You've lived all over the world, so I'm curious: What nationality are you (like, what race) and how many languages do you speak?

I'm just curious, you don't have to tell me.

im caucasian, im 100% Dutch, i was born in the netherlands, then i was 4 and moved to the USA, and back when i was 9, then to Hong Kong last year. there's a thread where i posted a list of all the places ive been to, and i speak uhhm fluent Dutch, fluent English, reasonable French and German and I can sometimes decypher ancient greek, latin and maybe swedish, and italian cause its like latin

One word: Jesus!

eBay! There's loads of unpatched GTAs going for reasonable prices on there.

With regards to Hong Kong, I had a good friend in boarding school from there and he corroborates your 'Piracy Capital' claim - at least it was in 1992... He had a 'Super Magicom' for his SNES and used to go into game shops and pick which games he'd like copies of. They'd then go away, copy them and give him the floppy disks, charging him about $5.

I'd really like to see Hong Kong one day (and a lot of the rest of the world), but I'm not savvy with languages other than English.

Some friends of mine just came back from Europe, and they said that there are a lot of people who speak passable English, so there really wasn't any language barrier.

How is it in Hong Kong? Could I get by without speaking like a native? Do many people speak English?

Since Hong Kong was under British rule for so long almost everything in Hong Kong is Cantonese, Mandarin, and English.  Not everyone there can speak English, but it isn't too much of a problem for tourists.

Piracy is still very prevalent there too, the last few times I was in Hong Kong I went to a mall called Golden Sun Computer Shopping Center.  The top floor is pretty much all computer stores, but below that are a bunch of stores that sell almost any software or game that you could want, as well as a fair number of movie and hershey kisses stores.  You might be able to get an unpatched copy of GTA:LCS there.  I can't remember what area the mall is in though, and it changes its name fairly frequently.

My dad lived in Hong Kong for six years, but last year he moved to a different company and now lives and works just across the border in Shenzhen which is alot like Hong Kong but very few people speak English outside of the Shekou area, everything is a whole lot cheaper, and piracy is way more prevalent.  It is actually harder in Shenzhen to find legitimate software, movies, and electronics than pirated or fake stuff.

ahhh i remember visting honkkong once. u can call someone and u can see the person through a screen on the payphone. also the maps are like a gps system where u just press where to go and it will show you where to go. i want to move there one day...

lol i havent seen that yet...
the MTR system is really cool though as is the Octopus

because the british used Hong Kong as a beta tester for all their new technologies like underground light rail and whatever wee get all the cool stuff :P

i think if you want stuff that you won't find in normal stores but more likely in market stalls or hidden somewhere so normal ppl don't find it, it will come in handy to speak cantonese. barely anyone speaks mandarin, only most of the children get taught mandarin in school now. all the adults are cantonese. most people speak english a little, most of the poorer chinese people who run the shops don't, and little speak it very well or even sufficiently. most of the ppl who speak decent english are foreign and work at luxury hotels and stuff, very often even the counter/customer service staff of a company doesn't speak english enough to get what you want which is annoying

its way different than in europe. in europe almost everyone knows at least a bit of english and all the teens speak it well. except maybe in france or germany. anyway

if you just stay here for a week/few weeks u'll be fine with english, but if you want full access to everything hong kong has for you you'll need to make cantonese friends :P