McDonalds Delivery!

I've been waiting for this day for so long.  I finally got the chance to try the Mcdonalds delivery service!

Check out the take out menu here:  http://www.mcdonalds.com.hk/english/mds/

I called into the Mcdonalds delivery line (#23382338) and chose the English line (they had option for Cantonese, English and Mandarin).  The first time I called the recording told me that the lines were busy, and to leave my name and number and they'll call me back.  I did that and waited a while and decided to call back a few more times - the second time I got through to this really proficient English speaking lady with semi British accent. Haha, loved the fact that she actually understood what I was saying!

After I gave her my order she gave me the option of paying in $200 or paying exact so I told her $200 even though I ended up paying exact.  Then she said the food will be here in about 40 mins.  I was kinda disappointed because I was sooo hungry at that point, but 3 mins later I got a call on my cell from the delivery guy telling me to come downstairs in 5 mins! WOW!  I got my food within 10 mins!

The delivery guy came in a red bike in a red uniform with a red box at the back to hold the food, pretty jokes :)  I couldn't stop taking pics... haha.

We ordered the Triple Taste Combo for 3 which includes 3 burgers, 3 drinks, 6pc chicken nuggets, 2 cups of corn, 2 medium fries and 1 potato skin (wedges) for $96HKD (~$13CAD), and added a Mccrispy Chicken Fillet burger combo and Fillet-o-Fish combo.  The total came up to $161.40HKD (~22CAD).

This time I tried the Double Wasabi Fish Burger which is pretty much a double Filet-o-Fish with Wasabi-mayo sauce.  It was pretty good, I was suprised I could eat it because I can't take any spicy or wasabi usually.  The wasabi actually stung the tongue but there was one bite near the middle where it went up my nose. haha.  The actual meal also comes with potato wedges and a dip.  Pretty good =)

I also got these free Doreamon red pockets with the wasabi burger.... so cute! =)

Food Roundup (Week 4)

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This week's notables:

1.  Shake Shake Fanta 

Fanta is a brand of pop that apparently originated from Germany.  You can get it at Mcdonalds (kinda similar to C-plus) or at convenience stores.  Saw a pack of Shake Shake Fanta at the local food mart and decided to give it a try.  Basically you refrigerate it, and then when it's cool you shake it 10 times really hard (thats what it says on the can) and the drink turns into a jelly soda dessert/drink.  It tasted really good when I first opened it, but it seemed like it got more and more "jelly" as I left it out.  I liked the taste of soda with jelly bits but after a while I was just struggling to slurp the jelly out of the can :P  You can find single cans in the convenience store (7-11) or in a pack of 6.

Will hopefully eat some more interesting food this week :)  Also, check out my post on Pizza Hut in my birthday post here. :P

Birthday in HK

Yes today is/was my birthday!  Had a nice small celebration with people, not a big deal anyway :)

Had lunch at Spaghetti House with my relatives.  So much food...  BBQ ribs, seafood angel hair pasta, smoked salmon salad, veggie/lobster soup with baked pastry top, pizza... yum!

Then met up with my roommate and she secretly bought a cake for me WHILE I was there!  I always thought I was good at finding out surprises.... dang :P  Met up with 2 other friends for dinner and after wandering for a long time we decided to go to Pizza Hut.  Pizza Hut is pretty crazy in HK.  Tons of selections for appetizers, pastas and pizzas.  They had escargot on mashed potatoes as an appetizer, and pizzas with a mushroom sauce base, curry base, and thousand island base!  For dessert they had a chocolate pizza... I think it was a pizza crust but with chocolate spread in the middle topped with M&Ms and other chocolate candies.  Death for me...

We ended up ordering a meaty mashed potato appetizer (looked so good on the menu, turned out being so small...), the Bollywood Delight pizza (eggplant, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, pineapple & corn), and the creamy chicken mushrooms angel hair pasta.  Everything was pretty good, except that the menu was kinda deceiving and everything looked bigger than it was.  However when we tried to eat the cake in the restaurant they informed us that we have to pay $50 extra to do that!  Ridiculous.... so in the end we just went to the mall across the street and ate the cake in the food court surrounded by really amazing smelling food =)

Us taking a pic before repacking the cake -_-

Thanks to my awesome roommate Soyeon for the beautiful cake!! (repacked at this point :P)

With a touch of Korean :P

And of course, you can't end the night without some Hui Lau Shan!!  Best Mango (& coconut) drinks EVER and for pretty cheap (even cheaper if you buy 2 at once), and make sure you get a rewards card - buy 6 and get 1 free!

Sing-K in HK

First time doing Karaoke in Hong Kong and it was CRAZY!  Never expected it to be so... intense shall I say.  Didn't take enough pictures but still have a few (unfortunately extremely blurry), so hopefully it's enough to give you an idea of how it's like.

(pic taken from Google)

About 30+ of us (I know, crazy already) went up to Neway, a Kareoke chain, in Mong Kok.   At first I didn't even think they would have a room to fit us all but I was proven wrong :P  After we booked a room we had to go up one floor to the room we were assigned to.  We walked down this looong hall lined with Karaoke rooms (at least 80) until we reached our room.

Our room was sooo huge.  Two huge TV screens for Karaoke and 2 smaller screens for song selection.  We also had a private (single) washroom, and 6 wireless mics.

(The Washroom)

Coolest thing was, the place also had a buffet!  Man, Hong Kong and their buffets everywhere :P  There was a "buffet room" where they had sushi, make your own hot pot (with mini pots and hot plates there for you to cook), octopus balls, peking duck wrap, stir fry noodles and grilled skewers (octopus, chicken, sausages).  All this was made to order.... mmm.  There's another room where they had tons of hot tray food where you can serve yourself.  Dessert was also included - mango pudding, cakes, etc, and also this guy who would make a dessert plate for you with lava cake, ice cream or other cakes and decorate it all nice and pretty :) 

Pics from left to right:  Line up for sushi, make your own hotpot, dessert guy, stir fry and grill, octopus balls, peking duck and chinese sausage rice.

Here's a pic of some of the food I got, yum =)  The total price was about $170 per person, seems pretty expensive in HK but when I convert it back it's less than $25CAD.  This wasn't happy hour either, so in Canada this would be a craaazy deal :P  Must go again sometime!

Symphony of Lights

Went to see the light show (Symphony of Lights) with my roommate today.  I actually really liked it!  Yes a little cheesy with the music but it was just really cool that so many buildings participate to put this show together.  I think the show was a total of 15 min long, I was pretty satisfied with it at the end :P

The show runs every night at 8:00pm, with narrations in different languages depending on different days.  We watched it near the Avenue of Stars in Tsim Sha Tsui, you can also watch it on the HK Island side but I think you can see more interesting buildings from the TST side... I'll try watching from the HK Island side another day :)

Here are a couple pics:

The skyline and the show starting...

Lights!

More lights.. click to view larger pic

There were tons of boats/ferries sailing around during the show, I think there are packages like a 2 hour boat cruise with dinner and you can watch the light show from there.  Pretty cool but I'll probably opt for the free option :)

Food Roundup (Week 3)

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This week's notables:

1.  Tofu Ice Cream on Red Bean Ice @ Tsui Wah (翠華餐廳)

I went to this restaurant on Saturday night and someone wanted to order the tofu ice cream on red bean ice but it was sold out and I really wanted to try it, since it was tofu ice cream after all. Funny enough, me and my roommate were trying to find a restaurant in central and we ended up at another branch of this restaurant! I'm a pretty huge fan of red bean ice (a cold drink with red bean, sugary syrup and milk) so definitely had to try this one.  The tofu ice cream tasted like tofu, what can I say... and the tofu ice cream didn't make that much of a difference in the drink anyway, but it was cool to try something new =)

2.  Passionfruit shaved ice @ Modern Toilet Restaurant (Mong Kok or Causeway Bay)

Yes there is a toilet restaurant in Hong Kong!  All the food is served in mini toilets or other washroom related items, and some of the drinks are served in mini urinals.  A bunch of us decided to only get dessert because we wanted to check out the all you can eat KBBQ downstairs (which included all you can eat salmon sashimi, AHHH!).  We definitely didn't expect this to be SO huge!  The shaved ice was topped with various toppings like jelly, little cookies, raisins and fruit and chocolate ice cream shaped like poop :P  Pretty delicious, and flavourful all the way through unlike in Canada where half of it is just ice and no flavour!

Some other photos @ Modern Toilet:

My food is getting less and less interesting because I eat at the canteen (cafeteria) most of the time :P

HKU Campus

The HKU campus is awesome!  I guess I have low standards because of Waterloo, but I love HKU because of the interesting looking buildings and how all the buildings are on different levels.  Since the school is on a mountain, sometimes you'd have to take lots of stairs, escalators or elevators just to get to the other side of the campus.  Quite confusing at first but you learn the shortcuts and paths you're supposed to take it's actually quite nice =)

Here are some pics! (slideshow style, click for larger pics)

Course Enrolment, Timetables, and Other Adventures

I basically spent the last 2 days figuring out what courses to take and figuring out when and where these are.  There's alot of little rules like you have to take at least half your credits from your faculty (ie. Engineering) but in general it wasn't too bad. All the timetables for the courses are available for you, it's your job to make sure they don't clash.

HKU sets an add/drop period during the first 2 weeks of school, where you can choose your courses and try them out before finalizing them.  During these 2 weeks after you add your courses, the faculties and departments at HKU will screen the students and determine whether they will approve your courses or not.   Of course there's a risk of the courses not getting approved until the end of the 2 weeks.  Today's only the first day, so we'll see what happens... hopefully I get everything I wanted to take!

I also went on an adventure today!  After getting my student Octopus card (half price on the MTR/subway!) from far far away (I took 4 subway transfers, GG), I got off at Central station and decided to walk west towards school.  I had a list of things to buy and I was hoping to hop on a bus along the way back to school when I was done.  That plan didn't turn out so well because #1 I ran out of cash and #2 I walked all the way back to school.  It wasn't even a very efficient path, I made a huge loop to get back to school because I was trying to walk on a main road :P  This is the route I took...


View Larger Map

It was pretty fail, but I got what I needed.  I was so surprised at the selection at some Chinese(?) bakeries. Everything looked SOOO yummy! Some pics of what I bought:

I forget how fast you spend money in HK, carrying $300 with you is actually not very much.  Luckily I had lots of money on my Octopus card so I just found stores that took Octopus... which wasn't very hard.  Octopus card by the way is a rechargeable smart card that you can use on almost every transportation method and lots of chain restaurants and stores.  All you have to do is put the card near the sensor (or even your bag on the sensor) and it'll "doot", signifying that the transaction went through.  So convenient!

Finally after walking back to campus I got on a bus which took me back to rez.  I really worked up a sweat because the campus is half way up a mountain... =_= ""  Great exercise I guess :P

Food Roundup (Week 2)

This week's notables:

1.  Rice Noodle Roll (Cheung Fun 腸粉)

This snack (pictured left) is cheap (around $10hkd a plate) and tastes sooo good!  It's basically a bunch of rice noodle rolls cut into bite sized pieces, served with peanut sauce, sweet sauce and hot sauce which you squirt on however you want.  I personally like covering the cheung fun with peanut sauce and then squirting some sweet sauce on the side. SO GOOD!

2.  Taiwanese Snowflake Ice @ 糖仁街 China Town Dessert (TST)

Rough translation of the Chinese name for this dessert - 雪花冰.  First time I've ever tried or SEEN this and my goodness, it was sooo good.  I should have taken a picture of the order form - you choose one flavour for the ice cream base (10+ options), then a sauce/topping, then two sides.   I can't remember exactly what we ordered but I think the first one was green tea ice cream with sesame with tapioca balls and exploding mango balls.  These are like jelly/tapioca with mango juice inside, so they explode in your mouth when you eat them (SO GOOD!!!) .  Second one was chocolate ice cream with cornflakes and exploding yogurt balls and glutinous rice balls (湯圓?).  Best. Dessert. Ever.

Notable mention:  Mcdonalds Sausage and Egg Mcmuffin (Combo #10)

This is available ALL DAY every day for $9HKD (roughly $1.25 CAD).  That is all.

HKU Orientation

Had orientation for all the exchange students yesterday (Friday).  There were about 300 of us packed in a small theatre where they had speakers and even a lion dance for us.  It also included the lion spitting out gold chocolate coins and the helpers passing out lai see (red pockets) and new years snacks as an intro to the Chinese culture.  Unfortunately nothing too new for me but I think others enjoyed it.  We also had an icebreaker where we split off into different countries and filled up boards with stuff about our country/continent.  On the Americas board people had "fat", "debt" and "loud" (US) lol.

Met a couple of people yesterday too, even a girl from my program but one year younger... haha!  And I'm sooo glad that my roomate is in the same (HKU) program as me so we got to settle our courses together and probably take a couple of courses together too! Yay :)  Looking forward to school starting on Monday.  I don't think my courses are too difficult this term, and It's only pass/fail after all.  The only annoying thing is that they have an add/drop period for courses during the first 2 weeks of school, so your schedule isn't really finalized until the end of the 2 weeks.  Hopefully I can get all my courses within the first few days though.  We'll see how it goes!