It's been a while indeed.

Last time I sat down to blog was back when I was writing my thesis wasn't it? Maybe I hadn't even started writing it yet. Now that's a story to tell, a long one though. And everything that's happened since... a LOT of things have happened since!

Me, a liar? Judge by yourself, I'm moving to France in June. HA! Proof that I speak but the troof!

But let's start from the ending just so we can go back to the beginning.

Current location: Hong Kong. Starting this blog entry from the infamous Canadian Hostel in Tsim Sha Tsui. Tiny. Dodgy. With paper-thin walls. I'm also pretty sure i am being filmed. Located in the heart of Chung King Mansions, sounds posh doesn't it? Well, I'm posting this picture to illustrate my situation. Let's call this, the lobby. This charming little Canadian hostel is run by a couple of evil looking Indians, on the 7th floor of Chung King mansions. Yikes.

I'm in the city for, shall we say, business? You see, dollface... I graduated, I hold my very own bachelors degree now. I am officially professionally unemployed. That's where all my problems really started.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Hong Kong, yes. I arrived yesterday (Tuesday) morning with the sole purpose of running to the Commissioner's Office of China's Foreign Ministry in the Hong Kong SAR, more commonly known as Visa Place, to apply for a three months Chinese tourist visa, which would be long enough for me to reach June, at which point we would just move to France, no need for visas anymore. Originally i thought i'd be flying back to Shanghai on Friday, since the normal visa processing time is 4 working days.

But when I saw the hostel I'm staying at... my instincts of survival kicked in... and I ran to the Visa Place and applied for a FLASH SERVICE - Visa processing time: one minute.

Not really though, the fastest I could get was one working day for $740HK, roughly 75 Euros, BUT STILL! I didn't even know it was possible. Well alright, i knew but- I didn't think it would be possible for Mexicans! We're always refused visa-related concessions. That's why I took a return flight for Friday, because I was 100% sure I'd only be allowed to apply for the regular 4 working days service... and now look at me. Can't change my flight because I OF COURSE took the cheapest flight available (nobody is going to do you any favors in the airline if you took the $21USD fare), so I guess I'm trapped in Hong Kong for the next 3 days.

And I plan on doing A LOT of blogging.

By the way, if there are any mexicans out there, wondering if they'd ever be able to go to Hong Kong for a Chinese visa... o brothers, why you can! They didn't even ask me for a return flight or anything. Just filled in a couple of forms, turned in a passport picture of me-self (terrible by the way) and my passport. Nothing else, it was like magic.

When Milk applied for the same visa, he was asked to present the driver's license of the landlord of the person at whose apartment he was supposed to stay. Madness. Well, that's what happens when a country's president goes on saying bad things about CHINA. Go Sarkozy.

I'm at Shakey's Pizza across the street from the hostel now. Honestly, I don't like it that much, I'm just here to piss off Milk who, for whatever reason, LOVES Shakeys. Probably because of the all-you-can-eat we tried in Japan. Well, Milky dearie, I'm having a small Caesar salad, a 7 inch pepperoni pizza and a Coke for 50 RMB.

Proof, you ask?

Alright, change of scenery. Picked up my visa already, its shiny and beautiful. After that I walked around for a bit, I hadn't realized the Visa Place is ON Wan Chai, well I had realized but you know, not really.

As I was walking down the street I came upon a bar that looked strangely familiar. I realized this is the exact same bar Milk and I came to, about two years ago, where I got a black eye from a complete stranger. We were sparring haha, imagine that! I didn't wanna go back in there, so I just turned the corner and I'm having a beer at another bar that Milk and I visited earlier that night. Brings back memories!

Ah, well now let's take advantage of the nice oak table that is far too tall for me and go back in time. Let's go back all the way to December. By then, I had been writing my thesis for a couple of months, the thesis director assigned to me was the dean of the school, for some reason I was excited about that. I thought, he's BOUND to be the best at this. PhD in Literature and all. My subject was 'The influences of Western Literature in the works of Lu Xun', name that my director chose by the way.

Agh, damn it's too painful to remember, cause it was also my fault... I wrote it all in Chinese, I read a THOUSAND books and went to another THOUSAND researchers' works. It was beautiful, it was mine and I was so proud of it. I knew it by heart and all. The day of the thesis presentation... I got raped by the panel of teachers who were grading me. Raped in the ass.

Turns out, I completely overlook the fact that my subject's key word was 'WESTERN LITERATURE', and made the mistake of dedicating one whole third of the thesis to the influence of Nietzsche on Lu Xun. Fuck that, I didn't notice, and of course, that has been one of the dumbest and biggest mistakes of my adult life. My thesis had the wrong format, too many mistakes like that, I even wrote about Marx. It really made no sense at some point. I was blind to all these mistakes.

Their biggest critique was that my thesis lacked DIRECTION, because from what they said, it is the thesis director's duty to make the student aware of such mistakes. All he did was correct my punctuation, which of course, turned out impeccable.

I was one of the 3 students that were asked to rewrite their thesis. The whole thing. Too many quotes, too many sources, not enough personal commentaries. Those were all MY mistakes. I blame the fucker for not caring enough about my thesis, because all of these mistakes he could have seen from the beginning, and just didn't. I went through hell that week, but ultimately, my thesis was completed. The subject changed to 'The influence of Russian Literature of the 19th century in the novels of Lu Xun', and it was so much better this time around. I mean the subject I had originally chosen was HUGE, and by changing it as I did, all I had to do was write and write and write without doing any more research, as I had already read like a hundred books of russian realism, all of which had a direct influence on Lu Xun. It would have been bliss to write this thesis if I had had the months I could have had.

I especially liked Andreyev's 'The Red Laugh'.

So that would have been December, if not for the most expected and cursed day of the year, better known as Christmas Eve. We hosted a small party at our apartment, sort of like we did last year, only this time we decided, for the mental health of the involved, that NOBODY was doing any cooking whatsoever. C. came up with the idea of ordering a Christmas dinner from this catering place, the logistics were simple enough: We all split the cost of the dinner between ourselves, and everybody brings as much alcohol as they can. Fortunately for most of us, we had a little bit of money saved for this occasion, I say mostly ALL of us because BICHA had just returned from Mexico and was broke.

And what was more, she didn't come back alone. She brought along a boyfriend. Whahhh you ask me, well wahahhah I reply. A Boyfriend. And the boyfriend brought along a cousin, and both of them were also broke.

We decided that the ones with moneys (Milk, G, C, R, a couple of guests and I) would take care of the dinner expenses, and BI and her entourage would handle the drinks, she had to work that night but she promised to take the alcohol the day before the party.

And hell, of course she didn't. She went to work that day and turned off her phone. We were all at the apartment, beautiful turkey and canapes and what not, all ready, and not a drop of alcohol in the apartment. What happened was, we all started fighting over it. Fighting about what? Beats me, guess we all had issues, and me, I'm cursed, I told them and nobody believed me. Last year phone broke down and Nikita was never picked up from the train station... it still hurts when I think of it.

We fought that day, we all did. We were yelling at each other murder because we didn't have any alcohol. I had prepared a bit and bought a bottle of Captain Morgan, but that was all we had, so the boys had to go to the store for beers and they were pissed.

Bicha arrived at around 2 am, by then of course we had all stopped fighting but I don't know, I guess there was something left lingering in the air. Unresolved fights. I'm guessing because it only got WORSE in New Years Eve. Hoo, that night though, was too horrible, too over the top dramatic that I'd feel bad posting about it. Let's just say, half of us cried a lot that night. Openly cried like, down the street, inside a club, while climbing 14 flights of stairs. Intense is the word.

All but Milk, who was smart enough to go home early. Smart boy, that one.

Heps... this is long enough for one entry, I'm posting this while I write some more, yah.

Chinese word of the day:

Hong Kong (xiang1gang3)