Hong Kong Happenings

One thing about Hong Kong….it is quite heavily polluted, but there is lots happening here.

First to address the pollution part of that statement, look at the two photos below. Both of them are taken from my room around sunrise (thanks jetlag!!)

 

It is quite simple to see the difference between these two photos – no Photoshop wizardry here! Taken from almost the same position, you can see the haziness here very “unclearly”. The API here in TST is always on moderate to high or higher. On some intersections it is even cloudy looking at buildings on the other side of the road!

Here is a photo taken today out at Tsuen Wan – where I am examining. It is not raining, it is merely hazy with dust and pollution. Tsuen Wan is well away from the centre of HK, so you can imagine how much worse it is in the city

The pollution probably has many causes, but much of it is because of the high density population. Still the number of people here means there are lots of events happening all over HK. Halloween is coming up and it seems to have taken a good hold here with lots of Halloween specials and shop displays. Fortunately they will find it difficult to ‘trick or treat’  me, because they need a key card to get up to the upper floors of my hotel. Besides, do any real HK people live in TST? I doubt it.They probably avoid it like the plague, as it is a tourist place. Below is the Halloween display at the No. 1 Mall round the corner from the hotel, which has quite a good supermarket with ‘fresh’ food. I go there quite often as you might imagine. On another floor of the Mall was the M & M display – they were giving away packets of them the other day. I could not be bothered to wait in the queue…

 

There are people everywhere of course here, with the number of people in a small area very high. I do like the way in which people manage to carry on with their activities, despite all the people around. this painter was working  – very concentratedly – in the middle of Kowloon Park amid lots of families and activity around her

Here is a photo of a typical suburban apartment estate just past Hong Hum. there are any number of these. I could take this type of photo literally thousands of times. Note here the washing  and think how many people must live in such a confined area – some of them only rarely leaving the estate, because there are shops etc at the bottom. where I examine in Tsuen Wan, they have everything – doctor, schools, library – all on site. One of the Hong Kong people I met said they did not like NZ because of all the house and the spread-out nature of the cities.

One evening I went along the waterfront here – in fact several evenings! I want to go and catch the nightly laser show which utilizes the buildings on the harbour. It is quite a display, which attracts thousands every evening. I have of course seen it but would like to go watch it again – see if I can capture some good shots for a future blog.

However this particular evening. I enjoyed looking at this parrot. I am sorry I do not know exactly what kind of bird this is. However, the owner did let me stroke the bird, which was cool – even without asking for any money! However once I did about 20 or 30 (mostly Mainland) Chinese people immediately gathered around wanting to stroke it as well. The bird became a little restive then, so I left 

A little further along the walkway which is a smokefree area by the way – New Zealand could follow this good example. We pride ourselves on our environmentally clean image (So close to an election I simply can’t use the word ‘green’), but we really do very little about it. It mostly happens because the country is so spread out – and now off my soapbox and back to the business at hand…I saw this …”asian – like” playground – beautifully colourful. I remember buying wooden toys for children because they were supposed to like them, when in fact they often the cheap plastic COLOURFUL toys.

And then later in the evening, I took a shot of the buildings on Hong Kong Island. The tall building on the right is the IFC (International Finance Centre) building, which reminds me of a story about Texas-Small size condoms…especially with the Asian size next door….but anyway…  Wandering a little further along is a rather nice former police hotel. when I saw the tree in this photo, my first thought was “ How large do you want your pot to be Madam…?”

So life here may be hectic and sometimes rather dusty and polluted, but there are quite a lot of Hong Kong Happenings.

Settled in Hong Kong

After a week here in Hong Kong, I am starting to feel quite settled. The room in my hotel looks out over Victoria Harbour. On a clear day (cough, cough) I can see the Island. Don’t ask about the not-clear days…It is great room with quite a lot of space, mostly quiet and after some negotiation with the manager, free internet access…might have had something to do with the sight of a kiwi in shorts and bare feet sitting in the hotel lobby as the wireless internet there was free… One of my friends has already said I was always good at getting my own way. I bet my siblings also agree with that!

 

Of course the highlight of the week would have to be the two rugby matches which the All blacks played. Isn’t it strange how not living in your home country can make you feel more…patriotic….well if not patriotic, then at least proud  I found a nice pub  – almost empty last weekend, but full of strangely quiet Australians today – now THERE’S an oxymoron….! Table is booked for next weekend’s game against the French.

So today has been my first day off. (We work Tuesday – Saturday in HK). I have been working out at Tsuen Wan, which is out in the New Territories. It takes half an hour to get there – cross the road, down the stairs and along the subway until I get to the MTR and then go to the end of the line. Up stairs and through the MTR mall until I get to Parsons Music Store where I lock myself in a padded cell (yes, I know, I am getting in some practice!).

I have had one rather extended lunch at Tsuen Wan, so I went for a walk and found a little garden area. There is not much greenery around in central Hong Kong, so I took the opportunity to spend some time there. Seems a little ironic to use my e-reader in such a place, but it has proven yet again to be invaluable on a trip such as this. Very little truly fluent English this far out from central HK. I have found a couple of places to eat with english menu translations or speakers. I suspect I will spend some time out at Tsuen Wan, so I will probably locate more as I go. There is a whole city centre to explore!

Today was spent around Kowloon. Two green areas – Signal Hill Garden and the Kowloon Park attracted me today – the first really sunny day in a while.

Signal Hill was where they used to hoist a signal (hence the pragmatic name!) which told the ships in or around the port area, when it was exactly 12.00 – useful information for navigators. Not much of an area left untrammelled by the encroaching concrete and glass edifices that pass for architecture, however a nice oasis in the busy city area. at the top there was a religious gathering – all dressed in white. The thought did occur to me that it was probably an illegal gathering fomenting rebellion in a group of more than twenty, however they are not occupying Wall Street, so can’t be that important…

Then along to Kowloon Park. A few flowers here – hey this is Hong Kong. Not a lot of arboreal splendour here! Lots and lots of people – many muslim women, obviously waiting for their  men to escape from the mosque. Also several groups of people learning and practicing Tai Chi and a walk around the bird aviary (No pictures here as there is wire separating people from the birds – or was that the other way round…? Oh well no matter, it was not good for photos.

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After all that strenuous exercise, it was time to head to a prominent position for the big game!

I will expostulate about the food here another time. Suffice it to say that I have had Japanese, Vietnamese, Chinese, Hong Kongese!, Salads and various other beautiful foods. I keep on forgetting to take photos until after I have destroyed the meal, but I will do that in a future piece of blathering on. For now, farewell from me, settled in Hong Kong

Traveller’s Tales

The travel to Hong Kong started very well indeed, with the Shuttle van exactly on time and a good trip to the airport. Wandering inside the terminal I was surprised to see a line of people at the Cathay Pacific check-in with the queue snaking out towards the door. Fortunately I had completed an online check-in and had my boarding pass, so after checking with the attendant, I was sent over to business class to complete the check-in process.

I was feeling very complacent as I wandered in to the boarding area. As a new Marco Polo customer I was able to go through without queuing up with people that don’t know how to queue… After I had gone through the boarding rigmarole, I was halfway down the corridor to the plane when I was called back – along with everybody else that had come through. They had to pause boarding and then shortly after had to DE-board us, as there was a technical problem on the plane and they had to wait for the OK from Hong Kong before they could start the repairs.

So I retreated to the One World Lounge  – which I had not had time to investigate earlier. It is very civilised in there. There is free food and drink – water, tea, coffee, juice, alcohol etc, the seats are comfortable. It is (mostly) peaceful. At the end of our first hour of waiting – juice and a chocolate cookie, the attendant came to give us the news of our plane just before it was announced, so we tucked into more of a meal this time – with a nice glass of wine. We were also warned just before the announcement came over the system that boarding was about to begin. So I walked along again to the boarding counter and wandered on to the plane for the journey here.

I have stopped feeling guilty now when I receive my meal early (because I ask for a low-fat meal when I make the reservation). A nice glass of wine and a film later, I was ready to sleep – which I managed to do in small doses for much of the journey. Towards the end of the journey, I found some Bach and Mozart to play on the audio system and arrived feeling relatively fresh – given that we arrived at 11:00pm (the equivalent of NZ 4:00am the next morning). A quick trip by airport express and taxi to the hotel, so I was able to arrive and fall onto bed before 1:00. Not too bad!

Next morning I woke to the view above out my hotel window. A clear day in Hong Kong  LOL – still a temperature of 27 though. The weekend was spent in a relatively small area of Causeway  Bay – lots of shops of course and interesting food – and  walking around Victoria Park. The bushes in the photo below are actually sitting in pots – I found it quite extraordinary that there was a lot of mass “planting” with the plants sitting in pots, but “landscaped” above ground. Lots of people were using the park, with children’s activities and an exercise group.

Here also is a Church which I noticed from my breakfast restaurant. really interesting to see a Christian church which still likes like a temple from another religious denomination.

So if you are reading this, welcome to my traveller’s tales. I hope to see you again soon! 

The other side of Sunrise

Why am I a sucker for sad/romantic films? I won’t even say what I watched this evening. I know these things are not real – that people do not find happiness together in such miraculous ways as depicted in Hollywood movies. Barriers do not suddenly fall away to be replaced by loving and doting (read ‘cloying’) happiness together. However I still watch these things. It is almost masochistic behaviour – watching two people suddenly find themselves and each other in ways that are so patently not real – or even more than vaguely possible.

I think I am stuck in that part of the film where everything is black – just before it miraculously starts to come right. Don’t they say that it is darkest before dawn? I think my life is in a sort of groundhog pre-dawn.

So now I am doing an equally bad thing and listening to the Schubert “Der Tod und das Mädchen” String Quartet. Such amazing music, with such an emotional message to it. I remember when I was younger, I used to listen to the Tchaikovsky ‘Pathétique’ Symphony. The Schubert is a chamber music form of the same kind of thing. It brings out the ‘ghosts” in my psyche – the ‘might have been’ people…

However life is not black. Exciting times performing lately (both in and out of New Zealand)and off examining in Hong Kong for nearly two months. One never knows. There could be exciting times…just the other side of sunrise 

NB Both these photos were taken here – and they are not photoshopped   – apart from re-sizing to fit here and the reflective border added to the top photo by WordPress.

Live up to the Naim

In the last year I have made quite a lot of improvements to my little “castle”  – I use this term very advisedly!….

However my house is almost unrecognizable if you have not been here for about a year. Almost every room has been changed significantly and I have plans now for further improvements. I might as well use the money, as it won’t do anything sitting in a bank or other account at the moment, thanks to the fun and games in USA and Europe…

However  one of the best improvements is one that I have only completed lately and appreciated even more when returning from being away performing.

I bought myself a digital hifi system. At the centre of this little beauty is a NAIM Unitiqut Amplifier Not much bigger than a large book, this machine is absolutely amazing. I owned a NAIM pre-power amplifier in the days when I had more money than sense. Now, while  I have a little more sense (debatable?), I do not mind having less money!!  So expensive, yes. Worth it? YES

I have burnt nearly all my CDs in lossless format to a central drive, which contains all my media files. I have spent a lot of time now cataloguing the files so that I am able to find them on the drive.

I also bought lately some REGA R7 speakers. Rega became known first as a manufacturer of turntables. The speakers replaced some quite capable Wharfedale speakers that I bought early this year. I am using the spikes on the bottom of these to improve the sound even more. Suffice it to say that this is simply the best system I have ever owned. The sound us transparent, but weighty when it needs to be. At low volume, there is still a good balance in the sound.

An extra bonus is the fact that I can run the system from my computer home network and also my phone. I can find tracks and albums on any of these from anywhere in the house and play them – or pause/stop them as I wish. Very handy when I want to turn off the music and go to sleep

:):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):)

Life in the digital age can be very cool. This is a great system with a very CUTE amplifier at its centre – it is easily able to live up to the Naim! 

Tumultuous Times

We in New Zealand live in tumultuous times. The Christchurch earthquake –well, in reality the Canterbury earthquake, with the costs still to be counted in terms of both money and human loss. Unless you live there, it must be difficult to imagine what this can have been like – to feel the earth suddenly shudder under your feet and wonder if this is “the big one” that will destroy you and/or your loved ones…Will Christchurch survive? Only time will tell.

On another level we have had the England riots – the “misunderstood” youth attempting to show that they “can do anything they want”. Which other countries in the world will follow this example? New Zealand is not that far away from such an event. We have pandered to the young people of this world to such an extent that leading a life on a benefit is seen as a cool thing to do. Imagine not having to work for a living! The attitude among a significant part of our society appears to be “Leave work to those that can pay for us to live on handouts…” What will happen when those that do pay suddenly begin to realise what is happening?

Yesterday I fought my way through the Auckland traffic to Newmarket to see the film “Mrs Carey’s Concert”. I almost turned back  – as the traffic was so bad. However once inside the theatre I sat back to be completely overwhelmed by this film. Hardly a cinematic experience, however it laid open so many aspects of trying to teach in the classroom today. It brought back so many things about why I loved teaching, but also why I left.

This film is about the preparations for a concert which happens every two years, given in the Sydney Opera House by all the members of one school. I ended up with tears of both sadness and joy – even sometimes almost at the same time. What do I remember most? I remember the way in which all the students grew through the experiences they had – even the rebellious student. This was no slick film showing everything in rose-coloured glasses. This was a film showing a team of dedicated teachers, PROVING that their students could go beyond what they and everybody else thought they could do in the aim for perfection. But the scene where Mrs Carey was rebuked quietly when she quite lightly spanked a student on the knee – what PC nonsense is this!!!?? This was virtually an affectionate slap. This was a film about a teacher determined to make her students grow.

I don’t apologise to anybody for the way in which I managed to persuade people into producing so much more than they thought they were able to produce when I was teaching. I fought for musical perfection for many years. So many of these ex-students have become so much…“more”…because of the department where I worked for most of my teaching life, in tandem with David Hamilton (with whom I shared so much in teaching philosophy). Some of our students were also  “at risk” students, who managed to realise their own worth and value, partly because of what we were able to help them to achieve. As Mrs Carey said in her film, “I was not rude, I was firm…!”  Oh yes I loved that line!!! I can imagine the fallout over that at the schools where I taught. Would I get away with it in New Zealand now ? I doubt it. I would be told that I needed to pander to the students and their SPOILT PARENTS!

We in New Zealand are breeding a generation of students, who do not know what it means to fail and do not know how to cope when they fail in society and because of this we can expect many more tumultuous times!

Home Sweet Home

Back home from Malaysia. Time to consider life here in NZ. I am still very angry at the Auckland  City Council decision to give millions of ratepayer money to a Maori statutory board when there already plenty of positions available for Maori representation on the council. This despite much protest from the people of Auckland. Well I guess that is what we get for voting such an inept mayor. It is easy to say that I did not vote for him, but somehow that gives me little satisfaction. Auckland is in trouble.

I fear the whole country is in trouble. Is it time to consider leaving these troubled and shaking shores? No I did not feel the small earthquake which apparently happened here tonight. I was trying to work out what I was doing at that time, but it certainly had nothing to do with the earth moving!  Probably much more to do with enjoying the glorious music coming from my new stereo equipment. I have truly joined the digital age with a new Uniqute amplifier made by Naim. Back to the makers of the best amplifier I had centuries ago. It runs off a server with digital inputs for tv/video and will even run wirelessly if I choose to. At present it suits to have it connected but who knows what the future holds.
Anyway, back to NZ. I don’t think I could join the current exodus to Australia. I don’t think I like the country enough. Certainly there are good things about it but I think i would prefer to live in either Europe or Asia.
I like the work ethic in Asia. People there do not expect handouts from the government as they do in NZ. We have created a generation or more of people who think it is their right to do nothing and when they need money the government will give it to them. We decry the
street people we see in other countries, yet many people here are similar except for the fact that they find another benefit for the government to pay them more money.
This week I heard some protest at the government’s decision to remove people from state houses if they could afford to pay a normal rental. These are houses that are meant to be for families in need. A significant number of these houses sport SKY television satellites. Some of these people even own other houses which they rent out at market rates while living themselves in these low rent state houses.

Yes there is much to admire in a welfare state,
but it has gone crazy now and will bankrupt this country in the future because we have one two or three generations of families all living off social welfare.

So where to go? Which country would welcome a musician of advancing years to its shores? Mhhh. I can see why people from here settle in Australia. Immigration anywhere else is difficult. At least from NZ we can enter and stay in Australia without difficulty.

But then again…..Australia…. a country slowly dying of thirst…and full of Australians….. I think it is a matter of home sweet home….