29.4.13 - a lost soul in the cemetery

I set out to find another hash route up Mount Davis, which sits on the northwestern edge of the island a mile from our flat. It is riddled with ghost villages that were once fortifications and later occupied by now-departed squatters.

I misread the map. Where a trail should have joined a road, I wandered into dense forest with barely discernible path. I pressed on – it had to pop out soon.

Ten minutes later, I had lost the trail. All around was bamboo, gnarly trees and spider webs. I couldn’t even make out the way I had come.

I found a dry riverbed to clamber down, using trees to jump from rock to rock. As I started to get desperate, I stumbled upon a drainage channel. These always lead to civilisation!

It emerged abruptly facing one of the hillside cemeteries that dot HK. After heaving myself over a chest-high wall, drenched in sweat, I walked around the beautiful graves. After admiring how immaculately kept it was for some time, it began to feel eerie – I had not seen another soul and I could see no roads, buildings or entrances.

I rounded a bend and saw fields of plots populated only by orange/white stalk-like birds that flapped lazily away. A dream?

Eventually, I found a man in front of a big gate. Startled, he jumped up looking terrified and stammered, “Is private property!” I gestured at my scrapes, muddy knees and the hill and looked lost. He fumbled open the lock, eyeing me strangely.

Only later did an old HK-hand point out that, with my white skin and being covered in earth, the poor man may have actually thought I was a ghost...

28.4.13 - Post Junk Funk. It's Hammock Time.

I lie in the semi-darkness covered in a film of hangover sweat, grunting gently, trying to stay as far away from consciousness as possible because of its accompanying unpleasant sensations.

In this semi-cogent state, images that might be dreams but I am concerned are replays of the night before swim involuntarily in and out of focus.

Gigglingly smuggling armfuls of Junk Corona into bags, and crowingly drinking our ill-gotten gains on the bus like rowdy 6^th formers.

Hanging around the trendiest joints in Lan Kwai Fong, gleefully drinking cheap shop-bought beer, like a 15-year-old with cider behind the bike sheds.

Inelegantly scooping a third vodka jelly shot onto the back of my hand and messily guzzling it with gusto, like at a 6-year-old at a children’s party who’s been told to have just one helping.

Being offered the mike by the Insomnia cover band’s lead singer to do a couple of lines from I’m Walking on Sunshine, and obliging with enthusiasm.

Bantering with a confidence only drink can bring in Cantonese with a very indulgent taxi driver.

Eventually, I could take the montage no longer, opened my semi-glued eyelids and staggered out into the day. For once, we are going to do nothing. After some fortifying eggy-bread, I blearily constructed this enormous umbrella (courtesy of the lovely Seven in China, like the hammock) so that we could have a proper lazy day on the terrace.

Pleased that’s the last Junk for a while couldn’t do that every week, says I. What’s that, Claire? We have another booked next Saturday? As I lower my sunglasses and have another gulp of berrocca, I shudder. Half in anticipation. Half in dread.

27.4.13 - Breaking our Junk Duck

We are junk trip virgins no longer.

The junk trip season begins when the weather is (supposedly) more summery and we were lucky enough to get an invite along to one early doors.

The concept is very simple. An organiser gets together a bunch of people, between perhaps 20 and 40, to celebrate some occasion or other. This group shares the cost of hiring a boat with crew for the day.

This group and boards the boat late morning, which chugs merrily to a pretty spot where the water is swimmable and a beach is within striking distance. The group will frolic about in the water and mess about on the boat, until the boat tips them back on shore 6 hours later.

And oh yes, did I mention you get free-flowing booze, a massive meal and constant snacks?

We will be going on quite a few of these – this trip was as good as that advert sounds! I’ll try in future to just pick out something unique about each trip now that you all know how they work.

This is our group, gathered around Katherine whose ‘leaving junk’ we were on, posing with a decorated engineering achievement complete with moat. The lady in the foreground was the source of food and boozy goodness all day…when she wasn’t offering us trays of chicken, beef, crisps or tacos, she was contriving to ensure that every cup never emptied. Even better, when we were in the water, she decanted everyone’s drinks of choice into plastic bottles and variously burled them into the sea on order, or ferried buckets of booze to the beach in a little motor boat.

Sore heads today, much? Hmmmm.

26.4.13 - Putting the Hong* into Hong Kong

Oh dear. Could I look like more of a Brit abroad in this picture?

This is not an Indonesia snap. It appears that I have not, after all, got the hang of the weather here and its possible effects at all. I managed to do the effects of this photo to myself in HK.

When it came for that first round of golf I wrote about yesterday, I peeked out the window to see what the weather was doing. Thick, lowering, grey-black cloud, and forecast to stay that way all day.

So, I ventured out in cap and polo shirt, as you do for golf, without any sun cream.

By about 4pm that afternoon, well after I’d got out of the sun, I began feeling irremediably hot, despite having the aircon on, and a bit itchy. I nipped to the bathroom to look in the mirror, and cried involuntarily in horror, as I had gone unexpectedly, lividly red.

Turns out, the sun here is so strong that even on an overcast day, 3 hours out in it will burn you to a crisp.

I capped off this ridiculous sunburn – openly got laughed at in the street and on the tram, quite right too – by running late for our Cantonese lesson and in my haste grabbing the first T-shirt I could see and dashing out the door. Fashion disaster, much – red on orange?!

Unsurprisingly, Claire and Cecilie, our teacher, though this was all jolly hilarious, and snapped this for the record.

*At our Canto lesson, we learnt the word for red: Hong.

25.4.13 - What do you do with a spare piece of land next to an airport?

In the UK you would probably do something sensible: parking; a low-rise budget hotel. In HK, you build a golf club entirely from scratch, of course!

A fellow golf-playing expat, Nigel, texted me within hours of hearing that our stuff had turned up to ask if I fancied cracking open the golfing gear. Well, I thought, I do need to live up the guy tai hash name…what better way to do that than tootle off for 18 holes in the midweek, just as everyone else is commuting to work?

And so, I found myself waiting for a lift from Nigel under the HSBC tower, golf bag on shoulder, as bankers and office workers swarmed around me.  A pleasing contrast.

Due to some fussy rules on who can play at the larger golf courses, we were essentially forced to go to the more lax airport course. However, I had in any case been nursing a wish to see the ‘Sky City’ course since we’d got here.

It didn’t disappoint. A short course, very well put together, full of bunkers for my liking, immaculately kept for the most part by an army of groundsmen/women.

But the highlight of course was the strangeness of playing accompanied by the sight and deafening sound of huge passenger jets lumbering straight over the course every 3 minutes.

The piece de resistance of crazy is to come. See the grey metal poles? Those are floodlight pylons. Why allow the pesky sun to limit golfing hours? The whole Sky City course is floodlit. So you can keep playing at night.

24.4.13 - Indonesian Interlude 3 - Desert Island Disc(ontent)s

After our dip in the pool, we looked at the waterborne activities the resort offered. A boat tour of the deserted island visible on 23.4.13’s post with an option for snorkelling sounded like a suitably relaxing way to pass a few hours.

Beach resort. Island boat tour. Snorkelling. One imagines a small sailing boat, a deck, places to sunbathe, a cabin and pootling around this island as the occasional passenger plops off the side to snorkel.

That’s not how it went.

A jeep drove us 5 minutes to a tiny shallow bay, populated by a serious-faced man with Bond-villain glasses and a very small boat. He insisted that our startled group, weighed down with bags and towels, don life jackets (life jackets?!), and hoisted us into this stripped-down boat.

While we and a Japanese couple were trying to get comfortable, Villain cranked up the engine and we lurched immediately into speed-boat style motion. Wind and spray began whipping over the boat, which jumped at each small wave, threatening to whisk everyone’s possessions overboard.

I missed out on a bench seat, and so spent the journey lying flat on the front of the boat, clinging to everyone’s bags, shrieking in an undignified way and getting knocked about at each jolt.

The island, when we staggered onto it traumatised and nervously laughing, was beautiful (see Claire's facebook profile). We spent a leisurely hour spotting sea beasts (including a green serpentine fish lurking in seaweed, which Claire christened Dave). Or our group did. Hilariously and awkwardly, the Japanese couple – immaculately dressed, girl sporting a fashionable-looking red hat – were so unimpressed, they mutely stood with folded arms and lifejackets on for the whole hour waiting to be picked up…

23.4.13 - Indonesian Interlude 2 - it's much (Indon)easier to relax AND get sunburn here...

After our friendly intro to Indonesia at the ferry, we piled onto a shuttle bus. The view during the hour’s drive was interesting  – decent road (may only be so for the tourists; the side roads looked suspect), well-kept if not quite thriving villages, neat one-storey schools, an imposing army barracks and terrifying driving.

The Agro resort – ironic name, for while we were there, aggro I experienced none – was perfect for a one-day/one-night hit of ‘paradise’. The rooms left a little to be desired, but when you have a pool, plenty of sunbeds and a view like the above, what do you need a stuffy hotel room for?

Within minutes of arriving, we were in the pool chatting with the 7 other people in our party that had preceded us by a day. They had invited Charis, who had invited us in turn, on this jaunt, and so I expected them to be firm friends of long-standing. Wrong – most had met only 2 weeks before via an expat forum, and were now on holiday together. That’s how expats seem to roll. it was refreshing – it meant a diverse range of backgrounds and jobs, making for easy conversation.

Only issue was that the midday sun near the equator is not at all like the sun in, say, Greece. We had ignored the fact the locals were all taking cover, and slathered on factor 50 and hoped for the best. Despite this, by the time we got out of the pool 40 minutes later, Claire, Charis and I were hopelessly burnt.

I am still red now, 3 days later, and beginning to peel. Mad dogs and Englishmen etc.

22.4.13 - Indonesian Interlude 1 - Strike a pose

After a fun evening admiring Singapore’s skyline from a skyscraper-top bar, aided by multiple lychee martinis, we were up (painfully) early on the Saturday to move from Singapore Sojourn to 26-hour Indonesian Interlude.

Due to Singapore’s odd location, just a one-hour ferry ride away is the Indonesian island of Bintan. Given its proximity and the idyllic unspoilt scenery, white beaches and gleaming turquoise sea, it’s a common weekend destination for Singaporeans. We planned to join them.

We took the early ferry, passing through the now-visible cargo and container ships. An astonishing sight, they were arranged in endless, sweeping rows in all directions, making our ferry feel puny as it wound its way in-between their looming hulls.

As if by magic, an hour later we moored up at a cute little port with a jauntily coloured ‘Bintan Resorts’ splashed across the jetty.

Pictures and videos of the delights Bintan offered abounded, and the locals were terrifically cheerful and very friendly.

Reflecting this trend, Bintan’s mascot-cum-emblem was this pictured chirpy chappy, based on local indigenous face masks. He was on every poster, with an outfit for each activity – snorkel, safari hat, sunglasses, even a rose in his teeth. We could not resist mimicking Mr Bintan as we went through customs, causing much hilarity with the customs team who demanded a photo with us all (and so entirely forgot to check our stuff).

Warming to our theme, we got a local to take a picture of us copying a giant eagle outside the terminal. Which it appears is the Indonesian national emblem. Which could have been seen as pretty offensive. But the locals seemed fine with it. Which was a relief.

21.4.13 - Singapore Sojourn 3 - Mou Hoi sing, Ah!

This the Lau Pa Sat [I think, odd name hard to remember] food market, which is very close to Charis' house, and where we ate lunch.

I wanted to feature this not only because it looks fab - it used to be a wet market, but when the area filled up with hungry office workers galore the government switched its use - but because it because it highlights some differences to HK.

The market had tens of types of food available, and the cheerful hubbub every he lunching crowd gave it a welcoming atmosphere.

We ate at an Indian veggie joint, where had some of the best indian food I've had in ages. Every tiny dish on my thali plate was gorgeous.

So the differences this represents are:

- HK has every imaginable food type available, but not necessarily because there is a big community of that nation to cater for. Singapore is more ethnically diverse, and has lots of variety to cater for this. Hence the 'orfentick' Indian.
- Markets like this in HK were put in by the govt to tidy the streets up, but the restos in them overwhelmingly to cater to local Chinese, not expatty office types. The food there can be great, but a gamble with my fish aversion. Hence the title - my phonetic rendition of the key cantonese phrase 'no sea food!'.
- We saw lots of vegetarian restos in Singapore, and the food was slightly less fish-centric.
- The stallholders' English was excellent, as we found with almost everywhere we went. English is genuinely the joint first language in Singapore, whereas in HK it is the joint first language in name only in my view.

If I could transplant this market back into Second street in HK, it would be just about the perfect place to live...

20.4.13 - Singapore Sojourn 2 - when it rains, it (Singa)pours

I’m told that the Singaporean weather, as it's close to the equator, runs like clockwork. It's almost always 32 degrees, which drops to 26 occasionally (locals don jumpers), and there is usually a daily short, very sharp downpour.

As we left china town, the air became unbearably close, the threatened rain almost tangible. So we dashed for cover to ride it out. As you can see, these are no showers; 2 days later we walked through a similar storm for 10 metres and ended up soaked to the skin.

The other major weather feature was heavy smog. I was surprised to see the bay badly obscured, as I understood Singapore doesn't suffer like HK from pollution.

I was fascinated to hear that this is caused by Indonesia burning off thousands of acres of palm groves. It's apparently a regional sore point that sparks sophisticated international debate like this:

Malaysia+Singapore: Indonesia, can you pack that in? It's really manky (and ruins my nice views, Singapore adds)

Indonesia: But palm oil’s a huge chunk of our national income...besides, you burn lots of stuff too, Malaysia

Malaysia: Oh yeah I guess. Fair enough.

Singapore: Hey, no, not fair enough! I don't burn anything!

Malaysia+Indonesia: Yeah well you don't need to, you've got loads of dosh...so you and your precious view can sod off!

The other unbelievable dispute stems from Singapore getting caught pinching sand from uninhabited Indonesian islands to chuck in the bay to reclaim land...so what yesterday's boat building stands on used to be Indonesia.

Understandably, Indonesia is not very impressed. Now that is fair enough.

19.4.13 - Singapore Sojourn 1 - Baffled, but Impressed

On Thursday, straight after Claire had finished work we hopped into the wonderfully efficient airport express (marred by a fog-horn voiced mother doing her several children's homework over the phone: "Why are you doing a scrap book? Because you’re a child and children like doing scrapbooks, daahling") train to catch a plane to Singapore. This is a fairly common weekend trip here, but it's actually a 4-hour flight, which would be like 'nipping' to Istanbul from home.

We pitched up to Charis' - featured in a previous blog complete with Nescafé – place in the small hours, with plans to explore Singapore the next day.

I had to start off the blog recounting of the sights we saw with this. This tanker-sized boat on 3 buildings is out on a big spur of reclaimed land, so you can see it from almost everywhere. The idea is to mirror the astonishing number of ships that populate the water beyond, which are so numerous they disappear over the horizon.

I'd love to have been in the brainstorming meeting to concoct a fitting building to acknowledge the boats...sail shaped? Been done. Like a ships prow? Meh, boring. A suitably nautical name? Not even close. I've got it! We build a full sized ship and wang it on top of three towers, in which we'll stick casinos and shops and stuff. Done!

The title is to reflect how I felt about lots of stuff in Singapore - this chief among them...

18.4.13 - Jumbo the resto may be, but HK Island is not

This is a fairly fuzzy pic of the Jumbo floating restaurant in Aberdeen. I have seen it and the other floating restaurants for which the port is best-known a couple of times now.

I cannot yet report how good they are inside, because I have only looked on from afar, but I can see why they are so famed just from the exterior alone. They are an extraordinarily weird mash-up of boat/building-cum-Chinese Temple/cruise liner (Jumbo combo?).

However, my having seen them 3 times already has brought home to me how small HK Island actually is. It is very easy when talking to people who live in the HK Central, north coast, expatty bubble to get the impression that all of the main attractions on HK’s east coast/south coast are very far away and require day trips to see them. This is partly, I think, because many Central-living expats leave the strip very seldom, and partly because expats seem to think that public transport in HK is limited to the tube or taxis. Anything that involves a bus must be MILES away, I mean, God, do they even have, like, running water there?

Despite being on the island’s south side, I have got from my front door to these boats in just over 30 mins by bus.

So anyone thinking of visiting, never fear about getting to see the famous sights of the wider HK Island. But steel yourself to step foot on a bus or two.

PS - We are going to Singapore/Indonesia for the weekend, so there may be a break in the blog until Monday...but expect a blog for each lost day explaining what went on when we were away! I only note this because the last time I got behind, I got a message from one reader saying they were worried I must be ill or something to have got behind, and almost called Claire's parents to check!

17.4.13 - a physicist, a vice-chancellor and an archbishop walked into a bar...

Before we left home, I got in touch with the helpful Churchill College alumni office and asked if there was a network/society we could join to kickstart us with some contacts that had something substantial in common with us.

No society exists, but this email produced invites to the HK-leg of a uni bigwig tour of Asia, including Churchill’s master and the Uni’s Vice Chancellor.

So I spent lunch with the Master of Churchill (speaking above) and the evening (with Claire) in a 43^rd floor bar with hundreds of alumni and this distinguished bunch. Some interesting snippets:

-          The Churchill Master accidentally got tipsy before lunch. This made his lunchtime anecdotes more risqué than they might have been...

-          He bought some cracking historical morsels from the college archives, e.g. a photo of Thatcher with Reagan with a personal note from ‘Ron’ on it.

-          At both events, there were endearingly gentle, if unsubtle, fundraising attempts (“we’ve replaced the chairs in hall, you know, and for £400 you could name one after you…”)

-          Yes, that is ex-archbish Rowan Williams! Now Master of Magdalene. His sonorous voice – the archetypal ‘what a bishop should sound like voice – is impressive in person. It makes everything he says sound incredibly wise, even if he does look like Owl from Winnie-the-Pooh.

Nice event, pleasant nostalgia, good contacts…but I reflected afterwards that where this sort of event is a big deal at home, here, it’s so easy to get invited to stuff and create great networks from scratch, it did not feel quite so grand. Food for thought.

16.4.13 - kicking [frogs] around in the hills at night

Firstly, Claire wanted me to note that she is unhappy with this choice of picture for today! I apologise that it’s a bit pants…it was very dark, raining and I had no way to do a longer exposure pic.

I took it to mark Claire’s first foray into night-running. We decided to go out into the trails near-ish our flat together so that Claire could get a sense of whether she likes it without having to go on a mass-run, but also to try out a route I am devising. Next Friday, I will be setting (‘haring’) my first run, and I want to practice it to death to make sure I don’t get it wrong.

Success! The trail worked, and Claire took to the light and tricky footing conditions really well. It was strangely relaxing, as we saw only 3 other people for an hour plus.

For company – aside from unseen beasties rustling just off trail – we had rather cute little frogs. They were the size of a £2 coin, and appeared for a flash in the lamplight before hopping out of our way.

Claire went off our reptilian chums when, on a downhill section, we started seeing their large-apple-sized cousins. Not only was their jumping more alarming, but in the poor light Claire accidentally kicked one square on, propelling the poor thing into the gloom and causing her great anxiety due to the unexpectedly squidgy contact.

We spent the rest of the journey with my stifling laughter and Claire crying “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” every time we saw a fat frog in our path.

15.4.13 - a sneaky snake in the grass at the tennis

First swing of a tennis racquet in HK today. Many thanks to Andy who agreed to dust off his tennising skills too, as well as find and book the court and even take today’s photo on his phone.

I’ve told lots of people this already, but HK has a territory-wide ranking system, like for the tennis world rankings, that anyone can join. They even use it to select the national team. So my plan is to practise a bit, take some lessons, then enter a tournament, just to be able to say “I’m ranked 678^th at tennis is HK”. Sad I know.

But today’s subject is this great sign from the tennis club – not something you see in the UK. Credit where it’s due, though: this is genuinely useful signage, and impacted on how carefully we retrieved a wayward ball.

However, let me break down for you why it makes me laugh.

Sentence one – patrols? I really want to see a staff snake patrol. I did not see one. Unless they were super-stealthy.

Sentences 2-4 outline a hilarious counterfactual. So the worst thing you could do, according to these guidelines, is:

-          Tramp into every flowerbed available

-          See a snake.

-          Promptly panic

-          Tell no-one else about your sighting or your state of mind

-          Then, rather than run away or wallop it with your racquet, you try to catch the bugger with, what, an empty tennis ball tube?!

Thanks for letting me know to beware of snakes. But maybe the latter bits of advice are a bit unnecessary.

14.4.13 - HKCC

Second blog post concerning clubs in a matter of days. If you had asked last week if Claire and I were thinking of joining a club, we would have said it was unlikely. They have waiting lists years long and the joining/monthly fees are vertigo-inducing. Plus, we had vague notions about these clubs being exclusive, and maybe not our thing.

I have since eaten every one of those sentiments.

Neil, a long-term HK resident who hails from Liverpool, was kind enough to take us as guests to the season’s last match. The ground, as you can see [disclaimer – second picture not taken by me, forgot the camera! Sorry!] is immaculate, and has an incredible backdrop. The people we met seemed friendly and open. The food and bars were excellent. The club has every sport and activity imaginable available.

The exclusivity etc. is there. But I confess to falling a bit in love with the place.

So here’s the catch. To make it in, I will have to go to trials in August to try to get membership on merit. The level I watched was pretty high; and I will need to perform at my best to have a chance. Except I haven’t played regularly for ages, and have a poor record in trials.

I have painful memories of 4 years of failed county trials for Lincolnshire as a schoolboy. I always performed dismally, and felt sick with nerves…I never thought I’d have to do something like that again as an adult. And actually, more will be riding on now than when I was 14.

Better find some nets and get practicing…!

13.4.13 - A run, a river and a christening

Saturday saw us head off for a run that is longer and more challenging than our weekday running.

Claire, having been very nervous about making this jump, did brilliantly, completing the 10km course with a 1000ft climb in a decent time. I did the longer 14km+ course, and came in the first few back. So far, so good.

Usually, big runs like this have showers at the end. This time, the washing facilities consisted of a river. So, 50 sweaty runners picked their way down the rocky bank and gingerly washed in the ‘bracing’ water. Our tiny towels were inadequate for shielding our modesty, and while trying to subtly wriggle into some pants, I half-fell in the water, stubbed my toe, dropped some clothes in the river and full-frontally flashed at least 3 strangers.

The indignity, however, had barely begun. Hashers all get ‘christened’ with a hash name eventually. In the rugby-club-like booze fining fest (‘the circle’) there was much banter about Claire being the breadwinner. The locals nickname expat wives who don’t work, hire help, lunch, have massages, drink and bitch, tai tais. Recently, expats have begun to jokingly refer to people like me as ‘guy tais’. And so, as the drink flowed, momentum grew to christen me as ‘guy tai’. Could be worse – most names are shockingly rude. A non-sexual name is a bonus.

The christening involved kneeling in the middle of the circle, while an organiser interrogated me about whether I could live up to this name. After nervously agreeing that I could, she sealed the deal in the traditional way: spraying a bottle of Tsingtsao all over my face. Some went in my ear.

Guy tai: Dignity personified.

12.4.13 - Curtains up on our new home

What a difference a day makes. One day on from the boxes arriving and breathing life into the flat, all of our stuff is unpacked and set up.

As part of the ‘keeping people informed with what’s actually happening in our lives’ drive, I thought today’s picture should show what the flat looks like. Won’t be entertainment central today on the blog – think of me as the BBC, and today’s post is a public broadcasting informative piece.

This is the front room. It’s five metres long, and about 3 metres wide, so an odd shape for a living space. We have heard so much criticism of how crappy HK TV is that we’ve decided not to bother getting one. The upshot is the room is not centred around the TV for a change, so we can use this strange-shaped space better, orienting it out onto the terrace.

It’s a perfect blend of the familiar and the new. In the new camp, big, comfy sofa (huge improvement on our Brixton one), high stools for a breakfast bar, colourful new curtains we had made from scratch at a local shop and the ever-present aircon unit. On the familiar side, we have our lovely books+book case, our coffee table (made in India, bought by my aunt in Southampton, then given to us and now out here – a very well-travelled table), big lamp, rug, wedding photos and the super-comfy wingback chair.

 It feels like we have been here for ages, suddenly. It feels like home.

11.4.13 - Shipping In - can you guess what it is yet?

So our possessions finally arrived from the SEA, hooray! I’m not 100% sure how this has happened, as the dock strike seems to still be ongoing and talks have broken down again…this, though, means I can be pleased that our stuff has arrived but not at the expense of the failure of a nasty wage dispute.

The flat has, so far, been a bit of a chore. We (mainly me) have had to be in it just to let in workmen, utilities people and do various faffy-practicalities-based stuff, and it has contained zero home comforts. Basically, it has not felt like home yet, at all.

So it was wonderful yesterday to have our stuff wheel through the door in the same boxes photographed in the first post of this blog. From the moment the first familiar item emerged from a mound of packing paper, the flat felt more like home immediately.

We had particular fun waiting by the door as the packages arrived. We had a checklist of boxes, with a short description of their hidden contents. A removal chap would shout the number of the box as he came through the door, which we would then search the list for feverishly, then shout “A lamp, some cushions and some pictures, yaaaaaay!”

But there were a couple of packages that looked like a comedy cartoon wrapped version of themselves (like a bone wrapped under the Christmas tree for a dog), one of which is pictured in the second super-double-picture-bonus photo below…what could it be?

10.4.13 - drinks in the club bar, old boy?

Most professional expats, or at least those who stay for a decent chunk of time, usually join a ‘club’ of some description. Whether they are ex-colonial era institutions or not, the word gives off a whiff of empire, no matter how you say it.

Even the supposedly sports-focused ones provide a club house building with facilities entirely unrelated to sport for expat families to use. Membership is invaluable in terms of networking, and can be pretty prestigious.

I got my first taste of one yesterday, and I went straight – arguably – to the top: a networky drink in the Hong Kong Club. The most venerable of all the clubs (it doesn’t have to give a qualifier, like ‘boat’ or ‘foreign correspondents’ – it simply is The club), it opened at almost the same time the colony was founded, right next door to HSBC, on where the waterfront used to be.

The inside was swanky, the staff friendly and efficient, and some of the services – a 3-lane bowling alley that those in the bar could just pitch up and play on – pretty extraordinary.

However, I’m sure you will be equally surprised as I was to match such an institution with the building in the picture. The white stone, tower-topped, imperial column and arch filled structure that you would automatically picture was demolished in the 80s, and was replaced by this.

I’d walked past this quite a few times and not even noticed it before. Intriguing – book by its cover etc.

PS – had the best, most interesting and most encouraging work-search meeting I’ve had so far there. Phew. Watch this space…

09.4.13 - One, not Five hundred, Seven!*

The time to move into our flat is coming at last – hopefully Saturday.

I have had feedback that there’s not enough day-to-day stuff on the blog, so here’s a flat update. Our possessions were stuck on the sea for a long time due to a strike at the docks, stopping us moving in. The flat has had loads of work – painting, crack-filling, fixing odds and sods, repairing the fence that fell in the storm, a massive clean indoors and out. Further pics of a full flat will follow.

The item pictured is the first ‘nesting’ thing we’ve bought to try to make the flat ours. Claire said very early she wanted a hammock. This launched me on a funny correspondence with a ‘dai lok’ (‘big landmass’, Chinese mainland) businessman called Seven. I found him online, via a wholesale garden furniture site, and asked on the off-chance if he was willing to do just one.

After some heart-stopping misunderstandings where I very nearly ordered 500 hammocks, we got on the right wavelength. He fell over himself to be helpful, took our specific requirements, then built it from scratch. His emails are incredibly upbeat, covered in exclamation marks and full of endearing phrases – he wrote to me on 1st April to wish me a “Happy April Fools’ Day!!! Hahahaha!!!”; he finishes every email with “hope you have a nice time!”

So here it is. Built from scratch, assembled by me (:-s), 3 metres long, sent by post from China. All for under £100. Will be buying much more from China methinks…

*NB - Claire came up with this title, and wanted everyone to know this :)

08.4.13 - a local pub, for local people

Not a great picture, I was struggling with night-time lighting – but here is what will become our ‘local’. I don’t mean in the sense that we will be in it every day, but that it’s the closest bar by far – 90 seconds away tops.

Oddly, it’s done out to be a UK pub…but it’s not 100% there.

Things it gets right:

-          A proper bar – built around a corner, solid wood top, rail above head height for glasses

-          Bar stools

-          One of those metal rails that runs along the bottom of a bar – nice detail

-          Tiled section around the bar – old-fashioned, but nice

-          All day English breakfast

-          Premiership football on a loop. There’s even a signed shirt (might be QPR).

Things it gets wrong:

-          No ale

-          It replaces a few tables with the branded, plastic types (Hoegaarden) that only some UK pubs take, and always stick outside

-          Permanent bunting and a Union Jack as a curtain between kitchen and bar

-          A year-round tinsel wreath

-          Strange faux-leather studded green wall in the restaurant

-          Beer costs a fiver outside of happy hour. Oh no wait – on London prices, they’ve got that right.

I don’t mean the above as nasty criticism – I’ve been in twice now, and already feel bizarrely fond of it. Perhaps it’s supposed to look this way. SYP is mainly an HK-Chinese area; and aside from us, I’ve only seen HK people there. So maybe it’s more UK-themed than meant to appeal to a UK audience…

Bonus Thatcher section
Everyone else is taking to social media to throw in their tuppence about Thatcher’s death. I thought I’d have to note it in some way relevant to the blog.

Turns out, she was the PM that opened negotiations on the future of HK and the New Territories. The 1997 deadline originally applied only to the New Territories, so Thatcher wanted to keep HK itself as a colony, for longer. She couldn’t swing it. So as an antidote to all the ringing famous quotations, here’s what she said in later years about HK:

“What I wanted was a continuation of British administration…this proved impossible…it was very sad”.

She tried; she failed; she was sad. Human after all?

07.4.13 - Newsflash! UK does not have a monopoly on bad weather!

Nothing much going on today, so thought I’d use a picture from last week to make a more general point. In the UK, I found that when you think Hong Kong you think – hot; muggy, sure, but never bad weather. Does it even rain much there?

Actually, about 10 days ago came the shock: the weather here can be crappy. We are weeks away from the oppressive humidity (veteran expats almost gleefully rub their hands when they tell us newbies how TERRIBLE it will be), and have hit this weird period of permanently grey skies. The only time it’s not grey is when it turns black, and lashes down for two hours at a time with very strong winds (we had our first typhoon strength wind last week, which blew the bamboo fence at our flat down). The rain is so heavy it bounces back off the pavement, provoking forests of umbrellas to sprout around the city as in this picture. Again, longer term residents tell us that we ain’t seen nothing yet – apparently there is such a thing as ‘black’ rain, which is so heavy that you cannot walk in it.

It’s not actually been cold since we got here, and the rain lasts hours rather than going on all day. But the greyness and constant risk of getting soaked at short notice has been a bit of a surprise. You guys at home definitely win with snow in April, but I wanted to make you feel better by knowing that it’s not all roses here either!

06.4.13 - Self-catering in HK - mushroom for improvement

In HK, there are restaurants literally everywhere. If you look around, you can find almost any food you want in the world at any budget – you can get lunch of a big box of egg-fried rice with some tasty pork for about £1.80 near our flat, right up to meals in swanky hotels that cost £100s. Plus, eating out here does not immediately mean ‘unhealthy’. After all, a bowl of rice topped with some meat isn’t actually all that bad for you.

So, the temptation that most expats give in to is to eat out pretty much all the time. Claire and I have given in to this a shocking amount in these first weeks. In our defence, we were also pushed by high supermarket prices, our limited kitchenette, and our hatred of the weird burns-everything-the-moment-you-turn-it-on tendencies of our induction cooker.

However, this week we resolved to be better, and see if it is possible to eat in every night. This is partly an experiment in how this affects our day-to-day lives, and partly to see how much cheaper it works out.

So this is why today’s picture is simply of a mushroom. One odd thing visitors here will notice is the sheer array of types of mushroom stocked in every supermarket. This type is not only very tasty, but also has an odd surprise. Looks like hundreds of tiny mushrooms right? Wrong! All of the small growths here sterm out of one enormous root below. Weird, eh?

05.4.13 - The Chinese handshake

So I finally got involved in the ritual that happens any time you meet pretty much anyone you’ve never met before, at any time, in any circumstance. It was reaching the point of being genuinely embarrassing that I was unable to do it. The look of bewilderment, disdain and almost disgust I got when I could not participate, it was like the equivalent of someone putting out their hand in greeting in the UK and my responding by jumping up and down blowing raspberries.

I refer of course to the ‘Chinese handshake’, of exchanging business cards. With the entire world. I had to go and get some printed up for myself, despite not having a job to put on it or work for a business, so that when trying to network for career purposes I had something to hand over.

As you can see here, the way you do this in China/HK is to hand it over with both of your hands at once (and possibly even a very small bow), with your name facing them. I learned today that the reason for this two-handed gesture is to reassure the recipient of the card that you aren’t going to use your free hand to stab them while they look at our fascinating card. When on the receiving end, you have to also take it with two hands and look at it for a few seconds like it is the most interesting thing you have ever seen.

You can all expect to get one when you come visit…

04.04.13 - No Fishing...

Thursday 4^th was Ching Ming festival – so yes, that’s right, we got another public holiday here in HK. I should really have a picture here of the big Chinese graveyards set on the hills and the business that goes on during Ching Ming. It means something close to ‘clean bright’ festival; so it’s a day for visiting shrines and your relatives graves and giving them a bit of a sweep and a clean. Most exotically, everyone buys up paper ‘hell’ money to bury and/or burn around the graves, so that their family has some cash in the afterlife.

Sounds like interesting pictures, right? Well, Claire and I were off running again (they seem to do one every public holiday) on the island of Lantau, and I didn’t want to lug the camera all the way the grave yard on our route.

So instead, we have this amazing sign from near the ferry jetty. It expressly lays out dangerous methods of fishing that must not be practiced there (which intriguingly suggests it once was – see below and imagine the scenes). Trawling nets, drag nets on the right – so far so normal, ad yep, pretty bad. But the others are eye-popping, and their accompanying pictures pretty funny despite the cruel subject matter.

What?! You mean I can’t catch fish with dynamite?! Or with a massive hoover?! Or chuck poison in the sea and scoop up the fish! Or shove a massive electrical wire in the sea and harvesting the frazzled fish! Outrageous!

Trip to Macau Episode 3 – The Return of my Stake [never happened]

And so, the Macau trip reaches its third and final part.

Macau is most famed not for the lovely historical sights; not for the beautiful, weirdly European looking old-town, that Claire swears is just like Lisbon if you squint a bit; nor for the lovely beaches that Claire and I visited in the afternoon. Its principal source of local infamy is that it is, arguably, the gambling capital of Asia.

Pictured is the ridiculously ostentatious, architecturally preposterous Grand Lisbon. We didn’t actually do our small gambling stint in here, but we did go in for a look, and its exterior was the most unashamedly gaudy, glitzy Vegas-y nonsense we saw, so I thought I’d put it up.

Our foray into gambling came at the Venetian, which is part of the Vegas-strip proper in the southern island of Taipa in Macau. It is based on the Vegas casino of the same name, and gobsmacking in its scale and surreality. A fake bridge of sighs, Marks Square, set of canals and even proper, singing gondoliers.

The gambling area was fun and intoxicating, but with our meagre sum to bet and touristy air we felt like country bumpkins. We lost half our tiny stake on one foolish bet, and the rest over a series of piddling, ill-advised flits from pontoon to craps to roulette. We will certainly go again, but with a little more money, more savvy and in full knowledge that whilst this is what Macau is famous for, the beaches and the history knock the socks off this Vegas-lite any day of the week.

PS – in my first double picture bonus, given how many fans of the nescafe photos I’ve had, here is Claire in the entrance hall of the Venetian, can in hand…

02.4.13 - Trip to Macau Episode Two - the Local Chinese Religion Strikes Back

Yesterday’s picture focused on the biggest Macanese Catholic site; I thought it fair to look at its Chinese counterpart today.

This is a section of the A Ma temple. Not sure who she is? I refer you to yesterday’s entry – she’s the mysterious girl who occurred to the men sailing on the sea of the beautiful day, who caused the storm to cease, but just disappeared, remember? Jolly good.
It was similar to the Man Mo temple Claire and I visited last week – icons, incense, drums, bells. The main differences were three-fold:
Size – this was tens of times bigger. Every nook and cranny of the rocky hill the temple is on seemed to have a shrine wedged into it.

Scale – everything was larger. The drum you can see here is absolutely huge, while the large rods stacked up beside it are the biggest incense sticks I’ve ever seen. They have a welding-style blow-torch to light them.

The tourists – Man Mo’s non-worshipping tourists were white, and falling over themselves to be quiet and respectful. Here, throngs of mainland Chinese charged up and down the hill looking for the best vantage points for photos in packs, talking very loudly, and woe betide you if you got in their way. Hong Kongers whinge loudly and often about mainlanders in HK. This was the first time I saw their point.

As we left, the temple really did ‘strike back’, causing Claire and I to yelp and jump in the air in fright. In Catholic churches, incense, icons and bells there may be; but random fire crackers there are none.