cough cough

This story is something of a worry, particularly today - the air pollution index is 112, or "very high". Here's what we can expect:

People with existing heart or respiratory illnesses may notice mild aggravation of their health conditions. Generally healthy individuals may also notice some discomfort.

Kowloon is hardly visible from HK island through the haze.

Year of the Golden Ox

Here's a personality summary of everyone who will be born between Monday 26th January 2009 and 14 February 2010:

Positive Traits
Responsible, dependable, honest, caring, honourable, intelligent, industrious, practical
Negative Traits
Petty, inflexible, possessive, dogmatic, gullible, stubborn, critical, intolerant, materialistic

Just realised that means that CNY will be on Valentine's Day next year. The year that has just passed was the year of the Rat; this means that Romilly and Astrid will be big fans of pork, peas and cabbage!

Kung Hei Fat Choi!

Well, that' s a bit early actually. Lunar New Year approaches, bringing with it the cultural minefield that is lai see. These innocuous-looking red packets are destined to be my downfall in the world of Chinese etiquette. However, I have extensively consulted both gweilo and Chinese colleagues, and come to a few conclusions. I'll give you the vague outline; if you want to read an amusing take on the whole situation, I suggest you mosey on over to Batgung, an awesome site kept up to date by two expats, Mr Tall and Mr Balding.

1. Married people are expected to give to unmarried people. Fair? I'll let you be the judge.
2. You are expected to give to any "subordinates" at work - I don't have any, so that bit's easy for me.
3. You have 15 days after CNY (which is Monday 26th Jan this year) to present the red packets.
4. Here’s the hard part – the packets have to be stuffed with money. How much to give? How to distinguish the red packets you’ve filled with $50 notes from the ones you’ve filled with $10 notes? New notes (the done thing) or used notes (the environmentally-friendly thing)? As I said, minefield.
5. Another issue is the recipient list – lots of people at the office, which really requires you to know whether all your colleagues are married. Not only colleagues, but other staff at the office. So that’s the super-friendly bin dude, the desk-cleaning lady, the aggressively smily loo-cleaning lady, and the surly vacuuming lady. And not only them, but also colleagues’ children, who will pay a lovely visit at some point. I’m ok with this bit, because people quite often bring their kids into the office, and everyone knows them already. Also lots of non-office service people – the (3) doormen at our building, our cleaner, the building cleaner, lift repair men, post man….

It’s tricky. Everyone’s getting reeeeally friendly this time of year, the doormen leap up to snatch the door open for you, and the bin dude has learnt to say “You’re welcome” in English. Actually, he almost certainly knew that before, just didn’t try it out on me.

It’s also a pretty austere time. While I’m not pretending that HK is as gloomy as the UK sounds, people are still tightening belts, or whatever the phrase is. So, it could turn out to be an expensive fortnight. Oh, and Ross and I both have to give packets to all the service people individually, we can’t give as a couple. Having said that, the service here makes life pretty luxurious so I am perfectly happy to hand over a few packets in return for the (almost universally) courteous and excellent service we get all over the place.

Photos

All our HK photos are on Flickr, here....

China Town given answers

Have a look at this BBC story about a public well-being survey. Cheating huh?!

Great Grandaddy

Between Christmas and New Year I had a few days where I was still on holiday but Sarah wasn't. I therefore took the opportunity to pop round to the other side of the valley and try one last time to find Granny's father's grave. I bumped into a historian there who was documenting people in the graveyard who came from Devon - quite a task! He was very helpful though, explained where I could look people up to find graves.

Suddenly everything was a lot more simple - a 10 minute wait while Norman Pope was looked up, and then I was armed with a map detailing the location to within 10 metres or so.



And so here it is, a very handsome grave stone of a fallen cross. The stone is quite difficult to read after 90 years of lichen, but here's proof it's the right one:
It's a lovely spot, although there is the noise of a road nearby (a Hong Kong hazard it's pretty hard to avoid on the island).

Chi Lin Nunnery and Kowloon Walled City

We headed over to Kowloon-side the other day to visit Chi Lin Nunnery, near Diamond Hill MTR. It's an incredibly peaceful place - as you step inside the huge wooden walls of the first courtyard, the traffic sounds start to fall away. Once you move further into the complex, you could almost forget you're in Kowloon. There's also a very peaceful garden on the other side of the road (just don't try to go in the out gate, or proceed in the wrong direction)

"The Chinese new-year exodus is the world's largest annual migration"

Just to give you an idea of the scale of Chinese New Year...

Panda nonsense

I came across this while I was looking for a video of one of the Ocean Park pandas attacking a keeper. Please look, it'll make you smile.

Oh yes, one other thing...

A Hong Kong born baby has been infected with H9N2 virus - bird flu. There are more details in the news here. Bad news. Tamiflu at the ready.

(Vis a vis chicken prices: it might help to know that a catty is 605 grams)

Happy 2009!

Times Square, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, originally uploaded by Sarah K Moore.

Now that I have gainful employment, I spend my days in the retail mecca that is Times Square. (I should add that the office is in the building, I don't actually spend all day shopping) It's something of a monolith, here's one of the pics I took of the inside back in February.

The slightly freaky totem pole figures (=Christmas decorations) by Carrie Chau in and around Times Square have been removed, to make way for hundreds of scary-looking crowd barriers and a big stage. Times Square is due to be a big venue for tonight's New Year's Eve celebrations, with a big countdown, and possibly fireworks, not sure. The Standard, a free paper here (roughly equivalent to the London Shite and whatever the other rag was called) has more details here.

We're planning a night in with a friend. Basically now that we have an oven we are hugely over-excited about baking, roasting, grilling, crisping, all those things you can't do on a hob, so we'll be making pizzas. I know that many of you were deeply disappointed by our failure to produce the promised Christmas Pizza, so think of this as recompense. Hopefully we will then go to Carol's friend's office at Exchange Square to watch the fireworks over the harbour. Only 5 minutes long, not a patch on Mod-Autumn Festival's 23 minutes! I think we could probably see quite a lot of the fireworks from our flat - maybe I'll leave the webcam on for your delectation.

Of course 2009 here starts at 4pm at home, so I don't imagine you'll be feeling too festive at that time...however, midnight at home will be 8am tomorrow morning for us. Actually we probably won't be feeling too festive then either.

Hiking HK style

We went hiking on Saturday with Elaine, a friend of Ross's from work. We started in Happy Valley, walked up to Wong Nai Chung Gap, and then headed off on Stage 5 and 6 of the Hong Kong trail. It was a seriously challenging climb for poor little me - lots of steps and steep inclines. The tragic news is that I have "flip flop disease" (seriously) which means that I should avoid walking too much. Obviously I'm ignoring that advice! We ended up near Stanley, where we went for yummy lunch.

The other big news is that we bought an oven this weekend, and Ross demonstrated his culinary prowess with a superb roast dinner. It's a super-multi-purpose oven, which can do anything automatically. Steam, crisp, cook, grill, microwave - just press "Go" and adjust the "doneness" buttons.

We started Ross's birthday with the obligatory bacon butties (bacon courtesy of the "crisp plate" in the new oven!), then spent too much money on a new amp and speakers before a Nepalese dinner prefaced by the customary espresso martini.

White Elephant in the Mouse Pad

Christmas came early to Disney HQ last week. The focus of the festivities was the White Elephant – the idea is that everyone brings a wrapped present to add to the pile. It has to be something that’s new, but you don’t want. So a free bottle of washing up liquid from Watson’s would do, as would freebies from suppliers and unwanted gifts. Being a generous soul, I contributed an entirely unwanted, but pretty high quality gift – the Burberry passport cover that I got free as a “Christmas present” when I worked there. Slightly backfired, as everyone thought it was a Shenzhen rip off.

Anyway, everyone stands in a big circle around the table full of presents, and each person gets a turn to pick a present. However, you can either pick one off the table, or nick something that somebody has already got. Not really the Christmas Spirit is it?! Each gift can only be stolen three times, The most popular gifts were a teddy bear (?!), an X Men jacket (supplier freebie) and a Dior necklace (which was quite likely to be a Shenzhen rip off). It was….an experience.

We also had some amazing home made cakes and cookies, proving that not everyone in Hong Kong is oven-less.

Update

The other Mrs M tells me that the parachute dudes were actually paragliding, which is what the other Mr M does in his spare time. That's just crazy.

Here's a video to demonstrate perfect landing technique (maybe)

Crimbo on the Beach

Well, the holidays are here, and thankfully Murray the Ming Aralia has come back from the dead just in time (just long enough?) to serve as our Christmas tree, in the interests of saving us 650 bucks on a freshly-cut US one.

We've decked the halls, in a tasteful manner of course, posted the presents and even sent the cards. All that's left to do now is open 2 more windows on the Advent Calendar, belt out some carols at St John's Cathedral, avoid all retail- (and therefore crowd-) heavy areas, and manage one more day at work. Then we can enjoy Christmas Lunch at the Press Room, before calling you guys nice and early while you are opening your stockings! The Big Man (as Oliver calls him) doesn't know that we don't have a chimney, so we will be stocking-less, if you know what I mean, this year. Actually, FC might be suffering a bit of credit crunch himself. Either that or our tenants will be extra lucky this year.

We spent the day on the beach yesterday, chillaxing. It was about 24 degrees, with a bit of a breeze so there were lots of people hang gliding, or whatever you call it - you know, the dudes who jump off a cliff with a parachute? Anyway, there were lots of those, and quite a few kites, mostly being flown from sticks poked in the sand. Two of the parachute dudes laned on the beach, which caused quite a kerfuffle. Other than watching that, we mostly tried to figure out the rules of the popular ballgame played by all teenage groups at the beach.

Sisyphus, Bauble and Syble are in Oz, Carol's in the Philippines, and Tom & Rachel, Tom & Cathy, Anthony and everyone else we know are currently chasing each other across the skies to get back to Old Blighty for Crimbo. So it'll be something of a lonely one for us, but we hope to have lots of lovely webcam chats so you can admire our decos.