Location

First up, the photos of my humble abode in HK.

This is how my room looks like from the door. Each hostel room is divided into two sides - left and right. Mine is on the left side.



The rules dictate that we do not change sides without asking for permission from the office, and apparently they're quite strict about that.

There are two blocks of hostel apartments, and each block has 19 floors. The top floor is for barbecues, and it's a really nice place to sit and enjoy the wind (when it's not winter). The first floor has all the hostel facilities, like laundry room, gym, common room, tv and music room, and even a piano room for people to practice! Apparently there's also a karaoke room but we couldn't find it and so concluded that it has been turned into the tv and music room. We enter by the ground floor, where there is a security counter and turnstiles.

The security at our hostel is quite tight. We have to scan our student ID cards at the gantry before the turnstile will be unlocked. And so they have records of the times that we enter and exit the building. Every guest is also stopped by the guards and asked to leave their particulars.

Our door locks are the same as that of hotel rooms, and we use a key card to enter. I felt this was really cool the first time I received the card.

Here's a pic of the corridor leading to my room.



Ok, let's go back inside my room.

Each side of the room contains a wardrobe, a bed and a desk. On the right side of my room, there is a door leading to the toilet (shared by 2 rooms).







There are two sinks in the bathroom, one for each room.



But there is only one toilet cubicle and shower room.



Sorry for the bad pic, this is as far back as I could get (I was leaning against the sink already)!

Our university is separated into 3 campuses. They are located within 5-10 minutes' walk of each other, but the weird thing about it (to me) is that you have to walk outside of the university's premises to get from campus to campus.

This is one the campuses, a building which I pass by everyday when I go out.



Here's another part of the same campus as the one above. This one is just next to my hostel.



This is the school library nearest to my hostel (there are several libraries in our university, I think).



People

This is a pic taken on the first day of orientation. The three girls below me are also Singaporeans from my course in NTU. Beside me is a Korean girl, and the thorn among the roses is from Korea as well.

I hang out with the three girls in the photo plus 1 more girl and guy from Accountancy, the Korean guy and a Vietnamese man who is an Australian citizen. He worked in Japan for several years and is now a middle-aged undergraduate.

We get along pretty well and I'm very thankful for them, esp. the Singaporeans as I would probably miss home a lot more without them around.



In the photo below, the guy who's half-squatting is the one from NTU Accountancy, and the other Accountancy girl is to my left (in black). The one to my right is another Korean girl.




Food

WARNING: Do not continue if you are nowhere near a) a meal, or b) a mealtime, or c) a trip to HK, as it is likely to make you want to tear your hair out with desire (yes, I'm looking at you, toufu! :p).

Yes, HK is truly the land of gastronomic delights. The food is ever so slightly more expensive than in Singapore, but both the quality and quantity more than make up for it. If what you order contains rice, be prepared to tackle a whole mountain of the stuff. But as it is winter (it really feels horrible to be cold AND hungry during winter!) and the food is really scrumptious, I usually have no problems finishing it all. I've got myself a bigger belly for the trouble, haha.

Haha anyway. This is sweet corn and pork with rice, a dish I had on the first day. As you can see, they were quite generous with the 料. It tasted really good too. Sweet corn and pork is a common dish over here, it seems.



Wanton noodles, another must-have when you're in HK. This is from a shop in Mongkok. It's delicious, of course. The wanton and the prawn inside the wanton are bigger (than Singapore's) and fresh.



We also had the mango and pomelo sago from a very popular dessert chain (as commonplace as 7-Eleven, a local friend once joked). It is absolutely heavenly. A generous helping of very sweet mangoes, countered by the slight bitterness of pomelo.



The school has several cafeterias (but much fewer than NTU's 16 or so canteens) with acceptable food (compared to the quality sold outside). There are also 2 restaurants, and this is the best eatery in the university: Wonderland. They sell Taiwanese and Japanese food (although I hear the Japanese food, especially the ramen, is not very nice).



I love the salted crispy chicken (盐酥鸡) with rice. They even have minced meat underneath to add to the flavour of the rice! It reminds me of the extra-large chicken chops at the night markets in Taipei *aches with desire*.



Of course, when in HK you gotta have milk tea. I have it almost everyday, but I'm getting quite sick of it and so sometimes I choose lemon tea. Below is the milk tea from Wonderland. On a scale of 1 to 10, me and my friends have rated it 8. We are still trying to find a 10/10 one.



Beef (especially beef brisket or 牛腩) is much more common and cheap in HK. It is one of my favourite foods over there. I have it once in two days, usually with noodles. On average, it costs $4 + per bowl.



Another thing that HK seems to be famous for is egg tarts! Now, I haven't been around HK a lot, but in my opinion these are the best egg tarts I've tasted around HK (better than the ones in Macau, even though it's not portugese). It's hard to describe the taste. All I can say is that the pastry is very special. They are from Tai Cheung Bakery at Grand Century Plaza. Kudos to Cathy, who introduced them to me :D .



On Thursday, we had dinner at some restaurant and discovered that they had you tiao chee cheong fun! It's a novelty to me, but I hear it's available in Singapore (though rare). It's quite nice, but I think I still prefer the ones with bbq meat or prawns inside.



On the first Sunday, we decided to check out the best dim sum restaurant in Tsim Sha Tsui (according to some food website).



We were not disappointed. The food there is to die for.

Just look at these almost ornamental spring rolls.



We ordered a lot of food, but only paid about S$20 each in the end. Very worth it.

HK Tour

On the third and last day of orientation (9 Jan), the school paid for a tour guide to bring us around HK. We went to the usual touristy areas (Wong Tai Sin Temple, Jade Market, Stanley Market, etc.) as well as the places mentioned below.

This was taken at the beach in Repulse Bay.



One groovy thing about winter is that although the sun is shining really brightly, you don't feel hot because the temperature is so low. So you can actually enjoy the slight heat from the sun's rays. Also, doing sports during winter has the added benefit of minimal sweat. Plus, the heat from the exertion would warm you right up. It's really cool watching people play basketball in jackets and long sleeves. I'd like to try that sometime.

We also went to the Jumbo Floating Restaurant, the world's biggest floating restaurant. We had to take a 5-minute boat ride to get there.



The tour guide informed us that the owner of Jumbo is filthy rich (as well he should be, look at the prices he charges at the restaurants in Singapore!). This fact screams out at you the moment you step into the restaurant. It looks like a bloody palace.





趣事 or Interesting Tales

I was very curious when I first saw these box-shaped instant noodles. It turned out that they were dry instant noodles, and it is shaped and designed in such a way that it's really convenient for you to cook the noodles and then pour out the water. After the noodles are done, you have to put in the sauce and (a pathetic amount of) ingredients, and then stir them together. It tastes great!



I found some Doraemon air fresheners at a Japanese retail store which sells daily necessities/wants, only with Japaneses anime characters on them. Love them! They even had toilet air fresheners, which really tempted me. I would have given in if the toilet wasn't shared.



I found this painted along the wall on the way to the toilet in one of the shopping malls. Hilarious.


I couldn't resist having some of my favourite twister fries at McDonald's.



By the way, they're now selling these cute zodiac dolls. Here's a pic of the tray liner showing some of the dolls with some vague and useless predictions for the year.



Interesting errors in the English language can be found in many places if you just look. This was on the door of one of our school cafeterias. Read the English version of the message first, then read the Chinese one to make sense of it.



Spoils

I bought the two necklaces below for about S$4. I like them very much =)





Found this unique book at the library, after my friends decided to buy it for their friend at a second-hand bookstore a few days before. Every left page is a description of the Thing to Do, and every right page is an often amusing form for you to fill up when you've done the deed.



And the most shocking thing (to me) was that the stickers provided at the back of the book were still intact! How rare (for a library book)!

I haven't finished the book yet, but it certainly gave me some food for thought and ideas.



One day when I was walking home from school, I saw this person giving out free candy floss. An interesting sight it was.



Does the pattern here remind you of something? I was so glad to find something reminiscent of Singapore that I took a photo of it. This was found at some exhibition in our campus.



We chanced upon a Koi competition while trying to find the way to someplace at Tsim Sha Tsui. The Koi there were really, really huge.





Thus ends this extremely long blog post. But at least I've divided it up into nice sections for you, right? And it's a really long-awaited post. And you love my writing, so you don't mind. Right? Haha. Anyway I hope these'll do for now. I always find endless things to do when I'm in my hostel in HK, so I may not have time to post up more photos for a while after I get back. But I'll try to, of course.

Toodles and HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR! 恭喜发财！

Labels: Memoires of Dimsumland

Yours truly is home at last!

Well, I've been home for two days now actually, bouncing about like a happy bunny. =)

But time is flying by and I know I'll be on that plane to HK very soon.

Anyway. On the photos front, I'm delighted to report that I have progressed to the next step - uploading the photos onto photobucket! So watch this space.

And, in the words of one of my British professors - "There's only one thing left to say, and that is gong xi fa cai." =D

I forgot to blog about this just now. This morning during my International News class, I was evacuated from the classroom for the first time in my life!

What happened was an acrid burning smell drifted into the classroom one hour into the lecture, at about 11.25 am. It was quite strong, so my professor thought it might be coming from the room itself and decided to evacuate the whole class. I was both excited and bemused, since I have never been evacuated before!

Once outside, our lecturer called someone to check out the source of the odour. And after 15 minutes of waiting outside in the cold (many of my classmates actually took the chance to socialize with the rest of the class! Wow, time really is money over here.), we returned to the classroom and the smell was no more.

The funniest thing (to me) was that coincidentally, the professor had been showing us a series of photos of important people, and trying to identify their names and occupations. We had just been through our favourite PM Lee (who, incidentally, none in my class knew. They seem to know everyone else except their own chief executive and PM Lee, so I don't know what that means. Haha.), and were just going to talk about Saddam Hussein when it happened.

Apparently, the origin of the odour was from a room directly upstairs. The direct cause of the smell is not known at the time of this report.

Labels: Memoires of Dimsumland

Yes, I know. "Photos, photos, we want photos!" I hear your minds loud and clear.

And I actually have uploaded, into my computer, the hundred (!) or so pictures that I've taken since 5 January.

But!

I haven't uploaded the photos to Photobucket yet.

Haha. Still, it's a start. And 100 photos for someone like me who usually doesn't take photos is a lot. So please appreciate and await with bated breath.

So anyway, until I drop by Photobucket, I just wanted to give a written update.

All is well here, I like the school and the hostel quite a lot. Not much problem by way of adapting besides the cold (7 degrees is the lowest I've been through so far, but it's warmer nowadays at 10 degrees and above).

I've already learnt many, many things here, even though it's only been 11 days (feels like a month!). Here's the topic that I study everyday.

Cold (as in brr, not ah-choo. Thank goodness.)

After I came here I realised that when I was in Singapore I really knew nothing about what it means to be cold. During the past 11 days I have gathered the following insights about cold:

• Cold is relative. Last night, as we Singaporeans (a total of 6, all from NTU) shivered in our jackets and scarves, we heard the story of an American guy who attempted to switch on the air-con in the hostel room. Cos he felt hot (he is sane, in case you were wondering. In his homeland it is below 0 degrees and snowing). And apparently only the fan part of the air-con worked because it's too cold. On the plus side, though, they don't charge you for using the air-con like they usually would. So you can happily freeze to death with money in your pockets.
  
• There is cold (air-con in blasting mode at cinemas, or rainy seasons, as is familiar to us in Singapura), and there's cold (winter temperatures above 0 degrees, no snow), COLD (snowing) and then there is ohdeargoditisabsolutelybloodyfreezing (-30 degrees in Harbin). Thanks, Einstein!
  
• Most of it is psychological, much like running. When you feel really cold, just relax and tell yourself that it's okay, it's not THAT cold. Think about stories of human triumph over cold, like the beggars who have no winter clothes to wear or the poor souls in Harbin. And you'll actually feel better. It works for me, at least.
  
• Hands and feet get cold real quick. These parts of my anatomy betray me in under 30 seconds and turn into ice the moment I stop trying to get back to sleep. And it doesn't matter if the rest of your body is warm and cosy, you feel really cold as long as your hands and feet aren't toasty. Oh yeah, and moisturising is a pain in the a$$. Don't cringe when you see my beyond-scaly legs.
  
• As Selina once said, it really feels horrible to be cold AND hungry during winter. So I eat more, and I think I get hungry faster. The highlight of my wintery days is mealtimes.
  
• I now know how it feels like to be accosted by the wind to the extent that it hurts (slightly).
  
• Piling on clothes on your body makes your shoulders tire faster (Hebe mentioned this once). Thus (she went on to say) heat pads are a lifesaving invention.

Ok, that's all for today. I'll enjoy telling these little tales to you all in person much more anyway, so from now on I think I'll try to keep it short and just post up photos (ha! So says the long-winded one.). Oh, and when you get fed up with the heat in Singapore, just teleport some over to my room. Thanks.

Labels: Memoires of Dimsumland

I've got so much nervous energy in my body right now that I could cartwheel around the house. Adrenaline + dread. It's a really weird and uncomfortable feeling. Haha. I wish my luggage would just bloody pack itself, cos all I feel like doing right now is shuffle around the house aimlessly and stone.