Chinese New Year

The past 10 days have been full of different activities and happenings. Let me start with the Chinese New Year (CNY).

I started to celebrate the CNY on the new year's eve (13.2.) raditionally by visiting the CNY fair aka Flower market in the Victoria Park in Causeway Bay with Salla, Sophie, Kenji and Sjoerd. The park was loaded with people and booths selling flowers and also booths selling different tiger themed accessories. The park was so full that you could barely move in the crowd. XD The main idea of visiting the flower market was to turn the luck for yourself for the coming year, so I should be very lucky this year, hhohhoo. :D

Flower market crowded with people in Victoria Park

Kumquat, symbolizes prosperity. These were everywhere, in homes, malls, our Halls etc.

Plum blossom flowers, symbolizes luck and most important luck in some new love ;)

Not sure what these are.. but they look nice, don't they? :D

Grrr, ready for the year of tiger! CNY eve party in Insomnia, LKF after
the flower market. Very good chicken wings in Insomnia btw! ;)

The 1st new year's day was also the Valentine's day this time, but obviously here the CNY day was more important. From this day started my three-day mission of collecting "lai-sii", the red envelopes loaded with money. :D According to the traditions, red envelopes are passed out during the CNY's celebration from married couples or elderly to unmarried juniors and children.

My "lai sii" collection that pretty much covered my travel budget in the Philippines, hhohoo :D

One of the many CNY feasts I had during the few first days of CNY. 8 different dishes was a must since the number 8 sounds like wealth in Chinese. There's chicken, fish, prawns, duck etc.

To summarize my first experience of CNY in Hong Kong, I really liked it here. The idea of getting all family members together to celebrate the CNY and visiting relatives and friends with gifts and wishing them a good and prosperous new year is really nice. And of course it was great fun to be still unmarried and collect "lai sii" (even from people that I didn't really know)! :D

Puerto Galera, Philippines

Just to make a short update: I'm now sitting in the internet cafe in a island called Puerto Galera in the Philippines. I'll give you a more detailed story of how i got here etc. later on when I get back to HK.

In short, I survived to and in Manila for two nights. Then like within two hours in the Wednesday evening we decided that next day (Thu) we'll take a bus and a ferry ride to here, Puerto Galera! Took us like 4-5hours all in all to get here from Manila. :)

Anyway, just wanted to let you know that I'm safe and in one piece, so no worries so far. <3

The weekend

Today I spent the whole day at my room just relaxing and recharging myself. I used some of my quality time to glance through the photos from last year. Most of them were related to the student activities which i was enrolled in the last year. One word: TALKO <3

Yesterday we had a City Hunt, an event organized for exchange students. The idea was to complete as many checkpoints as possible with your team. The checkpoints were located all around HK and the points given varied according to the location. It was a nice event although I had slept oly for some 5hours. The team I was in didn't win, but we were not bad. :D Actually my roommate's team won, so it's almost the same. But they had to run a lot during the hunt, and Salla was even more tired than I was after Friday nite. :D

City Hunt team - buying some pineapple buns with butter

Bank of China Tower

Of course the day didn't stop to the City Hunt. I went to see my cousins straight after the event and found myself almost falling asleep at my cousin's place. XD I don't know how I managed to get myself to LKF after the dinner with my cousins, but somehow I did. Maybe because of the pasta and sushi I ate with my cousins.

In front of Oysters where u get long island ice tea for 35hkd!

Drugs drugs drugs

I've been sneezing and coughing now for more than a week so I went to the health centre of PolyU today. I was there first time so the nurse checked the blood pressure, my weight and height and asked questions like "how many siblings I have, how many of them are male and how many female". And I was thinking that I came here for my allergic symptoms.. :D But the good thing is that now I know how much I weight so I can give you an update since I wasn't able to do so last time.

TADAA: 55,1kg (and the nurse said I'm really fit, hohoohoo) This means I have no worries yet and I can keep on eating as much as I can.

Now back to the doctor. It took only like 5minutes the actual appointment with the doctor. She agreed with me that it must be some allergy and wrote a prescription for the medicines. So I went to pick them, and this is what I got:


Three different pills: the one on up-left is two times a day, the one on up-right is four times a day and the one on bottom is three times a day. In addition for the coughing there's a small bottle of something that I need to take 4 times a day and it may cause drowsiness so I guess I'm not going out for a while. =p And how much all this cost me? Only 5 eur.

I just hope all these drugs will cure me..

Statistics

I've been here now for three weeks and I've bought

• 8 pairs of shoes (3 high heels, 3 flat ones, 1 ankle boots, 1 boots)
• 2 handbags
• 6 pairs of earrings
• xx amount of clothes

My weight three weeks ago WAS 56kg, the weight NOW is rather unknown... :D FYI I've been eating out almost everyday. Cooking in the Halls is possible, but just haven't yet got that much energy to cook myself. I'll try to get Salla and Sophie to cook with me; we can make some meatballs with mashed potatoes. Jättegott!

Today I was watching the live performance of Signmark in TST. Signmark is like the world's only deaf rap artist from Finland (http://www.signmark.biz). I felt like I have to be there and cheer for Finland but I also really enjoyed the performance! Actually I had a weird feeling of home-sickness too during the show.. Like Vili told me he had to look at photos of lakes (!) to cure his home-sick, I kinda felt the same relieving effect while watching the performance.



Tomorrow afternoon I will have the first group presentation in HK. Don't really have any pressure on it, because it's only a 5minutes presentation based on the assignment given. In addition in PolyU you get graded for your fluency in English during the course, mainly in presentations! I think I'll get those extra points in language. :D Tomorrow starts the chinese lessons as well, and I've signed up for the intermediate one, but I heard there will be a level test on the first class and if you don't pass it, you have to transfer to the elementary level. Let's see!

Visit to a health centre is also on my agenda tomorrow, since I've been having some sort of allergic symptoms for like almost two weeks, so I really want to get rid off the runny nose and coughing...

Almost forgot to add that, I've been challenged to have more blog followers than an "unknown" Brazilian jiu jiutsu practicer :D , so my dears, please log in and press the "follow" button. Appreciate it! <3

Dear diary..

Last Friday Giulio was here with Arja. Hong Kong was their final stop before flying back to Helsinki so I tried my best to offer them a nice ending for their holiday. :) It was great to see them and even more exiting to listen to their adventures in Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam. Really got me excited about the travelling! :D (Actually me, my roommate Salla and a Swedish girl Sophie have a plan to start planning the trips we wanna make this semester.)

Up on the windy Peak with great views

Crispy chicken, fried eggplants, deep fried shrimp and pork dumplings

Dessert time-the best time :)

Mango pudding, sago in coconut milk with melon and
the giant portion of mango ice cream with fruits

We were so full after all the food and dessert! Giulio and Arja had a morning flight the next day so I didn't have a chance to introduce the LKF for them.. :D Maybe next time...

Last Saturday we had a city (shitty) tour organized by the school (some student affairs office) with three attractions: Nan Lian Garden, Kowloon walled city park and Ladies' market in Mong Kok. Hanging with the other exchange students was really nice, but the tour itself didn't really satisfy me. It was more like a tour of gardens in HK. So, me, Salla and Sophie skipped the ladies market since we have already been there several times during the last weeks and went to shop in other places.

Nan Lian Garden

Sushi after the tour

We had a better city tour on Sunday after missing the Lantau Island trip with Salla, Sophie and Jakob exploring the Central with the Mid-Levels escalator (the world's longest covered escalator) and Soho.

Found the Rich Court

The view from the avenue of stars, TST. Also we made it to the symphony of lights which is the world's largest permanent light and sound show. It was alright, same as the past few years. :D

Nightlife

The first two weeks in HKG have more or less been like a holiday: sightseeing, shopping, eating and out almost every nite. During the last week I've been introduced to the various Ladies' nites. Something like Tuesdays at Tsim Sha Tsui (TST), Wednesdays at Wan Chai and Thursdays at Lan Kwai Fong (LKF). Why is it called Ladies' nite then? Ladies get free entry and free drinks around 10 pm to 2am! So, welcome all my ladies (like Tytti & Elina) to HKG! <3

Last Wednesday was actually really nice. I was for the first time in the Happy Valley Racecourse and was amazed of the amount of people (locals and foreigners) and all the happening there. For most of the people it seemed to be more like a socializing event than just horse racing. People were having beer and McDonald's and chit-chatting with each other. But there were also people that look really addicted to the "game" and who were spending a lot of money on the betting. The racing ended around 11 pm and then people (exchange students) head to Wan Chai for Ladies' nite. :D