I am going to write the days spreading over a series of entries then i will add them back together as one whole page and then add in appropriate pics as well. So for now i am going to write for Day 1.
13/11/2004 – Saturday
I couldn’t sleep the previous night. Counting sheep doesn’t work. So I was turning in my bed and in the end I think I only had at the most 3 hours sleep.
Then I woke up and went to bathe and only to find myself shivering and chattering my teeth when I went to change. It was so damn cold but I thought that I would be experiencing worse weather in Hong Kong. I was afraid, afraid that I couldn?t get along with my home stay buddy. I was afraid that I would appear very childish to them.
As my dad?s car cruised along the expressway to the airport, I was shrouded in an air of uncertainty. At last the airport was in sight. I went in to take the skytrain, only to find out it is not in operations until 6 am.. (-_-?) So I walked instead to terminal one. And I was late??
Then after a pretty hasty check in we went into the departure gates. And there?s the typical waving of goodbye and then poof I was in the air. It was Flight VF 902, the lousy flight of Valuair. For 50 more bucks it would have been SIA, or so I was told. There were only some horrible tasting Bee Hoon to eat and because I was hungry, I ate them. Then they began to sell snacks and chips and we bought one for 2 bucks, and it was so small that Xun Yong, Daniel and me finished all of them in like 5 minutes or so. So much for Valuair!
On the flight I did nothing much except to read The Da Vinvi Code and it was pretty interesting. The others all played cards, right in front of the Kiw who was obviously sleeping.
When we reached, a teacher went to pick us up from the airport and we took a picture. I found the way he pronounced words was pretty funny. He pronounced ?One-two-three? as ?wan-tsu-tsui?. After that we took a bus ride of about 45 minutes or so to their school. Po Leung Kuk Ngan Po Ling College (保良局颜保龄书院) or PLKNPLC is the school?s name. Their school has 9 floors and is pretty small compared to ours, let alone Raffles Institution or The Chinese High.
We were brought into a multi purpose hall and we met our Hong Kong counterparts for the first time. And after a pretty quite lunch at my table I got to know who my buddy for home stay is. His name is Eamon Zheng Xing Lun or 郑幸论 (I know the name is weird). And a teacher said I looked very like him. This must be fate for other than looks, we have a lot of other similarities. He likes gaming and is a computer geek and so am I! This must be the most appropriate buddy I am going to ever have.
Anyways after the lunch there were supposed to bring me home but instead I waited in the canteen of their school with Eamon?s mum because we were supposed to wait for another teacher who will be accompanying me to his house to take some pictures. The school was pretty cool and the winds that were blowing were really cooling. Their canteen is very different from ours. They eat packed lunch offered by the schools and have some snacks from a snack stalls during the resting time between lessons. Anyway I had a pretty interesting talk with Eamon?s mum and she was telling me a lot of stuff about Hong Kong.
Then we took a mini-bus. A mini-bus is just a small of a bus. There are two types, one that has a fixed route and the other with a sort of ?ala-carte? style of traveling, meaning you can tell the driver which way to take and where to go. Eamon told me a lot about Hong KongThey have a kind of stored value card that can be used for anything, from traveling to vending machines. It?s called the ?Octopus Card? or ?八达通?. And soon I was at his place.
His house was among one of the few blocks of flats (or public housing as they like to call it) on top of a mountain. If I am not wrong he lives in New Territory in an area called 将军澳. The house is pretty small compared to that of Singapore?s. I am not good at comparing so I can?t give u a relative or absolute size. And then after changing into my normal clothes (did I mention the Kiw wanted us to be in school uniform with blazers when onboard the plane?) he showed me his PC. It was running on Windows ME and he said he doesn?t shut it off but hibernate it instead.
After that we had dinner. If I am not wrong they say they have steamboat for dinner usually, but with less food and varieties. I didn?t feel good to eat a lot so I ate little and his mum kept giving me food. Well so I ate and ate. And guess what! They are seafood and some pigs? intestines! Firstly, I don?t feel good eating such an expensive dinner and secondly I don?t like seafood and pigs? intestines!
After a really long (about an hour) dinner, they brought me to a shopping centre. On the way I had a ride on their MTR (I forgot what it stands for) and it was very similar to Singapore?s MRT and after a walk around the shopping centre, I found that it was very similar to Singapore?s shopping centres. The shops were almost the same.
Soon I was back in their house and after a bathe I settled down to sleep. The room was pretty small and he slept in the lower bed while I did so in the upper bed. As I looked at the scenery of night time Hong Kong I drifted to sleep.
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