Shek O grocer
From an otherwise sleepy-looking part of Shek O in Hong Kong.
In the day I write about IT, and here's where everything else goes.
Leave a comment, but if you're shy you can write to me.
New Flip cam + new MacBook Pro + impromptu trip overseas = a sudden unexplainable urge to create something, regardless of quality. "Great DJ" by The Ting Tings was chosen as the audio track because those in control of the iPod in the car in Hong Kong refused to play it upon (my) repeated request. Huzzah!
Went to Shanghai for the World Expo (that's for another post). I thought it was fairly pleasant, and the city's changed since I last visited in 2008—the touristy bits have been cleaned up to a noticeable extent and plenty of English signs and amenities now litter the popular Bund area.
Amenities like public toilets, although I have to note at this point that both my experiences with the public toilets there did not go well. The first time, it was evening along the Bund and I stepped into the toilet only to walk in on a woman in one of the cubicles, in full-squat and peeing, with the door wide open.
The second time was in a mall, and I stepped right in a yellow puddle in the middle of the walkway before making it to a cubicle. Then going in, I saw a full pile of soiled sanitary napkins in the bin, splayed out looking like the St. Valentine's Day massacre.
Oh and this doesn't quite count as a toilet incident, since there wasn't a toilet per se, but then there was that mother carrying her 6 or 7 year-old daughter over a drain to pee. Most of it was flowing down the street—fast—toward my feet, so I hopped out of the way but landed in some slippery sputum and almost lost my balance. (I knew what it was because it was, umm, bubbled.)
Okay time for photos.
The colour-changing Bund Waibaidu Bridge.
Hot and sour fish soup and numb and spicy hot pot-flavoured potato chips. Uh.
A porta-loo which means business.
The "milk" turned out to be some fairly thick yoghurt. It was drinkable though, so I had it the next morning and hoped for the best.
Oh Shanghai, how you know the best way to make your food sound as delectable as possible in English. Gooker? Croaker? Wrinkled skin pork?
Finish it off with some of that glutionous rice. Yum-my.
Dear JFK Airport,
I propose an exchange programme with Singapore's Changi Airport. It could be fun. Except I don't know what Changi would learn from you. Maybe the lesson of complacency: how a large airport can still have processes resembling a much smaller airport in some remote European or American city, and not at all an international transit hub for those entering and exiting the country.
Did I tell you about the time I was at the Louvre and I kept feeling like I had forgotten something? It was at the back of my mind; all day I rushed around the museum feeling like I had forgotten something. At the very last five minutes before it closed, I glanced at my folded map and realised: I FORGOT THE MONA LISA. It had been staring at me all day on the front cover, but somehow had failed to register.
Luckily, I managed to rush to the exhibit in time to see it, just as the doors were about to close. Phew. I mean, that's like going to New York and forgetting about MoMA or The Museum of Natural History, right?
Yeah. All day I kept my eyes firmly affixed to the Penn Station mark on my map circled in ballpoint by the airport information counter clerk. It was only on the E train back to the airport that it hit me like a bag of wet cement. And then I forgot I could use the airport lounge with my airline membership, so I ate cold pizza, unsuccessfully hunted for a power outlet and paid for Wi-Fi.Was in Orlando for a work trip. Not much happened. So here are some pictures. More photos from my unintended day in New York, in a bit.
There must be something that the US Embassy does as an employer that makes its staff feel extra entitled.
Because why else is the visa application process one designed to strike fear and nervousness in the applicants? And how did process inefficiency become something so easily accepted, while any form of inefficiency in the local government passport office —well-oiled machine, it is—automatically invites disdain? First there was the application process. Once you make it past the guard barking instructions at people stepping out of their vehicles— you aren't allowed to park here—you're greeted by a cold grey building with guards peeking out through small windows.
Make it past that and the unpleasant receptionist, you get to queue up to see the unpleasant woman with the stapler, who will point impatiently to the metal tray on which you slip your documents to her. She will then rifle through them noisily and shove the remainder back on the tray to you. That's punctuated by the loud confirmation of her stapler.
While queueing to get interviewed, you feel like you're violating someone's privacy. Person after person in an open room facing the waiting area, telling their entire life stories to get temporary work visas into the US. Some people get turned away because they didn't bring adequate documentation, or won't be able to fly back to Singapore just to collect their passports from the embassy. One guy said he would call his attorney, and stomped out, while a roomful of bored people watched him go. Word to the wise, wear a watch there. For some reason, there are no wall clocks and they confiscate your phone at the entrance so waiting there without time reference turns A Damn Long Time into plain eternity.
A few days later (or weeks, I hear for some), you get to come back and repeat the waiting process again. This time, because collection time is usually in the afternoon, you get to wait under the sweltering Singapore heat under the sun.
There's a little sheltered area in the carpark, but the queue snakes beyond it onto the tar road. Most in line have fashioned shields for their heads from whatever they had: sheets of paper, bigger sheets of paper, bags, bare hands. Who designed this? Is it a matter of assuming the people here would accept standing under the sun with no shelter because they are native to the country? Or am I just spoiled by my airconditioned nation? Inside the shelter are rows of aluminium benches. Behind those is a makeshift row of wooden benches, which I assume were put there to accomodate the crowd. Not that the volume of people should have been unexpected; they're all there by appointment. Every now and then, the queue moves as people get up, the aluminium benches groaning as the weight on them relaxes. You start making little benchmarks for yourself. Once you make it into the sheltered area, you feel bad for the poor sods waiting in the sun. And then you get a seat—look at the suckers who are standing. Then you graduate from the back wooden benches to the aluminium. Getting there. Then the guard says you may approach The Final Queue, right at the guard house. Don't step beyond the faded yellow line though, or the lady behind the glass window will yell at you. And then... And then. You get your visa. You can hardly believe it. It was such an arduous process, you forgot how many steps it took to get here. The American Embassy is quite efficient, you decide, in a haze. Maybe it's sharing oxygen with a throng of sweaty, disgruntled people, but once you make it out of there, you've never been happier with your visa and the embassy that issued it.Recording equipment was confiscated upon entry, so I went with analogue recording—my sketchbook.
