Times Square

Not sure if i ever showed you guys where I work but I work in a building called Times Square - pretty ironic considering I used to live right next to Times Square in New York. Anyways, this place is nothing less than a madhouse. There are floors and floors of shops - see exhibit A below:

The shopping mecca

There are hundreds of shoppers visiting everyday. It's a great location - can't complain about walking by Chanel, Gucci, and Bottega on my way to the office everyday. :)

on my way down to the street level - 4 sets of escalators

But the reason I wanted to show you where I work is b/c they have this really cool art exhibit in the main lobby and by the entrance. It's called "between imagination and reality" and it's a display of all these animals that have been constructed from rubber tires! Literally - check em out.  

Ok I don't think this one was made of tires, but it's still really cool.

how cool/pretty is this?!

This was an eye stopper on my way to work this morning.

Who's feeling cultured? :)

 all made 100% from rubber tires!

Anyways, just wanted to share a little bit of what I've been seeing everyday with you all. Interestingly enough, the displays change about once a month. During the World Cup they had a giant foos ball table (like 30 times a life size one) and then before Toy Story 3 came out, they had all these little alien guys and an enormous toy story bed display here. Will keep you posted on what's to come!

In the words of Homer Simpson, "D'oh!"

First time I felt this way was after a purchase made at Fortress. It's like the Best Buy of Hong Kong except they DON'T have the best prices. They are available everywhere though and they're probably one of the biggest electronics chains in HK. So I decided to buy an ipod dock from there. I was eyeing a basic speaker thinking it would be fine for what I needed but salesperson told me it was a bad choice so I stepped it up and decided on a nicer ipod dock. I was hesitant because it was more than I wanted to spend but I figured it's ok, b/c it has a universal adapter and I could always use it when I return home. So the guy told me I had 10 days to bring it back so I bought it on the spot.

The next day I told my sister about the purchase and she told me she could help me buy it in the States and bring it to me so we looked for it online. Of course, only then, did I realize it was 1/2 the price that I paid for it in Hong Kong! So I figured, ok, no big deal. I'll just bring the one I bought back to the store. Little did I know that Hong Kong doesn't do returns! AT ALL. I thought I had the 10 days return policy to go off of, but apparently that was only for if anything broke on the dock, then I could return it within 10 days. So of course, being sassy mcsass, I told the salesperson, sure fine I'll go home, break the speaker and bring it back for a return. Sounds like a plan to me! Needless to say, he did not appreciate my humor or my tone. oops! So the net net is that even if I returned it broken they would only give me a new one. So my friend tried calling their hotline to see if someone could grant us a special condition where we'd be able to return the dock - I had literally bought it less than 24 hours ago and it wasn't even opened! The only thing they could do was allow me to return it for store credit which I would then have to use in 1 week's time. It was an impossible thing solution because there isn't anything else I need to buy at the moment. So that was my "D'oh!" moment number one. I mean, I've returned things at Zara and H&M, but I guess those are the only two places that allow returns. Go figure - they're also the only two places I've really shopped at since being here.

The second and much bigger oops moment happened last night. As some of you may have seen from my FB status, I bought tickets to see Usher in concert. He was playing in Macau which is this island off of HK but very close and somewhere ppl from HK travel to often.  I've been told by many people that as long as I have my HK ID card, that I'll be fine. I won't need to bring my passport. So I didn't and neither did my friend, Crystal. (Both Americanos and still new to HK) Turns out that ISN'T the case. It's only the case for people who have "permanent resident" on the back of their HK ID cards. I didn't even know there were different versions of the card. So we got through the security check-in point to get to Macau and took the ferry all the way there (it's an hour long ride). Once we got there, we had to go through immigration which is where they and we realized we needed our passports to enter. At that point, I had already left work early just to catch the ferry over here and now, I needed to go back on the 1 hr ferry, go get my passport, come back to the terminal, and take the 1 hr ferry back to go to the concert. We blew it. There was just no way to go back, get our passports, and  come back in time to see the show. Not only that, we couldn't even use the restrooms while we were there. When we asked, the security lady said we'd have to ask the doctor. Not wanting to know what that was all about, we waited til they escorted us back onto the ferry. That's right, escorted us - like we were drug mules. Is that the right saying? Not only that, my other friend Ann who came with us (she's a permanent resident) was able to get through but came back with us because it wasn't worth going to the show without any friends. BUT she wasn't given a pass back to the island the way we were, so she went to pick up her return trip ticket that we bought with the concert tickets only to find out that she couldn't pick them up at the ferry terminal, but would have to take a shuttle to the Venetian (which is where the show was held) in order to get her return ferry ride. So she ended up buying another return ticket at the ferry terminal so that we could at least take the trip back together. Not only that, we had to give the officers our HK ID cards and then they said we'd have to go to the HK Immigration office to have them returned to us. FML. For those of you who know what that means, yes. FML was running through all of our heads. For those of you who don't, good. It's a bad word.

So we ended up wasting four hours of our lives travelling for no reason, and wasted all this money we spent on tickets that we couldn't even use. I thought we could maybe salvage the evening by selling our tickets and spending it elsewhere but since we were escorted moment to moment by the Macau officials, we didn't think selling the tickets on the spot would exactly be the best idea. Who knows what they would have done to us for that. It was a disppointment to say the least - not because I cared all that much about seeing Usher - but b/c I'm a newbie and for that, I have to learn all the rules through experience and sometimes, I feel like an idiot. D'oh!

Good thing the girls and I all had good attitudes about it when we got back and turned a waste of an evening into a great one. And how we did that will remain between the girls and I. 

World Cup - German Style

I've made some German friends while being here and as most of you probably don't know since not a lot of people are into the World Cup in the States, Germany is playing really well in the World Cup this year. They had their biggest match so far, last night against Argentina and totally slaughtered them. It was a great game. Since USA is out of the picture, I've been going to the games with friends rooting for their home country and last night was all about Germany. And let me tell you something, those Germans really know how to celebrate. It felt like New Year's eve! People were blocking the streets, singing their hearts out, and drinking. Lots and lots of drinking. It still weirds me out that people can drink anywhere here - including on the street in public, in taxi-cabs, everywhere. You can take a drink you got from one bar and just walk out with it when you please. No "drinks must stay inside" rules or anything. Made me reminisce of the many nights in Boston and New York when I went out with friends and we'd always hide our alcohol in a diet coke or snapple bottle on our way to the bars. Those were the days, but I digress.

So before we went out to meet up to watch the game, a couple of friends decided to buy some face paint so we could all paint our faces black, red, and yellow for team Germany. Mind you, these friends are probably the two most un-sporty soccer fans you'll ever meet which makes it all the more sweet that they got so into this. Once I saw how the face paint looked and realized it didn't dry - ever - I decided to opt for the little German face painted flags on the cheeks and arms instead. The girls did the same, but the boys, well, you can see.


At least they were good sports about it and everyone enjoyed it.


The real Germans had their authentic world cup t-shirts on and were ready to go!



We had found a German bar in Wan Chai, at least I think it was German. Everyone there was rooting for Germany and singing so many fun songs in German. The only one I could sing along to was Deutscheland, Deutscheland, Deutscheland... It was pretty easy to figure out. Guess it's their version of U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A.

It was a really great game and our eyes were glued to the tv screens despite the air con dripping on us all during second half.


Here's some pics of the rest of the gang during the game at the bar.





And here are some pics after the glorious victory, at a bar close by.


The street was completely mobbed - impossible for cabs to get through.

And then some friends tried to leave in one...

But we couldn't let them leave without a proper German send off...


And that was the night. Great game, great people, great fun.