Yet More Postcards from Hong Kong

Saturday morning begun in pretty much the same fashion as the morning before, except it was minus Mrs Prost. (If you have lost the thread at this point, then I believe that you should take a look at the blog entry before this one :-) ).

I woke up at 6:30am, fell asleep again, and bolted out of bed as my once again awoken eyes settled on the digital clock by the bedside, displaying 8:10am. Getting to the Exhibition Centre was a big rush, the MTR was once again packed, and I was 20 minutes late for the start of the Exhibition. I was expecting a quiet word in my ear or something to that effect, but instead all I received was "Good morning Dan, did you have a good time last night?", and I knew all was well.

I had made quite a mark on the first day, and word had spread about my "show" so that many more people than the day before came to visit the booth. As well as getting asked questions about my solving methods and how long I had been solving etc etc, I found myself getting asked questions like "What is the minimum Order Quantity on this product?" and "Do you have an exclusive agent in the US?". I mean, huh? But I soon managed to give them even then the answers that they were looking for, after a little bit of prompting from the real sales people. And so it continued, until finally it was time to once again pack away and be free to enjoy the sights and sounds of Hong Kong.

There was just time to get back to the hotel and change for dinner. I had been invited to an extremely posh restaurant in Lan Kwai Fong by the boss of one of the companies who works with InterMed. Accompanying us was his girlfriend, and his work colleague Jane. We had some very intellectual chit-chat about climate models and global warming over the foie gras and beef ragu pasta with black truffle. Once the delicious meal was finished, we ventured out into the streets of Lan Kwai Fong, which seems to be a haven for the (sp?) "gui lo" (Cantonese for white people, literally 'white ghost'). Thanks to Jane, who is a New Yorker fluent in Cantonese, my first learned words of Cantonese was the slang for white people :-S. You see, Lan Kwai Fong is the place where all the ex-pats come to relive England, there are many bars of the sort you would find in the UK, with football matches on plasma screens and lager louts with their shirts and beer cans chanting in all their glory.

After the frivolities of Lan Kwai Fong, we split company, Ron (the boss) and his girlfriend went somewhere, and Jane decided that it would be a nice idea to visit Mong Kok, so we caught the subway and did just that. Her ulterior motives became clear as we spent at least 25 minutes looking for the hilariously named "Wanko" tailors... she had to pick up some suit trousers so while she did so I couldn't help myself by entertaining the staff and customers with some cube solving. We got lost countless times, but it was handy to have a native speaker with me as we never got completely lost, we could always ask pretty much anyone for directions. By now it was 10:30, 11pm time. It was a completely weird experience for me, at 1pm the only places you can visit in the UK are nightclubs and 24 hour supermarkets, but in Hong Kong, literally everything is still open at this time! It's like the city that never sleeps, incredible. So we visited a couple of shops to browse for souvenirs, walked through the incredibly crowded "Ladies Market" where you can buy literally anything for a few dollars, if you don't mind compromising on quality or sometimes breaking the law... ;) We bought coconuts with straws to drink the coconut milk (which wasn't that nice in my opinion, oh well), and spent a little more time chatting and soaking up the atmosphere of the bright lights in Mong Kok.

Didn't arrive back until midnight, and promptly flopped onto the bed and fell asleep. But another great day and even better evening; and once again the time flew :)

See you soon!
Love to Lisa of course :*

Danneh