Happy Birthday Lizzie!

hkfour.blogspot.com

For those of you who don't yet know, Ingrid is going to be a big sister come early December!! We three are very excited for our new addition. Lizzie is doing great though Hong Kong in the summer is already uncomfortable enough let alone being pregnant. All scans and checkups show that everything is proceeding as it should with the baby. Official due date is December 2nd at Matilda International Hospital here in Hong Kong. And this time around we're not going to peek so the baby's gender will be a nice holiday surprise!

We're Gonna Need a Bigger Bucket

Ingrid has outgrown her trusty bath bucket. It is such a tight fit that her bum has practically taken on the shape of the tub. We need to upgrade to more space.

Uncool

Ok, so the state of the States is not the best, but I've had enough. My beloved homeland has been dragged over the coals long enough and my window shopping yesterday proved the final straw. A 70% off blowout sale on Stars & Stripes cufflinks?! Uncool. I almost bought them just to get them out of the window, like breaking up a schoolground fight to spare the poor little fat kid. We'll be back Links of London!!

Solar Eclipse

A solar eclipse darkened much of Asia this morning. Here in the southern latitudes of Hong Kong we only got a 70% eclipse, but it was still pretty cool. There was a noticeable blunting of the harsh sunlight and the streets were crowded with people wearing funky 3-D glasses looking skyward. I'm told Northern China was the best place to view the eclipses' full effect, which is ironic because the Chinese don't think twice about the pollution which blots out their sun on every other day.

I took a brief unprotected glance at the sun and I've been seeing a big multicolored blob in my central vision ever since. Unwise, but such an event won't happen for another 300 years so I wasn't going to let corneal damage get in my way. Perhaps I should have used this unconventional viewing method:

Regional News

This is an article you might expect to see in The Onion or some satirical website, not in a major morning newpaper like the SCMP. The headline and picture combo was enough to get me laughing this morning....

Cannibal says he has changed but the neighbours are not convinced


Indonesian cannibal Sumanto says he has sworn off human flesh - but that is little comfort to his former neighbours.

In many countries, the 37-year-old farmer from Palumutan village would be receiving specialised psychiatric care in a secure facility. Not in Indonesia. Here, he spent five years behind bars in a regular prison for theft of a body and causing distress to the community, and was released straight back into his remote village in rural Central Java with no follow-up care.

Mr Sumanto admitted that he dug up an old woman's body for a cheap and "tasty" meal. "She was delicious," he said from his room at a private Muslim mental-rehabilitation centre. "I love meat ... all types of meat as long as it's cooked. But I don't eat people any more. Now I eat spinach."

His next-door neighbour Ngadiah, 43, said she would never forget the stench of death from his home. "Sumanto? That corpse-eater. He was a bad-tempered man who often stole our rice and chickens," she said. "There'll be chaos if he ever comes back. I don't want him to kill me and have me for dinner."

Menu

This video might appear to show the family at a local aquarium, but it was actually outside one of HK's popular seafood restaurants. All these tanks are what you might call 'The Menu'.....just point at your favorite fish or crustacean and they'll scoop it out of the tank and prepare it any way you'd like.

Calm Before the Storm

The current view out our window is of a crystal clear Hong Kong skyline but that is expected to change very shortly as Typhoon Molave approaches. Should be a wild night!

STORM UPDATE: It was a big one, but unfortunately it took place between 1am and 5am so we were mostly asleep....I did wake up around 3am and it was clear the storm was violent. It actually reached Signal 9, 1 below the maximum of 10 but 1 above the Signal 8 that shuts down the city's transport and sends workers home. Being in our apartment was kind of like driving thru a car wash, water was blasting the windows from multiple directions so you couldn't see anything. And wind whistles loudly up through the elevator shafts. But by daybreak it was clear.

Pea Soup Air

The SCMP reported Hong Kong's 'street level' pollution to be reaching all-time highs due to increased traffic exhaust and a densely congested skyline which traps the bad air. On the plus side however, 'rooftop' atmospheric pollution has fallen significantly due to better pollution controls on factories in the Delta to the North. So the air well above us is getting better, but the air at nose level is worsening. Whatever will HK'ers do without the North as a scapegoat for its bad air anymore. Also, the crummy economy means more factories have shut down which means less smokestacks to belch pollutants down upon HK! Hooray, bad economy!

Chicken Dance

The current HKMagazine has a funny interview with a local poultry farmer named Fong Chi-hung who gains a competitive edge in the market by serenading his chickens with tunes prior to slaughter.
HK: You call your farm the “musical farm” because you play music to your chickens. What inspired you to do that?
FC: When I first started my farm it was no different than any other. But after Sars I realized that people cherish their health and are willing to spend more on food which is high quality. So I wondered how I could make the quality of my produce really stand out? I started doing research and asking experts then discovered that musical therapy for farm animals is common overseas, but mostly for cows and ducks. So I thought, can I try this method on chickens?

HK: What kind of music do you play to your chickens? How do you know if they like it?FC: We have played all different kinds of music to them over the years. At the very beginning I played mellow Cantopop songs to them, like those by Twins. But they didn’t seem to react to it much. Next I played them some of Beyond’s songs and first they “chickened-out” a bit but after a while they started to move with the rhythm. Finally I tried some disco music on them and they all freaked out but miraculously, after two weeks, they all became “less chicken-like”—for example, they weren’t afraid of strangers anymore. After a while I decided to go to a record store and ask what music the staff would recommend for young children. They said Mozart. So I tried classical on them as well. You can tell if they like the music by whether they dance with the groove or not.

HK: Do they like Cantopop?
FC: Cantopop is useful because it gets them familiar with Cantonese so they aren’t scared when they hear people talking in the farm. But it gets annoying after a while so then I play them English songs or hip-hop.

HK: What kind of stereo do you use?
FC: I used to play music with a portable stereo but recently we installed a full hi-fi system with speakers in every corner of the farm. This ensures that every chicken can hear the music at the same volume.

HK: How different does the chicken taste after musical therapy?
FC: They are tastier because of the psychological benefits they get from listening to music. When chickens panic, the texture of their meat worsens. But chickens that listen to music are calmer and better balanced. Also, because they dance with the music, their muscles can be better developed therefore giving their meat a fuller texture.

Waterbug

American Club BBQ

We celebrated our Fourth of July as invited guests to a BBQ at the American Club in Tai Tam on HK Island's southern shore. It was an unabashedly American affair with hot dogs, burgers and beer, stars and stripes everything, and a kids chorus belting out classics like "I'm Proud to be an American" and "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy." There was even an Uncle Sam on stilts, though he spoke with a foreign accent.

Shanghai Surprise

In case there was any doubt that China's runaway construction growth is being achieved with shoddy materials, workmanship, and corner-cutting engineering, there was a reminder last week as a 13-storey block of apartments completely toppled over in Shanghai. Luckily the building was unoccupied and somehow only one construction worker was killed, a miracle given China's population density which tends to result in people perishing in large bunches. But it can't make you feel too secure to be living in one of the development's other towers!

Happy Fourth of July!

Cobras in HK?

Alright, as if I needed another reason not to lace up the running shoes I got it via a conversation with a fellow ex-pat who has been in HK for over 20 years. He’s an avid runner and we were swapping stories about wildlife we’ve seen on our runs thru the wilds of HK's jungle/woods/forest. I’d just finished telling him of my freak encounter with the little orange crab atop the Peak (elevation 1600 feet) when he blew that story out of the water by saying he recently encountered a fully hooded and hissing King Cobra on a trail on Victoria Peak!

I acted surprised, but must admit I was a bit dubious. I always think of HK as devoid of wildlife that hasn’t already been captured and either put in a tank outside a local restaurant or dried and bottled for medicinal purposes. But because I do a bit of trail-running on the Peak often thru dense vegetation where I can’t always see where I’m stepping, I felt I should do some of my own research on the subject. To my dismay, King Cobras do exist on HK Island, and on the Peak specifically. Now, I’m not afraid of snakes, but I am afraid of snakes that can kill me. Uncool.

I pulled up this 1938 entry from the Hong Kong Naturalist entitled Land Snakes of Hong Kong by G.A.C. Herklots. It is a really amusing read. Herklots was the local expert and snakes caught in the colony were sent in to his office for examination. In detailing how to submit snakes to his office, he counseled, “On one occasion a cobra was sent in from Cheung Chau and a careful Chinese had sewn up the mouth of the snake to prevent it biting; there is no need to take this sort of precaution, the snake does not like it and the task of unsewing an angry cobra is rather a tricky and risk business.”

So I will tread lightly on future trail runs, and perhaps carry a flute with me.

Ing and Friends

Here are a bunch of picturee of Ingrid and her best buds, some of whom are part of her inner circle and some who she's met during her world travels.

Handover Day

Today is Hong Kong Establishment Day marking the 1997 British handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese. HK was a British colony for 156 years, with the handover coming as a result of the expiration of a 99-year lease, a period that Mainland officials referred to as the 'century of national shame.' On June 30, 1997 A handover ceremony was held presided over by the Prince of Wales and outgoing Governor Chris Patten who said to the assembled, "Our own nation's contribution here was to provide the scaffolding that enabled the people of Hong Kong to ascend: the rule of law, clean and light-handed government, the values of a free society. The beginnings of representative government and democratic accountability." It is unclear if he was referring to bamboo scaffolding, however.

At midnight the Union Jack dropped to the strains of "Rule Britannia" and the Chinese flag was raised. Patten greeted Chinese President Jiang Zemin with "Welcome to Hong Kong," before he and Prince Charles boarded the HMY Britannia and sailed out of Victoria Harbour under the watchful eye of Chinese warships. At midnight thousands of Chinese PLA troops began flooding across the border, HK's elected legislature was disbanded in favor of Beijing appointed officials, and HK took on the look and feel of its new patrons. The royal crest was removed from gov't buildings, police bobbies gave way to the newly Chinese HK uniform, and red phonebooths, mailboxes and doubledecker busses began their phase out.

So, with our own Independence Day this Saturday I suppose it makes for a pretty tough week for the ol' British colonial pride.