Why sleep when you can watch Taichi?

Monday night was among the coolest things ever happenned in Hong Kong so far. For me anyway.

Tuesday was a day off which meant that I knew I could stay up a little later on Monday evening, and so I did. I called this nice girl I've been seeing quite a few times already and asked whether she had time to go out again. She did. So we went for a dinner in a rather expensive - but nice - place (both had salads, HKD 200 for each set). I paid, of course. So anyway, the night was still young when we were finished with the dinner and just so happens that a friend of hers calls right when we were about to plan for what to do after.

So, turns out there is a party somewhere in Causeway Bay and he's asking her whether we would like to join.

"A party", I think to myself, "I've been to many bars in Hong Kong so I know what they're about but 'a party'?"

Needless to say, I was interested to see what the word "party" means in Hong Kong and thus we took a taxi to Causeway Bay. We didn't go to one of those nice areas with neonligts everywhere and all, but instead we found ourselves in a rather shady street with bags of trash and broken streetlights. If I was walking alone, that would exactly be the kind of a street I wouldn't want to take in the dark.

So, a shady street.

"Ok", I think to myself, "I know most 'local' places are actually somewhere far from the tourist places we usually go to."

We enter a random doorway. It's just one of the many doorways in the street without any particular lights or signs, just a doorway. We go in, take an elevator and go somewhere maybe to the 5th floor. Doors open.

Black walls; young Chinese looking people walking about, drunk; and loud dance music fills the air. Sweet!

We go in. Music is really loud and at first I don't like it. It's too loud, and it's not the kind of music I usually like to listen to. Yet, I get used to it quite quickly.

We pay HKD 220 to enter and get stamped on our hands. For the 220 we supposedly get 3 drinks for free. Sounds like a bad deal at first, but since we're already there I don't mind. As long as something's happening.

So, we enter the main room. It's maybe 30 sqm space with black walls, a bar and a tiny dance floor packed with people dancing to beat. I get my first beer. Sweet.
We sit down on sofas and try to talk in the noise. Not impossible, but difficult. My date, who is highly energetic already by default, seems to get even more accelerated by the atmosphere of the place. Fun.

She wants to go dancing. I resist; my dancing is kind of like a quadriplegic rhinoceros trying to do a somersault. Awkward.

Well, in the end I allow myself to be taken to the floor. To my relief I notice most people are possibly even worse dancers than I am, so I don't give a damn anymore. I only wish the DJ would've played the Axel F.-theme. Anyhow, dancing the night away from henceforth. We stayed mostly on the floor for the whole evening, maybe 3-4 hours or so. My legs are protesting now, but it was fun back then.

I forgot to mention I was the only white guy in the party.

There were a few others but they stayed only for a little while and so mostly I was the only Gweilo around. Fun, fun, fun! The amount of people asking my name and where I come from was almost scary.

R= random person, M=me

R: "Hey, what's up?"
M: "I am enjoying this charming atmosphere very much, thank you."
R: "Hey, what's you name?"
M: "Pekka, P-E-K-K-A, Pekka."
R: "Ok, Pikah! where are you from?"
M: "Finland."
R: "England? Whoo-hoo!"
M: "No, Finland."
R: "Oh, Finland? Whoo-hoo!!"

And this went around a number of times. Sweet. I was the most popular guy on the planet that night.

One random guy tapped my shoulder and I as I turned he said to me: "Hey, congrats! You're the random white guy!", and I was like "Erhm, thanks?"
I suppose that kind of places always have 99% population of Chinese people, and always one or two 'random white guys'.

Oh, remember that HKD 220 entry and three drinks? Well, turns out no one was really counting how many anyone had, so it ended up being way more than 3 free drinks.

The place closed at around 04:30am. We got out and I was thinking of staying in Hong Kong island untill 06:00am when the metro starts operating again. I didn't want to take a taxi to Tsim Sha Tsui and then wait for a bus, and all that. So some of my newly made friends, and my date, decided to head for Victoria Park to have some more beer. And we did.

It was funny enough to be sitting at the park talking and drinking beer, while there's a lot of older people doing Taichi in the park. I tried to teach my newly made friends some basic Finnish, they tried to teach me some basic Cantonese. I think we all failed miserably.

It all went untill around 08:00am when finally we decided it might be best to get some rest. So we left and I took the metro back home. Arriving around 09:00am; taking a shower and dropping a few lines to friends still online; I found myself in bed around 09:30am, and I slept like a baby untill 17:00.

That pretty much concludes my adventures on Monday night as well as covers most of Tuesday too. Seems this post is mighty long and mostly about nonsense - so if you're still reading this, I have say you should get a better life and you must be a very sorry person to have spent all this time to read this post. Thanks though.

No wikipedia quotes today.