Hot Pot Cuisine

After only experiencing one hot pot eating event once before I was eager to try it again. Especially as the first one was bloody vegetarian!! So I was very happy we were invited to a very meaty hot pot event in a colleague’s apartment.

Basically hot pot involves a pot of boiling water, raw vegetables and meat. And an accoutrement of  sauces and spices to mix together as your dipping concoction. It’s a very communal, social affair with everybody ladling out various things to people who can’t reach the bubbling broth of earthly delights.

This was my smorgasbord of sauces. I like soy so I  had two types of soy, some spring onions and a little sesame oil. It was niiice!

Various fish balls, beef balls and tofu bits.

The pot for veggies only. VEGGIES ONLY!!

Pre-dipping into my special sauce. Yum!

The other entertainment of the night was our friend’s aquarium. I love a good aquarium and could stare at one for evvahhh.

Hi Mr. Turtle!

I think this guy is called an Axolotl; a type of salamander. We think he’s blind…

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The A380 Experience

If you’re heading down to Bangkok from Hong Kong for whatever reason you can get the most reasonably priced flights on, strangely enough, Emirate’s sparkling new behemoth double-deckered Airbus 380! I’ve wanted to fly on this bird since I watched its maiden flight live streaming back in 2006/2007, I can’t remember exactly.

On board, it’s got great leg room; you are actually disadvantaged sitting at a bulkhead row as you can’t watch your TV while taxiing, take-off or landing. And the extra leg room is minimal. Emirate’s entertainment system is also full of stuff to keep you entertained. Flight times between HKG and BKK are only about 2 and a half hours anyway.
The downsides of flying this size of plane is the extra bodies on board, everything takes longer and is more stretched out due to the numbers involved. We were delayed both going and coming back and I’m thinking this is quite regular. The more the people the more the chance of things messing up!

You can really feel the sheer weight of the A380 when turning and taking off. It’s a great experience and if Emirates keep their prices low then it will be number one choice for many people doing the Bangkok route from Hong Kong.

from https://bonkersinhonkers.wordpress.com/

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The View From HKU

I’ve being going to HKU now since September 2009 on a 2 year part time gig for my Post Graduate Diploma of Education. I finish up the whole shebang in May. Forever. God knows if the PGDE will have any monumental standing outside of Honkers.

The overwhelming high point of my time at HKU has without doubt been…..the cheapest Starbucks in Hong Kong!!

Yes for $35 HKD all this could be yours too. I seriously looked forward to this every week. They don’t card you either so yes you can just be a normal skinflint and get some cheap Starbucks too!

For your information in the first year of the PGDE at HKU you gotta go on a Tuesday and Thursday night from 6-8. Now in my second year I only have to go once a week. It’s been…an experience. There was a dead cockroach on the staircase leading up to my class for quite some time. A few weeks ago it disappeared…I miss it.

If you ever go to HKU prepare for stairs and elevators; it’s all levels Jerry. Levels. It’s a very easy university to get to though with numerous buses running right past the gate so that’s been good.

I’m getting my Masters somewhere else.

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The banality of normality

WordPress kicked my behind when it sent me that email with the stats of bonkersinhonkers. It did exactly what they wanted it to do; it got me at least to think about blogging again.

Reasons for not blogging

We are in our third year here in Hong Kong. Life has a habit of just being routine. Here we are in one of the most exciting cities in the world but when you throw in a 07:30-16:30 day job you become part of the normal working day life everyone has around the world. We travel back and forth to work in between towering apartment blocks, past local eateries, go through a tunnel through the middle of Hong Kong island and we get on with our lives. My family always ask me where the updates are to Bonkers and I look back and the last one was in September; that’s life getting in the way right there!

For sure, I find myself wandering the streets of Causeway Bay at times slaloming through the sea of humanity looking up at the awesome buildings old and new and realise how awesome it is to live here and to be experiencing what I am. I know  people find it interesting what we go through but it’s hard for me to find it interesting enough to blog about after two years. So I need to get back to basics. I need to think about what people who have never been to Hong Kong would find interesting or at least semi-interesting. I look at the Cleveland SGS blog that I know very well and find the various scenes of Cleveland fascinating and I think I need to be doing the same here.

I will try. With a kick up the backside and a fresh perspective from WordPress, Cleveland SGS and also the 365 Project. I will try.

Which leads me on to this mess of a lunch and a passing nod to my recent foray in Hot Sauce Williams in Cleveland. I get this delightful tray of earthly delights quite a lot from the International store at Cyberport. It’s breaded and fried pork, a dollop of mayo, two sushi rolls (this varies every day) and a slab of boiled rice with a Jackson Pollock helping of a soy sauce type thing all over the top. It’s lovely and fattening and delicious and it’s about $25 HKD which is about $3 USD/2.50Euros.

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Sunset in HK from our window

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