Hong Kong Day 1-3

What can I say except its been pretty gloomy. Except on Monday when I landed. Sunny and hot. The two chaps from the lab that picked me up from the Airport, Albert and Kah Wu remarked that the 28 deg reading for the day is rather unprecendented. Which got me to thinking "It can't be me again, can it? The now legendary Joelle Effect".

Alas, and so it was, because after that glorius day of sunshine, Tuesday and today pretty much returned to normal programming. 17-20 deg, gloomy, windy. A little like Genting I suppose. I met up with a friend of Alan's on Sunday, who just came over from HK for a holiday, and he assured me that I'd be comfy in whatever I already wear in Singapore. And I was naive enough to believe him. Thinking on hindsight, c'mon this guy was born and bred in the UK! Of course 20 deg is a walk in the park for him. As for me, I'm thinking I packed too much singlets and not enough long sleeves. And I don't even have a jacket! Another compelling reason for me to get one. Cheap too.

The CUHK university is situated in the New Territories, which is like the boondocks. Luckily, there is a KCR station which runs from Lo Wu (the bit closest to mainland China) and the other to the end of NT where one can take a connecting MTR to Hong Kong Island. I have not ventured out there yet, but will probably do so maybe tonight or tomorrow. Trying to arrange a visit to HKU. The campus itself is set on a hill, and the marine lab I'm based at is right at the bottom, since, obviously, its a marine lab and they need to be near the sea (for seawater and other nitty gritties) Its a very big campus is a sprawling compound, organized along a main road called University Road. Which sorta reminds me of NUS since we are also organized along Lower Kent Ridge. The only difference is that LKR is pretty flat in comparision with UR which only goes UP UP UP. There are also no faculty specific cafeterias. All the makan places and everything else that's important (co-op, supermarket, banking) are situated right on top of the hill. Of course, there is a free internal shuttle bus zipping around the campus, but since I have not figured it out, I spent 20min yesterday walking up the road for my lunch (HK15 for a bowl of shui kow noodle), and because I was pretty spent from all that walking, only ate half of the food, and spend 15 min walking back down to my room (downhill slightly faster. heh).


Dinner was had in a sprawling mega mall in Kowloon Tong (4 stops along the KCR line). Festival Walk or something. Very posh. Very expensive. There is a modest food court and I was dying for some rice, since the only thing I've been eating since coming here has been noodles. Spent 10 minutes walking pass 5 stalls cos I couldn't decide what to eat. I have a major problem reading Chinese. Can't speak cantonese either, so in the end, the best I could do was to have some curry katsu rice at the Ajisen counter. Nothing typical HK I'm afraid. I have to eat like the locals do tonight. Dessert was a lovely Ben and Jerry's New York Super fudge (or something like that) cone. One of the problems (minor) that i have here is the fact that I look local (though that is debatable, Albert said I look 'different') and many of the shop girls think I'm local. So at the B&J kiosk, I was busy leering at the ice cream when the girl passed me a sample of Dublin Mudslide and proceeded to talk in rapid cantonese about its virtues, supposedly. The only thing I figured out from that was that its a NEW flavor, and because it had the NEW sign stuck on its name. The same goes for other shops. I'm hesitant to walk in because the salegirls will descend on me telling me which items just arrived or whatever, only to find out I'm an idiot. Times like these, I just look down and walk away really fast. Or maybe I should just enter shops that are really full so no one notices me.

Today is anotehr day. Hopefully I'll do better today.