Hong Kong 2010

20100421

Today, Weng Yee sensed something was wrong. She noticed the big bag Papa was bringing to the car. And Papa told her: "Papa is going to Hong Kong".

When we reached school, she refused to come out of the car seat. Cry and scream, and resist Papa's attempts to carry her. Mummy spent a few minutes, talked to her and calm her down. Outside the classroom, she started crying again. Even when her favorite Teacher Korey came to carry her, she cling on to Papa tightly.

This is the note Papa made for Mummy, to let her know what she'll expect in their flight the next day:
Cathay Pacific flight.
Channel 17 - Dumbo, Toy Story.
Food - Beef with potato, carrot, vege.
Fruits: grapes, papaya, honeydew melon, lousy pineapple.

20100425

Ocean Park day.

Weng Yee woke up late at 9am. We had a light breakfast, pack Weng Yee's stuff and some food for our picnic, and start our journey at 10am.

It was a long journey. Took bus 69M to the Tsuen Wan MTR (30min), MTR ride to Admiralty (50min), bus 629 to Ocean Park (20min), plus all the walking and waiting, the whole trip takes 2 hours.

At the Tsuen Wan station, we feel like we are at Lucky Plaza. Lot of filipinos at the shopping complex, and in the MTR train. The filipinos domestic workers are very lucky here. They usually have 2 days of rest every week (Singapore is 1 day every month), and their pay is 2x higher than in Singapore (In Singapore, employers
pay the same, but half of it goes to Singapore Government foreign worker levy).


At the Admiralty MTR, we saw a MTR shop promoting a MTR Club special: sign up as a MTR club member online, and redeem a $222 Ocean Park ticket (usual price $250). We walk in and enquire about this promotion, the lady just ask "how many tickets you want?" We said "Two", she said "please pay $444". We happily paid $444 and get 2 Ocean Park tickets. The tickets we got are the regular tickets printed as $250. We saved $56 just by "pretending" to be a MTR club member.

We arrived at Ocean Park at 12 noon. The first stop we go is the Panda zone. Took some photos with the Panda, then visit the Red Panda (Racoon?) at the other side. Then we queue up to take photo with a Crocodile mascot. The staff there is very lousy at crowd control. When it is our turn, Mummy stand at one side of the Crocodile, Papa pass the camera to the lady staff, then some Mainlanders just walk in and stand at the other side of the Crocodile. The lady staff was confused, and she asked Mummy to step out. Then Papa told the lady that we had queue up, and it is our turn now, then she try to ask the other group to step out, but they didn't seems to co-orporate. Lucky for her, Weng Yee feels intimitated by the Crocodile, and start her "I don't want" cry. So we just tell the lady that Weng Yee is scared of the Crocodile, and we walk away.

20100426

Morning

Woke up at 8am. We took a taxi to the airport. The taxi driver charge us a flat rate of $200 for the trip. Distance is 35.5km.

At the airport, we went to the Cathay Pacific customer service counter to try our luck to change Papa's 4pm flight to the 11am flight. No luck. The counter lady refuse to change. We checked in the luggage. Had a light breakfast of toast bread and coffee. Then Mama and Weng Yee proceed to board the plane.

Papa roam around at the airport. Took out the laptop to see if the internet is usable. No luck. The PCCW free wifi network at the airport sucks. Can connect to the network, can ping to yahoo.com (drop packets around 20%), but for web browsing, the browser was redirecting to hotspot.pccwwifi.com, waiting..., nothing displayed. The wifi gateway web server hang, need someone to reboot it, or the network is overloaded, and refuses any new connections.

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