Dispatch from Elsewhere: Another Chill Day
Day 15: Macau
Hello friends! I’m writing today from a busy food court at Yaohan Centre. It’s a multilevel department store, swanky in comparison to its very sad cousin in Richmond. It’s a bit of a rainy day today, so we are spending our time inside. The weather is much cooler, but so humid that I felt like an umbrella didn’t make much difference to getting wet as it feels like the water comes from everywhere.
I’m enjoying Japanese Pepsi Zero that feels a little sad in comparison to ours, but it’s nice to have some sit down time to collect my thoughts.
This morning, we meet Loud Grandma for brunch at 11am. We call her that because she has a voice that shakes the earth, yet everyone is drawn to her kindness, humour, and heart. We love Loud Grandma, but her most difficult personality trait is that she’s always too generous, often insisting on paying for too much food at the highest end restaurants. This trip, we use my sister as an excuse, saying that the only thing in the world that would make her happy is an egg sandwich. Begrudgingly, she accepts brunch at a cha chaan teng nearby. The server is the nicest one we’ve had so far, and I suspect the universal belovedness of Loud Grandma has something to do with that.
We get some quintessentially Macanese dishes. I personally order the Moroccan chicken as I wanted to finally try it, and my grandma informs me that they used to have it all the time at the hospital canteen.
Loud grandma is my grandma’s youngest cousin, and kind of her opposite in many ways. I always enjoy seeing her, even if my own grandma makes brunch a bit of a bummer by the end. My sister says that she’s the kind of neurodivergent she wants to grow up to be, and I tend to agree.
After brunch, we sat around at home for a bit. I chat with my mom while my sister figured her banking stuff out. Soon, we decide to set off on our next adventure: picking up a few presents for B.
We decide to revisit a few stores from before, stopping at a lovely little bookstore from around the corner. I want to find a visual guide to Chinese plants and herbs, but O informed me previously that it might not exist. TCM, she said, is so complicated and takes so many years of learning, that she’s not sure anyone has distilled the information down for easy consumption by the public. I almost buy an illustrated children’s book about plants, but I decide $40 is pretty steep. Books sure are expensive! But I do really love and and appreciate the colour palettes and how things are laid out. I briefly fall in love with a book about creating natural dyes for your clothing, but it’s even more expensive than the children’s book!
We meander over to Yaohan and ooh and ahh over more cute things. Gotta get my fix before returning to Kelowna!
Now we are resting at the food court before returning back to our neighbourhood for dinner for me. My sister had a lovely little salmon sashimi don here!
It’s after this that I am enticed to buy a mini digital camera blind box. I’ve seen folks with the little Kodak ones (in my dramas mostly), but I’m also sold the idea of a Snoopy themed one with a 1/96th chance of pulling an Olaf (Snoopy’s cousin), which comes with his own frame.
Still, the little Snoopy frames are cute, and I’m excited about the whopping 2 megapixels I get to play around with. It’s 0.5 megapixels higher than the Kodak, so it’s basically my flip phone in 2005. It’s perfect, and I already have a little essay brewing in my brain around “slow” tech.
We spend some time in SaSa (HK’s very own Sephora), then we hop on a bus back to our neighbourhood. I get pork chop macaroni in soup again, because I already miss it and I haven’t even left yet, and then we head home to do some repacking.
I’m not looking forward to unpacking everything once I head home, but I am excited to decorate my place with all of my new sons. I make some unboxing videos to make repacking more fun. I’ll be sharing those once I edit them together!
Tomorrow, we are heading to The Galaxy hotel for a buffet. Finally, we are heading out of Macau’s mainland and into Taipa!
That’s it for today! Flor, out!