Since my last post, nothing really has changed around me other than the arrival of the Year of the Rat. Classes are pretty much the same. Still behind on the reading, like a normal college student. My roommate's tendencies have begun to get more and more annoying. I have come to the conclusion that he has some vampire blood in him. Why? Well, the fact that he sleeps literally all day is one. Going along with that, he'll stay up all night - literally all night - doing who-knows-what on his oh-so-precious computer. I'll wake up at 8 or 9 am, and he will still be at his computer where I left him at 2 am the night before. We don't really talk anymore. He probably thinks I am shy, I just think he's weird. It's hard to talk to him because he is just not that interesting when it comes to talking about anything other than China. Everyone else in my hall pretty much sticks to themselves or their computer, constantly playing Warcraft or whatever that game that encompasses their social lives is called.
Recently, I've been eating some absolutely scrumptious food. Omar took Janelle (another exchange student from LA, if I haven't already mentioned her) and me to what he claimed was the best dim sum restaurant he'd ever eaten at. And of course, after eating the ten dishes we ordered with stomachs stuffed to the max, feeling the post-food coma kicking in, I share the same opinion with him. The best dish we ate was called 'ham soy gok' - an extremely light, fluffy, puffy, cloud-shaped ball filled with steaming pork bits and some veggies inside. They were absolutely amazing, so good in fact that we ordered two of them. It's been a while since that time we ate there, so I can't remember much of the other dishes we scarfed down, but we did eat some great chicken feet, an unreal platter of siu mei, and the best mango pudding I have ever tried. The restaurant is in Causeway Bay, in the Times Square shopping mall, called SuperStar Restaurant. Next time you're in Hong Kong, GO THERE!
In terms of going out, the same old LKF and Wan Chai have gotten extremely old, so I have been hitting up the various jazz clubs that are scattered around Hong Kong Island. One, called Gekko, is pretty decent, but it's filled mostly with a lot of people and compared to this other one I found a floor above this random building just one street up from LKF, it is crap music. I have been going to this one place with a Filipino band, called Freddie T. and the Quatrocinco. They are absolutely phenomenal - their feel-good, have-fun, care-free vibe glows when they perform and just infects the entire crowd, pushing the whole band to play even better. I have come so often that the whole band knows me and always get a shout from Freddie when I walk in, so I feel sort of important. They say that eventually I'll have to get up there and sing a song with them, and I'm sure I will - that will be an unforgettable experience. On their break, the band members sometimes call me over and have me try their food while they sip on some drinks. They are all from the Philippines and have been together for about 9 months, and staying strong. All have been playing their respective instruments for at least 20 years, and the real energy-filled guy is the keyboardist. He will get so into every song, just feel the music in his fingers, that standing up and playing is too boring for him. No, this guy, Romeo, will lift his leg up and stomp on the keys. But sometimes that's not enough. No, then he will throw his whole knee and thigh up on the keyboard. But sometimes that's not even enough. When he really feels it, he'll pick up his stool, pound it on the keys, then throw it across the floor as the band closes its number! He's absolutely astounding to watch. You can't do anything but get on your feet and make as much noise for everyone, just so they can keep it going, keep that energy. Last time I went, the bartender gave me three shots of tequila. That place is the best.
OK - now I guess I should get down to what's really been taking up all my time this past week, the Chinese New Year, the Year of that friggin Rat! Last Monday, there was a big dinner for some exchange students and locals to go eat at a good seafood restaurant and then go to the Flower Market at Victoria Park, Hong Kong's biggest park. At the restaurant, we ate some pretty normal dishes, or at least they're normal for me now since I've been here. Jellyfish, shrimp, chicken (served whole, with the head and everything), a noodle/chow mein dish, some pork platters, and to top it off, hot red bean soup for desert (which I've found I'm not too fond of). The real highlight of the night was the lucky draw/raffle that came after dinner. The big host who was running most of it asked everybody on the mic who had a loud voice, and immediately, the entire table I was at, which was conveniently located right next to the host, started screaming my name. I faked having a sore throat, but after constant heckling and shoving and pushing, I got up there. The host gave me the mic, and told me to stick my hand in a box and pick a name and yell it out. So I did just that, the person came up, and then the host told me to ask where she was from, so I did, and then everyone started laughing and screaming for me. When I was about to sit back down, the host told me to just stay up there. So I basically played host for about 15 minutes, drawing names, handing the winners prizes, having one or two sentence conversations on the mic, and then sending them back to do it all over again. It was entertaining and fun, and when I got in the elevator after the dinner to get on the bus to go to the park, there were a bunch of locals all staring at me, looking at me like I was some big celebrity. That was a little odd, but oh well - that's the price that comes with fame. Heading to Victoria Park was absolutely insane. We entered under an enormous banner that said Happy New Year, only to be faced with crowds and crowds of people, all shopping with their kids getting ready for the new year. Above the five or six stalls that spread out across the park were traffic banners that were pretty entertaining to follow. The fact that the market actually needs traffic banners above them, declaring "No Entry Only Exit" and "Entry Here", should give you an idea of how many people come to this market and how it is absolutely 100% necessary to have some sort of traffic flow, otherwise people just won't get anywhere. So we walked down the aisles, absorbing all the flowers, the bonzai trees for sale, and most of all, the absolutely insane and random and just all-around tacky (and dare I say "Asian") inflatable toys available for the cheapest price you can think of. When I list off these things, just picture them in your home, and then picture them as an inflatable, and you will understand just how ridiculous this market was: caution-floor-is-wet signs, no-smoking signs, hammers, swords, tridents, mushrooms from SuperMario, the black cannons from SuperMario, plungers, axes, and my personal favorite - exacto knives (the ones architects use that you switch up and down because they are so sharp). I will never forget seeing that. Turning my head, and seeing a guy standing up on a stool, pushing the exacto knife up and down - how scary would it be to see a little Asian kid run around with that? One of the most hilarious toys was an inflatable ass. One guy was holding up just half a torso, from the waist to the knees, and there was just the ass, but sticking out of the crack was this white thing. It turned out to be a tissue. What the vendor was actually holding up was a tissue box but it was an inflatable ass and you pulled the tissues out of the crack - no joke! There was also inflatable condoms (not blown up but in the wrapper) and inflatable meat on a stick (like inflatable grilled chicken on a stick) and inflatable cigarettes and inflatable ice cream cones. It was just insane. Pictures will come, don't worry.
The cool thing is that market is only open 4 days out of the entire year - the 4 days preceding the New Year. The New Year officially began on Wednesday night, so Wednesday night, after going out with everybody (since we didn't have school Wed., Thurs., or Fri.), Vivienne, Aurore (an exchange student from Canada), and I took a cab to Victoria Park to catch the Flower Market at its most packed and lively moment. Just walking to the park was a trip - the streets were packed and filled and just alive with people. It was insane. Now we thought that was bad, and then we walked into the market. I have never felt more helpless than ever before. We were literally in bumper-to-bumper traffic but just all people. We could not move, literally. Worse than anything I had experienced in New York, London, or anywhere in South or Central America. Just throngs and masses of people. Absolutely insane. I have some pretty wild videos, we'll see if they make it up there.
The next day, Thursday, the official first day of the New Year, I was basically getting prepared for the parade that was planned for that night in Tsim Sha Tsui. Aaron, Vivienne, Janelle, and I met up right on the street the parade was planned for, picked up some beer from the nearby 7-11, and made our way to one side of the street, and actually got right up against the fence. We had looked at the map and made sure that we would see all of the parade, since the route mapped out for us in our brochure said it would flow down one side of a street then double-back and go on the other side. We were on the second side, once it double-backed. We were all so stoked. The 4 of us were just pushed up against the fence and all we did was scream 'Gong Hei Fat Choi' about ever 30 seconds. Eventually we had some performers come by: an African drum group, some older guys on stilts who actually stopped to ask us where we were from (once we told him were from America, he started going off about how much he loved American literature; picture a British guy with make-up on on stilts saying in an accent: "Oh, I love Faulkner, Scott Fitzgerald, I absolutely love American literature." It was pretty weird), a group of Asian cheerleaders who we took pictures with, and then they came back to take pictures of us. Then the real parade started. Random floats with various sponsors all lit up, with the craziest people all dressed up in everything from balloon-gowns, fake horse-things on rollerblades so across the street it looked like they were floating, children in tutus with cheese that ran around and did some choreographed little dance. There were more lit-up floats that I can't describe; there was the traditional dragon-flying with people underneath running around moving the dragon in wave-like motions, which was pretty cool to see in China. We saw bands come around, including an Asian Scottish band, and the UCLA and San Francisco 49ers Cheerleaders. Something unfortunate, though, did happen. The first float that came around, double-backed ready to head right towards us, turned off of the street toward us and went into some garage area. We were really upset, because even though the people all came down right in front of us, we wanted to see the floats up close. So we all thought it was worth it to give up our prime spot on the our side of the street for an ok spot on the opposite side just so we could get closer to the floats. Overall I guess it was a good idea. We ended up being with more friends and it was towards the end of the parade. There were a bit more people, so we couldn't see exactly everything, but it was still a lot of fun. We went to LKF after the parade, hung out for a bit, and had a pretty crazy night because of the New Year (everyone was partying)!
The next day I lounged around and had brunch with a bunch of people in my dorm. Then I headed down to Wan Chai with Janelle, and meet up with Ted (a Dutch exchange student) and Chloe (a French exchange student) and a huge group of other French exchange students. The harbor was host for the big fireworks display which started at 8. We had to hurry our way from the MTR station because we were running a bit late, but of course so was the rest of Hong Kong so it was more like a pack of late people herding their way across platforms and down streets so they could get to the harbor for a good view. As we walked down to the harbor, we were caught in a packed area and realized that there was an empty lane created by two fences that separated two groups of people - the group closest to the harbor and the group of people coming from the MTR. I guess they didn't want people to be completely packed on the harbor ferry. Then the fireworks began! There was never a moment when my ear wasn't ringing from an explosion or when my eyes weren't stunned by the massive circular images created by the explosions. Eventually, fireworks started exploding in the shapes of 0's and 8's to bring in 2008, which was really cool. The grand finale was just a spectacular show of everything going off at once, all climaxing towards one big blinding explosion that deafened even the loudest of ooh's and aaah's. It was pretty inspiring, and left us all ready to go out. Aaron met up with us and we got something to eat before going back to LKF, meeting up with other people, and then basically just roaming around the streets before the two of us met up with Dave (an exchange student from Ireland) at our jazz bar with that fantabulous Filipino band. They were on their A-game, due to the Chinese New Year, and the crowd was absolutely loving it. During their break, everyone came over to our table, brought their plate of food with them, and then we just started going picture-crazy, taking snapshots with the band members. Romeo, the key player, gave us his full name to facebook him, and the bassist, Mario, was telling us all about their other music they've been working on, and once again, about how I need to get up there and sing or play along with them for a song. It was a great time.
Instead of going home that night, I went back with Aaron and crashed at his place, all the way in Sha Tin, which is in New Territories - super far away. The reason was because the next day, Saturday, there was a big New Years race at the Sha Tin Racecourse. So we woke up, and made our way down there (it was only one stop away) and then met up with Janelle and another girl named Anika (an exchange student from Brisbon, Australia). We got out of the metro station with hundreds of others all ready to hit the bookies. We walked out to a gorgeous clear day with the green track in front, and four huge screens with numbers everywhere: odds, win-loss records, weights, etc. We had no idea what was going on. After watching a few races, we decided to place some bets and went to figure out how the hell to do it. We saw everyone had these cards, so once we found out where to get the cards, we just stood around like weirdos watching everyone else fill out their cards. All the locals were just staring at the newspaper or whatever other reading material they had with all sorts of horse-racing information and would fill out their cards accordingly. Once we thought we had done it correctly, and picked the race, and what horse(s) we thought would place and win, we took our cards up to the counter, only to see the people behind the desk place our cards in the machine and get straight-up rejected. This happened about three or four times before we finally figured out what we were doing and how to fill out the cards correctly. We each guessed three different horses in three different races and it only cost each of us $20. However, when Aaron handed in his card and the money at the same time, the guy behind the counter took the ticket and just left his money there. So when the guy handed Aaron's ticket back to him, Aaron just carefully took his money and his ticket back. Damn him! Just my luck, all my horses were in 4th place and fell behind in every race. Aaron's picks actually placed the first two races, but then his last horse fell behind at the end, and because of that he didn't win any money. Boo hoo! He still got a free bet. Then Anika left and so Aaron, Janelle, and I went to eat at Janelle's uncle's restaurant. We had a great, delicious meal of barbecued pork, roasted goose and chicken, and a great fried shrimp with veggies and walnuts dish. Plus, it was FREEEE! Yes. Janelle and I split up from Aaron and just went home and crashed, as I got ready for my trip to Vietnam!!!
I'm now at Aaron's place and tomorrow we're going to take the bus to the airport for our flight into Ho Chi Minh City (or Saigon as it was once known as). We are there for a week. We have no idea what we want to do (no real concrete stuff) but we are going to have a blast. If we can get a cheap flight, we will probably try and go to Hanoi just to check out Halong Bay, which is supposed to be the crown-jewel of Southeast Asia. I'll tell you all about it once I get back. Be prepared for stories of renting motorbikes, eating the most amazing food ever, talking to the most random locals, drinking some snake blood, and just having some ridiculous adventures and experiences. See you all in a week!
Gong Hei Fat Choi!
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