First off, be forewarned. This blog will not be updated on any regular schedule. As a kid, people always assumed that I would be a great journal writer or diary filler because I liked to read and had a smart mouth. Not so. I have never successfully kept a record of my own humdrum existence for longer than a couple months because, even when the only audience I had to please was myself, it was still boring. So let's take the pressure off right now. If I update this blog, I will let friends and fam know on facebook. No need to constantly check back otherwise.
DAY 1 - 7/1/14
Arriving in Hong Kong could have gone a little more smoothly--there was a confusing mix-up over whether anyone was coming to fetch me from the airport, so I ended up getting a cab into the city only to find out that the poor HR lady from the company had only been running late and had driven all the way to the airport after all. On a side note, I filled out so few forms coming off the plane that I keep worrying that I somehow missed filling out some vital immigration/customs info and will be arrested by the Hong Kong police at any moment. Hong Kong appears to require the least customs documentation of any country I've ever visited...there can't have been more than fifteen minutes between getting off the plane and getting through both customs and baggage claim.
Anyways, the first thing you realize when you spend a few minutes in Hong Kong is that the tourist guidebooks are misleading. They are technically accurate: you can "get by" in Hong Kong with only English, and they do list the exceptions and warn you that taxi drivers on the whole do not speak English. But they don't prepare you for how little English is really used in Hong Kong.
Luckily, all the street signs have English printed on them, and you'll see a ton of English on shop signs, ads, and, in the touristy areas, on restaurant menus. But people in the less fancy shops and restaurants speak English very poorly, and what the guidebooks don't capture is how intimidating and overwhelming it is to realize that if you meet someone whose English isn't good enough for the two of you to understand each other, there is no alternative solution. You simply have no common form of communication--and Hong Kong is so fast-paced and frenzied that no restaurant worker is going to patiently wait while you google how to say something in broken Cantonese. It's honestly scarier than the time I spent living in Japan, since there I actually had much, much better command of the local language and really didn't need English at all.
After the HR lady fed me some kaya toast from my favorite Singapore breakfast chain and dropped me off at my temporary apartment (I get housing from the company for the first month while I look for a more permanent place), I immediately turned back around and went out in search of shampoo, conditioner, toilet paper, etc. That too was overwhelming. Finding clothing stores or restaurants is no sweat in any city you go to. That kind of stuff caters to tourists anyways, and is easily and instantly recognizable. But stop and think about where you would go to pick up everyday necessities. Walgreens, Safeway, Trader Joe's, Costco, Bed & Bath. Your go-to places in the U.S. are all brand name chain stores that specifically sell the miscellaneous everyday items no other store is going to sell. And none of those brands exist here.* So how are you supposed to know where to get stuff?
Mostly, I just wandered around poking my head into stores that sold tissue paper out front and looked like they had lots of bottles on their shelves. This seems to have been a fairly successful strategy (although now that I've learned where the actual supermarket is, I suspect I overpaid at the mom & pop places), except for one problem. English.
You don't even need English to buy shampoo. All you have to do is put the bottle on the counter, hand them cash, take the bottle and go. But, after already having some difficulties earlier that morning with the taxi driver who spoke no English at all, I was somewhat irrationally terrified of a potential "Sorry, I don't speak Cantonese can I please just have this shampoo" conversation. It doesn't help that Cantonese to me has always felt a little like being shouted at all the time. But maybe that's the fear of the unknown talking.
The result, anyhow, was that after finding the place that sold the stuff I wanted, I walked past it and paused to stare at it four times before my longing for a shower (it is SO HOT and humid right now ughhhh my sympathy for the poor FIFA players has increased 1000 times over) woke my courage and got me in the store. Predictably, once I was in, everything was fine. Put item on counter. Hand over cash. Go. Phew.
The rest of that day was pretty boring, actually. There are plenty of things I need to get done, like get a real phone plan or set up a bank account, but none of that can happen until I start work on Friday (7/4/14). I wasn't up to much touristing either: Causeway Bay, one quickly realizes, mostly reads like a directory of shops filled with things I can't afford. And with my notoriously bad sense of direction, I was a little afraid to stray too far from the area with no GPS, no friends, and no Cantonese. I mostly wandered around trying to break my jet lag. Decided at 4 p.m. that I should make an exception to quitting coffee so that I could use caffeine to stay awake. This called of course for a Starbucks run, since, as many of you already know, Starbucks is the only place in Asia where I'll drink coffee because it is guaranteed to have Splenda no matter where you go. There have actually been very few Starbucks' around so far, although when I did finally find one, there were two sitting right across from each other. Typical.
Caffeine turned out to be only semi-effective. Stumbled back into apartment, which is really not an apartment but a room plus bathroom. Luckily, that's about what I was expecting, having been staring at scary pictures of what X dollars will get you in the Hong Kong rental market for the last few months. I was just happy/impressed that there's enough floor space to lay both my suitcases down on the floor and still walk between them to the bathroom. Forced myself to wait till 8 pm to sleep. Conked out and got up at 5 something a.m. in time to see the overtime of the U.S. losing heartbreakingly to Belgium. So for those of you wondering why my Facebook status "tweets" only exclaim over the last half hour--I was unconscious. Sorry, Tim Howard. Others will have to do the memory of your greatness better justice.
Random observations that don't fit into a cohesive narrative:
1. Not sure what's going on with recycling here in HK. Thought I saw some drop off locations while walking around, but there doesn't seem to be an easily understood system.
2. On the other hand, yayyy there are actually public trash cans in the street. Not having public trash cans is definitely one custom I do NOT miss from Japan.
3. Speaking of Japan, its influence here seems much bigger than I expected. Lots of ads/shop posters have Japanese as well as English; tons and tons of Japanese restaurants including some chains like Yoshinoya that I recognize from Japan; the 7/11s here even carry my favorite matcha chocolate chip cookies from Japan, which I'm pretty stoked about. There are also these enormous statues of characters from a soccer anime peppered around Causeway Bay (major shopping neighborhood where I'm currently located) right now to promote Adidas and the World Cup.
4. Street restaurants are so low on space that if you're eating alone, they will just seat you with another lone person. I've seen people share cafe tables before in the States when there are no seats, but I feel like it's almost unheard of to share a restaurant table unless one person invites the other solo person to sit. Shared a weird meal with a guy in a booth table. Awkwardly checked phone many times. He didn't care.
5. Didn't see much of the protest in Causeway, which is two metro stops over from where the big time stuff was happening in Central, but there were a few people shouting what seemed like political messages into megaphones with posters, and a LOT of policemen walking around in large gaggles.
Some additional pics:
A Batman exhibit at the Times Square building--there are also life size models of all of the Batmobiles (including motorcycle) from the three Christopher Nolan Batman movies.
These guys below are climbing up the wall of the Times Square mall interior.
How you know you're in China: when Starbucks posters look like this.
Concluding note: if you're worried that this sounds like a depressing start, don't worry. It gets better. In fact, so much more was accomplished today that I'm too tired to tell it. You can probably guess how well this journalling is going to go based entirely on that comment...ah well.
Cheerio and Ta Ta for now! (Sorry, I watched Saving Mr. Banks on the plane over.)
*Well, actually, there IS an IKEA right nearby. Ahhh, IKEA. Bless its heart.
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