A/C = happy me

Today I made the happy discovery that not all HK ferries are open air: the ferry to Lamma Island is air-conditioned. Oh, happy me! While it is not yet truly hot, it is still insanely humid (a drop of water on the kitchen counter will remain there from morning till...well, the next day, unless I wipe it up...quite mindboggling, especially after Easter week in Vegas) and humid air + mildly warm weather + any exertion at all = very sweaty people.

A/C is especially appreciated since the ferries here bob and weave rather more (i.e., MUCH more) violently than any that cross NY Harbor, and well, I don't usually get seasick, but I really don't do well in hot weather. (Yes, yes, I know -- very ironic that I'm being transferred to a subtropical climate. C'est la vie.)

My expat neighbors in the building (Brit, Aussie, and South African) decided to head off to Lamma Island today, instead of Macau, since one of their HK colleagues offered to be a tour guide. I was happy to tag along and add to the melange of accents. We had a lovely tea break at an organic farm which raised rabbits (fear not: the bunnies provided fertilizer, not food) and chatted with some Americans at the next table who lived in Shenzhen (which is right over the border in Mainland China) who are teaching English at the international school there. I particularly liked their novel re-use of bottles on the garden. Oh, and my lemongrass tea was yummity.

Of course, the charmingly bucolic aura on Lamma was rather spoiled by the 3 giant smokestacks from the sprawling power station which dominate the horizon.

I also engaged in my first bit of bargaining as we all bought straw hats to stop from burning to a crisp. While I know that HK$25 vs. HK$28 is not much in the scheme of things, it's just the principle of the thing. And it's something I've got to get the hang of. It even (mostly) fit my gigantic head. Shocking.

On the way back to HK Island on the (violently bobbing) ferry, I received my 2nd call on my new cellphone, which I think is darn cute. It's just a super-basic Sony Ericsson which has no camera, etc., but does have FM radio, which is great, b/c I don't have a working radio in the apartment. I did, however, finally remember tonight that I can tune into "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" on NPR (where I learned that Barack Obama is apparently a lousy bowler) and WCWP-FM, a NY metro jazz station, via the web.

Then this evening I went off to Lan Kwai Fong (the expat ghetto) for some spectacularly good sushi with a work colleague (a/k/a the phone call on the ferry). It turns out that my posting here will be perfect for his unit's research needs, as it involves facilities for Chinese tourists and our thorough & lengthy work-related discussion more than justified the hefty price tag. Re: the fab sushi -- if you judge the quality of the sushi by how little soy and/or wasabi I use, then put it this way: I used almost none (and could've used zero, really). Through about 10 dishes. Yum.

Okay, I should really go to bed now, since I will have to figure out yet more new & different forms of public transit in the morning, since I'll be working at a different office for the rest of the month. And not only will I get to wrestle with yet more new & different office connectivity issues (problems) but I'll be helping to unpack the library there, as we've just moved in to new, and most likely temporary (!), offices. Sigh.