HK Day 1

Despite my hellish "adventure" in getting to HK, I couldn't quite fall asleep my first night. There was some wicked lightning going on that seriously brightened everything. So i did some reverse psycho on myself and tried to stay awake. That seemed to work. i think i slept around 4something am.

i got up around 9:30am and updated y'all on my fun yesterday. then got ready and headed out. stopped by a 7-Eleven to refill the Octopus card Anna had given me to use, then found my way to the bus and rode to Central to catch the MTR to Yau Ma Tei. There I met up with my friend and WingTsun si hing (shi xiong), Sifu Robin. It was raining pretty hard, and the weather all day was pretty gloomy. After he took care of some official IWTA business, we headed back to the IWTA/Leung Ting Company head office. I remember the first time I visited with Mel back in '03; I was totally a little kid in a candy store with all the WT stuff everywhere. This time it was some of that coupled with a joy in returning and seeing Si-Tai (Grandmaster Leung Ting's wife) again. She's the sweetest lady, whom I had actually just seen 4 months ago in Hungary (for GMLT's 60th Birthday celebration).

After a quick pitstop at the office, we went to get Dim Sum nearby. It was a very good meal (esp. since i had skipped breakfast, which reminds me i'm getting kind of hungry now, but anyway...) and we got to catch up a bit. It's funny how you can be close to someone even when you first "talked" through e-mail and have communicated mostly through online means. In this case, i am very thankful that that is the case. After lunch, we went back to the office.

[ALERT: WT-details alert that prob will bore most of you so feel free to skip:]
Robin gave me the second Chi-Sau book that was recently published. I got to read through most of it and found some interesting comments/techniques/gems. :) He works in the head office so he had to take care of business while I occupied myself with the many WT things surrounding me. I bought a pair of new WT pants, two pairs of shoes, and a new T-shirt. It was tempting to buy more, but I had to restrain myself given my lack of income and impending debt.

After Robin was done with work, we stopped by the school and did some training! :D After that we walked down to Mong Kok and he showed me some of the shops and places that a lot of young people seem to hang out. He pointed out a milk tea place that happened to be Mel's favorite (Xiu Liu Shang) that he had brought Alex to when Alex visited. Then a little later I saw my (formerly) favorite milk tea place -- Saint's Alp! There was an awesome one in the village on Bleecker that sadly closed down. The one that still remains (around 10th and 3rd Ave) is not bad, but just not as awesome. I said to Robin that we need to come back at some point. :) I also messaged Mar that we have to go. Hopefully it's not disappointing...

Robin had to go off to teach class so I hopped on the MTR back to Central. I walked around a bit to familiarize myself with the area. Eating by myself and not wanting to spend too much money, I stumbled into a KFC. :P So not the healthiest meal, which is another concern. Afterward I met up with Wendy in the LKF area and we grabbed drinks (she had mango juice i had cranberry) and caught up. LKF is the ex-pat area of HK and it's crazy how many people are there. Ex-pats, foreign visitors, locals... just a big mix of young people looking to get their party on. After Wendy and I chatted a while, Anna and her friend Rob met up with us and we went to this place where everyone who worked there seemed to know Anna's name (as Rob said, it was like Anna's Cheer's). They had this live band that performed some classics of the 90's which was a nice treat. After that, we called it a night.

Overall standout impression today: HK has tons of young people. During the day it seems like the age-distribution is relatively standard, but at night, they're just all over the place.

Comments:
1. Thanks to Chris for the heads up on falling cable cars in HK (fell during testing sans people).
2. I'll get less verbose as the days pass and i'll try to replace them with some pics for your viewing pleasure. :)