observations

I'm exhausted after not sleeping enough and working in the studio for the last two days. Tonight I plan to re-regulate myself though... nothing to do but eat, wind down, and sleep.

A couple of observations about Hong Kong:

• They're just as consumerist here as in the US. Maybe more so. There is a superabundance of malls.
• Much of the Christmas music (which gets played constantly here too) sounds as if it were purposefully trying to "sound Chinese," that is, it's a bunch of Chinese people singing English words with stereotypical mistakes in the pronunciation. I never thought I'd hear "jingle beres" in a Chinese grocery.
• There seems to be no tipping. Or low tipping. I can never figure out what's appropriate.
• There are about 8 HK dollars to each US dollars. This makes prices seem just low enough to be ridiculously high ($10 for a drink!?), when in fact the cost of food, etc., is quite reasonable.
• The Chinese appear to have invented dessert relatively recently, and with as little input from outside as possible. This leads to innovative and strange offerings. My current favorite is the rice is a soup of vanilla sauce and ice, topped with mango.