Okay, I clicked on 'Publish' before I finished my post...so wow that sucks...

To be continued I guess..

Talk about commercial, I live in a commercial. Everywhere I go, huge department stores tower over me; I see every brand name possible - Lacoste, Vuitton, Armani, a Calvin Klein down my street. Then I see 7-Eleven's, KFC's, Bank of America's. It's America....

I turn down a street and then I see herbal medicinal shops, fishball and pig intestine stands, advertisements of famous Chinese stars, Hang Seng Banks. It's China....

Perfect. Simply perfect. Hey, I thought I'd cave under, well...under all these buildings. I was about to yesterday, my first day here. I was scared shitless because I was alone and I walked up this shabby stairway that would eventually lead up to my apartment and I didn't know where to begin or how to begin. It was a scary and sudden realization, after putting aside my suitcase and sitting on the bed, that I was completely and utterly alone. But then I decided to explore...

You come outside and the first thing you notice are the colors. Faded ones and Bright ones and Neon ones. Endless signs of stores that seem suspended up between either sides of the street, and ones behind the others make this unbelievably intricate 3D collage. You just want to walk towards them to see what they look like above you. All around you are others who look like you. The mannerisms of people, picking their noses, eating with their mouths open, slurping their soups unrelentlessly, staring at you but looking away the minute you look at them, are the kinds you're used to from your own hometown, well, your own Chinatown. And many of the girls here are your size or less - you'd think this place was starving them. But just the opposite - food food food...McDonald's, waffle balls, sponge cakes, Outback Steakhouse, lo mein, boba, anything and everything. It's a fusion of Chinese and American - which I am.

Everything is faster here, too. The escalators in the subway stations go about 1/3 faster the speed of New York escalators. The street has a pulse to it and if you're pumping a little slower, it'll go on without you. When you ask for things - for directions, for buying things - people are efficient and quick. Everything screams metropolitan.

But then you meet individuals and they are slow. No, not in the head, but in pace. They want to thoroughly talk to you...at least the people I have met. They take longer to finish conversations, they take longer to start them too.