Yes, two posts on a Saturday night, when presumably no one is reading blogs. Should I write this stuff and save as drafts and postpone published till Monday, following conventional blogging wisdom? That’s never been my style. Anyway, this is minor stuff, noted in passing. It all falls under the list of Reasons I Love Hong Kong.
Friday afternoon I went to Wing On in Sheung Wan in search of de-humidifiers. I settled on one particular model, only to be told that it was out of stock, that I could buy it and get it delivered within 4 or 5 days. I decided that I didn’t want to spend my life searching for this, buy it and get it done with, even if I had to wait a bit. While I was standing on line, a guy rolled in a trolley of stuff that had just been delivered, including a stack of the de-humidifiers I’d just ordered. “Do you want to take them with you now?” Why, yes, indeed I do! The box was quite heavy, I’d bought two of them and I asked them if they could help me get them to my car (which was parked in the Wing On car park). “Of course! No problem!” And a minute later there was a young guy with a trolley to help me out. Point being that good service is not a rare commodity in Hong Kong in my experience; it is the rule and not the exception.
Standing outside of Amazonia on Friday night, I got to talking with this guy. Exchanging the usual info, he told me that he was born and grew up in Hong Kong, moved to the States and hated it (he was living in L.A.), happy to return here. What were the things about Hong Kong that he appreciates? The usual – the convenience, how it’s so easy to get everywhere, how places stay open late and you have a thousand choices for a good meal after midnight – the kinds of things that we often take for granted. But I knew what he meant, having moved from HK to San Francisco and then very happy to return to HK again.
Saturday morning, I realized that the Oscars would be broadcast Monday morning local time and that I don’t get broadcast TV at home. In years past, I’d just watch it in the office (not a problem, after all I was working for a movie company). So I went down to Patsy House in town and asked, “Do you know anyone who can fix a TV antenna in a village house?” And one woman behind the counter raised her hand, like an eager schoolgirl who knows the answer to the question. “I do! I know someone!” And it turns out she had two people listed in her contact book who do this. “Tuesday or Wednesday okay?” “Well, I was hoping to get it done before Monday.” She said she’d try her best. Now here’s the extra mile that she went for me – the guy she found called me at 6 PM and asked if he could come over right away and I said sure and then, two minutes later, the lady from Patsy House called me just to make sure that the guy she found had called me and that I was being taken care of. By 7:30, it was all fixed and I can now receive our four wonderful broadcast channels. With my luck, I’ll probably forget to set the alarm clock and wake up after the whole thing’s over.
I know, I know, this is all really simple shit. But sometimes I take pleasure in the simple shit and don’t want to get jaded to the point where I take peoples’ kind actions for granted.
After getting that taken care of, I thought this might be the day that I finally try the food at Camden Town for lunch. But they’re gone and already replaced by something else. Oh well. I turned the corner and said, “Okay, this is the day we finally try Fiesta Fiesta.” It’s a comfortable looking small place on one of the back streets in the old part of town. They’ve got a lot of western food on the menu but I thought it might be better to go with something Filipino.
So I ordered the pork adobo, which was listed on the menu at $68. A couple of minutes later the waiter came by with a bowl of soup. “I put you down for the lunch set, same thing plus soup, drink and dessert, and it’s just $58.” The soup was cream of chicken with noodle with a small bit of garlic bread on the side. The pork adobo came with a heap of rice and some broccoli and wasn’t bad at all (though not as good as my gf’s). The dessert was some kind of Filipino jelly thing with a bit of strawberry sauce. My gf ordered their Lumpiang Shanghai, spring rolls with pork, served with a salad of lettuce, cucumber, tomato, yellow pepper and we both thought it was quite okay (though not as good as her mother’s). We got to sit outside for a relaxing hour watching people strolling by – lots of people with dogs, lots of people with cameras, as always. This wasn’t gourmet stuff by any means, but comfortably in the cheap ‘n cheerful category. The place right next door, Pan Da Cafe, also seems popular and I’ll have to give them a try one of these days too.
The dehumidifiers are working great. I’m shocked at how quickly they’re filling up with water (I got the 21 liter models) and just kicking myself that I didn’t get these years ago. Tonight I sold off my Nikon D300 to someone via DCFever. Dinner at home and a relaxing evening.
So it’s been a relatively productive couple of days. Nothing at all planned for Sunday and I’m quite okay with that.
























































































Hi, I’m Spike. Born and bred in The Bronx but I've been calling Hong Kong home since 1995. I'm a corporate IT professional, music and film critic and aspiring photo-journalist. I've been writing Hongkie Town since 2004 and have been writing the "Spike" column in BC Magazine since 2006. You can follow me on Twitter



