Health and beauty weekend

I think I can really get used to this sauna and massage thing. Well, my massage session will end soon but I can always to go my gym for the sauna.

I went to the office on Saturday but didn't end up doing any actual work. I went to print out and bind some building codes and other guidelines that I always use. I think I'm getting to the point where I can read these codes and know what's important. At first, it just seemed like there is an endless amount and I didn't know what was what. I talked to X about the CA PE exam and she told me that we need to know the California Building Code for it. I didn't know there was one... But I'm guessing it's should be similar to ASCE stuff except with heavier emphasis on seismic. Maybe more stringent guidelines. I should really spend some time figuring out what I'm supposed to know for this exam because it seems like there's a lot of material in the exam that I won't be learning on the job. I think for the actual geotech part, I will be fine. But things like seismic, surveying, and other civil engineering topics, I won't have much exposure.

I went to the gym afterwards and was walking all over Langhram Place (the mall next door) for a decent dinner option. Things were either too pricey or I had already tried it. I ended up to going to Honeymoon desserts and had dessert for dinner. That place is really good. I need to go hang out in a different mall after my workouts. There were also a lot of people at the food court level because of a Hello Kitty Christmas display. I couldn't really see what it was because there were just too many people all trying to pose with the displays. I swear this city is crazy about Hello Kitty. Can a city have an official cartoon character?! I think I'm going to start taking pictures of Hello Kittys whenever I see them. Should be an interesting collection.

I started Sunday with a hike. I saw a reservoir while taking the bus to Shatin one day and decided to go hiking around it today. A lot of people got off at that stop as well. Hiking is actually pretty popular here. There were a lot of other people on the trail. It wasn't crowded but I definitely ran into a lot of families and groups on the way. While it is good to see other people out and about, some people are very obnoxious. The reservoir is not very big, only 1.4km for the entire loop. So if you shout, other people can hear you from across the reservoir. There was a lady who kept whooping and telling people to hurry up. There are also people who carry their own radios and blast them. One old guy actually had the FM radio going and was receiving mainly static. I don't know what he was trying to listen to.

 Can you spot the monkey?? There were a lot of monkeys. And a lot of signs telling you not to feed them.

Anyway, there are actually a series of reservoirs supplying water to the Kowloon area. There are link paths between them and I took one to get to another reservoir farther north. It was a cool day out so I felt that I had enough water, snacks, and energy to keep going. I ended up walking around that reservoir for only a little bit before attacking another family trail. I swear the category of "family trail" is very deceiving. You would think it's a walk in the park. But no, it was mostly uphill with many steps and small paths around the side of the mountain. I guess that's why it said 1km, approximately 30 minutes. I was like, there's no way 1km would taken 30 minutes. Should have known better. The end of that trail deposited me at a big road but I wasn't exactly sure where I was. I just knew that I was about 3km from where I had gotten off the bus. So I figured I was closer to the next town (neighborhood) than going back. I wandered around a bit and just  went the opposite way of other people. This was a good choice because it took me to a street with bus stops. I successfully found a bus going back to my neighborhood and took it back. I really love the public transit system here. I knew that there had to be a bus that will take me to the right place, even though I didn't even know where I was.

I showered and at lunch at KFC. Have to replenish those fat and calories lost! I walked around a bit and then went to get a haircut. My hair was getting really long. The guy definitely cut off more than 2 inches though. I think in about a month or two, I have to find some time to go get it straightened again. It's getting curly again. It's such a long process. Getting a hair cut beforehand is part of that process. I want to minimize the time I'm sitting there so I need shorter hair. Then I have to wait for my hair to grow out a bit more because after the actual hair straightening, which takes 4-5 hours, I need to get another haircut in another few days to get rid of all the split ends caused by the extreme heat.

I had another massage. This is the 4th out of my 6 paid sessions. They keep trying to sell me another package but they're not very appealing, price wise. The facilities are not bad though. They have nice showers, a sauna, a hair products. But there are better deals on Groupon! For example, their package deals, even with all the "discounts" are still $300+ (HKD) per session. Groupon deals are usually $100-ish a session. Anyway, I'm putting these massages down as a "health" expense. My masseuse says my back and legs are very hard. I should make a bigger effort to get out to MegaBox to make use of the swimming pool there.

I bought another pair of shoes after dinner. hehe. But some sales people here are way too aggressive. They will literally follow you around, chatter like crazy, and push for a sale. I mean, it gets to the point where I don't even want to ask  for the item in my size because they'll just keep pushing that or another product until I buy something. It's difficult to get yourself out! Maybe I need to learn to not be so polite about things. When my coworkers get phone calls trying to sell them stuff, they just say, "I don't need it. Thanks." and hang up. The salesman on the other end is still talking! I guess that's just the way things work here. It's much better at bigger department stores though. The employees don't seem to care as much.

Very busy week coming up: hard core work on submission, seminar on Thursday, bowling and hot pot on Friday  30 km hike on Saturday!

November updates

Only the second post for November! This is not acceptable. I've been really busy this week. Took a taxi home three days in a row. But let's do things in chronological order.

The day after my hiking practice, I went with a friend from work to watch Tower Heist. It was a pretty good movie. It had action, suspense, and humor. It wasn't really a comedy as in there wasn't a joke and punchline every other minute. The ending got very exaggerated but it was definitely a good movie. The setting is NYC, same as the last movie I saw. There were a few "American" references that I wasn't sure an international audience would appreciate.

Anyway, interesting things about going to the movies in HK. The regular popcorn served is the caramel one. I haven't tasted butter popcorn in theaters yet and not sure if they have them. My theory is that butter (dairy product) is more expensive than sugar... Also, aside from having assigned seats, movies start on time. As in, the previews are played before the advertised time for the movie showing. Both times I've been to the movies here, I got into the theater just as the actual movie started playing. I remarked during one lunchtime to my coworkers that there doesn't seem to be previews. They were like, of course there is!

Last weekend was interesting. I went into the office on Saturday for a few hours. I arrived before noon in order to make an attempt to open another bank account. I chose the Bank of China because it offers a credit card that you can use in the Mainland without charges. I thought I had brought everything I needed but apparently a receipt for my rent does not qualify as proof of address. I had to go print out a bank statement. Anyway, I left my application as it was and went back to finish it this morning. Customer service is lacking here. They didn't really bother to explain things. But I guess it's good that they didn't try to sell me a bunch of stuff. Their online interface is very simple and you get to chose what you see right after you log in. Waiting for my ATM card to come in the mail now. Let's see if this credit card gets approved.

I went to the gym Saturday night but there's too much people there on Saturday nights. There are also too many personal trainers roaming about. They make me nervous. Could start selling me their service at any time. They roam in packs. As I was heading to the shower, I saw that the sauna was on and decided to give it a try. I started sweating intensely after about 5 minutes. I had dinner nearby and by the time I got back, I was extremely sleepy and went to bed early. I felt really sleepy the next morning as well. I felt like the sauna gave me some extra doses of melatonin.

I made a trip out to the Breakthrough Village, the host of our 30km hike on Sunday for the briefing. There were a lot more other participants than I had expected. Many of them seemed to be high school students. We felt old as we saw at the back of the auditorium wondering why we're singing songs instead of learning about useful stuff. I headed to TST after that and I had my third lympathic massage. Again, I felt extremely sleepy afterwards. I guess it's good to get more sleep on the weekends.

This week, I went from never having gone to the Buildings Department (BD) to going there every single day. All the civil engineering projects here have to be submitted to a government body for extra checking and approval. It's an interesting process. We had submitted our drawings for some trial (test) piles and had been communicating with the BD officer to address his concerns. It's apparently common to get a lot of comments and have extra conditions imposed on your submission during the approval process. This whole process takes up a lot of time and effort. But it's very interesting because you must know your own submission and project very well in order to answer questions. I'm beginning to see more and more of the entire design process here in HK. My team definitely wants me to be more independent and be able to do more of the non-analysis parts of projects.

Next week will be another long week as we are trying to push out another submission. But Thursday evening will be another geotechnical team workshop. This time it will be by the slope team. And Friday night, our team is having a team gathering. We're going bowling and then hot pot. Should be fun.

Hiking practice!

Really tired after a 15km hike today! In my last post, I mentioned that I signed up for a 30km hike. Today, a few of us did a practice hike with one of the guys who did it last year. The guy leading the hike is also in the geotech group. And it turns out that he's super fit and hikes really fast. Good thing I've been exercising somewhat lately because otherwise I would not have been able to keep up. 

The hike is mostly on trails but the trails are not easy. We started off on a concrete road and then turned into this really small trail and at some point, we totally went off any marked trails in order to cross this big hill. We got lost at this point trying to find the right trail and climbed all over the side of this mountain. Lessons learned from the first two hours of the hike: wear hiking shoes (which I did), wear long pants (which I did not). After crossing a stream, we found the first BBQ area where our support teams can meet us. Now I see how important it is to have a support team. There's no way we could carry all the food and water we want to carry. I've always got the feeling that our geotech team is very close in terms of things that need teamwork. We're always watching out for each other. Let's see if this holds true for our support team!

We went up one part of the Maclehose trail, which is one of the trails that are really well kept in HK. Things were very nicely marked at this point. But it was still a tough trail since there were a lot of rocks and other loose things on the ground. We saw people paragliding. There were a lot of other people on the trail as well. I didn't find the ascend to be particularly bad. One of the guys had a really hard time though because his legs kept cramping up. I found the descend to be more difficult because it was very hard on the knees and a lot more of the trail consisted of rocks and dirt. I went through nearly 2L of water on this part of the hike. It took us 6 hours but that was including getting lost and all. So we're looking at about 10-12 hours of hiking on the actual day. 

I finally understand how hiking can help with running. If the hike was this intense, with a lot of uphills, then it can be a really good workout for the leg muscles. I feel like running on flat land builds the lung capacity more than muscles. Anyway, I need to start training for that half marathon because I saw that they charged me. Actually, I think after the 30km hike, I might be mentally ready for a full marathon. A marathon is over in 4-5 hours but this hike will last at least twice as long!

Not going into the office this weekend. No one from my team is going into the office. Weekends should be time for recharging anyway. 

Pumpkins and other fun

This past week was a relatively relaxing week at work. I mean, we're still trying to make a whole lot of deadlines and such but since things weren't imminent, we didn't see the point of staying late.

On Tuesday, I organized a pumpkin carving with the other graduate engineers. Several of us went down to Taste (a supermarket) and bought a couple of pumpkins. Some of us brought some knives from home and we carved them. The knives weren't exactly the right kind, the rinds were very thick, and we didn't have a whole lot of time. But we managed to finish both of them. It was amazing how many people we managed to cram into a tiny meeting room. The company is very fond of glass walls so everyone who walked by did a double-take. My boss used the meeting room after us and he was like, what is going on here??

Thursday turned into a short day with all of us leaving by 7:30pm. It felt really early to me and I walked around my neighborhood and picked up some papayas and shui mai. The papayas were small ones and looked really good. I only wanted one but the lady stuffed three of them into a bag and it was only $10 for all of them. I'm going to make some papaya and banana milkshakes soon! I got back, realized it was still really early, so I got changed and went back out to look for some dinner. There's a place that I've been meaning to try out. They make rice in clay pots. I ordered take out and they said to come back in 15 minutes. So I decided to go shopping for a external hard drive for work. I've been meaning to do this so that I can keep a hard drive at work and have work and personal stuff separated.

I got back and watched part of a movie while eating my take out. The clay pot rice didn't turn out to be as good as I imagined. I thought that the rice would be tastier. Anyway, I saw a place that makes sticky rice. Smelled really good. I'll save that for the next time I get out early, I guess.

I'll admit that I did no work at all Friday afternoon. We had a meeting Friday morning. And then the people who were promoted to Grade 6, Senior Engineer, in the geotech group held a celebration lunch. They booked 8 tables at the dim sum restaurant and we all crammed in there. Some of the people from the site offices even came back for this. After lunch, I went around with my Inner Challenge team to fundraise.

I joined the company's Inner Challenge team where we're hiking for 30km in the mountains. We're supposed to raise funds for the Breakthrough Youth Camp as well. The company sponsors the event and we have several team participating. The youth camp was designed by the company as a charitable activity. This event is somewhat of a tradition at the office so the old timers all know what's going on. It takes a lot of time to walk around the entire office asking people for money. We collected a lot though. People are very nice. It was also interesting to finally walk around our floor and meet more people. I feel like I've never ventured out of our little corner. Getting too comfortable nowadays.

So lunch went until around 2pm. We fund raised for 2 hours. And then we had a foundations design workshop starting from 4pm. The workshop had too many speakers and went an hour over. These workshops always come with food at the end but a lot of people left by the time it ended. There weren't as many people to begin with this time. So there was a lot of leftover food which we brought back downstairs.

A lot of the food actually disappeared overnight. We think that people took them home. Anyway, I was back at the office this afternoon (Saturday) to do some calculations. I feel like I have no time to actually crunch numbers during the working hours. A few of us munched on the huge plate of salad that was still in the fridge. Very healthy lunch.

Lots of submissions on the horizon though. So I'm foreseeing a couple of very busy weeks...!

6 Months! 10K and tailor made shirts

After next week, I will have worked for 6 months at my first job! I can't believe time has gone by so fast. At the same time, I also feel like I've been working forever. I feel like I've done an incredible amount in these past 6 months, both in terms of work and in life. I've moved to yet another country, started my first real job, got my first apartment, gotten a lot more fluent in Cantonese, learned the work culture in HK, joined a gym, and expanded my circle of friends and acquaintances. 

More on the recent stuff though. I ran a 10K today and feeling sunburn now. This race didn't feel like it had a lot of people. It was held at the Disneyland Resort but we didn't actually get to run inside the park. We ran around the Inspiration Lake and Arboretum instead. I thought the course looked very short on the map and then read the legend where it said that the 10K participants are to run around the lake+arboretum 3 times! I usually don't like running in circles but I guess the circle was big enough and there weren't a lot of opportunities to see other people going in the opposite direction. 

Anyway, Disneyland is very interesting. The MTR goes there and once you're there, it doesn't feel like HK at all. There's a lot of open space. You can see the hills that have no development on them and there's even a parking lot. The race was pretty very well organized. The bag check felt pretty secure and well looked after. The was even a kids race that was held at the field next to all the booths. There were a lot of families. The only downside to this event was that they had a lot speakers and pre-event things. They even started late because there were too many people they had to recognize! Their awards ceremony was also very late. Not sure why they decided to hold it an hour after everyone is supposed to have finished.

It was very hot. I ran it with a friend from work. We were very disappointed at the end at the lack of food provided. They gave away a goodie bag and such but only had one little snack booth with non-appetizing selections. After the race, we walked around the outside of Disneyland and saw the pier. I don't think this pier is operational. We were wondering if there were any boats to take us back to the Kowloon side. The pier was farther than we thought so we missed out on the raffle at the end. We took the MTR to Tung Chung and got lunch there before heading back. I passed out after getting back for a bit before heading out to my tailoring appointment.

I got this Groupon deal for 3 tailor made shirts. I had made an appointment and an Indian guy picked up the phone. Then I found out that it's in the mall next to the Chungking Mansion. When I finally found the place, it turned out to be this very tiny place but it was very busy! I think everyone else there had the Groupon deal. The guy did some quick measurements and I picked out the fabric I wanted. I didn't think they had very good solid colors. Their solid colors were very guy-colors. So all the ones I picked were striped ones. Hope it turns out well. It was very hard to visualize what the end product would look like with just fabric. I swear there were many different styles for women shirts. Anyway, I told the guy to make my shirts shorter. I really don't like shirts that are too long since I don't tuck mine in. I guess that was the good part about the tailoring. The whole process was very fast but now I have to wait 3 weeks. 

Weekend hike

Living in a crowded, busy, very urban city makes me miss the outdoors and nature. Where is my nearest tree? So I decided to go hiking today (Sunday). The nice thing about HK is that nature is very readily accessible. I took the MTR and then a bus to find some hiking trails in Sai Kung. Sai Kung is a mostly hilly, mountainous forested area in eastern Kowloon. I took the bus past Sai Kung town and got off at a bus station where I got some fish balls to start my journey. 

I went on this trail that went along the reservoir that had a lot of mangroves, wedding picture-taking people, and mini-mangroves:

The end of the trail leads to the Folk Museum, where they rebuilt a part of a Hakka village. You can go inside to see how people used to live, the tools that they used to harvest, etc. The house arrangements are very Hakka in that they all have the second story loft. 

The actual ruins of the village are down the road. Very educational for families. Nice hike plus more! I saw a couple of families on the way. 

 Instead of turning back and going back to the bus station, I continued on another trail. All the HK trails are very well marked with levels of difficulty, length, maps, etc. Impossible to get lost! I went on a "family trail" so I think it's supposed to be easy. There are "country trails" which are very long but they split them up into "stages" and you can do the stages separately.

This family trail had a lot of stone steps that led up the side of a mountain. The views were very nice. I got a call from a friend while walking along this trail. She asked if I wanted to do something outdoors! It's too bad that she lives in HK Island and Sai Kung is very far for her.

Lots of steps. This is probably not such a good trail for small children. I didn't see very many people along this trail. At some point, a helicopter flew by broadcasting something about "beware of forest fires."

After I found the end of the trail, I made it back to the main road and got on a bus to Sai Kung town. I really like this town because it's got a very busy pier where you can buy fresh seafood. You buy them directly from the boats. I got a pineapple bun from a really busy store. They're probably famous or something because the line is very long. The bun was also relatively expensive. This one equals the cost of 3 buns at the shops near where I live! But it was very good.

I ate it sitting on this platform that overlooks the piers and some palm trees.



All in all, it was a very good trip. Didn't take too much time or effort to get there. Even managed to get back before sunset even though I left early afternoon.

Mid week holiday

I think I can get used to these mid-week public holidays. Wednesdays are definitely good days to be on holiday. Because it chops up your week and it feels like you're working less. Or at least have a day to recharge and get more sleep.

I went for another massage with another Groupon deal. This place is pretty nice. They give you a locker and the bathroom has showers and a sauna. I was there pretty early so there weren't a lot of other patrons. I have 5 more sessions left. I think I need to use them wisely.

After this, I was in a very dreamy and relaxed mood. I found an Indonesian restaurant that another HK blogger blogged about. The place is in a little corner with lots of other Indonesian restaurants and shops. All the other customers were Indonesian, with the exception of this one family where the dad is white. Anyway, the food was really good. They definitely use a very good combination of coconut milk and spices. Their chili sauce definitely wasn't the same as the Padang ones. Anyway, their menu has a lot of good selections and their customers all seem very happy. Wish I can speak more Indonesian. I think I've forgotten a lot of it already.

I walked to find some shoe stores to buy another pair of running shoes. The first place I tried to find didn't exist anymore. I kept on going to the second place on my list and nearly gave up. I was right outside their building and couldn't figure out where they were. And then I realized that they were inside the residential apartment building. They set up shop inside the 1st floor of an apartment building. Seriously would not have found the place if I wasn't looking for it. The place was very small but was very busy! They carry Mizuno, Nike, and Asics. I gave Mizuno another try because their shoes start at a lower price. But I didn't like how hard it felt, which was one of my complaints about my pair of Mizuno shoes. The lady said that Mizuno uses air cushion and Asics uses gel. I was wearing my Brooks and she said that they are very rare in HK, have to go to Singapore or US to get Brooks. I ended up buying a pair of Asics that has more gel than what I've been wearing. Went for a run in them after getting back. They felt pretty good.

Work is very busy. So much stuff to do! We're bidding for another job that I think we have a good chance at winning. I seriously did not imagine I would be doing so much in such a short time. Learning new things every single day. Sometimes I wish I didn't have to learn so fast but I guess it would get boring.