Second day of class today, where I went to Psychology of Personality and Cantonese. There are 9 tones in Cantonese, but we are only learning the first 6. I can’t tell the difference among most of them, and in Mandarin I only know of 4 VERY clear ones!
Here’s the view of the library and from one of the main quads of campus. Do you see the gloominess? It may look like cool weather, but it’s actually pretty damn hot.
Petter and I got out of class early, so we decided to hit Uniqlo since we didn’t get to go the night before. Our goal while here in HK is to capture as many hilarious/fobby shirts as we can, and we found one. Petter also wants to buy one for himself before he leaves, but we have yet to find one.
For those who are interested, you can find a Uniqlo in the mall called “World Trade Center” in Causeway Bay. The only store I was interested in shopping in was Uniqlo, because I don’t like the other expensive shops (Muji was cool, but a bit out of my price range.)
I tried on some skinny pantalones, and I couldn’t resist from buying them because they actually fit me pretty well in the crotch area. I’ve also wanted a pair of gray jeans for a long time. I love you, Japanese store that is designed for skinny Asians! They also do free tailoring here if you spend over HK$100, which is an AWESOME service.
Peter and I hunted around in Causeway Bay after our shopping for some fried chicken, especially for Jollibee (Filipino fried chicken), which we thought was in Causeway Bay. After roaming around and failing, we decided to head back to Central to find a fried chicken joint and a possible restaurant to eat in for Peter’s birthday dinner. Central is almost like Fifth Avenue in NY, with huge buildings and expensive stores, and we couldn’t find a decently priced restaurant for the dinner, so we began to give up… and stumbled upon Jollibee! It was right in front of us this whole time!
We bought some meals to go, and ate and walked to the MTR station to go back to the dorms to change for the night. People stared at us while we rushed by them with food in our mouths and an open box of fried chicken, but it was so good that we didn’t care.
Lan Kwai Fung is party/bar central where every Thursday is Lady’s Night (free drinks!) so we went there to celebrate Peter’s 21st. Here are the awesome girls from Patrick Manson. I look tall because I’m in heels, which is the BIGGEST mistake I made that day. NEVER go to LKF in heels (unless you’re a masochist), especially if you plan to go bar hopping, because HK is made of HILLS.
We met up with Peter and the other guys to eat a quick dinner in Central, where most of the girls ended up just going to McDonalds. They sell pork burgers here, which is probably just luncheon meat. Kind of a sad meal, but it wasn’t mine! I ordered a Big & Tasty.
After waiting an unbearably long time (painful bc of my heels) for most people to join us, we headed to LKF to the first bar that we knew of that served free alcohol: Club 97. They had free cosmos. The boys were lucky that they came with so many girls, because all we did was go up to the bartenders, ask for a number of drinks, and pass it over to the boys for them to down it.
Our goal was to get Peter drunk, so we tried to get him some more Cosmos. The girls actually aren’t supposed to pass the free drinks to the guys, but we tried to do it secretly. Will got Peter a Long Island just to be safe anyways. It was disgusting, as was the Cosmo. In this picture I’m holding my first drink, which took me a long time to finish. Everybody else was on their 4+ drink while I was working on this one. Hah!
The bar started to get really cramped, and I spent some time watching what looked like perverted old foreigners hit up on some cute Asian girls. We called them IFC Bankers (stereotypical middle aged white men who are financial bankers). It was disgusting and intriguing at the same time. Asians make out very funny— which I think I should stop watching when I’m at clubs. I miss having Christine and Steph with me to creep on the creepers.
Some of our friends started to get the glow after a while, which we could only make out from pictures.
The really red girl in the middle, Lily, was crushing on the bartender making our drink (one of the first better looking local guys we’ve seen in HK), so I tried to get a picture of him without looking too obvious. Of course, when I’m trying to be subtle, I make myself VERY obvious. The flash bounced off her face as well, so it’s not a very clear picture of him.
Chin and his CUHK friends finally arrived to LKF, and they met us in the bar to add to the cramped space. Chin is a super lightweight who gets buzzed off just one drink, so I made sure to only let him have two. He gets really bromantic with people. And RED.
We left the bar to look for some other bars with free drinks, but we first had to stand outside the bars and cam-ho a bit. Drunkards GROUP PICTURE! It was James’ (the very dark boy in the middle) 21st birthday as well, so we were celebrating a double birthday. Where is Peter in this?
Oh wait, here he is.
How to tell that Peter is drunk (other than seeing his pink face): he will pose with VERY ugly faces, usually with his mouth open.
We actually didn’t really know where the other bars with free drinks were, so we entered some random bar, where somebody told Leanne to order three Long Islands. She did, and once she realized that we had to pay for our drinks, we just left the bar and headed outside. We stood around for a bit, and I saw our friend Chi arguing with a bouncer. I headed over to find out what was going on, and it turned out that the bouncer was trying to get Chi to pay for the three Long Islands that she “ordered.” Chi kept telling him that she didn’t order them, and that she refused to pay for something she didn’t order, and it went on for a while before the bouncer said “Okay fine, you don’t have money” and left. Leanne felt really bad about what happened, but I’m really glad Chi dealt with it, because she has that feisty personality that can argue with people. Hah! I also loved that they were standing outside of ANOTHER bar arguing about the drinks.
We were too buzzed to care about finding another bar, so we decided to do what foreigners do in LKF: Go to the 7-11 to buy beer, and stand outside to drink. I didn’t realize that Peter poses like o_< with his eyes.
It was Chin and my job to make sure Peter didn’t sleep on the floor or pass out. Well, mostly Chin’s. I just took pictures of him trying to keep Peter from passing out.
The environment here was really interesting. Maybe it’s because people were drunk, but everybody interacted with one another as if they’d known each other for years. Everybody had one thing in common: they were foreigners in a country far away from home. Strangers congratulated Peter and James for turning 21, and even took pictures with them. I have no idea who these German guys are.
Peter really needed to use the restroom, so we tried to go back into Club 97, but the bouncer wouldn’t let him in because Chin and I were carrying him and he could obviously tell Peter was super drunk. We sat around for a bit for Peter to put his “sober face” on, but the bouncer still rejected him. We found out that there was a public restroom a little bit down the hill, so we took Peter down there and had to drag him away from peeing in a bush. He tends to want to pee everywhere when he’s drunk.
Chin and I made sure to stuff Peter with water so that he wouldn’t have a bad hangover the next morning, and we sat around some more trying to figure out where to go. We called Will a couple of times, who told us that he found another club with free drinks, but because his phone was running out of batteries, couldn’t tell us good enough directions for us to get there. We climbed up and down the hills trying to find the place, and gave up when the rain started to come down. I asked Peter if he wanted to go home to end the night, and he just nodded and said “Fuck it!”
I’m glad you had fun, Peter, even though you had no idea that it was raining or what you did/said, but these pictures will keep memories for you.
