Paper Offices and Glass Forests

Interesting store concept: each box is owned by an individual who puts his/her wares inside and are sold to customers. So the consumer gets a variety of knick knacks to choose from while the store owner sells 'space' to the merchants who can sell items without having the huge commitment of signing a lease. Genius!

Listening to:Come Fly with Me- Frank Sinatra

This song is so jolly. I love it. Pack up let's fly away!

Also watching Guang Liang's MVs. I must say they're ultra cheesy and ultra cliche which annoys me (can you spell singer-and-girl-fall-in-love-then-tragedy-ensues-and-boy-saves-girl). But this one was cute: Never Apart. It's cute until the girl gets hit by the car. -_- you know I like my milk bottles although no one delivers milk in glass bottles anymore.

Anyway back to the main point. Now I'm glad that I'm starting work next week: a stream of people from New York/Toronto have come to HK and it's been fun to hang out with them in a 'foreign country.' It's like we're all going on vacation together! And those are always exciting- I've always wanted to do a big trip with people. Flying by myself is lonely. Anyway.

My life has become somewhat 'regimented'. I wake at 7:30am, eat breakfast consisting of congee/porridge/pancakes/radish cake and then get driven out with my grandmother, uncle and aunt to the market to buy groceries. Then we have dim sum and then return to Repulse Bay for lunch. Yeah I'm eating a lot. It's not fun because I'm eating out of a sense of duty/obligation to my grandmother. And my stomach can only fit so much.
Between then and dinner, I'm usually out with friends. I've been to Sogo three days in a row. Oh man. Even one of the shoe store owners whom I only saw once asked me yesterday if I ever bought anything from them because I looked familiar. T-T Yesterday I met up with a high school friend and we went shopping in the fob malls there. The fashion here is so much better. I've been doing a lot of people watching. People watching I mean by just standing in one spot and looking at people as they pass by. There are soooo many chinese hipsters here! It's almost like New York: skinny jeans/drainpipes, large rimmed black glasses, a hat (bucket or fedora), flashy converse sneakers and a large man bag (gucci). And I've never seen sooo many people wear the Commes des garcons logo shirt. It's basically a white tee with a heart and eyes. And Y-3 messenger bags by Yohji Yamamoto. I know I sound extremely materialistic but yup I like the fashion here. It's been quite interesting watching people. I wish I could take pictures because I've seen quite a lot of interesting stylin' going on. I've noticed that the locals respond more to more of an urban style over feminine/pretty when it comes to womenswear. On Sunday I wore all HK clothes from the previous christmas: Japanese brand Hyo shirt, white shorts, Norma Kamali halter hoodie. While people watching near Sogo that day, two hipster kids who were doing some HK street style thing asked to take my picture and then I got stopped by some 'modeling agent' who told me to go to some casting or something. To put it bluntly, I'm really not skinny enough to be a model. I've worked backstage at fashion shows and my thigh is the size of their torso. Anyway I take it this whole street style thing is really taking off in HK: while talking on the phone with my fellow intern, two girls were about to come up to me until they heard me speak English.

I returned to that store with that skull dress I was gushing about in my previous entry. I took a picture of the material becuase I didn't really like the cut of it.
Yeah. Screw American fashion. Asia is where it's at now. They have some really cool urban graphic tees, a crazy variety of Converse sneakers that I've never seen even in New York (metallics, plastic, faux leather, crayola-coloured shoelaces). I'm still looking for that store D-Mop though. So far the only clothing item I bought is a $90 t shirt. At this stage it's only a lot of window shopping to figure out exactly what the possibilities are before placing some money down.

Anyway after walking around for a while my friend and I went to eat double boiled milk dessert and then mango pomelo and mango pancake. SOOOO GOOD. Frick. She took me to another Chinese plaza where I purchased my shirt. Before leaving, the owner said my english was really good and asked if I could translate some chinese fashion terms into english. She verbally gave me the description in Canto and I wrote them down in English:
"that bag you wear across your shoulder diagonally."= messenger bag
"those slippers you wear outside"= flip flops/ thong sandals
"those large handbags"= tote bag
:P


While waiting for two hours at times square for Jer and Ang... guess who I saw?! Joey. I don't know what she sings but I know I've seen her in the Ming Pao. I'm not really interested in her as I am with what she's wearing which is also rather... interesting. Something I would have worn last year.

We then started walking back to the Sogo area where my friend recommended this Japanese conveyor belt sushi place to me. On the way there, I heard someone call my name. Turns out it was this girl who used to play with me when we were kids since my mom's best friend knows her too: I haven't seen for three years. Weird! I got the biggest 'it's a small small world' feeling just then. She spoke english to me since she's majoring in it and she's going to West Virginia to do some exchange program and she'll be visiting New York some time. SMALL WORLD.

Anyway we initially planned to go to LKF to drink after but the conveyor belt sushi place took one hour and fifteen minutes to get us a spot. My feet have never throbbed this badly before- not even in new york. Ugh. It was pretty good though.

I also got my visa into china! They've really tightened up their belts on visas since the Olympics are being held in August. I can only go into China twice. :S Anyway there were a few good looking guys there. ;)
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Those who have grown up walking the clean linoleum aisles in American grocery stores with state-of-the-art refridgerators would be in a for a rude awakening if they ever came to visit Hong Kong to how food is made and bought at the 'gai see'. The dull damp smell of the humidity mixed with fresh meat lingers in the air. The unwanted fat from dead animals are just tossed on the floor. The tiles at the butchers are permanently stained pale red while the streets run with blood. Suffocating fish helplessly flounder in their baskets as they gasp for air: their gills quickly moving up and down. Some manage to get out of the basket and onto the cement pavement but they get tossed back in. Fish guts are out on display for everyone to see, hearts still beating. The fish monger with an unlit cigarette permanently stuck between his teeth takes a knife and slices off all the scales from the fish that we buy: I feel the scales flicking across my skin. Filipino maids feel the slimy bodies of the fish without any qualms. It's wet everywhere. Vegetables are packed densely onto dirty styrofoam boxes. Nothing is packaged: you take what you want, they prepare it and it's tossed into a plastic bag. Space is tight. You want fresh, you got fresh. There's no beating around the bush here. Today I saw them flinging huge pigs onto a cart to be sliced open. A few days ago I was maneuvering around a long line up at a butchers only to be met by a sight of a huge pig chopped up on the floor with nothing but a plastic mat between the flesh and the floor.

And you know what, despite the American phobia of dirt and pollution, the locals in Hong Kong are probably more healthy than we are at home. I believe that one of the reasons why there is such a broken relationship between the environment and humans is that we have forgotten where and how food is made. We'd rather see our two-week old steak wrapped in plastic and foam in an open fridge nicely spotlighted at our local grocery store than see the entire animal bloody and quartered at the meat monger which is then tossed into a plastic bag upon request. We like to think that the food industry is a clean business when in reality, it's really a dirty and bloody deal. The American grocery store is designed for comfort: to give an air/facade that your surroundings reflect the very things that you consume. However what does the average American know about food processing? Very little. At least the people here are more aware of where their food comes from.

My consumption of fish has quadrupled since I came here. I haven't eaten this well in ages in terms of variety. If there's one thing I like about the Chinese, it's the ability to incorporate every part of an animal/vegetable to create some good dish.
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I'm not sure what to think of HK. On one hand I feel like I've returned home- to a familiar place but at the same time it seems that I'm just a tourist observing a vibrant culture. I'm caught between observer and participant. While driving past the buildings and roads here, I'm thinking of different ways to photograph each place as if it was some j-drama scene while simultaneously recalling different memories from certain places. Memory's a funny thing: some of the things you take the least notice in create the strongest impressions on you when you first revisit the past. For me it's the feeling of someone else's arm sticky with sweat brushing against mine. I hate that sensation because it feels gross but it reminds me of the past. The smell of incense is another so is the sound of the jingle they play on tv when the news is played. Every time I hear that jingle, it takes me back to the first morning I spent in HK: my brother and I sitting at the dining table eating a bowl of Cheerios. They all take me back nine years ago. Nine years ago. I act and talk as if HK was just a year ago. I sound like I'm missing a home I just recently left. Everything's changed but some things still remain. The stationary store on Queens Road East still stands there: I used to get my drawings laminated there.
The sticker picture store on the ninth floor in Times Square is gone. I used to spend all my money there with my old friends.

How things have changed.
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How do you know if he's the one? Not the love story definition but in the given present circumstances kinda thing. The artist part of me always thinks that there's someone better. So it doesn't matter if the other person is perfect, it only matters if you're perfect for each other. How are you supposed to know that? I probably don't understand because I've never been there.

Aloof.
I've been told that a lot by quite a few friends this year. I cannot read the gestures that other people give me. Friends ask me if I flirt or he flirts. But I don't even know what flirting is and when I ask for a definition, they can't really describe it. A friend asked me if I knew when guys are checking girls out. Once we were walking around NY and she asked me when two guys passed if I saw that they were checking her out. But at the time I never really paid attention to other people, I was always looking at window displays. I said I couldn't tell whether or not they were just baffled by my choice in clothes or whether it's something else. I check guys out all the time especially what they wear but not in a sleazy way. If someone wore a neon pink shirt, you'd notice right despite what their body looked like?
Then when it comes to discerning whether or not a chilling session is a date or not is confusing to me. I think that incident just topped it off.
I don't mean to be aloof- I just don't want to read into things that really have no lines to begin with. I like to take upon the 'no assumption' approach and whatever a guy does, I will just take it in a platonic way until he tells me otherwise.

I wish I was more aware, but I'm not. I'm new to this game which has a set of rules I'm not sure to play by.