… three precious weeks, day 3

Waking up at 6am is definitely better than waking up at 5am. NN and May should be coming by the apartment at 8 to pick me up so we can go to 信得中心together. I made sure that I have my passport, enough clothes to last me for two days and the bottle of Johnny Walker. As I waited, I tried once again to figure out my internet connection for my laptop. After a number of tries again and loads of frustration, I finally surrendered. I decided to use my phone to see if I could get my emails. Hmmm… looks like the phone card that NN gave me would not let me get on the web… okay… my boss is going to kill me either way so let me slip my AT&T US card back into my Blackberry… There, it works! Uh oh… where am I going to put this HK phone card? Ah, I brought my old Blackberry! I will put it in there! Geez… I didn’t unlock my old BB, okay… I will put the AT&T card in the old BB, put the HK card in the new BB and the phone that my boss gave me will remain the same. 3 phones! I can’t go wrong with 3 phones, right? Cool! But where the heck am I going to put all the phones? I guess I have to change to a bigger purse. Then finally, “Ring!!” “Hello? Okay, I’ll be right down.” Last minute check list off the top of my head… purse, keys, wallet, passport, phones, overnight bag and the most important thing… the one liter blue label, Johnny Walker! Got it! Turned off all the lights, locked the doors and it’s off I go, down four flights of stairs!
When we arrived at the Center, we went to this coffee shop to have breakfast. Perfect! Coffee! Oh, by the way, HK coffee doesn’t quite taste the same as the US counterpart… Then as one by one the other girls came, breakfasted then it was time to head to the gates. I was separated from them because I had to go thru immigration. “We will be waiting for you at the Duty Free Shop, okay?” “Okay!” NN: “Oh! You might need to show your ticket, so here you go.” “Thanks.” After passing customs, I looked around and didn’t see any DFS or any of the girls. Thinking to myself ‘Hmmm… there’s an escalator, maybe they’re downstairs.” Once I reached downstairs, I saw a shop and I walked over but it was a newsstand… ‘Okay… now where is the DFS? Hmmm… maybe it’s closer to the gate or perhaps maybe even inside the gate.’ I started heading that way and was about to give my ticket to a girl, one of my phones rang… “Hello?” “你喺邊呀？” “入緊閘…” 未講完就… “你喳住哂我哋啲飛呀！” “噢!” I immediately grabbed the tickets back and did a 180 degree about face and walked out of the line. Within a minute, I saw five laughing girls with rolling eyes rushing towards me all talking at the same time… the gist of it was… you were going to leave without us?!?! I tried defending myself... “Hey, I didn’t see a DFS and I thought it might be in the gate…” Trust me, they didn’t believe me so I turned towards NN and said… “Why’d you give me all the tickets?” What would be her absolutely brilliant answer? “They were stapled together.” @@ Okay, with that first incident behind us, we finally cheerily boarded the ferry. The vague smell of the sea and the rocking of the boat… take my advice… don’t eat anything before you ride these suckers. Alright, I admit it, I don’t have sea legs and I didn’t think the ride would be that long. I felt the coffee swishing back and forth in my tummy… luckily, I was distracted enough from the lively chatter that I was able to keep the coffee down. Once we docked, it was immigration and customs again. After the last incident, we all had our eyes wide opened, so meeting up went without a glitch.
Upon arrival at the hotel, we waited around in the lobby so May could check us in. Oops, too early, no keys yet. We left our overnight bags with the bell desk. Then it was off to lunch! We went to this restaurant and was shown our way upstairs (more stairs) to this little table. And what do we see hanging on the side of the wall? A huge picture of Wayne Lai… the squeals and bright eyes from NN was so funny. I told her to take a picture with her phone and post it on WP insinuating that she ran into him during lunch! When the food arrived, it smelled so good! 水蟹粥，椒鹽大蝦，西蘭花炒something (can’t remember) and some other dishes. The水蟹粥was delicious!! But I literally burnt my tongue on the broccoli.  After a very enjoyable meal, where do we go now?

Play tourist, of course! We headed out to 大三巴 and someone mention a landmark, a water fountain. When we arrived, I said… “Huh? That’s the landmark water fountain?!?” It was so tiny!! I mean with all the people around, you could barely see it. So we started our tour, our tour guide, 貓貓 introduced us to 天主廟 and later we were going to visit 哪喳堂… the girls started laughing but I just thought they were having fun. Only later on did I realize that 哪喳堂 didn’t sound quite right. Oh well… the cobblestones were quaint, the shops were bustling with customers, and the road was filled with people. We finally made it to that famous landmark! Yea! I was ribbed into walking up those steps to take pictures. I am supposed to do the touristy thing… so grudgingly, I complied. By this time, my feet were starting to really ache again and I needed to go to the restroom. We walked into a shopping center to “relieve” ourselves and when we came out, we missed that tiny little street that led to 哪喳堂. @@ After some distance, 貓貓 said… “I think we passed it, this doesn’t look right.” 視框 immediately said… “I have a MAP! My boyfriend gave it to me! (Grin) But… I don’t know how to read it!” So standing on a sidewalk, five lovely ladies surrounded the map… (I walked off to read a phone booth) 視框 says “We want to go here and there (pointing to the sights of interest)… but I don’t know where we are.” Rounds of laughter went up in the air. Then 貓貓said… “Why don’t we just go to “Yi Shun” for drinks?” Shouts of “Yes” from all five of us made 貓貓 roll her eyes and said, “Who needs planning?” So off we went with eagerness and anticipation. Anticipation is mostly on my part because I was finally able to sit down!  Once we arrived and were shown to a table upstairs (where else) I said I wanted to try the Coconut/Pineapple ice.  I was thinking it is so darn hot here and ice would be perfect.  When the drink arrived… I found no ice!  I said… “How come there’s no ice?”  Another brilliant answer from one of the girls… “It melted.”  “Huh?  It just came.” “It’s so finely shaven that it melted.  There’s ice.”  I peered suspiciously at my drink again and said, “I don’t think so… it’s not even that cold.”  “It could be just a name since it’s not a hot drink.”  It was my turn to roll my eyes… so I asked the waiter for a glass of plain ICE.  (The humidity was also doing its part in trying to kill me.  For the past 3 days it has been raining on and off. I don’t know why NN was so surprised that I was actually chewing the cubes… strange… hmmm…) 
Since we had tickets for the show “ZAIA”, we had to have an early dinner.  It was decided that a Portuguese dinner would be good.  I did say that I wanted to try the Portuguese suckling pig… but the restaurant that we went to weren’t going to be opened until 6. We decided to go to the other location.  We needed to wave down two taxis where taxis were scarce in the first place. It did cross my mind that if we couldn’t get a taxi, we were going to walk to the other restaurant? (In my mind, I was screaming… I miss my car!!!) Finally, a taxi pulled over but someone else had waved it down. I decided I wasn’t going to walk another step and where there is one taxi there should be others coming, right? I was so happy to get to the restaurant that I have no idea what the food tasted like, isn’t that awful?  I do remember this very blackish/grayish duck dish. I don’t have a sweet tooth like the rest of the girls so I passed on the dessert but I did drink a cup of cappuccino for energy and hopefully keep myself at least partially awake for the upcoming show. 
Once we arrived at the Venetian, it reminded me of home.  We went inside the theater and the show hasn’t started yet.  There were 6 complimentary popcorn tickets but we were too full or too lazy to stand in line for them.  We sat in a row and rested up.  I remember hearing 貓貓saying to 視框… “我哋可以去酒店…”  Immediately, May, NN and I jumped in and asked simultaneously… “酒店?!? 你哋兩個去酒店做咩呀?”  綠綠 exasperatedly said, “酒店入邊有咖啡shop喎.”  From that moment on, May, NN and I were branded with being [黃色]. (I wanted to remind them that 賞賞 also had the wrong impression about ‘hotel’ in one of the OP episodes, the one about 大閆生/好姐.) On stage, there was this huge round ball hanging which looks a lot like Earth and when the show started, there were these upside-down cycles with performers hanging from wires going towards the stage from the back of the theater.  My instant reactions were… “ET… phone home” followed by… “一係一蚊回地球.”  To keep myself awake, I was throwing in wise cracking comments here and there.  What really took the cake was these “bubbles” from above… I felt like they dumped it specifically on top of me!  I immediately said pleadingly… “我到港三日，你就落足三日雨，而家我在室內你都仲要落? 有無攪錯呀?”  NN and May couldn’t stop laughing because when they looked over to me, they said my head had the biggest globs of bubbles.  @@ Anyways, the show was… let’s just say, I needed to take a break.  So I asked 貓貓 for the popcorn tickets as an excuse to leave.  As I approached the concession stand, they were already getting ready to close therefore I decided to take a walk around the casino to see if it is similar to the one in LV.  I have heard horrible stories of Macau casinos, their obnoxious dealers, and rude gamblers from so many before that I am curious to see the “madness”.  Hrmph… it was very quiet compared to its LV counterpart.  I did double-takes on these slot machines because they were familiar but had these Chinese characters on them.  The translations were… interesting.  Darn, there weren’t any video poker machines to be seen.  For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how to convert it back to US dollars on the play.  I think I lost about $75 before it finally hit me that this is way too expensive for my taste.  Looking at my watch, I started heading back towards the theater, knowing that the show will be ending soon.  Darn it, people had already started coming out.  I stood against the wall and thought to myself, ‘This is a good place, I can see practically everyone who comes out and they should be able to see me.’  After about 10 minutes, a suspicious feeling started to creep in… did I somehow missed them (again)?  I started towards the throngs of people, like a salmon going upstream, looking around.  Once I got to the gift shop, I stopped.  Hmmm… they didn’t go out this way, did they?  I took out my phone and no signal!!  A flicker of panic flashes briefly then all of a sudden, I saw 貓貓 walking up to me within the mass of people.  A sigh of relief and a guilty grin spread across my face… “Hi!  I was looking for you gals.” “We went out the other way.  Let’s go… they’re waiting outside.  You… and where’s the popcorn?” “Uhmmm… they were closed and the show was really somewhat boring…”  By then, I see the other four girls standing around waiting for us… “So how was the casino?” “Did you win anything?”  I sheepishly grinned and said I was sorry for making them wait.  We started walking towards the exit when we did a turn around again.  Can’t remember why but when we reached the Canal shops, NN said that she wanted to go and find a restroom.  I said, “Me too.”  The others said they’ll wait so off the two of us went.  The signs directed us… and directed us… and directed us but no restroom to be seen.  We were in the food court and I went up to a girl and asked.  She waved her hand in the left direction and so we continued walking.  When we finally did find a door, we walked in and there was this lengthy corridor leading down and to the right of it was… (walla!) restroom!  When we started back, NN said “This way…” pointing straight ahead… I said “You sure?  Didn’t we turn right?”  “唔緊要啦！有路就行，實出番去架.”  “Oh, okay…”  As we walked… twist and turn… I looked over to NN… she said “憑feel 啦!” Sigh… NN’s 金句 “憑feel”真係… @@ 不過佢真係又幾好玩。By this time, I admit it, we were totally lost.  Nothing even remotely resembled anything we had passed before.   When we finally hit the canal shops, I felt that we should be close since we left the girls waiting by one of the shops.  I jokingly said to NN “Why don’t I go on one of the bridges and just shout… 貓貓?”  She nonchalantly replied “How many people you think will answer you?” “We’ll see.” I turned left and walked up the bridge and NN continued to walk straight. No, I didn’t shout anything but came back down on the other side and started walking parallel to NN. Then I stopped and started to watch her to see how long it would take for her to find out I wasn’t following her. There she was, playing with her phone (probably 微博-ing) then she looked up and then looked around… hee… she finally noticed. It took her less than 5 seconds to see me grinning at her from across the canal. Anyway, we finally converge a little ways down and she was on the phone with May asking where they were. We found a directory so we looked up the shop May said they were waiting at and (yea!) we found them! Four gals… arms crossed… feet tapping… a bit of exasperation on their faces with 貓貓 now holding a bag of snacks. “I walked off to buy snacks and that took me 20 minutes and when I came back, you two still didn’t return…” “Hey~~ the restroom was far…” “Plus we tried finding the way back憑feel 嘛！”
Once we got back to the hotel (I think everyone was exhausted by then), we headed towards the bell desk to grab our bags and that bottle of Johnny Walker. Oh… 3 rooms… 6 girls… how are we going to decide who stays with who? Another brilliant idea… 包剪踏! Six so called professionals standing in the middle of a hotel lobby in a circle late in the evening playing包剪踏. First round, 貓貓 and NN paired up, leaving the four of us. After three rounds of ‘paper and stone’ with no results… May said, “Uhm… I should stay in the same room with Charmed.” Yes, the two of us had something in common, perfect! Okay, now here are the ‘room keys’ folders… one of the rooms is just a bit nicer, pick one. Great, let’s go… up the elevator… same floor… this is it… NN suddenly says… “May… 你有冇囉鑰匙? 記得嘛...我哋頭先早咗 when we checked in. 話夜啲先比到我哋…” Those two rushed back into the elevator while four exhausted giggling figures slowly slide down the walls and sat on the floor of a hotel corridor… but of all things… a room service boy rolls his cart down this same corridor and then hesitantly says “你地… ” All four of us jumped up at the same time and said we are waiting for our room keys! Luckily, NN and May got back just in time and we all went into our rooms. It was decided that May and my room would be the gathering place after everyone takes their showers.
NN showed up first… and when May opens the door without removing the chain lock… it went flying into the air. May yelps but NN nonchalantly looks at the damage lock… “Oh!” but continues to walk into the room while May is frantically trying to put the lock back into place.  That's NN!  :D  I had noticed that there were only two glasses in the room so I asked May to call over to the other rooms to tell them to bring their own glasses. I was also wondering where either 視框 or 綠綠 was… so flippantly I asked May to ask those two if they were showering together.  Throughout the whole day, we laughed so much that our facial muscles were pretty tired.  So NN decides to tell May and me about true life murder stories.  She said the reason was so we can calm down a bit.  Geez... what kind of excuse was that?  Don't ask why but these stories were told with the 3 of us sitting in the bathroom.  You're thinking... bathroom?  Yup, bathroom!  Sitting on the side of the tub, on the sink counter and even on the toilet (with the cover down of course!)  When everyone arrived… the party begins. Glasses were filled, snacks strewn on my side of the bed and chairs… floors, window ledges and both beds (not by May or myself) occupied by bodies. Chatter starts… laughter and good cheer surrounds the room. It’s really amazing how視框can seem to be asleep but when she wants to, she will either speak with her eyes close or even sit up and comment. She keeps telling us that she is only resting her eyes! The air condition in the room was really turned to a very cold temperature. That’s one of the reasons that 視框 and 貓貓 were really snuggling inside the blanket. Great for me and May, someone warmed our beds ma!  The topic range was big and we even talked about singing at Temple street and 綠綠 made a comment that the girls there are sometimes very pretty.  Which had us laughing so hard that we were rolling on the floor.  Oh… you had to be there to understand… it’s too complicated to go into details.  The party lasted all the way till 4 in the morning!  By the way, that 1 litter was perfect for six girls.  No one got drunk but just to the point of feeling very good.