Monthly Archives: December 2009

Been in Hong Kong (and now Guangzhou) for almost a week now! Haven’t done much shopping yet, just been eating rather a lot and seeing some people. It’s good I guess, should try and relax more, rather than stressfully trying to buy lots of stuff.

Had a couple of morning (7am) dim sums with grandmother. It’s pretty chilly in Hong Kong these days, especially so early in the morning. Getting up so early also makes me rather tired early in the evening. Have almost only been out to buy some usage items like shampoo and bottled water, etc.

Everyone in my family had a haircut, I think for 45HKD per person or so. The barber went with my suggestion of just cutting my hair short, but tried to make it fancy nonetheless, maybe out of pity for my lack of any sense of style. Don’t think I’m gonna bother trying to recreate it once I’ve washed that away. We also went to church on Sunday, and met with some of Leon’s friends from when he was living in Hong Kong for school.

Went to Guangzhou on Monday. Passing the border didn’t take as long as we remember from last time! Just like Hong Kong 10 or so years ago there are mostly squat toilets in Guangzhou, even in some finer restaurants. Lots of buildings and roads are being built or renovated because of the Asian games (2010 in Guangdong?) though. There’s a lot less English here than in Hong Kong, by the way. Which is to be expected, but should be noted if you plan to go there.

Have mostly gone to meet relatives and friends in Guangzhou, but we also rented a minibus with a driver to drive us around to various places, like this goldfish garden place. Did some shopping too, I finally bought some new shirts (29RMB each) and socks (3 for 10RMB, I heard I could’ve gotten cheaper), also a 500 pieces Final Fantasy X2 puzzle for 10RMB (undoubtedly unlicensed). Things really are a lot cheaper here, soft drinks at 7-11 are roughly 2-4RMB!

Partly because of that, we’ve been having huge meals with our relatives and friends (and the driver) both for lunches and dinners. AFAIK most of the meals cost roughly 30-40RMB per person, even though we had some expensive stuff like duck, goose and crabs on some of the meals.

We also went to a karaoke one night. They had this awesome fruits basket! Also they had some anime songs (that we couldn’t sing anyhows) and Melodies of Life (which I tried to sing).Now we’ve gone back to Hong Kong to celebrate Christmas with our relatives. Going to have hotpot! Which should be good, since eating hotpot means eating slowly instead of stuffing ourselves with lots of food quickly. And I’ve been eating way too much the last few days in Guangzhou (and before that too, I guess)… Eat less! Maybe. Either way, I really need to lose some weight. When I get back to Norway.

I’m leaving for Hong Kong in just a few days! Looking forward to have some time off, meeting relatives and friends. As usual, a bunch of Chinese friends from Norway and Sweden are also going to Hong Kong, so I’ll be seeing them there! The more the merrier and whatnot.

The last week I haven’t really done much interesting. Went to get my second Twinrix shot and the swine flu vaccine, and also donated some blood. Chose a small Fiskars paring knife as a gift, it’s pretty good and sharp! Nice to have a smaller knife when I want to cut just some smaller vegetables. I already got a Fiskars kitchen knife from my parents when I moved out. (I think it’s that knife, look pretty similar in any case.)

On Sunday we had a baptism at church, where one of the new members of our youth group got baptized. Didn’t take any photos… Oh well. In her baptism speech she told a bit about her background, lots of things I didn’t really know… But she said she enjoyed joining and being in our youth group. I’m glad she liked being with us, and that God led her to us. I pray that we’ll be able to keep taking good care of her and all the other youth in our group!

I chocolate-covered the orange peels I made. Taste quite a bit better, although it still tastes like sweet and somewhat bitter orange peel. Just now with chocolate. My colleagues at work said they were good though! I’m guessing adults used to drinking coffee might like this kind of candy better than the youth at church. That, or maybe Norwegians like bitter candy better than Asians.

Bought a Visco-elastic pillow at Kid, I guess I’ll have to call it a copy of the expensive Tempur pillows. It wasn’t exactly cheap for a pillow, but since I looked up the Tempur pillows online and they cost around 800NOK, I figured 150NOK for a similar non-branded pillow wasn’t too bad of a deal. Felt pretty good sleeping with it the first night at least!

Have been trying to figure out what to bring to Hong Kong. My mother always says we could just buy new clothes in Hong Kong instead of bringing lots of clothes in the luggage. But I’ve decided to bring the clothes that are somewhat broken (with holes or worn down edges) or are miscolored, and then either throw them away or just leave them in Hong Kong when leaving! That leaves more room in the luggage for stuff I buy! Although I don’t really have any big buying plans this time. Not that I usually have lots of stuff I want to buy. I think I like looking at things a lot more than actually buying them. I do want to try not filling my house with useless stuff anyhows, I generally try to only buy stuff that I know I’m going to use at least a couple of times every month, preferably week.

I emptied my freezer now and turned off the refrigerator/freezer. Took all the stuff from the refrigerator and put it out on the balcony for keeping cold, although it’s probably too cold actually. But I had to do it because ice had been built up in the freezer from back when I didn’t close the door properly and it stayed slightly open for a night and workday. Now I’m planning to leave the refrigerator off since I’m going to HK anyways! But I have to do something about the leftover food. Either bring to work or to my parents house I guess.

Also, apparently my Vitamin D levels are up to a somewhat normal level now, my doctor said. So now I can’t make excuses when falling asleep! I still manage to get up in time for my morning devotion and exercise at least… I guess I’ll just have to see if I ever get myself to go to bed earlier. *sigh* Better start by going early today! But I’m still waiting for the laundry to finish… Ah well.

Went to Stockholm last weekend (27th – 29th of November) with 24 people from the youth group (also my parents, although they went to visit family so they didn’t spend time with the rest of us).

Family!

We spent most of Friday and Sunday on driving, so most of our activities were on Saturday, but we still did a lot of things! After meeting up with the Stockholm youth, we first went to play pool for an hour.

Then we ate lunch, and after that we went walking around town, doing silly things and taking photos and videos. It’d be interesting albeit highly embarassing if they released a composition of those videos, but they assured us they wouldn’t put them up on Facebook or Youtube, so I guess we won’t be seeing them anywhere soon. After walking around for two or so hours, we went to the gym hall for some sports,

Then dinner, and finally we went to the church for games and worship. Then home for bed, and church the day after that, where we youth from Oslo lead the worship with the adults, and then went with the Stockholm youth and led a youth meeting with them. We had the church service at a school, and their basement (that we used for the youth meeting) had a really cool painting!

Falcon… PUNCH!

Hopefully me posting their painting on a blog won’t get them into trouble with copyright lawyers. I don’t remember the school name anyhows. *cough*

The week after that I haven’t done much interesting. Have been playing Dead Space, which is really great! I turn off all the lights in my house when playing it for “maximum atmosphere”. It’s fun when things burst out of walls and I shoot everywhere and fail to hit them. xD But I think I’ve gotten pretty insensitive to/unaffected by monsters because I’ve been playing RPGs too much, and am too used to killing through dozens of monsters just walking through a grassy field. That’s my best guess anyhows.

Today the youth led the Sunday service for the adults, it went pretty well! The speaker was a Norwegian missionary named Nora, talked a bit about her family’s experiences doing missions work in China (forgot the town name, A-something). About being prepared for doing God’s work. I guess I’m not necessarily all that prepared… Better at least start reading those books I bought again. Haven’t read much when going to bed because I’ve instead been trying to finish some PSP and DS games that I’ve been playing. Addicted much? Noooo… *cough*sigh*

After the church service we went out to do some shopping, although it was mostly walking around talking about what we might buy. Found a cool mannequin at some goth store.

Yah, time for bed. Shouldn’t stay up so late all the time, but there’s always more stuff I want to do once I sit down in front of the computer.