Hey, you're always asking me where I find stuff...
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
T8 @ 11pm
Fengshen was supposed to miss us, but now it looks like it will get close enough for the Observatory to hoist signal number 8.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Dragon Boats!
June 8th was Dragon Boat day in Hong Kong (and in many other places around Asia) - and for the first time I participated in the Dragon Boat races at Stanley. A friend asked me to be on the Bloomberg team and we started training a couple of months before the Festival. Training mostly consisted of getting into a boat, paddling around off Stanley Main Beach for about two hours and then hitting the pub for "carbo-loading". So I was a bit worried that we weren't getting to the right level of readiness for the races. Fortunately we had a different trainer for the last two weeks and we actually did some competitive work.
Sunday June 8th arrived and I was up at 5.30am to make the team bus in Central. We headed down to Stanley, got a lift to the Bloomberg junk (the biggest in the bay), got changed and headed back to the beach for our first race at 9am. Which was a bit of a disaster - we came 7th out of 12. Back on board the junk the first beers of the day were already being drunk(!), and we held a post-mortem to work out what went wrong. I didn't listen to the post-mortem, and at 11.30am we headed back to the beach for our next race, which was make or break.
At the beach we got into our boat and headed off to the starting line.
I'm wearing the green cap.
We were rowing past the line of linked junks, which were in full party-mode.
After a bit of waiting the marshall fired the starting gun and we were off. We were a little slow off the mark but still in the first five. It felt better this time.
For a while we seemed to be trailing the leaders but we stuck to our plan (which was to go fast, them slow, then fast until the end), and eventually we overhauled the boat to our right.
In the end we came third in that race, which amazingly got us into the Men's Final, in which we came sixth. Not bad!
Sunday June 8th arrived and I was up at 5.30am to make the team bus in Central. We headed down to Stanley, got a lift to the Bloomberg junk (the biggest in the bay), got changed and headed back to the beach for our first race at 9am. Which was a bit of a disaster - we came 7th out of 12. Back on board the junk the first beers of the day were already being drunk(!), and we held a post-mortem to work out what went wrong. I didn't listen to the post-mortem, and at 11.30am we headed back to the beach for our next race, which was make or break.
At the beach we got into our boat and headed off to the starting line.
I'm wearing the green cap.
We were rowing past the line of linked junks, which were in full party-mode.
After a bit of waiting the marshall fired the starting gun and we were off. We were a little slow off the mark but still in the first five. It felt better this time.
For a while we seemed to be trailing the leaders but we stuck to our plan (which was to go fast, them slow, then fast until the end), and eventually we overhauled the boat to our right.
In the end we came third in that race, which amazingly got us into the Men's Final, in which we came sixth. Not bad!
Friday, May 16, 2008
Abattoir - I live next to one
It's not a working abattoir - but it's now being torn down and well, the noise is a little draining. To take my mind off it I wrote this ridiculous song and spliced together a video.
Thursday, May 08, 2008
8 Weeks (or so) To Go
It's been a while, but I thought I'd better summarise a few things.
1) In about 8 weeks (maybe one or two more) our son will arrive. We're attending antenatal classes at the moment, which are going very well except for the fact that I have to keep on leaving the room owing to an inherited condition known as "being a fainter". I actually inadvertently swore at the midwife conducting the sessions when she asked me if I was OK. I felt very bad about that. We are preparing for the arrival of Mr Chocolate Milk (our current best name - hey, it beats Buscopan) by trying to fit more stuff into our tiny apartment.
2) Hong Kong is finally starting to heat up, just in time for Dragon Boat season. I am participating in the Bloomberg team, which is interesting in that most of the people in the team don't appear to work for Bloomberg. We head down to Stanley every Saturday afternoon, train for two hours, and then Bloomberg pays for about 3 hours of eating and drinking at one of the many pubs in Stanley. I think we may actually be getting slower every week. Also our trainer doesn't really seem too bothered about getting us ready for competition. He delights in pointing out other teams on water - "Those guys train three times a week, all year!" - but he couldn't really care less about our performance. I guess we're not in it to win it.
3) The band is a bit more active at the moment which is nice - we're playing a gig on Saturday night with a group from Tasmania called "The Green Mist". Should be fun.
4) Our landlady is a piece of work - she rang up today trying to get us to pay an extra HK$10 per month to cover the cost of the receiving fee her bank charges when I transfer the money into her account.
That is all.
1) In about 8 weeks (maybe one or two more) our son will arrive. We're attending antenatal classes at the moment, which are going very well except for the fact that I have to keep on leaving the room owing to an inherited condition known as "being a fainter". I actually inadvertently swore at the midwife conducting the sessions when she asked me if I was OK. I felt very bad about that. We are preparing for the arrival of Mr Chocolate Milk (our current best name - hey, it beats Buscopan) by trying to fit more stuff into our tiny apartment.
2) Hong Kong is finally starting to heat up, just in time for Dragon Boat season. I am participating in the Bloomberg team, which is interesting in that most of the people in the team don't appear to work for Bloomberg. We head down to Stanley every Saturday afternoon, train for two hours, and then Bloomberg pays for about 3 hours of eating and drinking at one of the many pubs in Stanley. I think we may actually be getting slower every week. Also our trainer doesn't really seem too bothered about getting us ready for competition. He delights in pointing out other teams on water - "Those guys train three times a week, all year!" - but he couldn't really care less about our performance. I guess we're not in it to win it.
3) The band is a bit more active at the moment which is nice - we're playing a gig on Saturday night with a group from Tasmania called "The Green Mist". Should be fun.
4) Our landlady is a piece of work - she rang up today trying to get us to pay an extra HK$10 per month to cover the cost of the receiving fee her bank charges when I transfer the money into her account.
That is all.
Monday, April 21, 2008
A brief list
Sham Shui Po in general, and Ap Liu Street in particular is a place that I always enjoy visiting. Here are some of the reasons why (in no particular order):
- Very pedestrian-friendly, which means it's a bit quieter than other similar places, such as Mong Kok;
- The stalls selling lighting are so ridiculously bright that you can't look at them even in daylight!
- If you really need some, you can buy used dental equipment;
- More torches and binoculars and electrical parts and tools in one place than anywhere else;
- The computer mall with its excellent collection of pirated DVDs and games;
- The generally relaxed pace;
- kittens.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Mystery Solved
On the weekend the South China Morning Post revealed the secret of the missing vegemite (which I can't link to because the SCMP is still living in the Dark Ages).
Apparently, Japanese foodies have discovered that the taste of Vegemite has the flavour profile of something like miso - it has the "fifth taste" - umami, which is kind of the taste of kelp. It's a lot more complicated than that - read the Wikipedia article for a better description. Anyway, these Japanese foodies discovered that Vegemite is available in Hong Kong and Singapore (due to the large Australian expat population) and so when they come to Hong Kong on food tours they raid the supermarkets and buy as much vegemite as they can find!!!!
Apparently, Japanese foodies have discovered that the taste of Vegemite has the flavour profile of something like miso - it has the "fifth taste" - umami, which is kind of the taste of kelp. It's a lot more complicated than that - read the Wikipedia article for a better description. Anyway, these Japanese foodies discovered that Vegemite is available in Hong Kong and Singapore (due to the large Australian expat population) and so when they come to Hong Kong on food tours they raid the supermarkets and buy as much vegemite as they can find!!!!
Sunday, April 06, 2008
Grim portent of the future?
Those of you who read the Age might have come across this story about the Great Hong Kong Vegemite Shortage of 2008. Fear not - I realised this was happening about 6 weeks ago when I saw that in my local supermarket the Vegemite wasn't being restocked. I immediately sprang into action and every time I passed a supermarket would go and in and assess the situation. Eventually I managed to snag the last available jar at the Park'n'Shop International in Sheung Wan (it was hiding behind a stack of Marmite - I had to climb the shelves to get to it), and the last two plastic squeezy tubes at the CitySuper in the IFC Mall. I was going to leave one but then I realised that it could be months before normal Vegemite services resumed. And finally we organised for a visiting colleague to bring a big jar over from Australia (which was a good thing - we've already finished the jar I found and Vegemite doesn't taste quite right out of a plastic squeezy tube).
In other news:
In other news:
- there is a carrier battlegroup parked outside our window (I'd take a photo but they are hidden in the smog);
- I experienced Dragon Boating for the first time when I joined the Bloomberg Dragon Boat team yesterday afternoon;
- China is going mad because of the Olympics and will no longer let people use multiple entry visas.
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