HONG KONG: INSTAGRAMS

since my pops arrived, my dumpling intake has pretty much tripled and it's only going uphill in a downhill/loosen-the-belt way. we take hours to indulge in the wild hotel breakfast that has stations for like every breakfast food imaginable (and non-imaginable), including breakfast noodles and breakfast blue cheese and breakfast bao... and our favorite, breakfast 粽子. 

last night we had a molecularly gastronomized xiao long bao. ​(don't even. i'll discuss later.)

yesterday we had our first rehearsal with the phil and it went well. it was fun to play with my dad and aziz! aziz has surrounded himself with like a thousand bass drums and if i didn't know him i'd be scared. 

after rehearsal i dragged those two to the street with all of the kitchen supplies stores and it was the most jaw-droppingly amazing out-of-body cake mold experience. hey molly, did you buy any cool things in hong kong?  7,000 beautiful cupcake cups for the price of about two normal vending machine trips.

other enjoyable moments from these past few days: running into some friends from juilliard who were stopping over en route to bali, eating the most fabulous black sesame ice cream with the hugest black sesame seeds and not giving a damn about them getting stuck in my teeth, meeting a giant inflatable duck, and finding soup dumplings at the 7-11.​

​ok, i am off to play more gong!

-yeh!​

HONG KONG: DAY TWO

​the weirdest parts about such intense jet lag adjustments are when dreams feel so real and real life feels dreamy, since those two things actually happen at approximately opposite hours of the day for a few days. for example, last night i dreamt that i was late to today's rehearsal because i was shooting the shit with tyrion lannister. (i'll stop the game of thrones ​references when i'm back in territory that is legal for using hbo go.)

​at about midnight chicago time on monday, i boarded a boat in broad daylight in hong kong's causeway bay with about 20 members of the hong kong phil (i'm playing gong and bass drum and about eight crotale notes with them this week). boating around the green-ish water among plops of land felt a little bit life of pi-​ish. i'd been up since 3am, and now i was to continue to be up in beautiful cloudy daylight with a boat lady who had a sixth sense for when anyone's beers would be remotely close to finished so that she could be on it with the refill. 

partway through we parked it for swimming and cannon-balling and grilled chickens on sweet squishy buns. it was absolutely lovely and topped off with a rainbow at the end.  ​

when i got back i slept a really fantastic sleep. and then last night, my pops arrived! he's playing bass clarinet with the orchestra this week. we're about to head to rehearsal. rite of spring ​is on the program, and today is the 100th anniversary of it's premiere! i hope there are no riots this time?

-yeh!​

HONG KONG: HOKKAIDO DAIRY FARM MILK RESTAURANT

in the past year i've gone through, oh, about five thousand million dozen eggs. i've poached them under my master poacher mother's supervision, baked them at midnight for a noshie eggboy, soft boiled some rainbow beauties that were fresh out of the hen, scrambled them as slowly as possible with the best most freshest chives available, and gone through many many kinds of fancy salt in all different colors. one would think i've made a good egg. 

but upon taking myself on a morning date to the hokkaido dairy farm milk restaurant, i realized the answer was, 20 years ago, right in front of my four-year-old-bowl-cut-self: fluffy white bread with the crusts cut off, hilarious amounts of butter, and milk. 3.6% fat milk, to be exact, says robyn.

hokkaido's egg sandwich is approximately one of the best things i've ever eaten. it's better than australia dairy company's version. it's better than the super bougie eggs i spend too much money on at the farmers' market.

it's sweet, fluffy, buttery, eggy yumminess sandwiched between two slices of the most pillowy soft white bread you ever did meet. it's large. large enough to feel bad about also ordering the peanut butter stuffed french toast (but not that bad, because, hey, when in honk honk?) and large enough that you need to use two hands and be extra careful that you don't make a mess, lest some valuable egg get away. 

​eating a hokkaido egg sandwich is almost like eating a slice of new york pizza. the grease just runs down your arm and it is one happy moment. 

-yeh!​

this post on hokkaido was brought to you by jet-lag. it's thanks to jet lag that i was able to be the first customer of the day and avoid the usual long line.

thank you, jet lag, i love you, jet lag. 

HONG KONG: DAY ONE

here's a slideshow from my first full day in honk honk (hover for captions):​

crossing the star ferry.

​on the way from kowloon, where my hotel is, to hong kong island. 

can you see the humidity?

can you taste it??​

dim sum!

aziz, my tour guide and boss for the week, at city hall for dim sum.​

the sweets.

my favorite part about this dim sum was the black sesame soup. i must learn how to make it!​

a view from the escalator.

​after dim sum, aziz and i took the escalator further up the island to begin a hike.

the obligatory waterfall shot.

the hike begins!

puppy hiker.

​i was too shy to introduce myself, but here he is.

a crane for eggboy.

eggboy likes cranes. ​

the top of the island.

complete with two shopping malls, obviously.​

honk honk from above.

hong kong island and kowloon, across the river.​

being er.

​aziz told me that if a girl is ditzy, she is "so er." "er" means "two" in mandarin... like the two that i'm making with my hand in this pic. hehe.

a pretty wall.

a colorful wall.​

the back?

i think that's the back of hong kong island.​

aziz.

it just occurred to me that this year marks seven years of being friends with aziz! ​

escalator #34329058942

​heading back down the island.

heading further down.

on the trolley of doom. that thing gets nearly vertical. never taking it again.​

the mtr.

taking the mtr back across to kowloon for indian food!​