Culinary Hong Kong (part 1)

Food comes in plenty in Hong Kong and so far we have managed to cover quite a few nationalities and styles; the first evening after Maja arrived we went out to a local Chinese restaurant (one of those with a spinning platform on the round table) and had a huge Chinese cosine dinner with Joyce and her family, I also got to try the weirdest Kung Pow Chicken I've ever seen, not even close to the real thing. We have also done Thai food in Thai Orchid in Langham place in Mong Kok, great spicy curry and some other stuff that both enjoyed together with Almen (Joyce's third sister). We went for an enormous lunch buffet at the Gold Coast resort hotel with one of the companies I’m involved with, spending nearly two hours constantly eating I managed to finish five plates; starters, main dish, salad, cakes and dessert and finally some more of the starters. Saturday we went to celebrate Almen's and Maja's birthdays with Indian food in Yuen Long, together with all of Joyce's family and also Ariel and Man, and after that we all went back to my place to enjoy two cakes, one that I made and one that Shirly's (Joyce's second sister) friend made for us, mine with chocolate and the other with mango and passion fruit, very yummy. Finally last night we had a huge outdoor BBQ buffet and spend about seven hours constantly eating and drinking.

This of course has resulted in some weight gain but I hope to fall back to my normal weight once Maja has left again.

We have a few more things to try out before Maja leaves; tonight we will have Joyce's own home cooked food, I think one day we will try another Indian food and probably one day for another restaurant I enjoy where you can get really nice white curry, I will post about the rest of her time here later.

Omelet

Last night I had a small "Spring Festival" dinner with Joyce and Ariel and I came up with the, according to me, great plan of making omelets. The great idea about this is that we could do several omelets with different ingredients, satisfying everyone's wants and needs. With my small frying pan two eggs is more than enough for one omelet, still I tried with four in the first one and that was simply too big. I made spicy omelets, which I like but Ariel don't like, Ariel made one with mushrooms, which I can't eat, and Joyce did a rather normal one.

Kiu Kiu's birthday

1st of January, the very first day of the year, celebrated with fireworks and parties all over the world and as it happens it is also Joyce's little cousin's birthday. So when I talked with Joyce on New Year's Eve she invited me to come over and have cake with them on New Year's Day.

Rather tired after the long night of celebrations I still headed out in the "morning" to buy him a little gift; I found a nice Thomas & Friends puzzle after a not very long time of searching and as soon as I had my breakfast after that I headed out to take my 15 minutes MTR ride to Kwun Tong and one hour plus bus ride from there to Tin Shui Wai. The day was absolutely wonderful, the sunniest day of the year so far (and in a few weeks) and fortune had smiled on me so that I came just in time to join them all for two o'clock dim sum, which I reached strangely hungry, felt nearly starved despite the recent breakfast.

I teased Kiu Kiu with the gift for a while and ended up having to carry it around for most of the day because of that as we parted after dim sum and Joyce and I stayed out in the sun and Kiu Kiu lined up (or had his uncle and dad stand in line) for a inflated jumping tower. He got his gift later when he got back home, since we actually got there before him, and I helped him lay it out. After that I was beaten miserably in Chinese chess by a 7 year old, very embarrassing, and we had dinner and after that a splendid mango cake.

It was a very nice day and really warm but when I made my one and a half hour ride home at about 9pm it was really cold. It was a very nice start for the new year.

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.

Swedes everywhere!

Saturday 8th November 2008:

First in the hostel, which is actually not so strange, I ran into three Swedes, two of them checking in and the last one using the phone for long distance call.

Later I had dinner with my friend Eva, we went to the same restaurant where Joyce and I met dad in Beijing the first time, which is where I got sick (not because of the restaurant) and threw up on the street outside two years ago. Anyway, we sat down there and ordered some food and I suddenly noticed a group of six slightly senior persons sitting at the table behind Eva that were conversing in Swedish, couldn't place the exact location though.

Later that night I had supper with another friend, Ying, that had come in from Tianjin to meet me, we just went to McDonald's actually and had a burgers when I noticed the crowd of five that seemed to be speaking in a very familiar way, I soon discovered that it was in fact also Swedish and to be more exact whiny Swedish, just like my good friend and former flat mate Kei! hoho

Last night in Shanghai (3rd night in Shanghai)

Wenying was already home when I came back with the supplies, Linna had gone off to buy some bread since I finished the little they had that morning (they actually had Bregott and Hushållsost so I just had to eat some bread). I didn't start off directly, waited until around nine or something before I did it.

It was the first time in a very long time; I did it once this summer at home in Sweden but before that only twice in total in Chengdu. I had bought a new small frying pan since the ones they had weren't really flat and I worked with chopsticks since the other spades they have were way too thick.

Finally success, I'm pretty proud of myself actually, the pan was really awesome actually, easy to work with and nothing stuck to it at all. We sat down together for half an hour or so and finished up the pancakes with cheap Chinese strawberry jam and watched an episode of American Dad (rather Linna and I watched and Wenying was on the phone).

Good times, I can't wait until I get my own place in Hong Kong, I really miss having a kitchen.

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.

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.

Singapura

I think staying with Deming I seriously hurt his health both physical and financial, from the first night we had dinner with his friend Lynette, who is really cool by the way, and cute too for that matter. Who we also got to see a lot of the rest of the week, and after that we went to an Irish bar, Scruffy Murphy's, on the east coast. It is damn funny how everybody in Singapore knows every single place there by name and semi accurate descriptions; people always asked me where I had been and I never remembered the places, but there wasn't a single person who couldn't get it right on the first try when I said something like "Irish place somewhere on the east coast" or "Some shopping mall close this or that MRT station", truly amazing, I can probably do that in Lund but the size is slightly different.

Turns out that the people I met the most where the ones I had least expected to meet at all, except for Deming of course who I was staying with I mostly saw Yi Ling (one zero in Chinese) who came and met us at the bar that Evening. Yan Wei who I thought I would spend a bit more time with was really busy so I actually didn't meet her until Saturday lunch and later again on my last night in Singapore. Kelly too, who share my birthday, hardly had any time at all but we did go out for dinner, clubbing and finally a lunch too, with Elgin joining everything except clubbing. Kunshan and Glen I didn't see at all, nor did I meet any of the people that were in Lund same time as Yan Wei.

Day by day the story goes:

1. A few beers the first night with Deming, Lynette and Yi Ling, then I pretty much crashed at 1am when we got back home.
   
2. Lunch with Yi Ling and a brief visit to IKEA to buy some Elderberry flower juice concentrate for Karen who I met for dinner in the evening. This was after waking up at 6.30am and wondering why the hell I couldn't sleep though, then finally finding that Deming didn't get up until 9.30ish. Meeting Karen was really nice, we had Chinese food at one of the central buildings on Orchard road, and she seems to be doing well with her work here and is as lovely as always.
   
   The hours between lunch and dinner I spent walking in the really nice botanical garden and the national orchid garden. That would have been so much more fun had I not been alone and if I just had had a camera, I actually tried to make Lynette come and join me since she had half a day off, but unfortunately it was the first half of the day so that didn't happen. I ended up making my own way home and after some major confusion at bus stops I finally came back and crashed before the clock struck 10pm.
   
3. Again waking up around 5-6am I spent my whole morning at home and had lunch at a local place, but western food it turns out. The evening was my first club night but before that I met up with Yi Ling for some drinks, she had taken the afternoon off and we explored the central happy hours (still rather expensive I might say) and even before dinner I had gotten so tired I could hardly sit straight. Nothing to do but power through though and even though I might not have been the best conversationalist at the Italian dinner with Yi Ling and her friend at least I didn't fall asleep.
   
   Deming joined us there and after that we went from bar to bar, meeting up with random people, friends of Yi Ling mostly, and had quite a lot of red bull vodkas. By around 1am we found our way to a club called The Butter Factory (for butter cookies I guess) where eventually Lynette joined us too. Still being tired when we got there I wasn't much fun I guess, but by the time they closed at 3am I had somehow turned around and gotten really energetic, so we headed out for the main clubbing attraction that Singapore offers (or so they say), Zouk, a clubbing venue that offers the most expensive drinks from multiple bars and several dance floors, we only had water and that was free.
   
   We pretty much stayed at a dance floor for about half an hour until they closed it down and we had to move on to the next one, ending up at a pretty boring techno floor at 4.30 or 5am where I managed to drop my shades and dance them to pieces, which Lynette found rather fun and Yi Ling sorry, she actually offered to buy new ones, I think Deming didn't even notice it.
   
   Eventually we gave up though and went for some after party food where I accidentally ate a piece of minced prawn that nearly had me throw up, I really don't take prawn. Yi Ling and her friend Marcus pretty much fell asleep on the way back but Deming and I stayed up a bit longer when we came back. Clubbing in Singapore is fun, but really expensive, entrance fees to places is around 20-40 S$, which is basically 100-200kr, and drinks are worse than in Sweden, Deming is really happy to buy jugs of drinks though, sharing on a few people, which is fun but it's probably not too good for his wallet.

to be continued...

Flying, flying and flying continued

Time flies and I've been pretty busy, but let's continue with what happened with the plug in my ear; I was trying really hard to get it out but my fingers are a bit too big to put inside my ear, I was actually worried I would have to sit with it still there throughout the whole flight, but finally I asked a stewardess for something to pick it with and she gave me a rather big pincer, it probably would have been easier had she helped me too since I couldn't see anything but she really didn't seem to want to do that for some reason, so I spent about 15 minutes in the lavatory and finally to my happiness I got it out.

The rest of the flight was rather uneventful, except that I was pumped with adrenalin from the battle with the earplug so I couldn't relax and fall asleep in the next 30 or so minutes. I did finally fall asleep though and the rest was just normal sleeping/watching movie to kill time. At Hong Kong international I exchanged my last 100kr bill to a 100HKD bill and 1.8 or so HKD in coins (which is a horrible exchange rate), so that I could call Joyce from a phone booth.

3rd flight was as boring as the other two with the addition that I couldn't sleep anymore, I watched Find Bill which was pretty good but it was damned boring anyway. And then finally we are back to where we started and Deming meeting me at the airport with uncanny timing.

Once arrived he took me to a local small restaurant and forced me to eat cuttlefish, it was alright but I'm still not giving up my seafood ban! Finally finally finally I arrived at my end destination; Deming's home, and once he went back to work I could take my shower and rest up for the evening fun times!

Back home

Back home I spent the first day just hanging with my sister and Sofia and later in the evening I had dinner with them and mom and dad. The day after was a lot more eventful with meeting loads of friends for real Swedish pizza and then drinking too much, first at the restaurant then at Maja's, Sofia's and Madde's apartment in Klostergården and then later at Mat's place also in Klostergården and then finally walk in to town to have a real Swedish kebab at kebabvagnen, and take a 150kr taxi back to Bjärred, I really do miss cheap drink and really cheap taxis. It was the first time to meet Sandra's boyfriend Varij, that was quite interesting.

More things going on on Saturday with dad's 60th birthday party and all the family coming over, I was a bit hangover half the day but was fine in the evening, just really tired. The party was fine, lots of gifts for dad, among them was mainly an exclusive bottle of Cognac that we tried later on, I also got to give my gifts I had brought, unfortunately we have to wait for the correct ones for cousin Anna, aunt Gordana and uncle Per, they were all wrong. We had great barbecued lamb and sausages and a great cake and things too, I was actually worried I would start gaining weight already but it was still OK the morning after. For some reason everybody was really tired so everybody went home early and I slept around 11pm already.

A brief stay

So the second and last night in Hong Kong I was out with Joyce (again of course), Man and Janice. We had HK style hot pot first and then we went to see Joyce's office, it was really messy. Joyce stayed with me in my extra bed in the hostel and we had dim sum breakfast this morning, you can't really go to Hong Kong without having dim sum so I just had to do that. Now I've spent most of the mid-day/afternoon waiting for my passport to get back so I've basically just been walking around shopping for souvenirs for my friends in Chengdu, I hope they will like what I found for them, it's really stupid though.

On Tuesday night I was out for dinner with Joyce and Almen, Joyce's sister, we had Chinese, HK style, food, like sweet and sour meatballs and some other Hong Kong-ish dishes, and after that we walked around the avenue of the stars and took some photos, it was actually the first time Almen had ever been there, which was kind of weird.

Now if I do get the visa I'm expecting, there really is no other option than getting it actually since I have flight tickets and hostel reservations and stuff, I will meet an online friend in Shenzhen before I fly out to Shanghai, in about 10 minutes I should go out to the visa office again to see if they have it for me.

Papa John's

Papa John's is an American pizza restaurant chain that just opened a restaurant here in Chengdu. So since the opening day was today Li Min, Aaron and I (Kelly was supposed to come too but she was apparently feeling sick, and a few other friends of Aaron's should have been there too but they went earlier) went there for dinner, a late dinner as it turned out.

In the afternoon Li Min tried to call them to reserve a table for the (at that time) four of us, but they were very reluctant to take any reservation for us but told her they would call her back, but of course they never did that so when we arrived at 7.30pm the places was already packed and we had to wait for 27 tables before we could get in. I had deliberately starved my self to the occasion and both Aaron and Li Min were really hungry too so we went next door to wait, in McDonald's.

We didn't eat very much, at least I didn't but Li Min managed to get full and I think Aaron had a bit too much too actually, and we spent a too long time there, too long being surprisingly short but I think most of the tables ahead of us had just given up because it didn't take much more than 30 minutes before we had nearly missed our chance to get a table, Li Min managed to argue us in though.

Once inside started the real problems; not so much trouble at first actually, mostly it was Li Min trying to get the most out of everything, which we eventually did and totally too. First was the issues about ordering; they had some special offer that day that we finally managed to order, like a half/half thing where you order two pizzas in one but they only had the discount for a mix of Hawaii and BBQ Chicken, then there was some special deal you could get for their special where they offered a free dessert to it, so we got that too but that on had mushrooms and black olives which we had to ask them to remove (you know I'm picky about that), which surprisingly turned out to be no problem since everything else was.

Then we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And finally got our pizza, but no drinks (I had ordered Coke,Li Min Sprite and Aaron nothing, please take not).

So we finished the rather tiny 9" Hawaii-BBQ Chicken pizza and had to wait again, at this point we were rather thirsty though so we started asking for our drinks and at least I got my Coke rather quickly after that, but Li Min's Sprite seemed to linger somewhere so we kept asking for it. Suddenly there started showing up classes of water on our table and after some minor commotion and misunderstanding we managed to get a class of Sprite for Li Min, then we got another class of Sprite for Li Min that Aaron took and a few more glasses of water, that I got because my Coke was nearly out already by then.

After being confused for a while we finally got our second pizza and when we had almost finished that we got our second pizza again. Even though they were small it was kind of hard to finish the second pizza twice so I got half of it back with me home now. By this time my Coke was really finished so I turned to my water for refreshment but my water turned out to be another glass of Sprite, this really chocked me because Li Min had actually tried it and confirmed it was only water, MAGIC!

Now we only had two issues left: What happened to our dessert and will we have to pay twice for the pizza we got twice (actually we didn't get the same pizza twice but we have no idea which one was the right pizza and why we had gotten an extra). Li Min had worked really hard to get us some chicken wings for dessert; a while lot of issues about needing a commercial flyer for their promotion to get it, and she had managed to convince our waitress (who was really pretty by the way) to find one for us. So we had to ask for that a few times and then wait for it for a long while too, even though none of us really wanted it but she had so much fun doing that so we just let her at it.

Finally we actually didn't have to pay for the extra pizza, during all the commotion there I think no one knew about it, except the couple sitting next to us who saw us hiding the extra tablet we had gotten, this is also funny because when I got back home and was going to walk into my building I hear a loud grasp to my far left and when I turned I recognized the girl and realized it was the couple from the restaurant (I live about 10km from the restaurant). We finally got the chicken wings too and Li Min took them with her home, fighting with Aaron about who would not have them (I got away from that one since I had claimed the pizza already).

Bread

I baked my first real loaf of bread last night, turned out great.

Recipe:
7dl flour (don't know what kind but it hardly matters, and I actually got about 2dl leftover)
2 dl water
½dl olive oil
a very big tbs honey, I guess it should be about 1½tbs honey (I don't have any liquid honey so I used normal)
½ts salt
ca 25g yeast (I use a kind of fresh yeast that is longer expiration date, it doesn't work exactly like normal yeast though)

• mix around 2½dl flour and the salt in a bucket
• warm up water, oil and honey to about 40-50 degrees centigrade then add the yeast (I guess that should be finger warm for normal yeast)
• pour the mixture over the flour and salt mix
• work it and add flour until it's a good solid piece of thought that is easy to work with
• rise for 45 minutes under a towel
• work the though again and add more flour if needed, work it into a loaf and put it on a pan
• rise again for 30 minutes under a towel
• bake it in oven at 175 degrees centigrade for 30 minutes
• let cool down for 10 minutes
• Feast with butter, honey and cheese!

HK style BBQ

Only a few days in Hong Kong and I've been to the cinema twice, last night we went to see CJ7, a new Stephen Chow movie that was really quite funny, and tonight we went to see Enchanted, which was exactly as Disney as you'd expect.

Today we went out far far away somewhere in Kowloon to have Hong Kong style Barbecue, basically you go to a place and pay a fixed to get a buffet of different small food stuff that you can put on your sticks, grill it and finally add some honey glaze to it and then eat. We kept doing this for about three hours before we went to the cinema actually and I managed to go through a load of different food, from pork chop and beef balls to bread to fillet beef pieces. It was really good and really fun, I also got to meet another of Joyce’s university friends, Kate, and of course Man, Janice and Ariel too. Dad would probably have loved this because of all the weird small fish you could barbecue, I think my favorite was the pork chop but it was so complicated to grill so I only had one. Good times!

Spring festival in HK

Not so much special things happened actually; first was the first meal, I think, and it was only supposed to be vegetables, so we only had vegetables. After that we went around to visit Joyce's relatives, first a place close to Joyce's home and then a place in Yuen Long. There we had some snacks.

And that was basically it. Got some red pockets too :)

Nini

Some photos with Nini, first from our Korean food dinner and then from Tian Tan Garden.

Korean BBQ

Me and Nini

Nini om bike

Me on bike

Charline on bike

Charline and Nini inside the Tian Tan Garden gate.

Nini is 大

Jumping Johan

Me and Nini

Bye bye Tian Tan Garden!

A shitty day

I was hangover and tried to calculate how much time I would need to get to the airport on time and go past the post office on the way to send the helicopter when I finally decided to get up at around 2pm. After I done my morning bathroom stuff and got back to the room the key didn't work anymore, of course it was check out overdue but I had told them I wanted to check out in the afternoon, it worked out when I got down to the front desk though.

I also found out that taxi was not an option, during the holidays it would cost me 180kuai to get from central Beijing to the airport and that is just about 180kuai too much, I did figure out that I would need about one hour before departure at the airport, that is around 6.30pm, about one hour from the train station to the airport, that is around 5.30pm, and around 30 minutes from the hostel to the train station, that is around 5pm. It was only 3pm by then so I figured I had around 1½ hours (to be on the safe side) to have breakfast and get to the post office, which fortunately was on the way to the subway station.

The next bad thing coming my way was a pizza that took one hour to make, so I suddenly only had half an hour to eat and post, the next thing was that despite telling them that I really don't want mushrooms on my pizza the pizza was basically mushrooms and cheese, so I pretty much had to remove all the topping and eat the bread, because even though they offered to make a new one I just didn't have time to wait for it. Next was the price of the pizza, I had ordered a small pizza but for some reason gotten a large, I only finished half of it and they still said I had ordered a large, they were nice though so I finally only had to pay for the small one.

Setting out on my way to the post office and the beginning of my journey to Hong Kong at 4pm I found my next problem pretty soon, of course the post office closes at 4pm and not 5pm because it was holiday, so I had to carry around the bulky helicopter for the rest of the day (and will have to keep doing that unless I can post it from Hong Kong, which I'm not totally sure I want to). The rest of the trip to the airport went quite smoothly though, I got on the subway and got myself to the train station and quickly found the airport shuttle busses and got on, and it wasn't even 5 yet.

More problems came my way once I got to the airport though, I managed to get off at the wrong terminal, not so easy for me to know because no one had ever told me which terminal I should go to and it did say domestic departures. So after some time of figuring this out, worrying like hell over not finding my flight on the screens, I had to do a 10 minute walk to the other terminal, where things again went rather smoothly, fortunately. But I was early and had an hour to kill; luckily I found a wireless connection that could be activated with an SMS so I spent the time on Facebook.

The liftoff was pretty cool; luckily I had gotten a window seat and as an early new years eve like it was there were fireworks all over the city and I could see them quite clearly for about 10-15 minutes, I did still see sparks on the ground most of the flight actually but it was the lift off that was coolest.

At Shenzhen airport I managed to find a "bus" that could take me to the China/Hong Kong border, it was actually just a mini bus but it seemed kind of legit with an official booth in the airport, and it wasn't TOO expensive. At the border I found more problem, the first and minor one was that they couldn't read my visa stamp clearly so they thought I might have overstayed my visit, they finally gave up on that though, next was the borderline, which I didn't realize was a borderline until it was too late, I was tired as hell and hadn't eaten anything the whole day except the crappy pizza bread and the crappier airplane food and I couldn't find where I should go. I finally did get on a coach to somewhere more central though and that's when I discovered that we hadn't entered Hong Kong yet.

And to enter Hong Kong presented more problems of course; the coach stopped and there was some information in Chinese or Cantonese and everybody got off, I did the same but left some of my luggage in the coach, which turned out to be a bad idea, and tried to figure out what to do. I did go through immigration without any problem but there was still the luggage problem, which I had realized would be a problem, and once I got out the coach just didn't show up. When it finally did some people came complaining at me over luggage and stuff and I had to go back to the immigration to get my luggage and when I got out again the coach had already left, of course.

There was another one though and it took me to the place I "wanted" to go, which was luckily just next to a subway station and from there I could make my way to Tin Shui Wai where Joyce lives, it was not the optimum place to be though and I basically had to backtrack six stations to get on the KCR West rail and then travel past the place I had just been only because I had no idea where in that area the train station was, only the subway, which are not connected in that area of course.

I finally did get to Joyce's place and after a shower I could almost fall asleep. Except Hong Kong is humid, cold (around 8 degrees) and there is no insulation whatsoever, the windows are actually open, but I have slept through worse, once or twice, hehe.

Fakking <90kg

Yes, it has happened, I'm finally below the 90kg line! I discovered this last night at around 4-5am when I came back home from clubbing, I was pretty unsober and when I was about to take a shower I saw my scale and figured "why not?" So I stood up on it and lo, 89kg. I smiled happily to myself.

This I rather surprising actually because I have eaten quite a lot this last week, and rather irregularly too. Sunday last week I cooked and ate a lot of "flygande jakob" with A Jiao, on Tuesday I met with Li Min and we cooked potato buns (fried mashed potatoes), Wednesday I was with A Jiao again and this time she cooked loads of Chinese food, Thursday was the only day I was eating out; I went for Muslim food with Aaron and ended up having a few beers at Paname (and my bike stolen), Friday again with A Jiao, this time I cooked something Chinese style á la Johan and finally last night Aaron, Li Min and I made pizza that was absolutely awesome, then went out and met Kelly at Jah Bah.

It was a really funny night last night actually; I bought some wine (a nice Chilean Merlot) that we had with the pizza and a big bottle of Bailyes that we had after and some of the Xanté (pear cognac) too. After we met Kelly we mostly had beer, we played a game, a simplified version of King (the card game where you do different things for different cards) and that had us keeping our buzzes going for more than two hours. Finally when we left everybody just wanted to go out for barbecue but I somehow managed to convince them to go to a club instead, I think because it's really close to Aaron's and Kelly's homes. The first thing I managed to do there was to take a wrong step down a stair that I didn't notice and sprain my ankle, it is quite ok now but I have to be careful when I walk.

Flygande Jacob!

Just finished eating the best flygande Jacob I've ever made, at least in China. I decided to experiment a little because my friend complained that we didn't have enough vegetables, so I added a mix of red onion (yellow is not very easy to find here), some different peppers (red chili, green chili and some green paprika I think), tomato, ginger and garlic. I used a part of this to marinate with the chicken and then fried it all together (I think part of the success might be thanks to the extra time I've had, I had time to defrost the chicken and marinate it in oil, soy sauce, spices like curry (three different kinds of Swedish Thai-curries), black pepper, white pepper, paprika, salt, garlic and tabasco. And after that add some of the peppers and vegetables of course, I looked truly awesome when I started frying it.

The sauce was a problem actually, because I only have whipped milk which is too think and fat, so what I did was adding some skim milk (not that I know what skim is but it worked like magic), and once again basically all the spices I have and some chili sauce.

I also added curry to the rice, which actually gives it more smell and color than taste but it's cool anyway.

Finally after about 20 minutes at 175 degrees and about 10-15 more at 100 degrees (because I was making pancakes for our dessert) the marvel was done, we ate as much as we could and some more to that and there was still some over for me to have for lunch tomorrow! The pancakes wasn't that great but they were eatable, and there is always room for pancakes no matter how full you might be!