February 21-27, 2012

This is my first ever blog. Hopefully this will be interesting and informative for all who read it. I am visiting Hong Kong for two months. I arrived on Feb. 20 and after about a week of sending emails back home to various people I decided now would be a good time to learn how to blog. I will try to post every day or so to let you know what I’ve been doing and share pictures of my exploits.

I spent the first week in HK trying to familiarize — or should I say RE-familiarize — myself with this amazing city of nearly 8 million people, a far cry from my hometown of Tallahassee with about 250,000! To get a good overview of Hong Kong, check out Wikipedia.

The reason I am in Hong Kong is that I used to live here in the 60s and my school, King George V (KGV, i.e., Cagey Five), is having a reunion. This is also a buying trip for my home and fashion accessories business, YUEN MI PRODUCTIONS. I have been back in touch with my schoolmates since the late 90s and have attended reunions in Sydney (2001), Hong Kong (2007), and Vancouver (2008). The Vancouver one was a Hong Kong reunion and was not limited to KGV alumni, so we got to visit with friends we used to compete against in sports and party with on weekends. For this reunion, they expect about 400 people. I am fortunate to be staying with friends, Gopal and Monika Lalchandani. They live in Repulse Bay, which is on the south side of the island and is where I used to live, so it’s very familiar.

I used to live in the very small apartments just to the right of the brown tower.

I'm currently living in bottom floor far right side of the complex - with huge patio.

In 2007 I stayed with my brother Robin and his wife Boots. They live in the liveliest area of this city: Central. That’s downtown. That’s where most of the action is. And it was a simple matter of walking 100 paces from their flat in “Mid-Levels” to the world’s longest covered escalator that took me down to Central, where I would walk until my feet just about fell off. And it was HOT HOT HOT and HUMID HUMID HUMID. This trip, it is winter and much cooler. The weather has not been very sunny yet, but hopefully that will change soon. From Repulse Bay, I now take a double decker bus to Central, which takes about 20-25 minutes. Not a bad ride. And the scenery is fascinating. I never tire of it.

So in my first week I have taken numerous bus rides, ridden the MTR (subway, rail system) to Kowloon to make a special purchase and also got the soles and heels of my boots repaired while I waited for just 1/2 hr!, taken a purse in to be repaired (now ready; picking up today), shopped at the Stanley Market, walked from Repulse Bay to Hong Kong Country Club which is almost to Aberdeen, walked with Monika from RB to South Beach, had lunch and visited with Boots for 3 hours, had lunch with Robin when he got back from Jakarta, and visited with him for about 2 hours before he had to race off to work, walked miles in Central, and seen about 6 movies. Gopal and Monika love movies, and so do I, and they own a store where they rent videos so they have access to everything imaginable. Saw Hugo the day before the Academy Awards, so that was timely!