hong kong!

brace for yet another long entry!!!

last week was relatively low key - taking international criminal law intensive course that has me in class mon-thurs 3 hours each evening -- soo much potential to be interesting, so little of it fulfilled

on thursday morning i flew to hong kong to meet vlad and jenn... in the waiting room before boarding there was this really gross man who kept falling asleep and jerking his body around and making disgusting snoring/horking like sounds...i prayed that i would not be assigned to sit next to him and luckily was not... although strangely i could still hear him lurking somewhere near me on the plane but could not see him.. hmmm....

the man i did sit next to on the plane was really nice! when we were about to land he asked me about where i was from and where i was going- his name was 'Go' and he was singaporean heading to mainland china to work for a couple months - it turns out his daughter was on exchange in the US -- since we were both heading to the same train station, he had me go with him through customs, get our bags, make sure i got the proper train pass, rode with me to the city and then went with me to the taxi stand to tell them where i was going in chinese since pretty much no one speaks any english in hong kong!! how nice was that????

upon getting to jenn's residence i was both shocked and horrified at how cold the weather was (maybe just under 20 C) its amazing how i have adapted to the oppressive conditions in singapore!

thursday nite we went to the temple market (i think) and then headed over to this bar called aqua that had a great view of the harbour - luckily we were able to score some great seats near the window!

friday i did more walking that i have in possibly all my days in singapore combined! in the morning we had waffles at pun's fave spot 'the flying pan' in soho, where i also got to see the worlds longest escalators -- because the city is on a hill and most ppl dont drive, there are escalators to take padestrians up the hill and from level to level (imagine that the roads circle the hill) .. unfortunately for the lazy, they only go upwards!

among the afternoon's highlights was a visit to the 'walled city' which is now a park but used to house an insane amount of people in a really small area (and in recent years was where you could find a lot of people messed up on opium) The HK government demolished it in the 90's and turned into a park! I also had my first taste of 'shandi' the odd 0.5% alcohol beer/pop combination (the verdict is still out as to whether this is good).. we also went to the temple of 10,000 buddhas which was really amazing - the entire path up a hill is lined all different golden buddha statutes and leads to a temple filled with small gold buddahs - amazing! at night we headed to the peak and got a great arial view of the city (as can be seen in the above pic!)

at night we went to lai kwai fong - a popular nite spot... while eating dinner in a crowded little restaurant, jenn recognized a friend of hers from church in bc!!! about an hour later while walking on the street i ran into denise tam-- a friend from undergrad who went back to HK to go to medical school! two crazy coincidences, dont you think!!?? (for all you doubters, i totally have a pic!)
then we met up with some of jenns exchange peeps and puneets friend seehal and his crew and hit up a number of spots till early in the morning! highlights: hanging with the beautiful people at 'dragon' and 3 am dancing with the locals in 'hei hei'

exhausted, the next day we had dim sum in this insanely large (and remarkably efficient) restaurant, went shopping (i bought 2 winter coats, for shame!), went along the walk of stars at the harbourfront and then went to causeway bay- vlad's hood (because he spent 5 nights in a hostel there!!!) later we went out with some more exchange peeps to a local lounge

sunday while jenn went with vlad to the airport i went to the HK museum of art - they had a number of exhibitions but perhaps i was too tired to enjoy them fully!!! vlad will be happy to know that when i met up with jenn later- we had mcdonalds for lunch! (for my first time in asia, who hoo)

i almost missed my plane back to singapore because HK has the biggest airport ever... earlier i had checked in while in the city (its really cool, they give you a boarding pass and send your bags to the airport while you stay behind) so i didnt give myself tons of time to get to the gate, but it turns out that the damn airport is set up in a straight line and had EIGHTY gates - man, did this girl ever run to make it to her gate on time!!! (ridiculous, i know) whats worse is that ppl dont observe the rules on the moving sidewalks, so yep, i had to run without their help -- great for the person who had to sit next to me.. lol

today i attended what i call the 'nafta tea' - which was a welcome tea for north americans --- they had asked us to submit photos from our experiences in singapore and i submitted a pic of my head in a dragon from chinese new year... they actually made us get up and talk about our pic and our experiences in singapore- and then the 15 ppl who attended (lol) voted on the 3 submissions (lolol) ... naturally my eye for the artistic prevailed in the highly competitive field and i was awarded with a t shirt that says on the front 'does size matter?' and on the back 'not if you are in singapore!' LOL as well as a key chain and gift certificates to a place i've never heard of before! who hoo!!

i'm heading to vietnam on saturday so i prob wont post till after that - thanks for reading again!

also- i'm having flickr difficulty so i havent been able to upload my pictures - I'll do it as soon as i get it straightened out!! :)

a month already!!!!

Hard to believe that i have been in singapore for officially an entire month as of today! time has seriously flown by!!!

Updating this blog weekly i run the risk of writing way too much (and some of you may already think that i have been doing little to curb this tendancy), but here goes yet another attempt:

Firstly - a big shout out to Megan - your gift of a flickr account upgrade was absolutely wonderful and is saving me tons of time uploading my pics! I'm having a great time exploring my new 'pro' account! THANK YOU!

On Wednesday this week i went and saw the Indian president, APJ Abdul Kalam speak in the annual Singapore Lecture. He was to speak on the 'evolution of enlightened societies' - a very vague topic at best-- and the talk proved similar -- he essentially spoke of ties between india and singapore and of future economic plans including education, information sharing and a focus on the service industry... it was typical political fare, some nice, broad ideas and smooth evasion of the more critical questions posed by the audience....

Thursday i recommitted to my swimming aspirations- but managed to buy a pair of utterly useless cheap goggles that fill with water after half of a lap of the pool -- i should have known that goggles purchased in a random grocery store would not be useful, even if they were flourescent green... :(

On Friday night, i went out with the canadian contingent: suyin, claire, tanya and anna (plus jo, who is bajan-british but i digress) - we ate at this great indonesian restaurant in the Suntec Towers (home to the worlds largest water fountain-- sorry too focused on food to take pics!) we then went to kareokee (a first for me). It was in the National University of Singapore grad club- and was pretty swanky - the only problem was that the machine sang with you which seems to defeat the whole purpose of kareokee, no? I have since been informed that there are many venues that dont suffer this same ailment- unfortunately their songs are generally not in english!

Saturday went out with my 'law buddy', marc (who is top left in the above picture) - we met up with 4 of his friends from the equivalent of his highschool days (junior college here) and went around the city visiting each of their houses for the chinese new year! It was a lot of fun, seeing the city, eating too much, playing cards and hanging out! I also learned a couple more rather interesting things:
1. a local delicacy is called 'birds nest' - which is essentially bird saliva! the stuff i saw was opaque yellow with pieces of rock sugar in it... apparently it is sweet, sometimes drank, good for your health and skin -- but quite expensive (about 20 cnd for a small jar) -- from what i could understand, it is harvested by rinsing bird's nests (they use saliva to make their nests)... i didnt have the gall to try this- sorry guys!
2. to buy a car here, you need a certificate that costs $20,000 on top of the price of the car- imagine! certainly makes multiple cars cost prohibitive!
3. about 80% of the population lives in government owned housing complexes (i have some pics of these on fickr) - people can 'own' their places, but the buildings are ultimately owned by the govt and under their control -- they are often in clusters of identical buildings- makes it hard to find your way around!!

I also went to a parade downtown for chinese new year (have also posted pics of this). Dad, you would be happy to note there was even a group performing from angola! -- some found this contrived, but i admit i was largely entertained!)

Finally- today i went to Pulau Ubin - a Singapore island which has been left in its 'natural state' (read: not like the artifical paradise that was Sentosa)... It was fun to take a bum boat over to the island and the highlight was spending the afternoon biking around the island's many obscure and poorly marked trails... as you can see from the pics, it was less than scenic, but nonetheless very fun to go around! If you check out my pictures, there is one where a large fence runs through the water - thats because right accross from us was Malaysia!! the coast guard was actively patroling the area around the little island we were on - i'd guess to keep people out, not in!

i'll prob post my pics tomorrow - (monday) should you be interested... heading to Hong Kong to meet Vlad and Jenn on Thursday- should be a fun week!

thanks for reading :)