Prepare For Takeoff
April 6, 2012 § 1 Comment
Ever since I was a young girl, I’ve always dreamed of going to Singapore. I barely knew anything about it, but after spending summers in the polluted urban jungles of China, I figured a place where cleanliness was the law was too good to be true. In fact, a few years ago when I was first considering studying abroad, Singapore was my first choice — that is, until my father deterred me by telling me that I’d be bored within a week. Still, although my romantic notions of spotless sidewalks have mostly faded as I’ve matured, my eagerness to visit remained. It was with some trepidation that I booked my flight without a travel buddy, but thankfully, my Singaporean friend CK was willing to show me around.
Interesting things abounded before I even got on my flight. When checking into Tiger Airways, which is apparently the budget airline to fly to Singapore — other ones don’t fly there, strangely — the lady at the counter asked if I would consider changing my flight to the next morning. “We would book you a hotel room for the night and compensate you with S$200 (~$159US),” she offered. Two hundred Singapore dollars, eh? I mulled it over for a moment, thinking of the things I could buy with that extra cash.
Sensing that I was weak prey, the first lady’s partner/assistant/lackey, who was standing behind her, elaborated on the deal. “There are two flights tomorrow morning, and you can use the money as credit for a future flight with Tiger Air…why don’t you take some time to think about it, maybe call your folks, and we’ll keep your boarding pass here at the counter for you,” she pressed. Ha ha, call my folks…that’s a good joke…as if I have any family to contact here in Hong Kong! And if I couldn’t use the money as cash, I didn’t want it. Besides, I didn’t want to inconvenience CK by changing plans and cut into what was already a pretty short vacation, so I declined. It was their own fault for overbooking the flight anyway — not my problem!
Air travel always offers interesting experiences before one even arrives at the destination. This time, while I waiting in line to board and while walking down the tunnel thing to the plane, I was in front of an older Asian man who was carrying some English-language newspapers. I got the feeling that he was following me a bit too closely, so I was a bit alarmed when I stopped at my row on the plane to pull my laptop out of my bag and he paused right beside me to stuff his bag into the overhead compartment, his armpit hovering just above my face.
The plane was still relatively empty at that time, and he just happened to have the seat right next to mine, effectively trapping me by the window. Perturbed, I fleetingly hoped that he wouldn’t try to molest me on the flight. (It’s an extremely silly scenario, but these are the small things that men probably never have to worry about…) The third person in our row turned out to be a woman that I had also seen before boarding; in the airport, I saw her carrying the book Why Men Marry Bitches, and in the plane, she was reading He’s Just Not That Into You. Interesting choices. But I guess she was better off than me because I had stupidly forgotten to pack any reading material, not even a magazine.
Flying during the day is a delight because the view from above the clouds is always gorgeous, but traveling at night has its advantages as well. As I gazed out the window and saw stars in the sky and clouds floating below, I imagined a flipped world, that the space below the plane was actually the sky, rife with puffs of clouds and miniscule lights from boats that could’ve passed for stars, while the view above was actually the ocean, vast and dark and dotted with reflections of the lights below. There’s nothing like stargazing to make me feel incredibly small, to remind me that I’m nothing but a speck in the universe. But sometimes I relish that humbling existential feeling and remember to enjoy what I have at this very moment.
Rub A Dub Dub
April 1, 2012 § 1 Comment
Mmmmm, I just got back from a massage + facial, and it feels like the world is a beautiful place.
This treatment was one of the first Groupons that I bought in Hong Kong, which is kind of saying a lot because so far I’ve purchased 22. It was irresistible — a treatment that normally costs $345US was on sale for $13?! I was all over that, obviously.
I was in the mood for pampering because lately, a lot of tension has been building up in my neck and shoulders, which is bound to happen when you’re typing at a desk all day. In fact, it had been so long since I bought the Groupon that I didn’t even remember that it came with a facial. My body was aching for a massage, and I had to find a professional since I don’t have B around to give me one, hehe.
One main purpose of using a Groupon is, aside from the obvious factor of saving money, is the opportunity to experience something new. The risk that I run here in Hong Kong is that I might venture into a place that caters only to locals, as in menus with only Chinese words and waitstaff that only speak Cantonese. This has already happened a few times, and in those cases I usually end up appearing deaf & dumb, but I get by. It’s odd each time because the Groupon website is in English; how do these businesses get their deals online without knowing any English??
BeauStyle, the place I went for my massage, was tucked away inside a hair salon. I think the receptionist spoke the best English — the manager didn’t speak any, and my masseuse could speak very little. It doesn’t seem like a good idea to get body work done at a place where you can barely communicate with the staff, but it was too late to back out!
I was led into a small, dimly lit room with a massage bed, and my masseuse gave me a towel/dress thing that buttoned up as a tube top. She also gave me a pair of very sheer underwear made out of fine netting, which perplexed me for a minute. Was I supposed to wear these as underwear or over my own underwear?? I didn’t want to surprise her with my naked bum if she wasn’t expecting it.
I ventured out of the room to ask, but the hallway was empty. Eventually another staff member walked by, and she answered my question by telling me that it was supposed to go on my head. LOL. Thankfully my masseuse reappeared to clarify my quandary (it was supposed to be worn alone) and hand me a hair net.
The massage came first. It’s truly a luxury to receive a massage from somebody who knows what he or she is doing, and in this case, she really put her hands to good use. I’ve previously only gotten two body massages before. One was a $10 Swedish massage in the Philippines, which was as intense and satisfying as it was cheap.
Spending Money in Hong Kong
March 6, 2012 § 2 Comments
There’s something about reading good blogging that inspires me to do some writing of my own. In this case, I recently spent some time perusing Manhattan Nest (as well as his BF’s blog), and I feel inclined to do some updating on my own life, if only so I can later reflect on my adventures in Hong Kong. (I’ve also changed my blog theme to improve readability!)
While abroad, I’ve kept stringent records of all my expenses, even purchases as small as 90¢ for a carton of soymilk at 7-11. As far as non-food purchases go, I’ve bought an assortment of things, some that were outlined in a previous post, and mostly beauty/skincare-related because now, at the ripe age of 22, I should probably start getting concerned with such things. So please join me on a little photo journey that will be split into a few different categories.
First up: Non-Food!
It was so chilly these past two months, so I was on the hunt for sweaters & cardigans. I found this one for less than $15US at Argyle, which is a mall stuffed with hundreds of small shops and hundreds of hundreds of small teenagers any given day. The tag said Zara, which caught my eye; it only came in one size, which was not labeled and looked tiny, but the fabric was comfy and it had little pastel rainbow buttons(!!!), so I couldn’t resist. At the moment, a seam is coming apart, splitting the end of the left sleeve like a snake’s tongue.
Probably a knock-off.
Before coming to Hong Kong, I ordered a universal adapter from Amazon because the plug on my travel hair dryer wouldn’t fit into the two HK-specific adapters I already had. Within a week of coming to Hong Kong, the thing stopped working. As you can see, the plastic had started melting or something…in any case, I had to buy a new adapter. This photo is technically not something I bought in HK (though it did force me to buy other things), but I wanted to show you how this piece of junk broke anyway.
The prongs won’t go fully in or out; they’re just stuck halfway (after I tried to shove them back in).
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.
auradis 