Yat Ee Sam

Almost a month has passed since I last blogged, and well...it's because my life is pretty boring. Nothing much has happened in the last month. The thing about HK is that all the external stimulation makes you think your life is interesting, busy. The bright lights, loud noises, crowds of people, shiny ads - being surrounded by these all the time give you the illusion that your life is exciting. In reality, all I've been doing is eating, sometimes exercising and doing lots of beautifying. In HK, beautifying is a legitimate activity. Facials, nails, waxing, massages, haircuts, brazilian blowouts, makeovers - on average I probably spend at least 3 hours a week beautifying. Partly because I'm vain, but also largely because in HK, it's just what you DO. You eat, you shop, you beautify and relax.

So in the past month, I haven't traveled anywhere exciting. I don't think I even went on any hikes (weather was really non-conducive 3 weekends in a row). But I did learn what blush color is right for me. Got highlights. Changed my nail color twice. Extracted my pores. Super exciting stuff.

Some other more useful stuff I've done in the past month. I learned how to count to ten in Cantonese. I realized that I knew some numbers, but not all. I could say/understand 3, 5, 6 and 10. So I might as well teach myself the other numbers. The useful thing about learning 1 - 10 in Cantonese is that what it actually means is that you can count to 99, because ninety nine (I think, based on what I hear around me) is just nine-ten-nine. Gow-sap-gow. It only took me 17 months of living in HK to learn how to count to ten.

I also learned how to say "I am SOOOO hungry" in Mandarin. Wo euh ssu le.

We spend the first 18 or so years of our lives constantly learning, growing, evolving. Our brain capacity is so great, our curiosity so incurable, our learning capacity so endless. Then we spend the following 4-10 years trying to cram our already deteriorating brains with as much info as possible to determine the path for the rest of our lives - college, grad school, examinations for various licenses. And then, for the most part, we spend the rest of our lives letting our brains idly rot. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I'm just making an observation.

Maybe God thought my life was getting too boring - this past week was filled with drama thanks to our landlord and her agent. Too exhausting to write about, but let me just say: it is beyond frustrating to talk/deal with people who MAKE NO SENSE and who don't do what they are supposed to do. How do you even have a rational conversation with someone who is 1)intentionally tricky and conniving, 2) lazy and irresponsible, and 3) totally irrational and unable to separate A from B? You can't! I hate irrational people! I hate tricky people! I hate people who don't do what they are supposed to do! BLAH!! This place makes me so aggro.

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I recently read the Five Love Languages. I am usually not a fan of any type of self-help book. I'm not really a touchy feely person. But I really liked and recommend this book for everyone - whether they are married, in a relationship or single. Maybe I'll write about it in another post.