what to do when not looking for jobs

Painted Skin (wa pei)
A killer that cuts the heart out of its victims is terrorinzing wang shengs territory, meanwhile his wife, pei rong, starts to suspect the new girl that wang sheng saved from bandits during one of his recent campains to be a deamon.




Not the greatest movie ever but it was quite interesting, a lot of people assume it is a scary movie but it was more like funny action, I gave it a 3 out of 5 on http://www.filmtipset.se/, after adding it there myself, that low because of the ending.

My need to see list (priority listed!!!):

1. Southpark S12E08 (E09 comes on Thursday)
2. Heroes S03E01-04 (E05 should be available today but I can't find it so I guess I have to wait until tomorrow)
3. Robot Chicken S03E14-20 (all second half of season 3 basically)
4. Californication S02E01-03 (E04 on Thursday)
5. Enourage S05E03-06
6. Family Guy S07E01-02
7. American Dad S04E01-02

Of course I only have today and tomorrow to find stuff so anything that airs after that will have to wait. Lost is also one thing that will have to wait for a while since it doesn't start again until January 2009. Apparently I missed Robot Chicken S03E14 too, the Christmas special from 2007 (S03E14) So that one comes too.

Tap Mun

As usual when I have to get up early I can't sleep at night, I probably got about 3 hours of sleep but was still quite fine, since I had actually eating something which is usually the biggest problem, when I met Joyce and Kiu Kiu at Coi Hung MTR station at about 9.45am. We took a 10 minutes or so Light bus to Sai Kung where we met up with Joyce's friends and had breakfast with them (which I didn't know so I had already eaten something but not too much). After breakfast we took a real bus for about 20 minutes to where the ferry was and went on a ferry ride for another 30 minutes or so, then we finally arrived in Tap Mun.

The harbor on Tap Mun is on the east side of the island so we walked up the hills and found ourselves on the steeper west side after a rather short walk where an amazing view and strong winds met us. We played around with kites and other stuff for a while, which was a lot tougher than you might think, and after a while we had our picnic; everybody, except me, had made some stuff and brought with them, I can't even try to explain the food but it was very good.

A lot of photo shooting (neither of nor by me) later we packed up and started walking around the island, I would give it about the same size as Pottneholmen (one of the places we used to boat out to in Blekinge when I was younger) but a lot hillier. More marvelous views and photos later and a walk through something like a cemetery we got back to the harbor at about 4.30pm.

With all the travelling back, boats and waiting and a bus that I think took about an hour, it was probably around 8 when we arrived at Diamond hill MTR station so we stayed there and had dinner, very typical Chinese dinner with the spinning table and several really good dishes.

After a very long day I was totally exhausted when I arrived at the hostel at around 10pm, but having to check my email about the interview that I thought I had the day after I met some friends in the hostel common areas. Realizing that I didn't have any interview I had a few beers and suddenly it was 4am and I had had a few beers more so I basically went up to my room and passed out from exhaustion.

Om hästar kunde flyga...

Så skulle dom troligen inte kallas hästar längre, eller?

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Vad vill du ha till middag ikväll?
Det va ett tag sen vi hade hästvinge!
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Gott och nyttigt, väldigt mört ljust kött som bäst servers till ris eller potatis, passar mycket bra till vita viner och smaksätts gärna med basilika eller rosmarin.

Leisure

I have been jumping around a little when it comes to accommodation actually; the first 5 nights I saved a lot of money staying in a 4-beds dorm and only paying 70HKD per night, this really sucked though and I made a friend in a travelling Dutchman who also wanted something more private, so we got for his two last night a 2-beds room which cost us 175HKD each and gave us a king-size bed each and private shower and toilet.

After he left I spent one night in Tin Shui Wai, in Joyce's home, and left the majority of my luggage with my Canadian brother (he has kind of adopted me) who has a private room in the hostel, when I came back the morning after though there wasn't any other room free, not even a dorm bed actually, so I started looking around in the building, where there are about 20 other hostels, and found a private room for 250HKD, in which I'm still staying, have 8 days in total and might extend until I leave for China. I still hang out a lot in the old hostel since they have some nice common areas (remove nice it’s just a comparison and there because it's the only place that has any common areas at all) and I made some friends there.

The first few days when the weather was better I went to a public leisure pool in Kowloon park a few times, since I didn't have much else to do I tried to spend as much time there as possible but it got pretty boring after 1-2 hours. I have been trying to meet up with friends for lunches and dinners but most of the time no one is available, I did (fail to) surprise Joyce (Man had already told her I was coming) and we had Thai food and watched a movie, Connected which is a Hong Kong remake of the Hollywood movie Cellular. No point in counting all my lunches and dinners and movies now but I have tried quite a lot of different food and met almost everybody I know here I think.

I also spent two days in Tin Shui Wai, at Joyce's cousin Kiu kiu's request I had to come back and play with him, a lot of scrabble and other word games, he is a very curious little 6 year old now and I have had good times there.

EFL

I had some very positive feelings before I came here, given that I already had an interview waiting for me only a week after I arrived. I got a few more calls about interviews actually and went on the first one a few days before my original first, and the first one I went to, at a company called Eureka, I got a quite good feeling for it, but the other two, including the original was not so good and finally they don't offer much money to be honest. I also got quite a lot of calls for part time jobs but as soon as I mention that I don't have a working permit yet they all say they have to talk to their supervisor about sponsoring and that they will come back to me, which they never do of course.

I have quite a bit to write about the process of getting a job and a working permit and such here but I think I will wait with it until I actually have one. I'm still in contact with Eureka and waiting for a contract with them, but they are sometimes slow to answer and I really don't have much time, this is because, from what I hear, the working permit process can take as long as 6 weeks, which is a long time and I'm not sure I can afford to stay that long. It is not all bad though as I will still have my passport during that time and can actually spend it in China, where I can live of about one fifth of the money I need in Hong Kong.

There are some additional expenses I didn't foresee; there is an institute called HKCAAVQ (Hong Kong Council for Accreditation of Academic and Vocational Qualifications) that will accredit my academic qualification so that they count in Hong Kong, which they don't do right now. This accreditation costs 2160HKD though and will take 15 working days, and it needs some papers that I don't have with me here, my high school grades for one.

Still hope is left and I think in the end I will have a job, it is rather impossible for me to go back to Sweden over Christmas as I had hoped since I probably won't even start working until mid November and not get my first salary until beginning of December. Sorry.

Nightlife

Already on the first night I came here I got to experience Hong Kong night life, this was actually the worst night life experience I had though. I met a random stranger from UK and we went out drinking together, soon Ariel joined us and when time drew closer to midnight we decided to try a club. The club we went to is called "Why bar" and can be found in TST pretty close to my hostel actually, we paid our 160HKD each (free for girls though) and went inside to find it... totally empty, there was not a single patron there when we arrived. Later three others came in and the six of us actually managed to have some good time, got a few drinks for free and enjoyed the night until about 2 or 3 in the morning.

Since then I have tried quite a lot of different things; One night I went out alone, since no one at the hostel wanted to go out, and managed to find some foreigners in central that brought me around in Lan Kwai Fong in Central, which is one of the bigger bar scenes in Hong Kong and is where basically all, and only, the foreigners go. Before the end of the night we had explored Wan Chai as well as central and I had seen the sun rise over Victoria harbor. This was so far the most affordable night since we just kept buying beer at Seven-11 for 6HKD a can instead of the 50+HKD in the bars and I took the MTR both there and back again.

Another night I just spent in a bar in TST, this time with more than 3 people, and talked to some old professor and got treated Bacardi 151 (which apparently is 75.5% rum) by my Canadian friend from the hostel.

I made a Greek friend at the hostel too and together we explored a more local scene when we went to an open mike night at a live restaurant, that is a restaurant that has live music by local talents, and got tipped off by that owner, who my Greek friend is out having drinks with tonight, to go to one of two towers in Causeway Bay and explore the karaoke scene; it took a while for us to actually find any lounge karaoke but jumping around on 10 different floors (which is only half of one of the buildings she talked about) we did see a lot of bars (that were basically exactly the same).

Mostly a night out has cost me around 300-400HKD, but like the longest night I only spent about 100HKD (and I still bought one beer in a bar) and another I should have spent way more but my Canadian brother is, or pretends to be, loaded so he bought a lot of drinks for us.

Too much

Way too much has happened for me to write about it all, mostly because I've been too lazy to write and I don't have much access to Internet these days so I'm just giving up. I figure I should write some kind of summary though so I decided the divide it into three parts, night life (I have been going out quite a lot and been trying to experience different aspects of Hong Kong night life), EFL (basically about my pursuit of a job here) and others (what I have been doing when I'm not partying and looking for jobs.