Random Thoughts

Other things I noticed about Hong Kong....

All the apartments on Hong Kong have a heavy reinforced gate that is closed outside of each front door. That gets locked separately. THEN, the front door itself has a chain lock, a dead bolt, and then finally the normal keylock. It makes you think....how dangerous IS Hong Kong if each apartment must use all that to be secure? WHO in the WORLD would go through all that effort to break in a house, and then what in the world are HK thieves packing to even require all that security?

There are SO many people in HK; close to 8 million people, packed in a city that isn't very large. I think I overheard it might take just about an hour to circle the city. So there's no room to be polite over there. If you're too slow for something, you've lost it. By the end of my trip, I was just as bad as everyone else...I'd be pushing old ladies aside just to get a seat. What an ass. But everyone else was doing it!!! I'd be getting crazy looks if I DIDN'T do that.

Some restaurants you basically have to find an open seat anywhere. Forget waiting on a table because you'll never get one. If there's an open seat on a table where other people are eating, you just hop your ass over there and sit down. While I got used to this in some of the whole-in-the-wall eateries, I didn't expect this in other places.

In Disneyland I was sitting happily at a table eating with my girl, and suddenly these 2 China guys just pushed their tray on to our table and starting eating in front of us. I'm like "WTF!?" But my girl explained to me that it's "typical" that they do that. That's what everyone does. I don't know if I'd ever get used to that. I tried shooting them the evil eye...pfft, yeah like that does anything. I'd probably get kung fu chopped finding out one of these suckers were from Shaolin or something.

Cleanliness.... almost everywhere we ate, my girl advised me to clean the chopsticks and spoons first with tea. It's another one of those tips that make you go "HMMMMMM". Do they not wash their utensils at the restaurants? They looked clean.... but I'm not about to question anything. I know my mom does that with her chopsticks and everything here too....so maybe there's something universal about Chinese restaurants that I am better off not knowing about.