Hong Kong Trip – part 1
January 07, 2010
I’m going to put up two posts about my recent trip to HK. The first part is about my first day and the second part is about the rest of the trip. I had a lot more time on my first day to write.
Dec 28, 2009
I had stopped posting every single word I wrote about my few trips because it became a really boring long post about minute details. I thought, I would summarize everything into one clean(er) post at the end and post pictures. My track record for this is terrible though. I just realized that I haven’t posted anything about my Philippines trip in April this year. So, just to have this all done, I will recommence the posting of every minute detail of the first day of my trip! Enjoy, all two or three of my readers!
Why did I choose the early flight? My 10:00 flight automatically means check-in at 8:00 which means I have to be on the airport shuttle bus at Namba by 7:00. Give my standard hour and a half to leisurely prepare, I woke up at 5:30. Somehow I managed to sleep on the bus and the airplane. Any sleep will let me go that much more today.
I’ll have to admit. I was a bad traveler today. I had my third bout of some cold since Wednesday and I decided to go through with traveling anyway. I don’t have a fever or anything but today marked the “coughing” phase. I had two coughing fits and I think I scared the Japanese lady next to me. She kept leaning away from me. Although, my cold may not be related to that at all, it might just be my natural charm.
The flight was great and Cathay pilots have always landed so smoothly. So here I am at Hong Kong International Airport at 14:00. My family will arrive at 19:00 which probably means they’ll get their bags and go through immigration at around 20:00. That’s just a 6 hour wait. Me being me, I’d rather wait for them for six hours instead of them waiting for me for a few hours. Thankfully, there is awesome free Wifi here.
One of the things that’s always so neat about HK is the international, multicultural flavor. I ordered a gigantic coffee (relative to Japanese sizes) from a Filipina who speaks at the very least English, Cantonese, and Mandarin. I heard her use these languages while waiting in line. Amazing. Also amazing: I forgot to tip. Oops.
While enjoying my coffee, some really strange Aussie bloke grabbed a magazine and sat down. He started making a lot of noise – a big sigh here, some self-mumbling there, then, he addresses me and some dude behind me directly, “Have you guys heard of Doctor Lighting?” No buddy. No. He also stank too. I was just about to get my gear together and move tables when he took off, and I mean took off. He just dropped the magazine and jogged away. I’m thinking his imaginary friends were out to get him perhaps.
If you’ve read so far, then you’re a much stronger person than me. I think I’ll use this to talk about why I’m in Hong Kong suddenly. This was definitely not a carefully planned trip. My sister texts me less than two weeks ago, “When can u go (sic) hk”? I tell her that I probably can’t go until May or late summer during Obon. She replies about my grandmother’s health condition and how it’s recently been. They wanted to fly over to HK as soon as possible to see her. So, for the next week, I was running at hyper tension mode because my parents couldn’t decide when to go – now, next week, a month from now, and I was worried that every day they hesitate meant less chances that I can go and that I can even get tickets. I start a full-time position in March and I really don’t want to be taking time off then. I don’t even want to take time off before that.
In the end, it all worked out like clockwork. We all got airplane tickets for the same day and I don’t have to miss any lessons but I had to sacrifice a lot of my winter holiday and time to spend with The Woman (who couldn’t come). Anyway, that’s why I’m in HK – I’m here to visit my grandmother while she’s in good spirits and alert. This sounds terrible but this will likely be the last time I meet her. It also gave a very fortunate chance to meet my family again so quickly too.
