprising since it was a Grade 9 Applied class. It was a complete zoo the two days I took over and I must say I'm not qualified to tend to those types of animals in that class. I still have nightmares about them! Argh!

Well, enough about them and more about me!

Lesson planning was a bit difficult (since I've had no real experience in planning an entire course before). Good thing I borrowed resources from the folks over at Mayfield (Big thanks to Lindsay, Fred and Dave) or I would have been toast. Having extra (any?) resources really helps in planning especially for the grueling 5 hour summer school day. I hope this experience will help me with my planning once I have a job. It took almost a week of work to come up with my game plan. Good thing I got everything done because I certainly wouldn't have had time to do anything else after teaching my class.

My plan of attack for the class was to lay the smack down by giving them a billion assignments, quizzes and tests day after day. Boy, that was a mistake. I didn't take into account the marking afterwards. DUH!! The five hours of marking every night completely destroyed took away all my free time and destroyed my life. The 2 weeks became a routine of "waking up and going to school to teach, teach, go home and have my nappy time, wake up and mark, and sleep after marking". Oh yeah, there's cheap Indian buffet somewhere between teaching and nappy time every now and then. I now completely understand why teachers don't want to deal with summer school. It's brutal on you physically and mentally. It's draining and it literally sucks the soul out of you. I know my soul has left me. I need to go find it now that summer school is over. It's probably somewhere in Scarborough playing softball with my softball team. I miss softball... but I digress.

When I stepped into my own class for the first time, it felt unreal. There was this feeling of bliss as if I've accomplished something really big. Sorta like the feeling you get after you watched the ending of a video game that you've spent 120931 hours playing (FF6 anyone??). Anyway, I had 32 faces staring at me trying to figure me out. Like, WTF is this kid doing in front of the class?!??!?! Everyone thought I was a student at first but they soon figured it out... lol...

Then there was the "How old is Mr. Chau?" thing that happened between my class and Sonya's class. Nobody thought I was a teacher even after the first few days! They really thought I was like 22, 24. Sonya said someone in her class guessed I was 18! OMGWTFBBQ?!?! Not even legal drinking age! Pwned by adolescent stupidity... Well, they found out eventually that I was older than Sonya. God I'm old... :(

Even though I said all that bad stuff about summer school I would gladly do it again if I were to teach a class similar to the one I had. They were a lot of fun and best of all, no behavioural issues! I guess 2 years of growing up makes a world of difference. And I used my teacher powers on the kids. I made a kid chug a slurpie because he brought it into class... haha!! And it was his most memorable moment in the class (obviously) and one of mine too. The whole class got into it. It was great. Everyone was shouting "Chug! Chug! Chug!". It's great when you can joke around with students like that. It really loosens up the class and makes the class that much more fun. There was this one time where my kids asked me what I was doing when I was giving a lesson and I said to them "I'm here giving you a lesson. I'm not here to dance for you guys" and I said this while I was dancing around. The class cracked up laughing. I think we really need to have that warm, positive connection between teacher and student in order for everyone to be on the same page.

In the end, everybody passed my class. Some students barely passed and some were pity-passed but I think everyone will be happy with their results. There was a kid in my class that went up over 20%! Many went up over 10%. I'm glad I can help them improve their marks. I can't wait to see their faces tomorrow when I hand them their report cards.

Whew, that was a long post... Wish me luck on my job search! Until next time!

Officially carless again

2008-07-14T16:21:00.000-04:00

Hi All,

So my car dilemma came to a climax today. It was a tough decision but I finally decided to return my car to the dealer and eat the two years cost that I put into it. It felt totally surreal when I returned the car. Everything happened so fast. I walked into the dealership and gave them back the car keys and registration. Ten minutes and a couple of handshakes later, I walked out the dealership door with my two license plates in a plastic bag. The lease manager didn't even try to offer me a deal. I guess that Mazda dealership wasn't having any problems selling cars.

Anyway, I believe returning the car was the most sensible thing to do. I currently have no "stable" job (I pray that I'll get a full-time job somewhere) and I'm currently very uncertain about my own future whether it be in Ontario or across the Pacific in Hong Kong, Japan or Korea. I can't really afford a car at this time. More moneys mean more honeys? Only time will tell... haha!!

On a different note, my friend George who CLEARLY has too much time on his hands had a bit of photoshopping fun.

"Whenever I think of Will teaching, this image comes to my mind...."

Thanks for the confidence boost, George. And no, I'm not related to Michelle Pfeiffer.

Summer school... ugh...

2008-07-09T14:25:00.000-04:00

Hi,

Today, I got my first taste at teaching summer school and I'm completely drained. I took over for a friend who is on bereavement and helped her out in her class. No disrespect to the students in her class but I saw the reason why they were there. All I have to say is "Wow"... It shouldn't be surprising to me since it IS summer school but wow I never would have thought to have been that bad. Imagine the bad eggs in 10 classes put together in one room. Well, it makes for a really bad omelet. I hope they can behave a bit better tomorrow. And I really hope my own summer school class isn't as crazy as this one.

On a different note, my car got assessed yesterday and it turns out that the damage on my car isn't really as bad as I thought it would be. It was certainly cheaper than all the quotes that I got from auto-repair places. I'm pretty happy about that. But that's if I return the car. I'm still very undecided about my car situation whether I should keep my current car or return it and get a new (or used) one. Decisions, decisions... Suggestions are welcomed.

I've been living a pretty boring life since coming back to Canada. No wild adventures to speak of with the exception of ... Rollerblading! Something that you definitely can't do in Hong Kong for obvious reasons. I went rollerblading with my friends Chris and Justin on a beautiful summer day.

Chris and Justin had a good time and so did I. The breeze off the lake at this part of the trail was gross but that didn't stop us from having fun. Two thumbs up!! Eeeeehhhh!! After rollerblading, we took a little break at this little park near Harbourfront.

We met up with Monica (Justin's pregnant wife), whom we kindly left behind to go rollerblading. Resting underneath a tree on a grassy knoll is nice. The view was good too!

Planes flying across the CN Tower and Skydome or Robber's Centre made for a very pretty picture.

Until next time.

Happy Birthday, Chris!

2008-06-29T09:02:00.000-04:00

Hi All,

It was Chris' birthday (party) yesterday and everyone there celebrated his "Turn-of-the-Thirty" by doing lots of fun stuff like operating heavy machinery, burning meat, ingesting fun liquids and CAKE!

Party Central started at Chris' place but soon relocated to The Docks where we went Go-Karting! Go-Karting was a bit short (and expensive) but everyone had fun time.

I unloaded my camera to Toni afterward and she handled the camera duties at the Go-Kart track. Here's me pulling out onto the track with Patrick right behind.

I'm going to have to start being less like an Asian tourist now that I'm back in Canada. Bad habits are hard to break.

We went back to Chris' place for dinner after Go-Karting and much food was had. Hamburgers, sausages and salads, oh my! The BBQ was BYOM (Bring Your Own Meat). Patrick manned the BBQ and did a fantastic job cooking for everyone.

Food approved by the Meat-patrol, aka me and Chris. We do like our meats! I do anyway...

DEEEEEEELICIOUS!! Thinking about the food is making me hungry. lol. After dinner, we had the "Blowing-out-candles-and-make-a-wish-then-eat-cake" (BOCAMAWTEC) ceremony. So... how many university graduates does it take to light a cake full of candles? See for yourself!

I've never seen so many candles on a cake before. There were so many candles lit, the smoke detector went off. Craziness! Can we say "fire hazard"? I knew you could!

They went overboard on the candles don't you think? There's more wax on that cake than cake! :o

There was also the "Bring-out-presents-and-open-them" (BOPAOT) ceremony where wrapped goodies are opened and wrapping paper is flung across the room! Chris sure looked like he enjoyed this part of the day. He got a nice board game and...

... a Flight of the Conchords LP!! Yes, VINYL!

Good times were had... Happy birthday, Chris!

Rob and Will does Macau!

2008-06-27T15:37:00.000-04:00

Hi All,

I just put up pictures of my trip to Macau. Let me say that if it wasn't for the rain, Rob and I would have had way more fun. Macau PWNED my umbrella in like an hour after we got there.

This is what I learned in Macau.

Squishy shoes = lose!
Baked goods = win!
HK girls >= Macau girls (That girl in black was super hawt!! Otherwise, Macau was meh)

Don't get me wrong, Rob and I still had fun but it's sucked ass being wet for the entire day.

Nuff said, on with the pics! Clicky here!

or go here... http://picasaweb.google.com/willchau/Macau

Will

Rob and Will does K-Country!!

2008-06-27T12:32:00.001-04:00

Hi All,

As previously mentioned, Rob and I took a side trip to Seoul! We stayed there for a glorious 4 days and 3 nights. Everyday was action packed with K-goodness.

Originally, I was going to put up a super long post of the trip but I decided to put up an album instead! A picture is worth a thousand words and there are lots of pictures in the album. You do the math.

Click here to see the album! Go! GO NOW!!!

In case you want the URL instead...

http://picasaweb.google.com/willchau/Seoul

Will

Ode to Christine

2008-06-19T11:41:00.000-04:00

Hi All,

Today's post is dedicated to Christine because Christine is awesome! Rob met Christine during his travels in South East Asia. Christine, being the awesome person that she is, met up with Rob (and me indirectly) in Hong Kong. The three of us did lots of cool stuff!

The first day she was here,we went drinking in this sports bar in Soho. The three of us had a nice time drinking and chatting. We couldn't really do much else since it was pouring outside that day but it was fun nonetheless. Nothing wrong with drinking 10 bottles of Asahi in the afternoon. :) The original plan was to go over to Macau to meet up with her but this happened.

At night, we met up with my sister and my host family and the six of us went up to IFC where my host dad worked. We took some really awesome pictures of the Hong Kong skyline from the 64th floor.

The Hong Kong skyline is simply too beautiful to describe. After taking pictures at IFC, the six of us went and had hot pot. In case people don't know what hot pot is, you have a big, boiling pot of broth and you cook stuff in it! It might not sound very good but trust me, it is. It's buffet style so you order as much of anything as you like. Just make sure you eat most of it or you'll have to pay extra. This is me, Rob and Christine at the hot pot table.

Look at all the food on the table! That was only a part of it! The rest of the food came later. I had some fun squirting noodles out of a plastic bag into the broth and after it cooked, it looked like curly udon noodles.

The noodles were tasty BTW. ;) Needless to say, everyone was stuffed after that meal.

The next day was the Dragonboat Festival. The three of us decided to go to Stanley to take part in some of the paddling action. We arrived at Stanley at around 9:00am but apparently the races started around 8:00am so we missed the opening races. D'oh! When we got to Stanley, we went to the local Pacific Coffee House to get some black morning love. The place was packed! All the Dragonboat racers hung out there after their race and new contestants went there to change into their uniforms. Because the place was so full of errant elbows and buttockses, I had a little accident.
Word of advice: Believe the cup when it says "Coffee is hot".

When we got down to the beach, it was already jampacked with racers and tourists. We saw many interesting team uniforms down there. For example, this guy...

and these guys...

Here's a Dragonboat with a team ready to race.

I found a great photo-op with a Dragonboat and got Rob to quickly snap a shot of it with me standing in front of it just before a race.

Sadly, after taking the photo, my shoes got wet and I had squishy feet the rest of the day but this quickly cheered me up.

How can horned helmets not make anyone happy?!?! lol

After two hours of sitting around watching Dragonboat races, we decided that was enough and headed down to the famous Stanley market. Stanley market has lots of little mom-and-pop shops selling shoddy, overpriced HK trinkets and souvineirs. Here's an example of the Stanley "Cheese" factor.

I would NEVER buy anything like this but I guess I'm not a "stupid" American or European tourist... lol! At the bottom of the market was the ocean. Here's what the bottom of Stanley looks like on a clear, sunny day!

So very pretty... As you can see, the sky cleared up. Pretty amazing since it rained practically everyday since Rob came to visit.

As nice as Stanley's view was, we quickly got tired of it. After a drink, we headed over to neighbouring Aberdeen for some dim sum. Surprisingly, it was Christine's first dim sum experience and she thought it was pretty awesome. After dim sum, we took a look around Aberdeen and found more Dragonboat racing. We saw a REALLY long Dragonboat there. It was much longer than the ones at Stanley.

After a whole day of watching Dragonboat races, we were Dragonboat-out. We went back to my sister's place and had wine, beer and cheese. At night, we met up with more of Rob's friends, Alex and Courtney. We had some curry in the diviest curry place in TST but it was tasty so whatever. Taste+Cost >>>>> Atmosphere.

It's too bad we couldn't hang out with Christine more but Rob and I had bigger and better things to do... like going to SEOUL!! WOOOOOOOOOT!!! More on that another time.

Will and Rob does HK!

2008-06-16T12:46:00.001-04:00

Hi All,

Rob and I are simply having too much fun to keep our blogs up to date so be prepared for another super-tacular (catch up) post.

The next day after pretending to be a llamas, Rob and I went out to TST. We met up with my host mom in the afternoon and we took a ferry ride on the famous Star Ferry from HK to Kowloon/TST. The ferry ride was super short because the harbour is slowly being reclaimed by the Chinese so that more brothels can be built. The brothels will support Hong Kong's economy long after China's finished raping it. QFT!

When we got to TST, we had to eat. It was like 3pm and haven't had lunch yet. We went to a local fami-resu called Cafe de Coral and had some rice with BBQ pork and BBQ duck. Pretty decent food at a reasonable price. Once we were done eating, we powered-up and immediately became crazy, Canadian tourists! Apparently, food increases powers us up and increases our tourist abilities.

First on our list of things to take pictures of was of course the Hong Kong skyline. It's arguably the best skyline in the world.

Here's me and Rob with Hong Kong at our backs. It was a bit windy and it blew my hair around but whatever... Ehhhhhhhh!! Rob's hair was unfazed by the wind due to heavy product placement on his head. Advantages of having short hair.

I think you can see the weather that day wasn't really that great and after walking around the harbour for about 30 minutes, it started to rain. We decided to run away from the rain and run we did... into the Hong Kong Space and Science Museum! OMBWTFBBQ!! I've never been there before but I thought it would be fun to go. I mean, space and science are fun things! Let me tell you, it was the shittiest museum experience I've ever had. The museum opened in 1980 and I'm pretty sure the stuff in there haven't changed since. Everything in there was either out of date or half broken. The movies that were playing on the small screens of exhibits were all from like Star Trek. Well, it wasn't very fun except for this Moonwalking exhibit. I was too tall for it so I wasn't able to get on (screw short Asian people) but Rob wasn't! Rob tried it and let me tell you, it was the funniest shit I've ever seen. The exhibit tried to mimic the gravity on the moon by lifting you off the ground through a harness. Let me tell you, after watching Rob ride it, I AM SO GLAD I DIDN'T GET ON THIS THING!

Rob may look like he's having a good time in this picture but I can assure you that he's not. The harness had a good stranglehold on his sensitive bits and he was spinning and bouncing around. Ouch! As a man, I felt every step he took. My host mom and I laughed so hard and Rob was completely clueless during the whole space "adventure".

After walking on the moon and going through the rest of museum, we went to my host mom's travel agent where we BOOKED OUR TRIP TO SEOUL!! YATTA!!! \o/\o/ That night, Rob made pad thai. He learned how to make pad thai during his Thailand trip. The pad thai turned out really well and it was super tasty.

This was what was left after eating two plates of it. End of Day 3.

The next day, it rained like crazy and didn't really do much. We went to that gargantuan shopping mall in Sha Tin to look for Father's Day deals. The place was packed even though it was the weekday. At the shopping mall, there was this super-awesome-tacular-ifically delicious udon restaurant where they make fresh udon. Wow! I had some plain udon (which tasted awesome btw) but Rob had this!

This was a mushroom udon with a some soy bean soup base. Yummy! We ended up walking around the mall afterward and the little shops outside the mall. The only interesting things that happened was we had "Guai Ling Gow" (a black jelly made from turtle shell powder) and fresh "Old Wife" cookies (winter melon and almond? cookies). Didn't do much afterwards because Rob got a bit depressed from all of the shopping and the HK pushiness so we went home and drank this! That fixed Rob up good.

Ok, this blog post is never going to get done so I'm stopping it here... I keep getting distracted by "funner" things. I'll write again when I'm less distracted.

P.S. Rob has a big head...

OMB! Rob is here and the sky is falling!

2008-06-08T07:00:00.000-04:00

Hi All,

OMB! Rob is here! Rob is here! Well, actually, he's been here for about a week now and we're having the time of our lives! Ok, enough about Rob, more about me! Over the past week, I've been doing so many crazy, touristy things!

Tuesday, the first day Rob was here, we walked down Mid-Levels aimlessly and ended up at the Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens. Of course we had to go in. Nothing really special in there except for some birds and a statue of a gorilla!

We continued down to Central, took the MTR and went to Yau Mah Tei and started walking up Nathan Road. It started raining (go figure, it's rainy season) and we took shelter at a Tin Hau temple at Yau Mah Tei. I've never been in a Tin Hau temple before and saw some interesting things. In the temple, there were these incense cones hung up on the ceiling and I thought they looked really cool.

The bottom of the cones had names written on them and these incense cones are burnt for good luck for a low, low price of HKG$120 for the yellow ones and HKG$250 for the red ones! What a way for the temple to rip... I mean... be entrepreneural. With all these incense cones burning, they must be raking in some big bucks.

Here's a close up shot of Tin Hau. Pretty slick dude(tte?). I can't really tell from this pic. After the rain let up a bit, we continued up Nathan Road and got to Mong Kok. We walked around Mong Kok for the entire afternoon looking at shoes, jackets and other cheap stuff. Since this is Mong Kok, we ate ... street food!

We had some takoyaki and...

... curried squid and fish balls! Yummy! Actually, the curry sauce was a bit too spicy for me. Rob loved it. He's built up a tolerance for spicy foods over the past few months in South East Asia. We sat down at a little parkette to have our food. While we were having our delicious snack, we saw some people play badminton. There was this crazy, old, topless man playing and he made some trick shots.

Don't mess with crazy, old, topless Chinese men when it comes badminton. HE WILL PWN YOU!! After walking for like what seemed to be an eternity, we went back home, ate and drank. Oh yeah, it poured like a mother trucker on our way back. Good thing the Mid-Levels escalators are mostly covered.

The next day, Rob and I decided to go see the Big Buddah on Lantau Island and do some hiking. The day was a bit cloudy but it didn't really deter us. So off we went. When we got to Lantau Island, the weather remained the same. No biggie, or so we thought. We got to the cable car station, and we watched the cable cars climb up the peak to disappear into the mist... OMB! The clouds ate the cable cars! DOH!

Disaster perhaps? First, the trip was far. It took us about an hour to get there from my sister's place. Second, the trip costs us 20 bucks to get there. Third, we had no other plans. Put two and two together and we have a crap situation. Well, Rob and I didn't let a few little clouds and some pissy rain stop us from going up so up we went.

Here's a shot of us getting on the cable car. Rob is such a "poser". lol... One thing that needs to be mentioned here is my TERRIBLE FEAR OF HEIGHTS! I am deathly afraid of heights and I have no idea why. I'm took the cable car for the sake of Rob! If I had my way, I would take the bus. Anyway, I freaked out everytime the cable car went through one of those pole-thingies. Asides from freaking out, I managed to get in some decent shots of the ride up the mountain.

At the top, there was this little make-shift China styled village that looked like a tourist trap. I didn't pay too much attention to it. Our goal was to see our Buddah friend and we did that right after devouring the pb&b sandwich that we made in the morning. Did I mention it was raining? Probably... Anyway, it was raining and after lunch, we had to break out our ponchos! Walking in our ponchos was a drag. It was hot and sticky. But most importanly, it looked like shit! Slowly, we made our to the Buddah. Before you got to shake hands with the Bronze Badass, you have to climb 297398217371254676 stairs to get to him. It's like initiation. You have to earn the right to be with him. Well, we did and we snapped up a nice shot.

Right afterwards, we through the Wisdom Path and up Lantau Peak. Let me say this once more... I AM (DEATHLY) AFRAID OF HEIGHTS! So someone tell me why the hell I'm climbing a moutain again?!?!?! Climbing a mountain has got to be the craziest thing I've ever done in my pretty average existence. Well, even though climbing the moutain was super scary, I have to admit that the view was breathtaking (in more ways than one).

Can you see the Big Buddah from this pic? Look closely... :) When we reached near the top of the mountain, we kept thinking that was it and we were done. But every time we high-fived, we would look up and there were MORE STEPS! OMB! MORE STEPS! And the higher we got, the more dangerous it got as you can see from the sign.

So, two and a half hours and many, many panic attacks later, we reached the top of the peak. YATTA!! Here's my victory pose.

Until next time... Hopefully soon. I still have so much to blog...

P.S. OMB = Oh My Buddah

Random Post...

2008-05-31T22:02:00.000-04:00

Hi All,

I found this picture on my hard drive and thought I'd share it with everyone.

Only in Hong Kong can everyone eat asses on a regular basis! lol

Back to regularly scheduled programming...

No work, all play! Yay!

2008-05-31T05:08:00.000-04:00

Hi All,

This is going to be a super deluxe "S-Class" post so please read!

May 29th was my sister's bday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY SIS! I haven't celebrated my sister's birthday in probably forever. My host fam and I took my sister to this nice German restaurant in TST. Here's me and my sister posing for a photo.

The food was delicious! We had lots of sausages and pork hand(arm?) fresh baked bread and of course BEER! Lots of cold, delicious beer! Maisel's Weisse to be exact. It's a fine brew...

Ummmm... Doesn't that look tasty? I'm drooling already. They also had a live band playing in the background but was mostly ignored because we were too busy eating, drinking and having a good time.

After dinner, we went to Haagen-daas to have dessert. We ordered a nice ice cream cake for my sister. The cake came with fire... FIRE!!

Fire is your friend! The problem with the flaming cake was that the alcohol they used tasted like crap. I think they used cheap vodka or something because it made the cake taste like paint thinner. Oh well, it was all for show anyway.

By the time we got back home, it was 1am... Good times!!

The next day... was my last day of my internship! It's finally over! No more creepy tunnels! No more smelly bus rides! No more sewage rivers! Best of all, no more work!

During the last week of the internship, I had the opportunity to take some pictures of the school, my students and the teachers that I worked with. And I'm going to post these pics up without any of their consent! Ha!

Here's the entrance to the school. The front of the school isn't really all that interesting so let's move on. This is the main building of the school. All of the regular program classes are held here. I only went there for my (free) lunches and photocopies. I have no idea what's written on the building but I'm sure it says something about working hard and being good Chinese citizens or something.

The school has a really good track area and lots of basketball courts. They're used all the time or so it seems. Kids play basketball during lunch and after school and it's like the only thing kids do for P.E. class. China loves their basketball.

Here's a picture of all of the teachers. From left to right: Echo, me, Anna, Victor, Annie, Philip, Liana, Roger

As you can see, we're a happy bunch of people. Echo actually came back in the middle of my internship because she had a baby boy. Philip is quite the guitar player. He has a band here which I saw on my last night in Shenzhen. Teacher by day, rock star by night. YEAH!

And of course, this is probably what everyone's been waiting for... Here's a picture of most of my students.

I'm going to miss them a whole lot. They're a great bunch of kids. I miss them already! They joke around a whole lot and they even gave me a nickname "Little Sweet Sweet"! How cute is that?

I must say, there's something about students here in Asia that's so very different from students in Canada. They are so much friendlier and respectful towards themselves and teachers. It must be the air or water or something.

Next Monday, ROB COMES TO VISIT ME!!! WOOOT!! I can't wait!

Until next time...

I'm alive with less hair!

2008-05-21T05:50:00.000-04:00

Hi All,

It's been a long time since I posted something. I'm sure everyone is just dying to read about my life in Hong Kong.

I got a haircut over the weekend! OMG! The stylist guy made me look like more like a j-dude than ever before! After my haircut, I scooted on over to Victoria Park in Causeway Bay. All I have to say is this: "There is no shortage of foreign domestic helpers in Hong Kong." I swear to god, the entire park was PACKED with DH's. It was like a giant picnic. I've never seen so many Phillipinos/Indonesians/Malaysians/South-East Asians in one area in my entire life. Anyway, I made my way around the DHs and saw some interesting things.

The first thing real interesting thing I ran into was this stone path. You're supposed to walk on it barefoot and it's supposed to give you a shiatsu-like massage. If you walk on it and you feel pain, you're supposedly not feeling well. Well, this is what the stone path looks like.

And this is what it looks like up close and personal.

Yikes! Good thing the stones aren't sharp... lol but then again, if they were, people wouldn't be able to walk on them unless you're her!

Well, the reason why I've heard of this before is because I've seen it on this HK TV show called Super Trio Series where celebs play games like "Human Tetris" for prizes and stuff. A long time ago, one of the games was to walk on one of these stone paths, drink a bottle of coke afterwards and burp as loud as possible. LOL! Anyway, it was clear on the TV show that walking on the stone path HURT LIKE A MOTHA FUDGAH! Of course I was willing to give it a try. :)

So I took off my shoes and put my first foot on the stones. Ok, not so bad. I put my other foot on the stones. Ok, not so bad. I started to walk. OMG IT WAS BITCHINLY, MOTHA FUDGINLY PAINFUL! I had to stop after every third or fourth step just to "rest" my feet from the excruciating pain. Of course, being the stubborn idiot that I am, I didn't let the pain stop me (just yet). I kept walking painful step after painful step until the bottom of my feet were numb. That's when I knew I needed to stop. Ouch.

Near the exit, there was a statue of a horse. I'm not sure what it was for but I thought it was kinda cool so I took a picture with it. As you can see (or not), I'm sportin' my new do!

At night, I went to this place to have goose. It was SO tasty. I ate some goose intestines too. It was considered a delicacy so I had to try it. It was ok. The thought of eating goose poo kinda made it taste weird but otherwise it was kinda tasty if you can get past the goose fat. And boy was it ever fat.

After dinner, I went to the Lantau Link Visitor Centre (only accessible by car) and took some pictures of the bridges that connects Lantau Island, Kowloon and HK Island. The bridges are all lit up and everything and you can see the night skyline. It was very pretty.

When we arrived (around 11:30pm), the place was closing down so we had to really hurry in and out to take the photos. We didn't get too many good shots in but there were some decent ones.

When we left, we took a much different route to get home. We went on this street that went through Mah On Hill. It was by far the most dangerous road I've ever been on in a car. The road is famous for street racing because of the "Initial-D"-ness. The road had some crazy, tight hairpins and there's elevation to boot. You're constantly angled up or down (depending on if you're going up or down the hill and it's 1km high). It really felt like a rollercoaster. I'll have to take a camera and film the ride next time I'm up there.

Anyway, until next time.

HK wants me! China wants me! EVERYONE WANTS ME!

2008-05-16T10:36:00.000-04:00

Hi All,

I'm officially a Hong Kong citizen! Yeah, that's right! I'm 100% Grade 'AAA' prime HK beef. I got my HKID card the other day and boy was I happy when I got it. It only took all of 30 years! Better late than never I suppose.

Here's a super blurred picture of the back of the card and its plastic sleeve. You don't want to see the front of the card anyway. The picture on the HKID card is pretty bad but not quite as bad as the one on my driver's license. But it could have been much better. Anyway, because I have one of these things, I have special privileges that I will NEVER, EVER USE! Well, ok... with the exception of one. I might want to work here one day if I can't find a job back home. This option is available to me so I should take advantage of it.

So, a funny thing happened to me today at the Lok Mah Chau border crossing. It was a very typical day at the border crossing. Being Friday, it was somewhat busier than normal but nothing really out of the ordinary. I line up at the counter and waited my turn to cross the border. When it was my turn, I handed my passport and departure card to the officer. He looks at my passport, looks at me and says something. I didn't quite hear it so I said "huh" and he said it again. I still didn't quite hear him properly so stupid me said "Do you speak Chinese?" IN CANTONESE! WTF WAS I THINKING?!?! The dude was a China man for Christ sakes! Of course he knows Chinese, just not the Chinese that I know. I don't think he caught what was meant by that but let's continue with the story. So, he repeats what he said (presumably Mandarin) in Cantonese and it was to move my bangs. So I brushed my bangs aways from my face. He looks at me and looks at my passport and looks at me again. He then asks me to tilt my head up. I thought it was a weird request but ok, I tilted my head up. He looks at me, looks at my passport and looks at me again. He hands my passport back to me and he says "You're Canadian right? You were born a very pretty boy." I was in SHOCK! I couldn't believe that guy said that! I bursted out laughing. I couldn't decide if it was a compliment or if he was trying to hit on me... lol

Ok, I'm tired and it's late. Until next time.

Shenzhen's flame and the human sauna (times two!!)

2008-05-08T11:09:00.000-04:00

Hi All,

It's been a while since my last post. Nothing exciting happened recently until ... today!

As you may (or may not) know, today was the day Shenzhen hosted the Olympic torch relay. Since I missed the one in Hong Kong, I decided that I would take part in witnessing this awesome event with Liana and our co-worker Anna.

The schedule was to go see the opening flame ceremonies at the Shenzhen Civic Centre, go to the Book Store/Music Centre, do some shopping at Hua Qiang Road, go to the Shenzhen sports stadium to watch the flame relay finale and have dinner afterwards. Well, the schedule didn't go as planned.

Woke up at 5:30am (OMG!!!!) to meet up with Liana and Anna in Shenzhen at 7:15am. We figured it's early in the morning and there wouldn't be too many people there. WRONG!!

There must have been everyone in China crammed into the Civic Centre when I arrived. It was red mayhem. As you can see, the place was simply packed.

On their way to the Civic Centre, Liana and Anna found out the opening ceremony would be delayed because the torch relay on Mt. Everest was delayed. Because of this, we took some time to be a tourist! Here's me in front of the humongous Civic Centre. You may not notice but I'm actually very, very far away from the building. The building is ginormous!

We walked around the Civic Centre and found a bunch of people, chanting and screaming. I wanted to scream but decided to save my energy for later. That proved to be vital later on in the day.

We went back to Liana's place to watch the Mt. Everest torch relay on TV. I found it amazing that the climbers could bring camera and torch equipment up there! And the feed was live to boot! Simply put, no other Olympics would be able to top this feat unless they bring the flame to the moon or blast it off into space or something crazy like that. Or do this!

We made our way back to the Civic Centre afterwards thinking that the people in the morning would leave. WRONG AGAIN! The place was even more packed than before. We couldn't even get close to the civic centre. We ended up fighting with China for a photo op spot on the relay route. After experiencing the human sauna for about 20 minutes, I could only get to about 5 rows away from the barrier on a street close to the civic centre.

Can you see spot the torch? Probably not... lol... And there was a pickpocket standing a few dudes next to me who was caught during the tourch relay! He got the beatdown from the guy who he was pickpocketting. It was awesome to see some vigilante justice first hand.

After seeing the Olympic flame (and much disappointment), we headed for the Book Store/Music Centre for food! Well, the Horde that was China thought the same. To avoid being spat on (lol, j/k China), we decided to head towards shopping and a kaiten sushi buffet! On our way to the Metro, we were stopped from entered the station because of the Horde so we took more pics of me!

This is me in front of the beautiful Youth Palace. The architecture is simply stunning. I loved the shapes and water fountains here. I don't know if you can notice this in the pic but my shirt is completely soaked with Grade "SS" China Body Sweat (aka not mine) from the human sauna moments ago. It was disgusting. I felt ill wearing my clothes knowing that I was wearing foreign bodily fluids. Ewww...

Anyway... we had lunch and it wasn't terribly interesting. It was cheap though and cost a low, low price of $60RMB (roughly $9CDN). The bonus was that I didn't get sick afterwards! Shenzhen is known for it's "dirty" foods and "bad" restaurants but this one was pretty decent.

After our two hour recharge, we headed for the stadium via shopping. We went through the Hua Qiang Road district and took a bus to the stadium. There we had this "brilliant" idea to line up to take pictures of the flame again before heading into the stadium! And so, I experienced round 2 of the human sauna. Somehow I managed to get to the front of the gates where I saw the Chinese Army preventing human spillage from taking place.

Go hand go! Beat those guards down with your candid patriotism! No, this wasn't my hand. It was a hand from some old man who eventually was told by the Army to put the flag down. I also felt a pickpocket. I gave him the death stare and I think he stopped. I also had this annoying guy constantly stick his fat elbow in the side of my head to take pictures of nothing. I have him a good, hard headbutt on his arm and a swift elbow in his fat gut. He got the point afterwards to not mess with me. That's right! I'm a bad mudah-fudgah! lol

In the end, the torch runner slipped through the other entrance of the stadium and the stadium did not allow "guests" from entering. BOOOO!! So much sweat, blood and tears went down the drain. Well, we know next time to NOT take part in big Chinese events. And YOU SHOULDN'T TOO!!

Until next time...

The pungent smell of victory

2008-05-02T11:14:00.000-04:00

Hi All,

Today is May 2nd. Yesterday was a national holiday. I guess it's equivalent to a Civic holiday in Toronto. It really doesn't matter because I got a day off from work today! Yay! Unfortunately, I have to make up for this day Sunday... Booo...

Today also meant the Olympic torch run-around-the-world thingy stopped in Hong Kong! Cool! I didn't get to see the torch run in person but I saw it live on TV. I'm sure glad I didn't go. It was raining but more importantly, everywhere along the route was PACKED with people. I'm not too big on the olympics anyway so it didn't really matter to me if I saw the torch run in person...

Well, I met up with my uncle at around lunchtime. I dropped by his tutorial center. I got lost along the way because it was my first time going there. I had to call for directions but apparently, I was standing right in front of the center when my uncle went looking for me. Doh! I got inside and my uncle asked me to help him with his computers. Apparently, two of them were on the fritz. After playing Mr.Fix-it for an hour, I managed to fix both computers. Normally, it would be a easy to fix stupid Windows problems but these computers were all in CHINESE! GAH for Windows XP Chinese Edition because I can't read Chinese.

After lunch, we went to Mong Kok, met up with a friend of my uncle's and shopped! I bought a pair of kickass Converse Allstars and a super, nice pair of Gucci glasses that I'll be picking up within the next week or so. What I really wanted was this but they were $6100HKG (equivalent to about $800CDN) and that was just for the frame!

Here's me with phat lootz! PHAT LOOTZ! Who doesn't like PHAT LOOTZ?!?!

I also ate some street stall food when I was shopping in Mong Kok and OMG it was good. Stinky tofu is the SHIZZZZZZNITZZZZ!! It's so stinky, yet so good. I also had some curried fish balls and egg waffle balls. I washed everything down afterwards with some herbal tea (aka chinese mud medicine lol). After walking for around for what seemed like an eternity, we ended up in the shopping mallish building and ate some Pepper Lunch. All I have to say is Wow! A 6oz steak, veggies and rice for $85HKG. Hot-dang-it! And it was so tasty! I totally won today, from shopping to eating.

I really wish I had my camera with me today but I left it at my sister's place in HK mid-levels. Too far away to get to. I won't be seeing her for a while so no pics until I see her. :(

Until next time!

First day of work

2008-04-28T06:51:00.000-04:00

Hi All,

At the request of a fellow reader, I'll be keeping my posts shorter.

Today was my first official day of work at my internship placement. I was really afraid that I would get lost but found my way to the school. It took about 1.5 hours to commute from my new home to the school during rush hour. Ew... I think I'm going to dread the commute by the end of the first week.

When I got to the school, I was greeted by the security guard. He had no clue who I was and had no understanding of English. Huge communication barrier here. Fortunately, there was a teacher that walked in the door just a bit after me that knew English. She became my temporary translator. After a little chat, the security guard smiled and let me in past the front gate. First obstacle cleared.

I made my way to the office and nobody was there. Duh! Everyone is teaching. I went to look for Liana (my internship supervisor) and found her teaching her class. I walked in and was greeted by all of her 8 students. The morning class ended shortly after.

We went for lunch after chatting a bit. It was a Chinese buffet style meal. There were platters of Chinese dishes, rice and big drums of soup. The food was pretty decent. Best of all, it was free.To my surprise, lunch is free for the international teachers! Wow! I'll work for free food! :)

After lunch, I sat in Liana's second class. This class was much bigger. I was introduced right away and did her lesson. After the break, I was asked to formally introduce myself. The students asked me lots of questions, from "How tall are you?" to "Are you single?" To get the students to read, I wrote my answers on the board. I thought it was kinda cute. They all wanted me to speak Chinese but I wouldn't budge on that.

So, tomorrow, I have to get up at 6am to be at the school by 8:15. Wish me luck. Someone over there give me a wake up call... lol

Calves, not just for eating anymore

2008-04-24T23:06:00.000-04:00

Hi All,

Yesterday was my first official day of travel. Yay!

I woke up with super sore calves from all of the walking from the previous day. I had to start the day with stretches because I was simply that sore. Ouch.

On my way to Immigration Tower, I walked down the world's longest escalator system! According to Wikipedia, it's about 800 metres long and 135 metres in height. It runs from the top (or near the top) of Midlevels, through Soho and into Central. It took me about 20 minutes to get to the bottom and into Central.

There's only one set of escalators and depending on the time of day, it will either run up or down. It just so happens that the escalators were running up when I left my sister's place so I had to walk it.

Some parts of the escalator system are really step and if you slip, you're in for a long and painful tumble. There are also parts where there are barbed wire fencing. It makes it look like you're walking down a set of prison steps. Not very touristy at all. I guess it does the job of keeping people from jumping over into other people's backyards but HK could have made it prettier.

When I got to Central, I had forgotten where Immigration Tower was. I went searching for the building but I couldn't really find it. I walked around the area for a good 15 minutes before realizing the building is actually located in Wan Chai! I hopped on to the MTR and away I went. I managed to get the passport forms completed and paid for in about 30 minutes.

After getting my HK Passport, I went to Mong Kok in search of a new pair of running shoes. The ones that I bought in Japan are finally starting show some wear and tear. I think need to get them replaced before I go back to Canada.

In Mong Kok, there are specific clusters of shops that sell a type of product. There's a cluster of shops that that sell shoes, another that sell electronics, another that sell women's cloths, etc. It's really weird how all these shops are all bunched up together like that. It's like there's no concept of direct competition. After looking around, I didn't manage to find a pair I liked. I guess I'll have to wait until summer season starts when new styles come out.

After Mong Kok, I headed down to Tsim Sha Jui. I saw the Star Ferry and the HK skyline. The weather wasn't very good so I didn't get a good shot of the skyline. I'll have to come back another day. I also bought some postcards at the ferry so shoot me an email with your address if you want a postcard.

Next to Star Ferry was Harbour City. It's this huge shopping mall with a big boat outside! I remember the boat being a restaurant but I could be wrong.

Anyway, inside the mall was a Vivienne Westwood store! OMG! I saw all this stuff that I wanted to buy. I could have easily blown all my HK money in this store. I also saw these awesome clothing boutiques in the mall too. I realized that blowing all my money on the second day of my trip was a bad idea and prevented myself from spending.

After shopping, I had curry udon with takoyaki (doughy octopus filled balls). The noodles were made fresh by some Japanese chef but the curry broth wasn't very good. I could have probably done a better job at the broth. The Takoyaki was decent but nothing special. Overall, for $65HKD (about $9CDN) it was a decent meal.

In HK, there are very few supermarkets but this mall had one. I can't remember what it's called but it sold beer! And good ones too! They had some trappist beers and even had Forbidden Fruit. They also had crazy, overpriced marbled beef ($179HKD/100g). Normal things we buy at Loblaws are like 2-3 times more expensive. Craziness! Needless to say, I didn't walk out with anything but I'll be getting some beer over the weekend. :)

At the end of the day, I walked around a closed Central and walked up the escalator path. It was painful. Because I was super-duper tired from all of the shopping during the day, the escalator ride felt like an eternity. It kept going and going... On the brighter side of things, I was able to spot some SOHO nightlife on my way up. There are lots of foreigners in the restaurants and bars there so I think I'll be visiting this place with Rob when he comes to visit me. White people in HK, go figure...

Today, I'll be visiting my Aunt May (everyone in HK has an Aunt May, lol) in Kwun Tong. I <3 my aunt. She's super fun. I stayed with her and her family for 2 months when I went back to HK like 20 years ago. I hope she'll take me some place awesome.

Until next time.

Buses, trains and taxis, oh my!

2008-04-23T23:34:00.000-04:00

Hi All,

Yesterday was quite the interesting day. It was my official first day back and I needed to get my HKID, China ID, visit my internship placement, visit a family friend, pick my nose... well, you get the idea. And boy, was it ever "exciting". More on this a bit later. Plus I was still jet lagged.

I have to say that I have never used public transit as much as I did yesterday. I experienced first hand how public transit should be like in Toronto. The MTR is fast, efficient and clean! Most importantly, the service gets you everywhere! The MTR is everything the TTC should be. Anyway, back to me, me, me!

So, I went to the Immigration Office to get my HKID yesterday. The building is next to the IFC building, the tallest building in HK (as of today). It's really phallic and reminds me of a big dildo. It took roughly two hours for everything to be completed. I got a temp ID and the real one will be ready for me in 2 weeks. Happy camper is me!

As soon as I got that done, I went to get my China ID card. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to. A new law states that HK citizens must have an HK passport as a prerequisite in order to apply for the China ID card. Booo! On top of that, the passport costs $370HKD, roughly $50ish CDN. Well, I'll be getting the passport later today. I need this China ID card so that I can easily pass the HK-China border. :(

Onward to the next item on my to-do list. I met up with my family friend who had helped me with a bunch of stuff leading to my trip here. My sister and I met up with her just before lunch and we went to Shenzhen to find my school internship placement. I learnt some valuable lessons on my way to the school.

Lesson 1: Never, EVER leave your passort/wallet unattended

On my way across the HK-China border, I was stopped by customs. Apparently, I needed to fill out an arrival/departure form. So I fill out the form and went back to the customs agent and gave her the form. She OKed everything and I was on my marry way and crossed customs. Well, little did I know, I left my wallet (which had EVERYTHING!) on the counter on the other side of customs. Well shit... I ran back to the counter to get my wallet but I was stopped by the security guards. After explaining everything, I was escorted to the counter and LUCKILY noone had taken it. I would have been royally FUCKED but disaster averted. Whew.

Lesson 2: Watch for oncoming traffic before crossing the street

In HK and ESPECIALLY Shenzhen, drivers are notorious for their crazy driving. There are no rules against drivers doing crazy shit on the road. Think of the worst possible drivers in Toronto (like cabbies) and multiply their craziness by 1273926587648628164121 times. Drivers in HK and China will run you down and won't hesitate to do it to get through an intersection. I feared for my life in Shenzhen when crossing the road. It was extremely dangerous.

Also, I was dumbfounded by the lack of people who understood Cantonese in Shenzhen. If it wasn't for my family friend who spoke Mandarin, my sister and I would have been completely lost (and screwed) when trying to find my school. When trying to find the school, we had to get directions. We asked business owners, pedestrians, bus drivers, taxi drivers and even cops. Either they didn't know where the place was or or gave us false information or was unwilling to help. In the end, we found the school but it took a good 3+ hours. By this time, I'm exhausted from jet lag. So exhausted that I was feeling nauseous. I passed out on the train and bus going to dinner and home. Everything during and after Shenzhen was a complete blur.

Sorry folks, no pics yesterday. I was too tired to take any cool pictures of anything so I leave you with this view outside my sister's flat.

Today, I fight against forms and administration again, hopefully with more pics! See you tomorrow!

Fighting cats, birds and jetlag...

2008-04-22T18:18:00.000-04:00

Hi All,

Yesterday, I embarked on my awesome supertacurific Hong Kong trip. Woot! Go me!

The flight went from Toronto to Newark, New York to Hong Kong. The first part of the flight took an slight deviation in that when I checked in, I was bumped to an earlier flight. It didn't bother me since the connection on my original flight was a bit on the tight side. Flying from Toronto to New York took about 2 hours.

The only thing that was somewhat interesting (and scary) was the landing was a bit shaky. The plane was teetering as we were approaching the runway and that really got me worried. Once we touched down, the plane was still teetering a bit but all went well.

I had a couple of hours to play around in the airport so I worked on an assignment and took some pictures with my webcam on my laptop! :o

I took a picture of some boeing plane outside. It's actually bigger than it looks. And every passenger walkway to these planes are littered with HSBC logos. I made a conclusion that HSBC owns all the souls of New York. lol

That's me in front of my webcam! It's easy to take a picture of yourself when you can see your face in front of you. Kawai desu ne? :)

On the flight to HK, I was hoping to sit next to someone that I could chat with but alas, I was denied by HSBC. HSBC took the soul of a fun, loving plane neighbour and replaced him/her with a couple of Mexican businessmen who spoke no English. Ugh...

During the flight, I had lots of entertainment. Every seat had an LCD panel so we can watch movies, TV shows and even play some video games! I kept myself busy with my travel guide, DS and TV. I watched the first 3 episodes of Season 5 of Six Feet Under. Oh how I miss that show... I also watched some Chinese movies so I can get reacquainted with the language. The selection of movies and TV shows were actually pretty decent. I can see how people can keep themselves entertained for the entire flight.

Way back when I bought my plane ticket, I specified "Kosher" meals in my flight profile. Well, I ended up getting kosher meals for the entire flight! And I ate before everyone else because my meal came first! How awesome is that?! Well, comparatively speaking, that's about as awesome as budding in line on a popular ride at Wonderland. So, if anyone can pre-order their flight meals, I would highly recommend it. I think I'm going to try halal on my way back. And get a window seat.

So, 16129873123917 grueling hours later, I arrived at Hong Kong International Airport. My entourage of 1 (my sister) picked me up from the airport and we went straight home after she bought some dinner.

Needless to say, I crashed after dinner and a shower. About five hours later, my sister's cats woke up and starting running around her flat. And they wouldn't really stop for the rest of the night. At 6am, birds wake up and start chirping away. That was my queue to get up and write this blog.

Today, I will be fighting against crowds, administration and local transit. Wish me luck!