Hong Kong Minute

It's incredible how much you pack into a Hong Kong Day (e.g.: New York minute).

The day started off with a late wake up call that provided itself to be a well-needed "reservoir of energy" that we used to sustain ourselves - that being our group of fellow of trekkies - for our truly long "Hong Kong Day."

We got food at the uni canteen and proceeded in doing the non-sexy tasks of the exchange student (e.g.: paper work, transit discount forms, fitness room applications, passport photos, etc) - exchange is not ALL excitement right? It's not all parties and late nights because in end, we're here for ...... school (ohhh yaaa). We then moved our foreign butts over to Mongkok to venture into Ladies Street and Fa Yuen Street.

For the uninitiated, those two streets transports you back into a place where bartering is a must and where old Chinese relics are in the same stall as a pair of True Religion jeans - the smorgasbord of products, from electric to the adult oriented, all create a buffet of consumer goods that we in North America have either forgot or have chosen to forget.

That same forgetfulness left us racing back and forth between Kowloon Tong and Tsim Sha Tsui as we wanted to catch the light show at the harbor. After pulling out all the stops (running to the MTR, getting off at the right exit, but.............walking in the wrong way and eventually having to get a cab to bring us back to where we started).....we still missed the show. We eventually met up with more exchange kids and still made a night out of it - we bought some beers from a 7-11 and enjoyed the view from the lookout deck.

Then came Billy Boozer, an old Dickensian looking bar that wreaked of a personality disorder - Irish interior with an all Asian cast of bartenders. The place was packed due to their outrageous promotion - 150HKD for an all you can drink ticket. With the loosened and unrestricted vibe of the other exchange kids, the place was bumping with the feel of a The Pit (UBC) or Mountain Shadow (Burnaby). Billy Boozer's represented for the exchange kids a desire to go back home (old Irish bars, playing American top 40 music, a basically all caucasian patrons, etc), but at the same time presenting itself to be a contradiction (all Asian bartenders, chinese waitresses, just beyond the doors one can feel the HK humidity).

The night ended at 5am the next day. I never want to see the sunrise when I'm showering ever again.

A Hong Kong Day, according to me, will always be at least 29 hrs.