Hong Kong Trip - Day 17

Gambling? HORSE-RACING?

We dressed semi-formally (to the best of what we had available) for the annual GOME-sponsored (GOME's equivalent to our Future Shop but from Mainland CHINA) horse racing event called "GOME SPIRIT", and we were invited to sit in the Clubhouse with the other rich, civilized folks. One of my mom's old best friends was married to a rich business man (and the whole story about she fell in love with a handsome airplane driver but he wasn't rich, and this other guy who was ugly but was rich loved her too so then she decided to take the si lai rich life), and she invited us to join her. We first got picked up in a comfortable leather-seated family CAR with AIR CON (my first time sitting in an actual CAR in HK!) nearby our place and got driven straight to Sha Tin's race track where the gathering has already begun. He drove into his exclusive parking spot in the "horse owners" section and then gave us each a badge to get in. We headed inside, flashing our shiny badges and took the elevator to the clubhouse level. We were greeted by friendly employees (star treatment a bit?) and were lead to our table where we were fed with dim sum and the such. Then came the main purpose of our visit... BETTING ON HORSE RACING!

We weren't crazy gamblers so we basically took a good [random] swing at every round, betting 10 or so bucks (which was the minimum) and tried out a variety of betting styles (Win, Place, Quinella, Quinella Place, Trio, First 4, Double Trio, Double, Treble, Six Up...). We also referred to the cheat sheets which were provided by their acquaintances who were good at "predicting" the wins. SUPPOSEDLY, anyway. Each race was also sponsored by an technology company (e.g. Sony Ericsson, LG, etc) so they were named after them. The runs ran at about half our intervals and lasted until a bit after 6. Most of the time, me and my brother picked silly horse names like "KING PRAWN" and other times, we'd pick based on their racing history. All in all, it was a great experience, and at the end, we ended up breaking even.

After all the small change gambling excitement, we returned back to our place, rested a bit, and then headed to dinner. It was a giant family dinner with all my grandpa's children and relatives (however without grandpa himself and the failure as a son uncle the rest of the family despises). We ate at this restaurant I recall going to years ago when I first visited HK, and it was with the same people too! I had pissing prawns (lol direct translation.. for real) for the first time and it was GREAT. I also met some uncles for the first time as well. I also met Uncle Dick, who had a son, and they didn't have an English name so we called him "Dick" and "Dickson" - it was great lol. We ate and talked into the night... so late that the DOOR closed on us (wtf). We were locked out until the late night guy came to free us.

It was never too late for some drinking, especially in HK, so some of us walked to Uncle Jackie's studio which was in the area to chill. It was located on the highest level (penthouse-like) which was actually an extension for that extra level. I was lured into his recording area to do KARAOKE and my OWN SONG (gasp!) but my problem was finding the right song to sing! Another problem was finding the karaoke track for it... the actual songs I wanted to sing aren't all that readily available on the internet so I ended up picking an anime track, ahem, Bouken Desho Desho from a la Haruhi no Yuutsu. Call me a stereotype or whatever but it's a fun song so I went with that! I had to sing through the song a dozen times to get the parts right... I was also given a few tips to sing and was assured I don't sing as bad as Cecilia Cheung (ahem :b). If we had more time, I would've kept singing it even more but my vocals were getting tired, being untrained and all... so we left it as that.

He DID send me a glorified version of the song sung by me in mp3. I don't think I can hear myself sing so I'll probably never open it...

Though, I did felt like quite a star after doing that.