Laundry
January 24, 2012 § 3 Comments
I spent my first few days in Hong Kong stressing about how I was going to clean my clothes. Well, more specifically, how I was going to dry them. HK is one of quite a few places around the world where drying machines aren’t common home appliances. They do take up a lot of space and use quite a bit of electricity, and besides, who needs dryers when you have perfectly good windows to hang your wet laundry by?
This, my friends, was quite disconcerting for me. Never in my life have I had to do my own laundry without the use of a dryer. My history with laundry is short — I didn’t learn to do it until I graduated from high school. My parents, being the wonderful people they are, always did the laundry, and apart from being lazy, I was also rather intimidated by those mysterious machines. Pretty much the only chore I did around the house was manually washing the dishes because there’s really no way to screw that up [arguably]. But the washing machine had so many settings! Do something wrong and all the clothes could get ruined, or worse, I could end up breaking the machine and flooding the house! I probably sound like a total moron, but having a hypercritical mother does that to your self-esteem.
Anyway, when I studied abroad in HK before, our dorm had huge laundromat-style dryers. When I taught English in China during the following summer, one of the church’s prayer warrior ladies [truly a blessing] kindly did my laundry for me. And whenever we visit our relatives in China, there’s always somebody else who will take care of laundry for me. The thought of not having a dryer really flustered me.
Another thing that continues to perplex me is the mystery of my missing laundry bags. I distinctly recall packing my two pink laundry bags into the front pocket of one of my suitcases, but when I arrived in HK, they were gone. Their inexplicable disappearance is annoying because 1. who would steal laundry bags??? and 2. they were a gift from my mother [if you can call it a gift?], and I considered them her blessing to go out into the world and do my own laundry freely. And they were pink!!! Also, not having laundry bags means I can’t haul my stuff to the nearest laundromat.
In any case, I’ve been keeping my dirty laundry in the random Express shopping bag that I used to pack all my toiletries. This turned out to be an advantageous option because the tiny washing machine in the kitchen of this apartment can pretty much only hold the contents of a medium-sized shopping bag, about two pairs of pants, one sweater and some socks.
Pork & Socks
January 20, 2012 § 10 Comments
Last Saturday, I was able to meet up with four former study abroad classmates from HKU + two other girls.
From left: Cathy, Winnie, me, Kathy, Christian, Danny
Cathy, originally from mainland China, is back in HK doing her Masters. Kathy, who graduated from Cornell, is working in Shanghai. Christian and Danny are both from Australia. Winnie, a friend of Danny’s, grew up in Hong Kong but now lives in Australia. The photographer was Yi, Danny’s cousin, who teaches at Hong Kong Baptist University (and apparently studied at Yale?? I only heard fractions of that conversation). Everyone except Cathy and Yi were only in HK on vacation and departed with the weekend.
Fun fact: Christian and Danny showed up wearing the exact same cardigan (unplanned). Which they had bought together at H&M (allegedly). From the back, they looked exactly the same that day (can you tell?). I mean, I thought it was pretty bad whenever LC and I happened to wear similar colors to church, but we never took it to their level! That’s true destiny ♥
We had lunch at some hole-in-the-wall place in Wan Chai known for their barbecue pork, which was indeed delicious.
Also known as “char siu”
Settling In
January 19, 2012 § 2 Comments
After traveling for 24 hours.
My first day in Hong Kong was hectic and endless. The list of things to do:
1. Buy a SIM card for my phone
2. Open a bank account
3. Transfer money from U.S. to HK so I could withdraw it immediately
4. Exchange my USD and RMB
5. Buy some household items, like a pillow and a cup
6. Email my family & access some social networking so everybody knows I’m alive
7. Call my friend Kathy to meet for dinner
8. Shower & sleep
None of those tasks are particularly difficult, but I was a frazzled hot mess and don’t understand Cantonese, so it added a layer of complications.
After dropping off my luggage at the apartment, Bobby walked me to the nearby MTR (subway) station, showing me some shops along the way. I popped into a 7-11 to buy a SIM card (852.6702.6379 call me!) and boarded the MTR to Central, hoping to find a Citibank without too much trouble. Thankfully, I found one right outside the MTR exit I happened to choose, but there, my progress slowed to a dispirited halt.
I chose to go with Citibank because I have an account there in the U.S. (is this too much information to be revealing on the Internet??), so transferring money between the two accounts wouldn’t generate any fees. However, lately I had learned (through opening various new bank accounts at home) that banks basically hate people, especially non-rich people, and will do anything they can to squeeze money from even the most basic of checking accounts. I HATE BANKS.
Run…run from nefarious banking fees!
Citibank HK was no different. I couldn’t qualify for the waived-fee work-pay checking account (or whatever it was called) because I was only here for an internship and didn’t have my work contract with me, so I had to open a basic checking account, which has a $100HK monthly fee unless there’s a balance of $10,000HK in there (almost $1,300US). Well, great. I already have to keep $1,500 in my U.S. Citibank account; where am I supposed to magic this extra money from?? Whatever.
I spent 2.5 hours in that bank. One third of it was listening to my banker (a young man named Axel, as if he were a character from Cars) explain everything to me, another third was spent watching the poor guy run around trying to process my paperwork while I tried to process all the information I was receiving, and the last third was spent at one of the e-kiosks on the side, trying to activate my online accounts and do a global transfer. During the last part, I had to go back to Axel twice for help.
After that experience, I truly understood the value of just keeping all your money under your mattress. Besides, the debit card they gave me starts with “666”…if that’s not an authentic sign of banking evil, I don’t know what is!
I withdrew my funds, visited the currency exchange next door, and finally had enough money to pay Bobby the deposit + one month’s rent, which came out to a total of more than $900US. Damn. I never had to pay that much for an apartment during college. $465 a month could get me a pretty nice place back in Columbia!
Stopping by a Japan Home Centre on the way back, I discovered that pillows were outrageously expensive. Most cost around $100HK (a little less than $13US), and the cheapest one I found was $49HK — but it was an embroidered throw pillow. Like, one you would have on the couch. I was pretty sure that I had bought decent pillows at Wal-Mart for $5, so color me bamboozled. I ended up buying nothing and went home, exhausted and dejected.
Fortunately, the rest of the day went according to plan, and I was happy to be reunited with Kathy, whom I had met while studying abroad in 2010.
My friends have been asking me to post photos, but I haven’t been having that many adventures because I’m working full-time. Seriously, though, I took so many photos while I was studying abroad two years ago. You guys can creep through those while I work on my next blog post, which will definitely have pictures!
Living Small
January 15, 2012 § 1 Comment
One thing I love about Hong Kong (and Asia in general) is the crazy clothing that people wear. Don anything remotely unconventional in the Midwest, and people will immediately turn their heads to gawk at your outlandishness. Here, wacky fashions are as common as the smog on the horizon, though I doubt I’ll be bringing back any with me. As soon as I rolled off the plane, I spotted this woman, who seemed to be the nanny of another woman and her child (although I could be very, very wrong):
Her shirt says: “my parent still think i am straight”
I feel like the only place someone who understands English would wear that shirt would be San Francisco? (Maaaaybe Japan too.) Then again, who knows?
Another aspect of Hong Kong that bothered me a lot is the prolific amount of PDA, especially in the subway areas — young couples just cling to each other like the world’s about to end! Take, for example, these two:
Maybe they were practicing the tango.
They were originally embracing on the left side of the photo, and then they hug-walked 15 feet to the right. Please…just stop.
Anyway. I had brought my SIM card from two years ago, hoping that it would still work (especially because I had to refill it just three days before departing), but it had expired, so I had to find a pay phone to call my landlord. I took a taxi to the apartment, which was quite a scary experience because I was no longer accustomed to the death ride that is a city taxi.
My landlord also happens to be one of my roommates. I’m living with an Indian couple (probably early 30s), Bobby and Tracy, and their maid, Aman, in an apartment listing that I found on an ex-pat forum. Bobby runs some kind of textiles business; Tracy actually grew up in Hong Kong and can speak some Cantonese. They’re both pleasant so far, but I haven’t interacted with them very much. Aman, probably no older than 20, is a gaunt girl who speaks very little English.
Upon learning that I was to be staying in an Indian household, quite a few of my friends expressed the sentiment that Indian people smell like curry, and their houses even more so. First of all, that’s racist. Second of all, I’ve never experienced a smelly Indian person or house, so I can only conclude that these are mere ignorant stereotypes. Third of all, I like curry, so I guess it wouldn’t be such a bad prospect anyway.
The apartment exceeded my expectations in many ways. The size — oh my goodness, the size. I had only previously been inside two actual Hong Kong apartments, which were both rather tiny, but as I was not living in them, I didn’t really pause much to think about them. Living in the dorm seemed cramped, but the rooms were comparable to American college residencies. Seeing this apartment in its dwarven reality kind of blew my mind. The whole apartment (two bedrooms, living room, kitchen, bathroom) is smaller than my parents’ master bedroom (plus bathroom & walk-in closets). Granted, my parents’ room is pretty huge, but fitting your whole life into a space this small is mind-boggling.
The washing machine, nestled in the kitchen, is big enough to hold maybe two pairs of jeans and a sweater. The shower is the nine square feet of tiles at the end of the narrow bathroom. Only the two bedrooms have windows. The (folding) kitchen table is the size of a nightstand. I have no closet. Aman’s bed is in the living room, as is the refrigerator. I would take photos of the place, but she’s kind of there all the time, so that would be awkward. I don’t think photos would do the place justice anyway — as someone who grew up in the suburbs of America, I would really have to see it physically to grasp the startling proportions.
The good thing about the apartment is that they keep it very clean. The bedrooms both have rugs to give a carpeted feel, and all three of my…roommates…are very particular about stowing things neatly and keeping everything tidy. The living room faintly smells of curry in the mornings because they eat dinner late, but other than that, I’m pretty impressed at how immaculate the place is. That’s good, because I’d probably shriek and faint if I so much as saw a hint of a cockroach indoors.
Due to the upcoming Chinese New Year holiday, during which pretty much everyone gets the week off, Bobby and Tracy have gone to India for two weeks, leaving Aman and me to get to know each other (not). I’m still trying to figure out my relationship with her; considering her age, I’d like to be friends, but the language barrier is quite extreme. Having come from midwest America, I’m not really familiar or comfortable with the concept of having a domestic helper, especially a live-in one, which increases my feelings of uncertainty around her. I do wish that I could converse more with Aman and find out her story. My guess is that she was brought here from India to work as a maid so she could make money for her family back home. I can’t see any other reason for someone so young to waste her potential by spending her precious time taking care of a Hong Kong apartment and watching Indian TV.
After five days here, I’m still trying to settle in. Before coming, I imagined that I might be able to do some cooking, which I now have given up as impossible. Cooking takes a lot of supplies — you at least need a pan and some ingredients, of which I have none. I can’t ask if Bobby and Tracy would let me use their pots and fridge space because they’re in India, and even if I could, I don’t know if I would be motivated enough to. On one hand, it’s pretty easy to find a meal in Hong Kong. On the other hand, eating out all the time usually means an acute lack of any nutrients other than fat and carbs, so we’ll see how this goes.
auradis 