Ion is still building. Orchard Scotts has finally been torn down. Pacific Apartments are open. Nothing much has changed in the area I live, except my room. I was in utter shock when I looked into my room. There are foreign objects on my table, my earrings hung on sushi rattan net are no longer there, all my clothes are gone from my closet, folded and kept in the lower compartment and another closet. Nobody touches my clothes, not even my mum. How audacious my cousin was to remove my clothes from the hangers!

I had so many things to do upon reaching so it was really annoying to have to search the whole closet for the belongings I need to bring along to Hong Kong. Singapore was so hot and humid (I forgot how the weather in Singapore felt like), so when I was dying to take a shower, I couldn’t find my usual towels and underwear.

My usual pillows and comforter are no longer on my bed, and my room just looks like a storeroom now. I mean usually I’m not such a petty person, so I told myself to get on with life and forgive her for taking the initiative to attempt to neaten up my room which kinda failed. But when I lay in bed in the guest room (since there were no pillows, bedsheets and comforters on my bed), tears rolled down my cheeks as I sniffed at the pillow. I knew it mattered no matter how I told myself to forget about it since it was only going to be 2 days at home, after a long time away from home, sleeping on a bed without comforters in Germany for 4 months and not having a home or own bed to sleep in and constantly on the move for 1.5 months, and after looking forward to having my old room and bed for just 2 nights before heading off solo for my internship.

My mum appeared to have aged a lot since 5 months ago, and I don’t know if it’s my imagination or if it’s true.

18 Jun. God is indeed trying to test my resilience as my search for a printer in my area was in vain. The printer was spoilt, of all days! So I was looking forward to the flight with SIA on a 747-400, but turned out there was a technical problem, nopes, technical problems. The first technical problem was that the PA system was not working on my side of the plane so we could not hear any announcements at all, not a big problem unless there was a delay in the flight of maybe 2 hours due to a second technical problem, which I wasn’t sure was what. This meant that instead of reaching at 9plus I reached at 11plus and reached my apartment at 12plus in the night. Honestly my experience with Qatar was much better, despite it being such an awfully long 15-hour flight. The flight attendants were much more sincere, gentler and sweeter. The flights were smooth, with little turbulence, though it was on a smaller plane - Airbus 320. Flights to Europe are well-known to cause bad jet lags or turbulence, due to the odd time difference and bad weather conditions in Europe, but all turned out well for me. Even with 3 hours of sleep on the flight, I managed to stay up to do some packing till late at night.

And so I reached HK in the middle of the night, with no idea how to get to the apartment and I had a 25kg load to lug with me. The problem was that the cab driver was not very nice to me as I couldn’t even speak Canto in complete sentences or pronounce correctly, and kept asking me where Wo On Lane was. I could only tell him roughly where but not how to get there. So in the end he passed by Wo On Lane and instead of getting to the right location, he dropped me off somewhere down the hill on Wellington St which meant I had to backtrack, uphill, to get back to Wo On Lane, lugging the load behind me, and walking antitraffic-direction in the middle of the road. My area turned out to be in Lan Kwai Fong, so there was a lot of nightlife in the area, and much noise heard from my room too. I knew my room would be small, but it was really small! The shower area is the size of a toilet cubicle so I had to shower in front of the toilet bowl and leave my clothes and towel outside. Anyway, it's not like I'm going to spend much time in my room when I start work.

Just when I thought I could enjoy my internet after a warm shower and enjoy the aircon, the internet failed me! It really irked me because I specially mentioned that I need the internet urgently to finish up my work (which is in fact like 32 modules more to complete) and hoped that it would work well!

All these was just a bad start to my experience in Hong Kong, which made me feel pretty miserable for a first day in a foreign place, alone. But I refuse to give in to these; to me, these are merely tests of my resilience, which I would need a lot to cope with the supposed long hours at the bank.

19 Jun. The next day turned out to be slightly better, with the helper fixing my internet and thus saving my life. Took a tour around my area and was pretty satisfied with what I found - 5 min walk to my workplace, 3 min walk to MTR station, 2 min walk to H&M, Esprit and supermarket, Ben&Jerry's, Haagen Daz, Pret A Manger, Sasa, 7-11, Delifrance, Pacific Coffee, Starbuck, all at my doorstep. Please feel what I want you to feel - jealous.

What I see on my way home.

20 to 21 Jun. I had like 39 online modules to finish up, clothes to iron and a presentation to prepare for my training, so most of the time I spent indoors completing the online tests, which was kinda boring. Now that I've settled in pretty well, familiarised with the area, and making myself comfortable in my own apartment, life is good when you get to socialise over dinner or drinks, which I did with Thor, Mich and her mum, as well as the ML interns on another night.

Hong Kong is fantastic! Words simply can't explain the excitement I am feeling right now. So far so good. I have a lot of backlog for my blog, so I'll be back backdating my blog entries whenever I have the time!