ajkle;aghakd (in memory of yelena's blog)

the past couple of weekends have been some sort of fantastic. we didn't have the gumption to figure out a trip over easter weekend, so we decided to eat the HKD6000 that we would've spent instead. i had to cover the desk on friday, which meant coming in in frisbee clothes at 10am, going to the gym at 1, having lunch till 3 (at union bar...pretty good burgers), coming back, answering a few emails, and vamoosing at 6pm. and for all that, i get a day in lieu. i love working holidays.

that night, we splurged at stonegrill, a steak place that serves up it's meat raw on a 400 degree C slab of rock. jon's wagyu was slightly disappointing given the price (the most expensive thing on the menu, incidentally), but my superprime (whatever that means) was fantastic. plus some of the best scalloped potatoes i've ever tasted. i've never liked steak before, but man, this stuff was good. jon says we should go again...provided we don't order the wagyu, it shouldn't break the budget.

saturday, we hiked the twins and watched charlie wilson's war, dinnered at chili fagara, a small szechuan place that was too hot for me. jon liked it fine tho...i think we have different types of spicy tolerance...i can take mexican spicy till the cows come home, but szechuan spicy is beyond me. i will say that the mapo tofu there is the best i've had in hk.

sunday, we brunched at caramba, a swanky mexican place that doesn't carry ketchup and charges $22 for extra salsa! normally, these are enough to condemn any restaurant in my book, but mexican is hard to find in hk. plus, they serve a pretty mean breakfast burrito. then disc, then to kristin+grante's for guitarhero. also, they were leaving for cambodia the next morning, so we had the (always pleasurable) duty of cleaning out their fridge--homemade lasagna and cheesecake, come to mama.

monday, we went on a 45km bike ride, from tai mei tuk to shatin. tai mei tuk is a pretty busy little place. it sits next to a reservoir that they drowned a village to make, but the reservoir is no longer used b/c they get their water from china now. the bike etiquette is crazy. ppl ride really slowly and swerve all over the place. i almost killed a kid who was coming into a turn on the wrong side of the track...we were in a tunnel, both going downhill, so i couldn't see him at all. why would you ride into incoming traffic like that? and while riding across the reservoir, we saw a man with a bloodied head being lifted into an ambulance. another man had caught a really big fish (like the length of my arm) (unrelated incidents).

the masses thinned as we got farther from tai mei tuk. most of the riding was quite pleasurable, and relatively flat. a nice outing in the countryside with the sun shining and the air clear (we were pretty far from the city). i favored passersby with my rendition of doe a deer (a female deer!)...i only sing the verse where they shout the notes (RAY! a drop of golden sun...MEE! a name...). in shatin, we found a track that didn't kick us out when pulled out a disc (most places are all "no flying saucers!"), so it made a nice destination for the bike ride.

bike riding is a private affair. i felt like all the ppl who were going a different pace than i was were in a different dimension. you can do all these things you wouldn't normally do b/c in a second, ZOOM! you were outta there (or zoom! they were outta there)! you didn't have to share the time, so you couldn't possibly offend anyone (right?).

oh! and they also rented out these family death carts. they're 4-wheeled contraptions where the 2 ppl in the back pedal, and the rest of the ppl sit in a basket-like seat in the front. the front also tends to be wider than the back, and i think there's a steering wheel, but the driving wheels move independantly so if the two peddlers pedal at different speeds, then the cart turns independantly of the steering wheel...and if front wheels happen to be misaligned then the cart tips over. b/c they're hard to maneuver, these carts tend to crash...and most often, ppl place their babies and grannies in the front basket, and of course, no helmets. i can't believe it.

and then last weekend, instead of going to the sevens (the drunkest weekend in hk), jon and i dragonboated, brunched in stanley, climbed the twins in record time (58 min for him, 68 min for me), got massaged at sunny's paradise (not sketchy, i swear, but i'm peeved that the boys have TWO plunge pools and the girls only have saunas), watched HORTON HEARS A WHO (!!!), and had dinner at crystal jade. Horton Hears a Who is a fantastic movie. i was a bit worried going into it that i had outgrown non-disney animated movies, but yay, i haven't. fav quote: "i said what i meant, i meant what i said, an elephant's faithful 100 percent!". i'm gonna find a way to work it into a cheer, b/c seriously, have you heard a more cheerful thing? the animation will blow your mind too. the level of detail in the water, in the forest, etc...wow.

recently, we've discovered the pleasures of corned beef. so cheap, yet so delicious. fry it up with some scrambled eggs and onions, slather it with some horseradish sauce, and voila.

this weekend, we embark for yangshuo, which is supposed to be a backpackers paradise near guilin, famed for limestone "forests" and climbing/biking. hope the weather holds. hk is grey and bleary...back to winter.