OGGI HO FATTO

On wednesday 11th i went down to Wan Chai district on hong kong island to take care of some business.. it's a serious neighbourhood. skyscrapers right on the street and extreme smog and pollution due to the heavy traffic, so much that you can barely breathe. extreme financial-district atmosphere mixed with a thin layer of gritty street happening and more of the huge sooty residential buildings.

i went down there early in the morning (experiencing the joy that is rush hour on the MTR: i could only catch the 3rd train through the station because of the crowds, composed mostly of cute schoolchildren with iphones and enviable school uniforms) without having had any breakfast so after exiting the chinese embassy with my brand new chinese travel visa i needed some food...

and went to McDonalds for breakfast. yes i did. i wanted to see how different it was from european McD's.. also i was just craving some fast food. i had seen before that they serve curly fries here, which they stopped serving in italy years ago, so i was ready to gobble some.. BUT they do that thing where they don't serve fries and hamburgers in the morning! they only serve crappy 'breakfasts'! what if i want fries for breakfast?! anyway.. so i had to order a mcdonalds breakfast. it wasn't so bad but i would have preferred curly fries.

that's not a hamburger, it's like a sausage patty in a bun. and a hash brown (always wanted to taste one... fried potato nugget.. quite good). another very strange thing is that they serve pasta dishes in McD's here. twisty pasta with egg and stuff like that. i definitely was not going to try that. also, i need to stop eating so much egg, because it's certainly not good for a body to be eating egg and meat like twice a day .....

hmm... so after this filling breakfast i was fortified enough to go for a wander around the neighbourhood without dying from the exhaust fumes.

it's fairly typical to see barbecued animals hanging up in the front of restaurants, we even have them in the school canteen, but i had never seen barbecued chicks before! tiny and a bit delicious-looking. barbecued with crispy skin, mm. i wonder what animals they are.. deep-fried baby ducks.. this is exactly the kind of thing that makes many westerners go 'NOOOOOO' but the way i see it: if it's part of the local traditions and economy, nothing wrong with it... i didn't buy any but who knows if i'll try them one day during my 5 months here.