HK Bag Lady

I'm no stranger to the plight of the homeless having lived and worked in SF for a bunch of years, but this homeless lady takes the cake, never failing to illicit a blank stare from me. She wraps her head and body up with plastic grocery bags leaving only a small hole to breathe thru and then sprawls herself out over the busy Hong Kong sidewalk below my building. And the weather in Hong Kong right now is just brutal with the combo of killer heat, humidity and pollution.....I don't understand how she can handle it! Photos pulled from Flickr.com because I haven't the nerve to pull out my camera to shoot her.

Star Ferry

Ing and Wy

Trinket Shopping

MJ

There aren't many icons in the world with a larger profile than Michael Jackson. Sad he is gone, but we'll always have this Bollywood version of 'Thriller' by which to remember the Gloved One.

Waterbugs

Ingrid and one of her pals from our apartment building show off their matching wetsuits and water wings.

Escalator Surfing

Our Little Dumpling

We visited our favorite dumpling destination today. Ingrid loves the restaurant because of its fish tank and because of its udon noodles, both of which she couldn't get enough of.

Welcome Back!

Lizzie and Ingrid return to Hong Kong this evening after nearly 6 weeks in the US, and I can't tell you how happy I am. Donna is also traveling back with them, generously volunteering to help shepher Ingrid back on the long and painful plane ride. I will be so great to see all of them. It's been a lonely time with them gone and now I'll have three immediate friends in the apartment!

Turbulence

Hong Kong is undergoing a pretty big storm tonight. I just returned two hours ago from Shanghai and my flight flew straight thru the teeth of the storm, a harrowingly bumpy experience. I practically kissed the jetway when I stepped off the plane.

Auto Industry in Alive and Well in China

Tea for Taxi

The trusty companion to any Mainland taxi driver is the Big Gulp-sized tumbler of Chinese tea that sits in the car's center console. But I must say that this Beijing driver's tea looked pretty nasty.....those don't look like tea leaves at the bottom of the jar. More like prawn shuckings. And are those aspirin tablets floating on top? Hey, whatever keeps him from falling asleep at the wheel!

Evil Hotel

Very evil of my hotel in Shanghai to have this 'Welcome Back' pastry treat waiting for me when I checked into my room.....I resisted but it took inner strength.

Blog Quarantine

I've been in China all week where Blogger.com is among the blacklisted social networking sites. Finally back in HK so I'm free to post!

Harvest

Ingrid and Grandpa kicked off grape season this morning with an early harvest.

H1N1

They take Swine Flu seriously in China. Upon landing in Beijing yesterday multiple masked medics stormed the plane and used a space-aged forehead scanners to take the temperature of every single passenger on the plane. This picture shows a passenger 3 rows ahead ahead of me who registered a fever. This process went on for nearly 30 minutes. The flu police brought out a secondary scanner as well as an old fashioned mercury thermometer to validate the passenger's reading before handing her a facemask and sending us all on our way. I was just happy not to be sent on a 1-week quarantine vacation.

Happy Birthday Grandma!!

Covert

This picture ran in the SCMP this morning and had me laughing. The story was about the huge number of plain clothes police officers covertly patrolling Beijing hotspots around the June 5 anniversary. This undercover cop is dressed like an urban hipster and would likely go unnoticed....if he weren't standing in a bush!

Kaboom!

It's storm season here in HK! Sound is necessary for this video...

20 Years On

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. I just returned from the very moving candlelight vigil in Victoria Park, attended by an estimated crowd of over 150,000 people. Alongside Operation Desert Storm and the OJ Simpson chase, Tiananmen was in the top 3 news events of my adolescence.

So on the twentieth anniversary we see quite a different manner of observing the event. In China, the Square has been completely sealed off and tens of thousands of police, military and plain clothes security officers have canvassed Beijing to disperse any gatherings of remembrance. Known troublemakers are being monitored and intimidated. Social networking sites like Twitter, Hotmail, Bing.com and others have been shut down and the central government has deemed this significant June 4th as (not joking) "National Internet Server Maintenance Day." Hmmm, coincidental and quite galling. Go to state newspaper's website www.chinadaily.com.cn and you'll see no mention of the event or its anniversary.

In Hong Kong, things are different. Though several Tiananmen student leaders who are now foreign dissidents were turned away by HK immigration this week, people are generally free to express themselves. Over 150K people gathered for a candlelight vigil in Victoria Park tonight. Outside of the park the streets were lined with people standing on ladders and milk crates sounding off into loudspeakers. A group staged a 'die-in' in Times Square, splattered in red paint sprawled over banners images of the massacre. Hong Kong is China, but tonight's behavior would certainly not fly in China.

I'll be in the Mainland all next week for work so I'll stop short of expressing too many opinions on the matter, lest the Internet 'watchers' decide to pass a negative word to the immigration folks.

Long Hair

I really wished that I spoke Cantonese at this moment. Walking out of the Tiananmen vigil tonite I noticed a man with a microphone standing on a ladder, someone I'd recognized from the newspaper. It was Leung Kwok-hung, a member of Hong Kong's Legislative Council, who is otherwise known as 'Long Hair' because of the ponytail that goes down below his beltline. He has always said he won't cut his hair until China's central gov't apologizes for Tiananmen, so it grows and grows.....LegCo is a bit like SF's Board of Supes, and Long Hair is its Chris Daly in his capacity for sh$# disturbing. And on that ladder tonight he was like a carnival barker, bantering back and forth with the assembled crowd, at times with jovial humor and at times with a really sharp tongue. I didn't understand a word but it was still a good show.

Happy Birthday Grandma!!!!!

She's Growing

Lizzie and Ingrid have been in the States for the past month so I've monitored Ingrid's growth through pictures. This one really freaked me out. Its her at the family getaway house in Sedona -- look how long she's getting! I'll be looking her in the eye when she gets back to Hong Kong!

Auspicious Close

The Hang Seng Index has been on a tear the past several months and yesterday closed at the numerically auspicious level of 18,888. That's a lot of 8's and the Chinese love 8's. I'd scoff at such astrological nonsense if the S&P 500 hadn't bounced off the biblically significant 666 level back in March!