Alpha's Summer Adventure

[Rog]

All that seafood looked immense, except for that egg. Always wanted to go to a restaurant where you pick the fish from a tank. Calamari is great and if there's some going at work I always make sure I get it. Try cripsy seaweed if you get the chance, it's sort of sweet so you'll like it.

[Chocolate Jim]

Speaking of seafood I went to LochFyne this evening! Bloody fantastic! Chill & Garlic Grilled king prawns FTW!

[Johnny Ryall]

Jesus every time I look at this thread I crave food. That place looks nice at night.

[John Galt]

That food looked mint. I doubt I'd have eaten the egg but I don't eat fresh ones let alone 1000 year old ones. I can't believe you'd never eaten crab, lobster or calamari before; they're definitely a lot less "fishy" than most would expect.

This topic is making me crave a holiday now as the things you've been doing such as that restaurant trip are exactly the kind of things I would do on a family holiday.

[Hulohot]

It seems like you spend most of your time there in restaurants and arcades. The food looked awesome, would have loved to try all that. How old was that egg, really?

[aayl1]

Was it really 1000 years old? I mean, surely people wouldn't have had the foresight to bury that many of them back then.

EDIT: It's several months, apparently.

[The People's ElboReformat]

When I saw this, I could only think of Pinchy from The Simpsons.

Good update (as usual) Alpha. Good to see you getting along with the father.

[smurphy]

Those eggs look foul. Remind me of the the same devilled egg Zoidberg eats a few times.

[Fatal Exception]

[Denster]

Another class thread, Alpha.

[Alpha eX]

A Night at the Arcade
22-06-09

Today was a bit of a lazy day, we woke up late and lazed around until dinner time. The maids had cooked some kind of curry today, i'm being told it's Green Curry with Chicken.



This was really nice, it wasted a lot like Thai Curry but a bit not as thick and with more flavoring on top of what would be Green Thai Curry. I enjoyed this meal and wanted more, sadly, there was none.

We decided to go out after dinner to Causeway Bay. We wanted to get some sticker photos done and then to get some desert and have a bit of a walk around, we don't like being lazy that much. When we arrived it was around 9pm, it was very dark and all the local snack shops were open and still quite busy.



Our first destination was the Namco Arcade in the World Trade Center. We go here quite a lot as it's once of the nicer arcades with a Taiko Machine that you can hear and isn't beaten up.



I never usually take sticker photos but after getting some done the other day I actually liked it, not the whole getting my photo taken but the artsy decorating afterwards, it's just like doodling and actualy quite fun. In the Namco Arcade there is a lot of sticker machines, I didn't manage to get any pictures because it's quite difficult to not get in trouble for using the camera in an area full of young girls. Here are the stickers we got done this time.



Usually after you get your stickers done you go to a set area to cut them out but we're keeping these on sheet so we can scan and copy ect, the pictures turn out really well and we like to make more copies as you only get one print out which seems like a huge flaw in the design of these machines.

We left the arcade in search of a snack / desert. I was in the mood for a cake so Antonia lead me to a local cake shop which sells buns, cakes and other pastry treats.



Under the instruction of Antonia I got something called a Mexican Creamy Yolk Bun which is a bun with a some sort of yolk custard filling. It wasn't that nice, the filling had a strange flavor in it that made it quite bitter, i'm told that isn't usual so I got something else.



Again, under the instruction of Antonia, I got an Egg Tart. I'm told these are usually very good but this one wasn't, the pastry was way too flakey and dry, the filling tasted like raw egg. I didn't finish it and needed a drink, off to the 7/11.



There is currently a promotion going on for the new Transformers film. There are lots of snacks, drinks, foods and even tickets that have the Transformers brand slapped on. I previously tried Transformers Strawberried Peanut Butter M&M's which were brilliant but this time I wanted a drink. I decided to try the Transformers Lyche Slurpie.



You have to go to the counter and buy the cup then you can fill it. I was very tempted to just put my head under the tap and pull but I didn't think that would be wise.



The Lychee flavor was very fruity, a little flat in flavor but still retained it's sweetness. A strange taste for something that's supposed to full in flavor and sweetness but once I got over my expectaions, I really enjoyed the refreshing taste of the Lychee Slurpie.

We went to the local arcade, Game Cyber. We got here around 11pm and it was really busy, the music games were hogged, especially my favourite, Jubeat so we decided to try something different, DJ Max Technika.

I've posted about this game before, it's pretty much an arcade version of Ouendan, the popular Japanese DS music game. We started on the Lite mode and was given a quick tutorial showing us how to play, we recorded this so you can get a better understanding of what I am on about.



As you can see, the game in itself is quite simple. Touch, Tap or Slide on or from the circles in time with the music. We decided to share one screen as we wasn't very good at this on our own, the last time I tried I failed in 20 seconds. We took another video of a song so you can see how it's played.



We played this game for a while, it was a lot of fun sharing the screen and getting used to playing. Feeling quite confident in our joint ability, we attempted a level 4 song and failed quite rapidly. Discouraged, we went to play some racing games, Taiko no Tatsujin and even got in a few games of Jubeat.

Time really flew by in the arcade, before we knew it the lights seemed to dim, people started to leave and machines were being turned off. We checked the time and felt quite ashamed of ourselves.

2:10am on the watch, we left about half an hour later.

We was in the arcade for a long time, a very long time. I was feeling snackish so decided to go to the one place that was both open and air conditioned, Mc Donnalds. If you read my earlier post about my first visit to Mc Donnalds in HK, you'll remember the amazing Shake Shake Chicken and my vow to use it as part of an ultimate burger. I did it.

Combining the thick crispy southern fried style Shake Shake Chicken with a Double Cheese Burger, my creation was complete. I got a lot of stares from the locals, one guy looked shocked and excited at my creation. It sounds awful but the chicken and meat go together well, I suggest you try one, buy a Double Cheese Burger and McChicken Mayo and combine the two, goes well with BBQ sauce.

I was still hungry after the McFrankenBurger so I had an apple pie. After that we left to take a cab and finally go home to sleep. Despite not doing much during the day, I really enjoyed the evening, we had a lot of fun and time vanished within the smokey arcade, if you ever go to Hong Kong and like gaming, be sure to check out Namco Wonder Park Plus and Game Cyber in Causeway Bay.

[Fatal Exception]

I like the fact you bothered to blur out her face

[Alpha eX]

I like the fact you bothered to blur out her face

Didn't want to but I can't trust you guys with her picture on the forum now can I?

[Fatal Exception]

I like the fact you bothered to blur out her face

Didn't want to but I can't trust you guys with her picture on the forum now can I?

How the strawberry float are you not some big ass roley poley mufucker with all that gooseberry fool you eat?

Also y'all look like a young Timble.

[SEP]

I always end up feeling really hungry after reading Alpha's updates.

[Alpha eX]

The Next Adventure
23-06-09

Last week me and Antonia spent ages looking around travel agents for deals on trips to Beijing and Shanghai. We left the building with a huge stack of flyers and leaflets of package deals.

Today we went out with Antonia's mother in tow to help us find the best deal, sadly, I forgot my camera. Antonia's parents had spent the previous night going over the stuff we brought back and had picked out a few good ones. We went back to the travel agents to choose and book one.

It took a while but we finally found and settled on a great package deal to Beijing leaving on the 27th, 5 days in the central staying in 5 Star Hotels complete with a tour each day covering all the main tourist attractions in or around Beijing. The price was brilliant, around $3500 which works out about £280, brilliant! When it came to paying, the guy servering us asked for our passports, we both forgot to bring them

It was ok for Antonia as she has her HK Identity Card but I had to fax my details over to them. The deal was booked and Antonia's mother told me that they had a fax machine, great, but it was broken and I should fix it, not great. I looked at this as a chance to get on the good side of Antonia's father who still doesn't think much of me.

We got home mid afternoon so Antonia decided to bake a pie for dinner while Antonia's mother showed me to the broken fax machine. I am not good at fixing electrical appliances so had low hopes for the fax machine. The first thing I did was pick up the reciever and checked for a tone, nothing. I then checked the connection to the phone socket, it was fine. To make it look like I was making progress, I attached the paper feed and put some paper in but sadly, I couldn't fix the fax machine.



Dinner was really good, we had the Chicken Pie that Antonia had baked for us. She had slaved over the pie for ages and got very stressed when the pastry went wrong, thankfully, it wasn't ruined and we had a nice pie for dinner.



Antonia's father was back and I was hoping he didn't expect the fax machine to be working, thankfully, he didn't but to my surprise, he was much more talkative with me after hearing about the trip to Beijing being booked. I think he was happy about the fact I paid Antonia's mother back the cash right away, still, he spoke to me more than he usually does at dinner.

We didn't go out again today, I had to call up the travel agency and give over my details and we got some much needed rest. I'm really looking forward to Beijing and can't wait to blog about it but there is some bad news. The internet costs $4 a minute, that's right, the internet is charged by the minute, that's about 30p per minute. There's no way I am paying that, I will take my laptop to write up blog posts and sort photos of an evening but unless I can tap a WIFI connection, there won't be any posts until the 2nd when you can expect 5 massive posts over the next day or two.

Very excited about Beijing!

[LewisD]

Speaking of seafood I went to LochFyne this evening! Bloody fantastic! Chill & Garlic Grilled king prawns FTW!

Oh gooseberry fool, I used to work in the kitchen at Zinfandel's - just a couple of doors down from Loch Fyne.

The breakfasts in Loch Fyne were made of win... used to eat their scrambled eggs and smoked salmon quite often.

[LewisD]

Antonia's father was black....

Note to self... don't skim-read

[John Galt]

Looking forward to your Beijing review. Don't you think you'll be a bit constricted with tours all the time though, unless they're only half day ones or so?

Will this be Antonia's first time to Beijing?

[Chocolate Jim]

Alpha this is the most interesting topic on the forum! Have a great time in Beijing! I am looking forward to hearing about it!