The big list of Hong Kong peculiarities...

This list has actually been in the works since last December and even before.  I've never just went ahead and published it, but reading through it now it's pretty good.  It's not finished, but maybe in another 3 months I will have finished the second half, anyway enjoy!

This started off being a list of what I liked about Hong Kong and has evolved into something else, including random observations, things I dislike, and things that I find interesting/funny being a Westerner/Gweilo in Hong Kong

• Bus seating

This is probably the same everywhere in the U.S. I'm just a country boy and I don't really ride any public transportation in New York, but it's funny here when riding on packed buses, everyone just sits on the aisle seats and doesn't push in unless you ask no matter how full the bus is

• Mcdonalds bagging

Would you like a bag with that?
Supersize the amount of bags you give me!
Want a coffee for takeaway (to go)? You're getting it in a bag. Want a milk shake or chocolate (hot fudge) sundae? Here's your mini bag to out it in! It's weird they do this since they started charging ~.07 cents for bags at grocery stores back in July in order to become more Eco friendly.

• Picking up after yourself

In most fast food places it's actually frowned upon dumping your tray and cleaning your table. A lot of the time it is someone's job to clean that stuff up. It's not just there Hong Kong employs thousands of street and beach cleaners to clean up. This keeps the city and towns really clean, but poses a problem when I have to teach the kids about Leave No Trace and they are so used to just leaving everything for other people to pick up because "it's their job"

• Left side of the road...

I don't think I'll ever get over the driving on the opposite side of the road here. Sometimes I'm not paying attention when someone's driving then jerk back to reality when I think some huge truck is driving right at us, then I relize I'm still in Hong Kong and theyvdrive on the left here as the 1000 ton monster rumbles by to the right of us.

• Day/Month/Year? or Month/Day/Year? I don't even know anymore.

12/1/09
1/12/09
One is December 1st, 2009 and the other is January 12th, 2009. Don't ask me which is which my brain doesn't know what to write. I try to make it look like both when I write them...

• 1950s glasses...

Are the Buddy Holly glasses a world wide fad? Or is it just every teenage boy in Hong Kong?

• Pccw everywhere!

Unlimited wireless Internet at over 6,000 points in Hong Kong for about $4 a month? I think I've died and gone to nerd heaven.

• "Brown sugar"

They don't really have brown sugar here. You know like the stuff you put in chocolate chip cookies? They have "Brown sugar" at all the coffee places but it's actually real raw unprocessed sugar, not the white stuff.

• Mindless jibber jabber

A lot of time in the states I'm out wherever and I just want to turn my brain off and eat/drink/look at something in peace but there's some obnoxious person jabbering on way to loudly about useless small talk or how so and so's dog just keeps crapping on their lawn and how good lunch was and that they should call/text/IM/myspace/facebook stalk so and so.... Well I pretty much never have to deal with that ever now, because I'm on my own little island of English understating bliss in the middle of the Pacific Ocean of Cantonese. Whoooo!

• Cheap non marked up computer parts...

The only way radioshack, staples, and best buy stay in business in the US is to mark up everything by 4X's the real amount to make up for the millions of online stores that sell everything for 1/4th the price with free shipping. Hong Kong has really good computer stores that you need to travel for 2 hours to get to and then 2 hours to find what you need... But at least it's cheap!

More to come sometime....

Posted via email from Doc Bones in Hong Kong