I pried myself out of bed early to drop off my Visa application at the Indian consulate on Hong Kong Island. The errand afforded me my first trip on the Mass Transit Rail (MTR). I bought an Octopus card which is a renewable debit card for Hong Kong's public transit system, as well as a way to buy stuff at random places like McDonald's and 7-11.
The MTR is awesome, I could hardly think of what more I'd want from a train system. It was fast, comfortable, impeccably clean, and had tons of clearly labeled maps. My favorites were the ones inside the cars, above each door, which lit up the next stop, along with a green arrow showing the heading, and a light to indicate which side of the train to exit from.
After some initial elevator confusion, I managed to drop my Visa application off, paying the $35 fee to have my records checked out back in the USA. I was instructed to come back at the end of the week (Friday AM) to pay the Visa cost, and then between 5-5:30pm Friday to collect my passport (they worked off a copy until Friday AM).
I triumphantly returned to Mirador after my successful navigation of the city, and bumped into Adam using a tiny laptop, the Asus Eee PC. I immediately barraged him with a list of questions about it as a desire to buy one myself built up. It has a 7"? screen, weighs less than 1.1lbs (1kg), has 4gb of memory, wi-fi, a web cam, and runs on Linux. While he got his in England, he estimated they'd cost around $300 in Hong Kong. It is built for web browsing, email, and basic applications. I had considered the idea of getting a laptop in Singapore after meeting Gary back on Bali several weeks earlier. I was feeling self-conscious about the amount of money I was spending in internet cafes. The Asus laptop aptly addressed my concerns about size, weight, and cost.
