In a hotel with an outdoor swimming pool, what better way to spent two beautiful sunny mornings than to ... stay in my room and watch football for 10 hours? I would have spent that free time blogging and catching up on the news, but the ESPN here decided that since it's weekday and no one is watching anyway, it's okay to show the Sunday and Monday night football games live (the ABC broadcast of Monday night Football is on ESPN here) instead of the usual endless soccer.
Some notes on Hong Kong culture:
--Proof of the limits of American cultural hegemony: not enough girls here wearing slutty clothes. In fact, I don't think I've seen
one women under the age of 25 that didn't look as if their mom picked out their clothes for them. And apparently contacts haven't been invented in Hong Kong yet, because everyone here wears glasses.
--The people who do dress up are the guys. They all seem to be going for the Koizumi hair look, though in different shades of dyed brown.
--Saw a guy at work wearing a t-shirt with the words "SHUT UP BITCH" in English.
--There's way too many people here. Everywhere we went every place was packed, even on weekdays. Just imagine the supermarket at the busiest hour ... then triple the number of people.
--People here have no manners. They don't hold doors for people, they don't say thank you when you hold doors for them, they don't let people off the train first when the doors open, etc.
--A lot of signs advertising a $1500HK penalty for littering or spitting, and they seem serious about it too. Since the SARS scare earlier this year, the government has made sure that all the streets are as clean as possible. Also: $5000 HK fine for smoking indoors.
--Weird foods eaten: a dessert with turtle extract as the main ingredient (I think it's sold in Chinese markets in the US in a can for $2), pig's blood in cubes.
Ummm, pig's blood... Tried to order ostrich in a restaurant but they were out.
--At the hotel, everything seems to be "environmentally friendly", including the three-in-one soap/shampoo/conditioner.
--The new apartments buildings being built are all 40-50 floors high, and there seems to be many more of them than I remember from 10 years ago. My grandparents from my mother's side live on the 6th floor of a building that is "harborside". I put that in quotes because in a few years the harbor is going to be filled in to put up more buildings, just as the land where the apartment is was water only several years before. Pretty soon all the "islands" of Hong Kong are all going to be connected since the water is all going to be filled in.
--Don't try to cross the street on red, because cars here don't stop for you.
--People here rely much more on public transportation. There are three main varieties: subways, the double-decker buses (now with air conditioning!), and light buses traveling locally that seat exactly 16 people. About half of the cars on the road are either buses or taxis. When the light buses are picking up people at the starting location (they seem to only go 1 way), they would not leave until every seat on the bus is full. And if they have 1 seat left, they won't let 2 people on the bus, even if they're a mother with her four year old. The residents here all seem to have an all-purpose transportation pass. Unlike in the US where we are charged for a monthly pass, they have to put money into the pass like a debit card that gets deducted every time you get on.
--The escalators at train stops all go at breakneck speeds.
--Not handicap accessible: the pedestrian bridges here all seem to be badly designed, since they have both steps and incline
on the same path. Wheelchaired people can't use them because there are steps, but for walking people it still feels as if you're going uphill. They should have made it either all incline (so people in wheelchairs can use them) or all steps (so walking up a bridge won't feel like climbing a mountain). Incidentally, bridges, both for cars and for people, are everywhere, since they've just about ran out of space on the ground.
