I went to pick up my second-hand laptop
computer at Digiman Computers
Unit 1137 - Floor 11 (veer right a
few seconds)
The Windsor House
311 Gloucester Road
tel 852 2808 -0850
Causeway Bay Metro
exit E, turn left at street exit,
walk a block or two
(or exit side door Park Lane Hotel, cross road)
and found the guys there incredibly
friendly and helpful, They let me use their Internet to download Adobe PDF, and a web anti-spyware program.
The two guys were well over six feet,
a robust and bespectacled owner, and his close pal,
a corporate who had dropped by to
keep him company on Saturday afternoon.
I confided in them how I still wanted
to be
my own boss, even if it meant
working
seven days a week.
We had a long and amusing conversation
about how I could make more money as a so-so Web Queen, with over 100,000 readers a year, and several popular sites.
We also touched on computer problems
in China.
They read you for free,
said one of the guys.
No one makes them do that,
I said, with a world
full of medicine bottles and cerealboxes
to also peruse.
That's true!
Medical tourism sounds boring
to me, said the accountant friend of the owner, a tall guy with
a cute toothy smile.
He then explored ways I could jazz
this subject up,
as they were trying to help me write
my ebooks.
I had a few aces up my sleeve,
which I do not reveal to other business people.
Laura knows all,
being my Chinese Woman Friend,
and having her hands full with the Beauty Salon.
Very impressed with service at Digiman Computers,
the leisurely pace reminding me of Shenzhen service,
the excellent prices and seeming honesty of the
management, I took their card for
future computer issues.
I then went to to foolishly celebrate,
celebrate losing the man I loved and planned to
spend my life with, the loss of my Chamma Tau home, my failure to get a third job I badly need,
and the drops in ratings my websites suffer when
I do not sit like a happy slave working daily on them!
Off to an exquisite Mango Tea Buffet at The Park
Lane Hotel!
******************
Tourists and new arrivals to Hong Kong
can combine the computer store and also
the Mango Tea Buffet.
In better times, I have lived better, and have
an Up and Down destiny more than a Straight Down,
so just shut my mind to my worries,
and proceeded recklessly to spend a reasonable
$15.00 USA - a little less, really -
taking High Tea in the spacious lobby
of this luxurious hotel.
What did I eat?
Well, if you don't care for Mango Flavours,
you are out of luck here.
There was a trick used with dessert buffets globally,
in that sugary foods fill you up quite quickly,
and there was just a teeny tiny tray of sandwiches
as first courses.
There were itsy brown wholewheat circlets with
chopped salmon spread on them, and some boring hamwiches, though quite good looking.
I was taking this as my main meal of the day,
and also started with a lot of plain fruit salad,
watermelon, honeydew melon, pineapple, and berries.
I trounced this with lots of fresh whipped cream.
The whipped cream was delectable, though
it had an unrecognizable underflavour,
something the chef had to done to make it
more imaginative.
The servings were all tiny, to make you guilty
for pigging out, which usually does not work with
hard core buffet attenders.
I took tiny samples of mango tartlets
in mini choclate shell cups, recommended, and
petite mango tapioca desserts, and mango gelatin
moulds which were not as fabulous as they appeared.
Everything was at least very good, however.
I avoided the scones as filler foods, like soups,
to be avoided at buffets, though they had bowls
of whipped butter, and fruit jams, and something
I usually like.
Too late did I see a wall of hot snacks,
withno mango theme whatsoever,
samosas, and beef pastries, and chicken puffs.
The chicken puffs I craved though not
between mango gelaltin and mango cheesecake,
my last course.
The tables were luruxiously spaced, and
I imagined poignantly that I was in a city
where I had felt more physical comfort then Hong
Kong.
San Francisco, at my Rich Aunt Dorothy's who was
so rich she bought three penthouses and had the walls torn down to mel them together.
Or Montreal, where I loved to walk along the streest
parallel to Rue St. Denis or Rue Parc,
never once banging into anyone, or getting my
toes run over with metal-wheeled suitcases
as in the TST Metro.
I scooped the last of the whipped cream onto
my mango cheesecake, which was a true Deli Style
cheesecake, textured and firm, not soft and custardy,
and I grew up in Montreal Delis, where I first
had
true Europeean cheesecake,
tall and simple and delectable.
Best of all, there was service so attentive my
plates were scooped silently away a moment or two
after I finished with them, and staff neither
effusive nor hasty.
I chose British tea rather than coffee,
feeling the need for a beverage more refreshng
with all that sweet food than my customary coffee.
I lingered a long time, half-listening to a Canadian
Career Woman at the table beside me, she was talking in a roundabout way with a Hong Kong business man who owned fifteen beauty
salons
in China, about sending him her herbal treatments
that she planned to have made freshly in China.
Though I do not want to be diusmissive of other's
business dreams and hopes,
I could not help but think realistically,
And what would stop a local from
copying your plans?
What would stop them from having the herbal treatments
made locally themselves,
and having a better first price, as they are in
touch with their own people locally?
And what would then stop them from being
able to sell those products at a lower price, though that
is not necessarily the right marketing strategy?
The woman had done better far better than me
in Canada, where she knew the local business terrain.
She had been doing a Preparatory Tour of China,
assuming that a long and expensive trip would help prepare the grounds for her business.
A great idea,
lengthy preparations,
low cost labour.
I thought about Laura's impending birthday,
she is a Scorpio of the Dove variety, and
maybe
I would take her for a surprise.
A strawberry wall, cooed two Chinese
matrons,
and too late, I discovered a whole wall of berries
above the Mango Buffet were free to take off,
just remove the toothpicks, and douse them
with even more whipped cream.
I finished the buffet a second time,
and went home - or not home -
in the early evening, too full to go for
my Kowloon Park swim.
