Chinabites

Posted: Feb. 26, 2009

The biggest lifestyle change for me since arriving in Hong Kong happened this week when I joined the ranks of those able to brew their own coffee. I had hemmed and hawed for weeks about buying or borrowing a french press or some other kind of miniature brewing device, but these days my M.O. is to travel light. The idea of schlepping around a coffee pot from place to place like a modern day albatross was preventing me from taking the plunge.

Previously, my addiction to caffeine would drive me forth daily from my tiny apartment in Times Square into the welcome and waiting arms of Caffe Habitu, where I would sit for five to ten hours per day working on various projects, never consuming more than exactly one cafe latte in a paper cup. Not exactly 环保, but it did hide the fact that I was finished from the wait staff.

All of this changed this week with the arrival into my life of a tiny, precious miracle called the coffee sock.

How I've lived for almost thirty years without this little bundle of joy I'll never know, but I do know there can be no going back. It's like some inventor channeled my own personal trifecta of laziness, frugality, and caffeine addiction into a single material object.

The ability for me to make coffee in my own apartment has dramatically reduced my drive to go out and interact with the world. That's bad news for Chinabites since I really need to hit the streets to expand the restaurant reviews for Hong Kong. I am lucky, however, that I just made a couple of friends here who dragged me out (highly caffeinated) last night to the racetrack for the weekly spectacle of Hong Kong's Wednesday night horse races.

The crowd starts arriving around 7:30pm and admission to the public seating area and beer garden is basically free at HKD 10. We showed up late and no one even bothered to make us pay at the gate. The beer garden adjoins the racecourse directly and features several tents serving surprisingly good draft beer in pints and pitchers at rock bottom prices (for Hong Kong anyway). Leaping at the opportunity to mix depressants with my stimulants, I had a pint of Leffe Belgian beer which was fantastic.

The crowd was a healthy mix of young, fashionable expatriates (one of our group described the races as the best-looking scene in Hong Kong), and desperate local gambling addicts with mullets. The question burning on every Chinabites reader's mind at this moment, no doubt is: What does one eat at the most fashionable place in Hong Kong on a Wednesday night? A picture is worth a thousand words:

This totally awesome McDonalds features a select, six item horse-race themed menu. A subsequent blog post will cover this important Hong Kong dining establishment in detail. I'll write it just as soon as my hands stop shaking.