Yearly Archives: 2003

Museums Of Hong Kong

Went to the Hong Kong Museum of History, and learned that Hong Kong peo­ple suck at fight­ing. Out of the two wars we were in, we won zero and lost two. First was against those damn British in 1839, tak­ing Hong Kong from China so they could have free trade of their soul­less opi­um. Then there was the Japanese inva­sion in the ear­ly 1940’s which made Hong Kong a liv­ing hell for almost every­one there, although one could say that the Brits were respon­si­ble for defend­ing one of their colonies. I can sort of see what the return to China has done to the exhibits in the sub­tle hints of pro­pa­gan­da found in the lat­er gal­leries.

Also went to the Honk Kong Science Museum, which is a com­plete rip-off of the Ontario Science Centre (or is it the oth­er way around?), from the exper­i­ments to the inter­ac­tive con­trap­tions. I had actu­al­ly seen almost all of the HKMS already just from my younger vis­its to the OSC, and most of it was exact­ly the same. I won­der if there was a col­lab­o­ra­tive effort with Ontario to cre­ate a stan­dard­ized sci­ence muse­um.

Sitting In The Airport

I’m sit­ting in the Vancouver air­port, wait­ing for the con­nect­ing flight to board. It’s 2:08 am back home, 11:08 pm here, 3:08 am in Hong Kong, and the ter­mi­nal is almost emp­ty. I caught scat­tered glimpses of the lit cities on the way over, lights bright and del­i­cate under­neath like rows upon rows of gild­ed chains.

A loud Julian sat next to me on the flight, telling me about his accom­plish­ments in the IT sec­tor, a bright young work­er who’s made his way into a great posi­tion in a recov­er­ing econ­o­my. Only the sound of suit­case wheels grind­ing on grooved floors can be heard here, with an occa­sion­al announce­ment over the loud­speak­er.

I can feel myself get­ting excit­ed, final­ly, sit­ting here remem­ber­ing all the great times I’ve had in Hong Kong. The fire­works, the fam­i­ly, the food.

I Mentally Outgrow My Clothes

Found a great stark red dress shirt at Banana Republic yes­ter­day that I want­ed to pur­chase right then and there, but unfor­tu­nate­ly I don’t have any mon­ey any­more. I’m flat out broke, going into debt for the first time in my life, unless I decide to take up a tem­po­rary job in January instead of going back to school. The first thing I’m going to buy when I get a job is new clothes. Running across that shirt gave me a great idea though; I’m going to try intro­duc­ing more reds into my wardrobe. I cur­rent­ly only have a maroon golf shirt, and most of my clothes don’t seem to match my cur­rent moods/outlook. The pre­vi­ous year has been very neu­tral kha­ki and navy blue, while the year before that was most­ly blacks and greys.

The only real down­side to con­stant men­tal change is that it seems like I’m out­grow­ing my wardrobe every year.

The Hong Kong Packing List

Things I’m tak­ing on my trip to Hong Kong include: