At dinner last night, Jason was talking about how Lamma Island has the smallest fire-engine and the smallest ambulance in the entire world and that he'd long wanted to see them.
Although I've never seen their fire-engine, I promised to show him the photo I took of their ambulance, so I'm off now into my frighteningly enormous and disorganised collection of photographs to see if I can find it.
This is it, I think! No. That's the world's smallest garbage truck. Mmmm! Really hard to see properly in those thumbnails. But I do know I have a shot of it someplace, only it took me two hours to locate this one and my neck now hurts so, instead of looking for it, I'm going off for a massage.
Next day:
Gosh, I really do need to organise my photos. Discovered a whole pile I didn't even remember I had. And it was indeed in the last place I looked that I found ...
It's exactly one year today since I started this blog? Yup, I did my first post about my trip up to Nan Sha on the Coast of Mainland China on 23nd March 2008, so despite what the date says above ... it's on American time and they don't appear to have yet discovered the International Date Line ... so ...
Happy Birthday to Blog, Happy Birthday to Blog, Happy ... you know the rest!
So, one whole year! Whoosh!! Where did the time go?! An old friendhas a theory that time is all relative - no, I'm not talking about Albert Einstein - and that one year in the life of a three-year old is exactly equivalent in length to 30 years in the life of a 90 year old.And I think this old friend - Shane Dwyer from Mackay in Queensland -and since he came up with it please attribute it to him when you quote it - is really on to something because, gosh, time has really sped up since I turned 30, and it's getting faster and faster all the time.
But we've packed a lot into this fast-moving year, haven't we. Let's see: After our first trip to Nan Sha, we went to Guangzhou, and we've had many visits to that enormous city since, as well as many many trips up to Shenzhen, particularly to the Artist Village of Dafen, and there's that one trip to Dongman where little kiddies tried to steal our purse. And we fell in love with with beautiful Shamian Dao and have been there many times as well.
And we've rocked around Hong Kong zillions of times and made many strange discoveries and seen lots of out-of-the-way places. And we know Lamma Island well. And Macau. And we went with the gorgeous Aitkensen family to Beijing, Shanghai and Suzhou. And yes, we visited The Great Wall too.
And we've all been further afield: Vietnam, Singapore, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand (where our purse did get stolen), North Queensland, Sydney, and we've teased New Zealand on several occasions, and visited there as well.And we've even rocked home to Fiji several times, and, yes, we should do it more often.
And, well, we've been to every HK7s since 2004 and will be going again this up-coming weekend (yyyayyyy!!!) and we desperately hope we'll be invited to a particular corporate box for the entire three days.
And we've tracked Hong Kong's weekly panic, which is always a lot of fun. And together we all went through HK's floods, and saw the Olympic Torch pass by and didn't douse it with water to protest anything. And we've been shopping too, although I haven't yet taken us around the stunning Sample Shops in Johnston Road, or toured the wonders of Ap Liu Street, or the fabric markets down near Kennedy Town, or played around the escalators of Soho ... gosh, there's still so much of Hong Kong we've still got to see, isn't there.
And, do you realise, we haven't yet visited a single one of the regular tourist spots. Very remiss of me, yes? Still, I can rectify that in the upcoming year.
In fact, why don't I rectify that now:
Big Buddha!
Us at Big Buddha, Largest giant seated Buddha built in the past 300 years!
Fun day, Do it sometime!
There you go. That's out of the way. It means I don't have to do it again because it's vastly more interesting ignoring the regular tourist spots of the world and spending that time instead with the very special people we meet along the way, or discovering there are a great many strange and wonderful places and objects out there to be explored, and, well, that nothing can top a fascinating mystery to be uncovered or discovered ... and that's the mission of this blog, and we've had a lot of fun, haven't we? I know I have.
And if you've ever wondered what blogging looks like from my side of things, here it is:
MY LIFE AS A BLOGGER!
What I see when I blog.
So, Happy Birthday Blog and may there be Many, Many Happy Returns of this day!
It's very early in the week to be doing this, but no one seems to care about this one so I feel I have to say something:
Late last week, a young police officer shot and killed an old homeless Nepali guy. The old man was armed with a chair and did try to attack him, but shooting him in the head? Wayyy excessive, yes?
Anyway, another guy further up the hill saw the whole thing and recorded it on his cellphone, and, although the quality is appalling, you can now see it on youtube:
The first shots you hear are the pepper-spray, which you can see doesn't slow the old guy down for a second. And you can hear the policeman giving instructions too, and then ... well, you don't see the man get shot although you can definitely hear the two shots being fired.
But for those of us who don't speak Chinese, what's really horrible - and what makes this into a Threatdown - is that the instructions, as you can hear for yourself, are all in Cantonese which the Nepali man didn't speak, yet the police are now saying, since this is China, they still count, in the police books, as instructions being given, which mitigate this shooting altogether.
I think there should be a court ruling on that one, because if it goes by without reproof, it's set a precedent and all of us who don't speak Cantonese are screwed.
However, I don't think anything will be done about it. If you go into youtube and look at the stat. counter, no one's visiting. Hard to believe that "Terminal Rage" - the Mainland woman throwing a temper tantrum at Lap Kok Airport - got over 5 million hits, while this one - up now for four days - when I exacted the code three minutes ago, had only 139. Hong Kong really doesn't care and so it's just going to be allowed to lapse.
Also, what I find sad is that, since this guy is Nepali, he definitely would once have been a Gurkha, and old soldiers definitely deserve better than this, even if they are homeless and insane.
And while not totally changing the subject, it all reminds me of the occasion more than a decade ago, when my nephew was stabbed in a nightclub in Cairns, in North Queensland. See, what happened was that a "loco" Spanish tourist was hassling a girl so Kele stepped in to protect her and, yeah yeah, since this is Kele we're talking about here and we all know what he's like, he was having a little too much fun with the incident and giving wayy too much 'smart-mouthing' and so ... well, it all enraged Enrico so much he pulled out a knife and stabbed Kele through the ribs and up into the lung.
And here's where it gets similar to this Nepali shooting. Because Enrico said "I'm going to kill you!" in Spanish, a language Kele didn't speak, the police said didn't count as "statement of intent" and so the entire episode became "misdemeanour battery" - the equivalent of stomping on someone's toe - and Enrico got off.
So what this means is that, here in Hong Kong, if you don't speak a language it still counts as "communication of intention" while in Australia it doesn't. Is that right?
THREATDOWN
Definitely, definitely, that this should not be a legal ambiguity which means, until some ruling has been made, we should all feel the need to panic. Yes?
Update: The Police Commissioner himself has given his word that there will be a full and open inquiry into this shooting and that a ruling will be made on whether instructions given in a language you don't speak legally counts as communication.
Will let you know what happens with this since it's so very important!
Keith now says he wants to come to Cuba with me - for the music, he says - and so, because he doesn't have holidays on our tour dates, as a good wife should I've canceled my existing plans, which is sad and more than a little annoying. This "Good Wife" thing is so frustrating, isn't it!
Nonetheless, Aussie Christine is still going ahead and so, with a bit of pleading and arm-twisting for photographs et al, this blog will still be showing you Cuba next month - and Cancun too as Christine will be going there as well - so you won't be deprived of this treat totally.
And if you'd like to go ahead to Cuba without us, here's what I've discovered so far: Cabana Airlines takes you from Mexico, but there are also several flights from various American, European and Canadian cities, PLUS Virgin Airlines now flies directly to Havana from London.
Also, you need to make sure you can get in, and you can do that by trying to get hold of the Cuba Tourist Card (their fancy name for "entry/exit visas") somehow. It costs approximately US$30.00. Also discovered there is a Cuban Embassy right here in Hong Kong, but it only operates from 10.00am to noon, five days a week. I have the address right here and so, if you need it, just let me know and I'll post it for you.
Damn! It's happened once again ... so let's hope it isn't another 30 years before the chance comes up again.
This is something very odd that has had me intrigued for several months now:
Look Upstairs!
It's a tiny boutique in Wan Chai, in an alleyway just off Queens Street East. Middle of nowhere, right? Very unprepossessing, right? You'd go past it without glancing at it, right?
But you go up those stairs and it's like Alice through the looking glass because suddenly you're in another world, walking among untold racks of Dior, Chanel, Kenzo, Gucci, Pucci, Prada, Ungaro, Sass and Bide jeans, and shelves of Louis Vuitton handbags, Marni handbags, Marc Jacob handbags, Jimmy Choo shoes, etc, etc, etc, etc. Sodding names up the whazoo, and it's all gorgeous!
And all these clothes are selling for between HK$400.00 to HK$800.00. I'm not kidding. You get a cashmere Chanel cardigan, say, for HK$490.00! And a breath-taking grey Marni pouch in the softest, softest lambskin, say, for HK$2000.00! And, say, a pair of diamante-covered Jimmy Choo's for HK$300.00. It's all just so impossible to believe. And nothing in there is fake either. Those prices and all real!
What's the catch, you ask? Well, there are a few and it's those various catches that have me so intrigued:
First off, every item of clothing is in American size 4 and all the shoes are HK-size 37.
Secondly, most items look like they may have been worn, but only once and by someone who knows, loves and takes care of her clothes.
And finally, the woman in there is a heinous mean Alpha-bitch who has the least talent for selling in the entire city of HK, and we're talking a population of 7 million, all of whom know how to sell as their genetic birthright or something.
Gosh, this woman is unpleasant. She glares at you from the moment you arrive, and then dogs you around the store, right on your heels, glaring and sighing and tssking, and if you touch anything, she immediately afterwards touches it more than you did, and when you pull something out for a closer look, she's all furiously hissing through her teeth, and when you put something back, she immediately straightens the coathanger just the nth degree, humphing all the while. Not a nice experience at all, and yes, never once in the dozen or so times I've been up there has she ever said a word to me!
So, are you as intrigued as I am? And have you reached the same conclusion I have?
THREATDOWN
The financial meltdown forcing millionaires' wives to sell off their own wardrobes!
And let me tell you, they aren't at all happy about it!
No. That's the world's smallest garbage truck. Mmmm! Really hard to see properly in those thumbnails. But I do know I have a shot of it someplace, only it took me two hours to locate this one and my neck now hurts so, instead of looking for it, I'm going off for a massage.
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