Playing House I

I went to get my Hong Kong ID card yesterday. It looked slightly better than my Malaysian one. And it's also a chip-and-pin type. Then I was motivated to go make my China visa. The consulate was not open, but the travel agency took my request and my visa will be ready on Monday. Certainly worth the extra service charge! So now I can go to the Mainland any time I want.

Being the geek that I am, I decided to go check out the local public library on a Saturday morning. I stayed for a bit and finished a book before continuing my search for egg tarts. I don't know why there were so many detours on my furniture hunt okay! I got some tea in some speciality tea shop. I don't know what tea it is, but it was 40 dollars per ounce. Any tea that is weighed in ounces should be treated with caution. I wanted the same tea that my mum used to plant in the garden at home, which was absolutely lovely, organic and best of all, free. I have yet to try it, will tell you when I do.

I phoned the banker to bug him to come eat egg tarts with me. And he gave me some excuse of being in WanChai and having to go to Ikea. I think he is stalking me. I was in WanChai looking for egg tarts before heading to Ikea too! So we met up for lunch and then went to Ikea to look for things to buy. The Ikea here so small! =( And the prices are the same compared to UK, but converted to HK dollars so things were not cheap. I was looking at all the furniture, and wondering if I would ever be able to put them in my place. I have very specific taste and DIY is not my strong feature. I went about looking at beds, sofas and curtains with a banker tagging along. Then we went to look at duvets. We both needed duvets as it was getting colder here. Everyone was buying duvets! I wanted to get a Down duvet as it is more comfortable. They started at HK$199 to HK$369 for a single duvet. The banker had picked one to find that there was no more stock and we didn't want to wait till Monday. Oh, Ikea has this label on their duvets that states "our Feather & Down is not from live birds". It's pretty obvious isn't it? To get feathers and down from live birds would have been horrific. We went to Pricerite, another furniture store and found duvets there to be of higher Down content and also more expensive. I was looking at slow cookers. The vet takes birds' nest soup everyday for his complexion and I felt left out. The banker went quiet after I told him what the vet does. Then he said: " I think we need to start back on birds' nest soup." Then strode to look at slow cookers. -_- Needless to say, the cookers we saw would require us to cook 1 kilo of bird nest per time as they were huge! But now I know where I can get bird nest as the banker's family deals in it. Maybe I can steal it from him. *evil giggle with shiny eyes*

We went to Sogo, which is a more upmarket department store. There were so many brands to choose from! But the prices were all very nice to look at too. Duvet prices were into the thousands! We settled on one that was 70% Down and 30% small white feather made in Germany. It felt better than the ones we saw in Ikea and the price was not too expensive either. So we got them to throw in a duvet cover into the deal. For another 99 dollars I also got the fitted sheet and pillowcase. When we decided on them, we were told the particular duvet was out of stock. The 95% Hungarian Goose Down one was in stock but way off budget. We looked around some more, and found cheaper duvets of similar quality which was in stock. Something must have been wrong with our heads as we eventually decided to go for the more expensive and out of stock version. Maybe it was the lack of food. But we paid 700 dollars each for the duvets. It was on sale from 2000 dollars so that made us feel better. And the quilt cover was selling for 250 dollars anyways. Besides, a good quilt would cancel out the need for a heater for the cold nights and would keep you cool on warm nights. Yes, that's the miracle of Down. It is a temperature regulator and makes the duvet comfortable to your body temperature in all seasons.

I will now need to find a bed and mattress. And also a sofa and coffee table and rug. I also need to figure out curtains. I am so dragging the banker out again next weekend.

Summary: I wanted to blog about my 700 dollar duvet but felt it needed beefing up.