Unlikely pen pal

The last day of my Hong Kong weekend started with a bang. I woke up to what I thought was my 10AM wake up call, but instead was Lynette telling me Stanley St. was 30 min away via taxi, so we'd have to leave earlier than 10:45AM. I quickly showered, and called them to see if they'd be ready. THey said 5 min, so I decided to go downstairs and check out while they gathered their belongings. After about 15 min it was about 10:45 and we were ready to leave; luckily I had found out from the front desk attendant that Stanley St. Luk Yu Teahouse was actually only 10 min away via cab.

WHen the cab driver dropped us off we tried to walk in the front door only to be turned away and told to go upstairs. I didn't see my Aunt anywhere, so I went back down to look for her. She arrived and told us to go downstairs instead. I was confused. After I gathered everyone we went down and that was when I realized Auntie Ling Ling has juice at this place. Basically only ballers or VIPs can sit downstairs and she was ordering around waitors like she owned the place. She explained she had been tipping them 40-50% of the bill for the last 27 years (before I was born) every single morning for tea and breakfast.

Auntie Ling Ling is a riot. She talked up a storm and correctly guessed Lynette is Singaporean (impressive) and that Eric was from the US (not difficult). I then told her about my lady soaking ways and instantly she began going through her mental roladex of Mandarin students (she is a mandarin teacher in Hong Kong). She began listing all the pretty ladies she teaches who are all lawyers, accountants, etc... all having no time to find men, all working late into the night every day of the week. She actually got one of them to come out to meet us later for some afternoon tea which was nice of her.

We then walked around a large shopping district with lots of little stands. I managed to purchase a t-shirt for my sister for 59 HKD, 2 bracelets and 2 necklaces for 250 HKD (a set of which was mine), a belt for 40 HKD and finally a monkey T shirt for 40 HKD. All in all that is 390 HKD for a grand total of? 53 dollars (pretty nasty!!!).

Later we met up with Auntie Ling Ling and her student (who was not as impressive as she made seem) and were faced with a monstrous chocolate buffet (delicious, but too much chocolate). We then returned to the hotel, picked up our things and headed to the airport. The flight home was a tiring one. There was one 6.5, and two 6's (flight attendants), none of whose numbers I accumulated which left me with a grand total of 0 through my weekend of HK. I really struck out big time on Saturday amassing a golden sombrero (0/4 4 stikeouts).

I really enjoyed HK though I must say I believe I like China a little better? Maybe it's because I had more people taking me around China and it's so much less expensive. I tried calling Alice, but for some reason my phone would not call/text her number. We finally realized her phone must've been off, or there was just something wrong w/my phone. Really annoying. If there's one thing to take away from my blog, it's that phones in Asia SUCK!!!! No voicemail really just kills me (maybe it's just taht I can't read chinese so I feel really lost when faced with a phone).

Anyway, the last thing I'll offer is this. I really miss my friends. Can you please include me in some freaking emails?!?!?!?!?! Would it really kill you?

I forgot to mention that my cleanup hitter emailed me again. She mentioned she quit and I told her hopefully it wasn't cuz of me and my coworker (we are auditors) that she quit and also mentioned though that we didn't really talk to her, so it coudlnt' have been. For some reason she responded and said yeah, she quit for personal reasons, but asked if we could still be friends... really not sure what's going on with that.

My results so far after day 7 of Taiwan (including HK):

# total: 2
Contact attempt/made: 1/1
Dates: 0

Horrible.