adrian is rad

Cheung Chau is a small, carless island off of the Hong Kong mainland. I spent most of today there. It was pretty cool. Maintenance people had little golf cart things and there were bikes everywhere along with boats in the harbor and whatnot, so there was still some noise, but it was pretty peaceful relatively.

I think at one point Hong Kong was considered cheap for something. It may be cheaper than the U.S. for eyeglasses and tailoring (and knock-off products) but not much else these days. This is an expensive city, on par with San Francisco in a lot of respects. Zhuhai (China) is about a factor of 5-10 cheaper than here, depending on what is being purchased.

I went back to the Spaghetti House last night. It’s one of two places I remember eating way back in 1997 (Jumbo Floating Restaurant being the other). I remember it being good and cheap. I was totally amazed then. Now, it’s neither. Mediocre and $20 for the meal. Every night it seems like “this will be my one splurge meal” and then the next night it seems like the same deal. Oh well. At least tonight’s meal was really good, really fresh fish in a strange-but-good black bean (but not the Mexican black bean) sauce.

What country do I live in these days? I feel like I’ve been traveling forever.

I went to the Hong Kong History Museum yesterday; Wednesday is free-museums day in Hong Kong. A recently built museum, it was pretty interesting, the way China and Hong Kong protray HK to the world. It wasn’t a hand over from the British, it was a “reunification.” And–in the view of this museum, at least–while the British were bad, the Japanese were just plain evil.

There was a section of the museum protraying life in HK in the early part of the last century, 1920s or so. An old record was playing along with a kitchen or living room scene from that era. There was this old guy, propped up on his cane, singing along to every word, even anticipating the song a little bit. At one point he looked back at me. I had a huge grin on my face. He smiled back.

Speaking of super-cute, there was this construction worker on Cheung Chau that as I walked past, lifted a tiny baby kitten out of his hard hat by the neck skin. If I’d gotten a photo, I could be rich off of that one.

People talk on their cell phones all the time here. They’re out to lunch with someone else and spend the entire time talking to someone else on their cell phone. And, pal, when you’re out to dinner with your girlfriend, take that stupid bluetooth earpiece out of your ear.

A haircut in China is like a carwash in South Africa (Jwerberg knows what I’m talking about): in America it takes 15 minutes and costs $15. The haircut and the carwash cost about 1/5th as much and take two hours. Shampooing, a head massage, rinsing, conditioner, rinsing, neck and shoulder massage, head massage, hair cut, washing your hair again. By the way, it’s short, the hair. It was time.