survived christmas

thank heavens i survived christmas.
last night, feeling the blues and slightly under the weather, i went to my usual haunt in lkf to meet some friends for a quick dinner and some chit-chat.

afterwards, i was all alone. ready to spend the christmas eve getting, what else, drunk.

surprisingly, lkf was not that crowded. i was expecting a bumper to bumper traffic along the streets of d'aguilar, but it was manageable. there was enough room to move around. which was great. there were still a lot of people, but not as many as i have earlier expected because it wasn't too cold outside.

i saw an old colleague at my former life in bloomberg and we hung out, got drunk. he bought a few rounds of beer. we stood outside of the bar and indulged in our favourite activity - people watching.

inside, it was party time. with lots of young people all dressed up for the holidays - coats, jackets, ties, luvly dresses, scarves and the bags of the season -- dancing, drinking, chatting, taking pictures using their iphones and tiny cameras.
i left lkf at around five in the morning, drunk and saw a group of young men singing and playing a guitar on the street -- right across the mtr station and infront of marks and spencer. they sang old time favourites from the beatles, elton john, simon and garfunkel, among others. i sat on the sidewalk, listened while drinking a beer on can, along with other partygoers.

(the one man band and the captive audience at five a.m.)

around six, i hailed a cab and reached my temporary shelter. i slept until one.
dreamless. uninterrupted.

*******

hungry, sleepy and nursing a hang over, i took a quick hot shower, put whatever clothes i could grab and headed to a friend's flat in ap lei chau for a christmas hot pot. it was fun.

it was my first hotpot meal in hong kong, so i was a virgin and a bit clueless.

like all first timers, i was a bit nervous at first. i was scared to make the first move.

but once i have started, it was all easy. i enjoyed it actually.
in between taking a hot meal from the boiling pot, we got to know each other (it was my first time to meet most of them), talked, gossiped and had fun.

like the ingredients in the hot pot, the group was a mix match of singaporeans, hong kongers, chinese, filipino and american. one was a movie producer from singapore scouting for locations in hong kong, another was a chinese movie producer based in hong kong who was shooting a horror movie with a popular canto pop star (whose name i could not remember), three restaurant owners, a fashion guru, a shipping magnate, a health journalist and a fashion model.
one of them actually worked for a while for my favourite hong kong director wong kar wai. she talked about how it was working with him and her experiences in shooting 2046.

once the food was finished, we exchanged gifts. i luv!
thank heavens for luvly friends and generous souls who are willing to adopt a homeless, penniless, wandering soul who is still trying to find his center in the universe.
thank god for friends like her -- our gracious host.