Christmas in Asia

Once again I failed to come home for Christmas and it bothers me. This year was not nearly as bad as last year when I had to work all week for Christmas but even though we had a lot of fun I still feel the distance to a real Christmas. On Christmas Eve we had a party in my flat; it was Joyce's and Man's idea so of course they were there, Janice, Kate and Ariel came too and Kate brought her boyfriend Tony, Joyce also invited a mutual friend of theirs, Wilson, and Almen and Lone came too, so we were 6 girls and 4 guys, which was a lot better mix than I had ever hoped for actually.

It might seem like a small group but with an apartment this small it still got quite crowded, especially since everybody should bring their own dish but because of work no one had time to prepare anything so they all had to use my kitchen and with a tiny kitchen like mine we had to go in turns and all the cooking took several hours to finish. Almen and Lone were rather clever and ordered Pizza instead, which took two hours to deliver but still arrived at about the same time all the rest of the food was finished.

Everyone’s dishes:

• Joyce - Pasta with pasta sauce (basically "spagetti och köttfärsås")
• Man - Chicken wings
• Janice - Brought a homemade cheesecake so she never had to occupy the kitchen.
• Kate and Ariel - A vegetable/fruit salad.
• Johan - Meatballs from IKEA and chocolate cake.
• Almen and Lone - Pizza hut set with pizza, lasagna and soup.
• Then I just guess Wilson and Tony got the Sushi.
  

I had planned to make pancakes too but we were too full and everyone left before we got hungry enough again.

Tony brought his Wii too so for the first time I got to try the Wii-mote and play things like Mario-cart, boxing (which was a real exercise), bowling and tennis. We had gift exchange too; lucky draw where everybody bought one gift and then fortune got to decide who got what. We numbered all the gifts and had numbers in a Santa-hat and the score in bowling decided who to draw first. You should have seen Joyce playing bowling by the way, damn the girl can stance, hahaha.

I got Ariel's gift, a two piece set of cute cat's where one holds curtains and the other is a storage box for napkins. Almen got my gift which was a beginner's guide to palm-reading book. And of course there were lots of photos taken and many joyful sounds so soon after the gift exchange we got a complaint call that we were too noisy.

We still kept playing a bit more silently and had the cakes and some Champagne that Wilson had brought but around 2am everybody started to get tired and left. I think that was a bit premature and was slightly disappointed but what can I do? Everyone else had been working all day and it was pretty late. I still sit with a lot of leftovers now so I don't have to buy and food today.

On Christmas Day I went out with Ariel and her friends; first we had hot-pot, which was actually a bit too expensive and not so fun for me; it is just not easy to join a group that speaks another language. After that we had a room in a club in TST but there had been some booking mistake and after less than an hour we were basically thrown out and moved to another club, which had a significantly better room; much bigger and with a nice view that I doubt anyone noticed.
We also had gifts exchange and I "won" a wallet from Quicksilver, so I guess it's time for me to start using wallet again, after about five or six years with my metal cardholder. My Klappa Panda from IKEA (IKEA is useful) went to a random girl that I don't know, I think Candy's friend. Ariel got a Hello Kitty play set for making labels.

The whole gift exchange was rather complicated, and took a long long time as we were about 20 people exchanging. First we had a lucky draw like on Christmas Eve but then we went through the whole group and had a blind exchange; basically your eyes were covered and someone pointed at someone else’s gift and you could say yes or no to exchange it with yours, if you said no three times you got to keep the one you had. I don't know the first one I had because I didn't see who finally got it but it was something from Sasa (a cosmetics store) so I guess something for girls, then I had some kind of first-aid for lonely men; something that would supposedly make you more charming, after that I got a tie which I finally lost to Fish and got myself the wallet, which I'm pretty happy about actually.

After that we played all night and had lots to drink, Ariel left around 4am I think but I stayed to the very end where the all nighters went to have breakfast at MacDonald's, which I despise by the way; what is the point of only serving ham stuff and nasty potato cakes when you actually have the means to make real burgers? And even when you ask nicely they completely refuse to do it, and it's just bureaucracy. It was still fun though and I didn't step through my door at home until around 8am.

Today I have to try and clean up the rest of the party (it is not as bad as the girls did all the dishes after dinner and we were actually rather clean), finish the leftover food and lesson plan my classes for tomorrow.

Out of phase

I think this might be just about the weirdest dream I ever had;

I was back in Bjärred in my parents’ home and I might have been 10 years younger, Sandra and Anna were there too and they were definitely 10-12 years younger, I think Maja was there too. Everything was rather normal but suddenly the ground started shaking and a flash of lightning went through the ground around us. The lightning was not like the one we see from the sky but was the color of dirt, brownish red, and wider than what you would normally think of as a fork of lightning, it was yellow in it and at the edges it turned into a hot white, it was like it was taken from a Japanese cartoon or a computer graphics animation but it still looked completely real in the dream.

The flash traveled up along the walking path to where Niklas used to live and in its wake something mysterious happened; it was as if time and space was out of synch and when you moved it could happened that a fraction of a second had disappeared, or that space was making up for there not being enough time. As I jumped over a low hedge, seemingly the one that was marking the line between the street and Niklas' font yard but still on my street, I was in mid air and then suddenly I struck ground really far, it didn't exactly hurt me but it felt like I had come down with a near infinite speed, which it must have been since I without spending any time moved from a few feet above ground to standing on the ground.

My sister and my cousins ran in through the garage, which was strangely empty, and as I ran after them a though struck me that if someone closed the door and it was out of synch with me I might as well be within the area of the door when it was closed, and that would probably kill me. I came into the kitchen and found my aunt Gordana cleaning the floor in there, but for some reason she had cleaned away even the floor tiles with the explanation that time had shifted and she had been finished it before she had started.

The gaps between time and space seemed to grow longer and like in a movie where the director what to show something general and global happening I knew that it was global, the brownish red flashes were travelling all around the world and the gap could last anything from a fraction of a second to several minutes; causing accidents and deaths all over the world.

A place to live!

I have been looking around at a few apartments and I have some more tomorrow to see but I'm quite set on the one I looked at on Saturday morning; it's a rather small apartment, only about 50sqm, and my room will honestly be tiny, 195x180cm (3.5sqm) with nearly 1sqm lost for a door, it is located in the east most part of Kowloon at the end of the green line with interchange to the purple one (so it actually have quite easy access to both Kowloon and Hong Kong despite it's remote location), and right on top of the metro station with an awesome view of the bay and the mountains to the east and south-east (early morning sunshine suspected) from the 28th floor (plus quite a bit as it is located on top of the park that is on top of the shopping mall that is on top of the metro station. The main contractor and user of the larger room is a Singaporean guy that works here in Hong Kong, I always have a good feeling about Singaporeans and I tend to make friends with them very easily.

The place has just about everything, even though most is not for free, the nice park for the estate, outdoor and indoor swimming pool, a decent gym and lots of other club activities like snookers and karaoke room, plus that is built on top of a shopping mall and the metro station giving easy access to most necessaries.

I still have three more apartments to look at tomorrow which are all quite promising, but they are all more expensive and only one of them has a decent location, I will go and look at them with an open mind though. Having said that, I can admit that I spent the afternoon today in IKEA; trying to figure out how to furnish a room that small. I figured out the following: a double size mattress (135x189) will fit on the length but prevent the door from opening fully, I will not care about the door because I can't live in a single bed (92x189), to me this means a Sultan either Hamnö or Hasselbäck, with 20cm legs and either storing stuff as they are or having an under-bed storage box, Anneboda, or a Mattress base with storage boxes like Sultan Arnö.

This leaves about 45cm to the wall where I'm hoping to squeeze in an 'wardrobe' PAX (which is 50cm wide and I just realized I have 45cm not 55cm so perhaps something else would be in order). I also have a big window that is rather deep set where I think I can make something of a work place and a storage area; using the bed as a seat I can have a low desk where I can sit with my computer.

The rest of the apartment is already fully furnished with most of what anyone needs; it actually even has something as unusual as a western (heated) washing machine and a drying machine!! What is lacking though is an oven but that is a later problem.

Since I don't really have any money right now I guess I will have to settle with buying a decent cheap mattress and live out of my suitcase for a while longer, it still feels good to have my own place though.