Yikes! It's been ages since I last updated. What can I say... I'm really lazy. But I guess now I have a lot to say.

1) My birthday night was pretty great. I got to see my closest friends, have a lot of laughs and even more drinks and even a little cat nap in a restaurant. All in all, it was pretty good! Over the course of the three days I celebrated my birthday I had the lights dimmed, cake brought to me and the entire bar singing happy birthday to me FOUR times. Unbelievable and very embarassing haha.

2) Hong Kong. I went for five days in early August and I really enjoyed it. I have to say one of the most memorable moments for me was before I even set foot in Hong Kong. When we were flying into the city it was around 11 p.m. so it was dark and all you could see was the many islands that make up Hong Kong lit up by traffic lights and buildings. The view was stunning.
The hotel we stayed at was really nice and had a great view of Victoria Harbor and Hong Kong island. The only thing is, it was on Kowloon. The travel agent told us that Kowloon was the better island with more things to do but I would have to disagree, I spent most of the time on Hong Kong island except to watch the symphony of lights.
While I was in HK I took a day trip to Macau. That was an experience in and of itself! While it was really great to see the Portuguese architecture and the massive casinos, I found it stressful because of the lack of English haha. I ended up getting lost on a bus for a while and missed my ferry back to HK... it didn't really matter because the ferries run every half an hour.
I spent most of my time there doing what I love best -- eating and shopping. Unfortunately I'm too big to fit most of the clothes there! (Wtf?) I guess when the British left they took their big bones with them? The food was good, my travel companion doesn't like Chinese food so we didn't really get to try too much authentic Chinese food haha but I convinced her once to eat some and I thought it was fantastic. We found a lot of western style restaurants and surprisingly enough a lot of Japanese restaurants with strange Japanese dishes like omuraisu.
That brings up one thing I noticed that I was surprised about - how much Japanese pop culture etc you can find in HK... I always thought the Chinese and Japanese despised each other? Guess not so much.

3) Good byes. One of my closest training buddies has finished his contract and decided to leave Japan so we had a good-bye party for him last Sunday. It was really fun but also really sad. We ended up going to a few bars and mid-way singing karaoke (as we always do), during one of the songs me, Nathan (the one who left) and my other training buddy Javier all got kind of choked up. I guess it hit us that it was the last time we'll probably ever do that together. After Karaoke we went to my favourite bar, the Loft in Kabukicho, and managed to convince the manager/owner to let us play one of the really nice Fender guitars and sing on stage (haha) so Nathan played guitar and we sang together for the bar. Finally, we ended the night true to form with an early morning snack, and since there are no pizza by the slice shops out here we had a little gyu-don instead (beef bowl). Rather than have a long heartfelt good-bye we just kind of said "See ya later." and walked our separate ways. I'm beginning to feel like an orphan or some kid getting left behind at the mall haha. Everyone is leaving! Javier will be leaving in December. Which brings up my last point of this entry...

4) Visit home. I've booked my flight and I couldn't be more excited that I'm going home to visit for eight days at the end of December/early January during Oshogatsu. Unlike my whirlwind visit last March, this one will be planned and I will savour every minute of the time I get to spend with my loved ones.