Weekend!

Last night Paul and I found the greatest thing!! A Korean, I use the term loosely, buffet! This place was insane. There were a bunch of Chinese soups, Korean side dishes, fried rice, then a whole tray of salmon sushi and sashimi, and then the mother load; an entire wall of meat. It was ridiculous.
There was lamb, pork, 18 kinds of beef, chicken, salmon, white fish, crab, mushrooms, egg plant, tofu, squid, and then there were spicy or marinated versions of each. I have never seen so much raw meat all for the taking before. You get your plate, then bring it back to the table to grill. Well, I guess the secret's out, because there were 7000 million people there and a line out the door and down the escalator. It was in Mong Kok which is the busiest area of Hong Kong. I believe the restaurant was called Han Wo. Oh, and if dinner wasn't enough, there were amazing pancakey things, a sweet tofu dessert, and ice cream! Good ice cream too!! Needless to say, I woke up this morning and went for a 5 mile run!

Weird things about Hong Kong, or maybe I should say Asia. Paul and I were going to the beach the other day so we went to buy some sunblock, you know, like SPF 15 or 30. Here's what the store had; tanning oil OR SPF 150++. No joke. I didn't know it went that high, but those are your choices. Why is it that the dark want to get lighter and the light want to get darker??

Another random tidbit. This is a mystery that has been bothering me for 3 months. In India (and Indians here and all over) the older men, and some women, have this fluorescent orange hair. It's bizarre. My theory was that they bought cheap hair dye and it turned orange in the sun, but after 4 million people did that, wouldn't you learn? Well, apparently I wasn't too far off. I googled it the other day and discovered that as men and women get older they don't want to go grey but they don't have the money for expensive hair dye. So what do they do? They use henna. Weird. I think I'd rather stay grey.

Off to get Paul from work and meet Neel for some sightseeing! Yey to Saturdays and not spending a day alone job hunting!

Stay Left Unless To Overtake

Please, dear god, put the sunbrellas away!!! It's dangerous and someone (me!) is going to lose an eye. It's not raining. It's not even particularly sunny out. You live in a city, which means high rises blocking the sun. It's 8000 degrees out, how far are you really walking? PUT IT AWAY. Your little Asian heights = perfect umbrella level to poke Lauren's eye out. I'm sick of it, and I'm gonna end it if you don't. I wish that were true, but instead of ending it, I will grumble and look at you with mean ugly face every time I see your umbrella out inappropriately.

Anyway, I have the best mom ever!!! I already knew this, but yesterday I got a package of birthday presents for Paul and I! Since we were traveling, she held onto them and waited til we had an address. Who's mom is better?? Thanks, mom!!!!

Last night I went out with the ladies for tapas! Apparently it's quite the trend here, and I haven't had em since my DC days. I love small plates!! Wine, squid, and girl talk. I <3 HK. Tomorrow my friend Neel is coming. We met, wow, 2 years ago exactly in Taiwan. He's visiting from Korea so I get to play tour guide/tourist. Lots of exciting stuff going on, unfortunately just not on the job front.

Pool time. Peace.

Me and the Old Men

The beach yesterday was amazing! It was pretty overcast here in Kowloon, but by the time I got off the 40 minute bus to Clearwater Bay the skies were bright blue and sunny! Surprisingly, there were actually a sizable amount of people at the beach for a Tuesday afternoon. I guess they're on the unemployment plan as well. I swam out beyond the orange buoys but still inside the shark netting and there are probably 10-15 sixty + year old men swimming laps. It's just me and the oldies swimming back and forth, back and forth. They would occasionally stop and look at me, I'm clearly the new guy here, but then just kept on with it. I had one guy stop and smile at me at every end; he's my favorite. But, man, swimming is hard work even with the amount of salt in the water. I swam a solid 45 minutes, 6 laps, and called it a day. I sat on the beach enjoying this lovely book, Life of Pi. It's about a boy who's ship wrecked on a lifeboat with a tiger. The whole thing is about all of the things in the water that are trying to kill him. It's all a little disconcerting while I'm swimming in the ocean. Good book though.

I followed up on some of the billion jobs I applied for and turns out, none of em want me. One guy even told me "in all honesty" it's a bad market, hard times for jobs right now. He even told me I wouldn't qualify for entry level because I'm not fresh out of college. Awesome. I'm not defeated, I just need to put more focus on skipping the recruiters and spending my energy looking for risk and credit positions where I have more experience. I would LOVE to work in derivatives, but I guess banking is not hiring these days. Especially for someone with no experience in banking. My favorite response yesterday was from Prudential.

Prudential: "Do you have your working visa?"
Me: "No, I just got here."
P: "Well, you need a working visa to interview with us."
Me: "How do I get a working visa without a job?"
P: Click

Today= internet, newspaper, running, gym, library (internet/ Economist), grocery shopping, clothes shopping, happy hour. Busy Busy Busy

A Good Housewife

Last night I made the yummiest dinner. So far they've all been pretty good, minus that one fail of bland pasta in the beginning. We've enjoyed fajitas, fried rice, cheesey rice, tofu kimchi, mexican chicken, countless salads (well me) and now green curry chicken! Thai food is delicious and now I realize it's super simple. Tom Yum soup is next on my list.

For now it's off to the beach. I applied for a bazillion jobs yesterday with not a one response, so in an effort to be patient (ha who am I kidding, I'm sick of looking at the computer), I am going to the beach for a swim. It's supposed to rain everyday this week, so today's as good a day as any.

2 Year Anniversary Abroad

The bangs are still a disaster but at least I had an amazing weekend! Friday night I head out with the girls to Central. There are only a couple bar areas in HK, and Central seems to be the most popular. It's totally different going out here versus in Korea. People here go out after work in their business casual. People go out in Korea in whatever (who cares we're English teachers!). People here are from all over the world and just because they look Chinese doesn't mean they don't speak English; ahem Koreans. It's a lot a lot a lot of 30+-ers. You don't see too many fresh out of collegers, which lights the fire under my ass to quit putzing around and get a job! But, ouch, it's waaaay more expensive to go out here than in Seoul, you may as well be in Manhattan.

I hadn't had a girl's night in forever! Probably since last summer, so it was really nice to go out and talk about hair, and shopping, and drinking wine! The girls I went out with are all English teachers, 2 who taught in Korea previously, so we all had a lot to talk about.

After school Saturday (yup Paul works 8:30-1 on Saturdays. God bless this man) Paul and I head over to TST (Tsim San Shui, I think) in Kowloon. This is THE place in Kowloon. There's shopping, tons of hotels, a walk of stars, ferries over to the island, and the best view of Hong Kong! We had intended to hit the museum, but didn't get there until late, so we just walked along the walk of stars taking in all of the touristy mainland things to do. We had bought a Groupon, my first!, so we went to the iSquare plaza and had an awesome 4 course dinner. There was an app of some meat and dumplings, a rice pizza with crab which was delicious, creamy pumpkin seafood pasta, and a trio of desserts. All in all I'm impressed Groupon. We finally made our way over to the island where we met up with the ladies and some of their friends. Everyone is so nice and welcoming, I guess because how transient everyone is here! I ran into my friend Catherine who had some friends in common with Katie; small little expat world we live in. We ended up staying out until 5. That hasn't happened in ages!!! I <3 HK.

Today, September 5th, marks my 2 year anniversary of living abroad. Crazy! In 2 years I've held countless jobs, made so many great new friends, traveled to 10 Asian countries, had some pretty terrible haircuts, oh yeah, and met my future husband. Been a pretty good run Asia. Here's to the next 2, cheers!!

I should have known better

Anyone who's lived in Asia knows this. I know this. Yet, somehow, again and again I fall into the same mistake.

Asians can't cut Western hair. They just don't get it. I've had many a haircut in Korea go awry (put the razor away!!!), yet for some reason I thought it would be different here. As an aside, when Paul got his hair cut in Nepal he got a sick massage. Since I hadn't gotten my hair cut in 6 months and since I also like massages, I went to get my hair cut. It was a pricey $3 deal. The man maybe cut like 2 hairs, unevenly I might add, and then skimped on the massage. Pshaw. Haircut karma's got to be coming back to me one of these days...

The best haircut I had in Korea was in the COEX mall, so with this in mind I went to the mall near my house to find a salon. I did. They gave a great shampoo massage. Yes, they actually wash your hair BEFORE cutting it here. Then I had a magazine, pointed at a girl with REALLY long hair and a face frame and said "like this." The woman nods in understanding, then chops off my bangs. She left no more than 2 inches of hair in the front on my face. And to make it worse it's not even a bang, it's her version of a face frame (of which she has in her own hair!), so it's not even across my forehead. It's like 2 inches on the left and maybe 3 or so as you move right. This is not what I asked for, woman. It was one of those moments where she did it, my stomach fell to the floor, then she had the audacity to ask, "OK?" No!! Not ok, but it's done now, and you've only left a patch of hair!!! The she takes the scissor back to my head and puts her hand at about ear level and says, "here?" NO!!! What about long do you not understand!!!? Thankfully I shot that one down, but she still proceeded to cut 4+ inches off my finally long hair.

At the end of the day at least it's different now. I was bored with the long stringy hair. She managed to get my ends even, which is something that never seemed to happen in Korea. But, she did leave me with this furry things in the front of my face. I can't even wear a headband because they stand up like feathers. Luckily right next to the mall salon was the mall hair accessories store where I immediately stocked up on bobby pins. No more hair cuts til America.

Day 3

of Paul at work and I'm bored and frustrated. Why don't I have a job yet? Why isn't it sunny enough to warrant a beach day? Man, everything's against me. ha. I have been in contact with a few recruiters, applied for countless jobs online (even been rejected by one, thanks Bloomberg!), and have stalked/harrassed linkedin connections. What else is there to do?? Next week I'm going to hit the happy hour trail :)

Today I went for run 2. I'm somewhere in between I missed it and why do I do this again? Although, I think I actually ran a solid 5k today which is much better than run 1. Now it's time to decide what to do with the rest of the day. I'm bored of sitting in the library (free internet) job searching, and it's really overcast so that knocks out the beach, so it really only leaves one option; shopping. This could turn into a dangerous habit.

Housewife update; I did a good dinner again last night. We had lots of leftover rice, so I made a beef stir-fry for Paul. Rice, soy sauce, eggs, and peppered beef knuckle. Twas quite delicious if I do say so myself. Tonight no cooking as I'm going out!! I'm meeting Katie and Stephanie (both teachers here) for drinks in Soho. Yey, friends!