January 28th, Shopping at Mong Kok

Day 12, 10AM: To begin, I would like to say I've decided to try a new format for my posts, where I actually give each a title so you have some idea what they're about. I thought this would be an improvement over my previous format where you only saw the date and day number in the title. Furthermore, I have digressed in my writing style for the past several posts and will make an effort to return to my more crafty, and eloquent style of writing rather than the simplistic style I have been using in the interest of time. The morning was fairly uneventful and consisted of playing Starcraft with Grady again, but an excitement filled the air in my room because of the plans I had arranged the previous day: I was going shopping for clothes! Now, I usually only get excited when shopping for electronics, but I made an exception for today. In fact, I rather dislike clothes shopping because they never fit quite right, are usually overpriced, and it's a guy thing, but I can't stand walking around a department store and want nothing more than to get in and out as fast as possible. So you must be wondering: why would Ansel get excited about clothes shopping? Let me tell you. First, since the day I arrived here I have felt somewhat under dressed. It seems like everyone here in HK are very fashionable and dress up on a consistent basis. I honestly feel somewhat embarassed wearing my USC sweatshirt because a sweatshirt doesn't fit in when everyone else is wearing a nice jacket or a vest or a suit. Secondly, I only brought enough clothes to last me about a week and a half and was now pushing my luck. Before I left everyone told me how cheap everything was in HK and that i should just buy new clothes when I arrived, so I admit I took some of their advice and did not pack enough. Additionally, I've never tried to bargain or haggle with someone before and I have been looking forward to my first true shopping experience with a fair amount of trepidation.


here you can see me standing just to the right of center pointing at the street vendors.



Mong Kok was unlike any place I have ever set foot, with the streets absolutely packed with people as far as the eye could see, and every available space on the streets taken up by street vendors trying to sell you their wares. We began our adventure in a shopping mall where Ghoribet and Wai Zin looked at ladies' clothes. There were about 7 floors and each floor was packed with small shops that were only about 80-100 square feet. I must admit I was somewhat frustrated (but not really) when they looked at so many things, but didn't buy anything! This is the difference between men and women. Women want to first look at everything and window shop, then they go back another day to actually buy things once they know what is available and the relative prices of things. I can understand the value of this methodology, but guys shop very differently as previously mentioned. Guys tend to go somewhere knowing what they want and desire to get in, get it, and get out as fast as possible. After several minutes my agitation at their lack of clothes buying must have been apparent because they kept saying how bad they felt that they had dragged me along when they weren't buying anything. What was their solution you might ask? It was to take me where I could go shopping and they could be the ones standing around while I looked at stuff. Does that seem odd to anyone else but me?

So, to alleviate their guilt and make me feel guilty instead, we exited the mall and walked down to the streets. The streets were packed with vendors selling almost every imaginable thing. There were booths ranging from clothes, to children's' toys, to display cases, and each was different than the next one. First we walked from one end of the street to the other end to get a sense of what was available before making our way back and actually buying stuff. First, I bought a jacket.


This jacket we had found on our first round and it was initially priced at $210 (all prices here are referenced in Hong Kong Dollars, not US dollars). Lucky for me Wai Zin can speak some Cantonese and bargained the price down to $140, which was probably not as low as we could have gotten it, but this was our first attempt at bargaining, and secondly, that's a little less than $20 USD. Let's face it, clothes here are practically dirt cheap and I'm happy paying pretty much whatever price they want to give me. After that I also bought four ties, and three polo shirts, with the ties being very nice and having neat patterns on them, and the shirts were only $30 (about 4 USD) each. All in all it was a very fun trip and quite culturally enriching. My favorite part though, was the calculators. Basically, all the vendors have these big calculators where they ask you to name your price when you're bargaining. This is not because of any language barrier or anything like that, it's because they don't want other people to hear the price they're willing to give it to you. What they do is inflate the price they quote you at first so that you can bargain it down and then feel satisfied you got such an amazing deal, which I think is brilliant and being a business major I can appreciate it.





Unfortunately, I had two goals going into the shopping trip: 1) get polo shirts, and 2) buy a jacket. An observant person might point out that I did indeed satisfy both of these goals, but this is beside the point. I failed in goal 2. My goal was not to only buy a jacket, but to buy a nice jacket that I could wear and feel like I was more dressed up. One might again point out that the jacket I bought fits that description, but it's cold right now in HK, and I have been freezing almost everyday since I arrived. So the jacket i wanted had to zip up and keep me warm, which the jacket I bought did not (it's more for just looks than for function). On our way back to the MTR station we ended up getting lost and going the wrong direction, but in the process we passed an Adidas shop and I decided to duck in. I stepped in, surveyed the bustling scene and spotted my prize: a jacket almost exactly like what I had been searching for. It was very expensive by HK standards, but I was willing to pay for what I wanted and I have worn often since its purchase (you can see it in my photos in my next post where I will also share a funny story about this jacket). If I may digress for a moment, I would like to share something (It's not that I need your permission or that you have any say in whether or not I digress, but it seemed like the polite thing to say). Here, their debit cards are called EPS (I think it's Electronic payment System) where they swipe your card and all that, but instead of you punching in your PIN onto a pad attached to the counter they hand you a small pad and then bow while you input your PIN. They then return the pad to a cradle where it verifies your PIN. I think these things are really cool not only because they're sort of half wireless, but because they're fun to use. This concludes my digression.

Next, we traveled over to Hollywood Plaza to meet CS for dinner where I was looking forward to eating a gourmet meal: Pizza Hut. No I am not crazy. Yes you read it correctly, Pizza Hut. You see, here Pizza Hut is a very fancy restaurant where you sit down and order from their menu (which is more than just pizza). I had heard about this before I came to Asia and I had been looking forward to trying it. Wai Zin did not feel like Pizza Hut so she and CS went somewhere else while Ghoribet and I enjoyed our meal. We ended up sharing a lasagna and a pizza which were both quite tasty, although the waiter gave me a funny look when I asked for a refill of my Pepsi. Apparently in restaurants here you don't get free refills. I've included pictures of the Pizza Hut here so you can see what I mean.

Ghoribet


Apparently I lied, you can see my nice Adidas jacket here.







So, that's what the Pizza Hut looks like. So after that we went back to the arcade for more musical fun of banging sticks on drums and then returned to campus. Once back I decided it was finally time to download the Orange Box from Steam (a game company). For those of you who are unaware of what this is it's basically five of Steam's most popular games, including Portal, which is my favorite game. So, I logged on and tried to buy it. Note my use of the word 'try.' Lucky for me, my two credit cards got rejected because Steam processes the request through the US, and I told my credit card companies that I would be in HK, so they nicely blocked the transaction to prevent fraud. Joy oh joy. Now, to give you an update, I asked my parents to log on for me and purchase it so I could then download it, which they did. The first day my download went 41%. That was 7 days ago from my current perspective, and it's currently at 88%. Basically, Steam doesn't want me to download the program because I'm not in the US. I'm less than thrilled about that.