"Who has time to blog anyway?!"

...said one of the speakers today at the firm's orientation programme. It was during a Risk Management presentation and he talked about how not to share work or client information with friends, in public places, in social networking sites and blogs. But the overall impression from all the talks and seminars is that we'll be so busy and have so much work crawling out of our [edit] eyes that we won't even have much of a life, let alone blog.

But I will still try. I think. Because even though Hong Kong is and has always been my 'home' I still feel like a bit of a stranger here.

Today I just discovered a whole street of chinese and dessert restaurants. There's always something small but interesting that one can discover every single day, and you don't even need to deviate from your usual commute to look. It's actually right in front of me. It's all those things that I take for granted, but still worth noting, such as this advertisement for plumbing services (or more specifically 'unclogging of pipes') written on the bus stop downstairs from my flat...and pretty much every single lamp-post or bus stop post around HK. I wonder how many numbers I can collect.


So keep checking :)

A little less conversation...

...because opening my mouth was extremely painful today.

They say 'No Pain No Gain'. However....not only did I gain a lot of pain, but I lost a whole lot of wisdom today. A whole wisdom tooth, that is. It was buried deep in my jaw, with just a slight corner of it peeping out. But for the last few days it had been pushing and kicking about, like an unborn child in a mother's tummy. But the dentist said it's no good. A goner. It had no space to flourish and display its full glory with my gum as its throne. So it was given the death sentence. Or the extraction sentence.

The extraction process itself was relatively painless (just an intense 2 minutes of what felt like strong pressure on the gums). But when the anesthetic wore off, and as I regianed feeling in my right jaw, pain crept in, my appetite withered away, and so did all my energy and will to speak. So all day it was pretty much just my mum talking to me all day. And me hm-ing and mmhmmm-ing. Which was alright because I'm not a very talkative person anyway whereas my mum always has lots to tell me so we were quite used to it.

Ps. One more day of freedom until I slave my soul away for the corporate world. Mmmhmmm.....

Herng Gong

Hong Kong. For good. Since 12 August 2010.

So far, in alphabetical order...

Bank.

Church.

Dim sum.

Dentist.

Facial.

Fifteen minute gym session.

Instant noodles with spam and egg.

Mangos.

New friends.

Old friends.

Pacific Coffee Company.

Papaya.

Pad thai.

Replacing my HKID card.

Shopping.

Stanley Market.

Tour guiding.

ZZZZzzzZZZZZZ-ing.

'So...how was Japan?'

Or 'Talk to me about Japan!' or 'So - Japan?' or 'What have you been up to the last two years?!'

I've been asked that so many times since I've left Japan.

I never really know how to answer that. So I just say 'It was good!'. Which is pretty lame. But truth be told I'm never sure how much people actually want to listen to me talk about Japan. Once I was told to tell everything right from the beginning. That would've taken a whole week. So I made a rough conclusion of Where I Was and What I Did and Who I Taught and How Good/Bad My Japanese Is and How Good The Sushi Was...

I probably should think about what I should include in my 'Japan summery' answer. I feel slightly like I'm being tested and I should maybe prepare for the question. Perhaps I should write an essay, with introduction, body, conclusion; and then memorise it.....?

Nah. I think the fact that I remember different stories/facts/things when I talk to different people is interesting enough for me. That way I can talk as much as I want about Japan, just spread amongst a large bunch of people.

'So...how was Japan?', you ask?

Read the blog, ya lazy pants.

Whirlwind @@@@@

Since landing into Heathrow (and then subsequently Manchester) last Wednesday, I've been whirling around Britain (with a few days of quiet recharge at my grandpa's internet-less house).

So after a mega massive lunch with Grandpa and his friend and my uncle and aunt on Wednesday (yesterday), I hopped on a non-stop train bound for London. A friend from Uni met me at the station and very kindly (and probably pain-stakingly) lugged my 30kg suitcase from Euston to Russell Square; we dropped off my luggage in my student accommodation room, and came back out to meet two others for dinner and drinks.

Today - with my trusty *laminated* London sightseeing map, I walked from Russell Square to Farringdon for a morning Starbucks chai tea latte with a friend I hadn't seen for over two years. We talked about PhDs, boys, old friends, and reminisced our old Bristol days (we went to seperate boarding schools in Bristol). Then I strolled along the London wall towards Liverpool Street, met another friend, had lunch, we walked to Shoreditch, discovered there was nothing there except for homeless people and crummy cars, so hopped on a bus and underground to Oxford Circus. We abandoned each other after a spot of shopping to meet our respective friends in various places.

I always thought London was big, but it turns out that it was pretty small. I say this because I bumped into two different friends - one from church in HK and one from Uni (although I hardly spoke to him then) within 3 minutes of each other. (Oh and before that we spotted 'Fatboy' from Eastenders at the tube station in Liverpool St.) And then after dinner, I bumped into another Uni friend in the tube station as I was heading home.

Conclusion: London is beautiful in the sunlight.

All that I used to take for granted...

Remove yourself from England for two years and you realise how actually there's a lot of wonderfulness in this country. Any sort of 'culture shock' that I anticipated was masked by being in the beautiful British countryside, surrounded by...

lush green fields,

trees of many different sorts,

cows grazing lazily under patchy clouds,

sheep wandering around the park with their heads in the grass,

lunches in a quiet pub with Grandpa,

tea, banter and lame jokes with old friends,

watching people attempt a picnic in the park under big umbrellas,

wearing 3 layers myself whilst people around me are in t-shirts and flip flops...


This past week has been such a whirlwind I don't know where it's gone. I went from cleaning my apartment til 4am in the morning, dumping unwanted clothes at the community centre, sending the last 2 boxes in the post, packing up a 29kg suitcase, zipping through Tokyo, hopping on a plane from Narita, coincidentally sitting next to a fellow JET-quitter and reminiscing our JET days that had ended 24 hours ago..........to landing in crummy Heathrow Airport, transfering to Manchester, going to the Lake District to spend 3 days with 14 long lost Warwick friends, walking up trecherous peaks, going go-karting, drinking tea and lots of bantering, pub lunches, walks with grandpa, and lazy TV dinners.

And there's more to come as I storm London tomorrow and Brussels on Saturday! Watch this space!

I am...

...a selfish bitch that never does anything for anyone but only expects people to do me favours.

Apparently.

Thanks for the reminder.