Hong Kong Bound

Almost time for vacation! I'm heading to Hong Kong Aug 27th - Sept 8th with Kitty and her family. I've never been to Hong Kong before and I've only been to Asia once when I was really young.

People are warning me that it'll be really stressful with the Kitty's family. They have an apartment there (they are going back to sell it) and we'll all be staying there. I didn't really think about it until someone mentioned it to me, but now I'm starting to get a little nervous.

One of the biggest problems is language. I don't speak or listen to Cantonese. I have lessons on mp3, but haven't worked my way through them all. A coworker offered me an electronic translator. Mike & Maggie got me a Lonely Planet Cantonese phrase book. It's pretty funny, because it has pickup lines, rejections and sex related phrases. People tell me that English is fairly common, so hopefully I'll be alright.

We have a few friends over there and hopefully we'll get to meet up with them. Victor Hsi is over there at the same time as well, so we'll probably meet up. Teresa said we would make quite a scene with a bunch of Asian people in a restaurant all speaking English. :)

So do people have any advice for me? I know it's going to be hot. Clothes is cheap. Avoid eating at street stalls. Anything else?

Hungover?

First of all, thanks to those that were able to make it my Birthday BBQ. I really appreciate it. Also, thanks for bringing food, alchohol and gift, even though gifts were not necessary. I especially like the message on the cake :)

My mom was out of town and usually she helps with the food when I host people at my place. I had a bit of trouble handling the prep work and ended up burning some of the meat :( Next time I'll start prepping earlier. This weekend I went to a Wii party on friday night and then only started prepping at noon on saturday. Oh well, lesson learned.

Drinking games were fun, but unfortunately, we didn't carpool very well and most people drove. We still finished about 40 drinks + 1 bottle of wine. They didn't get me too badly, but I was a bit hungover the next day. I played like shit in my softball game. I made multiple errors and hit two pop ups. My last at bat was especially crappy, because we ended up lossing by one and I represented the winning run. It was totally my bad. So yeah, I'm blaming the drinking on my poor play :)

Thanks for all the Happy Birthday wishes!

RFD edition

I went out and bought all the things Jerry suggested. For some reason, HMV had Mario Strikers Charged for $10 less than the typical price of $60. So I went to my local HMV, which is the one by the school and got the last copy they had. It's kinda strange buying from HMV as they just started selling games a few months ago. I picked it up on Tuesday, which is one day before the official release date, but I haven't had the chance to try it out yet. Maybe I'll get some time next week.

Then I went to National Sports and looked for cheap bats. They had one bat that was $10, but it seemed really really bad. I kept looking and eventually found a Worth bat (W2SB, Powercell) that had the price tag ripped off. I had asked for help and when they came back they said it was only $12. So I bought that instead. Edmond tells me that it's a worthless bat, that's good for nothing, but I figure at $12 you can't go wrong. Unless it breaks my hands. I haven't had a chance to use it yet, so I don't know if it was worth it or not.

Even though I have family coming up this weekend, I joined the Formosa Cup. It's a 2 day softball tournament. That means I have something like 7 games this weekend! Good times!