A General Introduction to Hong Kong Christmas Decorations

Location: Olympian City II (shopping centre)

Exhibit One

Rubber Ducks.  No, I don't get it either.

Exhibit Two

A Goose riding a bicycle.  As they do.  Check out the feather boa Christmas trees in the back too!

Exhibit Three

A Goose riding a sleigh.  As above.

Exhibit Four

A MONSTER duck and his goose army.  Fear him.

Exhibit Five

The whole shebang.  Make sure you note the psychedelic elf houses in the back too!

None of this makes any sense at all.  Like a lot of things here.

Merry Christmas from Olympic!  Ho Ho Ho!  (or should I say - quack, quack, quack?)

PS If you think this is nuts, stay tuned!  Next time we'll be coming live from Times Square, Causeway Bay, to witness the invasion of the massive floating heads!

End of the week take 2

Friday already! Again! Last week was so slow but this week has gone past like lightning :o !

My lessons this week were as follows:

Nursery: Hello, Bye bye, Stand Up, Sit Down, Jump, One, Two, Red, Blue

K1: H for Hat >w<

K2: Colours and the Rainbow Song

K3: Animals and Old MacDonald Song

...Now it is time to start planning for next week :(

This evening Ronald and I went to sing karaoke in Red Box in Causeway Bay :) It's fun to go by ourselves since we're not the best singers in the world :/ And being on our own means we can wail really terribly and not have to worry about offending people ^^ haha.

Our Ikea wardrobes arrived the other day. They weigh a TON. Seriously! We could barely move them! We bought a complicated Pax wardrobe thing and it comes with a billion different parts to make up separately :/ We laboured away at making the actual box, and then got really stuck because the sliding doors are well complicated :( So we went down to Ikea and asked them to do it for us xD They will be coming on Monday to fix it up. Yay :)

Tomorrow I can go and pick up my HK ID card :D Then I can go to the library and get a book to read because I have nothing left to read :(

Over and out >w<

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Post Boxes

Observations from HK #2

Most of the post boxes in HK have "POST NO BILLS" written on the side.

Worth a giggle :)

Flat Pix

Pix for the peeps who can't see them on FB:

Window Views:
[1] [2][3] [4]

Kitchen:
[1] [2]

Bedroom:
[main] [second/office]

Bathroom:
[1]

Living Room:
[1] [2]

New Sofa-Bed:
[1] [2]

End of the week

Yay its finally Saturday!

Yay!

Work has had me pretty stressed out this week. I keep waking up in the middle of the night dreaming that all the kids are staring at me and I have to teach them something. So I sit up in bed and start saying stupid stuff like "Say Thank You!" Ronald calls this "sleep teaching". Its kinda weird ><><

Right now we are bumming around at home waiting for the sofa-bed to be delivered. They said they would be here at about 3:00pm, so when (at 2:45) we were still in Wan Chai we had to RUN home. We got here at about 3:05. Then he calls and says he won't be here until 4 :( Always the way. But you know - if we hadn't rushed home he would definitely have come early so :P Its probably good that we ran. Got some exercise anyway - haha.

After the sofa arrives I am hoping to go down and try out the swimming pool for the first time! Unfortunately the outdoor pool is currently closed (because of the weather, apparently it is only open in summer. They don't seem to realise that it is about 25-30 degrees C outside. Gah.) But never mind we still have the indoor one :P After that there is a Youth-Band-Festival on the habour-front at Tsim Sha Tsui today, we're going to go and check out the local Indie talent... I don't have hight hopes :P When we walked past earlier there was a lot of people dancing "street-style" to Jenifer Lopez. Oh dear. Rock on.

Posted lots of photos of our place on Facebook. Am going to try and post them here too so the none-facebook-people can see (I know you're out there!)

Until next time, readers :P

Hong Kong - Day 11 - Olympic

Ahhh, I haven't updated in a while! First of all we moved into our new flat and didn't have any internet. Then I started my new job on Monday and have been really busy freaking about about it the last few days. Things are better at work now (I'm getting used to the kids and dealing with them, and also knowing what I am expected to do) so now I have time to write a post.

Observations from HK!

1) Automatic sensor-flushing toilets.
Everywhere. The ones in the HK Airport are particularly fun.
You walk in the cubicle door and the toilet flushes. Uhm. Okay.
You sit down, and the toilet flushes.
You reach for the paper and... the toilet flushes!
Then you stand up and nothing - NOTHING - not waving you hands, not jumping up and down, not doing the can-can, will make the toilet flush when you actually want it to. I kid you not.
So you have to press the button. So much for that :(

Language!

1) Ordering a chocolate sundae ("Ju go lik soot go sun-day") in MacDonald's yesterday... I remembered how to say "or mm yew fa song" (no peanuts for me!) I was well impressed with myself :)

2) Brought a herbal drink at Cafe Coral (downstairs in the shopping centre next to our building) after work today because my throat was feeling really sore after shouting at kids all day :( The lady asked me "li do yum?" (are you drinking in (or taking away)) - I understood what she said! Woo!

3) Learnt how to say my address in Chinese so that if I need to get a taxi sometime I can tell him where to go "Long Tsing Wan - Hoi Fai Do - O-wan" (The Long Beach, Hoi Fai Road, Olympic)

Adventures!

Last night, Ronald and I went out in search of food. As we were walking along we suddenly noticed that we could see the sign for Langham Place lit up on a skyscraper quite close by! We didn't realise we were so close! So we walked in that direction and arrived in Mong Kok (shopper's paradise - no, really) after a 10 minute walk :o
(We ate at a place called "Monster Sushi" xD)

We finally bought most of our furniture. We went to Sha Tin last weekend, we were aiming to go to Ikea, but in the mall there were so many other furniture stores that, in the end, we didn't even get to go into Ikea!
We found the perfect sofa-bed, and it was on sale too! It is black leather (PVC), looks really stylish, and it very comfortable to sleep and sit on AND its the RIGHT SIZE :D Yay!
We also ordered a bespoke TV unit. Its a full-wall jobbie, with lots and lots of cupboard space for all our games/CDs/junk :) The peeps are coming tomorrow to measure the wall space to make sure they build it the perrrrrfect size :)
We also bought a folding away dining table from a cheapy cheapy store in Tsuen Wan (Direct Sale Centre) and I brought my computer desk for cheap, and on sale, from another cheapy shop (PriceRite) which is just downstairs. It is being delivered tomorrow!

For the mean time we are sleeping on foam mattresses that we brought from DSC - they only cost $100 each and are really quite comfy :) Unfortunately they have really ugly patterns (one is lime green with little hearts, the other is light blue with bright coloured circles... and these were the least offensive ones there! The others were truly horrendous.)

Hong Kong - Day 5 - Tseun Wan

Still in Tsuen Wan! (Must type fast because I have to be up super early tomorrow because I'm going to Sham Shui Po to observe another English-Kindergarten-Teacher person in action - I will be taking lots of notes! I have to be there at 8:45am :( )

Today we got the keys for the flat finally - yay :) Ronald called up some dude who came round and changed the locks for us (this is because many estate agent shops have access to the old keys, and we don't particularly want them just walking in ya know). Tomorrow when I am out observing stuff, Ronald will be in charge of cleaning (lol) and buying things (oh no). Hopefully he will be able to manage until I get back in the afternoon!

We have been looking at some cheap furniture store in Tsuen Wan Discovery Park. I think its better than ikea because 1) its WAY cheaper, about 1/3 the price - although possibly less quality? 2) its better designed for HK spaces (i.e. not much space) whereas a lot of the things in Ikea are just too big to be practical. The HK store has some really clever folding away tables, and some good desks with lots of shelves and storage and stuff :) I'm looking forward to buying from them :D Maybe we can get a discount if we buy several items from them....

Words learnt today:
Doy ("bag" (plastic)) - learnt because the lady in the store asked me "lei yew mm yew doy?" (Do you want a ) and I had no idea what she was talking about, and I looked stupid :) (looking stupid is by far the best way to learn!)