Wednesday, July 13, 2005
a long time coming
per usual, haven't blog-oed it up in a while. make that, three months? dayaaaaaaaaaamn. das long. hokay, so.
let's start with the more recent and then work back from there. i just went to hong kong for a nice little trip. whoa back it up, easy back it up. first i came here to kunming. gonna go to school here, or so i hope. my lady at the ynnu, yunnan normal university, said that it was impossible to change a work visa to a student visa, so i had to go out of the country, get a tourist visa, only to come back in and have that switched to a student visa. the wuos of zhongguo. all in the great design-a of china.
so i went to hong kong. great time. beautiful place. hot as hades. the streets as pushy as xiangyang market in shanghai or the pearl market in beijing. the people seemingly pushing trilingual (bilingual with a side of dialect), but really only speaking cantonese on a whole. the signage all in traditional characters, which was a sight for sore eyes. i'm going to have to move to taiwan or hong kong to ever put my previous knowledge to use. in mainland china i feel as if i'm learning the whole damblamed language all over again.
i saw alex montgomery and hung out with him yesterday. that was a blast from the past. he's doing great with a chinese lawyer girlfriend (hmm, hopefully that's not a secret being outed by blabbermouth byrne) some tutoring jobs and the hopes of starting his own entrepeneurial dreams and sitting back to watch the cash flow in. i won't go into detail on his specs, but he's hoping to tap into the tourism market as few others have before. sounds like good stuff.
his cantonese is amazing, as it well should be after four years in the place, but i was astounded nonetheless. i could get a sense of what they were saying from context and the flow of the language, but even though i knew every word, i didn't understand a word that came out of his mouth. cantonese is frankly unintelligible and sounds like a big throaty tropical toucan trying to speak mandarin with boistrous bokkaws and clucks of the tongue. mandarin is a sweet soft tongue in comparison purred like a kitten, until you hear people arguing just as loudly in their language. any language can come off harsh spoken the right way.
i ate sushi at genki sushi, indian food at everest cafe, falafel at post 97, noodles at mak's, and various seafood and tofu in this wonderful cafe above a wet market in causeway bay. i'd go back just for the food.
i loved the ferry and the open air tram. both hela cheap (about a quarter US) and really convenient. the octopus card that they use in hong kong makes it even easier. put some money on it and flash it for the ferry, busses, subway, trains, etc. not cabs, but you don't really need to use cabs there. you don't really need a car at all, except for a status symbol. alex informs me that hong kong has the most luxury cars per capita in the world. i saw my fair share.
the subway system was clean and efficient. glass doors in front of the train until it comes to a stop, vending machines for sim cards, machines for tickets and adding money to the octopus card, swift escalators and plenty of signs in english and chinese. no wonder hong kong got the bid for the horse racing portion of the olympics as well as hong kong disneyland (over shanghai disneyland). furthermore, you can't eat, drink, or smoke in the subway. no littering. no spitting. no nothing. the fines are trememdous in hong kong and keeps spitting deaths down to a minimum.
alex took me to a cat cafe where cats were walking around and sitting on tables and chairs and laps. next to the door was one snuggled up on top of a tv. i was waiting for the AFHV moment, but it never came. kept expecting to see bip and ell-bee roaming around. next to our table was a glass house with two cats in it. the menu consisted of regular fare, except with meow added to the name. like, a coffee meow. an orange mocha frappacino meow. a lazy meow (orange, pineapple, kiwi). a coke meow. alex and i got some meow cookies and he got the iced banana chocolate mocha meow and i got the aforementioned lazy meow. ridiculously fun to order.
earlier i went to the HMV store and looked at and listened to the music that i'd been missing for a year in china. nothing i wanted to buy really, but fascinating to see what i'd mist.
mostly i walked around and did free stuff. world's longest escalator (broken into segments, but still very cool. i was expecting one long sucker taking me up to the pearly gates), kowloon park (with an appetizing swimming pool that i did not avail myself of), multiple highrise views of the city, temple street night market (lots of people watching, no buying), and lots of standing in well-air-conditioned vestibules. i sweat more in the past week than i have in the past month. that speaks to how hot hong kong is and how little i've exercised recently. whatever mental picture you have of me right now, add a chin roll (sushi) or pump a little more air into that spare tire in your image (fried rice). mmm, food.
the city was densely packed but is on an island that is 90 percent undeveloped due to steep mountainous terrain. quite an eye-opener to see mountains backing skyscrapers. the boats chugging around interspersed with windsurfers, window surfaces flashing brilliantly in the sun, and the mountains chewing on a few clouds standing sentinel over all. beautiful
now that i'm back in kunming the weather is terrible of course. no sky to be found. hopefully it'll get better. in the meantime, i'll apply for school, find an apartment, and trek around. i'll write more, i promise.
e
let's start with the more recent and then work back from there. i just went to hong kong for a nice little trip. whoa back it up, easy back it up. first i came here to kunming. gonna go to school here, or so i hope. my lady at the ynnu, yunnan normal university, said that it was impossible to change a work visa to a student visa, so i had to go out of the country, get a tourist visa, only to come back in and have that switched to a student visa. the wuos of zhongguo. all in the great design-a of china.
so i went to hong kong. great time. beautiful place. hot as hades. the streets as pushy as xiangyang market in shanghai or the pearl market in beijing. the people seemingly pushing trilingual (bilingual with a side of dialect), but really only speaking cantonese on a whole. the signage all in traditional characters, which was a sight for sore eyes. i'm going to have to move to taiwan or hong kong to ever put my previous knowledge to use. in mainland china i feel as if i'm learning the whole damblamed language all over again.
i saw alex montgomery and hung out with him yesterday. that was a blast from the past. he's doing great with a chinese lawyer girlfriend (hmm, hopefully that's not a secret being outed by blabbermouth byrne) some tutoring jobs and the hopes of starting his own entrepeneurial dreams and sitting back to watch the cash flow in. i won't go into detail on his specs, but he's hoping to tap into the tourism market as few others have before. sounds like good stuff.
his cantonese is amazing, as it well should be after four years in the place, but i was astounded nonetheless. i could get a sense of what they were saying from context and the flow of the language, but even though i knew every word, i didn't understand a word that came out of his mouth. cantonese is frankly unintelligible and sounds like a big throaty tropical toucan trying to speak mandarin with boistrous bokkaws and clucks of the tongue. mandarin is a sweet soft tongue in comparison purred like a kitten, until you hear people arguing just as loudly in their language. any language can come off harsh spoken the right way.
i ate sushi at genki sushi, indian food at everest cafe, falafel at post 97, noodles at mak's, and various seafood and tofu in this wonderful cafe above a wet market in causeway bay. i'd go back just for the food.
i loved the ferry and the open air tram. both hela cheap (about a quarter US) and really convenient. the octopus card that they use in hong kong makes it even easier. put some money on it and flash it for the ferry, busses, subway, trains, etc. not cabs, but you don't really need to use cabs there. you don't really need a car at all, except for a status symbol. alex informs me that hong kong has the most luxury cars per capita in the world. i saw my fair share.
the subway system was clean and efficient. glass doors in front of the train until it comes to a stop, vending machines for sim cards, machines for tickets and adding money to the octopus card, swift escalators and plenty of signs in english and chinese. no wonder hong kong got the bid for the horse racing portion of the olympics as well as hong kong disneyland (over shanghai disneyland). furthermore, you can't eat, drink, or smoke in the subway. no littering. no spitting. no nothing. the fines are trememdous in hong kong and keeps spitting deaths down to a minimum.
alex took me to a cat cafe where cats were walking around and sitting on tables and chairs and laps. next to the door was one snuggled up on top of a tv. i was waiting for the AFHV moment, but it never came. kept expecting to see bip and ell-bee roaming around. next to our table was a glass house with two cats in it. the menu consisted of regular fare, except with meow added to the name. like, a coffee meow. an orange mocha frappacino meow. a lazy meow (orange, pineapple, kiwi). a coke meow. alex and i got some meow cookies and he got the iced banana chocolate mocha meow and i got the aforementioned lazy meow. ridiculously fun to order.
earlier i went to the HMV store and looked at and listened to the music that i'd been missing for a year in china. nothing i wanted to buy really, but fascinating to see what i'd mist.
mostly i walked around and did free stuff. world's longest escalator (broken into segments, but still very cool. i was expecting one long sucker taking me up to the pearly gates), kowloon park (with an appetizing swimming pool that i did not avail myself of), multiple highrise views of the city, temple street night market (lots of people watching, no buying), and lots of standing in well-air-conditioned vestibules. i sweat more in the past week than i have in the past month. that speaks to how hot hong kong is and how little i've exercised recently. whatever mental picture you have of me right now, add a chin roll (sushi) or pump a little more air into that spare tire in your image (fried rice). mmm, food.
the city was densely packed but is on an island that is 90 percent undeveloped due to steep mountainous terrain. quite an eye-opener to see mountains backing skyscrapers. the boats chugging around interspersed with windsurfers, window surfaces flashing brilliantly in the sun, and the mountains chewing on a few clouds standing sentinel over all. beautiful
now that i'm back in kunming the weather is terrible of course. no sky to be found. hopefully it'll get better. in the meantime, i'll apply for school, find an apartment, and trek around. i'll write more, i promise.
e
