It's all about the past these days. Nostalgia, memories, vintage clothing and imagining yourself to be part of that era. The Straits Times did a whole special on New Nostalgia meeting Old Nostalgia on Sunday, and it was fascinating reading up on all the old places and people's recollections of the past, it makes me wish I had colourful stories to tell as well. How apt a reflection topic even as we're in the midst of the second day of Chinese New Year, as we go from house to house listening to the same stories about the past, yet I never tire of hearing tales of my dad stealing huge chicken drumsticks meant for ancestral worship because he was greedy.
Maybe that's why I love Sheung Wan, a beautiful place on Hong Kong Island featuring the Western Market, streets selling antiques and old posters and immensely cool propaganda. The buildings that flan the place remind me of colonial times, with the mud-brown brick buildings and trams that chug by. It was exhilarating being part of that pseudo past experience, and I decided to do my visual comm project there, making Jings pose for my black and white shots. Now I get to cook up any story I want about a person living in Hong Kong thirty years ago on a quiet afternoon ahead in Pacific Coffee, a place where I love to be by myself and let my mind drift. The cooler past, it's funny how the past provides inspiration for today.
That was us at the AIA world carnival about one week ago, celebrating our one month anniversary in Hong Kong. We've survived that one month happily, settling in and making friends, of course not without the drama in the back.
And all of a sudden, I'm back where I was, back in the comfort of my own room, but I feel different. I'm doing all the things I used to, and it feels like that one month never existed. But that part of me that misses Hong Kong cloys at my heart ever so often and I feel like I'm in a soap bubble that got transported back to Singapore in a surreal dream.
It's hard to explain, it's like I'm leading two different lives.
But yesterday was pure joy when I stepped into my favourite haunt, one that I've missed so much - Topshop. My one and only material love these days, I spent more than an hour in there by myself with their beautiful new collection of treasures. Ten outfit tries and many polite requests to the saleslady for different sizes and colours later, I emerged $171 poorer, but with a new pair of jeans and three tops. Plus two scratch-and-win cards which entitled me to $18 dollars off a single item. That means I successfully managed to cheat Topshop of $36. A fantastic bargain, this is why I love Topshop and why shopping requires that stroke of luck.
Other than Topshop, I've indulged in my favourite rooftop talks with cheese waffles, Starbucks with the girls and an overload of burgers and Italian food. Indeed, I like this surreal dream.
Yuen Long is the place for Chinese New Year goodies and every single kind of biscuit you can ever imagine. My hall people and Ben and Melody from Australia provided crazy company the entire night, with our own entertainment system everywhere we went - the new iPod fitted with speakers that blasts everywhere you go. Food galore, the delicious pork oil rice at the Big Wing Wah Restaurant and the best chicken ever, and delicious B-zai dessert at a little tucked away dessert store next to a smelly river. We get nothing like this back home.
Mondays are great for exploring because we end by the early afternoon and it's the start of a new week, which I find goes by too quickly as the days go by. So we decided to follow a walking trail and go around Shatin like tourists, to Che Kung Temple, the old Hakka houses of Tsang Tai Uk, the Hong Kong Heritage Museum and Sha Tin Park. It was a great experience, and it is rather amazing how watching a little boy get his hair cut by his mother at Tsang Tai Uk can tug at your heartstrings. Qi thinks I go around exploring too much, when I could be in the room sleeping or resting since I have to wake up early on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, but I can't help but have that mentality that there's so much in Hong Kong to do and see that I shouldn't quite be wasting my time in the room. Although, she happens to be right sometimes when I just drop dead in the middle of the day from exhaustion.
I loved every bit of being at the Happy Valley Racecourse. Wednesday nights are racing nights, and there's this unexplainable buzzing in the air once you step into the racecourse. You breathe in the cold night air and stare into the blinding lights of the stands, watch people buy cheap beer and place their bets, gawk at rich tycoons including famous celebrity Eric Tsang place their bets and take their places in their private viewing rooms, shout in excitement when the horses start racing, and watch faces of delight or disappointment as the colourful horses cross the finish line and the bright screen flash the results. We didn't bet of course, although Henri did an Academy Award winning short video that cracked me up till my sides ached. But it was absolute fun taking in the scene and pretending to be part of it all.
Lamma Island, the offshore island off Hong Kong, saw the City dudes, City chicks, Chinese babes and Baptist sisters come together in a Singaporean expedition. The nicknames coined by none other than the City dudes, the City dudes and chicks come from City University of Hong Kong, Chinese babes from Chinese University of Hong Kong and Baptist sisters from Hong Kong Baptist University. And it was as if Lamma Island were a part of Singapore as we made our way without any maps around the island, not even knowing what there was to see there, to the huge windmill and a random beach on the island, followed by a seafood dinner.
With the many picture whores in the bunch, pictures are in abundance.
Slightly over two years ago during my mission trip to Hong Kong, I was known as the one who carried her camera everywhere because she was the deluded missiontripper who thought she was going to meet a celebrity on the street. That belief stayed quite firm. A camera was always present in my bag, no matter how big or small the bag was - it was more important than the wallet sometimes.
And it has paid off. Festival Walk, the shopping mall my university is connected to by an underpass, has been known for its celebrity sightings and secret events. Yesterday as I was heading straight for MNG at the shopping mall to wake myself up after a terribly boring lecture, I saw a bunch of people crowding over the railing, and there were exclaimations of "hai bin gor lei gar!?" (who is that?!) The instinctive part of me smelled celebrity, and I peered down. I couldn't recognise the person initially, so I quickly rushed down the escalator to the stage, and suddenly Yoyo Mung was about 2 metres away from me. She's not that big a celebrity, but I've watched her on Healing Hands and Forensic Heroes and a couple of other Hong Kong variety shows. But what took me away initially was how tall and how skinny and how much prettier she looked in reality. On television, I've always thought she was quite average, but at that point, I was slightly shellshocked. Of course, I fumbled for the trusty camera in my bag and started snapping away. Then I informed my dearest roomie about the celebrity sighting and being as excited as I was, she rushed down all the way from school and in less than five minutes she appeared, and her face said it all. I can't think of anyone better to share a celebrity sighting with.
Towards the end of the event, I was standing amongst the journalists and photographers who were there covering the event (it was some Chinese New Year promotional thing), and some of them were really rude, and they told me to move aside just because they were holding their big bulky professional cameras, and it was obvious that I was the only non-journalist with my small Olympus. And they kept shouting, "Yoyo, li dou, mm goi!" (Yoyo, look here, thank you!) But the best part was this, after being shunned by the photographers, and as the event drew to a close, Yoyo came down from the stage, and amidst all the photographers who were shouting for her to look at them, she stood right in front of me and smiled for MY camera. And the thing was, my camera was somehow taking really long to reload from the last shot so Yoyo literally posed for my camera for about seven seconds. That was the shot of the day, the first picture you see on this post.
She walked off with her manager and a bunch of people after that, and Qi and I just jumped around as the crowd dispersed. We were waiting for a friend at Festival Walk, so we decided to just stand around outside the hair salon that she had disappeared into - I have a feeling that's the one that all the celebrities go to - and five minutes later, she walked out with her manager and she was on the phone. Qi nudged me, and undoubtedly there were fears of being rejected, but this was probably going to happen once in my lifetime, so I went up and asked her in Cantonese whether we could take a picture with her (the line I've mastered in the last month). Immediately, she put down her phone, smiled and agreed. Even her manager was really nice about it, he smiled as well and offered to take the picture for us.
The parting scene came with us saying "mm goi sai", and with a smile and a "mm sai hak hei", she left.
Today marks my first month in Hong Kong, and how timely. So much has happened, and the things and events that have happened over the last month usually happen in the span of a year or two. Home awaits in six days, and despite the mixed feelings about returning, I'm missing so many of you so this will be a good break.
I sprained my back after a game of virtual boxing. I can imagine myself breaking my back if I ever do box in reality. Too much Nintendo Wii which includes tennis, boxing, bowling, baseball and golf, and rounds of mahjong later, this is truly a life I never pictured myself in. A great invention I must say, I never knew you could play tennis almost like in real life. You serve, hit forehands and backhands like how you would with a normal tennis racket, and the machine picks up the signals from your actions, and somehow you're playing a virtual tennis game. Technology is more advanced than I thought. I'm still living in that world where you play virtual tennis games sitting down and you punch buttons to get various combinations. And mahjong is highly fun and addictive, I can hear Cheryl saying I told you so already.
My first hotpot experience was unforgettable, and one I wish I could have everyday back home. And in the cold weather, hotpots are the best food ever. They have every single type of fishball you can imagine here in Hong Kong, with cheese filling, crabmeat filling, vegetable filling, you name it, they have it. The people living in my hall are truly God-sent, I happened to mention how I've not had hotpot since I arrived, and immediately they set a date and organized one just for us. This is what the locals do, and I love it. They sit for hours in the common room with the hotpot in the centre, cooking and talking and watching Hong Kong drama serials at the same time.
I love my literature class. It's the only class I'm really actually enjoying here - we watched clips from The Joy Luck Club during the last lecture and I loved it. I sat with my chin in my hands and for once, my mind wasn't wandering on what I would next eat, do or wear. And my new friends from my lit class are absolute fun and it hardly feels like I've known them only for a week, people I've prayed about meeting, to walk down Causeway Bay with and doing Confessions of a Shopaholic for the group project. God is truly gracious, and He still amazes me at how much He's provided. The girls took me out for KTV and shopping at Mongkok on Saturday, and they seem really intrigued by stories about Singapore. We speak in a mix of English and Cantonese, which is really funny, because I still speak haltingly and I know my tones are all wrong, but they somehow think it's good. And they're amazed at my lousy ability to read Chinese words.
Billy invited us to his home at Tseung Kwan O and I really enjoyed meeting his family and the warmth and cosiness of his apartment. His parents were extremely hospitable and even gave us red packets before we left even though it's not even Chinese New Year, and treated us to a lovely dinner at a restaurant near his place. I've experienced so much warmth and generosity from the people here in Hong Kong, and they've carved out so many positive memories of this place. I was just saying how I could imagine myself living here, if I had no attachments to family and friends back home. As much as Hong Kong is similar to Singapore, it's also vastly different. They have so much more culture, that intricate mix of old buildings and modern skyscrapers. They have local food, a local language and I deem it the best place for shopping in Asia. Give me a place at Happy Valley or at Mount Beacon, that luxury condomininum I walk past every day when I walk to school, transport my family and friends over, and I'm here to stay.
The comforts of being in a home has eluded me for the last three weeks. Well, up till now. I'm sitting on a plush carpet in my aunt's home in Happy Valley with a huge plasma in front of me with over 50 channels to peruse, and I've just had the best bath of my life since I've been in Hong Kong, and I managed to catch the last episode of Amazing Race Asia.
I've missed being in a home, where you can walk out of your room and into a huge living room and a spacious kitchen, and empty spaces to just plop yourself down on. Unlike the student residences, where you walk out of your room into the cold corridors that run identical on every single level. I do already think the student residences at City University of Hong Kong are lovely, and a thousand times superior as compared to the ones in NTU, but a home is heaven compared to that.
I cannot wait to jump into bed. I can't even begin to describe the mattress in the guest room - it's thick and luxurious, and you sink right into it. My mattress in the student residence is hard as a rock, because I was unfortunate enough to get a brand new mattress. It doesn't even make a dent when I jump on it. And by the time my mattress is soft enough, it'll be time to leave.
And I've finally unlocked the mystery to shopping at Fa Yuen Street. That means more contributions to the Hong Kong economy, and happier days to come. But tonight, it's lapping up the simple luxuries of being in a home.
Goodbye, Hong Kong, for awhile. 
