2006-05-10T03:26:00.000-07:00

I don't know about the whole blogging thing - I had to give 2 people my blog address just then and found it really hard! I think it's the being assessed thing - hate it!

2006-05-10T02:12:00.000-07:00

Need to do a quick entry on my 3 days in Hongkong.

Hongkong did not blow me away; I'm not sure why I expected it to (maybe something to do with bullshit travel advertising?). I also didn't experience - for lack of a better term - 'culture shock', or too much anyway, either (so I'll cope ok if I go back to Indonesia? hmm????). Pao Ju, who came and met up with me for day 3, said that the scale of 'Asian-ness' (which equates to 'messiness' in that particular conversation with Pao) goes something like Singapore > Hongkong > Taiwan > China. Pao, who's from Taipei, had just come from Beijing and was not impressed - "people in Beijing don't know how to queue!"

Probably didn't experience Hongkong properly though, because I stayed with some distant rellies (rellies or relies?) I'd never met before who took me around the first two days, so it didn't matter that I don't speak Cantonese. Hongkong was actually good for my Indonesian, because my rellies don't speak English. Although their Indonesian isn't fluent, it was alot better than mine! I spoke to the kids in English (who don't speak Indonesian), which I think the parents were quite pleased about. It got interesting when Pao met them; there were conversations happening in Mandarin, Cantonese, Indonesian, and English between all of us in the same room. When I met up with Pao I had my uncle with me, and we were trying to sort out the night's and next day's arrangements, it got pretty confusing as my uncle and Pao communicated in Mandarin, my uncle and me in Indonesian, then Pao and me in English - a 3way conversation indeed. Good for hidden agendas though - my uncle was keen for us to stay with them; I wanted to stay in the hostel.

My rellies (and there were a lot of them - I got to meet them all over one of those banquet dinners where you get course after course: roast pig, followed by roast duck, followed by shark fin soup, followed by steamed fish, and so on, inducing over-eating), and a lot of their friends immigrated from Indonesia to China in around 1960, when the Chinese in Indonesia were getting a hard time following the government's anti-Communist (= anti-Chinese) policies (e.g banning of Chinese schools and hence why lots of Chinese Indonesians don't speak Chinese, like me, my parents etc). It's a bit weird to think of people migrating to China, it seems backwards, like you usually think of the flow of people being from China out, to everywhere else in the world. But there you go, they left Indonesia, went to China, where things weren't easy either, and then about 20 yrs later moved to Hongkong. Amazing.

Haven't said much about Hongkong have I? I did what I think most people do when they go to Hongkong - overeat and indulge in some shopping. Went out for yum cha for brekkie twice - and over-ate excessively the first day. They ordered so much food and made me try everything, and everyone knows 1 little dimsim multiplied by 12 varieties is a lot! And meanwhile, they drank their tea, read the newspaper, chatted, etc and only ate something every once in a while. So now I know - yum cha isn't about eating.

That's quite a long entry already! and I need to go out and explore more of London!

2006-05-09T09:53:00.000-07:00

My first ever blog! I need help naming it! Anyway, down to business, what did I get up to today?

I walked straight past Big Ben today and didn't even realise it until I was a block away. Typical! First day in London, and it feels like Melbourne! Yeah sure, there are a whole lot more big huge old buildings (they're everywhere you turn - I gave up taking photos), but it feels like Melbourne. It's not as cold as I expected it to be, a light jacket was enough, much the same as you would expect for a mild winter/harsh summer day in Melbourne. Kind of disappointing, to have had to endure a 13 hr flight (the painful HK to Zurich leg), and not feel the difference in your change of locale.

So that basically was my day - spent it walking around London because I couldn't check in at 9am and so had no bed to sleep in. Not even sure what all the buildings I saw were, although I probably should know. I do know that I have to get myself to the Tate, the National Gallery, the National Gallery of Portraits (or something like that), the British Museum, the Museum of London, and the Dali Center - and then I'm sure there's more I've yet to find out about.

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