a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
I am going downstairs for a nice breakfast and then the hotel shuttle will take me to Hong Kong airport. I snapped this picture looking back from the van that brought us here from work yesterday. It’s one of the two suspension bridges that runs across Victoria Bay and connects Kowloon and Hong Kong Island.
Below is another ‘spot the translation faux pas‘ picture, of a paper shopping bag on the counter at the dry-cleaners last night when I dropped off some shirts and pants. Those of us that go home are all packed up for our trip back to the States already, since we’re going to stay overnight at the Hong Kong airport hotel. Always, always check the Big Three : passport, wallet and Blackberry. Then almost as important there’s the cell phone charger, computer, charger, medicine, iPod and Bose head phones ! (Yes, I know – I have too many gadgets).
These pictures from a car parked here at work .. the Chinese bumper sticker equivalent of ‘back off!’. My colleagues tell me the second picture (same car) is more rude than the first one, roughly translating into ‘I was a bad boy at school so watch out for me!’. To look up these characters on my translator is a mini-project : I have to scribe it the right way with the stylus, and some of them are just impossible to get right.
Monday is over and only Tuesday and Wednesday stands between me and Thursday. I’m going home on Thursday! I can’t wait!
This picture was taken in the Tsim Sha Tsui district in Hong Kong on Saturday night. An Indian restaurant, a kitchen house ware store, 24 hr internet cafe and .. hel-lo! Van der Merwe’s Camera and Video Shop! South African flag on the sign and above the sign, see it? Background note to non-South Africans : Van der Merwe jokes make fun of Afrikaners , Van der Merwe being a stereotypical Dutch name.
Is this joke too risqué? Too late, here it is. The doctor wanted to go hunting, he calls his assistant Koos van der Merwe and tells him ‘Yes Koos, I am going hunting tomorrow, we don’t want to close the clinic, and I ask you to take care of our patients’. ‘Yes, doctor …’ answers Koos.
The doctor goes hunting and returns the next day and asks:’So Koos, how was your day?’
Koos tells him he took care of 3 patients:
The first one had a headache so I gave him TYLENOL.
‘Great Koos, and the second one?’ asks the doctor.
‘The second one had an upset stomach and I gave him MAALOX, doctor’ says Koos.
‘Yislaaaaaaaik Koos you’re good at this and what about the third one?’ asks the doctor.
‘Man! I was waiting for more patients and suddenly the door opens and a woman enters hot and bothered, she undresses herself, and lies on the table and shouts: HELP ME! For 5 years I have not seen a man!’
And what did you do Koos?!’ asks the doctor.
Koos : ‘Why – I put some eye drops in her eyes!’
I need a t-shirt that says ‘I love Hong Kong’, because I really do !
Here is a rundown of the pictures :
Bowl-shaped viewing deck of the Peak Tram BUT there was only FOG to view (co-workers Vic and Karl with me); we had a good laugh about that! The view has been like this for two weeks, said a guide, so that made us feel better. The Bank of China building in the Central district on Hong Kong Island is spectacular up close. Orchids on Flower Market street in Kowloon, they go for US$10 for a flower pot with the plant spectacularly in full bloom (I saw South African proteas for sale as well). Birds in cages in the bird market right next to it. A mind-boggling array of street vendors selling brand names, off-brand names, wanna-be brand names in t-shirts, toys, gadgets, underwear, housewares, electronics, you name it, it’s there. The t-shirt with the kitten character Marie from the Disney classic Aristocats flanked by Thomas and Friends and others. Goldfish in plastic bags outside an aquarium store. The high-end stores have stunning neon-lit displays of sea anemones, sea cucumbers, star fish and even coral for sale that matches the best scenes I have seen anywhere! A park off Nathan road in Kowloon where retired men played Chinese checkers and mahjong.
Then we walked south on Nathan road, and Karl bought some pearl arm bracelets; I bought more gold (yes, another one, somebody – stop me! .. it was a very small item, though). Then we were accosted like the tourist guides all warn, by the tailors that solicit business on the street. What an interesting experience to go into the tailor shop – a long story, but I ended up ordering three custom-tailored shirts which were delivered at the hotel and run all of $40 each. They fit very nicely.
Further south is Salisbury Road on the Kowloon waterfront with Hong Kong designer Vivienne Tam’s store 1881 about to open (the heart-shaped flower display in the picture); a store at that plaza sells Vacheron Constantin watches – which I have never heard of – and a stunning gold and diamonds watch with a dragon design was on display. I had the nerve to ask the salesperson the price. It goes for a cool HK$ 546,000 (US$70,000). The next stop at the Chinese Center for Arts and Culture is the one and only place any visitor to Hong Kong must go to. Pictures are forbidden, but I took the one shown of a carving, maybe it’s a block of jade, I don’t know. Some of the antique carvings in bone and ivory there make the word exquisite fall completely short as a description of it.
Next we got on the Star Ferry to cross Victoria Bay back to Hong Kong Island (skyline from the ferry). The tall building is Two International Finance Center, the tallest building in Hong Kong. The next picture shows two of my favorite night scenes : a tram and a building outlined in neon. And as far as I can tell the O’Fama group is a local band.
This morning a blanket of fog enveloped the whole area; it is amazing how warm and stuffy it got from just one week ago when we were sitting here in the office building shivering from the cold. The marble floors and door thresholds – and even windows – in the building ‘sweat’ – all the moisture condensing on it. It’s bad to have slippery marble floors, so the office management had to put non-slip mats in the lobbies and hallways. Yesterday a few of us walked up to the reservoir close to the office building here where we work.
But hey! it’s Friday and I have a weekend in Hong Kong to look forward to. The Marriott Courtyard hotel room waiting for me there will be a get away and a little lap of luxury, and I am going to snooze in that king-size bed with the six pillows.
Thursday – so, mercifully, the week is drawing to a close. We have an all- hands meeting this afternoon which is a break for me: I get to just sit and listen, and not stand up front, trying to control a raucous discussion with a room full of 20 people.
I’m going to Hong Kong with three colleagues from work, so we will see how that works out. I suspect my way of exploring the city is very different from theirs. I will join them for a big dinner at Ruth’s Chris steakhouse, but it’s good to explore the offerings from local restaurants, or just eat in the hotel where they also offer a good variety of Asian cuisine. Also, I tend to steer clear of the big touristy places, and just walk around on my own. I work with great people, but I already spent 12 hours every day this week with you. On the weekends, I need some ‘me’ time :).
Two pictures from around the apartment complex here in Dameisha.
Another day of work session facilitating for me – half of it in Chinese with me waiting patiently for the Daya Bay team animatedly discuss some design issue before them. Then I get a translation from the team lead or my Chinese colleagues, and depending on my answer back they settle down or debate it a little further : ).
It’s tough for me, and tough for them : some are seeing SAP for the first time – in English – and they are not familiar with the terms or the processes. It is packaged software, offering some setup choices, but not total freedom to redesign it. So sometimes I really have to shrug and say: ‘We just cannot change it in such a fundamental way. That’s not the way the Germans designed it’.
It was a long Monday at work – Mondays always seem long! but at least I can post these pictures from yesterday’s visit to the Outside China Town (OCT) theme park. Disneyland or Six Flags it is not – but there is a spectacular and steep aerial tramway up the mountainside to provide panoramic views of Dameisha, the beach and the bay down below.
A few of us treated ourselves to a buffet breakfast at the Sheraton Hotel close by – expensive by Dameisha meal standards – but still very affordable at $20.
I just had some scrambled egg, toast and some shumai. (Gobbled up the first one of the two little dumplings in my bowl before I took the picture).
We went to the Dameisha beach afterwards. Some people were out on the beach, but it’s only slowly warming up. Highs today reached only 60 ºF (15 ºC), with the sun is struggling to come out. We may go to a resort close by where we live this afternoon with a cable car that runs up the mountains with a panoramic view.
Here’s the cute translation into English, from the back of the coconut coffee bag. (Would have posted it yesterday, but had to wait until I got home so that I could take a high-resolution picture). Note the creative breaks in the words T-his (wow) and su-mmer, and – the taste will be better when it is hot drink in winter. Gotcha! :).
Saturday morning and hey! we saw the sun shine this morning on the way in to work with the bus. We got a little reprieve and left the apartments at 7 am instead of at 6.30 am.
The local Daya Bay team is mostly back on site – they were out all week, but work today and tomorrow. One of them brought in coconut-flavored instant coffee for us (picture of bag that contains packets). The US team has the day off tomorrow, thankfully. A really busy schedule of system design workshops start on Monday. I am facilitating the discussions for my team. We spent this week getting the all our ducks in a row, and I think we are ready. I am sure we will find out !
Friday, and a rough week it was, with long work days. It’s the last day of the new year’s week, and hopefully the firecrackers at night will now draw to a close. It wasn’t really all that bad, though.
Here is a little Mandarin lesson from our colleague: how to write and say ‘Happy New Year’.
新 new, recent, fresh, modern
年 year; new-years; person’s age
好 good / well / proper / good to / easy to / very / so / (suffix indicating completion or readiness)
Our project manager ran out to Walmart yesterday and brought back a bunch of space heaters for the office. Yay! and Thank You! we said. There will be no gallivanting around Shenzhen or Hong Kong this weekend : we have to work !
This metro bus with the giant giraffe, advertising South African Airways flights out of Hong Kong, pulled up across from my hotel when I was there last weekend. The direct flight to Johannesburg is 13 hours.
It was cold in the office yesterday. The new building’s heat pump was not working for some reason. Back at the apartment in Dameisha at night, we still hear a barrage of fire-cracker pops and fireworks go off, as the week-long celebration of the Lunar New Year continues. It is cold in the apartment as well. Our $12 space heaters from Shenzhen’s Walmart are not quite up to the task of warming up the entire apartment, of course.
Anyway, sticking to the theme of cold: below are the snowy cover pages of the English & Chinese versions of ‘Tintin in Tibet’. Tintin translates to Ding Ding in Chinese.
[From Wikipedia] The Adventures of Tintin (Les Aventures de Tintin) is a series of comic strips created by the Belgian artist Georges Rémi (1907–1983), who wrote under the pen name of Hergé. Tintin in Tibet is the twentieth book in the series. It is said to have been Hergé’s favorite of the Tintin series (previously The Secret of the Unicorn), and was written during a personally difficult time in his life, as he was divorcing from his first wife. The story is unlike any previous Tintin books, before or since: there is a small number of characters and no enemies, villains, spies or gangsters. This adventure revolves around a rescue mission of Tintin’s Chinese friend Chang Chong-Chen.
It is also unusually emotional for a Tintin story: moments of strong emotion for the characters include Tintin’s enduring belief in Chang’s survival, the discovery of the teddy bear in the snow, Haddock’s attempting to sacrifice himself to save Tintin, Tharkey’s return, Tintin’s discovery of Chang, and the yeti losing his only friend. Indeed Tintin is seen to cry when he believes Chang’s fate, something he is only seen to do three times throughout the entire series (the other occurrences being in The Blue Lotus and Flight 714).
Here are a few more pictures from my weekend in Hong Kong.
First, a quick refresher orientation of the Hong Kong area. Hong Kong Island is at the bottom of the picture. Kowloon (literal meaning ‘Nine Dragons’) is across Victoria Harbor to its north and west. My hotel was on the Island towards its west, but the MTR (Mass Transit Rail, red dots) whisked me around, anywhere I wanted to go. It goes under the water, in tunnels under the harbor (thin red line). The roads shown on the map that cross Victoria harbor all run across massive suspension bridges. (Note: this is an updated map from 12/2020 on Google Maps).
The street scene pictures were taken late on Saturday night in the Tsim Sha Tsui district in Kowloon. The little propeller fans were at New Years Fair in Victoria Park the (northeast on the island). The double-decker street tram with Chinese basket ball star Yao Ming is on the route that runs on the north of Hong Kong island.
Monday and I’m posting more ‘happy’ pictures to take the blah out of Monday after such a nice weekend in Hong Kong. The characters below were on a canvas poster on the street outside the hotel. I just couldn’t tell what they were happy about! And who wants some MeltyKiss with fruity strawberry chocolates? Saw these in a candy store in a Hong Kong subway station and had to take a picture of the box : ).
They do celebrate Valentine’s Day in China, and this year it coincides with the Chinese New Year’s Day – very rare since the new year’s day is late on the calendar this year.
It turned out that my fears of masses of people trying to get into Hong Kong on Friday through the Shenzhen-Hong Kong border was unfounded; I sailed through with no trouble at all. I stayed at a Marriott Courtyard Hotel on Hong Kong Island, very reasonably priced at US$100 per night, a tall 30 story structure with only 6 rooms on every floor (picture below is from my hotel room). The room was very cozy, the bed had six perfectly firm pillows, the glass shower stall a large oversized ‘rain’ showerhead .. and the food in the restaurant was superb.
I was so tired on Friday night, and sat there enjoying a crisp Asahi beer and fried halibut with jasmine rice and Thai asparagus. Saturday I crisscrossed the city on several missions, to the bookstore, to the jewelry store, to the toy store, and they were all successful. I also learned that the New Year’s parade (another parade other than the January one) and fireworks was only going to be tonight, so I missed that. But I did go to the New Year’s Fair in Victoria Park; I will post more pictures later this week.
My roommates and others are going to Shenzhen for the weekend. Later today I am going to attempt to get to Hong Kong on my own.
To get from the red dot at Dameisha on the far right where the apartments are, to the ‘Train Station’ dot on the Hong Kong border with a taxi driver, should go without a hitch.
Then I might run into a mob scene at the Hong Kong border, with thousands of mainland travelers trying to get through customs (it’s Chinese New Year weekend, after all). It might count in my favor that I’m a foreigner. Sometimes we have a separate line at customs.
Once through mainland China & Hong Kong customs, I should be all clear, since I know how to use the Mass Transit Rail system. I might still encounter seas of people that will want to use the train go to into Hong Kong city. We shall see!
My plan B is to turn around, go back to Shenzhen to stay there in a hotel and give up on Hong Kong. Hong Kong should have a really big fireworks display on Saturday night to herald in the Chinese new year. And who wants to miss a Year of the Tiger fireworks display in the country where it was invented?