DimSumDolly* - the different morsels of the life of a foodie

Four Months Down

Friday night, and I've spent it alone in my shoebox-sized flat in Tin Hau. Had I been in Singapore, I'd be out with friends having great conversation over a delicious dinner. The feeling kinda sucks; I'm not very good at being alone these days. I guess I'm sick of being lonely. When I went back to Singapore for 1.5 days I was SO happy to be able to catch up with my closest friends and have deep, heart-to-heart conversations with them without afraid of being judged. How I miss that!

I guess thank god for Internet broadband where I can download episodes of "How I Met Your Mother" and "30 Rock", two of my favourite comedies. And thank goodness for online chatting which allows me to chat with friends back home.

The hardest part about relocating is really the building up of a social network again. I'm not Miss Social Butterfly or Miss Party Goer so I don't meet that many people. Hell, I haven't met anyone new in the past month or two. Also, being new, you just can't be someone's next best friend over night. Such things take time and sometimes I wonder if I'm strong enough to stick around that long.

Not taking into account the emotional side of things, I have to say I really love living in this city. I've always known I love it, but now I love it even more. Hong Kong really does have an immense charm of its own. There's always something dwelling in the small alleys and side streets waiting to be discovered. The food's fantastic in this city and there's good food catered to every budget.

I love the hiking and paddling, and the easy access to the scenic spots. Many people don't realise that Hong Kong is actually very beautiful. Did you know there are actually waterfalls on Hong Kong Island itself? Waterfalls, streams, rock pools etc...all waiting for the intrepid traveller to discover. The hiking and paddling are things I'm definitely going to miss when I leave Hong Kong.

In a few days' time, I'll have been in Hong Kong for four months. It's been a pretty good four months I guess. Work's been manageable (albeit I work overtime every day and I have to work tomorrow - on a Saturday morning) and colleagues are nice. Yet, I never feel I'm settled. The other day, my colleague asked me if there was any point in my life where I felt very settled, where you could tell yourself 'This is it. This is home.' I told her immediately that, no, I've never felt that way. I'm too restless a being. I guess I might feel settled if I have a partner and that's probably when I might have a sense of where home is. For me, home is where the heart is. Cliched but true.

No regrets in coming to Hong Kong though. I'm enjoying the change of environment and love discovering new places in the city. It's nice to be away from Singapore for awhile - makes me appreciate home more. Am getting more chances to practise my Cantonese as well!

Anyway, am just rambling and writing out some random thoughts here. Sorry if I sound whiny and repetitive, but writing is cathartic for me. And heck, no one really reads this blog anyway.

Have a good weekend everyone.

甜姨姨 Auntie Sweet

The area I live in, Tin Hau (天后), has several eateries specialising in Hong Kong desserts and 甜姨姨 is one of my favourites.

It's located along Tsing Fung Street, which is the street just below the flyover. It's usually packed to the brim on Fri and Saturday evenings.

If you love mango, go for this ultimate mango dessert that consists of mango juice, mango ice cream, fresh mango slices and dried mango strips. You'll be mango-ed out.

This is my favourite dessert there - durian soya beancurd (榴莲豆花). I know it sounds weird and looks rather gross, but it's delicious. I come here and have this when I need my durian fix. Trust me, every durian lover whom I've brought here and has eaten this has said it's good!

This is the ubiquitous mango pomelo dessert (杨枝柑露). It was nice but pretty ordinary.

Their seaweed jelly drink with fresh fruits consisted of diced watermelon, honeydew and mango in mango juice together with some jelly cubes. It was called 'seaweed jelly' but I didn't taste any seaweed.

Another mango dessert you could go for is the mango green tea jelly which was delicious too. There's also jasmine tea jelly to choose from. I like their tea jellies with their faint accents of tea when you bite into them.

天后清風街13號地下
13 Tsing Fung Street
Tin Hau, Hong Kong
Opening hours: 3pm-3am

Best Birthday Present Ever

My dearest sister (that's us in the photo like eons ago) on the left gave me the best birthday present ever. On Thursday morning I was chatting online with her and saying how depressed I was at the thought of spending my 31st birthday alone in HK on Sat (i.e. today). She, bless her, then said she'd buy a ticket for me to go back. And she did it there and then.

And so I found myself on a Jetstar flight last night on my way back to Singapore. I touched down at 12.20am and got home at 1am. I was then up at 7am, and then found myself at Tanjong Beach at 9am paddling with my Singapore teammates.

Anyway, I'm having a swell time at home and enjoying my 1.5 hours day in Singapore. I fly back tomorrow! This is the most impromptu trip I've ever made.

It's so nice to be home! And a big THANK YOU to my dearest sister - whom I'm not even getting to see 'cos she lives in Sydney!

Big hugs to her!

Bao Dim Sin Seng 包點先生

I happened to be walking along Aldrich Street in Shau Kei Wan (筲箕灣 - a district to the northeastern side of Hong Kong Island) and I came across Bao Dim Sin Seng 包點先生 - a shop that specialises in steamed buns. I was very taken by the wide selection of buns in the shop and couldn't resist taking a few snapshots.

I loved the shop signage

Different types of Mantou (饅頭) or steamed buns. There are ones filled with spring onions, while others are plain, and others have chocolate etc. What a variety!

See the bakers at work behind glass screens in the shop

The purple buns are my favourite 'cos they're filled with yam paste. I love anything that has yam (also known as taro)! The orange ones that look like pumpkins are filled with black sesame (黑芝麻包). There are also buns filled with meat & vegetables (菜肉包） and chicken & mushroom (香菇鸡卷) among others.

These buns were so adorable. The yellow ones in the form of chicks are filled with lotus paste while the porcupine ones are filled with red bean paste.

If you want your buns steamed and piping hot, place your order at this counter and bite into a steaming hot bun straight away!

Tai O

One of my oldest and best gal pals, Des, came to visit a couple of weeks ago over the weekend. It's so nice to see a familiar face and great to be able to indulge in girly chat. One of the places we went to was Tai O, a fishing town in an obscure part of Lantau Island. The town is known as the 'Venice of Hong Kong' but trust me, it's a rather poor cousin of the Italian city.

Nonetheless, Tai O is not without its charm and tourists flock there despite the journey being quite a trudge from either Tung Chung MTR station or the Mui Wo ferry terminal. Here are some snapshots from Hong Kong's version of Venice.

Stilt houses all cramped next to each other.

Fish being dried and preserved

More dried fish, cuttlefish, prawn paste etc. Stuff I'm not very fond of!

Eeeks! Look at this stingray!

Vendors selling cuttlefish grilled over charcoal. Love that smoky charcoal flavour, but I'm not a fan of cuttlefish so I didn't buy any to munch on.

For some reason, every other eatery and street vendor was selling soya beancurd. I like the ones stored in wooden buckets like these. I love that traditional look.

A type of tea called 紫背天葵茶 that's produced in Tai O. Its English name is Matthiola incana R.Br, and I gather it's a type of herb. It's supposed to be good for quenching thirst, dispelling 'heat' from one's body, preventing high blood pressure and aiding digestion. The tea is a reddish-purplish colour and you can find the tea being sold in bottles all around the town centre.

Tangerine peel - used a lot in Cantonese soups and desserts (糖水)

Despite the not-so-pretty stilt houses, the backdrop of the hills makes the place look rather scenic.

I thought this was hilarious - "Snow White Spouse Wanted".

Cute round salted egg yolks

We were walking around the stilt houses and came across one that had old-fashioned stoves like these, still heated by charcoal and wood. Don't see much of this these days.

A calligraphy shop's grill has classical Chinese poems written on every panel of the grill. A common theme ran through the different poems - they all had to do with how time flies by so fast without us realising it and thus we have to treasure the little time we have in this life. How true.

Life is a series of waves

A shot taken in Sai Kung, Hong Kong, during one of my hikes

I watched a Taiwanese idol drama recently (偶像剧) recently (fyi, best not to watched these too often as it really skews your idea of reality). 败犬女王 (My Queen) was about a romance between a younger man and older woman. More on that and the derogatory term (败犬) in another post!

Anyway, one of the things that stuck in my mind in one of the episodes was an analogy drawn about how life is like a series of waves. The male protagonist (played by the very cute Ethan Ruan) was writing a postcard from Hawaii, where he had gone surfing, to his best friend in Taiwan.

In his short message, he writes that at any one point, we must always have dreams and that we must work hard to pursue them. Working towards that dream(s) is an uphill struggle, just like riding up towards the crest of a wave. It's hard work, but we must keep at it - because when we achieve that dream, it's like reaching the crest of the wave where we are rewarded with a spectacular view and an amazing sense of rush when we surf that wave.

The analogy makes sense to me as I chase waves to surf when I paddle too. Surfing waves is the ultimate thrill of outrigger canoeing. I understand that thrill when riding a wave - it's such a liberating feeling. When that happens, it's just you and the water. For those brief moments, it's pure exhilaration.

The male protagonist goes on to say that once we have surfed that wave, the next one will follow and we continue finding that next crest just as we find our next dream to chase once we've achieved one. I love that analogy and think it's so true that it's important to have dreams. I've always been somewhat of a dreamer, following my heart instead of my head in most situations. In some cases, it hasn't served me well, but in most cases I think it has. So I'm happy being a heart-gal more than a head-gal. My good friends who are more realists than idealists, keep me in check most of the time. For that, I'm grateful.

I made a life's to-do list back in 2007. I reviewed it a few days ago and found that I've since managed only about 10 out of the 70 items listed there. That's pathetic. But I also realise that I want a new list now. Most of them involve travelling by the way. Haha. I can never get enough of travelling!

I'll be 31 in 11 days and about 40% of an average life span is already gone. I need to work a lot harder at chasing those waves and dreams! But sometimes it's like the older I get, the more I feel those dreams slipping away from me with time and finances not being on my side. Nevertheless, I will not throw out my dreams 'cos I think it's important to keep them in mind to remain motivated to live and discover.

To us dream seekers and wave riders!