Lamma Island

I named him Toby

My companions (me in the mirror)

Dogs over dogs on this island

The beach

Sahara


This again is about hiking and pleasure outside the dorm ;)

The day after our excursion to the new territories, I decided to go to Lamma Island, an island only 20 mins from HK Island, mainly populated by relaxed old people (a lot of hippies and 68ers amongst them) but "über"-crowded. It was probably not the smartest idea to go on that holiday after easter but still I wanted to and did not regret it. Hence, I had to find companions, who happened to be Lorna, Melissa and Maria, Helena and Alex, three of Lorna's friends from Berkeley. Arriving at Lamma we became aware of the amount of tourists that would be overpopulating the island at this time and chose to find a place to eat. We didn't manage to and thus made our way over to the other side of the island, the part where most restaurants are situated. The hike took us about 1 hour (maybe a bit more) and we discovered the beautiful island with its hidden beaches and red bean ice cream sellers. The whole island is paradoxically controlled by an alien with chimneys huge as skyscrapers - the so-called power plant. Such an inappropriate place to build one! We marched on and came to the restaurant area where we started opposing artificiality by eating vegan, organic food. Make a point and bust a move!!!
Tired but happy we made our way back to the beach where Lorna left us to pick up more friends from the airport. After chilling for an hour or so we made our way back to the ferry and to Hong Kong Island.

what a week.

New Territories



On the way to town
The poor crabs.

It's been a while and a lot has happened.

I will start telling you guys about our hike to the new territories, i.e. Sai Kung.
Emma and Adele being the initiators of this fun trip, planning to go hiking around the mountains and eventually finishing the night with some good seafood and a cold beer. The trip to the new territories took us about 1 1/2 hours by bus and MTR and we eventually arrived at Emma's families friend's place where we were provided with a map and nice company. Guy and his wife plus son guided us to a small temple in which we lit up joss sticks to pray to Buddha for more prosperity and luck in our lives. I considered this to be wrong (at least the wrong thing for me) since I do not believe in Buddha. One reason for this is the meat, onion and garlic free food.
We eventually reached the path and were left by the family and about to enter the "jungle". I kinda wished to be listening to Guns 'n' Roses at that time which I did not manage to due to a lack of appropriate technical equipment. We were hiking on and over the mountains that gave an excellent view over the bay and the extremely misty and thus mysteriously beautiful mountain site. The weather was rather warm and very humid which made my jeans stick to my legs and walking rather uncomfortable. After passing the "Hong Kong Adventure Squad" (which to me looked more like simple scouts...) we reached the end of the path and made our way back to town where we indeed did finish the day with some tasty food and a cold Tsing Tao.

swimming

Since we do have very good sports' facilities at our Uni, I went swimming with Jojo today. The pool itself was stunning. Eight 50 m lanes and only 4 people using it. Doesn't get much better than that. Considering the fact that I used to swim about 4000m in 1 1/2 hours in my competition days seems so far away. We made it up to 800m this time. I blame it a bit on the shoulder workout yesterday but even without it I would probably only be capable of doing 200 more meters. I will improve the distance though. Tomorrow I shall go to town and get proper Speedos and goggles for not having to borrow Jojo's water polo ones that make me look like a member of the NZ water polo association which I am clearly not. Bullocks, wherever my condition is, I hope it's having a good time chilling out.

Just wanted to share this experience. Nothing world moving but still an astonishing recognition from my part.

old women and economics

As promised.

The hook of this story is my presentation in "East Asian Societies and Economics". I started hating this class in the first lecture due to our professor. Well, this is going to be controversial, since she seemed to be a really nice, maybe 70-year old lady from mainland China with a strong accent, making it difficult to follow her lectures. She made the misunderstandings up to us with a smile that made her anyhow small eyes basically disappear. The girls loved her for it. "Isn't she just adorable?" Yes, in fact she was until last week. Wait, I messed it up already since I want you guys to understand why I dislike this class and not love the prof as well :D

The reason I started disliking this lecture was because she boldly changed the name from "Politics" to "Economics". Since I really am not interested in world economies at all (yes, I know that you need it to understand politics but I really only know the basics which in my opinion is by far enough) I started switching off during the lectures. Big mistake as I was about to find out. To be fair I must say that I did not prepare the presentation too well, since my topic was an extremely broad one: Japan - Case Studies. I thus started preparing a presentation through the macro filter on the Japanese economy since 1945. Reasonable, isn't it? Well, where to start...outline and research of course. The matter of research was that basically all books on the topic I needed them for were unavailable in the library. I hence started raiding the online e-sources. Since you do know that I am not a big fan of economy and by far more interested in history I started summing up political events and underlined them with a few (few) statistics. I thought "Ah well, I think everyone will understand, why Japan is the economic power it is today, why the economic bubble collapsed and how it will be in the future." After the presentation my fellow students agreed. But I will come to that later.

The presentation starts and I start talking. As soon as I mention the term "processing nation" she indignantly interrupts me. "Never in my whole career did I hear this term. I think what you really mean, if you did the readings (which I partly did but was disgusted by all the statistics and numbers) you should know that what you are trying to say is called "vertical integrated economic system"." OK, fair enough. This brought up the discussion in my head, which of the two would be easier to understand for my fellow students. (It's basically a country importing goods such a s steel, etc., processing them and re-selling them for more money -> btw the key to economic prosperity in Japan) What a start. From now on it only got worse. I stuttered, finished the presentation/ torture and was now ready for execution. Again I quote "Mortal Combat" : "FINISH HIM!" The Q&A session, only held by the professor this time. I held the fortress and some people tried to help me out by defending its ground columns. The axe stopped as it started splitting my beard hair. We had reached events that occurred after '95 and the apple market shares, a topic I indeed follow closely in recent weeks and its comparison with market shares of Japanese companies. She didn't know anything about recent events. After having proved herself being a bitch before, she now put up one of those smiles I mentioned earlier. Did not work on me. My picture of old ladies is now forever distorted. After the presentation I received a lot of claps that helped me to get on with my everyday life and thereby escaping the scaffold.

I really have to raise the question here whether academic education always has to be based on difficult facts and terms when it could be so much more trivial and easier. Well, I think it has to be a balance as in everything. Puh! and all that on my birthday... After that I just went home to enjoy a couple of well deserved beers. They just taste best after a survived battle.

"Madness? THIS-IS-HONG-KONG!"

Khawp khun khrap

Cd-shopping at Ko San road

Day of our departure (view from Lee Hysan)

exploring the Grand Palace in Bangkok with timeless stylish dresscode

Louise...Imagine the ROCKY theme whilst running up the stairs
Jojo....take Teletubbies theme


I figured, that 5 pictures are not sufficient to give you an idea of the experiences we had in the 10 days in Thailand. That's why I will upload more right now and distract myself from writing this bloody essay! If I am already bored by this topic, I really don't see how the other ones will work. Will I drop the grandma course? Oh yeah, I did not have time to tell you about this escapade...next thread will.

"SLAUNTJE!"

Jojo waiting
In front of Starbucks

Erin
Louise and Marc
Tired in the cab.


St. Patrick's Day in Hong Kong. Melissa initiated a gathering at Lan Kwai Fong to go to an Irish Pub to celebrate the Irish Patron Saint. Arriving at LKF, Jojo and I were sitting down on the stairs in front of Starbucks, when Jojo appreciated the Irish manner of cheering to random people, passing by the entrance. One of these was an obviously completely stoned junkie who had a lot of stories to tell. He was a good laugh until he mentioned having lost his heroine. This was the point I, in secret had been waiting for, so I told him to "go over to that lovely street sign who wants to listen to all of these stories." He then asked whether he should leave and I assured him he understood me and quietly he left. I felt pity for him.

Soon after, Erin arrived and sat down beside us, still waiting for Lorna and Melissa to show up. When they eventually arrived, all of us got stocked up with "Irish-saying-buttons" Melissa's Mom had sent over. We crossed the street and got ourselves some beer at club 7/11 (for all of you who might not know what it is: a supermarket...) and went straight to the amphitheater to await the arrival of the rest of the group. Jojo's friends Dave and his older brother Mike arrived and soon after we were also joined by Louise, Marc, Adele, Ted, Hana & Franky. As you can read, a nice bunch of people, willing to go full-on for St. Paddy. The expectations were high, the result rather poor. With all the ex-pats in this city you would expect more than this. Only at one point there were actually people in the street celebrating but the group did not want to stay here but move up to one of the Irish pubs. We went into "Dublin Jack" but since the music was very quiet and the atmosphere not really good either we left and from then on just strolled around , trying to find the ultimate...no, not beach...location. We eventually ended up in "Dublin Jack" again, where I drank my last drink for the night: ice cold Bulmer's. Next year there's a better party to come. No dislocated arms though.

Art anyone?

This was one of the weirdest and most random gatherings of exhibitions I've seen so far. I took Melissa out for the so-called "Refabricating city", an exhibition of different artists with a focus on architecture and other random stuff in the old HK police station. Entering through an iron gate, facing a small alley leading uphill plastered with bamboo constructions and green writings on the ground, we reached the vast yard from which we were led to different rooms within the acutal station. We went through them and I just let go the feeling of attempting a certain kind of understanding, since I really did not. We eventually came to a room where we started drawing down what Central district meant for us. Very different approaches indeed.

Funny afternoon...and artistic.