The teams are practicing in So Kon Po, which is the Causeway Bay training pitch. SB has insisted that I go there and stalk the All Blacks. I'll let you know how that goes.
Because of New Zealand/Australia training at our pitch we had to find other accommodations, namely the old Causeway Bay fields next to Victoria Park in Tin Hau. SB was still nursing his injuries and skipped his training but managed to meet me in time for dinner with the ladies.
It is especially during times like these that I am happy that I chose my team. I was thinking of going with a more Gweipo team, where English would be more prevalent during training. This made sense after my time in Italy where I was constantly frustrated due to the fact that I just could not speak Italian quickly enough for my teammates who did not speak English so it seemed that I was always a step behind.
Here they all speak good to reasonable English, and they tolerate my poor attempts at Cantonese. I need to pick up my studies because I have been using the abundance of English speakers as an excuse to show poor Chinese. Anyway, back to why I am happy for going with the local team. With a mostly white team, practice ends at the pub. Now, I am a big fan of ending at the pub but that is not an uncommon occurrence with all the Gweilo men's teams. But the women's team is a team that dines. This means that SB and I can happily follow them from whichever part of Hong Kong we are in, to tasty food.
Eating with Junior, our coach
In this case, the food was less tasty than usual, but it was because our group got too large for the hole-in-the wall we were attempting to eat at and we had to find another option serving noodles. We found another small restaurant that barely held the fifteen or so of us. There was no English option in the menu so SB and I stumbled along with what he could remember from his Chinese courses in Nanjing over a dozen years ago (he's not so bad!) until Kitty helped us out. I swiped a copy of the menu to study at home. I can identify beef, fish, pork, and won ton. Everything else was translated by Kitty. I ordered wontons and beef tendons with my soup. It came out too salty, and the wontons were not stellar either, but the tendons were good. I'll try them again. There were a lot of "spare parts," as SB calls them, in the soup choices. This is the other great part of eating with the ladies. They are local and I can eat all the spare parts that I want to try with them. SB simply is not supportive of some of my eating adventures. I can't wait to try out a better noodle place, where I can dump all sorts of interesting offals into my broth.
what will this yield?
SB's soup of wontons with curry base and rice noodles. Mine with tendons and beef broth.
Because of New Zealand/Australia training at our pitch we had to find other accommodations, namely the old Causeway Bay fields next to Victoria Park in Tin Hau. SB was still nursing his injuries and skipped his training but managed to meet me in time for dinner with the ladies.
It is especially during times like these that I am happy that I chose my team. I was thinking of going with a more Gweipo team, where English would be more prevalent during training. This made sense after my time in Italy where I was constantly frustrated due to the fact that I just could not speak Italian quickly enough for my teammates who did not speak English so it seemed that I was always a step behind.
Here they all speak good to reasonable English, and they tolerate my poor attempts at Cantonese. I need to pick up my studies because I have been using the abundance of English speakers as an excuse to show poor Chinese. Anyway, back to why I am happy for going with the local team. With a mostly white team, practice ends at the pub. Now, I am a big fan of ending at the pub but that is not an uncommon occurrence with all the Gweilo men's teams. But the women's team is a team that dines. This means that SB and I can happily follow them from whichever part of Hong Kong we are in, to tasty food.
Eating with Junior, our coach
In this case, the food was less tasty than usual, but it was because our group got too large for the hole-in-the wall we were attempting to eat at and we had to find another option serving noodles. We found another small restaurant that barely held the fifteen or so of us. There was no English option in the menu so SB and I stumbled along with what he could remember from his Chinese courses in Nanjing over a dozen years ago (he's not so bad!) until Kitty helped us out. I swiped a copy of the menu to study at home. I can identify beef, fish, pork, and won ton. Everything else was translated by Kitty. I ordered wontons and beef tendons with my soup. It came out too salty, and the wontons were not stellar either, but the tendons were good. I'll try them again. There were a lot of "spare parts," as SB calls them, in the soup choices. This is the other great part of eating with the ladies. They are local and I can eat all the spare parts that I want to try with them. SB simply is not supportive of some of my eating adventures. I can't wait to try out a better noodle place, where I can dump all sorts of interesting offals into my broth.
what will this yield?
SB's soup of wontons with curry base and rice noodles. Mine with tendons and beef broth.
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