Halloweeeeen!

Well this is going to be my first 'exciting' post in a long time. Tonight I went to the Ocean Park Halloween Haunted House. Basically it consisted of 8 'haunted' houses that you went through. I went with Jessie, Suki, Erica and Nigel.

We arrived around 5:30pm and being suckers bought halloween themed headbands
then headed straight for the first haunted house, which also happened to be the 'scariest' one of the lot.
We bought privileged tickets which meant we were fast tracked into the haunted house but we still had to wait for while to get into this one (since it was one of the closest ones to the entrance). Poor Erica was already dreading it... (and we hadn't even gotten in yet)
The theme of this particular house was based on the old Chinese village houses - strangely enough i can't remember too much about it except I found everyone screaming really quite funny. It was probably luck that the 'ghosts' all came out and scared the people in front of us so I knew it was coming. Erica didn't fare so well, i think she screamed herself hoarse... There was a really good ghost at the end though, he kinda made me jump at little (in surprise though, not in fear). It was funny to hear people screaming, they were actually scaring themselves more.
It was great seeing the whole park decorated up with Halloween stuff, some people come dressed up as well.
We went to another Haunted house after this one, the Ghastly Entertainment City - I actually can't remember much of it - again it was a pretty funny one. There was a video showing what was happening inside and there was a button you could press to activate the 'scary' thing in the room and watch the reaction of the people - that was really funny, we waited until two guys had just walked into the room and hit the button. The panel of a painting in the wall shot down and flashed something at them and you could see the guys back out the way the came to hide... very amusing..

After that we took a break and went for a roller coaster ride on the "Mine Train" - thank god it was at night you didn't see the scenary flash by you as you went up and down - i've got to say though, for the length of time you line up the ride is terribly short. Jessie was funny, she kept her head down for most of the ride while i was going "OH MY GOD!!!!" Suki, Erica and Nigel totally enjoyed it (Nigel was sitting by himself at the front of the train... crazy man!)

We then moved towards the next Haunted House "The canton case" but convinced Nigel and Suki to go have a go on "The Abyss", a freefall ride... Nigel was eager enough to go

Erica, Jessie and I waited around - watching people get frightened by the various 'ghosts' that were wandering around the place

Anyway, finally it was Nigel and Suki's turn on the Abyss, we were obviously eager to see what their reaction was. Suki had fun but Nigel...
Man, what a funny reaction! Now, you couldn't PAY me to go on that thing.

Ok so we continued to head towards The Canton House, there was a 'quiz show' going on in front of the house. Suki went and had a go but didn't do to well (the questions had really stupid answers). Like "There was a Lobster, Prawn, Crab. Why did the prawn always lose?"... the answer because "ha llo ween" (ha 'no win', ha being prawn in cantonese... *sweatdrop*)

Anyway the line for the Canton Case was quite long, even with a fast track ticket we had to wait 30 minutes, i feel sorry for the people on 'normal' tickets. This House was basically you go to those old colonial/imperial houses, sit down in a 'dining' room where there was a cup and saucer in front of you. You are then instructed to put on some headphones and a recording starts playing, the sound is really bad so the 'guide' says he'll just go outside to check on the recording - of course, no one believes him ( i actually didn't know whether or not to believe him actually), anyway people are like "don't you DARE leave!" and he's like, well what am i supposed to do? so finally he leaves and then the lights go OUT! you're all sitting in the dark and the recording starts playing (you can choose your language, english/cantonese/mandarin) anyway you hear conversation snippets, then you 'hear' people getting killed and you're splashed with something - just as someone is getting knifed. Eeek! it was fun though. That happens a couple of times and then you hear thunder and lighting and the lights flicker as if it were really storming and you 'see' things - all in all it was pretty cool. the kicker was the things that come out from under the table and swipe your legs .... ughh freaky (but not scary). It was too short though...

Next up was the "Gruesome Green House", again the privileged line was non-existant and we went straight in. This was one of the best houses, Japanese style garden/greenhouse. except human heads are used as the pots, then you realise one of the heads is a real person - THAT was excellent. This one has to be one of my favourites.

We then went to "The 4th Dimension"
this wasn't really a 'haunted' house more like a psychadelic house, it used mirrors and wallpapers with 3D images and flickering lights. The people were also were fractal clothes - it did really wacky things to your eyes but it was REALLY cool.

How's that for an entrance?!





Well after this one we only had 3 more houses left and they were all situated in the lowland area of the part so we jumped on a cable car and headed over there.
I have to say these were the most 'disappointing' of the three - they were pretty much the same and not even scary (except i think Erica may disagree for the "Deadly Doll Factory" one) A guy was standing on the gangplank that everyone has to walk past, Jessie, Suki and I all say him and said hello or laughed at him. Erica and Nigel were behind us, she totally didn't see him so when he faced her she screamed, we all had a good laugh and the 'ghost' even had a go at here - considering he had been standing there for so long - that was pretty funny. There was also a terracotta warrior bit, i went through and saw a guy on my right, he sunk back into the shadows. Jessie followed and i heard her say "Ah i can see him!" i turned to my left and caught sight of another 'ghost' on my left. I figured "Drat, no scaring them" but then the first guy i saw walked out and scared them! They only saw the 2nd guy and didn't see the first guy. hehehe

Ahhh it was a lot of fun and the weather was actually really pleasant probably a bit on the misty/humid side but that is preferable to hot and humid. I don't know how the people on normal tickets would be able to do ALL the houses in one night. As it was we finished at 11:30pm and the park closed at 12pm - definitely recommend doing this again next year (it's a different theme every year)


And here's my favourite 'ghost' - well considering she's probably a cult icon

Check out my Facebook profile for more photos!

Absentminded

I have just discovered that there is a disadvantage with leaving your shoes under your desk at work and wearing joggers to work.

I only wear slip-ons at work and with slouching at your table... i ended up walking away from my desk with two different styles of shoes on = how embarrasing.

At least i don't think anyone noticed (advantage of working with all males i guess...)

11am

Woohoo! Typhoon signal 3, pity they're only thinking about upgrading to 8 around dusk which is home ... which means the possbility of being cooped at home for dinner. Noooooo!

1pm

Mmm i think the guy cleaning the front door when i went to bathroom noticed my mismatched shoes.. i caught him checking out my shoes just before... at least he was good enough not to make a comment about it

3pm

How disappointing, Typhoon HAGUPIT has decided to give HK a miss... So much for an early mark. *sigh* oh well at least that means i can go out for dinner phew!

6pm

Woohoo!!! Typhoon signal 8. Home time people!!

After Korea

Well, dad's been here to 10 days already and we've been to Korea to visit Bev and come back. I will get around to posting pictures and adding details to my blog sometime this week but be warned we actually didn't get much sight-seeing done. Our time was spent mostly eating and doing random shopping.

Insight!

Well, thinking about the utter lack of things that i have to write on my blog since my day consists of work then home i figure i may as well write about the books i am reading since I have bought more books in the last 3 months than i have in the last 2 years. Let's see... I started with 2 of Patricia Cornwell's books one of which i'm sure i had read before but couldn't remember when (& i forgot who did it anyway so it was a good read). Next, I was good and bought some 'career' related books. One on Soft Skills (which was a really good read) the other an easy read but I didn't benefit much from it called Flip!

After returning from London I also went through a Henry VIII fascination and since I saw it in London and it looked interesting enough I bought all of C.J Sansom's books about Matthew Shardlake and even started to watch The Tudors with Jonathon Rhys-Myers but it got kind of annoying after a while - being to preoccupied with his bedroom exploits and obsessions... oh well.

Then Fona told me about Mr Darcy's Diary that she found pretty good so off to the bookstore to look for it, but i couldn't find it instead i came across two other books "Me and Mr Darcy" by Alexandra Potter and "The Darcys Give A Ball" (need to check that title). I found "Me and Mr Darcy" very enjoyable to read though initially i really hated how 'American' the main character was and it was a bit slow to start - though as you get into it, it's really quite a good read. The rest of her books seem to be similar, I think i'll go get them just to have a something to read - i have such a bad habit of finishing a book in one day, it really leaves me with nothing to read very quickly.... if only someone would design something like Amazon's Kindle but allows you to transfer e-books onto it directly (that'll save a look of trees, long-term money and of course, bookshelf space - which i seriously don't have much of, the shelf I do have can't really be called a shelf, more of a half-shelf).

Ohh i'm so excited dad is arriving in just over 12 hours!!!! Four weeks of fun and lots of eating... (plenty of time to lose weight once mum & dad leave :P) and we're off to korea next week to visit Bevvie....

Typhoon Nuri

Well it's been a while since i last posted and the only interesting thing that has happened is Typhoon Nuri. Though by the end it hit Hong Kong it had weakened into a Tropical Storm, but the typhoon signal did hit no. 9. If it hadn't weakened it would probably have been a number 10! Woo that would have been interesting - funny how it doesn't stop people from going out though.

The other good thing about it was we had another day off work and it was a Friday, so long weekend, yeah!!

Been looking at potential places to rent, concentrating on Heng Fa Chuen since it's so nice and quiet and relaxing down there (the phase that's near the water not the mountain side coz apparently there are some apartments on the mountain side that are a bit 'unclean', mainly because the area they were built on used to be a cemetary or something along those lines)

I hit my '3 month' probation last Thursday as well (just before the Typhoon hit) - what a good way to celebrate, giving me a long weekend. No complaints and i have been escorted out of the office so it's a good sign eh?!

Dad'll be here in 1.5 weeks, ohhh poor doggies left at home ... gosh i miss them.

Tropical Cyclone Kammuri

Ohhh i'm on the early shift this week but there was a tropical cyclone warning and the signal was increased to no. 8 at 6:47am so that means... no work today!!!!

Yippay! And the fact that the cyclone wasn't going to be nearest to HK until 12ish meant that the HK market wasn't going to be open - so no chance of having to go to work in the afternoon!

There was a loud sound of glass breaking this morning, i figured it was someone's pot plant falling from the window but then i saw on the news a building where a window appeared to have broken and fallen to the ground and i thought 'gee that looks familiar' turns out it was our apartment block!!

Out of curiosity, headed downstairs to see what happened and it was actually the office building across the road. Two glass panels had fallen off the building and hit one of the apartment windows on the way down... there were so many news crews downstairs as well.



The glass had even bounced half way up the street:




Guess it was bit of excitement for a rainy day

Ani-Com & Games

Ohhh, I thought i'd be good and go to a "Honkie" event and lo and behold there was the 10th Annual Ani-Com & Games Exhibition at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. Entry fee was only $25HKD... so off i went on Sunday afternoon. Mum mentioned that on the first day there was like 60000 people there and i'm like ok, cool whatever - those were the hard core fans who went in to get the limited edition things i reckon. So i headed down there and boy was i surprised there was a massive group of people heading a certain direction (guess where THEY were all heading...) luckily since i'm by myself it was easier to slip in between groups of people but i hit the front driveway of the convention centre and you have to form two lines: one with pre-paid tickets the other none. So, ok i'm not THAT well prepared, i have to line up. You can't really call it a line it was just a mass of people funnelling into a doorway.
I have to give it to them, it was very efficient (i didn't even wait there for that long, there must have been over 100 people in front of me) - it helped that it was a single ticket price and they didn't take $100 or $500 notes so get in line whip out your money and then off into the hall.
I was verry surprised at the amount of people there, the showbag hall at the easter show had nothing on this crowd, i can only imagine the first day would have been 2-3 times as bad. This is only one tiny little section of the exhibit.
The only main problem with the crowd was, it was a hot day. Everyone is crowding around and people are sweating.... stinky city..

Now, an anime/games convention is not complete without at least half of the exhibit made up of absolutely adorable stuff - i feel sorry for the kids who go and see all the things they want to buy. I overheard a boy saying, "Oh i have $100 at home. Gee, i'm really regretting not bringing that extra $100 out..."

So here are some of the cute stuff on show:

You know, i'm really kicking myself for not getting the other monkey. I bought the monkey with the smug look but both ben and mum said i should have bought the set of 5 kittens, i rather i got that other monkey with the x for eyes... but you know, i was actually looking at them and thinking... "Mum will kill me if i came home with that - doh!"

And of course, there are mini toys as well



And of course, cos players


Then there are the Bandai girls etc..



Boy, was it weird taking pictures of these girls (everyone else was male... the things i do for my brothers... i hope they appreciate it...)

The other thing you don't see if how organised the kids are, they were all pulling mini suitcases so that they can put all their purchases (i.e. manga) in them and then they go and sit down off to the side to take stock of their purchases (and pack the suitcase) then they go back into the crowds and buy some more stuff. Gee i'm going to be better prepared next year (if i'm still here)!!

Anyway the rest of the photos are on my facebook page, it was a fun afternoon (though gee i really wish i'd bought more soft toys...) next time i'm going to go full hog and buy everything i like and worry about the consequences after ^_^ i could always sell the unwanted stuff on eBay

gee i'm almost tempted to run down there during lunch break and do some more shopping...