RedChina

Sign in the Hong Kong Tsuen Wan metro station.



Access stairways to the parking lot nearby.



A small fishing village on the less-densely inhabited side of Lantau, Hong Kong.



Same place: A streetside altar. "Street" means a narrow alley wide enough to let two people pass.



Steelworks on an overpass in Tsuen Wan.



Somewhere downtown.



Another alley-side shrine, this time in a New Territories village.



Shenzhen train station.



A café in a Shenzhen cultural quarter.

HK 2007 - Return: HK, Doha, FFM, BT/HA5, BT/GSP

Back in Doha:
After one week of sweltering heat, strange sounds, and chicken feet, the 10-yrs-past-graduation-reunion-trip to Hong Kong with Hi-Khan is coming to a close.



The last days were so full of sights&sounds that I'm constantly surprised when browsing through my pictures folders. Lots of places I haven't seen before (this having been the third time for me in HK), we managed to check off a long list of things I wanted to see, Hi-Khan had a long-time-no-see family reunion himself, and much more. Pictures will follow.




Am now safely back on the way to BT, with connection to GSP via Doha, FFM and HA5.

HK 2007 - Grand Hyatt

I can barely walk.

Maybe it's the sudden onset of age, but this "holiday" is made up of hurting legs much more than any previous one, including the last in Italy, which was filled with much more walking even. But maybe it's the jetlag, extreme heat/humidity, and strange food altogether.

However, there's nothing to complain about the trip itself.
Today, Hi-Khan and me finally made true the promise we agreed on ten years ago. We had our tea/coffee in the Grand Hyatt lobby, with live music and a grand view on the harbour and Central lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree. In a flash of introspection, we both found we mostly finished all steps in the last decade successfully. It was probably the most interesting one in our lives, although the consensus is that the next one will be the most decisive. And we tried to settle on a destination to meet in after the next decade, in 2017. (One idea so far is Buenos Aires, on account of neither of us ever having been there, and improbable to go there otherwise.)



I tried to soothe myself by buying a huge stack of cheap VCDs and DVDs. We went to Chungking Mansion, shoe stores ("Sneakers. Wenn's mal wieder länger dauert.") for Hi-Khan, electronics stores for both of us, took millions of pictures, and walked and walked, with AC being our tour guide, dubbed "TomTom" by Hi-Khan.

HK 2007 - Shenzhen

Yesterday was Shenzhen. Looks astonishingly like Beijing... it's true there's no heritage, but untrue about no culture.
Furthermore, there's a real deluge of pictures, but they need to be sorted first.

Today it's to the ManMo-Temple (with one of them being the God of War, the other being the God of Civil Servants) and the Sitting Buddha on Lantau.

HK 2007 - Business

The whole business class is humming with the engines adjusting the individual seats. In fact, when the seat doesn't fit you, when you feel uncomfortable, it just means you haven't figured out the appropriate setting yet.
"How may I help you, Sir?" (note "may" and capital "S" in "Sir) on the press of a button.
There was compulsory caviar sandwich shortly after takeoff, but the rest of the meals can be ordered to your heart's desire from a menu whose size which would humble several restaurants.
All this comfort, however, doesn't make the air more humid. So when I felt the onset of a nosebleed, I moved to the lobby with QiLin/PingGuo, which I have all to myself at this time (around 06:00 a.m. board time). Not for long, however, as the First Class will soon wake up, and for us from Business it's "the other lounge, Sir". The first-class lavatory is a room with a view, btw.




Breakfast was brought to bed, starting with an energizer drink made from freshly-pressed orange, milk, and oats. Then I ordered a Chinese breakfast tofu, however: "Sir, all of it is inclusive. There is no choice within the Chinese breakfast." So I had everything, starting with green tea and dim sum and continuing with chicken, rice, grilled lobster, and my tofu. In fact, the lobster was so large at first mistook it to be tofu. The chopsticks were everything but single-use; heavy and brass-plate-ended they'd make any home collection happy. The wonton soup was not too bad, either. Same as the abalone congee the evening before.

HK 2007 - Day 1: I/O, Doha, &onwards

2007-06-18
11:30
Idar-Oberstein

The first day of the 10yr Reunion Trip starts out in I/O with sunshine, birds singing, buses on time, people asking for the destination of my trip, and strawberry cake with coffee right across from the train station, idling away the last half hour before leaving.

On Qatar Airways: No green tea right away, but BTO/brewed-to-order... highly stunning.

In Doha Internation Airport, Qatar: Free WiFi. Free as in free beer, no idea about free speech. Oh, and there's free power.
Aha. And just got upgraded to Business Class. Aha aha. Oh, and the flight FFM->Doha was right in the emergency seat aisle, meaning lots of legroom. Aha. In case you ask, Qatar Airways seems to rule.

However, now about one point five gazillion people streamed into the departure hall, 1/2 of them using all kinds of gadgets (just checked that) to access the WiFi, thus totally bogging down the connection. Or the connection quality. Or whatever.

...

Now that I'm thinking of it... what an improbable luck that I've been idling at the right gate at the right time to be found by this airport ground personnel employee. Hm hm hm. When travelling, there seems to be a lucky charm about me. That's only half a joke. Italy's been a close call very often, and there's been lots of luggage involved then.

(female employee) "Are you flying alone?"
(me) "Yes..."
(female employee) "Why?"
(me) "?!?"

10 Years Ago

Ten years ago, on June 23rd, 1997, PJS passed his final Abitur (aka high school graduation) exam at the Gymnasium an der Heinzenwies.

Three written examinations (Math, English, and Physics) were followed by one oral examination (in Geography) on that day. The weeks and months before, everybody was delving deep into the mysteries of the final grade calculation scheme, and was busy extrapolating their Abitur marks.

One year earlier, in 1996, my Dad and me had been on a world tour together, leading us to a whole bunch of places, roughly following the footsteps of "80 Days around the World". Since my Dad had taken tons of pictures and video footage, I had a chance to give a short presentation to my geography class after our return when we were - by chance - discussing the socio-political-economic status and development of Hong Kong. It seems my teacher recalled that when deciding on a final exam topic for me, and this allowed me to excel ("brillantly shine", in case you didn't get my point) in that cross-examination.

One week later, on July 1st, 1997, Hong Kong was in the limelight of international news, as the 100-years old lease of Great Britain for the New Territories was ending, and Hong Kong itself was returned to the Chinese mainland then. In short, it was HK's big days, both on a world and personal scale. (Oh, my mom had visited that place in the meantime, too.)

So after our Abitur and in the turmoil that engulfed BA and me because of a less-than-warmly-received criticizing feature of ours in the Abitur newspaper, she, me, and Higgins decided to have our own, alternative 10-years reunion. We'd not meet up with everybody else (provided there'd be a big-scale reunion at all), but discreetly have a sip of coffee or 5-o'clock tea in the lobby of the Grand Hyatt in HK - provided it'd still exist by then.

PJS, my then-gf, and Higgins (probably in 2003)

Now it's June 2007. Time to 'fess up.

Higgins and me will go through. All the way, straight to the bottom of that long-ago agreed-upon cup of coffee. We'll lift our cups in reverence to BA, who won't be able to join us, and rejoice in old memories, wading through the muck which accumulated around our feet during those ten years, and soberly ponder our fates, all the while musing about the ways of the world.

And sure, have a jolly good time, too.


It will start 30 minutes from now, with PJS running down the same side alley to the main street of Tiefenstein, trying to catch the bus. The bus to the train, the train to the airport, the plane to one week of catching up with old plans.