Girl and City

I was in Hong Kong for a full week, which felt at times too long and at times too short. FBB turned out to be a typical ibanker-douche, so I have absolutely nothing to say about him. His apartment was sweet though, even better than staying at a hotel. However, his kitchen didn’t function, so I had to eat out almost every meal, even when I didn’t have anyone to eat with. Those occasions aside, I spent less time alone than I would have thought.
I spent the first half of the week mostly with WAF and her boyfriend’s relatives, who were all super rich and made me understand some of the “class distinction” my friends had warned me about before coming to Hong Kong. I spent the latter half of the week with various classmates from TheBusinessSchool who were now working in Hong Kong, and whose work hours were so terrifingly long that it made me dread starting work myself¹.

My entire week consisted of two principal activities: shopping and eating. I did far too much shopping for my own good, considering things in Hong Kong are actually more expensive than mainland and I don’t have any luggage space for Singapore whatsoever. I also did far too much eating considering the food was mostly Western food that I could have had anytime I wanted in Canada. I did manage to slip in two dim sum trips, because how could I go to Hong Kong without having some dim sum? I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves².

Lunch at a tiny but busy Japanese joint near Causeway Bay MTR. They are known for their fatty tuna sashimi.

Lunch at an apartment-turned-restaurant near Sham Shui Po, Western-style cuisine, prix-fixe menu that included appetizer and entree. The dessert (every single dessert on their menu) was compliments of the owner, who seemed to know my friend’s aunt.

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1. I often had to wait until past midnight to have “dinner” with them because they didn’t get off work until midnight or 1 am, and even 10pm on weekends! [↩]
2. Unfortunately, there are three fantastic meals I didn’t get pictures of because my camera ran out of batteries. One was the first dim sum meal at a Shanghainese restaurant. The second was a Western meal on an island where they only travel by golf carts (no cars). And the third was a midnight excursion for some street food, including curry fish balls, lobster meatballs, roasted octupus and deep-fried calamari. [↩]

I’ve been eating extremely well in China, which isn’t difficult given that everything¹ here is better than anything I’ve had in Canada times ten.

Let’s walk through a typical day of eating for me in Nanjing.

Breakfast starts at 5am² and is usually at a xiao chi dian which is kind of like a dim sum stand with road-side aluminum furniture. Sketchy? Yes, a little. Delicious? Definitely. Luckily, I’m not someone with a sensitive stomach and I have never gotten sick from eating in China.

In the last four days, I’ve had quite a variety of breakfast items: plain steamed buns (man tou), veggie or pork-filling steamed buns (bao zi), glutinous rice buns (shao mai), fried dough sticks (you tiao), soy milk or tofu soup (dou jiang, dou nao), congee (xi fan).

Some xiao chi items can be repeated for lunch, such as steamed buns. Nanjing has the best xiao long bao in the country, many would argue.

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1. When I say ‘everything’, I’m mostly referring to all Chinese food. [↩]
2. Everyone gets up really early here because mid-day and early afternoon is too hot to function, so that’s usually nap-time. [↩]

Part of 30 Days of Me.

I’m a pretty good cook, because I love food and I have sensitive taste buds. I cook a lot of Asian food, and usually that doesn’t require recipes, but I still like looking over a recipe to validate what I have in mind. I never follow the amounts in a recipe though, I just add as much or as little of something based on my own sense of smell and taste. I think the only times when recipes are meant to be strictly followed are for baking, which would explain why I’m not as good a baker as I am a cook.

One of my favourite dishes is duck stewed in beer. Delicious. I’ve made this at dinner parties before, definitely a hit. My other go-to dishes are chicken coconut corn chowder, ma po tofu, spicy eggplant, and sweet and sour pork ribs (the traditional way, not that breaded fried pork in red sauce stuff).

Duck Stewed in Beer

Ingredients:
1 whole duck
1 bottle of beer (12oz)
1 head of garlic
2 tbsp ginger
2 star anises, broken up
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup of soy sauce
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 stalk green onion
1/2 cooking onion, chopped
8 baby carrots

Instructions:

1. Chop the duck into big pieces with a cleaver. Slice the garlic and ginger.
2. Heat up the iron casserole pot and add some oil (1 tbsp). Put duck pieces in the pot, and stir-fry for 5 minutes till they become golden.
3. Add the garlic, ginger and anises, and then stir-fry for 5 minutes more.
4. Pour the beer in and boil for 5 minutes. Add soy sauce, salt, sugar, onions, and carrots, and cook for another 5 minutes. If you are using chicken, you can stop at this point as the chicken will be fully done (the meat should be half-hanging to the bones). If you are using duck, continue to the next step.
5. Preheat the oven into 250F and put the iron casserole pot with the dish together in the oven to roast it for 1 hour. Then open the cover and add onions in it. It will be cooked after being roasted for another 15 minutes.

Do you follow recipes? What’s a favourite recipe of yours?

With my impending move looming in the near future, and my job not far behind, I have been investigating the travel accessories market and finding it insufficient. After watching Up in the Air, I realized I, too, needed some space-saving travel accessories to make my traveling more efficient and hassle-free. But other than wrinkle-free clothing, I have found it difficult to locate quality travel accessories.

The most promising, so far, has been LL Bean’s “Packing Essentials”. I’ve never used SpacePak Bags but they look like a good idea, but will they increase wrinkles?

I definitely need a jewelry travel organizer, but theirs looks rather small and insufficient for my two dozen earrings and dozen necklaces.

I have a hanging toiletry bag but I found on my Europe trip that when it’s full, it’s hard to roll up, and is not actually very space-saving. I wonder if these will be any different?

If you have any experiences with high-quality, lightweight, space-saving travel accessories for professionals who travel a lot, please leave your comments, recommendations, experiences, or links to point me in the right direction. Thank you!

I have never studied art. I took two years of art in school, was no good at anything, and learned zero. But for some reason, I love art museums, and most of all, oil paintings. I love learning about artists and watching them grow from naive youngsters to seasoned artists through their works. But I have never been deeply moved by a piece of art before, until Van Gogh. In the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, I found myself standing in front of a landscape painting of a harvest and crying. I wasn’t even a huge fan of Van Gogh before coming to this museum, but after going through a lifetime of his works, I couldn’t help it. I just stood there and cried. (more…)