Jake Allen’s Ockhamist.com

I took the above picture last night at about 2AM.  I finally got to my hotel at about midnight.  I took the express train that was supposed to link to a free (included) shuttle, but the shuttle would not take me to my hotel and I’m not sure why.  My English was pretty bad at that point.  I tried to take a taxi, but had not found an ATM yet. After finding an ATM, I took a taxi to the hotel. WOW. Nice hotel indeed. Doormen, concierge, super-clean, marble floor, real art in the halls, et al. I’ll put up some pics later.

Last night I ate some weird food on sticks from a street vendor.  It was seafood, maybe?  It was spicy, but pretty good.  There were not a lot of choices at 3AM, except for the karaoke bars, which are everywhere.  Later I bought most of a fried chicken, which was good.  Later I saw a 24/7 McDonalds, but got some diet coke at a 7-11.  I had bought some bottled water, but it had ginsing and honey and tasted awful.  It tasted like sweat.  The Diet Coke recipe is different here.  I’m an expert on Diet Coke.  There was an English-speaking black family on the plane, but I have not seen any black people since, or hispanics at all.  There are a few South-Asians in busy places.  There are few to none caucasians anywhere.  Everyone I’ve talked to has been nice.

There’s a Starbucks on every street. Really.  There was one between the gate and customs even!!!  It was next to a small duty free shop.

I got up late and felt awful (1pm).  I went to the mall. Wow. It was the wierdest mall ever.  It disobeys all the laws of space and time.  “Floors” don’t exactly describe it.  Every level is a series of split levels.  Escalators are flying around everywhere.  I cannot tell where one starts and another finishes.  Prices were high.  It goes underground for several floors too. My hotel connects through a walkway at about level 3.

I am on the 30th floor.

It’s 3pm and the concierge sent up a power transformer b/c the one I had broke on my laptop. Madness!

I bought some pants and two watches at a street market sort-of near the hotel. “Come here! Very cheap!”  I am basically dividing by 8 when converting HK$ to US$.  First watch was a Swiss Army knock-off, HK$30.  Looks pretty good.  Second was a carabiner watch w/compass.  Ask was HK$40, but I paid HK$30, which was still probably too much, but US$3.90 was a good price.

I was the only male wearing shorts, including the occasional caucasian.  That’s why I bought the pants. HK$79.

I am still dead tired.

Madness!