Love Hong Kong

Things are going swimmingly here in Hong Kong. The past few days have been filled with sushi, furniture hunting, and get this, for the first time in over two years, SHOPPING. Yes! Paul and I hit 3 malls yesterday and put that credit card to use. For those of you who have been to Korea, shopping is not that fun. It's all cheap small crap or at the opposite end, Gucci, Prada, etc. Here in Hong Kong, there's everything!!! It's weird, after going out on Thursday with Andrew and his grad school buddies, I realized how out of it I was. Everyone was dressed, well, for work! For the past 2 years business casual has meant jeans and a T. Now I have cute new tanks and skinny pants to fit in at happy hour :) Poor Christy is probably rolling her eyes, we still have stuff all over the living room because there's no room in our bedroom, yet we come home with 5 bags of more clothes. Oops!

Last night Paul and I put on our new duds and hit the town. We met up with Catherine who is Maria's (my best friend from college) best friend from high school. She's been living and working here for the past year and has an amazing apartment in the heart of Wan Chai, which is in the heart of downtown, and had quite a few people over on her amazing rooftop terrace. We go out to the bar and I notice this girl dancing on the table. Turns out we had hung out with her in Udaipur, India, a month ago!!!! What a small freaking world! She's still on holiday and just happened to be at the same tiny bar we were at. How bizarre, how bizarre!

In other bizarre news, I got an amazing email this week from Angelina who was my substitute teacher when I went home last September. I found her on criagslist, have never met her, and shortly after subbing she moved to Hong Kong for a finance job. Sounds familiar! Last week I guess I showed up on her linkedin page and she sent me an email saying her company is hiring. Asa! And the job she has now is mid-office on a trading floor, eerily similar to what I was doing in my pre-Korea days! We're meeting today for lunch. I love Hong Kong!


Some other weird things about being here. Men don't wear shirts. Perhaps I'm used to the Indian mentality where you have to cover up, but I've been amazed at the number of shirtless beer-gutted men here! There appears to be an inverse relationship to shirt wearage and beer guttage. Bigger the gut, smaller/more pulled up the shirt.
People tend to push their dogs in prams. There's even a movie in theaters now that appears to be all about a fluffy faced dog.
People CANNOT walk here. Somehow, someway, someone will find a way to walk into you. Not like Korea where you get elbowed and pushed, people will straight up walk dead into you. I don't understand it. I'll just be standing, not even moving, and someone will find a way to walk into me. Someone please explain this to me!

Tomorrow it's off to Macau on a visa run. Paul needs to leave the country and come back with his work visa, and Macau is just an hour ferry away and filled with casinos galore. I'm just excited for the boat! Wish me ( or more likely Paul) luck!