China Day 3

Woke up early today, and to top it all off, I reckon I'm sick.

Still not used to seeing my reflection in the mirror, due to my hair colour. (Who is that girl I see?)

Furthermore, I changed the frames of my glasses, so looked even more different.

Also, by 9:30am in the morning, I had experienced my first hock-and-piss in China. I almost forgot about this little habit of the homeland until woe behold, my taxi driver hacked up a spit ball and hurled it out of his window.

Lovely.

In other news, I finished reading Memoirs of a Geisha and loved it. I've now moved into Anatomies, whilst my brother is engrossed in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

I approve of this new hobby.

For lunch, we went off to the Four Seasons Hotel, which has a spectacular view. Wore my new shoes and jeans, which was nice. Also the food was fantastic (and pricey) and taught my brother some photography. Also managed to take a few good shots of the nice architecture and design in the place :')

Reaching up to 100 floors, the Four Seasons Hotel is truly a remarkable place to dine, and is genuine 'high tea', since you are having yum cha.

Legitimately 100 floors.
Apologies for the awkward hand reflection, haha

Really getting into outlays and photos of this theme.

The view was super nice, but the pollution made it difficult to take great photos. The smog was pretty bad today, too.

These photos below are quite heavily edited in post-production. As in, very, very excessively edited, in order to make them appear better. If I were to show you the originals... Let's just say they were very washed out and smoggy.

It was a nice view though, and oddly calming.

The little cars reminded me of ants.

The tables were so shiny, too. (I love reflection photography)

Also funny thing about the table that we were seated at, the backs of the chairs were sky-high (metaphorically), and it was really humorous, especially with my brother being such a small kid. The juxtaposition is strong.

I'm not sure why our table had such strange chairs; the other tables had relatively normal ones.

And, although the food was pricey, it was absolutely delicious. Yum. Looking at these pictures makes my stomach rumble.

Roast goose

Egg tarts

And then, went exploring with my brother to really admire the interior architecture of the place and take some photos (that are far better than the ones I took last year at this place, trust me...)

The water was so perfect for reflections

Unfortunately, to anyone who didn't notice, the ISO is just as high as this building is (ho ho), because the lighting inside was really dim. What's with it with expensive places and dim lighting? Don't you want me to capture your glory in pure sharpness?!

Or maybe the film-grain makes it look more rustic and 'fancy'. Who knows.

But I managed, I suppose.

Interior design on point

With a bit more exploring, I found a nice cafe a couple of floors down, which had wide open windows with absolutely beautiful sunlight streaming in, which made for great portraits. I only had my brother to take photos of, so.

Afterwards, my parents dumped my brother and I at our apartment whilst they went out to do some house keeping things (buying tickets to HK, picking up new glasses, and heading off to Carrefour -- the Chinese version of Woolies).

I slept a great deal of the time, trying to sleep off the sickness. After a 3 hour nap, I felt a considerably amount better.

Off to dinner we went; some friend's business partner had invited us out to dinner (one thing about China is that people are always treating/inviting others out to meals; they hardly ever split the bill, and it's always "I treat you" or the other way around. Maybe it's just because I'm a foreigner and my relatives often treat because we only come annually, but I've never split a bill in China. That's just my experience, though)

After a while, I began to feel really sick and nauseous, likely due to an accumulation of cigarette smoke (wafting in from outside), drinking some red wine (a few sips), and my sickness. I was relieved to finally go home and sleep (which I did, until 11am the next morning. Meaning I slept almost 12 hours, a new record!)

Aaaaaaand that was the end of the day.

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As a side note, today (6th) I finally gave life to my first Mac! Super excited, loving it, and utterly confused at the controls (being a girl who's lived with Windows her entire life).

Unfortunately, the store assistant at JB Hifi made me purchase a Microsoft Office only for PC... Which is really disappointing and I was pretty furious, but I suppose I didn't specify I wanted one for Mac. I just assumed it was implied.

But all's not lost. He did give me generous discounts, and my brother's PC needs Microsoft Office anyway.

I'm heading off to a small volunteer job tomorrow for a few weeks, but I'm thankfully bringing my Mac, so that should mean I'll be able to blog there and such, but who knows. The time management is tricky and probably short, but I'll see how things go.

Can't guarantee posts, but I'll do my best. I didn't end up having time to edit and schedule posts from China photos (I've still got about... 500 to process...), but we'll see.

Stay safe. Adios amigos.