Thursday, November 24, 2005

Madame Chiang's Day Off...

And so another day off...this one spent predominantly housebound whilst I waited for delivery of furniture, cable TV, the plumber, the electrician and various other visitors...all nicely timed to ensure that I could not leave home...I also wanted to get my internet access hooked up but am told by PLDT that I need to give three weeks notice...

Despite being housebound I managed a quick visit to Greenhills...finally, I hear so much about the mall there that I had to pay a flying visit...for HKGers it's a cross between the mall at the station in Shenzhen and Ap Lei Chau..a flea market downstairs and furniture stalls upstairs...some nice bits of furniture but from what I could see not drastically cheaper than what I could buy at the MegaMall...maybe I could be corrected on that...Greenhills itself seems like a really nice area and from what I saw whizzing past in the taxi there were a few promising looking pet stores (cat litter is proving a bit of a challenge to find) and what looks to be quite a good vet's clinic.

The decorations at Greenhills were quite good...




Then back home to wait for the plumber...at 7pm I was free at last...so I scooted down to Powerplant to see a movie and joy of joys I managed to get a ticket for the movie and 20 minutes in the bookstore...I went to see Prime (Uma Thurman and Meryl Streep)very enjoyable but the ending was totally unexpected...there was an audible "Uh" thoughout the cinema as the ending was shown...left the theatre at 9:20 and Fully Booked was still open...that has to be a good evening out!!! Anyway decided against more books in favour of supper and a few Apple Martinis at Teak ...my first meal here that I have found the food to be good, tasty and hot and the service was efficient and not in your face. Until I found that link above I hadn't realised it was such a new restaurant...if it continues to be as good as it was last night - I shall definitely be going back.

The majority of Manila is not greatly photogenic however, there is one street that I regularly drive along between my house and Rockwell..not sure yet what it's called but it has Bill's Gym on it and looks to me as if it would make some great photos at night...just need to pluck up the courage to go down there at night!!

So I finally have BBC world again..and life is loking a little better! The cable installation here is different to anything I have seen before...what normally happens (at least to me) is that the cable guys show up, plug in some contraption for which you get a seperate remote control and tune in one of your tv's channels to the 'feeder' cable channel from which you then use your special remote control. Not here....what happens is that they do something with the arial or whatever (to tell the truth I wasn't really watching - Chiang Kai-shek had chosen this moment to regurgitate the entire contents of her stomach onto the kitchen floor!!) and then they need to tune in every single channel on your TV to match their cable channels - quite bizarre...anyway...who cares how it's done as long as I have BBC World!

I also tried out Rustan's delivery service to see if the 'system' works...it does...very useful when buying cat food in bulk...although on Tuesday it seems as if there had been a massive run on cat food in SM Supermarket and Rustans...so the cats got tuna instead...I also managed to pop into Cherry's Foodrama on Shaw Boulevard as a colleague questioned my shopping at MegaMall when Cherry's was just down the road...admittedly Cherry's has everything one could ever need, however, it also has an aroma about it that can only described as the aroma one would get if one left a piece of fish in the fridge, switched off the fridge and came back to it two or three days later!!! Will give it another whirl another time to see if was just an 'off' day!

It wouldn't be a day off post without the view from my apartment being logged...this time in the morning....




And finally, anyone want to buy a hotel?

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Torn and I have seen those massive buildings in Moscow. They were really impressive. Very Gotham.

As for kitty litter, I've been on the search too. Normally get them at Pricesmart (Fresh Step) but they're all out. Starting to panic..

See you on Tuesday :)

5:44 pm  
Blogger Madame Chiang said...

My brother spends a lot of time in Moscow (being married to a Russian helps!!) and says that the buildings are incredible - he describes them as 'very KGB'!!

Cat supplies are a worry - there are a few bags of Tidy Cats cat litter at Rustans at the Shang Mall - took a few as back up, but hate the stuff - it tracks so badly. Am just off to MegaMall to search for cat food and most importantly a litter scoop!! the Sieve is not good long term!

Looking forward to Tuesday!

9:05 pm  

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