to the land of the branded

branded meaning of course, brand-name items. yes, i have just been to Hongkong, the shopping capital of the affluent Asians. the land of the Toyota Crown Smart taxis running side by side with various luxury cars, hundreds of looping flyover streets, tall buildings, tall shopping malls, and a city wherein half the population seems to be wearing formal business attire.

so the last time i've been to HK must have been more than a decade ago, so i only have a fuzzy recollection of that last time, but nevertheless even if i did i doubt that my recollection would guide me very far since everything looks brand new. given that i stayed in the main part of the city rather than to kowloon or sham sui po, so all i saw were very tall towers and throngs of people walking around. and of course the occasional ferrari, porsche, bmw's and lexus's seemingly cruising around.

the main reason we were on this trip was to accompany my aunt who had a few business deals with people who work in HK, and my grandma(mom side) loves any excuse to get out of the country came along, and they needed a baggage carrier(what they consider us young adult male relatives with flexible schedules, overpaid though, hehe). so there i was. so about a quarter of our time was spent meeting these various people who seem to have open checkbooks when it comes to treating us to a meal, especially when they heard my grandma was with us, which isn't all that bad after all. so we had a few free lunches(no such thing?) then left aunt to hammer out their business while me and grandma went out shopping or resting in the hotel room. of course, the good thing about being in HK is no matter which hotel you stay in, a shopping centre is right around the corner, in our case, that shopping centre was SOGO.