Day 5 - Hitting Up Causeway Bay

Well, I had plans to go to the HK Science Museum today, but those plans were quickly derailed by Roy, since he had free time today. Since I haven't seen Roy in, oh, more than a month, I figured we should have lunch instead. :) I can always go see the science museum some other time! Also, he was off the Causeway Bay MTR stop, which is where my school is.


(After the jump: sushi! the library! birds nests!)



What can I say? It's going to be a loooooooooong commute. Hung Hom and Causeway Bay are actually quite close to each other. However, because of the nature of the subway system, there is no direct route between the two, so I have to transfer between 3 lines. Also, the time on the trains is really about 10 minutes, but the station is 10 minutes away from my flat, and there's another 15 minute walk between stations halfway in between, so that's like more than half an hour. And then I have to take a bus. So, it's going to be little less than an hour each way, which is v. unfortunate. But what can you do?

Anyway, Roy and I first went all the way through SOGO, which has like a bajillion floors (okay, like 10). It's supposed to be the biggest department store in HK or something, but we didn't really find anything we liked (I have yet to do any shopping, actually, with the exception of foodstuffs). Afterwards, we realized that we were hungry, so we set off in search of lunch.

Finding a restaurant for lunch proved more difficult than we thought, but we eventually settled for some Japanese sushi place. It was definitely a little different from what we were used to; at any rate, we never quite figured out what the conveyor belt was for, and we had a hard time finding the hot water for our tea (on our left, we have Roy, who has just discovered how the spouts work). The food was quite good, and surprisingly cheap, too!

Afterwards, we headed to the Central Library (where the picture to the right was taken), which is a library that might even outshine Sterling. Well, maybe not, since it appears to have more computers and televisions than actual books. The Library also has a gift shop full of textbooks (surprise, surprise, Americans are paying like a 500% markup on our textbooks) and a Toy Library, which is where parents can take their little children and play with "educational toys" (yeah, they just looked like wooden blocks and a playground to me). On a side note, we also discovered that the HK library, which carries a very, very limited number of English books (as in, only an aisle and a half of fiction ones), appears to have some sort of contract with Harold Bloom. In fact, in the span of about 10 minutes, we discovered at least 6 Bloom books. Who knew that he had like 3 different series of books out! That isn't to say that he wrote these. It's more like he wrote the introductory essay to each volume, but the name of the actual author of the work is completely obscured, so it seems like Bloom wrote them all. Oops.

Later on, in search of something sweet to drink, we discovered a little shop that was selling fruit juices...with bird's nest. Bird's nest, or swiftlet spit (okay, okay, swiftlet saliva), is a delicacy, and HK is apparently the world's trading hub for it.

Obviously, we had to try it. Roy ordered a "Bird's Nest with Honey Jelly in Mango Juice," and I got the same, but in "Watermelon Juice." The drink itself was delicious, but I didn't actually really taste the bird's nest. Maybe there wasn't enough of it? At any rate, bird's nest is  it's the hsupposed to be good for your skin, although I think that something in the water here is already taking care of that. Or maybe it's the humidity.

Tomorrow is the first day of Breakthrough? Am I excited? Of course! Also, I'm supposed to be (photo)blogging for Breakthrough, so I'll have an excuse to take lots of photos. Stay tuned for cross postings!
Remains of the Day:

- The laundry service turned my nice white shirts slightly bluish, which I'm not happy about. Also, my jeans feel really gross and have also changed color. Therefore, since I have laundry supplies anyway, I have resolved to wash all the color-sensitive stuff on my own. And I might need to go shopping. Today, I washed my shorts in a giant pot. Yup - I'm now using kitchen supplies to do my laundry.
- Still waiting to hear back from the yoga studio, but things will probably work out. It's right on the way back from school, actually, so maybe I'll just learn to take evening classes.