It’s definitley not summer anymore. Jackets are in daily rotation, even a scarf occasionally and (sniff) birkenstocks are no longer standard work footwear. But with the Pilots flying back and forth from Europe and talking about minus temperatures … so far I would say it’s been a mild autumn.

We’ve been out and about a few evenings lately, our flatmate’s girlfriend was over visiting for a few days, taking a break from her English teaching job in Japan. We went to a Dim Sum restaurant which has been named one of the 101 Best Places To Eat In The World. That is quite some statement, and the fact that it was from 2012 doesn’t even diminish it much in my mind, the world is a really big place. Even being in the top 101 in Hong Kong would be impressive. It was probably for the best that I only learnt this on the way out so I had no expectations and just thought we were at a random place for dinner. We had some standard dishes: Piggy custard buns that looked like pigs, bbq pork buns, Siu Mai (shrimp and prawn dumpling type things). Then there were a couple of standouts, the deep fried won tons with sweet and source sauce were super crispy and delicious, but our absolute winner was the dumplings with Wasabi filling, sounds strange but it was really moreish, so much so that I think we literally ordered 2 more plates of them. Top 101 in the world seems intense but at places like that you are never quite sure if you ordered the right things… ok I just googled it and we ordered NONE of the things that they tried oh well read about it here.

We followed it up with a bubble waffle for the true HK experience for our visitor. And actually we haven’t had one since we’ve lived here. The place we got it was a proper proper street food stall, down to the cockroach looking things crawling way too near our food, the home-made looking waffle iron where the wiring had seen better days, the locals getting served before us despite ordering after us, and paying next to nothing for the waffle. The waffle though was yummy as, a slight hint of coconut, super crispy and light and there is just something fun about breaking them off one bubble at a time to eat.

A spontaneous “I’m on my way home from work do you need anything” message to the flatmate resulted in an invite to dinner at The Diner. After walking up way too many stairs for a Wednesday I met him and a friend there for dinner, she is also a Pilot (aren’t they all) who does 2 months on 1 month off and was visiting her boyfriend in her month off but he was off flying somewhere else… as was mine (Brisbane) … pilot life eh. Anyway The Diner was pretty much as you’d imagine, very much US diner styled with neon signs galore. The service was entertainingly bad, the girl told us it was her first night but we figured she probably wasn’t keen on keeping her job. This stuff doesn’t really bother me but it was pretty funny when I ordered “the cheapest white wine” (yes I am all class) and she came back a few mins later with “cool we got you a Rosè on the way”. Or when we were checking out the dessert menu and asked her what the intriguing sounding item “Unicorn Poop” actually was. She looked at us like we were nuts, then realised we weren’t taking the piss and it was actually on the menu, she giggled an “I don’t know” and went off to ask. When she came back and proudly announced it was chocolate filled donuts she waited just an awkward enough length of time before adding that it was unavailable, sadly our unicorn dreams were over. Anyways the highlight was definitley the “skirt” burger, yes that is a pure grilled cheese “skirt” - utterly ridiculous but yummy. I’ll be back for the unicorn poop another day.

We had tickets to see Greg Davies’ comedy show just across the road from my work at an Indian Restaurant, of all places. For a guy who is used to performing at places like the Apollo Theatre in London, rather a step down. Although as he rightly put it, he gets a good curry after the show. We had bought a buffet Indian feed with our ticket so got there early to make the most of it, the restaurant has an awesome outdoor area with views across the harbour and we enjoyed it while we ate as much as we could. The venue was hilarious, the seats were so tightly crammed that it was an entertaining people-watching exercise seeing who could deal with having to ask the people in front, behind & beside to shuffle and move around to make it work, somehow they got us all in there. The opener was Barry Castagnola who was great and Greg Davies was his usual awesome self. Sadly the show was the same as his Netflix special that we had already seen, so we kinda knew all the punchlines but it was still cool to see him in real life and doing bits of improv or crowd interaction.

Before the buffet dinner I was walking around checking out the sights and sounds, some proper city buzz. It’s cool as there are so many raised walkways to get around town so you can easily observe the traffic chaos with a kind of detachment, as you know you don’t need to get in your car and join in at any stage!