maid in hk

Sundays are special days in HK. A lot of people work 6 days a week here, Sunday being their only day off, so therefore Sundays are special and also regarded as the family day – because that’s the only day you have with the family.

A lot of people also have maids here in HK. And they also work 6 days a week. And after a week on their feet looking after family they work for, I’m sure the Sunday is a very welcome break. Most maids around here come from the Philippines and support their families back home with the money they make here and can usually only afford a trip home once every or every second year... (It is estimated that around 170 000 Philipino-maids work in HK). They are usually live-in maids as well, meaning that they don’t have a home of their own, but are granted a small room in the house they work in.

“So far so good”, but here comes the twist…
Sundays are family day remember, meaning Sundays are only for family, and if you’re a maid you’re not family…, so of course you’re not welcome in the house where you live – you’re home in HK… And neither are your fellow maid friends where they live… So if you still want to relax and meet up with your friends on your only day off, the only place you can go are the streets of HK…

Many streets, bridges and parks in the centre of HK are absolutely full with girls that have nowhere else to go on Sundays. They spend their whole day there, sitting on the card board boxes and blankets they bring with them, playing cards, talking, laughing, sleeping and eating. And when the sun has set and the day has gone, they are allowed to return to the house they live in. Only to dream and look forward to their next Sunday off (hopefully it doesn’t rain then…) and to when they have saved up so much money that they actually can afford to go home to visit their real home…

made in china

Yep we have all seen those 3 words, on the sewn in labels in our clothes, on the stickers on the things we buy, and as text on the hang tags etc. Lots and lots of things are made in China. And today I've been exposed to some of all of those things, as I visited the biggest fair in China. (An enormous complex filled with people from all over the world, trying to source and make good deals for their stores).

I've looked at Easter eggs, cute teddy bears, pretty photo frames, inflatable toys (for kids and grown ups... :)), jewellery boxes, Christmas lighting - well you name it, I've seen it... And we may have found some good things that you just might be able to find in a toy store near you pretty soon...

And for the first time in what seems like ages I was "checked out", on several occasions! Am so unused to appreciative looks nowadays that the looks I got today almost made me feel embarrassed... But also most obvious glad, cause other wise I wouldn't be writing about it here now would I... (thought I lost it, so it feels kind of good to know that I still got it...)

So to sum up the day, it has been a good but also tiring... And right now I will not waste an other second before I jump into bed.
Night night.

family celebrations

A delicious chocolate fudge cake coated in pure white chocolate and dazzling stars....

And today my cake goes to my dearest friend Sofia, Happy Birthday darling!
And on Sunday I'm wishing the little cutypie Maya (Sofias baby girl) a Happy Birthday too, can't believe it's been a year already since you first came into this world...

Hope you make the most of your family celebrations on your mini-vacation trip to Germany!
Have a great time.
Biggest of hugs and kisses to you both.

ginger, lemon and honey

I'm sick. Again... The usual - fever and a sore throat... It started Friday and since then I have spent most of my time lying down in my sofa, reading books, watching movies, and giving my self health boosts consisting of juices (normal juices, healing juices and reanimating juices....) and green tea with ginger, lemon and honey. All to make a speedy recovery.

However, in spite of all my good efforts, four days later I'm still sitting here in my sofa, and still have a temperature (+38). So I've just been to the doctor. And in front of me now, together with my mug of ginger, lemon and honey tea, I also have a bag of pills. Hopefully those white little things will do the trick that my health boosts haven't been able to do...

And I've been thinking...
Could I be trying too hard? Living a healthy life I mean... (Cause I think I do live pretty healthy... I walk to and from work, I go to the gym, I make sure I eat vegetables and fruit and all those things you are supposed to do...).

So I'm thinking maybe I should start living my life differently. Maybe I should take up smoking, start eating unhealthy, stop exercising, increase my alcohol intake dramatically (shouldn't be too hard... :)) and maybe even start doing drugs (not too much of course, even an unhealthy life can be lived in moderation..., but a gram of coke for Friday and Saturday and some weed on Sunday just to chill out - that's pretty normal, loads of people do that every weekend...) Maybe that's the remedy...

But no, I like my healthy life, so don't worry, I won't. But one thing is clear and that is that I think it's sooo incredible boring to be sick, I think it's unfair that I do get sick so "often" and I really do wonder what I should do not to catch all these germs that I most obviously am catching...

OK, time for another sip of that healthy remedy of mine.
Ciao.

high heels

And for being a city full of girls wearing high heels, they walk remarkably badly in them...

First of all - I don't get why? When you come from a country where you seem to be more or less born into them, you should be able to handle them one might think.... But no..., the feet go inwards, the shoes get dragged along, the feet and ankles wiggle down the street, the shoes do not seem to be comfortable at all and feet are put down on the ground in a very funny way, some just wear way too high heels and stagger along and far too many of these very nice high heels are walked in with bent knees ...

Second of all - it's not that hard....

Anyway, my point is -if you can't walk in them - don't wear them! It's just so damn ugly....
And a shame I think, because when high heels are worn on the right person in the right way - it's damn sexy...

But I walk on by.... (In sneakers, flip flops and sometimes even high heels...)

people

For being a city full of people in a hurry, the Chinese can walk remarkable slowly at times. It drives me insane, at times I just want to scream…

Ah well, I guess I should just walk and push, and as I’m both tall and big around here I should be able to make my way.

An other thing, bumping into each other or stepping on someone else, does not in any way require an “excuse me” or “oh I’m sorry”, it is instead totally ignored.

So we walk on by…

birthdays

Hurray!
A birthday cake with candles for you to blow I hereby present to you Pernilla (birthday today) (why don't you have 2 pieces... you've got a lot to celebrate!! :) ) and to you Dwight (birthday on Saturday).

Hope you both get to have fantastic birthdays!

Enjoy the cake!

Birthday hugs from me....

hard work

I've got really sore knuckles today...
Have taken up boxing.

Great fun and hard work - so hard that parts of my knuckles were bleeding at the end of the session yesterday, even though I was wearing gloves... Doesn't bother me though, just makes me feel more tough... And that's very appealing to a "Tom-boy" (swe:pojkflicka) like me.

sum up

As you know my friend Jon was here over Easter. And Jon is not only my friend but also a friend of "sum ups". So just before he left he thought it was a good idea to do a "sum up" of his holiday... You start he said. And I said:

- It's been great! (Cause it has been great having him here, I think it's a short, sweet and perfect description, and I'm not such a good friend of sum ups as he is...).

Surely you understand that he wasn't too impressed with my answer... So I will now give it an other go...

• Hiking 3 out of 5 possible days is an OK effort I think. Especially as the hiking we did took us through beautiful national parks. To sum up it was: green, relaxing, tiring, sweaty, beautiful and lovely to fill up the lungs with fresh air. It was great...
  
• I love shopping. Whether it's for me or for someone else... So taking a man on a mission for a watch, sunglasses and camera among other things is a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon, from my perspective anyway... Especially when I get to pick out the things!! (Jon walked out of the Gucci store with a golden bag containing a very nice watch and cool sunnies). (And I walked out of the MaxMara store with a pair of really cool sunnies too :)). It was great...
  
• Introducing people to "new" things are always fun too. I took Jon to a stability ball class and I took him to my Thai massage place as well as had him eating Vietnamese food. All things that I really like and things he had never tried before. It was great....
  
• Trying new things is also something I like myself. I really do believe it's good to broaden your horizons. So together we tried colon hydrotherapy. I mean, it might be a bit weird at first, but it is supposed to be really good for you, and I actually do believe it is... Detoxifying, hydrating and all. It does require some work though, although with all that water running around, it sort of makes the job pretty easy... So that's now a tick off the list. It was great...

So to make a last sum up - having Jon here was.... great....!

one quarter

3 months… I’ve actually lived in HK for over 3 months now… Can you believe it?! That’s actually over a quarter of a year…. If the 3 coming quarters goes as fast as this first one has, a year of my life will have passed by very quickly…

Time flies when you have fun, that’s how the saying goes isn’t it? And I guess that’s just a confirmation of how I feel about living here. It is fun! (Ok, work is not the best…, but the rest sure is!)

And after 3 months I’m official. I’m a Hong Kong resident. I’m a holder of a HK ID and from now on all I have to do when I arrive to this country is put my finger on a fingerprint scanner and they will let me in. No passport required…

easter birthday

A yummy piece of sweet chocolate cake for a sweet girl!

Happy Birthday dearest Soph!

happy easter

Just wanted to wish you all a happy easter!

Hope you are having a fab and sweet time, whatever you get up to!

easter hiking

My friend Jon is visiting from Sweden, and on top of our agenda is hiking. Yesterday we started up with a walk that made us puff a bit, but it was all ok and it was not too long. Today we thought that a bigger and more challenging walk would do us good. And it did! Just that it was pretty damn tough...

6 hours of walking up and down two peaks (the two highest in HK) surely make your legs feel used (almost abused...). As I started writing this post, Jon protested as I wrote the headline and thought that "a hike from hell" would be a more appropriate name for it... And I guess that gives you an idea of how we were feeling at times throughout it. But it feels good now!! And most of the time it felt good during as well, just made us huff, puff and sweat a lot.

Towards the end we also got to experience a quite spiritual and beautiful as well as unexpected moment. As we where taking our last 5 minute break the heavy clouds that had been surrounding us all day dispersed and the biggest sitting bronze Buddha in Asia appeared in front of us. It felt like it gave us the strength we needed to walk the last kilometers of the hike. A very special ending to this exhausting walk.

birthday

Happy Birthday Åsa!!
Have a great day my friend!

damn birds

Damn damn damn birds...

shanghai update

Shanghai sure is big and seems to be a really cool city.
And speaking about cool, it’s been freakn’ freezing…don’t know when I felt so cold last. People have been walking around in winter jackets, gloves etc, whilst all I had on was a T-shirt and a jumper… Doesn’t really cut it… Anyhow I survived, but my ambitions of doing a proper sightseeing in the little time that I had, was kept to a minimum. No pleasure in walking around when 5 minutes was all it took for one to feel like jar of frozen yoghurt…

But I’ll be coming back, that’s for sure! Because the little I saw gave me good vibes, and I definitely want to see more. However, being used to HK standards now, when it comes to all the people in the streets, I sometimes almost got a feeling of the city being deserted… (Like someone actually made a joke saying that Shanghai has over 18 million inhabitants or like 93 per cent of them had been told to stay off the streets or maybe they were all just playing hide and seek and I weren’t invited…) Quite nice though, being able to walk normally without bumping into 100’s of people within an hour.

And compared to HK the city also differs when it comes to the buildings. Where HK displays high rises and high rises only, Shanghai displays a mix of the old and the new, the high and the low. Which is real nice I think.

(Although no question at all that HK wins the battle of which city is the best!)

So thank you Shanghai for a good, however cold, adventure and know that I’m leaving you with good feelings and with the intension of returning soon again.

shanghai

This foreign babe is broadening her horizons of Asia and has taken her adventures to Shanghai. Or maybe it's the other way really, the adventures are taking the foreign babe around...

Anyhow, I arrived this morning, after spending a couple of hours on the plane beside a very talkative French guy (did he ever breath...?). And so far I haven't seen anything. Except the suppliers office and factory - after all I am here on work... But that is about to change very soon though, as I'm about to head out into this BIG city.

Shanghai is situated on the estuary of Yangtze River of China. It is the largest industrial city in China. Covering an area of 5,800 square kilometers, Shanghai has a population of 18.7 million, including 2 million floating population.

And all this is what I will go out and explore in just a few minutes. So all you millions of people out there, here I come!

Just afraid I will be a bit cold though... Hong Kong has been warm and humid the last days and unfortunately I didn't think too much of the different weather conditions here compared to home, so consequently I didn't bring enough clothes... (but hey what can you expect - after all I'm blond...). But I'll be fine, don't you worry.

Time to go.
See ya!