Batgung

- waving goodbye by opening/closing your hand like having a handpuppet
on it (hard to describe)

- not drinking the tea in restaurants but washing your chopsticks in it

- waiter is smoking while serving you

- never opening or holding doors in public places (as if they're
contaminated),instead wait until someone else holds it for you and
slip thru

- start almost every sentence with 'so' or 'actually'

- 'value added services'

- Arriving at Hong Kong airport and feeling like a transit tourist because you still have to travel a lot more before you reach Hong Kong!

- Trying to enter MTR/KCR trains [subway trains] when everyone inside the compartment has decided to stand in the doorway and block your entry [despite there being ample space down the aisles]!

- Wondering why the place is called "Asia's World City" when the stupid cabbie [Taxi driver] does not understand a word of your English instructions?!?

- Balancing yourself in a break dance when the public transport bus driver has decided to stop or start *suddenly* [just when you are heading for the stairs (double decker) or the door].

- Trying to enter or exit a carpark entrance where you doubt that the narrow passage way is *deliberately* designed to scratch or bump your car!

- Focusing like a pilot while navigating your trolley [cart] through narrow and crowded super market aisles. While at the same time being careful that you do not injure the baby piled on top of the groceries in a trolley [cart] coming from the opposite direction...

- Hailing a taxi using a really limp wrist action. Don't knock it...it does work!!

- Junk trips..love em!

- Dai Pai Dongs...the food is cheap and tasty. Though ensure you have a cast iron gut or kill the germs with plenty of beer.

- Hong Kong Action films. Especially using handguns which don;t seem to run out of bullets

- MTR sprint challenges. Go to NorthPoint MTR and watch the people run from train to train as they interchange trains. At least you can exercise while using public transport!

:wink: :wink:

We're apartment hunting, so I'm obsessed with real estate and associated themes:

Knowing the size of your apartment to the nearest five square feet.

Knowing the size of everyone else's apartment to the nearest five square feet.

Standing on tiptoe, body bent into a right angle between the kitchen sink and fridge, to catch a glimpse of a two-inch sliver of Victoria Harbour between forty storey buildings and thinking you have 'oean views'.

940 square feet in Lam Tin for HK$3.5 million seems reasonable.

Real estate agents ringing you at 11.00pm.

Looking at the 'last transaction price' for an apartment and really getting what the Asian crash meant ($8.8 million in mid-1997 now going for $4.0).

Having to add on at least $200,000 to any property price for renovation (almost mandatory). Most apartments will be gutted and refitted by new owners.

Serious discussions over how much space can be gained for the living room by closing in a balcony that anywhere else would house a few dead pot plants at best.

Thinking that anything past HKU on Pokfulam Road is the outback (when it only takes 20 minutes by mini-bus to get to Central).

The impossibility of securing a mortgage on a building over 20 years old for a decent repayment period. Banks expect loans for older buildings to be paid back in about two years rather than twenty.

Old buildings are way more efficient (if the advertisement says 1500 square feet it will probably be around 90 per cent efficient). New buildings have rooms shaped like things my daughter makes out of play dough, doors that hit the toilet seat and thus don't allow residents into the bathroom, and a single pool to cater for the population of 2,000 apartments in 12 towers. An 850 square foot apartment will probably be more like 550 of actual floor space.

Names like "Elite Tower" and "Tycoon Court" sound strangely appealing.

Rooftops with illegal structures. Every rooftop...

"Chinese building" means "no lift".

Walking from apartment to apartment with your real estate agent rather than driving, taking a taxi, or catching buses.

Just one this time: going out to a low-end local eating establishment that does variations on western food, i.e. a 'restaurant' in the local parlance, and always having to choose between the 'red soup' and the 'white soup' as your first course. By the way, if you're new to this eating style, ALWAYS choose the red soup. The white soup is nearly always just flour, water and msg. If you're lucky you get some kernels of canned corn or maybe a shred of fake crab meat. The red soup is usually some variation of vegetable soup or borscht that is guaranteed to reacquaint you with the vegetables from many days past.

You're correct, Mr T. That should have read $[b]2[/b].5 million, although you can pay up to $3.3 for 930' for a high floor in Sceneway. I was getting a bit carried away there...

Speaking of swarms of real estate agents, do you recall the story from last year when agents actually rolled up their sleeves and duked it out at one of the new estates (I can't think which one it was now)? Walking into a swarm of a 100 real agents at the entrance to a residential block is a pretty intimidating experience, let alone when they start punching each other in an effort to gain your custom.

We're still looking, by the way, and I'm sure by the end of year will have bought something - though not in Laguna.

- A place where MTR commuters extend their feet while sitting even when the train is crowded so that no one can stand in front of them.

- A place on earth where MSG (Mono Sodium Glutomate) is cheaper than salt, that's why many restaurants use it for salt replacement.

- They believe landscape of buildings which erected like male organ instead of mountains and seas, is what it takes to build a world class city that attracts tourists.

- Cockroaches or the locals call them "little Keungs" crawling around your table and feet while you are eating in a fast food mall at night before it closed.

- On the mobile phone for at least 10-20 minutes.

- When one phone rings on the MTR, about half the people check if it's their phone ringing.

- Extremely silly ringtones which try to emulate a theme song from Enter the Dragon.

- Modified cars - especially vans or those "space wagon" i.e Tarago types vehicles which can carry more than 5 people.

- Taxis with either Yellow, Blue or Red mudflaps.

- Octopus ("bat dat tong" or "doot" in cantonese)

- Minivans

That's all I can think of for now.

- Hair dyed jet black at Chinese New Year, but then grey roots growing ever-longer for the next 12 months

- Someone old enough to be your Granny rifling through rubbish bins for empty drink cans, and pushing heavy carts of rubbish along the street :(

- Ladies holding hands with ladies

- Men walking along with a hand on each others' shoulders

[quote]Octopus ("bat dat tong" or "doot" in cantonese) [/quote]
- Similar to the "doot" above :
"ding", to cook something in a microwave
"ding-ding", a Tram

- Those Grandpas who've realised that if you take your pyjamas off in the morning you're only going to have to put them on again at night. They've since decided to avoid the hassle by wearing them all day long, whether at home or out on the street

- The fingernail on one pinky left long for ear-inspection duties

MrB

If you found a dead cockroach in your bowl of soup, leave it and dont drink it. Exchanging will do no good as its still comes out from same pot of soup (or just be scooped away) . Restaurant owner would suggest additional insect protein in diet would be benefitial.

Before taking a dump anywhere, always check restroom conditions, and prepare yourself with tissue paper. Otherwise you may need to call for help.

how about the matchstick men and women. not from the film. every one is anorexically thin there! its like, i cant find shoes or clothes in my size! im glad i moved away in that sense...

and what is with the girls clasping each others hands when walking in the street. i seen linking arms and thats ok. but talk about getting jiggy...

Buying property in a new country means a whole new set of abbreviations to learn. Out with the "Det. Des. Res." that you admired in the UK (you can't afford one here anyway), and time to start deciding whether you want your flat with MV or SV.

MV is optimistically referred to as "Mountain View", but in most places it means you'll be staring at the wall of a neighbouring tower block. So having decided we wanted a flat with SV (sea view), should we go for FSV or PSV ? ("Full" or "Partial" of course, keeping up ?)

As part of the mass of trivia that property agents hold in their heads, we were immediately told that only flats above the 15th floor would have an FSV.

We purchased flat 20C and admired our FSV for a year or so, only to see an ominous yellow crane peep over the top of a building lower down the hill. In Hong Kong it's only a matter of time before a building in front of you gets knocked down, and a new block twice the height sprouts in its place. Even a seafront property is no guarantee, as one morning you'll open the curtains to find a reclamation barge setting up for work.

Sure enough, our FSV is now a PSV...

MrB

OSV--you're on a roll today, Lohpoh. Maybe today is one of those days? It's so nice it feels like a curse has been lifted after that rotten weekend.

Anyway, I was going to mention that chez Tall has a combination sea/mountain view; it's currently unobstructed and very pretty. But our building just posted the latest government plan for the area: it looks as if somewhere down the road we're going to have a BV instead, i.e. a bridge view. Hmmm. Better than a tower block, worse than the South China Sea.

Now, for a couple of other hongkongness items:

Is it only me, or has anyone else noticed that almost all HK bike riders (except for the really really serious ones who wear the funny tight clothes) leave their seats at the lowest possible setting, thereby increasing to the maximum the angle their legs must assume while pedaling? This is both inefficient and uncomfortable, but this practice is so common here it's even repeated in the gym, on the exercise bikes!

Another ubiquity in HK is the 'where are you' mobile phone conversation:

A: "Where are you?"

B: "I'm coming out of exit B3 from the MTR station, but I'm only about a third of the way up the escalator yet; no, wait, now that I've taken the time to make that utterly inane statement, I'm at least halfway up; scratch that, my feet are now being ground to bloody shreds by the grille at the top of the escalator since I'm incapable of talking on my phone while effectively coordinating my lower appendages . . . . "

And speaking of mobile phones, how about those moments in certain HK clubs that ban the use of mobile phones, in which you, a lowly guest, have forgotten to turn off your phone, only of course to have it ring as the patrons, staff, and no doubt the very universe itself frown upon you as you fumble to turn it off?

And another:

- Catching hypothermia in the cinema theatres. Why does the air conditioning always feel like its on zero degrees?

Back to flats.

We used to have a harbour view from our flat but some bright spark from the Governement decided to build a baseball ground some 300 metres, as the crow flies, from our flat.

We now have a harbour AND FLOODLIGHT view. Is someone really thinking :roll: when you start placing 30M high floodlights that face directly into a private housing estate !! ?

Jeez.....

Vince.