Hiking.

This weekend has been a pretty exciting one for me. Let’s start from Friday – I went to the Hong Kong Music Fair (HKMF) after work and before I got on the bus to the HK Exhibition & Convention Centre in Wan Chai, I saw this restaurant at the bus stop near Cheung Sha Wan:

Considering the name of the restaurant literally translates to “Who’s the boss”, I think there are 2 possibilities arising: either you can shout at the waiters when they are slow in their work “Who’s the boss” to scare them, or the boss of the restaurant can shout “Who’s the boss” at you when you criticize the food.

The HKMF itself wasn’t a very interesting event – probably because it was the last 2 hours of the whole exhibition when I reached there. I walked through the path where they exhibited a lot of old stuffs from the music and entertainment scene in the past.

This is how big a radio is like back in the 1950’s. Considering how big my iPod Shuffle is now, I think technology has definitely advanced.

This box showcased the “first” items in the Hong Kong music scene. They even had that PSP music album from Joey Yung – of which I own a copy back in Singapore (it was like I bought it in Hong Kong and brought in back Singapore)

The exhibition wasn’t exactly fun, so I left after about only half an hour – but not before I managed to see one of the students from my FD class. Small world.

Went back to school yesterday morning to do some work. Stayed for about 2 hours before meeting Sis for lunch at Nam Shan. Then went to Kwun Tong to get a new router for my place. The old one was acting strange and I decided to ditch it and got a new LinkSys one. At $390, that was testament to the fact that playing with IT gadgets is definitely an expensive hobby.

Then today was exciting – I went for my first ever hiking trip in Hong Kong! The IVE Teachers’ Association organized a hiking trip from Tsuen Wan to Sham Tseng. I have never been on a hiking trip before, so this was definitely an eye opening experience for me. As it turned out, it was a hike of 2 halves. The first half involved mostly uphill paths, and that part was the one that had me almost wanting to die. It was a lesson for me who have not been exercising regularly! Then the second half was much better, as the path was easier to walk on, and it was mostly downhill. But mind you, downhill paths don’t make it easier to walk, because the downhill can really be pretty steep and challenging! In the end, it took me about 3 hours to complete the hike, and I’m glad that I made it – even though my legs are hurting like mad now!

This signboard points to the trail that we hiked on – note that it was one hour to the start of the trail from that particular point. It’s like we have to hike for an hour before we actually start hiking.

I was calling SOS all the way when I was going uphill, but views like this do make the whole tiring trip worth all the while.

See this track where everyone was walking? It looks mild enough, but for me it was a killer! The worst thing was, after this apparent uphill, there was another one behind this!

Then halfway through there was a small family-style restaurant that sells cold drinks (Glory be to the God) and offered a very nice pond for viewing pleasure. At this point, the hike was about at its 60% point.

Apparently the path that we walked on was a black spot for landslides. I’m sure it wouldn’t be fun to be stuck in that spot when a landslide is happening.

Civilization!!!

After the hike, we went to this roast goose restaurant for a sumptuous roast goose lunch – for all the difficulties and hardships, it was a well-deserved reward!

Then as I took the bus from Sham Tseng out back to Tsuen Wan, the bus had a very good view of the Tsing Ma bridge.

After the nice view of Tsing Ma Bridge, an equally good view of the Ting Kau Bridge was coming up.

I’m totally knackered after the whole day of walk, and it was weird to spend a weekend not resting at home when I was so tired after the whole week of work in school. It’s quite amazing to see half the class not bothering to hand it the homework given to them. But I can’t complain – perhaps I can’t be bothered to complain considering that I don’t think I would really want to be in the job after my current contract expires. I really don’t think teaching is the job for me.