When It Rains, It Pours

Actually, that's a pretty ironic title because, as you can see from the following two pictures, today was the absolute sunniest and clearest day I have ever seen in Hong Kong.  Apparently, the sky really is blue.  I had forgotten.

And, what?  Those mountains have tops?  I never noticed before.

Of course, all good things must come to an end.  Mine came to an end at 7:30am this morning when, for the life of me, I absolutely could not sleep any more whatsoever, despite having hit the sack past midnight.  It seems the only time I don't need an alarm clock is on the weekends.  More irony, I suppose.

Well, I decided I might as well make myself a busy little bee and do some laundry.  I went downstairs to put some money on my CU-Link Card, which is something I've never done before.  Naturally, the instructions were all in Chinese so the only words I understood were things like "money" and "card."  I had to get the lady who works at the counter to help me.  She didn't speak more than about 5 words of English, though, and my Mandarin wasn't sufficient either.  Eventually, she put HK$50 on it from her card and I paid her back with cash.  Then I ran upstairs, got my laundry together and went to the laundry room.  I loaded up the washers, and put in my liquid detergent then went to paid with my newly-loaded CU-Link card.  The little card-scanner refused to acknowledge my card so I had to find the lady who works at the counter again.  She jammed my card in so hard I thought it would break, but (thankfully) it didn't.  Phew.  I got the clothes washed, but there was no timer on the machine so I had no idea how long it would take.  I grabbed my homework and something to eat for breakfast and just hung out down there for about an hour.  I then transferred my clothes to the dryer without any issues and got them dried.  By that time, it was about 10:30am.

I did some more homework until Cameron was ready to go to Sha Tin at 11:30am.  We took the bus to the train station, and then took the train to the Sha Tin MTR station so we got there around 12:15pm.  The reason he wanted to come with me was to pick up a converter, and frankly I need one too.  Supposedly, you can buy everything in Sha Tin.  I now strongly believe, though, that electrical converters are the exception to this rule because we searched for hours and found only adapters.  I think some guys are planning a trip to the Air Port to buy some later this week.  I guess I'm going on that outing too.

So I felt bad because the one thing Cameron wanted to pick up was the one thing we couldn't find.  He was a good sport, though, and went with me to IKEA.  I got a non-stick frying pan, a non-stick pot with a colander lid, a spatula, and some tupperware.  Then we went to get some stuff for me to cook because I had (oh so cleverly) already analyzed the resources available in the dorm kitchen:  one refrigerator, one microwave, and two hot plates--all of which I have seen in use.

At c!ty-super, the grocery store closest to the MTR station in Sha Tin, I saw the largest variety of Buitoni I have ever witnessed.  From this, I knew that I could cook one of my favorites:  Tortellini Soup!  I got a package of the spinach and ricotta tortellini, a can of navy beans, a can of diced tomatoes, some chicken broth, chicken, and (just for fun) some canned mushrooms and a little container of parmesan--not to mention I finally purchased the remaining spices on my "basic necessities" list.  In other words, I am absolutely ready to cook anything and everything I want/need now.  Not to mention that, even in Hong Kong, cooking your own food is still cheaper.

I also went Eco-Friendly and bought this enormous grocery tote for HK$6, which is like 75 cents US.  They charge you extra for plastic bags here, so after 5-6 trips to the grocery store, the tote pays for itself.  Plus, it's kind of nifty and rather useful for other things.  On the other side, it says the same thing in Chinese with the same picture.

So I was looking good and feeling great.  I was so incredibly excited about finally FINALLY being able to cook something, and having that ability made me feel like an unstoppable super woman.  There was, however, a little problem.  To be precise, make that lots of little problems.  Look at the picture below.  No, I haven't contracted chickenpox for the second time (although it sometimes feels like that).  Those are bug bites.  Just 3 days ago I had not more than one or two bites per leg.  But for some unknown reason, the bugs have come out in full-force.  I think maybe it has something to do with the fact it hasn't rained for several days.  This is just the one leg, but the other one looks similar.  I wore long pants today and yesterday for this precise reason.  Needless to say, I purchased mosquito repellent at the mall today.

Anyway, moving on...

After trying not to scratch myself to death, I snapped a little picture of my all-ready-to-cook workspace.  As you can see, I've got all my little ingredients and my equipment ready.  Yay me!  I cut up my chicken into tiny pieces and let it marinate in the fridge a bit with some olive oil, pepper, and garlic.  Then I fired up the hot plate and got ready to cook the chicken pieces so I could set them aside and boil the pasta.  Unfortunately, I never made it to the second step because, after firing up the hot plate, it promptly turned itself off.  Weird, but all right.  I mean, there are two hot plates.  I turned the other one on and set the heat so it could be warming up.  It thought about it for about a minute then decided it was too much effort.  It too shut itself off.  This annoyed me to no end because I know for a fact that people have burnt scrambled eggs on those things just this week.  Why don't they like me?  I mean, the buttons seem straight-forward enough, but some of the people from California who live on our hall (most of the IBCE folks weren't there at the time) tried to help me but they couldn't get it to work either!  So I gave up on the tortellini soup for tonight because I have 3 people (although they don't know it yet) lined up to ask for help tomorrow because I've seen them use the hot plates almost daily.  Hopefully, hopefully, there is just some little malfunction that will work itself out by tomorrow.  Dad, you're an electrical engineer.  Can you think of any explanation for this?  I'm at my wit's end (and, yes, they were plugged in).

So, as the title says, it had been raining, even pouring, but there was bound to be a grand finale.  I went to do my listening assignment for Han Laoshi's class, which is due on Monday and my computer refused to recognize the file.  I deleted then reloaded it into my iTunes and got the same result.  After 3 hours of messing with it, I still could not get the file to work so I sent Han Laoshi an email letting her know I was having technical difficulties, which I would try to work out.  I hope, though, that she can email me the MP3 file again and see if it works.  If I can't get it done by Monday, I feel like she's an understanding teacher and she'll have an email from Saturday afternoon stating the reason.

I've decided not to mess with anything else tonight.  Tomorrow, I'm waking up sometime before 9:30am because I want to go to church at 10:30am at the Chung Chi College Chapel.  Hopefully my stroke of bad luck will end today, and I won't get struck by lightning on my way to church tomorrow.  Something about that seems so terribly wrong.