Tag Archives: Hongkong

You Get What You Pay For

Flow Like Water

I remember some years ago, in one of her yearly visits to our homeland, my mother dragged me and my husband to the premiere destination for cheap finds.

We call it Divisoria.

Now, Divisoria is a shopping mecca, comparable maybe to the night markets of Thailand or the street-side shops of Hongkong, that is, equal in color, in confusion, in aroma, in the cacophony of sounds that makes it almost the modern Babylon – of people speaking in different tongues and gesturing wildly to alter the balance of power between the seller and the sellee.  It is scary and alluring at the same time.

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Feng Shui and the Year of the Tiger

Influencing Your Destiny

I had my first brush with Feng Shui during my first trip to Hongkong.

We were taking the cursory city tour and the tour guide very carefully pointed out the building in the distance with a hole through it. She said that a Feng Shui expert was consulted when it was built and she said that there was a dragon that lives in the mountain behind the building.  To keep him happy, there should be a hole in the center of the building so that he can easily go in and out whenever he wanted.  It became the site of the former Repulse Bay Hotel and known as Repulse Bay’s famed “building with a hole”.

I was fascinated.  A dragon!

On her website, Lillian Too explains that the Feng Shui practice is described in colorful dragon metaphors and that that Master Yang Yun Sang’s (Founder of Feng Shui) emphasis was “…on the shape of the mountains, the direction of water courses, and above all, on locating and understanding the influence of the Dragon, Cha’s most revered celestial creature.”

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Travel, Budget Airlines and the Lilt of a Foreign Tongue

Reaching Up, Out

Reaching Up, Out

I like vacations.  Whenever I can take mini ones – I take lots (can I smile greedily here?).

It started when I was 21.  I just won the top cash prize at the office raffle and what better way than to squander it all at a grand Hongkong vacation.

Okay, it was not grand.  We stayed at a three star hotel and had breakfast everyday at the McDonald’s but I was with my bestfriend and we went around Hongkong and had so much fun – going to the parks, seeing the day life and the night life, tasted all the local delicacies, shopped for satin underwear, luggage and Giordano shirts, haggled (oh boy can I haggle) – that I wanted to do it again (and again and again).

And again.

From then on, I promised myself that I will take at least one vacation at an international destination every year.  Hey, I was single, I was employed, I had no financial conscience (it was fun while it lasted).

This year, I am taking 5 mini-vacations (to my financial planners – uhm, ehrm, sorry?).

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