Friends, Family, Food, Flight

Yeah I know, it’s been a while since I’ve updated this blog… maybe about a month; a crazy month.

Midterms here are no different from the ones that I had back at UMass, except for the fact that 3 out of 4 of them were in the form of MCQ. And me being me, I just can not do MCQ to save my life. also the fact that the concept of homework only exists in my heat transfer class doesn’t help me psychologically at all. Speaking of which, I have my heat transfer midterm on this coming Wednesday and I’ve just about had to teach myself how to do everything (as usual). I still don’t know what’s going on in that class. Oh well, just going to have to wing it. HK society is most definitely my favorite class, I just wish it was not on a Monday/Friday schedule, I’ve had to miss so many, resulting in my subpar performance on the midterm. And I’ve calculated it out, im going to miss 5 out of the next 13 classes ( well 4, since I missed one last week). I picked up a voice recorder in manila, so helpfully the other exchanges will be willing to help me out; it’s a win-win for them, I get the recording, they get the recording, everyone is happy! But enough about school; let’s talk about adventures.

Where to begin…

Domestic adventures: these mostly are composed of food adventures, a couple of friends and I will often leave campus in the search for food, most notably American/Mexican/donuts. Shit that is hard to find, and so far, we’ve had shit luck looking for those things. We have, however, stumbled upon some pretty awesome restaurants including Japanese, Korean, hot pot, Chinese, Mediterranean. The food is obviously more expensive than food from the LG’s but SO much better that to complain about the premium would be preposterous. Since im writing this on my flight back to HKG from MNL, and I can’t check my previous posts, I’m operating on the assumption that my last entry was from my last flight from MNL to HKG (shit that IS a good month ago).

For my birthday, I looked up places that we could smoke shisha, it was between Habibi’s lounge and Sahara Mezz Bar. Both got glowing reviews on open rice, but Sahara was a tad less expensive and I opted for that. The bar is located in Soho, near LKF in Central. Upon later observation, Soho seems to be the “rich man’s” LKF. With classy bars and relatively expensive restaurants, not to mention their clientele must be almost twice our age! When we arrive, we were immediately seated (I had made a reservation) and made our orders. My friends and I were impressed the with the place, it had stellar background music, the host was nice as hell and the place had a really low key atmosphere (definite plus). I was starving by the time my food arrived, I chose the lamb with beef sausage, I don’t remember the name, but it was def worth the 120HKD price tag associated with it. Oh yeah, my friends also got me a cake, pretty small but we were all able to share and have a piece of it :) . After dinner, a few of us hung around for some hookah. And at 100HKD a hookah, how could you go wrong? After talking with the host, he moved us to the private lounge upstairs where another patron was celebrating his birthday. We exchanged congratulations, he gave me a piece of his cake and it was awesome. To make things even better, the hookah was the best I’ve had in a while (sorry nyle, better than some of yours). I believe we had strawberry mint, it pulled superbly well! I bought my first “legal” beer, Stella. Two hours later, they were closing the upstairs lounge and we were relocated to the main room again ( it was only open for dinner when we were eating, so no hookah). As we were paying, they gave us free shots, perfect way to end my 21st without having to go crazy.

There’s so much that’s happened in the past month, its hard to recall what went down, a little disappointing, but im thankful that I photo-documented the majority of the adventures.

International adventures…

Last weekend I went to Taiwan! Now that I think of it, I have a fair amount of Taiwanese friends, and from hanging out with them enough, you get the sense that Taiwan is completely different than mainland, and from observations, I can agree with this statement, however not fully. The “asian” culture is obvious but their mannerisms seem to be different than the ones I’ve seen in Hong Kong. They’re friendly people and I t was a blast. I went with 9 other exchange students but they all left a day earlier than I to go attend a Far East Movement show at Luxy in Taipei, sadly, I had a midterm, thus unable to attend. On my way from HKG I realized I loved flying by myself (more on that later). After getting a little lost in the airport, I bought a SIM card and made my way to Taipei. I got off at some random spot and used the free MRT card that I was given when I checked in back at HKG (it had 50NT preloaded on it). My friends were at the flower expo and were in line to go see the main exhibition. When I called they said they were already inside and that there was a huge line into the main show so I opted to stay outside and explore. It was a good decision. There was a lot to see outside including tons of flowers and some museum exhibits. After we met up, we hit up the hot springs and as you could expect, they were pretty hot. It was mainly the older population that went to the one we went to, but it didn’t matter, we were living it up in Taiwan. Next on our list was the ShiLin night market. It was amazing, out of the few night markets that I’ve seen in my life, this one has got to be the best. There were games (mostly of the carnival type, but you could actually win…), a superb selection of food, and of course shit to buy. We all decided to check out the Taipei 101, we had a hunch it would be closed, and it was. But we explored and found where babe 18 was. We returned to the hostel.

The next day we explored some temples and hit up more night markets then hit up babe 18. 600NT for all you could drink until closing (sweet deal if I actually drank a lot). Once the club closed we hit up a karaoke place where I immediately PTFO’d (blame it on the alcohol), but hey, I managed to wake up for the last 3 songs. When we left, it was already 630 and the sun was almost done rising. It was a good day. The rest of our time in Taiwan was spent exploring, more markets, changing of the guard, the grand hotel, Taipei 101. All in all, I’d call this a great trip, despite it being composed of 10 people.
Oh yeah, EVA Air is awesome, good food, cute stewardesses, and ton’s of leg room
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As alluded above, I’m on a flight from MNL on HKG. Flying on on PAL, which is surprisingly better than Cebu Pacific. Last time I was on PAL was a little more than 3 years ago on my way to and from Bangkok. Back then the crew wasn’t too friendly. But now they’ve improved quite a lot, the food is spectacular and there is ton’s of leg room!

It’s my grandma’s birthday later this week, and seeing as I’ll be in Vietnam next weekend, I wanted to wish her a happy birthday. I guess I came on pretty good weekend, it was also my cousin’s graduation from University. But this was a pretty bitter sweet trip, I realized on my way over that it will most likely be my last one for a while… and I tried to soak in as much of manila as I could. When my grandma learned I was there to wish her a happy birthday, her smile just lit up the room. Writing about this makes me miss her, my aunts, my uncles, and my cousins. I do hope I can see them soon, especially my grandmother.
A lot of the other exchange students have family and friends visiting them in Hong Kong, but I have family only 90 minutes away by flight. I consider myself extremely lucky for the opportunity that I have. Its nice being able to escape the hectic life of being a student abroad and just have a relaxing weekend with family.

/sappy stuff

On a brighter note, I was craving donuts before I left HKG, and searched the airport for a place that sold any, and to my disappointment, there were none. As soon as I got in the car with my cousin outside NAIA, I saw a DD and she said just to get krispe kreme. Most satisfying donut ever.

On an even more disconnected note, I realized how happy flying makes me. I couldn’t help but smile to myself as PR310 from MNL to HKG took off. It seems to be a common theme in all of my flights. Flying makes me ridiculously happy. Flying alone makes me able to feel happy without feeling like a goon, its slightly embarrassing how happy I am. Four things off the top of my head, in no particular order, that make me happy: family, friends, flying, and food.

Until next time, remember to live for the adventures.