Went to see "The Terminal" with Doug. When I got there, I didn't see him outside the theater, so I ended up buying a ticket for a later showing of Harry Potter in case I couldn't find Doug, since I didn't particularly want to see "The Terminal" and only agreed on that movie because I wanted to see Doug. Once I got past the guy who tears your ticket, I went inside the "Terminal" auditorium (with my Harry Potter ticket) to look for Doug. Fortunately, Doug was there.
Unfortunately, "The Terminal" isn't really a movie worth seeing. How you can take the real life story of a political refugee who's been trapped in an airport in France since 1988 due to a bureaucratic error and turn it into a heart-warming Hollywood romantic comedy complete with token minority sidekicks, I can't imagine. Really, I see it being rather Kafka-esque or Theater of the Absurd, not Steven Spielburg. I'd rather an indie filmaker have taken on the responsibility, and done Merhan Karimi Nasseri some justice.
Saturday, June 26, 2004
Friday, June 25, 2004
On the day before I was to leave, I went on a biking excursion in Tai Po with Fish and his girlfriend and people from his fellowship. Riding 14 km is really fantastic. I discovered that one can maintain a fairly decent conversation with the group, since everyone is pretty much stationary relative to one another, even at high speeds, and I got a tan. Also, I'm a much better biker than city people from Hong Kong. ^___^ At the end, Fish said, "Why do you not look winded???" though I think my ease of travel had less to do with my physical condition (crappy) and more to do with the fact that I'm at least experienced enough a biker to not wobble or swerve all over the road. Also, early on in the trip, my hand slipped on the handle and changed gears (an accident to my advantage).
Tai Po is a city in the New Territories that was built around biking. Everybody bikes, from people transporting goods from one place to another to whole families in three-wheeled pedal-powered carts. We begun, after renting our bikes through the trail through an urban park and waterfront. Out away from the city, we rode past tidy, walled villages of colorful four-storey houses arranged tightly around narrow lanes at the foot of rolling mountains and the sea. They seem completely different from the gigantic scale of Hong Kong proper but still rather modern. It'd seem much of the economy revolves around selling drinks to bikers. At the last leg of our journey, the head of the fellowship convinced us to just, "ride across the lake," so we crossed a straight causeway across a great reservoir, which took over ten minutes to fully cross on bike. The blue mountain, cloaked in something of a haze with the sun shining bright, would always loom ahead, above the great expanse of calm water, never appearing any nearer. But we did arrive, zooming into a circular area where little kids were wobbling around on bikes with training wheels and flying kites (or getting the stuck in trees).
At dinner, for my birthday, I was presented with a basket of steamed buns shaped like celestial peaches, filled with lotus seed paste. I find this highly superior to cake, and a great end to a trip.
Tai Po is a city in the New Territories that was built around biking. Everybody bikes, from people transporting goods from one place to another to whole families in three-wheeled pedal-powered carts. We begun, after renting our bikes through the trail through an urban park and waterfront. Out away from the city, we rode past tidy, walled villages of colorful four-storey houses arranged tightly around narrow lanes at the foot of rolling mountains and the sea. They seem completely different from the gigantic scale of Hong Kong proper but still rather modern. It'd seem much of the economy revolves around selling drinks to bikers. At the last leg of our journey, the head of the fellowship convinced us to just, "ride across the lake," so we crossed a straight causeway across a great reservoir, which took over ten minutes to fully cross on bike. The blue mountain, cloaked in something of a haze with the sun shining bright, would always loom ahead, above the great expanse of calm water, never appearing any nearer. But we did arrive, zooming into a circular area where little kids were wobbling around on bikes with training wheels and flying kites (or getting the stuck in trees).
At dinner, for my birthday, I was presented with a basket of steamed buns shaped like celestial peaches, filled with lotus seed paste. I find this highly superior to cake, and a great end to a trip.
Excerpts, Edits, and Additions to/from E-mails from Hong Kong
(I've been home for a while, btw, since June 15th, just not posted.)
May 26
Saw Siddhartha's fingerbone. Kind of. It passed me by in the street, drifting slowly like a parade float in a golden reliquary presided over by some monks and guarded by an escort of policemen. People lined the road and the pedestrian bridge overhead to see it pass. To me, it wasn't a big deal once the "Walk/Don't Walk" light switched from the red standing man to the green striding figure.
I was in a traffic accident today, and by traffic accident I mean the bus I was on scratched the bumper of the compact car in front of us.
Had crabs today. Not the STD crabs, the seafood crabs. Wondered what I came halfway around the world for, if I'm eating crabs. They were softshell though, and pretty good. I'm a champion crabeater, but not as good as you.
Linkin Park is coming here on June 17th, but I'll be home by then. Apparently William Hung is pretty big here too, so maybe his success isn't too blatently due to racial exploitation. My cousins imitate him all the time, seemingly unaware that they don't sound much better, what with the same accent and all, but they can rest easy knowing they at least look better.
---
May 30
Cantonese food has a reputation for being bland for a reason. "Look! Food! Let's steam it!" Yarr... Did you know McDonalds is pretty upscale here? It costs about the same, but many other food places are cheaper so that it attracts a mostly middle-class clientele as opposed to the blue collar workers we get in the US, so that in HK while the food is the same the places are generally cleaner and there's better service. There actually
is service, for example; people will take your tray for you when you're done and give you menus and speak in very proper Cantonese, as opposed to even lower class or rural Cantonese.
Days are very long. Wish you were here, except, you don't like heat, crowds, or noise.
Went to Sai Kung, which is in the New Territories outside the city, and it's very pretty. It's got many villas by the sea along green mountains, and hasn't been too built up yet. By a pleasantly beautiful organic farm covering a series of gentle hills, Chinese herbal greenhouse, and insect museum,I went to the Shell Museum. Besides being a museum about shells, and it is also actually shaped like a partially opened clam shell, with windows at the opening, tapering in height into the clam "hinges," the entrance. The exhibits themselves are arranged in spiral corridors. It had all sorts of shells, and disturbing spiny, skeletal-looking cross sections. I will show you photos. Shells are very shiny. Did you know that they produce their own varnish? So it's not like you even have to polish them, just kind of wash them off.. and also there's no limit on their growth, they just stop growing whenever they die. So theoretically if there was a mollusk that was immortal it could keep on growing until it was the size of a small planet. And we could turn it into a space station and live inside the spiral corridors of its shell.
After a long walk through what can be described as jungle, I reached a Hakka (a Chinese ethnic minority) village by a stone pier, preserved from the 1900s. It's on a raised platform, accessible by stairs, but it's really tiny. The brochure says it housed 100 people but there were only like 8 rooms (not counting a room for pigs and other livestock) separated by walls and connected not by any interior corridors, but by an exterior walled courtyard. Most of the rooms had timber lofts reached by stair-like ladders, so there was a bit more room, but I couldn't bear living with the same 100 people in any case. But then again if you think about it I only interact with really 20 people throughout my life at any one time. Except that they never seem to be any of the same people that I'm with throughout my life except for my family; I don't really have any core of childhood friends, except for Christy but she's one and a half years older than me so ever since elementary school she's been in a different grade. In elementary
school it mattered in that we never had classes or lunch or recess together and now it's that we're at different colleges. So we've never really hung out together on a regular basis. I don't have someone who's been with me every single day, you know? If I think about it, the person I care about most in the world right now is you and I've only known you for 8 months and you already know me better than most people. I'm thinking about people I'd invite to my wedding or my funeral, and when it comes to friends, it's like for all of these years I've made none that really mattered. There are people I say hi to and talk to and maybe do things with when it's convenient for them, but there isn't anyone in the world, outside of my family which is there by accident of my birth, that would stick by my side except for you.
---
June 1
I went swimming yesterday. I still suck. My relatives were like, "Can you do anything else besides doggy paddle?" I was like.. -_-
Cafes here are ridiculously cheap, and they're also clean and delicious. I love them. I had French toast with peanut butter yesterday and it was great. You'd think that peanut butter doesn't go well with French toast, but you're wrong.
---
June 2
Went to the art museum today, the rather prominent pink building with upswept roofs in Tsim Sha Tsui, recognizable from anywhere in Hong Kong Island when one looks over at Kowloon. Two walls of the lobby are lined with parallel, floor-to-ceiling windows, so that straight ahead of you, unobstructed, like some grand photographic mural lays the harbor and the entire, signature skyline of Hong Kong Island. There's a promenade along the sea known as "The Avenue of Stars," an imitation of Hollywood where famous Chinese media personalities ("everybody who's anybody") each get a star in the walk and a slab of cement in which he makes his handprint. Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and John Woo's stars were there. Well, also Andy Lau, but he's not someone you've heard of. Jackie's hands are much bigger than mine, but Maggie Cheung, who won Best Actress in Cannes this year (which apparently is a big deal, and makes her the latest news darling in Hong Kong) and who played Flying Snow in "Hero," has the same size hands as me. Somehow, sticking your own hands into someone's handprints makes you feel closer to them, as if having the same sized hand makes them smaller and more human.
At the museum itself, I got to see all sort of gold artifacts, glowing softy in a dark room and the craftmanship is really amazing. Of course you can see the evolution of craftsmanship, from rather crude artifacts from the Neolithic era which looks like someone pounded on a yellow gum wrapper, to some incredible filigree work in the Qin dynasty, gold so fine that it looked like woven silk, except that it was, of course, gold. It looks pretty sturdy too; some of the Tang dynasty stuff looks like it would
bend if you so much as touched it, which is not to speak badly of it, per se; it's just a different aesthetic.
Also jade, which was less interesting, because there are limits to what you can do with stone as opposed to metal. Apparently though, nobody knows what quarry the jade in ancient artifacts came from, because they can't find it anymore; it's a soft, translucent white-ish jade known as "nephrite," (this is why in poetry beautiful women are described as having jade skin.. they're not Martians!) whereas modern jade is dark green and hard and known as "jadeite." It seems very mysterious, like something out of a novel, having a treasured material from time immemorial, that can no longer be found.
Saw some watercolor paintings too, which were unremarkable ink and colour landscapes of trees and misty mountains and such. Also some Qin Dynasty glasswork, but this was also unremarkable because really, we use all the same techniques even today so it looks like things you'd see in Pottery Barn, and some artifacts honestly looked like plastic, except for some really lovely snuff bottles which were made of frosted glass painted from the inside with tiny bamboo brushes.
And libation cups carved out of rhino horn, all in the tapered triangular shape, which is very manly. They are a nice, glossy shade of brown, like a polished hardwood. I think I'd like to get a piece of wood carved to look like a rhino horn, and if customs officials stopped me for suspicious contraband, I'd tell them it's actually wood, and it'd be true.
Btw, saw something really cool on the Metro. There was an ad on the side of the subway tunnel which was a series of consecutive billboards, so that as the train passed by and you looked out the window, it looked like an animated billboard, kind of like a flipbook effect, but in the Metro! It was hella cool.
---
June 3
Hey, if my feet are tired, does it help to lean against a wall? Does this take some weight off my feet by having my weight pressed into the wall, or does the normal force of the wall push into my back and into my feet, into the ground? Or none of these?
---
June 7
I had a dream too, that it was next year and you had a job and I was at school by myself and lonely. I think your dream was much better.
I went to the Gold Coast, a five-star resort hotel, over the weekend. There was a beach and stuff. It was fantastic. I went swimming at the beach because while I'm not a beach person, I felt it was something I should at least try. Now, the beach in itself great for actually swimming, which was what the swimming pool was for. It was salty and murky, and the sand had a lot of shell shards and little bits of rock in it so it hurt to step on it, but it was really fun drifting on the waves and being washed up against the shore. Also, I found a clam shell, with both shells intact and hinged. Wasn't too sunny, but it's better that way because then it isn't hot. And also I went to the outdoor dinner buffet and ate a lot, and I ate some grilled ostrich, wasabi cheesecake, and also there was sushi, except that kept getting attacked by a horde of tourists. ^___^ And also I went shopping at the little umbrellaed stalls on the boardwalk but you don't want to know about
that.. and then I spent the night being hyper and jumping between two beds. Literally.. it's the bed jumping game. It's quite dangerous and juvenile actually -the mattress can slip, causing you to lose your footing, or if you don't stop in time your momentum can take you charging right off the bed into the closet, which is why you have to play. And also UNO and junior Monopoly with my cousins. In the morning, I went into the sauna,
which is just like a small room with lots of steam in it, and it's very hot and wet but it feels nice to breathe in, like you're drinking gaseous soup or in some sort of womb. And I went to the jacuzzi which is just bubbling water, except that I was the only one there at 10 in the morning so I swam around in it like it was my own giant private bath tub and massaged my feet with the water jets. And also, I took an archery lesson for thirty minutes and ended up having the string thwap the the inside part of my bow
forearm, despite me wearing a bracer, and also the index finger of my arrow hand is rubbed raw. But it was fun still, if tiring, because it was a real, wooden bow, and I even managed to hit the target several times.
And today I went to the top of Victoria Peak which is just a big tourist spot and saw some dried pufferfish which were inflated and strung from the ceiling, like some sort of macabre Christmas ornaments. I thought about buying one, but I a) wouldn't know how to pack it and b) don't know if it'd get through customs. I also took the Peak Tram, which is a trolley up and down the mountain. The tram is set along a steep incline, with ridges along the seat aisles to prevent someone from sliding. It feels like a roller coaster when you are at the very top, and you can see a little bit of the track in front
of you before it drops steeply away out of sight, and it feels that if someone released the brake you'd go roaring all the way down the mountain. Fortunately, the method of travel is much slower.
At the bottom, threaded through Hong Kong Park, and took a path through a niche behind a waterfall where a man sat on the rocks reading. Revisited the tea museum which I had gone to a few years back, but the great inflatable teapot which had been standing on its grounds is now gone, which is a pity. Many things are still there, like the stairway over which a shallow current runs, and in which a braver person than I could walk up or down, and the cocktail glass shaped fountain accessible by a series of stepping stones across a pool, and with a bench running around the stem on which someone can watch the encompassing cylindrical curtain of water.
Oh yeah, I also got to the fourth level of Prince of Persia. Those swordfighting skeletons and slicing sheets that come out of the floor and ceiling are incredibly disturbing.
---
June 10
Not much going on... was sick for a while, but only with a sore throat. Think it may be the result of allergies; my nose is chronically congested.
Went and got a facial, which involves paying a lot to lay around for two hours waiting for the gunk on your face to try, and waiting for people to get around to you, and getting sprayed with steam and being rubbed with various creams. With your eyes closed. While you don't talk or move. Got a mask, which smells like chemicals, sort of like paint, but if you were there, you wouldn't go, "This smells like paint," but rather, "This has a chemical smell, which reminds me of the way paint smells, because they
both have a chemical smell, but it's not as if this actually smells like paint." It covers your eyes and mouth and is kind of heavy so it feels almost like someone's trying to cast you in iron or something. I felt like a Malfean.. you know, deep in my underground slumber or something. Except without the slumber part. Afterwards, I looked exactly the same.
I did go out for soft shell crab tempura though. Mmm! Delicious!
Also: got a haircut. Decided that since you were going to get a different haircut I ought to get a different haircut also, since it'd be hypocritical to tell you to change your hairstyle, and then be unwilling to do the same myself. Also, worse comes to worse, we can look stupid together and Bob's your uncle. Now my hair is wavy.
---
June 12
Well yesterday, I got to go to my uncle's (mom's sister's husband) decoration ceremony at the Japanese consul-general's residence, because he received the Order of the Rising Sun with Rosette (aka shiny shiny!). He likes calling it his 'bottle cap.' :P He used to be the head of the department of Japanese Studies at Chinese University and got it for
lifetime's service in promoting the study of the Japanese language in China.
The consul general's residence is at nearly the very top of Victoria Peak, which is the highest point in Hong Kong. For once, my ears didn't feel plugged. I don't know, maybe I just like low air pressure places, because "normally" in the valley it feels like every sound is dampened. I've tried yawning and swallowing and holding my nose and everything.. my ears don't "pop" like they're supposed to.
Anyway, it was kind of weird, because people kept bowing to us and I didn't know what to do, and you didn't know what language to speak to people unless you were good at that ineffable art of telling Chinese people from Japanese people, which according to World War II propaganda is possible, but very difficult for most normal, non-jingoistic people. The rule of thumb I used during the occasion was that apparently Japanese people are the more polite and better dressed ones. (As in, white gloves well dressed)
Anyway, in an impeccably neat reception room with a yellow carpet, there was a Japanese-style table with a photo of the Emperor and Empress each, with the Japanese flag to the left (respective photos of.. the prince and princess?.. were on the fireplace by another wall). Me and my family were close to the front, because we were family. There was the reading of the scroll "from" the Emperor (in Japanese, he probably didn't write it himself though), the ritual champagne toast by my uncle and aunt (his wife, my mom's sister), and the pinning of the medal, winking with its dark red stone, and a speech by the consul-general and an acceptance speech by my uncle in English (which I knew pretty well anyway because I'd proofread it). I have some pretty decent photos of the event since I was in front (with my digital camera) but they aren't great, about as crappy as the ones in the paper. You see how well you can photograph when you're jockeying for good shooting positions with the press.. they're pros at that kind of thing. There was a photo session afterwards, which was pretty tame too. There were some good catered snacks passed around though; very simple, but extremely classy things, like smoked salmon/shrimp/scallops on crackers... mmm, snacks. My aunt (mom's brother's wife) says she finds one of the consuls (in white gloves) to be "handsome, in a genteel way".. which I find amusing, because I think the word she's looking for is "bishonnen"... :P Anyway, when we left, the entire staff bowed to us simultaneously, in a synchronized manner. It was terrifying. I did bow back.. and they bowed again.. it freaked me out.
--
(I've been home for a while, btw, since June 15th, just not posted.)
May 26
Saw Siddhartha's fingerbone. Kind of. It passed me by in the street, drifting slowly like a parade float in a golden reliquary presided over by some monks and guarded by an escort of policemen. People lined the road and the pedestrian bridge overhead to see it pass. To me, it wasn't a big deal once the "Walk/Don't Walk" light switched from the red standing man to the green striding figure.
I was in a traffic accident today, and by traffic accident I mean the bus I was on scratched the bumper of the compact car in front of us.
Had crabs today. Not the STD crabs, the seafood crabs. Wondered what I came halfway around the world for, if I'm eating crabs. They were softshell though, and pretty good. I'm a champion crabeater, but not as good as you.
Linkin Park is coming here on June 17th, but I'll be home by then. Apparently William Hung is pretty big here too, so maybe his success isn't too blatently due to racial exploitation. My cousins imitate him all the time, seemingly unaware that they don't sound much better, what with the same accent and all, but they can rest easy knowing they at least look better.
---
May 30
Cantonese food has a reputation for being bland for a reason. "Look! Food! Let's steam it!" Yarr... Did you know McDonalds is pretty upscale here? It costs about the same, but many other food places are cheaper so that it attracts a mostly middle-class clientele as opposed to the blue collar workers we get in the US, so that in HK while the food is the same the places are generally cleaner and there's better service. There actually
is service, for example; people will take your tray for you when you're done and give you menus and speak in very proper Cantonese, as opposed to even lower class or rural Cantonese.
Days are very long. Wish you were here, except, you don't like heat, crowds, or noise.
Went to Sai Kung, which is in the New Territories outside the city, and it's very pretty. It's got many villas by the sea along green mountains, and hasn't been too built up yet. By a pleasantly beautiful organic farm covering a series of gentle hills, Chinese herbal greenhouse, and insect museum,I went to the Shell Museum. Besides being a museum about shells, and it is also actually shaped like a partially opened clam shell, with windows at the opening, tapering in height into the clam "hinges," the entrance. The exhibits themselves are arranged in spiral corridors. It had all sorts of shells, and disturbing spiny, skeletal-looking cross sections. I will show you photos. Shells are very shiny. Did you know that they produce their own varnish? So it's not like you even have to polish them, just kind of wash them off.. and also there's no limit on their growth, they just stop growing whenever they die. So theoretically if there was a mollusk that was immortal it could keep on growing until it was the size of a small planet. And we could turn it into a space station and live inside the spiral corridors of its shell.
After a long walk through what can be described as jungle, I reached a Hakka (a Chinese ethnic minority) village by a stone pier, preserved from the 1900s. It's on a raised platform, accessible by stairs, but it's really tiny. The brochure says it housed 100 people but there were only like 8 rooms (not counting a room for pigs and other livestock) separated by walls and connected not by any interior corridors, but by an exterior walled courtyard. Most of the rooms had timber lofts reached by stair-like ladders, so there was a bit more room, but I couldn't bear living with the same 100 people in any case. But then again if you think about it I only interact with really 20 people throughout my life at any one time. Except that they never seem to be any of the same people that I'm with throughout my life except for my family; I don't really have any core of childhood friends, except for Christy but she's one and a half years older than me so ever since elementary school she's been in a different grade. In elementary
school it mattered in that we never had classes or lunch or recess together and now it's that we're at different colleges. So we've never really hung out together on a regular basis. I don't have someone who's been with me every single day, you know? If I think about it, the person I care about most in the world right now is you and I've only known you for 8 months and you already know me better than most people. I'm thinking about people I'd invite to my wedding or my funeral, and when it comes to friends, it's like for all of these years I've made none that really mattered. There are people I say hi to and talk to and maybe do things with when it's convenient for them, but there isn't anyone in the world, outside of my family which is there by accident of my birth, that would stick by my side except for you.
---
June 1
I went swimming yesterday. I still suck. My relatives were like, "Can you do anything else besides doggy paddle?" I was like.. -_-
Cafes here are ridiculously cheap, and they're also clean and delicious. I love them. I had French toast with peanut butter yesterday and it was great. You'd think that peanut butter doesn't go well with French toast, but you're wrong.
---
June 2
Went to the art museum today, the rather prominent pink building with upswept roofs in Tsim Sha Tsui, recognizable from anywhere in Hong Kong Island when one looks over at Kowloon. Two walls of the lobby are lined with parallel, floor-to-ceiling windows, so that straight ahead of you, unobstructed, like some grand photographic mural lays the harbor and the entire, signature skyline of Hong Kong Island. There's a promenade along the sea known as "The Avenue of Stars," an imitation of Hollywood where famous Chinese media personalities ("everybody who's anybody") each get a star in the walk and a slab of cement in which he makes his handprint. Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and John Woo's stars were there. Well, also Andy Lau, but he's not someone you've heard of. Jackie's hands are much bigger than mine, but Maggie Cheung, who won Best Actress in Cannes this year (which apparently is a big deal, and makes her the latest news darling in Hong Kong) and who played Flying Snow in "Hero," has the same size hands as me. Somehow, sticking your own hands into someone's handprints makes you feel closer to them, as if having the same sized hand makes them smaller and more human.
At the museum itself, I got to see all sort of gold artifacts, glowing softy in a dark room and the craftmanship is really amazing. Of course you can see the evolution of craftsmanship, from rather crude artifacts from the Neolithic era which looks like someone pounded on a yellow gum wrapper, to some incredible filigree work in the Qin dynasty, gold so fine that it looked like woven silk, except that it was, of course, gold. It looks pretty sturdy too; some of the Tang dynasty stuff looks like it would
bend if you so much as touched it, which is not to speak badly of it, per se; it's just a different aesthetic.
Also jade, which was less interesting, because there are limits to what you can do with stone as opposed to metal. Apparently though, nobody knows what quarry the jade in ancient artifacts came from, because they can't find it anymore; it's a soft, translucent white-ish jade known as "nephrite," (this is why in poetry beautiful women are described as having jade skin.. they're not Martians!) whereas modern jade is dark green and hard and known as "jadeite." It seems very mysterious, like something out of a novel, having a treasured material from time immemorial, that can no longer be found.
Saw some watercolor paintings too, which were unremarkable ink and colour landscapes of trees and misty mountains and such. Also some Qin Dynasty glasswork, but this was also unremarkable because really, we use all the same techniques even today so it looks like things you'd see in Pottery Barn, and some artifacts honestly looked like plastic, except for some really lovely snuff bottles which were made of frosted glass painted from the inside with tiny bamboo brushes.
And libation cups carved out of rhino horn, all in the tapered triangular shape, which is very manly. They are a nice, glossy shade of brown, like a polished hardwood. I think I'd like to get a piece of wood carved to look like a rhino horn, and if customs officials stopped me for suspicious contraband, I'd tell them it's actually wood, and it'd be true.
Btw, saw something really cool on the Metro. There was an ad on the side of the subway tunnel which was a series of consecutive billboards, so that as the train passed by and you looked out the window, it looked like an animated billboard, kind of like a flipbook effect, but in the Metro! It was hella cool.
---
June 3
Hey, if my feet are tired, does it help to lean against a wall? Does this take some weight off my feet by having my weight pressed into the wall, or does the normal force of the wall push into my back and into my feet, into the ground? Or none of these?
---
June 7
I had a dream too, that it was next year and you had a job and I was at school by myself and lonely. I think your dream was much better.
I went to the Gold Coast, a five-star resort hotel, over the weekend. There was a beach and stuff. It was fantastic. I went swimming at the beach because while I'm not a beach person, I felt it was something I should at least try. Now, the beach in itself great for actually swimming, which was what the swimming pool was for. It was salty and murky, and the sand had a lot of shell shards and little bits of rock in it so it hurt to step on it, but it was really fun drifting on the waves and being washed up against the shore. Also, I found a clam shell, with both shells intact and hinged. Wasn't too sunny, but it's better that way because then it isn't hot. And also I went to the outdoor dinner buffet and ate a lot, and I ate some grilled ostrich, wasabi cheesecake, and also there was sushi, except that kept getting attacked by a horde of tourists. ^___^ And also I went shopping at the little umbrellaed stalls on the boardwalk but you don't want to know about
that.. and then I spent the night being hyper and jumping between two beds. Literally.. it's the bed jumping game. It's quite dangerous and juvenile actually -the mattress can slip, causing you to lose your footing, or if you don't stop in time your momentum can take you charging right off the bed into the closet, which is why you have to play. And also UNO and junior Monopoly with my cousins. In the morning, I went into the sauna,
which is just like a small room with lots of steam in it, and it's very hot and wet but it feels nice to breathe in, like you're drinking gaseous soup or in some sort of womb. And I went to the jacuzzi which is just bubbling water, except that I was the only one there at 10 in the morning so I swam around in it like it was my own giant private bath tub and massaged my feet with the water jets. And also, I took an archery lesson for thirty minutes and ended up having the string thwap the the inside part of my bow
forearm, despite me wearing a bracer, and also the index finger of my arrow hand is rubbed raw. But it was fun still, if tiring, because it was a real, wooden bow, and I even managed to hit the target several times.
And today I went to the top of Victoria Peak which is just a big tourist spot and saw some dried pufferfish which were inflated and strung from the ceiling, like some sort of macabre Christmas ornaments. I thought about buying one, but I a) wouldn't know how to pack it and b) don't know if it'd get through customs. I also took the Peak Tram, which is a trolley up and down the mountain. The tram is set along a steep incline, with ridges along the seat aisles to prevent someone from sliding. It feels like a roller coaster when you are at the very top, and you can see a little bit of the track in front
of you before it drops steeply away out of sight, and it feels that if someone released the brake you'd go roaring all the way down the mountain. Fortunately, the method of travel is much slower.
At the bottom, threaded through Hong Kong Park, and took a path through a niche behind a waterfall where a man sat on the rocks reading. Revisited the tea museum which I had gone to a few years back, but the great inflatable teapot which had been standing on its grounds is now gone, which is a pity. Many things are still there, like the stairway over which a shallow current runs, and in which a braver person than I could walk up or down, and the cocktail glass shaped fountain accessible by a series of stepping stones across a pool, and with a bench running around the stem on which someone can watch the encompassing cylindrical curtain of water.
Oh yeah, I also got to the fourth level of Prince of Persia. Those swordfighting skeletons and slicing sheets that come out of the floor and ceiling are incredibly disturbing.
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June 10
Not much going on... was sick for a while, but only with a sore throat. Think it may be the result of allergies; my nose is chronically congested.
Went and got a facial, which involves paying a lot to lay around for two hours waiting for the gunk on your face to try, and waiting for people to get around to you, and getting sprayed with steam and being rubbed with various creams. With your eyes closed. While you don't talk or move. Got a mask, which smells like chemicals, sort of like paint, but if you were there, you wouldn't go, "This smells like paint," but rather, "This has a chemical smell, which reminds me of the way paint smells, because they
both have a chemical smell, but it's not as if this actually smells like paint." It covers your eyes and mouth and is kind of heavy so it feels almost like someone's trying to cast you in iron or something. I felt like a Malfean.. you know, deep in my underground slumber or something. Except without the slumber part. Afterwards, I looked exactly the same.
I did go out for soft shell crab tempura though. Mmm! Delicious!
Also: got a haircut. Decided that since you were going to get a different haircut I ought to get a different haircut also, since it'd be hypocritical to tell you to change your hairstyle, and then be unwilling to do the same myself. Also, worse comes to worse, we can look stupid together and Bob's your uncle. Now my hair is wavy.
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June 12
Well yesterday, I got to go to my uncle's (mom's sister's husband) decoration ceremony at the Japanese consul-general's residence, because he received the Order of the Rising Sun with Rosette (aka shiny shiny!). He likes calling it his 'bottle cap.' :P He used to be the head of the department of Japanese Studies at Chinese University and got it for
lifetime's service in promoting the study of the Japanese language in China.
The consul general's residence is at nearly the very top of Victoria Peak, which is the highest point in Hong Kong. For once, my ears didn't feel plugged. I don't know, maybe I just like low air pressure places, because "normally" in the valley it feels like every sound is dampened. I've tried yawning and swallowing and holding my nose and everything.. my ears don't "pop" like they're supposed to.
Anyway, it was kind of weird, because people kept bowing to us and I didn't know what to do, and you didn't know what language to speak to people unless you were good at that ineffable art of telling Chinese people from Japanese people, which according to World War II propaganda is possible, but very difficult for most normal, non-jingoistic people. The rule of thumb I used during the occasion was that apparently Japanese people are the more polite and better dressed ones. (As in, white gloves well dressed)
Anyway, in an impeccably neat reception room with a yellow carpet, there was a Japanese-style table with a photo of the Emperor and Empress each, with the Japanese flag to the left (respective photos of.. the prince and princess?.. were on the fireplace by another wall). Me and my family were close to the front, because we were family. There was the reading of the scroll "from" the Emperor (in Japanese, he probably didn't write it himself though), the ritual champagne toast by my uncle and aunt (his wife, my mom's sister), and the pinning of the medal, winking with its dark red stone, and a speech by the consul-general and an acceptance speech by my uncle in English (which I knew pretty well anyway because I'd proofread it). I have some pretty decent photos of the event since I was in front (with my digital camera) but they aren't great, about as crappy as the ones in the paper. You see how well you can photograph when you're jockeying for good shooting positions with the press.. they're pros at that kind of thing. There was a photo session afterwards, which was pretty tame too. There were some good catered snacks passed around though; very simple, but extremely classy things, like smoked salmon/shrimp/scallops on crackers... mmm, snacks. My aunt (mom's brother's wife) says she finds one of the consuls (in white gloves) to be "handsome, in a genteel way".. which I find amusing, because I think the word she's looking for is "bishonnen"... :P Anyway, when we left, the entire staff bowed to us simultaneously, in a synchronized manner. It was terrifying. I did bow back.. and they bowed again.. it freaked me out.
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