I went to Hong Kong and they had grits

Last weekend, I got out of town for a little bit. Nothing major; the onus was a doctor’s appointment on Monday because it was a holiday.

Clearly, it wasn’t all that exciting because I totally forgot to write this blog entry yesterday.

Hong Kong is a cool city and definitely a good place to visit. There are lots of things to see, but since I’ll be here two years I didn’t really feel the need to see everything.

Which is fortunate, because really, I didn’t see much.

Mostly, I wanted to just relax a bit. I’ve been pedal-to-the-floor for awhile and it was nice to do nothing. I stayed in a hostel – which, like Hong Kong itself, was expensive ($40 a night) – and chatted with the people there.

Three of us went to breakfast on Sunday at an American place named the Flying Pan. I had darn good bacon, eggs, toast and grits. I have to say the grits weren’t all that good, but they were grits. I couldn’t believe it.

I’d planned on going back on Monday to have the country fried steak, but I got lost.

Anyway, I and two guests at the hostel – a younger German guy and an older American lady – went to a late breakfast and ended up staying until 1:30 or so.

The American had been a teacher in Yemen and had lived in multiple countries teaching English, which included being in China years before. She had lots of stories and was extremely talkative, so mostly the German guy and I just listened.

She’d been evacuated from Yemen, which was a fascinating story to hear because of where I work; the embassy there had called her one day and told her to pack her bags. Long story involving a kidnapping hit list; I won’t go into it, but all turned out well but she had a bad experience with the embassy.

After breakfast, the German guy hit the museums and the woman said she was going to get a massage, did I want to go, too? That had been on my “maybe do” list so I did.

It was quite painful! Oh, my, it hurt. But I slept good.

She’d gotten both the body and foot massage and I only got the body – I don’t like people touching my feet! – so I finished first. I’d thought about going to a movie and asked her if she was interested. She’d been in Yemen for four years and they don’t have movies, so she said yes.

After going back to the hostel to research what was playing (sadly, “American Hustle” was not), we fixated on “Saving Mr Banks.” Once at the theater, though, it was sold out and we opted for “The Butler” instead.

It was OK; Forest Whitaker is amazing and John Cusack made a fantastic Nixon, but nothing memorable. It was a VERY weird movie to watch in China, though.

After the movie it was about 7:30 or so and time for dinner. We went to some Thai place she’d mentioned at breakfast and lo and behold, the German guy was there.

On Monday, I went to the podiatrist to get fitted for new insoles. My feet do not like me right now. The elliptical kills me after about 45 minutes. My feet just start to tingle and burn.

The office was different than any I’ve experienced, too. First of all, it was on the eighth floor of some random building in downtown Hong Kong. I went in and they had a little drink bar, like at a hotel at breakfast. Tea, juice, coffee, water. Apples and crackers, too.

Internet was available, which was cool since I was about half an hour early. I sat down, though, and started on an email and some guy came out for me.

It was the doctor. No nurse at all. I only saw the doctor, who was British. He did everything, including slapping the plaster on my feet to case the new insoles. It was just very odd compared to what I am used to.

The only remotely touristy thing I did (besides gather brochures) was take the ferry instead of the metro across the harbor. That was fun, and once off I headed to the train station. When I passed a tourist office I went in for information and learned that they have a big red bus tour. That sounds cool, but when I investigated the price, I found that it was exactly the same as Disney!

I have to go back to Hong Kong on Presidents’ Day to pick up my new insoles. I’ll do the same as I did this time and get there on Saturday (only this time I won’t miss my train like I did this time!), play on Sunday and go to the doctor’s on Monday.

So Sunday … let’s see … Big Red Bus or Disney?

Such a no-brainer.

Customer services lives here.

I’m heading out of town in a couple of hours and getting back around 7 p.m. or so on Monday.

Since every Sunday, I cook for the week, I am going to be in a crush to cook Monday night so I won’t starve. I decided to head to the grocery store today, which is my usual routine, and have the stuff ready to go when I get back.

Well, remember in Jakarta when I said I had my shopping down so I could do it fast? Today I realized exactly how fast I am at it.

No kidding, door to door, it was 20 minutes. I know this because when I got down to the Friendship Store, the department store that takes up the first fix floors of my building, it hadn’t opened yet. It was about 2 minutes til 10 a.m. and they open at 10 a.m.

So I waited two minutes (this is included in the total 20), went in, went down the two escalators and wound through the subway area to the bottom of the building that is across the street from my apartment building. The grocery store is in the basement.

Then I grabbed my week’s worth of groceries: cooking oil (this is not a weekly thing, but I needed some) four carrots, six potatoes (I need five; they come two to a bag), an onion, bread, a can of Pringles, one liter of milk and two Cokes. I tossed in a mini bag of M&Ms for the train ride today.

And that’s it. I bagged my stuff and was out of the store itself in less than 10 minutes. A week’s worth of food for about $20.

I’m sure I make the people in the Friendship Store wonder. And man, there are a lot of them.

It’s almost creepy. I was there as the door opened. The door that I enter is a side door, and it opens to the floor with the hoity toity stuff on it. The Gucci section is the first thing I see, and it proceeds like that. Oil of Olay has a little section, too, so I guess “hoity toity” is more of an attitude in this case.

Anyway, customer service here is amazing. Every store/section has its own staffing, from the Gucci and Oil of Olay to the massage and electronic toothbrush displays.

And at 10 a.m., they are all pretty much standing at attention in the aisle areas, waiting on the customers to come. They all wear uniforms (not like military or anything, but color coordinated and a lot fancier than, say, Target’s color coordination) and are essentially lined up.

And when I say “sections,” that’s kind of a loose term. It’s not a section of, say, kitchen goods. It’d be a section for pots, one for pans, one for utensils, one for toasters and the like. And each of these has its own person staffing.

When you go down the escalator, all you see are rows of people, one or two at a time, standing with their hands folded, waiting to greet customers.

Just coming off one escalator to another, there were two at the top and two at the bottom.

It’s just absolutely amazing customer service. Or maybe it’s something else; I’m not there to shop, so I don’t know. (I did have to dodge perfume sprayers are couple weeks ago.)

But I think every last one of them was surprised to see me breeze through at 10:02 with two empty bags and then circle back at 10:17 with sacks of food.

All right, I am off to Hong Kong. My air shipment, which contains my camera, is due to arrive on Tuesday, so I won’t have any photos this go-round.

Monday I am going to a podiatrist to order new insoles, so I will be back. I’ll get photos then.

Hey, how ‘bout them Noles?!

Awesome.

Well, actually pretty scary, not that I’d know about it. The game came on here at 9 a.m. on a Tuesday morning; not exactly prime time. I was at work.

Since streaming wasn’t a possibility, my plan was to check email as frequently as possible and keep the ticker up.

Last week was also my first week working with my supervisor in his normal position. He’s been back for two weeks, but the week before he’d been subbing for someone else. Ergo, my first week of “normal.”

Well, “normal” seems to be a pedal-to-the-floor kind of pace so far. It’s not, I don’t think, that it’s an abnormally large workload, it’s just that I have absolutely nothing to go on. My predecessor left no files, no explanation, no handy tips, so I am starting from scratch. The few things I have heard murmurings of aren’t applicable, as my supervisor is new to the position, too.

There will be a lot of detail work, and at the moment, there’s a big row to hoe in front of me trying to get it all lined up. I’m holding out hope that in the end, things will fall into place.

At the moment, everything is so very much harder than it should be, even little things like walking over to the storage and picking up a few supplies. That’s infinitely easier than maneuvering this purchasing software, but it’s still more complicated than it should be.

It should be me walking to a store room, opening a door and grabbing a few items off the shelf, then signing for them. And while I wouldn’t call that a perfect system, it seems like it should be easy enough.

Well, Tuesday, day of The Game, I needed to go grab something simple – 2014 calendars. And since I’d asked, I knew the warehouse had them. Only when I went out there, first of all the door was locked and once I finally got into the main warehouse, I found the storage room sealed. Well, dadgum.

I went back to my desk and did more stuff, then checked again. Still closed.

Right before the game was to start, I had to go to the fourth floor for something. That’s where the procurement people are, and I asked about the warehouse. She said it was open. I said I’d been there twice already and no one was there. She assured me the guy had come in late and was there.

So right before game time, I ran out there and picked up what I needed. I had to argue to get it because apparently my predecessor had these but the whole “predecessor” thing implies the person is no longer here. If the things are around, I don’t know where they are. I arrived to a completely empty desk.

Armed with the calendars, I arrived back and foolishly thought I’d check the score. No. I sat down and holy cow, the fire alarm went off.

And when I saw “went off,” that is a gross understatement. It went off RIGHT above my head. If I had screamed, no one would have heard me. It was so freaking loud I had to cover my ears to keep them from bleeding.

At first, I thought it was a “duck and cover” drill. I was trying to focus on what day it was while not focusing on not bursting my eardrums. The drills are on Wednesdays, but there was never anything that loud. I was looking at my desk, trying to figure out how I was going to practice “duck and cover” while clamping my hands to my ears, which was necessary to avoid permanent ear damage.

Then someone came by and mouthed – or maybe he said it; I sure couldn’t tell – “cafeteria” and I realized it wasn’t a scheduled drill. In the end, there was no fire, but the alarm had gone off so we had to abandon ship.

Since my desk is right by the door, I had no idea I couldn’t go out that one and wandered around to the back and down the stairs. At that point, anything to get out of the noise, although I knew the game was going on.

We had to wait for an all-clear outside and once we made it back in, not only was it 10-3 but I’d missed my appointment for my TB test.

I tried running up to the heath unit then – there’s a TV in there – but it was still locked from the drill. Later, I emailed her and she was up there, so I went up to get the test and to check out the game, which I knew at that point wasn’t good.

I got there in time to see Auburn miss a field goal, then went and got pricked with a pin (negative!) and when I came out, not three minutes later, Auburn had scored again. Not good.

Barry, who was at the game, sent an update at halftime: “This sucks.”

Fortunately for me, the fourth quarter coincided with my lunch hour, and I went back up to the health unit armed with my peanut butter sandwich, chips and moon pie.

It was agonizing. When they scored on the 100-yard run, I got up and screamed and ran into the hall. There was no one there, which might have been a good thing.

I went back in and freaked out while Auburn scored again, then held my breath on the final run. I jumped up again and screamed at the TD and scared someone who was coming in to weigh herself. She tried to humor me, but I think I blew her mind. I don’t even remember who it was.

By that time, lunch was over and I couldn’t stay for the trophy presentation. I saw it later on a broadcast here and four words for Candy Fisher: spit out the gum. That was not classy. If I can offer a bit more unsolicited advice: your kid needs a haircut. Badly.

But your husband looks good with a crystal trophy in front of him. He did look a little goofy running down the sidelines to the 100-yard run, but I was also up and screaming, so I can’t really criticize that.  

Barry's text after the game: "Happy happy happy." Man of few words, but I think he summed it up properly.

Back at work, it was like nothing had happened. I tried to muster up some excitement, but there just aren’t any college football fans.

This is one thing that frightens me about foreign service: being so totally removed from America that you forget where you’re from. I do not want that to happen to me.

I don’t think it will. I can look around and within sight, I can see three FSU things (I just put up my Christmas stocking, or that would be four.) And my shipment isn’t even here yet.

Native Nole, born and raised. That will never change.

Out and about – a little, anyway

Happy New Year!

Mine stunk. Somehow I came down with a cold right before the holiday and pretty much went to bed around 8 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. I woke up again around 11 p.m. but fell right back to sleep. I'm told the tower was lit up big time and had "2014" running down it. Maybe I'll be well enough to see "2015" on it.

On New Year’s itself, I pretty much just lay in bed all day. The TV in my living room got jiggered and I couldn’t turn it on, so after working out I just curled back up in bed and watched some movie. To liven it up, I think I coughed a bit.

To be fair, I can’t complain because really, this is only my third cold since I left PC in 2009. The first was when I returned back to Morocco and was in the very cold Atlas Mountains. The second was at some point in Jakarta, and now here. Sensing a pattern.

But it’s pretty much gone now and after spending a holiday/day off in bed, I really wanted to go outside a bit and explore.

 

The pollution has been a little rough lately (100 is “unhealthy”; it’s been 190) so I skipped Saturday but today just said screw it. I’m tired of being cooped up.

My initial goal was to head to the Sacred Heart church, known here as the Stone Church. It’s a Catholic church that finished construction in 1888. According to the map I lost somewhere, it’s a district over but looked walkable.

It’s on the north bank of the river and I thought if I followed the river, I’d find it.

Not so much. I walked – it’s a nice walk – for awhile and came to some kind of barricade. Hmm. By that point the mass had started so I figured I’d just cross the river and go see the big tower that I can see from my bathroom.

Well, somehow that got thwarted, too. I still don’t understand how. I got on some bridge and then crossed the river, but when I got off the bridge (this part was harder than it sounds. I could see the park below me, but it took forever to find how to get from the overpass down to the park) I, somehow, wasn’t on the side with the tower. I think maybe the tower is on an island off an island or something. I don’t know, but I failed at that attempt, too.

Luckily I’ll be here for two years, so there’s another shot. As it was today, my feet were hurting and I started getting hungry. On weekends I’m pretty much waking up, working out and coming back to the apartment around 10:30, then checking emails and then eating breakfast around 11. It seems senseless to eat lunch at 3 or 4 and then another meal, so I’ve pretty much been eating breakfast and sort of a late lunch/early dinner.

So at that point today, I opted to walk to what we call the “bottle opener bridge” just to say I accomplished something and then go to Yoshinoya and Bread Talk for my beef bowl and donuts, which have become a Sunday staple.(Already, which is kind of sad.)

By that time my feet were killing me in my LL Bean tennis shoes, which have absolutely no arch support. I got home and pulled them off and sure enough, there was enough blood in one of the heels to make Curt Schilling blush.

So now they’re in the washing machine and I’m completely whipped. I have to get the clothes finished tonight, though, because I need some of the stuff for tomorrow.

At this point, I think I might just set an alarm to wake up again when they’re done. It’s not like I ever sleep through the night anyway.

In Amazon news, my first order came, the one with the Junior Mints, swim cap and frying pan. The swim cap looks goofy but is fine – I swam yesterday before hanging out in the steam room. The Junior Mints are awesome, although the boxes are smaller than I anticipated.

Sadly, my “intelligent” stove doesn’t like the frying pan. I don’t understand the stove, but I’ve been told it has something to do with magnets. The frying pan, a really nice Cuisinart, isn’t metal or whatever other material the stove likes.

So that is a bummer but I’ll deal with it.

The good news that came in the mail this past week was my Chinese national card. This really means nothing in my day-to-day life, although I can leave my passport at home now, but it clears the way for me to claim my air and boat shipments when they come.

It is possible that my air shipment arrive this week, so that’s exciting. My camera is in there, and I’d really like to take some photos.

As it stands, the ones here have been snagged from the internet. I think it's pretty clear which is the church, which is the tower and which is the bottle opener bridge.