Appliques

 

These are appliques I distinctly remember buying in Hong Kong some 30 - 40 years ago.

 I thought one day I'd be making a nice dress/jacket, maybe in velvet/satin and they
would look beautiful sewn on the front or back.
Every one was talking about the beautiful silk kimonoes one could get there.
Silk is wonderful to wear but a head ache to iron.
Some say once you wear silk under wear, you will never wear anything else.
Never got into silk for some reason.
 Probably the ironing. lol
 It is a lot of work to make an appliquee piece such as this and I know they were both done by hand.
There were many to select from but I had no idea about the money exchange and how much
40 HK was at that time.
I know I gave the taxi driver a 100HK tip and he was mad as hell. lol
Complained big time to the hotel porter who didn't know what to say.
I probably gave him a lousy tip too.
I told my husband in the hotel room what I did and he laughed saying it's like giving 5 cents.
Now how was I supposed to know? It seemed like an awful lot of money. lol
We are not used to throwing away 100.00 dollar bills.lol

 

Going to a place like Hong Kong was so exciting.
It felt like another world.
My son and I traveled from Montreal and I remember my legs began to swell
all the way to the knees
When I finally got off the plane, I swore
 I wasn't getting on another plane,if they killed me. lol
It got to be pretty scary feeling the swelling rise like that and so fast.
The landing in Hong Kong was also quite an experience.
The plane , large as it was, made quite a short landing.

The first thing we noticed were the different boats on the river.
I explained to my son Alex about junk boats.
Later we experienced the hydra boat which floated over the water.
Every morning people would come out into the square to do Tai Chi.
It gave you a quiet, relaxing feeling, watching them from high up above the hotel room window.

The dawn arose slowly around 5 am.
We couldn't sleep from the excitement and tried to take in as much as we could.
Then the employees would show up at their shops.
You'd see slaughtered pigs hanging in front of butcher shops.

It was winter back home but here, it was misty rain, dull and humid.
The hotel put on a beautiful display of various food for breakfast lunch and dinner.

We never saw such gorgeous displays back home in any of our restaurants.
Even today, there is no artistic quality to prepared foods in the restaurants
compared to what we saw in Hong Kong.

There were the working people and then there was the elegant high class people.
Men and women which could only be described as models and super rich.
All terribly polished from head to toe.

You couldn't be normal living like that, in my opinion.
Glamor like that is nice in small doses but not a 24 hour, 365 day a year kind of life,
which is how they lived.
That would be too much pressure for me to live like that but
 then I didn't live there, did I? lol
Thank God!
It was a different world that's for sure and easy to get hooked on
especially for a man.
I was glad to be a western woman though.
Like in all cities it can be nice but  hard and cruel too.
A Town without pity
Gene Pitney



It reminded me of the joke about when a man died and he had two choices of where to go to.
One place was nice but boring The other full of excitement, lights, glamor
dancing and feasting, golf etc..... The man thought to himself:
YA! This must be heaven and signed the paper saying this was where he wanted to live eternally.

Once inside he saw hardship and toil and the devil smiling at him.
The man asked the devil what this was. It wasn't what he signed up for and the devil answered
that was just advertising. lol

xoxoxoxoxox