CULTURAL SUNDAY

This sunday we went to an organic market in Quarry Bay. We thought it would be a big market, so no problem that we had to travel for +30 min. However, when we arrived it there were 10 market stands, which was kind of a disappointment. We decided to go to central, to make an appointment at a tattoo shop since Tirsa and I both want one. Sooo, today is the day!! At 7 o'clock we have an appointment!

Since we still have a bunch of things we have to do and see, sunday is always our cultural day. We weren't been to soho yet so we took the elevators trough soho. We thought, if escalators go up they must go down as well.. unfortunately this wasn't the case. We had to walk all the way down again, but then we came by the botanical and zoological garden near the peak. A big park with entrance to a free zoo. Although they don't have lions of elephants here, they do have a lot of monkeys and all kind of birds. Later that night we had an evening marshmallow's BBQ with friends of Patricia who came by. One guy is busy with a project; he wants to draw 1000 portraits in the coming years. It's called 'Nice to meet you'. The whole idea behind is that in the time that he's drawing you, you get to know each other better and you make new friends. You will keep in contact and years after, another portrait is made to see how he developed his skills and the person is changed as well. The story is nice.. Although I do think he need some more practice since I look like I'm a drug addict and Tirsa has a prolapsed face!

This week I booked a trip to Bangkok/ Pattaya for 4 days with Nina and Tirsa. Will be going the 14th of may for 4 days!!

10000 BUDDHA'S

Besides seeing the 10000 buddha's, I didn't count them but there were definitely a lot (!!), we also saw 10000 temples already. These pictures were taken last saturday. It may seem that the weather was shit, indeed it was raining but it was hot at the same time and it's even becoming warmer and warmer each day. I will keep you updated about this weekend, ofcourse we're going to pan kwai fong again and maybe we'll do some cultural sightseeing. But since I have a hard time sleeping, a day of satying in bed till late and not doing anything sounds nice as well. - XX

LUNCH BREAK

Almost every day we go for lunch with our collegues from Gaastra and McGregor, which makes me feel like I'm really part of the team. Although everything is in Catonese and I don't understand a thing of what they are saying or ordering, we have a lot of fun. 

I'm willing to try all kind of weird Chinese food, today I had sea cucumber, jellyfish and pork belly. Last week they were laughing and talking loud because they wanted us to try this weird 'insect looking' thing, which apparently was a tongue/ throat of a duck. When I asked what it was nobody answered, they only said 'I don't think you dare to eat that'. Never say 'you don't dare..' to me!! So, I ate it and I even liked it however I would never order it in a restaurant because it looks horrible. They were quite surprised but I gained a lot of respect now and I'm getting more and more Chinese by the day. I never thought that I would say this, but when I'm home I'm going to miss the real  Chinese food. They don't have bami pangang or foe yong hai here. Sometimes I have no idea what I'm eating but I think it's better that I don't know. I even become a pro with the chopsticks (halloo-oo, I can eat rice with chopsticks!), I don't think I remember how to eat with a knife and a fork haha. 

WEEK UPDATE

Last week was quite busy. As you see I didn't had any time to update my blog. We had to finish our first assignment for McGregor/Gaastra which was synchronising and improving the company manuals for Gaastra and McGregor.  We compared the manuals, spoke with the people from the office and wrote a report about how do we think they can be improved. We handed it in last friday, so we hope we did a good job. Meanwhile we moved on to assignment number 2; The fabric library. It may sound cool, at least that was what we thought, but I can't see anymore fabrics! The fact that I'm allergic for dust doesn't help as well.. Organizing the fabric library is a nice description for cleaning ALL DAY LONG. Not exactly what I expect from the honours programme! There are the nominated suppliers and the sham sui po market fabrics. Friday we managed to deal with all the fabrics from the market, today it was supposed to be 'nominated supplier day'. But, since our coach for this assignment is on a holiday until wednesday, we are not allowed to start with that. This means, we have nothing to do because they have no clue what our next assignment is. 'Something with quality control', but nobody knows what. Facebook and online shopping in the office it is!


Saturday we went to the 'monkey moutain' - Lion Rock Country Park. We all had a bit the idea of going to the Apenheul, but this was serious shit. When we arrived we first saw the warning sign of how to behave with the wild monkeys around you. Besides, they didn't looked that cute as I imagined them to be. I was pretty scared. We did not realized that the monkey mountain had a 2 hours hiking trail, which was really nice though but also kind off exhausting. It took us more than 30 minutes before we saw some monkeys, so I was pretty pissed off. Later on the track, we saw a lot of monkeys and the view was beautiful. I had the idea of being in the jungle in Africa, it didn't felt like Hong Kong at all! At one point we were so scared of the monkeys. A lot of people were running trough the mountains. The monkeys tried to protect their babies, so when a guy passed by he jumped on his neck. This happened 2 minutes before we had to pass, the monkey looked quite angry so we didn't dare to walk further. Without breathing we finally did and thank god he didn't jumped on my back! However, if you ever go to Hong Kong, monkey mountain is really something you should visit! 


We happen to have a real chef cook in our apartment, which I'm very happy about. She loves to cook, I love to eat. The relationship was meant to be. Thank god school put me in a place with her, haha. After carrot-ginger soup, veggies with chicken, pasta bolognese, this time it was pumpkin mousse with tomato pasta. When we got home, this was waiting for us --> I love my mom's food, but boy I'm going to miss hers when I'm home again. She doesn't only like to cook herself, but she also arrange dinners. Since we are models now, (I had a shoot with Doutzen yesterday, she's real nice) we were invited by the dutch PR guy in Dragon-i to have free dinner/drinks over there. This sounds kind off weird because this is never ever going to happen in the Netherlands
 but here it's quite normal. Western girls, attract (chinese) men. It's all about marketing and since they don't expect anything further from you besides eat, drink and party, it really nice to be a 'model' in the weekends. It's just like a normal saturday night in Hong Kong, but then for free. However, after loads of strawberry kiss cocktails and champagne, we decided to leave 'early' at 2.30 so we would be fresh the next day since we planned to go to Cheung Chau island on sunday. Don't really think we were that fresh and fruity the next day, but we survived.

Cheung Chau is a small island 35 minutes away from Hong Kong. We read about this on a blog about Hong Kong so we decided to go there on sunday. It was quite hard to get up in the morning, but the sun was finally shining so it was going to be a good day. We arrived at about 12.30 on the island. We immediately had the feeling like we were on a holiday for one day. There are no cars or skyscrapers, so finally fresh air and no noises! We did some serious hiking that day. First we went to the Pak Tai temple, this is one of the most colorful temples. We did some walking on the beach,  went to the peak of the island and to the 'mini great wall'. Afterwards we had dinner at the boulevard.

Now it's time to get back to reality: wake up at 7.30 in the morning is not really my thing. Certainly not when you find out that there's nothing to do for you at work. I'm gonna do some online shopping now, see ya! XOXO

WEEKEND UPDATE

Movies on friday, dim sum and clubbing on saturday and sightseeing in central on sunday. We ended the weekend with a dinner at the Mexican Coyote Grill & Bar with a super nice dinner!

WELCOME TO THE OFFICE

For the ones of you who think that I'm partying every day of the week, since I'm only uploading my party pictures. Here are some pictures of the McGregor/ Gaastra buying office. I'm spending most of my time on my desk, indeed of thinking which club to go to during the weekend.. BUT work hard, play hard! Our first deadline is tomorrow, so let's see what that will bring us. Keep you updated!

The Gaastra workplace, with my desk in the middle

Meeting rooms

Reception 

The McGregor side of the office

Our kitchen (!!)

Entrance 

And .. me and Ellie!

EASTER IN GUANGZHAO

Lastweek was a short workweek since we were free on friday and monday due to good friday and easter. And today I am free again because it's Ching Ming here. So finally some time to catch up with my blog!

Tirsa, Ellie and I went to Guangzhao by train on friday. A huge city two hours from Hong Kong. We weren't prepared at all, we just had train tickets and a heavy bag pack. We had no idea were hotels were nor nice area's or whatsoever. This was a new experience but we also saw it as an adventure.

After arriving in Guangzhao at 5 o'clock we first decided to go to the south station. While we were standing in the MTR we thought this wasn't a good idea after all since end stations most of the time doesn't have anything around. So, we looked at the map were the touristic places were and we stepped out near Beijing road. The biggest shopping street of the city. The only problem was, we couldn't read Chinese characters and Chinese people often don't speak english. So, we went into a shop and asked for pen and paper to draw a bed with a person in it. The woman understood us and wrote something down in Chinese. She called someone who could speak english to explain us where the hotel was. Unfortunately it was a five star hotel which we couldn't afford but at least we knew that we had to go to Beijing road to search for a hotel. I came up with the brilliant idea to go to the MacDonalds for free wifi, whatsapp did worked but the internet didn't so it wasn't that brilliant after all.

After walking for a while we finally saw a hotel. However this hotel, the intercontinental *****, was a little above the budget. We went inside to ask for a cheaper hotel but the hotel the lady referred to was fully booked. Luckily that hotel send us to another hotel that did had space. It costed us 168 yuan per person for three night in total. That may sound as a lot, but this is only 22 euro, so the more money there was left to spend! The neighborhood was really nice since it was located in the center of Guangzhao. Beijing road is a big shopping street, with a lot of hidden indoor markets behind the stores. You might understand that we spend a lot of time, and money here. But we also did a lot of cultural sightseeing. I've never walked so much in 3 days, but my new Nikes helped me through it. Despite the awful weather, we had a really nice easter weekend and Guangzhao is really a city that must be visited if you're near Hong Kong.

the hotel room

one of the 1984375937 temples 

people's park

trying all kinds of tea

Chinese dessert..

which didn't taste that good!

eating pineapple from the market

FIRST WORKING WEEK

I haven't been blogging for a while now but a lot had happened! Last monday we started working at the McGregor/Gaastra office. Wednesday we went to the MM&T, this is a leather material and accessories fair. Max gave us the assignment to search for new suppliers for washable leather and leather patches for the Gaastra jeans. We had a really fun day since our name tags said we were junior buyers so the people treated us like real buyers. We gained a lot of information and luckily Max was happy with it.  

On thursday we were invited to go to a QC (quality control) meeting in Shenzhen. This meeting is once a year; all the production people from Gaastra, McGregor and the QC's come together to talk about how to improve the system and the difficulties they face during the quality control. The meeting wasn't as I thought it would be, since I know that my father has meetings with his company at offices/hotels in special rooms I thought this would be the same. It was the opposite; the meeting was in a fancy restaurant near the Shenzhen train station. We entered the restaurant and indeed it was in a separate room. Everybody was having fun while having dinner, one woman even cried.. It didn't seemed like they were talking about business. Since everything was in mandarin we didn't understand a lot, however they thought we could speak fluently Chinese because we said 'ni hao'. I didn't wanted to disappoint them so I just said yes and no at times I thought I was supposed to and it seemed to work. We arrived at 12 o'clock, had lunch for 3 hours or so (I ate sea cucumber and I even liked it..) and after lunch everybody sat together for 30 minutes to talk about business. If business meetings are like this, I would like to attend some more! However it was a really fancy restaurant, when I had to go to the toilet I had a big culture shock. I was looking for the toilets and couldn't find any. After searching for a while, I saw this hole in the ground.. I just had to share it with you! I think I will have a beautiful but if I visit China more often since you have to squat above this hole.

Because it was our first time to China, our supervisors Jeff and Inez took us for a walk through the city to do some shopping. We went to a huge indoor fake market. I went crazy by seeing all the celine, chanel and hermes bags! Instead of buying these, Ellie and I decided to take a pedicure. A very expensive one, 6 euro in total! It was quite an experience since they try to make money out of everything. If you want orange nailpolish it's +10 dollar, if you want shiny nails its again +10. But since I'm the bargaining queen, I didn't let this happen to me!

Besides my internship at McGregor, I also work as a waitress now for little bao. The owner, May, is a friend of Patrica (the girl we rent the apartment from). I wanted to earn more money since HK is a shopping walhalla and I want to travel around as much as I can in China, so she arranged a job for us. Last wednesday was our first job at Clot, a concept store in causeway bay. There was a Nike air max event where May did the catering. Besides earning 100 hk dollar (10 euro) per hour, we also got a free pair of Nike air max! Apparently she was happy with us because tomorrow we have to work at an art gallery. I really like the job because we meet a lot of new people and we earn money at the same time.

Here are some pictures from last week:

MM&T

MM&T

business dinner

a Chinese toilet

Nike air max

Little bao team with our new shoes