Stop. Breathe. Cough.

I am currently enjoying a rare moment of peace in my hectic week...

Well...more like I'm procrastinating when I should be doing my finances, and its also about an hour before my HK-orphan friends (ie friends who had immigrated abroad and they've come back to HK to work but their Chinese parents are still away) come for some home comforts of Chinese soup.

Life has not stopped since I came back to the City over two months ago. Life doesn't stop in the city. One day you're bombing a tax exam with 60 other people, and touring haunted houses at Ocean Park the next night, and sitting in century-old buildings having expensive dinners with your mum's old colleagues the night after....

That is why I am going to stop this weekend. There will be no schedule. No definite place where I have to be at a definite time. It's all mine this weekend.

The setting sun

「もう日本の時代ではないですね．．．」

Japan's golden age has long gone, Mrs. Y said.

I was at a dinner party where the host and some of her friends were Japanese, and somehow the conversation took on a turn onto Serious Avenue, and went on a course of Japan's-going-down-the-drain route.

They're observations were all too true, sadly enough. Even Mrs. Y's 16 year-old daughter could tell that the young people in Japan have no dreams, no ambitions, no goals in life. They were content on working as an OL or in restaurants and fast food chains.

The percentage of foreigners in Japan is perhaps not as high as that of in other Asian countries, but there is a considerable amount in Tokyo and the major cities. "And yet the level of English has not improved one bit!" Mrs. Y sighed. Mrs. Y is Japanese and married to a Chinese man, and they live in Hong Kong with their daughter. They all speak fluent English. And while Mrs. Y's Japanese accent is still there, she is perfectly understandable and speaks English with complete confidence.

"Many of my friends from kindergarten when we lived in Tokyo have moved abroad." Said the daughter. There were two other Japanese families at the party, and hundreds and thousand others in Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok...all left the aging nation that was once as glorious as the rising sun.

Fear.

We fear because we don't know. We're not sure. We expect the worst.

Death. We're all pretty sure of that fact and that we will all, 100%, die.

But who is sure what happens after?

My dearly beloved aunt died last Friday. She had no kids. She lived with my uncle. She had been struggling with cancer for around 4 years.

Where did she go at the end? I don't know.

What did she believe in as she lay on that death bed? I don't know.

Did someone in the hospital tell her that Jesus the Son of God came to die on the cross for her and raised on the 3rd day to give her new life and hope for life after death? I don't know.

I will probably never know.

All I NEED to know and believe is that God is a just God. He is a righteous God. He is a faithful God. He is a loving God. He is a God that gives his children chances and creates ways so that they will find Him. He is a God of comfort, shelter, peace. He is a God of healing.

He is a God that gives us hope and courage to conquers all fears.

365

New challenge.

1 photo.

Per day.

Everyday.

That's it.

http://offwhite365.blogspot.com/

Work life lessons

It's been more than 4 weeks since I started my first ever permanent job.

There's a lot to learn, but so far this is what I've picked up...

It's normal to have sweaty feet whilst wearing high heels.

Internet speeds at work are particularly slow after lunch since everyone's taking a break and surfing the web.

The rush hour bus waits for no one. Not even when you're in heels. Especially when you're in heels.

Working in a 'professional environment' doesn't mean the office toilet seats are always clean.

Working in Hong Kong means you won't have time to blog.

Stars for dim sum

Michelin star, that is.

And for HK$10 dim sum, that is. (~1.30USD)

Last week, my keen foodie friend (and his friends from out of town) were already standing outside Tim Ho Wan dim sum restaurant at 7:45am (yes A.M.), 2 hours and 15 minutes before opening time. I was still in bed. But when I got there at 9:45 there was a queue of about 20 people behind my friend and his friends, who were already joined by more friends. I joined my friends, making those people at the very back of the queue wait longer.

After ticking almost everything on the peice of paper (there were 8 of us), we finally sat down, full of hunger and eager expectations. Food gradually flowed onto the table, and into our stomachs, with the table full of plates and bowls most of the time. More more more! We handed in a few more dim-sum-order-sheets and they handed us a few more buns, dumplings and noodle rolls. We probably ordered a bit too much, as by the end most of us were reaching maximum capacity, and the dim sum woman told us off for leaving food and letting it go cold. So we stuffed the rest in.

Very stuffed and satisfied, the bill came to HK$50 each.





And then we went to a Qi Pao exhibition at the Hong Kong History Museum and looked at dresses.






Oh no...I just realised how I said I'd keep blogging and asked you to keep checking this space and then zoom its been three weeks without a single post...! I guess that guy (in the last post) was right.

"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 :)