Tragic Romance on Pre-Valentine's Day Weekend

The Vow

It rated a low 27% on Rotten Tomatoes, but I watched it anyway. I honestly liked it. I don't recommend watching it if you're tired or emotionally loaded, though. It's a little bit heavy for a Valentine's Day date movie, but independent of the occasion, I think it's a good film to go back to over and over again. The girl-gets-amnesia-and-guy-tries-to-make-her-fall-in-love-with-him-again plot may not be new, but I definitely liked that it wasn't that unpredictable. It helps to appreciate it more when you remember that it's based on a true story. Makes you wish for a guy as dedicated (and as hot) as Channing Tatum's character was in the movie. Hahaha! <3 I shall say no more lest I spoil it for anyone.

The Fault In Our Stars

Currently reading The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

I won't pretend to be an expert by writing a full blown critique of the book, but I will say that I liked its depth. John Green likes writing about death a lot. Teenagers and death. People will most probably remember him for writing the New York Times Bestseller, Looking for Alaska. It tells of how this boy falls in love with this girl named Alaska who was troubled by her issues with death. Green takes on an even more tragic plot this time in The Fault in Our Stars by adding terminal disease to the mix. 

Hazel Grace, a 16-year old cancer patient falls in love with a boy named Augustus at a time when she was merely biding her time before her death. If it sounds depressing to you, well, you're spot on. I won't say how it ends because, again, I don't want to spoil it for anyone. Just know that it's not something you should read when you're tired or sad either. It's even more depressing than The Vow. (What did I do to myself over the weekend? Hahahaha.) Still, it's worth the read simply because it makes you think about the life you're living now. It tells us that we only have one life to live. Nobody knows for sure how long that life will be. I like how Hazel Grace put it in the book when she said that "some infinities are bigger than other infinities." The possibilities as to what we can do with it are endless, but what possibilities are we going to choose in order to make it count? The question of whether we're going to make it count and who we're going to make it count for is totally up to us.

So that was my weekend of tragedy. Hahaha! It wasn't my intention at all to put myself under so much depression, but at least there won't be much room for that this week with all the Valentine's Day hype. My  week shall be filled with chocolates and romantic comedies. Happy Valentine's Day! :)

P.S.
I just read here that the producers of Twilight have acquired the rights to adapt The Fault in Our Stars. Here's hoping that they do it justice. :/

Hop Inn: Our Pseudo-home in HK

When vacationing in another country, your accommodation choice will affect your whole experience. It would be nice to be able to stay in a 5-star hotel with a king sized bed to yourself, a humongous bath tub complete with luxurious toiletries, 24/7 room service, cable, high speed internet... the works! That would be nice, and if you're blessed enough to be able to afford it, then don't hesitate to grab the opportunity. Practically speaking, though, all you really need is a safe place with clean rooms and a bathroom with clean, hot water. You'll be out most of the day anyway. My family usually settles for a decent 3-star hotel on our trips out of the country. Since I was going to be using my own money for my trip to Hong Kong, I honestly didn't want to spend more than Php 5500 a night on even a 3-star hotel if we were only going to use the place for sleeping and bathing.

From the hours I spent googling and reading through the Hong Kong for Dummies thread on Pinoy Exchange, I found out that it's not uncommon for tourists to stay in hostels. I used to have this notion that hostels were places where a lot of bad things happen. (Definitely because of the portions of the movie Hostel I've while flipping through channels on TV. Hahaha!) It turns out that hostels aren't that bad. I think it helps to lower your expectations and set a bare minimum. My base requirement was a place in the Tsim Sha Tsui district (just 'cause Polina and I were most familiar with the area) with clean beds and a bathroom with hot water. I also found out that you can book a really decent double room for as low as HKD 380 a night (~ Php 2280), so my initial budget was around that number. 

The major setback during my hostel hunt was that I started booking so late! People don't usually book their HK accommodations less than 2 months before their trip, so from the list of tried and tested hotels on the HK4D thread, only around 2 had available rooms. I eventually chanced upon a Pinay blogger's post about Hop Inn while I googled for more hostel options. She was all praises about how clean, comfortable and safe Hop Inn was. The main branch is on Hankow Road, just a few minutes away from the Tsim Sha Tsui MTR station. What really caught my attention was this picture:

It looks too cool to be a hostel room, right? Apparently, one of Hop Inn's distinguishing features is that its rooms are works of art. Each room was muraled by a local artist, so no two rooms are alike. Some, like the one above, were even designed with some sort of installation art.

If you're not so artsy, you'll probably still enjoy their other amenities such as the free wifi, the laptop with webcam that you can borrow from the front desk and the unlimited DVD's in the common room that you can watch on the flatscreen TV in your room.

Needless to say, I was sold. I emailed to book a room the day after, and was ecstatic when I received a reply saying that we can be accommodated at their new branch on Carnarvon Road, which is just 5 minutes away from the Hop Inn on Hankow.

Commuting to Hop Inn on Carnarvon from the airport was a piece of cake thanks to the very helpful directions on their website, which is almost as cool as their rooms. Lisa, the girl manning the front desk when we arrived, was so sweet and friendly. She graciously showed us to Room 5, an apricot colored room with a semi-abstract mural. Here's a picture of Polina and our wall below.

Notice the Chinese characters under the paint? Lisa explained them to us, but I was too excited taking the whole thing in that, for the life of me, I can't remember what they mean. :/

Here's a picture of our comfy bed. It fit Polina and me perfectly. The pillows are as soft as they look. :)

I forgot to take a decent picture of the bathroom, but it looks exactly like the photo of the blue room above, only that the sink and the toilet were interchanged. Don't worry about the glass enclosure. The shower curtains are thick enough to show only a rough silhouette of whoever's inside. The bathroom was actually what I looked forward to the most every night because it felt so nice to run my sore feet under really hot water after a whole day of walking.

So, would I recommend Hop Inn for my friends?... Do I even need to answer that question? Haha! I would definitely recommend it to anyone! Usually when I sleep over somewhere, I end up missing my bed and my room, but I loved "coming home" to Room 5 every night, looking at our awesome psychedelic wall while I waited for my turn to shower and falling asleep to Hitch, Two Weeks Notice and Mr. and Mrs. Smith after everything.

Our stay cost HKD 690 a night, which translated to us having to spend around Php 6000 each for our whole three night stay in HK. It cost a little higher than what I initially budgeted for, but for the extra perks that we got to enjoy, I'd say it was Php 6000 well spent.

The worst part about Hop Inn for me is probably the lack of sound proofing in the rooms. The TV inside the room could easily be heard from the hallway, and people in the hallway were audible from inside the room. It wasn't that much a problem, though, since the other guests were respectful enough to turn their TV volumes down after 11pm, and nobody really caused a ruckus in the hallway. The only gripe-worthy experience I had was when one of the guests became too friendly and offered us his room number, asked what ours was, tried recommending erotic movies (@_@) to us while we were choosing a movie on our last night and knocked on our door at 2am for some reason that we didn't dare try to find out anymore. But that's another story. :) All I can say is don't open your door for just anyone, folks!

I've Been Bitten

Bitten by the travel bug, that is!

Two weeks ago, I had the amazing experience of going out of the country without my family for the first time. It was just me and my best friend Polina. Our travel destination? Hong Kong. We had been dreaming about our trip since April, but I honestly didn't believe that it was actually going to happen until the end of July when Polina called me up one night and said that I had to ask my parents for permission at that instant because she was already getting us plane tickets, and there were only a few seats left. I ran downstairs and hurried my folks into coming up with a decision, and they said yes! And so, within a few minutes' time, it was set. We were going to spend four days in Hong Kong!

PO and I had been to Hong Kong before, but never without family. This trip was different. Unlike our previous HK trips where we were sponsored in full by our loving parents, we had a tight budget that dictated the course of our trip - where to stay, where to go, how to get there, what to eat... everything! Our parents couldn't resist to help us out, though. They were kind enough to pay for our airfare (excluding taxes) and half of our accommodations, which lightened our load significantly.

Planning for our trip never stopped since night when our tickets were bought. Even during my hell weeks last semester, I would spend my free time (and sometimes even my not-so-free time) online, googling about Hong Kong, poring over websites, trying to find out how best to spend the four days that we were going to be there for and the budget that we had to work with. It was never a chore for me, however, because the more our itinerary materialized, the more I got excited. Researching wasn't so hard either since I was able to stumble across some useful websites and blogs that contained most of the information we needed. The most useful of which was a Hong Kong for Dummies thread on Pinoy Exchange. Apparently, since Hong Kong is one of the top travel destinations of Pinoys, the discussion about  Hong Kong in the forum became so long and so elaborate that the people of Pinoy Exchange decided to compile everything into one very helpful detailed guide on everything (and by everything I mean everything) a Hong Kong tourist needs to know.

The picture above is the first page of my purple travel notebook where I listed our flight details and accommodation details. The picture below is the list of things I wanted to do during our stay. I intentionally made it long so we would have options. I can get pretty OC about plans, and for this trip, I was extremely OC. Hahaha! It's not obvious, no? We ended up doing less than half of the list, though, because PO was more interested in shopping than sightseeing. I'm pretty much the opposite, but I still got to buy some stuff. I'll save them and the rest of my Hong Kong stories for another post.

For now, I will conclude this entry with my favorite picture from our trip. It's a photo of me (right) and PO (left) with a long-haired zombie in Hong Kong Disneyland.

Testing!

Hello, reader! Welcome to my blog. I'm not sure what this new baby of mine is gonna evolve into (or if it's going to evolve at all. Haha!), but I'll definitely try to make it interesting.