Day three: some initial notes

Today Kelly woke up a little grumpy and we thought it might be a little bit of culture shock coming on, so we decided to go to Pizza Hut for lunch. We'd passed the Pizza Hut in the huge mall in Tuen Mun earlier in the week and thought it looked pretty good - really fancy though - flower arrangements, a maitre d' - the works. So we went. Holy crap - it's a different world. A few selections from the menu:

- Corn quesadillas with black truffle sauce

- French butterflied rack of lamb

- Norwegian salmon cooked in foil

- Various seafood soups served in puff pastry bowls

- Escargot

But thank god they also had what we came for - pizza. They have a few special toppings (crab sticks, cucumber, corn, curry beef) that we don't have in the states, but they had the tried and true as well. Now, here's one thing I've already noticed about Hong Kong - Thousand Island dressing is HUGE here. I mean HUGE. It's everywhere. So when we ordered our pizza, we had our choice between tomato sauce and 1000 Island. They even have a stuffed crust pizza that's "stuffed" with 1000 Island. Okay, I'm trying to be culturally sensitive, but ICK. Just...ick.

Strangely enough, I ordered a "cold lemon tea" that turned out to be sweet tea that tasted just like you'd get in the South and served in...wait for it...a MASON JAR. I don't know. I just don't know. I could not get any sort of cultural handle on this place at all.

Everybody orders in the Chinese style - they order tons of dishes, put them in the center of the table, and share them family-style. Kelly and I got a very strange look when all we ordered was one pizza. In our defense, though, it was a large pan pizza with mushrooms, green peppers, and extra cheese, and we DEMOLISHED it. I didn't even feel overly full - I think it's all the exercise we're getting. And yes, I know what you're thinking - the pizza tastes EXACTLY the same as it does in the U.S. Same sauce, same greasy crust, same everything. They even serve it with parmesan cheese in that glass shaker. I was so cheese-deprived that I just unscrewed the lid and dumped it on.

You know in the U.S. the pizza is served with parmesan cheese and crushed red pepper? Here it was served with the parmesan, a shaker of black pepper, and a bottle of tobasco sauce. I'm thinking that something got lost in translation when the corporate office was describing "hot red pepper", so Hong Kong ended up with hot red AND pepper.

We did some other shopping. I got some great rice crackers at the grocery store - they're called Want Want crackers. Maybe they're for babies or something. Kelly needed a converter and extension cord for his hard drive, so we searched all over the huge mall (six city blocks, three stories, EIGHT MILLION PEOPLE) and finally found one at a junk shop in a dirty corner. After a long sweaty trek home, he plugged it in and immediately blew a fuse. All outlets, the TV, the fridge - all dead. He refused to call maintenance until I pointed out that all our beer was going to get warm. That always does the trick.

Fear of germs is huge here. A lot of people wear surgical masks, and all of the elevators have signs posted saying how many times a day they're disinfected. Outside of our building where a welcome mat would be is a "disinfecting mat." I have no idea what this is or how/if it works.