30.3.13 - Chinese Temples, and the harsher realities of expat life

Pictured here is the beautiful old Man Mo temple. Very different experience to going to church in the UK – though the shiny things, icons and incense aren’t a million miles away from Catholicism. Devotees worship by ritually waving incense around; attaching prayers/messages to lanterns or huge incense coils suspended from the ceiling; or, my favourite, banging a big ceremonial drum and hitting a giant bell, both of which you see in the gloom in the background.
A place of worship that hinges around family and ancestors and where locals go for rites of passage feels sadly appropriate today. The negative trade-offs of expat life bit for the first time.

Firstly, we missed Claire’s uncle Steve and his now-new-wife Esther’s wedding. We were thinking of them all day, working out what time it was there and counting down to the ceremony. Congratulations to them, and we wish them every happiness. We were very sad that the timing of our move meant that we could celebrate with them and the Priestley/Adcock clan.

Secondly, my great aunt Hazel passed away in the early hours. She had been ill for some time, and she slipped away peacefully with her friends and some family at her bedside. Our thoughts are with them and her good friends at her local church; and we are sad that the amount of support we can give to my dad and aunty Annette from here is limited, and that we will not be at the funeral.

We know we will gain a lot from this move to HK. But this Easter weekend has brought home to us that moving to the other side of the world means we will miss out on some things, too.

29.3.13 – Lion couldn’t believe it when Claire told him she’d gone running with Paddy and really enjoyed it…

Well readers, a threshold was crossed on Good Friday (I forget what this is in Cantonese, but the literal translation is Painful Experience Day). I have been really getting into this hashing lark, and was determined to get Claire to come along to one. I talked her into coming on a Good Friday family-friendly, short-ish one on the beautiful, car-less island of Lamma. She agreed with a heavy dose of trepidation, and on the condition that I ran it with her and didn’t streak off into the hills leaving her to work out the chalk symbols on her own.

The reasons Claire and Lion look so shocked in this picture, as Claire winds down after the run with a beer, are two-fold:

1-      Contrary to expectations, Claire had actively enjoyed the run a great deal.

2-      Claire took to the run very well, running the longer ‘Rambo’ course in 1 hour and 10, which was the benchmark finishing time, leaving several more experienced runners in her wake.

I was very impressed, and had a great time clambering around after the chalk trail in the wooded, red clay hills with Claire. Claire is cautiously keen to go on runs like this regularly, and we’ve booked in another one on Sunday. This should be great for both of us – easy way to expand our social circle, fantastic way to keep fit and gives us a shared hobby. Hooray for hashing!

28.3.13 - Happy Jellyfish, Happy Fookwutsit!

On Thursday, we had our first Cantonese lesson with the Happy Jellyfish Cantonese school, just shy of the Easter holidays (known here, phonetically, as ‘Fookwutsit’, which means ‘Back to Life Festival’). We have our lessons in the Cantonese resto pictured here.

The early signs are that I am going to really enjoy learning Canto, because it is a) Grammatically very simple and b) many sentences and phrases are incredibly literal. Here are my early highlights:

There are no tenses – you drink beer, you drink beer yesterday, you drink beer tomorrow.
You can often swap adjectives into sentences in place of verbs.

‘Aaaah’ is added on to the end of almost every sentence. It has no meaning at all, but acts as an oral full stop. Our teacher described it as ‘I can’t be arsed to say any more, it’s your turn to speak now’.

‘Ho’ is a catch all term for anything good, or numerous. So if in doubt you can just nod vigorously and say ‘Ho aaaaa’, and you’ll probably be fine. Alternatively, you can say ‘Ho Yeeeeh!’, which sounds pleasingly like shouting ‘ooooh yeah!’ but actually means ‘Good thing!’.

Absolute highlight came when the teacher was giving us clues in English on how to say things in Cantonese – e.g. Like a goat falling off a cliff (‘meeeh’, meaning ‘What kind of’); like a sheep charging into a bar (Beeeeear, meaning beer).  
But the clue she gave for the phrase ‘how much’, was ‘homosexual entrance’. The answer she was after was ‘Gay door’. My suggestion was pretty wide of the mark, “Er…bum?”

27.3.13 - high competence, and arch faffing - the GPO

This is the General Post Office in HK, which I have visited now to send various things 4 times. It is the epitome for me of all things bureaucratic in HK.

The bureaucracy around any service in Hong Kong can be best compared to the trams. A little quaint, even perhaps antiquated; it doesn’t always come as quickly as you like, and sometimes when you are on it is progresses a little slowly. However, you can guarantee that come what may, the tram will arrive; when it comes, it will work just fine; and no matter how long it takes, it will get you to where you want to go, and cheaply.

The post is exactly like this. On posting 2 parcels and 2 letters I had to go no less than 3 separate counters on 2 different floors; speak to 4 officials; fill in 2 long-winded and bewilderingly detailed forms (which employed carbon copy paper – who uses that anymore?!); and had to pay for these services separately. This all took 35 minutes. However, once I was in the hands of an official, everything was quite straightforward and so far as I know, each of these parcels has arrived safe and sound.

This won’t be the last time I mention tearing-your-hair-out-frustrating processes where everything is stamped in triplicate. Nor will it be the last time I grudgingly note that stuff just works well here. Both the faffing and the competence seem intrinsic to the way things are here, and I guess I’ll just have to get used to that.

26.3.13 - Sun Yat Sen. Without the Sun.

The statue here is of a chap called Dr Sun Yat Sen. Claire and I had noticed that he has many things named after him. On our visit to the SYS pool today, we noticed he has this statue looking off musingly into the middle distance. We have started to try to get into an exercising routine, making Tuesdays ‘meet after work, swim, find somewhere healthy to eat’ night. All public facilities here are excellent: I think all the pools, 16 of them, are olympic sized, clean, well-kept and about £1.70 entry!

I took this shot because I thought SYS looked particularly grand, unperturbed against the steely sky and mizzle with people scurrying by under umbrellas. The building the background is the ICC, which featured in a previous post front of the Kowloon Clock tower – you can see its astonishing scale, cloaked in cloud.

I thought It would be rude not to find out a bit on who SYS was…he is a big figure in the founding of modern China, who helped engineer the fall of the Chinese Qing emperors in 1912 and became the new Republic’s President. I was intrigued to see that he helped found the Kuomintang, the nationalist party that ultimately lost the civil war to the communists some 26 years later. My research tells me that he is respected by the Taiwanese nationalists, the communists and HK people alike…but am I sniffing something political when the HK govt dedicates all these public spaces to a Chinese figure that isn’t a communist?

PS - the blog passed 2000 views today...thanks everyone for sticking with it so far :)

25.3.13 - Terrapins and dreams of tortoises

I have wandered past these terrapins in HK Park several times, and could not resist taking a snap (snap, eh? Get it?! Renowned for briskly biting their owners? Never mind, have been a bit starved for conversation today).

They have a fantastic life – get up, have some food (partly what’s around, partly what’s brought to them). Swim about in the shade if it’s a bit hot. Eat some more. Then, when the weather cools, hang out on a rock with their mates surveying to coy carp.

I realised after musing how great their lives are that actually it’s very similar to my life. Get up, have some food provided not by my own labour; hang about in the flat most of the day on my own in the air-conditioned cool; have some lunch; then, when it gets cooler get out onto the trails for a run or go survey the terrapins in the park and hang out with Claire and/or some new acquaintances. Hmm.

We saw some terrapins for sale in a market this week. After watching the HK park critters, I was half-tempted to get some. But then, I saw in the next tank some TORTOISES. I have always wanted some, and Claire has only so far vetoed this on grounds of no outdoor space. Well now we have 1000 square feet of outdoor space that has no nooks or crannies for a tortoise-break-out, and getting a pit for them to dig in is easy. A pair, I think. All I need now is names…Terry the tortoise? Terence? Tom?

24.3.13 - [balls] up and under at the Sevens Village

There is no way to describe sevens weekend in 250 words. I suggest you bag your spare bed/sofa/patch of floor/spot on the terrace [delete depending on how early you book!] in our flat next March to see for yourself.

Instead, I’ll talk about one of the silly games available at the HSBC sevens Village. HSBC erect a free-entry big screen area next to the stadium throughout sevens. We spent hours there, sandwiched on giant cushions between superheroes, horses with Tesco plastic bags for T-shirts, Canadian Mounties, cavemen, Lance Armstrongs and Oscar Pistorius’ wielding water pistols (bit too soon).
As if the lovely weather, constant sport and drink were not enough entertainment, HSBC set up mass participation games to keep the masses amused. The up and under challenge was most popular. Competitors, in full fancy dress, entered a small arena tasked with catching five rugby balls, launched by a mortar-like contraption hidden behind a curtain, without putting any balls down.

I spent hours laughing at the drunk and terrible, and tutting at rugger lads who took it far too seriously and made fools of themselves. So when it was my turn, I felt a little pressured – money where your mouth is time.

Ball 1 caught safely – huge relief.
Ball 2 caught in other arm – respectability reached.
Ball 3 caught with fingertips – this isn’t so hard! Getting cocky now.
Ball 4 disaster! It bounces off the other balls and into the crowd;
Ball 5 determined to catch…I end up lying on the floor with ball 5 clamped to my shin with one hand as I balance the other three under one arm. Dignified.

23.3.13 - Sod the view, it's all about the nescafe

 

I said I’d write about sevens today; but we’re going back tomorrow, so we’ll cover that then. Today, I want to talk about tins of cold nescafé.

Minutes before the picture used for yesterday’s blog, Charis and I witnessed a very strange thing. An elderly Indian couple were lining up for their picture to be taken at the Peak, over the stunning HK skyline. When their turn came, the wife took up position, composed her face in a rigidly serious pose…and resolutely held out a tin of nescafe coffee. We spotted this and chuckled, assuming she didn’t know she had it in her hand. However, shouted instructions were issued from husband, and she promptly rearranged the tin so the brand was visible. Bafflingly, they then swapped places, and husband carefully rearranged the tin, back ram-rod straight, face stern for the camera. It was like the tin was of greatest interest, and the view purely incidental.

So in the spirit of sevens silliness, we bought a tin and resolved to pose as serious-faced as possible in front of anything interesting. We have a whole series, but these are our favourites. The one of me is in front of the sevens village big screen; and Charis’ is in front of the popular view of HK at night, complete with boat flashing by in the background.

I will keep the tin and try to do some more…if anyone can find a tin and send me some pics of themselves in unlikely situations I’d be thrilled – maybe we can start a meme?! Or perhaps we'll make it compulsory that every HK guest has to have one po-faced nescafe picture?

22.3.13 - Touristy touristy face

Well, hey ho, here we go. It’s our first drunken posting for real. If I were a tropical storm, I wouldn’t count as storm-measure ‘wankered’, but I am definitely a ‘pissed’ on the storm scale.

Today, Claire and I were lucky enough to have our first visitor! Charis Beverton wins a gold star for being the first to come out to see us, though she did have 2 big advatnages in that  a) She was in Asia and b) She was in the same time zone!. But, credit where credit’s due, she had to fly 4 hours to get here….which is London to Istanbul. So no mean feat.

I love this picture, which isn’t the best I got of Charis at the Peak complete with view, because it sums up how much of a bun fight the Peak can be when it’s top tourist time. Why I love this shot:

-          The Chinese pair to Charis’ right barged in when she had been there for a whie waiting for me to take the shot, entirely oblivious to others

-          They have given the ‘V’ sig that every westerner imagines is given in pictures in Asia. It’s no stereotype – it happens.

-          Charis herself is ignoring me and taking a self-made pic for facebook; which I’m sure looks fab, but adds to the anarchy.

-          The lady to Charis’ left has been aggressively hovering since she stood in this spot, and is now yawning her displeasure.

Sigh, making sense is hard. Bye bye. Sevens tomorrow. With wigs.

21.3.13 - Massive lemon?! No, just a massive knowledge gap...

I read somewhere that Hong Kong is the 7^th least religious country in the world based on the number of people saying they are atheist/agnostic.

I find this odd because I see religious buildings and signs of religious observance all over the place – I’ve seen a startling number of churches (which will feature at some point), a mosque, a big gurdwara, an enormous Buddha statue, and loads of shrines like this one.

Many are tiny – some can be a shoe box sized on the floor in the street; and you see small versions in shops quite a bit. This is probably the largest I’ve seen, down a seldom-used mountain trail.

What I am getting at in today’s title is that I know embarrassingly little about them. I am not 100% sure what religion they are (Taoist? Buddhist?); I don’t know what the object of worship is; I don’t know what rites get performed at them. The ‘massive lemon’ is just the funniest symptom of this – you can see a big yellow fruit in this picture. It’s an offering of some form, and when Claire and I first saw one we assumed that people try to find the biggest lemon going to make their offering impressive. Turns out it’s actually a totally different fruit. And I don’t know what that’s called either.

So I am reduced to saying ‘Oh, this shrine looks nice. And what an impressively big fruit-of-unknown name you’ve offered there’. Hope to fill said knowledge gap when we start our Canto lessons…!

20.3.13 - Which way, Frank?

On Wednesday, I “co-hared” my first hash. These are the organised runs with chalk markings that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, that I am really getting into. “Haring” is what you do when you are the one going out with the chalk and setting a route for others to follow. As I like to organise and plan, and have quite a bit of time on my hands at the moment, I wanted to learn how to do this from an old hand, before taking one on myself.

This picture shows Frank, the other hare, setting what is called a “check”. The runners reach a point where you could several routes. You draw a symbol with arrows indicating the possible routes; but only one is correct. This slows up the front runners, as they have to run down all the routes and check which is right.

Frank and I set 16km plus of trail, with all the false tracks. To do it, we climbed at least 1500 feet; ran on roads, footpaths, bridges and trails; scrambled down a stream bed (no easy matter after the recent rain); and used countless boxes of chalk. By the end, I was the more tired of the two of us…even though Frank had checked this route a few days ago himself, as well as just completed a 20km race this weekend over the 2 mountains.

Oh, and Frank is 70 years old…

19.3.13 - breaking 110-year old boundaries

 

OK, first of all a confession – this is the first photo I have not taken myself. I will replace it with one of my own sometime soon; but as I was about to head out to snap this marker, there was a grumble of thunder and the heavens opened. First rain I’ve seen here, and it’s pretty incredible.

Nonetheless, I did spot this marker on a run the other day. I wanted to get it on here because the 1903 city limit marker has long since been swallowed up within the city itself., and it allows me to get some historical tidbits on HK 110 years ago in here...

The population now is over 7.1 million; then, it was 284,000. The ‘New Territories’ were genuinely new, having only been tacked on to HK in 1898. These territories make up over 85% of the land mass of HK, so this was quite a bolt-on. Despite their coming on board, however, the population barely grew between the 1891 and 1901 census, because up to 100,000 people died in-between those times from the bubonic plague.
In other news, Chinglish update. In the squash changing rooms today, I saw this beauty in the showers: “No urination offender will be prosecuted”. Oh dear. For the want of a comma or a full stop, this sentence went from a threat of being taken to court to a free license to wazz wherever you like, because no-one’s getting a criminal record for it in these showers, thank you very much…



18.3.13 - Just don't mention the Blair Witch Project

 

Can you see very much here? No? Nor could I at the time.

As you may have gathered, I did my first head torch guided run last week. So today, as the sun set and the day cooled, I struck out alone to the trails around the Peak.

I had not considered several crucial things. My first run had been with many people; we needed torches for minutes at a time; we never strayed far from roads. Tonight’s escapade had none of these things.

The sun disappeared just after my route got jungly and unlit. My courage began to fail me when the torch-beam looked weak, I had not seen another soul for 20 minutes, and I knew there were 30 minutes of running to civilisation. Some stats:

No. shadowy figures that turned out to be trees: 8

No. non-existent footsteps heard: 5

No. frogs landed on my feet (“ARGH!”): 3
No. times The torch. Went. Out: 1 (I’d dislodged a battery. And emitted whimpering noises)

No. dogs: 1. (It trotted ownerless into my lamplight, stood its ground 20m away and growled softly. I thought the following: What would I do if it attacked me? How do you fight a dog? What if it was persistent - would I have to kill it? How do you even do that, chuck it off the mountain?! Oh bollocks! By the time I’d had this stream of consciousness, it was well behind me)

I summoned enough resolve to take the longest, brightest exposure photo to give you an idea how dark it got…VERY.

17.3.13 – Due to staff illness, today’s programming is replaced with ‘Chinglish’

 

Short blog today, as I have caught quite a nasty cold since yesterday evening. Nothing too serious, but I have felt pretty rubbish and have what could be a fairly important work-related meeting tomorrow.

So, I have spent most of the day in bed, and not left the flat…hence I have nothing picture wise to write about. The most exciting thing that happened today was that I burnt our lunch so badly that three fully fire suited and helmeted firemen burst into the flat to check everything was all right. Sadly, we did not manage to get a picture of them before they left…

Like the BBC when the expected sporting event has been cancelled, however, I have alternative programming (my equivalent of ‘Last of the Summer Wine’) to offer you. We bought a small coffee-table-cum-toilet book on our travels yesterday called ‘Chinglish’. It contains nothing but pictures of signs in Chinese English, some of which have made me fall about laughing. I have read it cover to cover today, and here is my favourite sign. Will hope to post similar signs to this that I actually find myself in the future.

Here’s hoping I feel better tomorrow, and can post less of a cop out entry.

16.3.13 – Towering achievements in ‘TST’

Today, Claire and I mounted an expedition to Tsim Sha Tsui (or ‘TST’ as it is mercifully known) to do some serious shopping. My suspicions that my tiny wardrobe would be totally hopeless and inappropriate out here have proven correct. So this was today’s towering achievement – usually Claire has to press me to buy even one item of clothing, but today was nothing short of an overhaul of my wardrobe.

TST is the area that hosts the Star Ferry terminal from HK island, where there is a lot of public space here to wander about in. This is where I found this view of two very different towers to share with you.

The brick one in the foreground is all that remains of the Kowloon-to-Canton railway station, work on which started 100 years ago. It is clearly designed to look both imperial, but also comfortingly familiar to railway stations ‘back home’. Incredibly, when it was up and running the railway links exited that meant you could buy a ticket in Paris on the Trans-Siberian Express, and land up here, via China. At 44m high it must once have been the most impressive building on the underdeveloped Kowloon side of the harbour.

Looming in the background is the ICC building. Completed in 2010, it stretches to 118 storeys and an incredible 484m – meaning you could stand 11 clock towers on top of each other and the ICC would still be taller. A clearer image of the colonial past being respected, but completely put in the shade by HK’s subsequent achievements I cannot imagine.

15.3.13 - Fishwatery feet - welcome to your local cornershop!

Claire and I are getting to know Sai Ying Pun better, the name of the area we will be living in soon. We keep making comparisons with SYP being to HK what Brixton was to London when we moved there:

- A leftfield choice for ‘people like us’
- Rougher and readier than normal expat areas
- Somewhere we find ourselves in a tiny minority
- Has its own distinct charms and unexpected+cheap eateries and bars;
- Surprisingly close to the centre, with glimpses of the city’s big buildings flashing between          tower blocks.
- Somewhere I struggle to be understood by the locals to begin with (see 12.11 – though I can do 1-10, “hello, my name is” now)

However, I cannot stretch the comparison to the cornershop. If 7-11 is the Tesco Metro equivalent, the pictured is the 24-hour shop equivalent. That shop could be divided into 3 ‘departments’: booze+fags, chocolate+crisps, household items for the desperate.

The HK shop has three very different departments: fresh fish (that live in little tanks below this display before being chopped up on the street), fresh veg, fresh meat. Plus, where the only foot hazard in Brixton was the occasional vomiteer in search of late-night alcohol, the HK shop is a different kettle of fish – we had fishwater lobbed on our feet as we walked past it yesterday.

Nonetheless, the veg does look tasty close up. Once we master our ‘how to buy stuff in Cantonese’ lessons the week after next, we may even get to test out that theory...

14.3.13 - Carry on Banking

OK, so if the title dragged you in because it sounds today has an innuendo-ridden bank-related story in store, then I’m sorry – I tricked you. I refer to what HSBC has done on the very spot shown here: carried on banking, for 148 years.

I thought it was about time to introduce something linked to why we are here: Claire’s fantastic new job in HSBC. When I saw HSBC’s lobby festooned with helium balloons (tasteful) for the 148^th anniversary of opening its doors here, today struck me as a good time.

The first HQ opened for business on Queen’s Road in 1865. Early settlers apparently cared a good deal about Feng Shui, and so this HQ was given the auspicious honour of a clear view to the harbour, which it maintains to this day. The version standing now is HQ mark 4, a Norman Foster creation, which was created in 1985 (like me). Once the most expensive building in the modern world, it is now dwarfed and outclassed architecturally by many of its newer, brasher neighbours. Nonetheless, I think it looks terrific when lit up at night (unlike me).

Claire spends about half of her working time in this magnificent building. So far, my main interaction with it has constituted mooching about in my shorts and T-shirt in the strange public space below the building, waiting for Claire to emerge from the staff entrance looking all glamorous to meet me for lunch, attracting suspicious glares from security staff. Such is the lot of kept men…

13.3.13 - HK 3D: don't forget to look up!

“Hong Kong is a 3D city”, said an HK veteran in our first couple of days when walking around the bustling Wan Chai area. Initially, I was nonplussed by this – what did he mean? The buildings are so much higher than elsewhere? Something about its vibrancy? When he went on to explain, he meant neither of these things, but I did not grasp his point until I went searching for a head torch (hash #2 today, at night).

This photo shows 298 Hennessey Road. What did I see? An entranceway to residential flats; a restaurant. Definitely not a massive electronics centre.

I had forgotten the 3D HK lesson: don’t forget to look up. In the west, you get multi-levels shopping centres, but on the high street what you see at eye level is what you get. In HK, space is at such a premium that normal retail premises can span multiple businesses, tens of floors up from an unassuming front door. A restaurant on ground level might be printers on floor 1, a beauty salon on floor 2, a masseuse on floor 3. You have to train your eyes to look for it…I still don’t have the knack.

Eventually, I found an unsigned small opening right of the restaurant that revealed floor after floor of tiny businesses in rabbit warrens of booths, selling every conceivable electronic good. Including head torches.

So, purchase made, I’m off running with strangers, in the dark, on unlit forest trails. With beer. What could go wrong?

12.3.13 - It's Time for Mime

This sign is for 7-Eleven, HK’s answer to Tesco Metro. I was chuffed to find this one 30 seconds from our new flat’s front door in Sheung Wan.

What you may notice is that the next two signs are solely in Chinese. This is true in 95% of the Sheung Wan shops. It’s only 10 minutes from the centre, but it is beyond the usual expat hubs and solidly HK Chinese.

I went to 7-11 to recharge my phone. The assistant looked blank. Fair enough – mime time! I waved my phone, grinning and pointing at the logo. She made understanding noises, and triumphantly produced a Sim card. I shook my head and tried to act out “recharging” (if you have watched me play Articulate, you will guess this went poorly).

She looked baffled, and enlisted two passing customers to help; they didn’t speak English either, but they crowded around the counter and looked concerned. I pointed to a mobile advertisement, shaking my head and waggling my finger negatively at the Sim, while beaming at the recharge-card with thumbs up. This totally flummoxed my now-alarmed audience.

Finally, an immaculately suited Cantonese lady entered, and we all sighed with relief, thinking suit=English. The assistant waved her over, and she immediately established what I wanted. When I finally handed over payment, our party of five all cheered – hooray!

How sweet. But pragmatically, Claire and I cannot live like that long-term; and on principle, why should we? I will not be one of those expats with zero Cantonese. The self-teaching CD sessions begin tomorrow…

11.3.13 "This is a [hilarious!] public service announcement"

In the UK, the tube has photos of ‘normal’ people showing poor tube etiquette – use the whole length of the platform. In Paris, the metro has a mildly disturbing rabbit-cum-hare doing daft things – don’t put your hands in the doors, or you risk a severe pinch.

In HK, they have this incredible big yellow smiley-faced fellow with stick feet and arms. I find him pretty comical as, like most advertising here, he is over the top, brightly coloured and relentlessly cheerful. In most of his ads, the message is clear – give your seat up for the elderly; don’t jump into closing doors. However, where he really wins my heart and makes me laugh out loud in public is the couple of ads that are hard to understand what he wants you to do…like this one.

What on earth is this about?

Children on the metro are great! Small children should be made to carry bags the size of their torso and be ecstatic about it! Stranger danger be damned, unaccompanied children should befriend creepy pacman-like figures! Honestly, just writing this I am chortling out loud…what is being communicated here?!

It turns out the answer is disappointing. The child is pushing unhappy-looking sandwiches back into his bag and the yellow chap is pleased because you are not meant to eat on the MTR (should we have this on the London tube – no more bleary-faced semi-sozzled people munching smelly McDonalds? You know who you are...).

Expect this guy and other public announcements to feature again.

10.3.13 - Cricket, Containers and The Quest for Sport

HK is mad for sport and organised fun of all forms. Both things appeal to me to an unhealthy degree. So The Quest for Sport (TQfS) in my workless period is intense, to ensure I get as much organised, sporty action as possible.

Today, TQfS took us to the University cricket Ground, where a friend of a friend (thanks Richard Lawrence!) had invited me to spectate. I wanted to see one game before signing up to anything to check I wasn’t pitching way above my level. It was a pleasure to watch such an entertaining and close-fought game between the University and a talented under-17s team in the gorgeous 25 degree heat. Importantly, the standard was fine. TQfS will continue at some nets soon.

I chose this picture because in the background you should spot an enormous container ship. We were surprised to see these giants lumber past every 10 minutes, frighteningly close to the coast, with no-one batting an eyelid. I later learned that HK remains one of the busiest container ports worldwide, servicing an astonishing 456,000 vessels annually with 243 million tonnes of cargo. At that number, the surprise should be that we haven’t noticed them before.

It’s a reminder that beyond the pleasure cruises and Star Ferry, HK is first and foremost a deep sea port, regional trading hub and economic powerhouse. Good job too, as this will aid The Hunt for Work (THfW)…which begins in earnest tomorrow with my first big meeting. Wish me luck!

09.3.13 - Making a bit of a hash of it

Yesterday, I went on my first hash. These are common across Asia…Never heard of it? Neither had I. Let me explain.

A group of runners meet at a set point. Two ‘hares’ mark a course with blobs of flour and chalk symbols. The chasers go off a set period later to chase the hares down. There is a short and long course, so that everyone finishes around the same time.

I love running, and at home consider myself fit. So this is perfect, right? The organisers tell us the course is 11km. I laugh inwardly – 11km?! I do that in about 47 minutes on the flat. Easy peasy.

Wrong. After 1km on roads, we hit scrub-filled hillside, and climb one false peak after another. At points, I clamber on all fours. We ascend 1500ft in 3km. This picture shows the highest point…where I stop because I physically cannot go on as well as for the view.

After the high point, we plunge into jungle – scrambling over rock formations, running bent over through bamboo fields, branches whipping at my face like some Vietnam film, balancing on walls of abandoned villages in lieu of paths, picking through streams.

Two and a half hours later, I was no longer laughing. I was chowing down on humble pie, having seen wiry old men and tiny Asian ladies leave me in the dust. So that’ll show me, you’d think – no more hashing.

Oh but what I forgot to mention - it is a) addictive and b) involves unlimited beer. Next hash on Wednesday and another booked for Sunday…

08.3.13 - Tenacious trees

Something a bit different today – have had a nothing-y day of boring flat admin and rushing about, so nothing much of note to report.

This is a banyan tree (I think). They spring up everywhere, even where there is no space and zero soil. This the best example I have been able to find – a fully-fledged tree sprouting out of a wall, sinking its routes into two roadways. Their powerful, sleek roots make them look exotic, and they have almost a liquid quality about them, oozing out of tiny crevices and gripping onto the wall like [WARNING – crap simile alert!] a leafy octopus.

There is also a slight hint of menace about their ability to thrive in the most densely populated, urbanised spot on earth. They give me a keen sense of how wild this place actually is, and how, were Hong Kong ever abandoned, trees like this would envelop the city as if it had ever existed in frighteningly few years.

On a lighter note, you may notice see old-fashioned brooms propped among the roots. Every morning, I see older HK Chinese on most roads wielding these brooms, sweeping out the night’s leaves and dust. I can’t work out if they are hundreds of small-time government workers; or just very assiduously tidy about ‘their’ patch of road. Either way, it’s very charming and I am sure it contributes to why HK, on the bigger roads at least, is one of the cleanest, neatest cities I’ve seen.

07.3.13 – IDiot abroad

Yesterday we sorted our ID cards. In the imaginatively-named Immigration Tower, I was not at my sharpest…

PT sits opposite the Official

PT:          Hi there

Official: Papers, please

PT hands papers over. Official squints at them, looks uncertainly at PT, and begins correcting multiple errors and handwriting. In her second language.

Official: Your wife has same name?

PT:          Oh, no. It’s Claire.

Official: [Pauses, frowns] No, Turner?

PT:          Ah! Yes, yes!

Official puts form aside

Official: OK, now put your thumb on the reader.

PT:          Where? Here? OK

PT places thumb on scanner. Askew.

Official: Straighter. Lift up. Down. Down again...Up...Down...Left. Not that far!

Official sighs, putting on a black glove. She reaches through the Perspex, physically placing PT’s thumb.

PT:          Oh, ah, gosh, sorry, haha!

Awkward silence. PT is manhandled.

Official: Sit on that chair. Look at red dot. Not camera, red dot…red dot.

PT:          [desperately] I am looking at it!

PT looks confuesdly at the official. The camera goes off. PT’s face freezes. The official looks unimpressed.

Official: Red. Dot. Please. Sir.

PT:          Sorry.

The photo takes. The results flashes up. PT looks like a simpleton.

Official: [firmly] Is OK?

PT:          [reluctantly] Yeah...

Official: [visible relief] Please take a seat in waiting area.

PT:          Right, yes…

PT stumbles slightly as he gets up from his chair, and leaves. 5 seconds later, he rushes back

PT:          I’m terribly sorry…what waiting area?

Official brutally murders PT with a stapler.

Clearly that last bit didn’t happen. But I think she wanted it to.

06.3.13 – a culinary peak...just watch out for the angel hair

This photo shows Claire and I last night enjoying our dinner at the Pearl on the Peak, which we shared with her senior HSBC colleague Francesca and her husband Philip.

The Pearl at the Peak would be described by Cameron/Clegg as a Ronseal restaurant (Does What it Says on the Tin). It’s on the Peak – the mountain that looms over the thickly northern coast of HK island – and it is a pearl of a find. The Peak and the bizarrely wonderful tram we used to reach it deserve their own postings at a future point.

The food, company and view were equally spectacular. I ate some of the poshest antipasti I’ve ever seen (the plate formation was pig, pig, pig, duck, cheese, cheese, bread – what’s not to like?) and truffle-strewn risotto.

I found a side entertainment in the menu, which used floridly obscure terms to describe its fayre. My absolute favourite was something served with ‘truffled angel hair’. Sounds like a convoluted euphemism for something unspeakable (“And then, you won’t believe it, but he truffled her angel hair!”).

I should mention that it was Philip’s 70^th birthday – so happy birthday and many happy returns Philip! This celebration led us to discover that HK greetings cards are a) Hard to find and b) Odd. Top marks to our newly minted septuagenarian for being such a good sport on discovering our offering was a card that turns into a 3D, standing panda upon opening…

05.3.13 - A machine that really 'adds value'

This one is aimed at my colleagues in the Civil Service. Behold! The Add Value Machine!

For those spared the bafflingly jargon-filled world of UK government ‘adding value’ is a clumsy-sounding catch all phrase for anything or anyone who produces good work or positive outcomes. So for example: “That meeting was really value adding for that project”.

So here we have it – what the Government needs, is one of these. Indeed, the instructions read “Insert notes/card to add value”. Which is how Government should work anyway, right? Put cash in, get useful stuff out?

These machines are actually used to top up the Oyster card equivalent, the Octopus card. Or so I thought – actually, Oyster is the imitator here. Octopus arrived in 1997, and is bigger and better than its British cousin. There are 20 million in use (three times HK’s population), and 95% of HK residents use one. Plus, not only is the whole transport network geared to use Octopus, its most impressive aspect is its multiple uses: convenience shops and supermarkets; most outlets in metro stations; parking meters. Furthermore, some schools and workplaces use them to allow entry to certain buildings, and monitor attendance.

The Octopus lives up to its logo of Making Everyday Life Easier. However, its best features are reserved for those who register their personal details on it. So just like the HK ID card, it is convenient and user-friendly; but there is something faintly Orwellian about it too.

04.3.13 - Hong Kong Housewife

This photo marks both a landmark of our getting settled in HK, and a low-point for me in the ‘kept man’ stakes.

Claire and I went to the main HSBC building – a spectacular Norman Foster creation, which will feature here sometime – to set up our HK bank account.

The forms to sign up for anything are comprehensive here. Banking is about the only thing so far that does not require a HK ID number (more on the unsettlingly broad reach of the ID cards later this week) – but it needed every other conceivable detail.

The worst was the section on employment. In HK, there is almost 100% employment for those who wish or are able to work. ‘Unemployment’ is not something people here comprehend. I had a demonstration of this social order when running this morning. Before 8am, the running track was packed with expat men and almost no-one else. By 815 or so, they had all gone to work and were replaced by expat women, going much slower and looking relaxed, and very old HK Chinese. By 9am, they were joined by swarms of Filipinas walking expats’ dogs in alarmingly large packs. Here, you work; you are retired; or you choose to be a home maker. And that is clearly not considered a man’s role by HK Chinese.

Hence, today, I had no choice but to circle the box for occupation as ‘Housewife’.

Hilarious. But I’d be a liar if I said that didn’t smart a little.

03.3.13 - First HK Panorama, Bowen Road runnning track

This is probably not the last sweeping shot of HK from a high point that will feature here. Nor is it the classic view you’d see on postcards because it misses out the central buildings and the vantage point isn’t high enough to take in the Kowloon skyline and harbour. It is however the first panorama we saw when jogging on the Bowen Road running track near our serviced apartment, so I thought it was appropriate to throw in.

Nonetheless, there are a few things in this picture that say a lot about what HK is like from our first impressions. You can see both the jungle-covered slope that runs up to the Peak and the water of the harbour here, which gives you a sense of just how narrow the densely inhabited northern strip of HK Island is – in places, less than a kilometre.

This paucity of space accounts for other common things you can spot in this picture. Several lots of construction works – new buildings seem to be shooting up from every spare bit of land on this strip. Sports facilities are either squeezed in tight or perched on the top of other buildings, like the five-a-side football pitch visible here. The thickly spread and countlessly numerous apartment blocks that begin at 40 floors, but habitually tower to 50, 60, 70 floors. 

Claire’s first day at work tomorrow, when I will be let loose alone into HK in full kept man mode…

02.03.13 - Business. But no class.

Until today I had never flown business class.

For those who have, I apologise if this is dull. For those who haven’t, this isn’t showing off. I just want to get down what it was like. Because it was jaw-dropping.

Our personal car swept us past building works into an oasis of calm behind T3. There, uniformed staff relieved us of our bags and charmed us through a dedicated, queueless check-in.

We dashed through duty free, seeking the Virgin lounge. This was tucked away in Narnia-esque fashion near some unpromising-looking toilets, up a secluded marble staircase. This opened onto a complex so stuffed with high-class services, it was like a Cambridge May Ball. Deli and restaurant food; three bars; arcade games; viewing platforms; a spa with pool; a barbers; multi-sports screens.

Most occupants looked bored or nonchalant, as if this were totally normal. I make no judgements – for many of them I’m sure it’s a humdrum means to an end. I’d love to say we played it equally cool…alas, we sampled every service with childish glee, rushing about in fits of giggles. I had this nagging feeling someone would shortly collar me, crying, “You are an imposter, sir! Nobody comports themselves thus in business class, particularly not in a…football shirt!”

In this photo, I find myself swinging in a wicker seat suspended from the ceiling supping my third glass of bottomless champagne, trying not to wallop the businessman behind me toiling at his laptop…

No class. None.

01.03.13 - Shipping Out

The biggest of adventures start with boring logistics.

Here are our things stacked at the bottom of our Brixton flats, ready to be carted into a van and then some obscure shipping container. It was breath-taking how fast the removal guys turned assorted nicknacks, tables, chairs, treasured possessions, golf clubs even into an anonymous row of boxes.

At risk of sounding horribly twee, moving abroad has made me realise quite how much stuff you accumulate, even by the age of 27. This load is only half of what we shipped; which was only half the amount we stored; which was only half the amount we sold or chucked away. Insert some gap-yeary-sounding tosh about the value of things or consumerism here…

The lobby in which I will next see these boxes will be very different to the one they are pictured in here:

-         Freshly painted walls against walls that have seen one coat of paint (because Prince Edward came to visit!) since 1970-something.

-         A reception that last saw door staff in the 1940s when the block was owned by Jewish emigres, versus a block that has 24 hour concierge.

-         The normally polite, sometimes threatening, always weed-smoking youths hanging in the hallway, against a hallway in which loitering would probably result in instant arrest.

Brixton, Brixton – I do love you really, and will miss you. But I’d be a liar if reflections like this don’t make me feel grateful to be leaving for a little while…