Shopping in Hong Kong

Majority of people who are on holiday in a big city such as New York, LA, London, Tokyo of course why wouldn't they take the opportunity of checking out the fashion and therefore go shopping!


I did a fair bit of this when I went HK. The city has many trendy quirky styles. From the very kawaii Japanese style to the slightly urban grungy edge. HK fashion is very influenced by Japanese and Korean looks where the shapes are quite exciting and a breath of fresh air to me, compared to the European High Street style - here's a few places and brands I encountered to share with you:-

Mong Kok:-


There are the typical places like off Fa Yeun Street (花园街) there is the market there and on the side plenty of clothes shops, cheap, not bad for fast fashion, however the quality is not really to point call it Primarni quality, but hey, my job is quality control related!


Tung Choi Street, a very long street that has the well know to Tourists Ladies Market (女人街) knock offs designer bags, belts, souvenirs, shoes clothing, and off one of the streets is section known for Sportwear AKA (Trainer Street)


旺角中心/ Argyle Centre, Nathan Road


One of my last shopping discoveries when I ventured to Hong Kong over 2 years ago was just on the corner and next to one of the MTR exits. This was one of my favourite shopping places, consisting of 3 floors of fashion shops selling bags, shoes, make up and of course clothing, every girl's shopping paradise; best thing the place doesn't close until 11.30pm!

Chic @ 堡 Shopping mall HK, Soy Street


This Shopping Mall is also 3 floors, known to sell al sorted toys and clothing, mainly menswear and men's sportswear, there's also a few salon shops to do nails hair for the girls


CTMA Centre 兆萬中心, Sai Yeung Choi Street South


This shopping centre is also a place for selling majority of toys, games and a few gadgets, however this place sells clothing as well, majority of the styles that I saw in the units were cute girly floaty styles Japanese and Korean influence  


Tsim Sha Tsui:-



This is actually a new dicovery for me thanks to my friend Vincent, he took me to a little area called Granville Road which is quite a hidden treasure


Rise Shopping Arcade, Granville Circuit, Tsim Sha Tsui, Opens late lunchtime 1pm till around 11pm


3/4 floors of little boutique shops selling a varied range of clothes, from designer, vintage and wholesale seconds. Vincent told me it used to have a floor devoted to bridalwear but not anymore, unless it they moved to the higher floors, we didn't venture any higher as we couldn't find the lift! hahaa!


Rise is very eclectic fashion wise and suit a lot of the fashion lovers, there are also shops for menswear as well compared to the Argyle Centre which has just womenswear. Prices do vary in Rise, pending on what you buy, you can try haggling and they do give you a discount if you by more that one item 10-20%

DNA Galleria, 61-65 Chatham Road South, Tsim Sha Tsui


This place is around the corner from Rise Shopping Arcade, it's actually a brand spanking new shopping arcade 3 floors of a range of different styles of clothing from sports wear to tailoring to street wear. Sweets and gadgets are also sold; in a nutshell it's a mini mall selling alsorts
The Layout of the place is very open, and I really love the Pop artish interior of large figurines around the store, what's strange is the way they do the check outs. There are individual check out desks around each floor, but as you purchase items from the shop, they give you a receipt  to make payment at the check out before obtaining your brought items. 


The Place is still quite new and of course has a few empty units that need to get filled in.

Things about Hong Kong

There are a few things I’ve noticed in HK that I’m not used to: -

Transport

Their MTR (Tube in our case) they have signal! I’m so used to being unreachable on the mobile on the tube

The Mini bus 小巴，I don’t really have clues where their bus stops are, >.<” they are so urban and hidden you have to shout out to the driver to tell them where you want to stop. There are actually different prices to the journey but don’t know the actual prices unless you ask the driver or look at the chart in the mini bus - I know without a doubt I have underpaid twice as the driver warned me, and have overpaid quite a few times by a few $

TV

Being typical TV, there isn’t really much on apart from the typical TVB series, series on talking about food, silly game shows and the worst thing, the excessive amount of news they have! I swear 70% of TV is mainly news, stocks and shares – . –

Obsession

In Hong Kong there is a very big obsession in beauty and sliming. Foods saying are so good and enhancing their skin, slimming products the celebrities endorse and campaign encouraging people to become such skinny twiglets of size 4-6, seriously a lot of the women and fair percentage of men in HK are very slim, maybe it because of different environment, diet or lifestyle they live. Makes me feel a bit on the fatty side

Since being in Hong Kong and post Japan earthquake disaster, I keep hearing that salt helps reduce the amount of radiation. So in China and HK there has been the mass hysteria of buying salt and the market selling their salt at a higher price to the usual cheap rate of $2 a pound or whatever weight it is they use to $20 HKD of course. But even so ridiculous prices, there was even a man who died because of consuming so much salt, TV had to create a program in how to consume the salt properly >.< honestly it’s common sense! My friends and I did crack a few salt jokes saying we should order the typical salty food products for dinner

Alcohol/ Rugby 7s Weekend

I think I came to HK particularly Lan Kwai Fong during the wrong weekend!! As some of you will know, LKF is renowned for being the main Square for bars drinking and clubbing, very Western influenced. But this weekend was hectic! Felt like being back in London, on NYE – overcrowded bars and on the street filled with lairy drinkers in fancy dress.

Damaging thing in LKF, cost of alcohol and entrance to the club – 2 bottles of Corona over $100 HKD?! Entrance into a club $300-400HKD. Rip off though I didn’t go to the clubs, my friends told me they’re usually small, overcrowded and the dance floor is always rammed can’t even properly dance!

Aside from that, I was really not use to being allowed to drink on the street! People were just buying their alcohol from the 7 Eleven, as it was cheaper to the bar of course and just drinking outside, I will admit I had ¼ bottle of my Corona left to drink before entering one of the bars and doorman took my drink away…. Oh well at least I had a laugh from the doorman as he questioned whether it was 5 girls in our group. I said “Yeah if you include my mate Kafai” as we know he’s still a man, but possesses many nicknames including Woman (hahahhahaaa)

Ok this will do of this chapter of blogging under this topic, I’ll throw some fun posts very soon!

Living in Wo Hang 禾坑村

As some of you may know I am holidaying over in Hong Kong for 2 weeks, the weather’s been over cast temperatures ranging from 17-22C not too humid either, which is good.

Instead of staying down in Central HK in hotel/hostels, saving the money & staying in Dad’s village where he grew up in called Wo Hang, in the New Territories; nearest KCR station would either be Fanling or Sheung Shui and 20min bus ride from Sha Tou Kok (town on the edge of China’s border) in a nutshell, I’m still kind of living in the middle of nowhere! Fortunately there are buses to the stations or next small town where there are amenities for everyone’s use.

Other reason to be out here is that my parent’s have been sorting out our new house, 2 buildings 3 floors, one of the reasons I’m back to HK, House-warming gathering for the house, more details about it in a bit.

Living in the village is quite nice, very peaceful minus the dogs that walk around the village and barking in the night, but saw a really cute puppy hanging around the street with 3 other puppies, they were all mixed breed but still quite cute! (-^.^-) ok went a bit off the topic. 

The air is much much cleaner here plenty of trees and grass around compared to Central as there so much pollution from the buses, cars and lorries. 

In Wo Hang it belongs to the Li Clan, and they usually speak Hakka (another Chinese dialect I really don't know much of) There are only about 50 houses left in the village most are still old houses that are broken/ deserted as they belong to someone & haven't really done anything with their plot of land yet

I'll post more when I get round to writing and getting my bum down the library. Another limitation for me in HK/ Wo Hang Village, I don't have internet :( I know my UK phone bill with be more than usual this month from popping on FB! >.<" 

Free food Events Weekend & food Porn!!

My Weekend has not only been filled with my Eclectic activities but as some of you may know I am quite a foodie ^.^

Here's my fill of awesome looking food I encountered over the 2 days of free food events consisting of La Dolce Vita, and IFE in Excel

La Dolce Vita was a smaller event mainly of Italian Trade foods, property and drink, a lot of people attended this event so was fairly claustrophobic at times

Italian Pastries Sweetness

Giant Ham with pistachio nuts not too fatty either!!!!

I will say the Excel event was the best - 3hours trying free samples and walking.... I got so full I really didn't want to eat anymore sweet things or cheese!

Tennis Ball Sugar things you can fill

Cute mini Cheese grater!!

Deserts Galore!!! 

Heart shaped cheeses <3

Roast Duck 

Mixed canapes

More canapes! 

Weekend of excessive activities

So, my last weekend in Londontown before I headed over to literally the East. Being typical me, it was a jam packed weekend!

First things first, my damn body clock woke me up @ 7.15am on the Saturday morning... Hate it when that happens, dosed off till half hour later, the alarm goes off. Skyped the parents checking if they needed anything from Uk to HK, mum only wanted 2 bottles of brandy for £50 from the duty free. On that note mum is not a drinker but dad & his pals are & the liquor is for a dinner party we're doing! Ooh still need to find an outfit for that! 

Next out the house before 9am to get breakfast & refund another thing to trusty Primarni, so annoying to think something looks good on the hanger but is actually not flattering on my body. 

Then 10am getting to Euston for 2hour free Japanese class! Some Japanese came back to mind but some of the words were a bit tricky for the tongue to twist, practice makes perfect non? I will have to admit there were some REALLY Kawaii kids attending a different Japanese class, just so cute!

Spring was definitely coming as the day was very sunny and was nice seeing daffodils ^.^ 

Next stop, to Angel for La Dolce Vita, Itallian event @ the Islington business centre, a fair bit of Italian food though was mainly olive oils, bread a bit of meat and of course ice cream!
Top up for the evening my friends and I decided to go to this concert held at the Royal Festival Hall, £5 for a ticket wouldn't say no. I was definitely intrigued to know what this concert was; it was al I knew was there was VV Brown performing and was a celebration of International Women's Day
It was such an interesting and emotional concert where there were 5 powerful female artists - ESKA, VV Brown, Speech Debelle, Krystal Warren and African singer Annie-Flore Batchiellilys with host Baaba Maal.

Listening to this music was absolutely beautiful, the music is not usually what I listen to; a range of world music with brass and African percussions, the singing was just amazing and very   deep, particularly when ESKA and Annie such it just blew me away



I will say I knew there was a reason I wasn't a fan of Speech Debelle's music, it's too much MCing and urban for my taste, Kystal Warren's lyrics in her music were not bad but was another artist I wasn't feeling, her voice was quite low to what I was expecting 


It was great that this event was held, as it was the 1st ever concert held to mark International Women's Day, marking the 100th Birthday, I would definitely recommend people attending events like this, it's nice to do something different and listening to different genres of music, though my friend's brother didn't enjoy it much as it isn't really his type of music to listen to.
     

Power Plates!!

I think I've noticed this year at the moment that I've hit the obession with keeping active and keeping up with some form of fitness. This time I've decided to dabble in Power Plates! I have read reviews about this new trend of keeping toned and whilst quite merry over champagne at a club launch party, I asked my friend to sign me up via Groupon! £22 for 3 sessions where one session is £22, why not give it a try!

So

People usually think that power plates is just standing on the machine as it just vibrates your body, but it's not just that. The instructor makes you do aerobic excersises as well as vibrating on the machine, about 30-60 second sets of each movement. I have to admit it was a bit of a work out in a good way, though made me quite conscious of my posture as the instructor corrected my poses quite a few times. Hmm .... Need to get round to doing my Bikram sessions to sort that out!

I have to admit it was the quickest 30min workout I've ever experienced and it wasn't too painful, 15mins on the upper body then 15min on lower body. There a pose we had to do which was very weird! We were made to stand with out back straight knees bent and I have to admit it did feel like you were going to poo yourself!!

It is quite an interesting form of keeping fit, though quite expensive for 30mins! oh well I have 2 more sessions to go but will have to be once I'm back from HK!

Tasteful dancing

As a Friday night, had waited few weeks for this performance and was excited to go out with the girlies. We decided to go to the Hurly Burly Show, it had been produced by a guy who did Kylie Minogue's shows. 

Polly Rae the main act and burlesque dancer was really funny, amazing and sung live. The guy who was singing Spencer Day, at first I thought he was one of the contestants who was in the Final from X factor, but he's American, so strikes it out. Good singing but he's a crap dancer!

Of course Burlesque is a bit of a of a strip tease, but it's tasteful, glamourous clothing, and contemporary, mixing modern songs with a bit of sexual innuendo in a humorous way. 

I will admit there were some pretty hot scenes in the show, I was very impressed with the act when they performed to "lets get physical" on gym balls under UV light. 

There were a few moments I found was funny was when Polly Rae made everyone join in, stand up and dancing, my friends and I looked around and realised, there was a lot of men around!  Then there was the last scene where Polly was dancing away then one of her boobie tassels slipped off, she had such a "ah who cares" look and carried on performing, very professional and I suppose she had problems like that many times!

Overall the Burlesque show was a very fun night out, it's great to see the women were curvy and not stick think models, tickets being on special offer of £20 can't complain, so yeah the women were baring very little but it's burlesque for you!    

I'd recommend people expanding their mind an dip in to a different world of performance!

For the Label?

Here I am on a bit of a hunt and browsing around online to find a new job. I've been working where I am for over a year now and I just want to have a change, experiencing more of what there is to offer, change of location and of course with better pay.

As I have been hunting around, majority of jobs posted with vacancies they don't really specify where the place is or who it's for. Then I decided to apply for a job for one of the brands within the Arcadia Group.

One of my good friends questioned me, "didn't you say you wouldn't apply to any of the Arcadia Group brands?" I did say I wouldn't want to as the Arcadia Group are known to be quite a difficult company to work for with their standards, but to be honest, it will be good to have under the CV; but then again it's not only to be able to work for a known company, it's all about the work experience that happens within the company.

Brands don't always mean you worked for a fantastic place. McQueen's company is known to overwork their interns, and they won't necessarily gain as much experience compared to a smaller company that is more hands on. When I was interning, I had even turned Vivienne Westwood down, because they wanted an intern to work for the accessories department. It was tempting, but it wasn't the area I was interested in.

Overall, Brands don't necessarily mean it's going to be the most fantastic, but I suppose it just depends in the situation like in most jobs and companies, what you will gain and learn from them.