I am so tired and tomorrow is a long day. But I know if I miss even one day, this whole saga will never be told. I got up at 7:30 this morning to get to the 9 am session at the temple. I only got lost in the Kowloon Tong MTR once, and made it to the temple in plenty of time. Kowloon Tong sure is warmer than the island. I got dressed and attended my session. I was worried my recommend wouldn't scan, since I may be lost to the church these days with all my jauntings and gallavantings, but they let me in. The temple was just as I remembered. The session was half full, including some Mandarin speakers, a Filipino, and another white woman. The session was Cantonese and, during the intro, they came and offered me headphones, which I refused. I was worried I couldn't do it in Cantonese, but it all came rushing back and I did fine. And this way I didn't have to deal with headphones. The Celestial room was just as I remembered it and I didn't want to leave. But I did, as we had a full day planned. On the way out, I ran into Sister Chan in the lift! Finally a kindred spirit. Shaun Morris and I used to visit her frequently. She is/was the chapel cleaning lady for Sha Tin. She's Indonesian and her Cantonese is not proper, and I always heard her husband was a creep, but her daughter came to church with her every Sunday. I introduced myself, she said she vaguely remembered me, but I don't buy it. At any rate, it was nice to see her.
The Distribution Center across the street was missing. In its place is yet another shiny new LDS chapel. I'm not sure of the purpose of this chapel, as there is a chapel in the temple. I tried to visit said Distribution Center but when I buzzed they informed me it was closed. I tried to give them some sort of information that would make them explain that it was a horse of a different color, but to no avail. Fort Knox remained closed and I'll have to try again another time.
I also noticed on the buzzer box that the mission home is there now and no longer in the temple. I wonder what's going on. I fully intend to find out when I take Susie to the temple on Friday. We promised our maid Kannagi a CTR ring so they better open up next time. Once again, the rudest people I meet in the Kong are members of my own church. Some things never change.
Back home we boarded the ding ding to Central where we alighted the Peak Tram, which, incidentally, does not accept credit cards. The tram is rather intense but we survived the long ride up to the top. We took some nice pictures, even though the air quality into Kowloon was poor. Maggie commented on how many Scrapes there were, being short for Skyscrapers. I asked her to count them and she said there were two. We also went for a nice walk on a 1-mile loop around the top through some lush jungle. They had those aerobic pit stops along the way and Maggie insisted on playing with them. We als found the waterfall where they dedicated the China mission. Maggie kept saying the waterfall looks like a mission--not sure what she thinks a mission is. We enjoyed the walk. After that, we ate at New York fries. I don't know what makes the fries New York, but they had hot dogs. Amazing how I would never crave a hot dog if I came here straight from the states. But no one eats pork in India. The vegetarians don't, and our maid won't either. She says pigs are dirty animals, and something about it not being proper/tradition. So here we are devouring pork as often as possible!
They had a very large princess castle on display for HK Disney's 5th anniversary this year. They also have a four foot ceramic wizard Mickey. Dalton LOVED that thing! And everyone else LOVED Dalton loving that thing. I'm glad he wasn't scared of it.
I've been hit up by eager school children for surveys. This was common as a missionary. One gave me a free postcard for the survey! I was also stared at by Indians all day long as well. It finally dawned on me that I was wearing my India cricket cup shirt. A man from Mumbai was so happy to see me wearing the shirt, though he gave me an incredulous look when I told him I live in Bangalore. Maybe I'm saying the city name wrong.
In the late afternoon we hit the ferry pier, as Maggie has been dieing to ride a boat all week. We took it to Kowloon for photo ops with the city background. The pictures all look like the backdrop is staged, but I promise, it's real. The place was packed with mainland Chinese, with whom I cannot communicate. In fact, they are taking over the place. I fear my Cantonese-language skills may be antiquated one day.
We watched the sun kiss the sky and the lights come up on the buildings over some chocolate-orange and sour cherry gelato. Then we ferried and subwayed our way back home.
We bribed Maggie to behave in all the pictures today with Disneyland. Since we plan to hit the Magic Kingdom on Thursday, I'm not sure what we'll use as bribes come Friday and Saturday. The girl is grumpy about pictures.
![[Comments]](/nb//themes/Default/comments.png "2 comments")
(2) Tue Apr 19 2011 07:45 techno-creep:
India is horrible tech wise, especially when you consider it is the IT outsourcing place to be. The internet is not widely used; computers aren't widely used. So finding things to do or places to shop must be done in person. It's a pain. Hong Kong is very advanced in this realm. Yet it is still a cash-based society. Everywhere we go, cash is king. That is a pain as well.