Who’s the prettiest one of all?

While doing my regular check of what’s happening this weekend, I happened to come across the Miss Babe Yi event for this Saturday night. It looked pretty standard at first, ladies free, men pay HKD150, everyone gets a free drink. Reading on, it said:

“All men will be given 3 stickers, they can post them on any girls that they think are the most pretty and gorgeous ones. Around 1a.m., Yilou [the club] will ask the top 3 girls to come out and let them to have a self introduction/talent show. Then the girl who received the most support will be titled as “Miss Baby Yi”. She will receive a gift from Tiffany & Co. and 1 X 1.5L Astoria Lounge.”

Hmm… I can’t help but feel a mixture of curiosity and disgust. Part of me wants to go as it’s a pretty funny concept, but if I did, I feel like I’d have to make an effort and dress up just to avoid being put in the ‘ugly’ pile. And what about the girls who do go all out, complete with double eye-lid stickers, fake eyelashes and jelly boobs? What if they don’t get any stickers? How sad would that be? Would there be men who give pity votes to some girls? Or would they naturally paste their stickers on the most boobacious/skimpily dressed ladies just so they can get a quick feel?

The whole thing just seems a tad wrong, just like beauty pageants. I know it’s just for fun but maybe they should have made it a Miss AND Mister Baby Yi event, just so we ladies could paste stickers on the hot men too. Of course, we wouldn’t have a very big selection to choose from (haha), but still, at least it would be equal.

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The Horror of Wearing Flip Flops

Flip flops. Generally regarded as one of the most comfortable footwear styles ever known to (wo)man. Does not restrict blood flow. Won’t mould your foot into a triangular shape. Keeps your toes free to wiggle. And hey, they match with almost anything. Who would ever suspect the flip flop to have any negative sides??

But let me tell you, wearing flip flops in HK is a very. bad. idea… Why? Just imagine this. You’re in the middle of a massive, and I mean massive crowd of people who are rushing to their next destination, who don’t know or care about the concept of personal space, don’t give a rat's ass about you, everyone’s moving in different directions and you’re shuffling along, weaving past slow walkers (and glaring at them) while dodging the people who sprint from metro to metro, looking down at times to make sure no one’s pick pocketed you and looking up at times to make sure you’re still facing the right direction, when suddenly your back foot is STUCK, your body jerks forward and your foot feels like it’s literally being cut into 3 evenly sized pieces thanks to some dude/chick who’s stepped on or may even *still* be stepping on the back of your flip flop.

Every time this happens – and it happens a LOT (approximately 5x a day, no joke) – the same thought runs through my mind, “How freakin’ close do you have to be to step on the back of my flip flop as I’m walking?!?!!” and no matter how evil the look I shoot to the offender, they ignore me 99% of the time, pretending that it never even happened!! WTH!!!?!

It’s pretty stressful and annoying, I have to say, to go through the crazy “people jam” every morning and evening to and from work. I know I used to complain about having to bike to work in the rain/wind of Holland but at least there, it was just the weather that I was complaining about, which is actually uncontrollable. Here, it just boggles me that there is no effort by HK people to apologize for doing something so vicious, even if it was unintentional!! GRR!!

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Cheap!!

Today, I was officially scorned by the office cleaning lady. Despite my daily 'good mornings' to her and rigorous attempts to make her feel like a just-as-worthy human being, I'm pretty sure she hates me right now.

Why, you ask?

The thing is, each of us have a little rubbish bin under our desk, which is essentially a rectangular plastic bin with a grey plastic bag lining it. I assumed, wrongfully(?) that we could throw garbage in it. Today, my lunch was particularly saucy, so when she came around in the afternoon to empty our garbage bins, she noticed that mine was particularly wet.

Her face was hidden by her tri-fold SARS mask, but the disdain in her eyes could not be missed as she said, 'Next time, wrap up your lunch better!' I remarked back to her, 'But isn't that a garbage bin?' She just replied, while picking through my wet garbage, 'We reuse garbage bags,' or something to that effect.

So basically, her job is to come around 2ce a day with a large garbage bag, and empty all of our smaller bins' contents into her bag. The last time I encountered something that cheap was when I worked at a fast food chain owned by an East Indian family (no offense). At the time, *I* was forced to do the exact same thing, which was to lift giant sized garbage bins and, if they were not yet full, empty one garbage bag's contents into another just to save 0.002 cents.

Anyway, I've learned my lesson. Next time, I'll throw my wet food stuff into someone else's garbage bin. :D

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