Hardgeus and his Hong Kong Adventure (Note: this is years old...Carmen and I are no longer together, and I am no longer fat.)

	This is what an illegal photograph would look like were I not to know there were rules about using a camera on board a plane during a flight. Of course, I know that using electrical devices on board a plane will possibly cause it to explode mid flight, so of course I didn't take this picture.
	Upon arriving in Hong Kong we were greeted by its spokesman.
	OK. Now this is the first thing I noticed about Hong Kong: All of the scaffolding is made out of Bamboo. At first thought you may say, "Well, we use wood which is just trees..Bamboo is a reasonable building material..." NO. You don't get it. It's not nicely cut sanded bamboo with bolts in it. This is machete hacked up sticks of splintering bamboo tied together with rope supporting teams of people working on post-modern skyscrapers. It is insane.
	OK...documented PROOF that America isn't the home of racism. Could you imagine this billboard in the US? Much less the first thing you see when you get off the plane? I didn't think so.
	Y'know. I'm sick of all the stereotypes my friend's have about Asian countries. Their rickshaws are actually quite a bit more advanced than ours.
	As you can see, all of the mannequins in Hong Kong look like sex dolls.
	It is now official. The only two places on earth where metal still exists is Fat City and Hong Kong. This is a SLASH T-SHIRT. And not like a novelty-still-laying-around Slash T-Shirt. This thing is new and apparently still in production.
	And while it is true that Guns And Roses was basically a good band, and even though somewhat cheesy does not truly capture the cheese that was the late 80s and early 90s... You CAN NOT DENY that this is Yngwe FUCKING Malmsteen.
	If people from Hong Kong want us to stop making funny sounding Chinese names...they just HAVE to stop calling things Pak Fuk. I mean seriously, how can we resist?
	I mean come ON! I couldn't even make that up!
	And the camera chose to take a bad picture on the king of them all: Fook Kiu.
	Normally when I'm in Taiwan and Hong Kong, I have that distinct "Nice to visit but wouldn't want to live there" feeling. But it was different in the arcade. The arcades there made me feel ashamed to be from Podunk USA. It was almost a religious experience to visit the arcade. See these two rows? That's NOTHING but Street Fighter. Every version ever made - including the hacked chips.
	You may remember my excitement over dancing games upon my return from Taiwan. Well, in Hong Kong they've taken it several steps further. For every insane musical instrument or input device, they have a video game wrapped around it. Here you see "Percussion Freak 2nd Mix".
	A DJ game. A freaking DJ GAME!!!!!!!!!
	Morrocas! WHO COULD POSSIBLY THINK OF THAT! WHO I ASK YOU! WHO!?!?!??!
	House of the Dead converted into a speed typing game full of Sega Dreamcast plugs.
	In a Country chock full of advanced video games and cell phones, no one in the high-rise skyscrapers has a dryer.
	One thing I noticed is that it's very common for girls to walk down the street holding hands.
	Of course, since all the men look like this it is a little hard to tell.
	Similar to the Elvis phenomenon in the deep south, Hong Kong still has Bruce sightings.
	These are two of Carmen's cousins on her father's side. The younger one looks identical to how the older looked about 3 years ago. It's quite uncanny in fact. It took about 2 days before the little one realised I don't speak Chinese, and that I'm not just a retarded albino.
	The girl on the left is Michaels girlfriend, the girl in the middle is Carmen's friend Cindy. And the guy is another of Carmen's friends.
	We went to Ocean Park, which is sort of like the Aquarium of the Americas mixed with 6 flags. This flamingo just looks cool.
	This fish is actually bigger than I am. It is the largest non-mammal non-shark animal I've ever seen in the water.
	I had never seen a panda in real life before. It was pretty cool.
	Due to the mad cow thing meat was extremely expensive in Hong Kong. (Editor's Note:After much angry hate mail calling me ignorant, I have to clarify: Yes, I KNOW the Hong Kong dollar is dramatically different than the US dollar. I know the meat isn't that expensive...It was a joke.)
	However, the sushi was really cheap. This place is a sort of fast food sushi place. There's actually a conveyor belt with sushi on it, and you take what you want.
	Hong Kong is an odd blend of England and China. Here's a English style double decker bus. One interesting thing...Carmen grew up here, and there were many many things that she thought were Chinese culture that were in fact English. Very interesting.
	These are Carmen's friends.
	The younger cousin has an interesting magic trick. She pulls a card out of the deck. Smiles, and then shows it to you. It's quite amazing.
	This is the universal sign language for "I'm from an Asian country"
	This is Carmen's Aunt, the mother of the two girls.
	Here we can see the brilliant bamboo engineering at the theme park.
	Carmen's hot yo.
	This is Carmen's grandmother and grandfather on her father's side.
	The following are pictures from Taiwan, which was actually the first part of the trip...I just wanted the Hong Kong pictures first.
	Strain your eyes and try to see what's under the table. That's right. Live chickens. The cage itself is a chopping block. I don't know whether this is crazier for the obvious health code violations or the fact that this guy chops chickens apart on top of their house.
	Ok, this guy's name is STEEL. This isn't his last name, or a nickname. His name is literally Steel. That's what is so cool about other countries. You can name your kid a random cool word and people don't look at you funny. And if they come to America, people just say "Well, he's from Tahiti" when they hear your name is DESTROYER. IF I went around saying my name was Steel no one would take me seriously. But when businessmen meet an asian guy named Steel, they think "This guy must be hardcore."
	This is Steel's daughter Debbie. She is enveloped in a cloud of steam because we are eating Shopu Shopu. Shopu Shopu is a Japanese style meal where you have a steaming bucket of broth in front of you and they throw raw food at you. Note that the Japanese BBQ is a firey bucket of coals and they throw raw meat at you...and sushi is uncooked fish...I'm starting to think that Japanese chefs are extremely lazy.
	This is Uncle 2. For the first few weeks of dealing with Taiwanese people I was extremely confused by their numbering of their relatives. From what I can gather, the oldest uncle on one side of the family is Uncle 1. Then Uncle 2 etc. Even carmen is not entirely sure what to make of mixed sexes where you have Boy,Girl,Boy in order...Is the girl Auntie 2 or Auntie 1? My vote is for Auntie 1. Uncle 2 treated us to an excellent dinner at the Hyatt. While there he told Carmen and I: "My sister told me not to mention the word...FAT because you and Carmen have gained weight...but don't worry...you're not that fat."
	This is Uncle 3. He's hella cool. He likes to talk about the US, so I spent about 5 hours complaining about liberal politics in America. He also treated us to a great dinner with the family. Needless to say I didn't lose any weight while there.
	This is Carmen's younger cousin MiMi (on the right). He and I played Starcraft, and he's got about 7 characters in Ultima Online, so we had a lot in common. Unfortunately, he doesn't speak a whole lot of English, so Carmen had to translate bizarre words like "Zerg", "Stimpack", and "Etherial".
	This is Carmen's cousin and cousin's cousin. Her cousin's cousin looks suspiciously like the Winkle.
	On the right is Carmen's cousin YoYo.
	This is Uncle One's son. I have never met uncle one.
	This is Carmen's friend Michael.