Dragon Dance, Computer Expo and The Terminator

This past Friday a couple of friends and I met up at the Global Lounge to celebrate a traditional Chinese Lantern Festival and watch a live performance of a Dragon Dance. In addition to that we learnt how to cook Chinese Dumplings.

Afterwards we planned our upcoming trip to the Philippines (for which I am leaving in 24 hours!) and then went to a Computer Expo that Chris read about on the papers. We left school and got on the train; it took us about one hour to get to the MTR station that we needed to go. Upon arrival we noticed that the expo was outdoors, something interesting considering that it had been raining all week long. We started seeing people walking out with laptops, desktops, monitors, keyboards, etc, and figured that there had to be a sick deal going on. It turns out that they where selling mostly old models and as a result it was at a "discounted price". Something that makes absolutely no sense to me is how products built in Asia by American Corporations are cheaper there than in Asia. I understand the whole brand name and stuff, but it makes absolutely no sense to raise the  prices due to the double-shipping. I could have bought myself a new version for the computer for a cheaper price than the one that they were selling the old one at.

We decided to head back to Soho after the total bust of the Computer Expo, and ended up finding a place called make-your-own-gourmet-burger or something like that. We walked in and I saw the menu on the wall. My eyes immediately locked on a burger called The Terminator. It was a 1.5 pound beast with chili, bacon, jalapeno, pickles and mushrooms, and if that were not enough to kill a man, it came with a tequila shot. My friend Mike and I decided to take on the challenge. It was a rough one but I had to finish it out of pride. After a good struggle I was able to finish it. I would love to see Guy Fieri trying.

Anyways, like I said before I will be going to the Philippines for the next 10 days so I will not be able to post anything new, however I hope that by the time I get back I will have a ton of pics and stories to tell.

Trip to the New Territories

Yesterday a couple of friends and I decided to explore a new part of Hong Kong called the New Territories. It was the last part of China that was annexed to Hong Kong while under British rule due to its military strategy, and as a result it bears that name.

We met outside the dorms and went to the subway station at Central. I saw an interesting vending machine and decided to try it out, turns out it sold frozen and shaken bottles of coke so that it would explode on your face the second you opened it. My friend actually knew about this so he managed to get a video of it.

From there we rode the Red Line to Mong Kok, then switched to the Green Line until Kowloon Tang and finally to the Light Blue Line to Tai Wai. The journey took about an hour but we finally arrived to our stop.

We asked for directions on how to get to the Ten Thousand Buddha Monastery and got very shallow explanations. We started walking in the direction and finally arrived at the place. It was a very traditional chinese-looking structure with the pagodas and ponds so we decided to go in. We started seeing many stairs going up so we assumed that we were in the right place since we had heard that there where over 500 stairs to the top. We entered a room with about 100 buddhas and were really impressed, so we decided to keep going up. After about a half-hour of hiking we saw a fence in the top separating us from a place with giant golden buddhas. We asked how to get there and found out that we had entered the wrong building. We went inside the cemetery rather than the Monastery. We turned around and began descending the whole trajectory. Once we arrived at the bottom we saw a very slim alley that actually took us to the right place. You'd think that one of the oldest civilizations in the world would know how to signal where stuff is.

We started our hike up again but this time we found hundreds of buddhas leading the track. It was an amazing experience since every single buddha was different in a certain aspect. Either their face was totally different, or their direction or hand gestures. 

It was truly remarkable. After about a 15-20 minutes of a nice track we finally arrived at the top, and saw a giant room were people went to pray. We went inside and noticed how the walls were covered by little buddhas. We counted 23 rows down in the smaller walls, and 30 on the longer ones, and approximated that there were about 100 or more sideways. It was an amazing view to be surrounded by that many buddhas! The coolest thing is that they all had a different name and hand sign. There was one bigger buddha in the middle of the room that had an interesting story behind it. A Reverend decided that he wanted his body to be covered in gold once he died and be placed in exhibition next to the other buddha's, and he got his wish granted.

We left the giant room and walked around for a bit. There was another pagoda and a tower covered by buddhas, and then a smaller track that kept going up. We followed it and found ourselves in a different buddha environment, this time colored ones rather than golden ones and more japanese looking, all of them leading to a waterfall with a giant white buddha behind. We took some pictures and headed back down.

Olga and Evalina got hungry and decided that they wanted to go inside IKEA to eat. Who would have thought that there was such thing as IKEA food. Anyways, this turned out to be a convenient stop for me to buy a pair of sheets to be used as a toga for Maude's party on Tuesday Night. Afterwards we got back on the trains and headed back home.

Swedish Kiss in the Escalator

Yesterday a couple friends and I hit up sneakers street to try to find shoes for our backpacking trip to the Philippines. I found the most amazing pair of Salomon shoes that are as extravagant as my backpack. We walked around for a while and bought other stuff (since it was right next to the Ladies Market) and then headed to Soho for some mexican food.

We went to a restaurant called Tequila. As the name implies, they had a huge variety of different tequilas and we took full advantage of this. In addition to this I ordered a sizzling plate of beef and chicken to fill up my fajitas. I missed the guacamole flavor.

Mid way through the meal a couple of girls approached us looking for someone foreign from an exotic place. Of course, that was my queue. I followed her to her table and she introduced me to her friends. Turns out that they were having a bachelorette party. After asking me a couple of questions, she asked me if I ever had a Swedish Kiss. I replied by asking them if they had ever had a Venezuelan Kiss. Long story short they ended up asking me to give them my underwear.

We left the restaurant and went to a bar close by to watch a rugby game. It turned out to be that we where next to the longest continuous mechanical escalator. The urban planner in Hong Kong came up with the genius idea to install many escalators that take you from downtown to the mid-levels such that people would be able to ride them to and from work rather than taking a bus or subway. Needless to say we had to ride it. We walked all the way down to Central and bought beers in the 7-eleven just to see how many we could drink on our escalator ride. Once we started our journey up we were disappointed to find out that it wasn't a huge escalator, but many chopped up ones. There was still one that was about 800m long (.5 miles) so that made the journey a bit more fun.

We got back to our original start point and stopped at a british pub to watch the game. Mid way through England was destroying Italy so we decided to head back home. I thought that the bar was overcharging us for the beer ($10 per pint) so I took the glass with me. Now I have a cool souvenir.

Chinese New Years in the US

This past week we had a break for Chinese New Years. The original plan was for me to fly with my friends to Taiwan and tourist around there for a week, however I had to cancel my trip since Microsoft wanted to fly me into Seattle for a final round interview.

My trip began with a 4 hour plane ride to Tokyo. I was only there for 3 hours however I took a picture just to say I have traveled to Japan. Something that amazed me (besides the amount of people) were the prices. You'd think that a ratio of 1 to 82.5 would favor you, but as soon as I went inside the duty free I turned around and went straight to the gate. Everything was roughly twice as expensive as in the US, meaning 20+ times more expensive than in Hong Kong. Another amazing thing was that the shops in the airport were all high-end stores such as Gucci, Cartier, Fendi, etc.

After my 3-hour layover I got on the plane towards Seattle. This ride was about 12:30 hours long. I finished my book and watched three movies and still had some time to sleep. The most amusing part is that even after I landed I somehow had done all of the stops in 15-minutes (8am to 8:15am)... Got to love those time-zone changes.

I left my bag in the hotel and went touristing around downtown Seattle. The first place I visited was Pike Place Market. It is a 100-year-old farmers market next to the waterfront with specialized shops in the bottom, such as magic shops, arts and crafts, and others. It was very satisfying to have some calamari and clam chowder since I knew I was going to have a hard time finding this in Asia for the upcoming semester.

Afterwards I started walking all the way to the Space Needle, a symbol of Seattle and I stopped inside the first Starbucks ever built. It was a very cool experience. Once I arrived to the Space Needle I took the elevator to the top and looked around the city skylines. Whats cool about this monument is that not only does it provide you with the view and interactive screens like most high-rise observatories, but it also has over 20 telescopes hanging around it that you can control and zoom in an out using other types interactive screens. 

Right beneath the Space Needle there was an odd-looking structure, similar to the theater in Millennium Park in Chicago. This one was multi-colored though, having a bunch of blue, silver, red and even yellow. It turns out that it was a famous museum of Music and Science Fiction with a special focus on Hendrix. I went inside to check it out and it turned out to be everything that I expected and more. You had rooms filled with electric guitars, theaters featuring Woodstock performances, rooms with lounge chairs so you can listen to your favorite Hendrix songs, and even a studio so that you could record your own songs. They had a sculpture built with over 400 guitars that played itself. It was really cool.

The next day I went to the Microsoft Campus in Redmond. They have over 50 buildings and shuttles that take you from building to building. I started in Building 111 where I played with many Microsoft Products such as Surface, Kinnect, Zune and others. Needless to say I was impressed by Kinnect. I later on moved through the buildings interviewing all day long. I spent about 6 hours on campus rotating between recruiters. Afterwards I headed back to the hotel, took a power nap and met my friend for dinner. We went to a local restaurant that served tapas and ate some Spanish food. Im gonna miss that place.

The next morning it was time to head back to Hong Kong. Going against the wind the flights took longer, and the time zone changed against you. This meant that the first flight was 17 hours and the second one was 5, in addition to an 18-hour time-zone difference. I landed two days after I left! The nice thing was that the Japan Duty Free was giving free Whisky samples so I must have tried about 20 different types. Still favoring Blue Label over all.

I got to my dorm at about 2am after not having slept for the past 2 days, however I decided that I needed to watch the Super Bowl so I decided to stay awake and go to the bars at 6am. Gotta say I was happy with the outcome, however I was very disappointed by Pittsburgh's performance. Now Im looking forward to a week of more interviews and hopefully some time for partying! Im already planning my next trip somewhere, and have the Philippines in mind!

The only bad part about this trip was that I missed Chinese New Years and all of the partying that entailed with that. I guess thats still on the To-Do List and I'll have to come back another year to check it out.