Whoop woddy wat, yeeeah, gaaahd daAATCHOO!

So many sick people! Hoh my gosh, every second effing person in my effing workplace is effing ill at the moment. The tragic amount of sleep I've been getting lately - a mixture of culture shock, socializing, & good old fashioned douchebaggery - should be putting me in a position where I'd be prime real estate for some kind of nasty exotic virus. Maybe I'll be the first Australian to succumb to the new goose flu. How about cow flu? Why not Al Packer flu? Swine flu 2.0. I can see it now, H1N2: The Snottening. Oh, what about computer flu!?! H1D2. Ugh. Enough. So anyway, you may be asking yourself the question, why am I not sick? Well let's put it down to a combination of the 8000 immunizations I was pumped full of before heading over here & the fact that everyone here wears those hospital masks when they're crook so as not spread their germs so readily. They are totally face condoms. Ha. That always cracks me up. Face condoms...Yeah. So anyways, the net result of all this is that my entire freaking office is a Howard Hughes wet dream, so cram packed full of weirdos wearing surgeon's masks that it's like a game of Where's Wally except you're looking for Michael Jackson & when you find him you win a lung crippling supervirus. Realistically it is an entirely sensible thing to do, but damn does it take some getting used to.

Oh, & I guess the logical question that follows would be 'why on earth is everyone so dang sick then? Luke.' Well look, I'm no doctor, but I'd say a good portion of it is the fault of the unholy cold that hong kong is experiencing at the moment. This is - is it not? - supposed to be a tropical island. 10 degrees in the afternoon with a rich helping of rain & a 30km/hour wind is NOT a good combination for the poor locals, all of whom are currently dressed like the Michelin Man in their enormous puffer jackets at the moment. And Michael Jackson... Also, tropical island! Hello! This was not in the freaking brochure! I didn't sign up for sub-arctic conditions. We get enough of that shit in Melbourne, thanks very much anyway Mother Nature. 

Observe the mist of sickness over a cold, cold Hong Kong. Brrrr.

Convinced? Well, now let's have a look at some other potential factors shall we? Let's start with...oh, I don't know, how about the goddamned freezing cold airconditioning that runs 24 hours a day inside every goddamned commercial building in Hong Kong! It is sacrilege the amount of airconditioning that juices the damned air in this place. It's freezing outside, but still, Hong Kong soldiers on in it's fervent belief that all indoor areas bigger than a toilet must be cooled to the point where the freaking aging process is slowed. My office is a prime example of this national hobby that seems much longer on cheap power than it is on sense or necessity (not unlike those houses absolutely covered in Christmas lights at holiday season, man that gets my goat...seriously people: pretty is good, Times Square in the suburbs is just confusing). So my office. It is generally cooled to approximately 10 or 11 degrees (really, that's a real number, I do not jest here), so everyone wanders around constantly mentioning how cold it is inside. Not that you can ever tell who just said it as we're all talking through surgical getup. Don't believe me? This picture is from the desk on the other side of my partition: 

Yep. That's a radiator. Know what that radiator is doing? It's competing with the airconditioning.


It's competing with the airconditioning.


Now, I know I take a pretty grey view on most things & really go hard at just about any topic I can get my hooks into. I have a graaand auld time giving out on the world from the comfort & relative safety of my computer. But this! This has got to be a dictionary definition of nuts. Turn the f*cking aircon down! Honestly, this is what would happen to the whole world if it was left in the hands of bankers and admin staff. Bedlam.

Wow, I actually had a lot more to say tonight & now it's gone. My brain got all bent out of shape just now all yell typing & everything...ummm. Nope, it's gone. Sorry.


Well, as promised: Communications to Australia & househunting. This'll be easy.


Communications to Australia:
Rebtel. Get onto it. All of you.


Call internationally for the cost of a local call over actual phone line. None of this bad IP Viber crappola, no Skype wireless dependency, just a bit of buggerring around with calling each other & then you're set. Almost free calls for as long as you want, mobile to mobile across ze wooorld! Awesome. Loving it all up.


Househunting:
My appointment got set back a day, but I was a little excited as I was looking at some proper old school, Wong Kar Wai set-quality 'walk-up' apartments (ie, no lift) in a suburb called Tin Hau, which is much nicer than than Central Hong Kong. As it turns out however, the majority of walk-up apartments suck surprisingly hard. They're in old buildings & they're, for some reason, old. Also, they're populated largely by people that seem to need cigarettes to stay alive. Booo! Looked at one place tonight & as soon as we walked in the agent started apologising. 'Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't get a chance to see this place beforehand. Oh, I'm sorry. Um, we can go if you want. We should go. No, please don't go into the kitchen...we should go...' and so on. The best part was that when I walked into the kitchen of one of them, it looked exactly like the kitchen in Abbotsford, just a whole bunch smaller. Anyone who saw my place in Abbotsford will know precisely how bad that apartment is now. Spee-yew.


Anyway, I managed to see one fairly righteous place tonight. It was furnished, had a modicum of living space, a good sized kitchen, is in a reasonable neighbourhood, & has a view of the whole harbour across to Kowloon. Not too bad really. That's on the list. Looks a little dated due to the tacky furniture, but whatevs. I can deal. I'll let my fruity side out for a day & get gay-man's-interior-decorating-secret up on it & just turf indian throws over everything.


Anyway, I've got work to do. More to follow on this in the near future. Seeing something like 10 apartments with two different agents on Saturday, so as the Bad Boys would say: This shit just got real.


Cannot wait to move into my own place. No doubt that'll be a hell of a blog post.