Feel the chi... FEEL IT!

Yes, as some of you guys know I've taken up tai-chi. And no, I'm not out in the park at sunrise with the old ladies practicing. It's quite interesting so far, which is the part that is supposed to be less fun, where we learn to relax (loosen up baby!) and learn the movements for later when we actually are supposed to learn to feel the chi. It's basically learning the movements and such for an especially long kata if you did karate.

Though, I wasn't very smart about it when I started. Knowing I had a 4 hour tai chi lesson later that day, I went to the gym downstairs and did the free trial day. Probably not the brightest idea, but I really wanted to see the facilities and how busy it would be in the approximate time that I'd be using it. For the record, the answer was decent, nothing to write home about but pretty clean and REALLY quiet, like only 10-20 people in there. So if you're ever thinking about starting tai chi, my advice to you is not to have a 40 minute run earlier in the day. Bad. Bad. Idea. Or at least be in a lot better shape than I am right now.

I actually don't know what the chi is supposed to feel like, since well, I can't understand Teacher. Which isn't that big a deal, because it sounds like more than me can't understand because he speaks mandarin in the class. Of course, I also can't understand the assistant teachers when they speak cantonese, but I have two or three people who are helping to translate for me, which is super awesome of them, and I really appreciate it if you're one of those people looking at this. I was telling Darmita the other day that I thought I could feel tingling in my hands and my fingers were getting all swollen, which she says is kind of the beginning of maybe feeling chi, but it could also be that i was swinging my hands around, or maybe I'm just getting fat fingers. At any rate, I'm not sure it was chi I was starting to feel, but I'm going to say it was because then I feel like I've accomplished something!

I'm slowly picking up cantonese words, mostly the ones that I think are fun to say, like si-to-be-le, and chu-go-lik. Actually, I think all of the words that I've learned have to do with food, because that's the easiest thing to learn when you sit down and go, what's this? And going with my above theme of getting fat, there's a lot of food being eaten, even muck pay. I should start titleing every post with a word and it's translation so I can learn at least a word a day.


I was also attempting to fill out some forms I found on the Canadian embassy website. The one where they say to register with the embassy in case something bad happens so they can alert everyone you know, like a piano falling out of a 37th floor window, landing on the street in front of you causing you to jump backwards, bop your head on a lamp post and forget who you are.

It took me a while to figure out why the heck Australian is a status in Canada. It's obvious that we have to keep a careful eye out on those subversive Aussies. Either that or they don't have an embassy in HK, which is a close second guess. That website was actually a pretty good source of information. I was surprised to learn that there are apparently 250,000 Canadians in Hong Kong. It was on the internet, and the internet is never wrong, so that's the number I'm going with. I'm dissapointed though, because I've only met about 30 or so. 249,970 to go!

Oct 22

So, it's my second week of work and things are starting to look okay. I haven't yet ventured into an actual restaurant to try and order anything, but I'm content with the assortment of cake shops around here. Considering I ate at one place for the past 7 years for lunch, I'll probably be happy with this routine. Besides, it's cheap. Of course, so are the restaurants. Assuming you're happy with noodles or fried rice or something else similar that is easy to mass produce, you can eat for $20HK a day. Which works out to $2.50 CDN. Of course, my cake shop pastries usually work out to about $2 CDN, so that's even better.

I don't think it's related to the cake shop lunches, but I'm starting to seriously think about signing up for the gym downstairs. It's nice and convenient, and as I alluded to above, I'm not currently able to effectively order meals, so I have a lot of time on my lunch break. What better way to waste it than sweating to the oldies?

Other than that, things are still pretty hectic. I haven't any trips planned for work yet, but I believe that the Japanese organization was making noises about having me come out for a visit. And of course, work still hasn't finished transferring over my information so I can't access a number of important work websites. I'm betting it will be another week or so before it's all set up. If it's that quick.

On the weekend we finally had some slack time that we could spend outdoors, and I started to miss everyone. I don't know how long it will be before I get really sad when I'm home alone and don't have Katey telling me to go play computer, or to stop dancing, or the boys asking me to play games. Not yet anyways!

Oh, we have geckos. They're so cute. I suppose they're technically vermin, but they eat insects, and anything that clears mosquitoes from my place is fine by me.

So I've started work. I always thought that a tie was like a noose, except it just hung the wrong way, but halfway through the second day, maybe it's not so bad. I feel spiffy for sure, but maybe I'm just being vain.

I had my first tai-chi lesson on Friday morning. It was interesting, and I realized how I do a lot of things unconcsciously that are not very conducive to relaxing. Quite a few times I had to stop, consciously relax my body and start over again. I wonder if that's something everyone does or just me. Because I always thought that I was pretty easy going and relaxed. I'd hate to see how tense the people I think are uptight are.

I also spent part of the weekend looking for my office building. For all of you budding stalkers out there, I'm in the Honeywell Tower (big surprise there!) at 255 Kings Road, North Point, Hong Kong. Of course, since I think it's in North Point, I get out at the North Point MTR (subway) stop to go see if I can find it. 15 minutes of walking later, I'm one MTR stop over, and realize that the building is right at the Fortress Hill MTR stop. At least it's going to be easy in the future.

The building itself is okay. There's a bunch of restaurants on the lower floors, and some little shops and things as well. There's also a fitness club in the base of the building as well. Who knows, I might become motivated and attempt to work out a bit at some point. I doubt it, but maybe.

The best thing about the building is the number of cake shops around. Go outside and there's like little cakeshops all over. You can go wandering around and find them everywhere. Fresh egg tarts, char siu bao, little char siu pies... Mmmmm.

Sunday was spent as a lazy day. Wandering around Sai Kung, helping D bake, and messing around with the computer. The only problem is the computer is in her dad's room, and I'd much rather we put one down in our room. Or two ideally. I think it's going to be a while before I'm WoWing again.

Monday was interesting. I'm definitely not used to the crush of people getting into the MTR on the way to work. I've always taken it in the middle of the day or on the weekends so it's not so busy, so I never realized how busy it was. The station attendants with the whacking batons was an eye opener.

Work is going to be interesting. I have nobody that I will actually work with in the office, so I am dealing with everyone remotely. I had my boss tell me he doesn't have anything for me for the next couple of weeks, so I'm kind of on my own doing learning and such until I'm needed in Japan, which if I understand things should be extremely quickly.

Until then, I guess it's time to see if the hour long commute is worth living out in the sticks and actually having lots of space.

More of week 1

So yeah. Dealing with being sick and getting over jetlag all in one isn't really pleasant. On the plus side, it gives you an excuse to lie around in bed all day. If only. Between hockey, tai chi, shoping and god knows what else I haven't been able to lie around at all.

I also haven't found time to look at getting a PC, which is something that I definitely need to do, and soon. And somewhere to put it, or at least run LAN cables into the room. Once I start working, and D goes back to her normal work schedule, I imagine I'll have an awful lot of spare time.

The good thing about the whole being sick was I got to visit the herbalist twice! And no, it's not those kinds of herbs. I always forget how well those things work, though I'm not sure if it's partly because the herbs taste so disgusting that you can't help but feel better when you stop drinking them.

The hockey here was better than I expected. I'm pretty excited about it, since it's about the level of the work team I was playing on before I left, if not a little bit better. There wasn't much defense help from the forwards at all, but it's something you get used to.

And there's really lots more I should be saying, but I'm feeling lazy. And I can't remember what I've already put in. I also have to figure out how to get pictures out of this camera phone so I can post some pictures for comparing living expenses and stuff.

But that can wait. It's Sunday afternoon. Time to go be lazy!

Hong Kong - Week 1

So I've left Vancouver and am in Hong Kong now. It hasn't hit me that I'm here to stay yet, and I doubt it will until a couple of weeks when I don't head home. Though maybe when I start work on Monday, that might help convince me I'm staying.

I was a lot less mopey when I left Vancouver than I thought I would be. Maybe it was because I was getting excited, maybe it was because I was too tired to be mopey, maybe it was because we were walking through the airport with my 2 year old niece screaming how she's "pretty like her mama".

I have to say that my decision to splurge on the business class ticket was a good one. The girl who checked me in didn't blink when my two regular checked in bags totalled 65 kg, on top of which I checked in two oversize bags. They were supposed to charge me extra for everything over 60 kg, so the fact that she didn't charge me for those 5 kg, or the entire hockey bag extra that I checked in was kind of nice.

Though, business class Oasis airways wasn't anything to be excited about. The food was horrible as far as business class goes and I couldn't really say anything about the service because I was asleep the entire time. At the least I managed to sleep the entire flight with it because, damn, those fully reclining chairs are worth the extra money.

I managed to get into HK okay, but I incubated Katie's cold all the flight and I was SICK when I got into Hong Kong. It's taken me almost a week, and I'm still not completely over it, but I'm mostly getting better. I'm getting bored of typing right now though, so I'll finish updating this later, when I can fully go into why it took me an hour to claim my bags.

29 hours, and counting

Things done so far:

1. Last day of work.
2. Sold my truck.
3. Packed most of my stuff.

Things yet to do:

1. Pick through my CDs.
2. Go to the airport.

I'm beginning to get nervous.