Yearly Archives: 2003

Hong Kong Jockey Club

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.

They Say It's Out Of The Matrix

Bought an absolute­ly per­fect leather jack­et today. I’ve been look­ing for one for more than a year now. The Canadian stores nev­er sell leather jack­ets that are built for my frame, so mak­ing the deci­sion to buy one here was fair­ly easy (that and the fact that it was 35% off, yet still cheap­er than any­thing I found in Canada before the dis­count, espe­cial­ly for long jack­ets). It’s a nice qual­i­ty leather, fits my shoul­ders well, and goes past my knees, so it’s exact­ly what I was look­ing for. I dare some­one to call me fru­gal. I dou­ble dog dare them.

The Half-Chinese Couple

I met a man who was born in Ireland and grew up in England, cur­rent­ly teach­ing at one of the uni­ver­si­ties in Hong Kong. He’s been here for three years, can under­stand quite a bit of Cantonese, and can even speak bits and pieces although he can’t hold a con­ver­sa­tion. I found it fun­ny that he tones down his British accent so that peo­ple can under­stand what he’s say­ing. He’s very enthu­si­as­tic about liv­ing here; he’s lived in sev­er­al oth­er coun­tries and thinks that Hong Kong is the best to live in. Even though I’ve always believed that I could nev­er live in Hong Kong due to the humid­i­ty, but his rea­sons for liv­ing here def­i­nite­ly out­weighed the rea­sons against.

His wife, a Chinese woman who grew up in Hong Kong and stud­ied at Cambridge, spoke English very well with an ele­gant British accent, and I must admit that it is very, very shexshay.

More Shopping With Pris, And A New Pair Of Docs

Priscilla took me shop­ping around Tsim Sai Tsui yes­ter­day with her boyfriend Thomas. I had no idea they were a cou­ple until lat­er on in the night when they slipped a kiss when they thought no one was look­ing. I was total­ly com­fort­able before I caught it hap­pen­ing, but after­wards, it was hard to not feel like a third wheel. It’s so weird that every­thing is fine before one knows, but as soon as one gets that extra bit of infor­ma­tion, every­thing turns awk­ward.

I end­ed up buy­ing a pair of Docs, which are sim­i­lar to the pair that I have now, except they’re more square at the toe and have a much thick­er sole. They’re very cozy though, even before work­ing them in. The UK stopped ship­ping Docs to Canada a few years ago, due to a cost imbal­ance, and I man­aged to get a pair before they were all gone. I did­n’t need anoth­er pair of Docs yet (I still wear the oth­er two pairs that I own), but I fig­ure that I might as well since I won’t have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to buy them any time soon.

The Alcohol Culture In Hong Kong

Oddly enough, Pabst Blue Ribbon is one of the cheap­er beers here and Budweiser is one of the more expen­sive. Drinking is sim­ply not part of the cul­ture here, so no one checks for ID since there’s no age lim­it. There’s a lot of smok­ing though, most­ly for image. People walk around with cig­a­rettes hang­ing out their mouths, and just have one every now and then, instead of need­ing cig­a­rette breaks every hour.