Author Archives: Johan Ho

The first week after getting back from Hong Kong I were too tired from jetlag to do anything useful after work (I started work the day after I got back). Then the week after that I spent almost all of my free time playing through Dead Space, finally beat it yesterday. The end boss fight was epic! I kinda wanna get the prequel for Wii now, even though that one is just a short on-rails/light gun shooter. But the atmosphere in this game is great, and the story, however clicheed, is pretty well presented. Which is why I want to get the Wii game, to see more of the story. For those who doesn’t know anything about these games: Dead Space is about a rescue mission on a space ship which turns out to have been taken over by aliens/monsters, and Dead Space: Extraction (the Wii prequel) shows the story about how the ship got overrun by those aliens. Anyhows, if I find it cheaply anywhere, I guess I might buy it.

As for what I’ve been doing in Hong Kong since my last blog, I guess I’ll just list some of things that I did:

• Went to a karaoke and then walking around at a mall and IKEA with my cousins and brothers. The IKEA meatballs are served with a few potato chips instead of potatoes! Apparently, potatoes are actually pretty expensive in Hong Kong. They also had a giant turkey leg meal that I wanted to try, but didn’t because I had already eaten quite a bit before going to IKEA.
  
• Forest fire near where I stayed in Hong Kong
• Ate at toilet restaurant. The bath tub curry I had tasted okay, but only had a little meat and vegetables on top. Most of it was just rice and sauce…
  
• Went to Macau with some friends and walked around mostly just looking at casinos and also the famous church wall that I didn’t know anything about even after I went there. Also Macau is awesome because they sell this giant Optimus Prime:
  
• Went to Ladies’ Market in Mong Kok with Simen, her brother and Yann and Monica.
  
• On new years I actually ended up staying at home in the evening, watching Up (HD version on a 40″ or so TV) with my younger cousins. It was pretty cozy, and the movie was quite good and sad… The movie ended just in time for us to go watch the countdown on TV, before going to bed.

Hmm, didn’t actually do anything special the last few days, just shopping and seeing friends and family. Oh, I wanted to take a photo of the stuff I bought, but I was too tired and just ended up stashing things from the luggage away. Well I mostly bought random stuff anyhows. The coolest thing I bought was definitely my new mobile phone:

Acer Liquid Android phone!

Biggest complaint I’ve got on this phone is the fact that it doesn’t have any flash on the camera, so it’s impossible to take any photos unless it’s bright… but I ended up buying the phone anyway. It has a faster processor than the HTC Hero, and also has a higher resolution, making things “clearer”, allowing it to show more things on the screen at once without things getting blurry. For example, browsing web pages should be a bit better than on the older Android phones because you can actually show more of the web page at once without zooming out, and things still won’t be blurry. I have to admit that I haven’t tried any other Android phones much though, so I’m just assuming… In any case, the screen is way better than my previous phone, Nokia N95.

Android is fun to use too, installed tons of (free) apps and games on my phone, although not all of them are as useful or fun as others. I really like MangaDroid, which is a simple app for reading manga online. Too bad GPRS is pretty expensive, otherwise I might’ve used internet apps more… For now I settle with only using internet when I’ve got a WiFi connection.

As I mentioned in the first few sentences in this post, after getting back from Hong Kong I’ve mostly been tired and then occupied with Dead Space. But actually I went to the movie theatre twice the last two weeks. Watched Sherlock Holmes and Avatar 3D. Both movies were enjoyable, although I have to admit that watching Avatar in 3D wasn’t as awesome as I would like it to be. For one I feel like things seem a bit blurry, not sure if it’s because the 3D glasses were cheaper (we watched Avatar at Colosseum, which sold cheap 3D glasses that we can keep, but when we watched Ice Age 3D and Bolt at Ringen, they lent us huge, sturdy 3D glasses that we had to hand back after the movie), or if it’s because it’s a “real people” movie and is therefore not as clear as pure 3D CGI movies. Not that Avatar isn’t mostly CGI, but eh.

I really dislike how I postpone blogging so much and end up writing a lot… *sigh* Aaaah, just one last thing I want to add! There will be a Final Fantasy concert in Stockholm in June! Since I actually went to the second Play! concert in Norway even though nobody else went with me, I guess there’s no reason why I won’t go to this one. Most likely at least a couple of friends are going with me this time though! But the seats are numbered, so I kinda want to wait with buying untill I know roughly (or exactly) who wants to go. So we can sit at least a bit close to each other. Hopefully the seats that are left by the time we decide aren’t too crappy.

Tell me if you wanna join!

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.