返屋

The one day I take the camera to film the way back home almost no people were on the streets. It had been such a crowded week... Anyway, I had the part of a song stuck in my head so it was a good excuse to clean the dust off my synth and try to record it. Not the best I've produced (had some trouble with the new pedal), but it was getting late and I wanted to upload the video soon. I'll record it again some day.

By the way, if 'anyone' knows the name of the song, could you tell me? :P Sí? Sí?

Imagine all the people

Hong Kong Island has around 1,289,001 inhabitants (I'm the last '1'). Since it only has 80 square kilometres, population density is over 16,000 people/km^2. If we include Kowloon as well (the most populated are in continental Hong Kong), total surface would add up to 88km^2, and population would total around 3 million. Which means the population density would be over 35,000 people per square kilmetre!

Australia averages 2.6 people/km^2 (as a whole country). New York, as the most densely populated city in the U.S. has over 10 thousand people per square kilometre. It looks like there is no consensus about the most populated city in the world, but the ones fighting for first place are Dhaka, in Bangladesh, Lagos, in Nigeria, Mumbai, in India and Hong Kong, in... here.

According to some geography-oriented websites, 90% of the world's population use only 10% of the land, and 90% of the earth's inhabitants live above the equator. I feel like I abandoned my family to be a minority.

About dried food...

It seems that people here like all sorts of dried food. Not sure if they eat it like that or buy it that way so it's easier to store and cook afterwards. Back home we do eat dried food, but we don't have that much variety.

In Chile we eat dried and salted horse meat. We call it 'charqui'. (And it's awesome.)

Not even seafood escapes the dryness. They even sold abalones! I suspect they import them from Japan (at least that's the impression I have after having started to watch "Heart of Greed")

And also all sorts of sea cucumbers...

...that are also kept in glass containers.

I have no idea what this is. I guess at some point I'll end up eating it, same thing with the rest of the food in the photos. :P

Dragon B... fruit.

I was told Dragonfruit comes from Australia, but it's the first time I've seen it in my life. All the more reason to try it.

The poor fruit remained on the living room's table for four or five days; I wasn't sure if it was ripe enough and I also had no idea how to eat it (which can be crucial when it comes to first impressions on food, as I've recently learned). Finally, Angel's parents gave me a hint: open it up and scoop the inside.

It was like eating a flavourless coconut, only that a bit softer, gooey and full of seeds. Mi stomach complained the rest of the evening. I wonder if I ate it at the right time. I'll probably have to try it again under the supervision of some local to make sure. Yay for second chances!

Double ammendment

Few days ago I was told that duck tongues are not supposed to be eaten with cartilague. Oops. Apparently, they are to be held from the base and bite the meat off the more bony part, leaving the latter on the plate. So basically it was like putting a whole crab's leg in my mouth and chewing it until I was able to gulp it.

No wonder the waitress had that weird look on her face when she took the completely empty dish. My reasons for eating the tongues whole was the following:

(Waiter comes to take the order)

W: What would you like, sir?

B: Give me dish number 201, please.

M: (Frowns, then smiles, leans over and speaks as if he were addressing a baby) that is duck tongues, sir.

B: I know: I want them.

M: (Writes it down on his sheet of paper, shaking his head disapprovingly as if he were saying "ah, stupid gwailos, why do they ask this things if they don't eat them".)

So, when I had the tongues in front of me, I decided not to give him any reason to think like that, thus eating everything on the plate. Oh, well.

Second ammendment: thanks to my dad's prompt e-mail and Favina's comment on the Spanish version of this blog, the red flowers a couple entries ago are called Poinsettia, or Christmas flowers.

A walk through Times Square

This entry is purely experimental. Right below this paragraph you'll see a podcast icon ready to be played. The audio is precisely the sounds of the place I'm writing about, Times Square. The idea (only for those who want) is to play the podcast as you read the post, so as to be "immersed" a bit more while reading. Just trying to see whether the experience of reading  improves or not. 

Times Square. The most crowded place in my current neighbourhood. Full of offices, restaurants and the most diverse stores. It's... always full of people. 

  

The first eight floors are only clothes and electronics; the next five have restaurants, and then on I couldn't continue since I was starving and temptation was too big. I'll try to get to the top some day. (Isn't that what most people want in life?) 

Had never seen escalators going up two floors instead of one. I feel small town-ish.  

For the first time in four or five days, I got to see the sun. It's not that it's always cloudy or I never go out during the day; buildings are just so tall (and numerous, and everywhere) that rarely sun beams come through. I have to change the route I take to my school.  

Local fauna seen from the appartment. Miaurr!

Stick your tongue out; say: "Aaaaah"

I tried lots of food yesterday. Starting with shark fin soup. And yes; I am aware of what becomes of those poor marine creatures after they're deprived of their fin. But I'm in China and as a food lover I couldn't not try once one of this country's most famous dishes.

Fortunately, I didn't like it much. It's not that it was bad or anything, but the flavour didn't come as anything too spectacular. It was quite soft and had some little translucent thread-like meat bits -the fin, I presume. Texture was okay, but not enough to order it again.

I had heard stories about this dish, but I didn't think I would come across it so soon. Duck tongues cooked with soy sauce. As an overall experience, it was tough. I constantly had the feeling I was biting my own tongue (that kind of texture), and the cartilage kept on prickling the inner side of my mouth. 

Uf. It wasn't too terrible, but eating them one by one, feeling cartilague crunch and the cold and jelly-ish consistency of the meat did affect me in some way. I tried some shrimp dumplings later and I still had the sensation I was chewing tongues.  

The aforementioned dumplings. They were awesome. In the upper photo, the ones in the bottom had shrimps and the others chicken soup. I loved the concept of soup inside dim sum.  

And, finally, dessert. The name was very ad hoc to the occasion: it translated as "Chinese birthday buns" =) 

They were filled with bean paste (if I'm not mistaken) and a bit of egg. Soft, spongy and moisty. A good way of finishing an adventurous meal.  

Drink green, think green, live green.

It well may be that for several reasons I'm not buying much alcohol these days (such a nice, healthy boy, me) but I HAD to try the local greens.

And the verdict is: ¡HEINEKEN!

Walkie talkie

It's always fun to walk around at night. Hong Kong lights up, and suddenly receives a second boost of traffic, noise and life. I don't think it happens in every single corner of the city, but at least in the areas I regularly walk it's more or less that way (Wan Chai and Causeway Bay). 

The place is full of street food posts. Live fishes cooked in the minute, salads, dehidrated meat, duck, chicken, pork and several others find their way into people's stomachs. As soon as I'm more capable of communicating in Cantonese I'll dive into this whole new culinary world. (Today I learned how to ask for chopsticks, and in the restaurant the lady actually brought them! I felt victorious.)

Trolleys are a nice and cheap way to move around. Whilst they may be slow, the flat rate is around 25 US cents. 

Urban art. I wonder if graffitists get hired or asked by the town hall in these cases. 

I give up; I couldn't manage to find the name of this particular flower. I even googled "red flower" for pages and pages of images, but I still failed. Oh well, the name should come back to me eventually.  

I shall conquer you some day, gotham-ish building. The International Finance Centre building is 415 metres tall; 28 less than the Empire State and 115 more than the Costanera Center, the soon-to-be tallest building in Chile. 

Item n.27: Beef brisket and tendon curry rice

Another masterpiece. The curry sauce itself was quite standard (if I'm allowed the term), but the capsicums, petite tomatoes, potatoes and onions made it all mushy, munchy and fun. The high note was the beef brisket. I have no idea what in the world they did to that meat: not only the grease and nerves were unbelievably tender, but they also tasted like premium quality butter (what's up with that!). I almost cried. I guess the fact that I ordered something relatively edible for second day in a row also helped . 

The only thing that upset a bit my stomach was the hot milk with egg I ordered for drinking. And yup, that is a raw egg inside the glass. But as an egg fan I couldn't let this opportunity pass. Let's say the opportunity came, stayed and already passed as liquidly as it came. =P 

Trees and their problems

"Confusa" translates as "confused" in Spanish. Poor acacia. 

Item n.71: Fukienese fried rice

One of the best meals I've had so far. The dish consisted in fried rice with shrimps, pork bits, kanikama, chicken, eggs, mushrooms and veggies (corn, peas and carrots). It was condimented with oyster sauce and other ingredients I ignore and therefore will call 'exotic'.

A blast of flavours. First came the curious sweetness of the steamed pork, then shrimps joined in and partied in the palate. Next came the particularly tender kanikama, which had absorbed most of the sauce and tasted like scallops, partnering brilliantly with the softness of the chicken. The rice, besides having its always fun texture, was soaked in awesome tasting broth. The scrambled egg enrichened the general eating experience by adding even more flavour. The dish was very nice: whereas it was intense and even a bit heavy on the stomach, it didn't go as far as to be saturating. I think it was thanks to the rice...

...and the mushrooms. Quite a delicate and soft consistence, their flavour brought back to balance the strongness of the other meats. The cool thing about these little fellas was that they had some sort of hood or cocoon. Quite exotic.  

Anyway, this dish gets a 10 out of 10 on my brunistic scale. 

Note: According to my sources, the term 'Fukienese' comes from the province of Fujian, in China, and for some reason refers also to Taiwan.

The little things

Thanks to Angel's mom's wise advice, I learned how to use the water heating system in the bathroom. After two days of cold showers, I was finally able to enjoy one of the pleasures of modern civilisation. I almost cried when the first warm droplets touched my scalp, specially because it was a cold, rainy Monday morning. 

And I got new shampoo. If Jackie Chan recommends it, it has to be good. My hair will be stronger and darker than ever. 

No comments. 

Yesterday I started my Cantonese course. The lessons had been going for four days already, but I joined in a bit late (it's almost becoming a habit; something similar had happened in Japan with I3 :P). When I came into the room, my six classmates stared at me with almost scientific curiosity. Which turned almost into horror when I explained I was their new classmate and was joining a bit late and that I could barely speak the language ("my name is Bruno" and "could you please give me a beer"). Even the teacher gave me a "oh, hello there young man, are you lost? Do you want me to help you find your class?" kind of look. She was reliefed to find out I was taking recovery lessons that afternoon. 

The course is tons of fun. Tones are quite a bitch, but I guess practice will take me eventually to the wonderful land of being able to talk to people in Cantonese. Today I was even able to go to a restaurant and order "this, please" instead of silently pointing stuff and trying sign language (which was doubly lame since the waiters did speak a bit of English). And this time it even turned out to be a relatively normal dish! Not pig intestines or cow stomach as randomness had given me the last two meals. I feel victorious. 

Sunset in Tsim Sha Tsui

Hoping to be able to test the new camera, I took the MTR and went to Tsim Sha Tsui, Kownloon's harbour,  for a stroll. The sights of the opposing shore -Victoria Harbour- are just gorgeous.

An important part of the Kowloon bay is a walkway -a small oasis in a city where heavy traffic seems to go on forever. Seriously, Hong Kong strikes me like some sort of driver purgatory; a place with more traffic than Napster at its prime; a city with more jam than Austria.

Ferries work from five or six am till midnight, and take around ten minutes to cross the channel that separates the island from the continent. The boat ride is said to be picturesque -and cheap- so most surely I'll hop inside a ferry as soon as I have the chance.

Once the sun set, pollution wasn't as evident. I'm not sure if Hong Kong has more smog than Santiago (my home town); the indicators used are different and, frankly, I haven't felt any difference since I arrived here. Maybe I'll become asthmatic in a few weeks' time, or I'll start to lose hair (perhaps it'll even start to turn white), but for now I'd say I'm safe. 

As night grew darker, lights started to appear....

...becoming a colored spectacle. New year's fireworks are launched from most of the tall buildings, and from Tsim Sha Tsui the spectators add up to the thousands. 

While I was taking pictures, a random local guy in his mid fourties approached me. He was holding a tripod and his English was... very Chinese. The conversation went more or less like this:

Local guy: Hi, excuse me, what exposure are you using?

B: Uhm... lemme see. It's X (Don't remember the number right now)

Lg: Ah, I see. And what aperture are you using?

B: 1.8

Lg: Ah, and what ISO?

B: 1250

Ch: Ah, I understand. Could you take a photo with a 1/200 exposure, 5.6 aperture and ISO 1000?

B: What?

Lg: Could you? Do it for me, please?

B: Uhm... suuuuurrre.  *Click*. Here. What do you think.

Lg: Ah, I see. That is nice. Bye!

I'm shuffling several hypothesis about the guy's intentions, but still the conversation didn't make much sense. 

I'll see if I can take photos in a clearer evening. Though low clouds (or dissipating smog) provided the scene with an almost batmanesque touch.

Once I was done, I put my stuff away and took the MTR back home. Haven't been mugged yet, but according to some people it's only a matter of time. 

Dedicated to Angel's brother. Beware of the food, dude. :P

Whereabouts?

My street. Traffic 24/7. 

Times Square. Not as crowded as Shibuya's pedestrian crossing, but full of people nontheless. 

Random people in the street. :P

Diamond ornament in one of the stores next to home. Half of them are fashion oriented, the other half are bars (luckily, they're quite silent). 

The entrance to The Bunker (my place). 

Seen from inside out.

The building is quite old; it's only matter of taking a look at the stairs.  

Back to the appartment, no more wandering around today.