Over two months here and I've already grown a routine sufficient for baristas to know what coffee I typically order. The speed at which the orders are processed is impeccably fast - it takes only less than 3 minutes to do up a vanilla latte at Pacific Coffee Company at Lippo. Things in Hong Kong somehow move incredibly fast.
The shop just below where I stay even knows what I typically order for takeout: Basil pork rice or Hainanese chicken rice. Oh, and Chicken rice tastes slightly different over here, it done slightly Thai-style, nice, but just different.
As I grow older, I feel that routine becomes increasingly important.
Whenever I am overseas I tend to wake up significantly earlier as compared to being at home. I treasure the moments of making my way to the usual coffee or confectionery place to start the day, regardless or whether it is a working day or the weekend.
I enjoy simply just sitting there, relaxing and basically do nothing but unwind. This is very likely a habit had was cultivated early on during the downtimes of my national service days where I mostly hung out at Coffee Bean during the weekends.
To date, I spend most my time on the HK island side, occasionally making trips to Kowloon on weekends. I hardly venture north of the area past TST (not sure why). I hear that there are many nice eateries in the area but it can be difficult to get seats especially over the weekends.
Admiralty and Central have become synonymous with work.
They are nice places to go over the weekends because it tends to be less crowded, but I still find it hard to look for places to sit down for a cuppa.
Comparatively, Sheung Wan is a lot better, especially when you venture further south of the island (further uphill). My go-to place is Halfway Coffee which is located along the street selling Chinese antiques. It is frequented by ang mohs (or gweilos at the locals say) and mostly the affluent local community in Hong Kong.
Perhaps one of the biggest differences for coffee and general dining here is that prices are way much higher (a black sugar latte sets me back by about HKD 50 or roughly SGD 9, which is nearly 70-80% higher than similar artisanal coffee in Singapore).
I haven't tried hiking yet although I have heard much about it but maybe I'll do so towards the end of the year when it's cooler or when I decide to break out of my routine of weekend coffees.