This recounts the first day of my visit to Hong Kong with my father (actually, the title of the this post will be pretty much applicable to every day I spend here).

Myopia

Our flight from SFO was at 1:30 AM. We arrived at the airport before 11 AM, and since it was so late already, I had taken my contacts out. I was not wearing my glasses because right after I take my contacts out, putting on my glasses makes me dizzy, so I wandered around with extremely myopic vision, only being able to see in vague shapes and blurs. Myopia is not fun; it almost makes you feel helpless, as if you need a guide, and as if your reaction time to anything had tripled – if something was about to knock me dead, I probably would not have realized it, AND I would have blamed it on my myopia after dying.

Tagalong

My dad and I flew first to Taipei, Taiwan, and then to Hong Kong. Since we were passing through Taipei, my grandparents, who had been visiting for the past couple of weeks, thought it would be a good idea to fly to Taipei on the same flight as us – thus we could kind of “drop” them off in Taipei and then make our way on the connecting flight to Hong Kong. Now my grandparents’ coming to Taipei with us is not the “tagalong” part of this. As a result of my grandparents’ being on the same flight as us, I got to take advantage of many first class and business luxuries – which, trust me, I am never able to revel in. My grandpa somehow talked one of the airport ladies into letting me accompany him to the first class lounge, where free food, free drinks, plush couches, and free internet abounds (I took very heavy advantage of each). Of course, I was out of place sitting among a bunch of old men and women, chomping on my apple extremely loudly, amidst erratic beeps of my cellphone notifying me that I received a text message. Nevertheless, it was nice. The high life is nice. So that was me being a tagalong. My grandpa also asked the airplane stewardess to bring me up from my lowly economy seat up to first class to sit and chat with him for a bit. Wow, I have never even close to sat in such a luxurious space on an airplane. And I reiterate – the high life is nice.

Multitasking

On the plane, I found myself in a row of three other empty seats, so that gave me the opportunity of taking out everything in my carry-on and spreading it out across the seats next to me. This then led me to a heavy bout of multitasking, whereupon I tried to listen to my iPod, eat my trail mix and granola bars, write in my black book, read three books, read Harper’s, Spin Magazine, and the Economist all at the same time. I don’t know how successful I was. It basically resulted in a massive overload of information and crumbs everywhere.

Vegetarian Meals

When ordering the airplane tickets, my dad booked vegetarian meals for me – an act that was very thoughtful of him. The meals were not bad at all. The one thing about having vegetarian meals on China airlines (and I guess various other airlines as well) is that they give you your meal well before everyone else (let’s say about 10 minutes). This leads to all the hungry people around me straining their necks to see what I am eating. I feel self-conscious, chewing slowly, staring forward, but well aware of the fact that everyone within a 10-foot perimeter has his/her eyes pointed in my direction.

Eating Schedule

The eating schedule on planes is weird, because they basically have to serve you meals not only based on the timezone you just left, but also on the timezone in which you arriving. Thus, you are served a cavalcade of meals, whether you like it or not, and you sit there on your bum groggily stuffing food into your face. I think I ate about 5 meals in 12 hours.

Linguistic Adaptation

We arrived in Hong Kong around 9 AM on Saturday morning. As soon as I stepped off the airplane, I realized I would have to quickly adapt my ears to a different language, well obviously. But it’s definitely interesting -this process of linguistic adaptation – how much it subconsciously teaches you – how much more I will have to speak Chinese (though I can only understand Cantonese and not speak it very well, which always leads me to the dilemma of whether I should speak Mandarin or English to people in restaurants, stores, etc. or just stay silent and act dumb). There is also the process of optic adaptation occurring here, whereby I feel a bit taller and fatter because everyone here is so petite and puny.

Clean Cars

Every time I come back to Hong Kong, I am reminded of this weird phenomenon of clean cars. Everyone here has clean cars. And I don’t just mean clean – no, like spotless, shiny, newly waxed cars – whether or not you have a Mercedes or a Volvo or a beat-up car from the 70s – every car is polished and glistening with sheen. My uncle tells me that his car is washed every or every other day. It’s one of those things that amazes me, especially because my car is an absolute dustball.

Food

I took a lot of pictures of food.

Traffic

Traffic here is really bad, which I guess is expected for a city. However, the traffic is beyond congested – it’s some of the worst traffic I have ever seen. Cars are inches from one another and there is no such thing as “right of way” for pedestrian, and there is definitely no such thing as “defensive driving” or “courtesy,” for that matter. I know that if I tried driving here, I’d probably have a heart attack (and multiple car accidents).

Revisiting

The last time I was here was two years ago, the summer after sophomore year. The funny thing is that every time you go somewhere again, you notice so many new things. Maybe that’s the process of growing older.

Jet Lag

Inevitable, unless you are incredibly skilled. I am writing this post at 5 AM Sunday morning. I slept from 7:30 PM to 4 AM, waking once at 2 AM. That’s the way things go with traveling, I guess.

It was a dreary, muggy, rainy day. The air here is so thick. I also not like rain very much. However, this does make it a bit cooler than usual, which is nice.

A cross-section of the cityscape.

Hong Kong is one of the largest container ports in the world.

Very old buildings.

My beautiful grandma! Who stands in stark contrast to the drab buildings.

My dad and my uncle (well, again, I don’t know the exact relation – he’s my dad’s cousin). My uncle and grandma picked us up from the airport.

We walked to CRC (Chinese Recreational Club) for lunch.

We spotted a huge Hong Kong cockroach. Those things are monstrous.

It’s raining and people are still playing tennis. Ridiculous. This is where my dad grew up playing tennis.

Lunch at CRC! To the left, pork knuckle (?) lined with a thick layer of fat, which I definitely did not eat, and to the right, strands of jellyfish … Oh, this is Chinese eating, for sure.

Winter melon, seafood medley soup with egg whites

Some kind of green vegetable with fish paste patties. This was my favorite dish. I think I ate most of it haha.

Vegetable dumplings. I liked this a lot too. Notice how much of the cuisine is selected so that I can eat it… haha, I feel bad.

Some kind of meat and veggie wrapped in tofu skin. I did not eat this.

Deep-fried taro balls. Very pretty and photogenic. I did not eat this either.

Chinese food here (even this “mediocre” stuff, at a recreational club) is so much better than that at home.

The hotel my Dad and I are staying at.

It’s a small little room, with very very white sheets apparently.

My dad and I took a walk. We went to the supermarket to buy a few things. Notice the very shiny cars.

We continued walking to meet up with my grandma. This was a nice view of the city.

I like this picture because of the tall building on the right that curves out of the picture.

The one sole picture of me in this entire batch.

Lots Lots Lots of people on a Saturday afternoon. I noticed a lot of tourists too!

My grandma took me on a wee shopping excursion in this alley. I bought a couple of shirts, scarves… very cheap stuff.

Oh, tacky hair accessories galore.

Then we went to the mall where we ate dinner at Chinese Jade Palace. This is a spicy-sour soup.

Naomi, this one’s for you! (This is my sister’s favorite kind of noodle – dan-dan noodles, or spicy peanut butter noodles). This restaurant has one of Hong Kong’s best dan-dan noodles, and you can even watch the cook guy pulling the noodles (making them by hand – it’s an amazing process).

My daddy!

And then I went on my little escapade of taking pictures of him eating.

Look at his bushy eyebrows. =)

Yum Yum.

My beautiful grandma again!

We had vegetable buns too.

Later we dropped by my grandparents’ place to see my grandpa. He really likes gardening/botany related stuff, so these are some of the orchids he has been tending to lately.

Do you see me?! Haha.

Then my grandma gave my dad and me some lychee (so good!) and we went back to the hotel, where I immediately conked out (this was at 7:30 PM). Yes.

This was a long post; hope you enjoyed Hong Kong vicariously through my pictures. I will try to blog everyday that I am here (unless I fall asleep first).