I hate it when there are five strips of bacon left. If I cook three then there are two left and it’s never enough, and eating all five at once is just too much. Three or four strips is always the ideal.

I have figured out the easiest stir-fry in the world. One morning I took my stir-fry strips out of the freezer to defrost by the time my classes were done. When I got home, I realized that I had no vegetables and I was too tired to make rice (actually it was more of being too tired to clean the rice pot because it’s always a bitch). I found a pack of garlic pasta salad, and threw everything together.

Ingredients:

1. Approximately 700 grams of beef stir-fry strips
2. One bag of Green Giant Garden Creations Pasta Salad (Garlic)

Directions:

1. Pre-heat frying pan to medium heat, add oil
2. Add stir-fry strips and garden salad
3. Cover and stir occasionally until the pasta is desired tenderness (should take about 20 minutes, liquid should be a light sauce by then)

Note: To ensure beef is cooked through, add beef in pan a few minutes before the pasta salad.

I got the chance to go to the Hong Kong Jockey Club country club today, which was quite a privilege. They own the only two horse tracks in Hong Kong, which is home to quite a popular gambling habit. It’s the cheapest country club to be a member of, but also the most exclusive. There’s a maximum of 200 voting members (one has to be a horse breeder to be a voting member), and each voting member can only sponsor two people every year. To be accepted into the club, one needs two sponsors, which my uncle was lucky enough to have many years ago. The treadmills in the workout room all have personal television sets with headphones and cable. Just from parking at the clubhouse, there were tons of Mercedes, Porches, and Audis.

I had some rib eye roast there for lunch. It was the most tender, most juicy, most savoury piece of meat I have ever eaten, well worth the tab I ran on my uncles account. The Cabernet Sauvignon was decent, with a light taste and mellow finish. I thanked him for the meal, and promised him that I’d take him out for lunch one day when I had a job. He looked at me as if such a thing was unnecessary, and that he was simply glad that I had such a pleasurable lunch.

I finally have a chance to write. It’s been busy ever since I arrived home, hanging out with Darren and John, and ever since I arrived here in Hong Kong. Right when I stepped off the plane, I could smell the difference of the Hong Kong air. Sometimes affected by the wind coming off the surrounding water, the smells here are often distinct and localized. Most of the time they’re fairly neutral, although there can be areas of disgusting, short-lived breezes, and the occasional pleasant waft.

The food here is delicious. It’s a fresh food culture, so grocery shopping is done on a daily basis, although eating outside is comparable to the cost of preparing one’s own food. Living as a student has probably made me appreciate restaurant food, and living in Canada has probably made me appreciate Chinese food even more.

I went to some Korean BBQ with John and the parents yesterday. I usually try to go at least once every time I come back home, a little ritual I’ve had since first year. Korean BBQ is a unique eating experience; the food one orders is brought for you in little trays, uncooked and marinated, and one cooks it on a round, embedded flame grill in the centre of the table. There are vents all the way around the grill to suck the smoke away from the food. We got the all you can eat deal, where they bring you as many beef strips, spare ribs, salmon strips, pork strips, chicken breasts, cow tongues, cod strips and cow liver as you want for $10.95. Even the all you can drink deal was only $1. I realized that they make their money by bringing smaller portions of the food to slow down one’s eating, letting the food sit in one’s stomach to get fuller faster, along with the fact that they don’t have to pay anyone to cook.

John kept opining on all of his eccentric political ideas, and it was only in the middle of dinner that I really felt I understood Julia’s attraction to him. One of the more interesting ideas was taking cigarettes out of the small business market and selling them exclusively in the LCBO. That eliminates the problem of underage smoking, since the LCBO is much more stringent in asking for identification than the local corner store. The problem would be that people would start going to Quebec for cigarettes, in the same fashion as alcohol, along with the fact that lottery tickets and cigarettes are the main staple of many convenience stores while almost all the other products are there for impulse shopping. If this were to happen, the LCBO would generate an even more income for the government, while reducing the number of kids addicted to smoking.

I also enjoyed his idea of having no summers for school, so that people could graduate from high school years earlier, since North Americans have fallen into the unneccessary habit of having a summer vacation over 150 years ago when the archaic act of harvesting crops was done. Of course, I didn’t completely agree since most people don’t have their brains developed enough for the concepts introduced university until at least their late teens, and such a curriculum would leave many people behind. So he brought up the idea of specialized, instead of standardized, schooling. That way each school would meet the needs of the students attending it, such as schools in farming areas having the flexibility of a summer vacation where it’s actually needed. In my opinion, something like this wouldn’t work too well for the credibility of the Ontario school system, since nothing is being too controlled, but there’s always the independent school “option” if parents can afford it. If the school system of Ontario is effective, however, then it should be able to prove itself and improve it’s own credibility, but an idea as theoretical as this would be extremely risky.

I never thought I’d say this, but John was a born politician, and I’ve never been more proud to be his friend.