Posts tagged with "Hong Kong"

Personal Horizon

Andrew and Alex are going on a back­pack­ing trip to Europe until the end of this month. They’ve request­ed a list of peo­ple inter­est­ed in receiv­ing infor­ma­tion and details about their trip, so nat­u­ral­ly I let them know that I’d like to have some doc­u­men­ta­tion dur­ing their jour­ney.

And while I under­stand their moti­va­tions for try­ing to have such an inter-per­son­al cor­re­spon­dence, I don’t under­stand why it has to be because of a trip.

Isn’t every­day life inter­est­ing enough to talk about? Can’t one learn as much on the bus ride to work as being some place com­plete­ly for­eign? I nev­er decid­ed to make an extra blog or some­thing for my trip to Hong Kong/China/Macau, even though it was still a some­what life-chang­ing event. To me, the month was anoth­er part of my sched­ule, some­thing I had planned to do. It was as sig­nif­i­cant as any­thing else going on in my life, or maybe I should say, any­thing else going on in my life was as sig­nif­i­cant as that. I hope I nev­er have to rely on trav­el to con­sid­er my life impor­tant enough to dis­cuss with some­one.

Perhaps, I feel like I still have so much to learn about every­thing else that I would gain as much just think­ing in the show­er as I would being exposed to new things. Every day can be excit­ing. Every sec­ond, there’s a chance to learn and grow. There are still so many things to fig­ure out.

And I prob­a­bly con­sid­er myself to be one of the biggest.

Love Them Or Leave Them

I have a love/hate rela­tion­ship with Hong Kong films. I’m glad that OMNI 2 has become an eth­ni­cal­ly diverse chan­nel, but every time a Hong Kong movie comes on, I’m not sure whether or not I should make some pop­corn or put an axe through the TV.

I love the movies because they remind me of every sin­gle thing about Hong Kong that has so poignant­ly affect­ed me (and I feel smart when I get the jokes).

I hate the movies because 90% of them end up being crap like Love Undercover 2: Love Mission. It’s all a reminder of the sad state of affairs that Hong Kong pop­u­lar cul­ture is in right now.

The Stereotypes Are True

Coming back here has made me real­ize how insane the dri­vers are in Hong Kong. It takes as much guts to walk down the street as it does to dri­ve, back there. The peo­ple with cars are amaz­ing at maneu­vers, and there’s a lot of forc­ing into lines since peo­ple will gen­er­al­ly not let some­one in (although it’s much, much worse in China). I think I under­stand the basis behind the entire bad Chinese dri­ver stereo­type; since the cost of own­ing a car is very high (gas prices are three times as expen­sive than they are here, park­ing is pricey and not even a guar­an­teed spot), peo­ple nev­er learn how to dri­ve until they leave Hong Kong. However, at this point, they’re too old to real­ly become good at dri­ving, and fol­low the more aggres­sive rules of the road they grew up with.

The Largest Bronze Buddha

Thumbnail: Worlds largest bronze Buddha statue

A look at the worlds largest bronze Buddha locat­ed in Hong Kong. It’s perched at the top of a moun­tain range, and can be seen from extreme­ly far away. As one dri­ves up to the moun­tain, the out­line is vis­i­ble against the sky from an hour away. It’s an amaz­ing piece of con­struc­tion; the inside is hol­low, where peo­ple can set up longevi­ty tablets, and there are three floors of Buddhist murals. Some of the best feng shui in Hong Kong is in that area.

Christmas In Hong Kong

This is where every store has a set of Christmas lights, thou­sands of sparks dan­gling from the awnings. This is where the sub­way is packed with peo­ple, all wear­ing their par­ty clothes, try­ing to meet up with their friends and fam­i­ly. Where the cross har­bour build­ings have gigan­tic, mov­ing pic­tures on their sides, cre­at­ed from intri­cate­ly set lights and timers. Where there’s eupho­ria in the air and shop­ping bags in hand. This is where the jew­ellery store guards have trad­ed in their berets for san­ta hats.

This is Christmas in Hong Kong.