Moving again

So we've been in this serviced apartment for 8 weeks now, and it's time to move on. We managed to find and negotiate a new place just in time, and we'll be moving there tomorrow. It's pretty small but in a great location and comes fully equipped so we don't need to buy anything. It might take a few days for the internet access to kick in, so I'll have to survive in internet cafes until then...I'll let you know how it goes.

Friendlies!

There's a display of Friendlies, the official mascots of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, outside the Bank of China building at the moment. The huge archway was put up over the weekend. As you can see, it's to celebrate the National Day, i.e. China's, on 1st October. This is one of the extra holidays that Hong Kong has benefited from (been bribed with?) since 1997.

Hairy

A bit of a catch-up post: On Friday we walked around Hong Kong park as we do, and have done, many times. This time we went into the hothouses, which I could swear used to cost a few dollars, but are now free. They have some nice cactii!

Then Saturday we went over the harbour to the Art Museum. It's ludicrously cheap (10HKD). A few of the galleries were closed in preparation for some big shows they have coming up, but we saw some of the usual Chinese type exhibits: scrolls, jade, gold and various ancient objects. The modern gallery was hosting a huge installation made of human hair. Visitors were encouraged to snip off some of their own locks attach them to cards and write a message about what hair meant to them. Many people partook, and in fact seemed to be cutting off huge lengths, rather than just a few hairs.

Bedding anticipation

We moved up a floor to a larger apartment over the weekend, for reasons I won't bother going into here. 2 bedrooms, tons of storage and an overly vast living room area. We don't quite know what to do with all the space. The ironic thing is that this place seems to be assigned only two cleaners, rather than the squad of four in our smaller place. And they seem to get it done quicker now too.

Odd floors get the sheets and towels changed on Tuesdays rather than Thursdays, so now Tuesday is our Big Day, as we speculate about what colour and pattern of bedding we'll be alotted. Today was a slightly garish set featuring shells of all kinds.

Other excitement: we got up to typhoon signal number 3 (meaning "strong wind", and between "standby" and "gale" - you can read the official decription of the system on the HK observatory site here and some of the recent controversy here on Wikipedia) briefly today, as a small tropical depression veered toward Hong Kong on it's way to the mainland. All clear now though.

Dark days

Literally. We're into typhoon season now, and the weather has changed noticeably: lots of sudden huge downpours, wind and cooler temperatures. When the clouds roll in and the heavens open it gets very dark here as all the tall buildings block out what little light there is. It's pretty ominous, but very atmospheric.

Everyone that doesn't need to wear good shoes seems to wear flip-flops in weather like this. Better to just surrender to the water than let it ruin your socks - but I'm not sure I'd really want to wade around in the runoff from some of the streets here (a nice mixture of chicken's feet, vegetables, paint and tapioca perhaps!).

Rain and Memories

At exactly 11 this morning it started raining. Real no-nonsense sub-tropical rain where the streets go from dry to awash in about half a minute, but the rain just keeps on coming down and down until buses are creating a bow wave and people seem to give up trying to keeping dry. A rainy day, so we decided to go to a museum for a bit. The Hong Kong University Museum and Art Gallery has some interesting exhibitions on at the moment so we got a number 40 up through the mid-levels to see it.

We perched on some side-facing seats near the front of the steamed up double-decker watching a new batch of people bursting gratefully through the doors at every stop: elderly old ladies shaking out floral umbrellas, groups of shrieking white-clad school girls clad in emergency plastic ponchos (with "World Cup 2006" on the back for some reason), grimacing men carrying various mysterious packages or manhandling small wheeled carts, thin and still-shy 1st year university students in glasses, pairs of brash middle-aged women in monotone polo shirts and flip-flops, busy-looking but grinning domestic helpers - the usual cross-section of Island society.

The museum is housed in a couple of inter-connecting buildings and has some nice exhibits and collections - mostly ancient Chinese earthenware, bronzes, jade, scrolls, furniture and carved screens nicely incorporated in to the walls and doorways. The main draw at the moment is a photo exhibition of Hong Kong under the Japanese occupation. There's apparently not a great deal of surviving information about that period, but the pictures they had on display were very atmospheric and all the more interesting now that we can identify some of the streets and buildings in them. The text of the introduction to the display read something like "We don't wish to stir up controversy but merely remember a significant period in our history" (my paraphrase). My thoughts indeed.

Live!

After the resounding silence and total lack of cooperation from my last post, here's a change of theme - a review:

HK Live! (Saturday 2nd September at the Fringe Club Gallery)

I don't want to use the cliche of intimate to describe the venue, but I might have to. You know the kind of place where the stage is only about a foot high and the only way for the band to get on and off is to push straight through the crowd. But the Fringe Club Gallery is a very civilized form of intimate venue: clean cool air, pictures from the current exhibition up on the bare-brick walls, and clean. Actually clean. No sticky mess of beer and chewing gum on the floor, no graffiti in the toilets, not even a dropped cigarette butt in sight. Having said that, it's not at all soul-less and over-sanitized. The audience were appreciative and energetic without being over-the-top crazy (well, we're all a bit older now) and the sound system was not too bad given the size of the place. Still, enough about the venue - how about the bands? There were two supporting acts on tonight, the first of which were the Shotgun She-Ras - a Hong Kong local, all-female, country and western outfit, with great hair and dubious Southern accents.
They were obviously having fun during their set, despite some struggles with the sound; the drummer gave her all from under her 10-gallon hat, the guitar and bass maintained just the right detached cool expressions and the lead-singer was a joy to watch as she grimaced and rolled her eyes in concentration at the mike, and then turned to the other band members smiling broadly. We started to doubt the authenticity of the girls' Southern roots after the lead-singer asked the techies to turn up her vocals in a broad Northern (England) accent but the She-Ras have some good songs and interesting ideas. They won a lot of support from the crowd with the obvious local references in "Mr Chan", a homage to the taxi-driver they met on the way to the gig, and their cover song was well-received. Perhaps a little more practice and tightening up is in order, along with some more confidence to match their outfits and golden bee-hive hairdos. And how about some other instruments in the mix for a little more variety?

Next up after a 10 minute break were The Lovesong, who seemed to be the most popular band of the evening. Described somewhere as a "spoken-word indie-rock" group, they could be better termed a shouted-word nu-metal outfit. There's no doubt that they're technically proficient and good at what they do: they'll keep the kids happy with their mix of driving beats, angry-sounding-even-when-not lyrics and almost electronic lead-guitar tones over fuzzed-out rapid power chords; there were definite hints of early Rage Against the Machine in there. But perhaps the vocals and song-writing need a little more depth.

Last up: Johnny Hi-Fi, all the way from New York at the start of a 6-day Asian tour. They are described in many terms: multi-ethnic, do-it-yourself, Asia's (or America's, depending on who you listen to) answer to Coldplay. But basically they were composed, confident, tight and just a little bit samey.
They opened with pure Radiohead chord sequences and ended with something very reminiscent of the best Placebo (who they'll be supporting at the Beijing Pop Festival in a few days) passing through Mandarin melodic indie rock-ballads on the way. It seemed the too-cool lead singer would never even break a sweat, but even he succumbed eventually as they cruised through their final numbers and one encore. They can put on a good show but to stand-up to their Coldplay tag they need to make a little more use of the other members and again, some other instruments wouldn't hurt at all. None of the bands on tonight seemed to have heard of acoustic guitars, or instruments with keyboards.

So it seems the keywords for this evening were good music, nice venue, and let's not forget "variety", as in let's have a little bit more of it and you could all go far.

1987

There's an idea on the BBC blog, The Editors, about looking up the year that you were 9 years old, and seeing how much of the news you can actually remember. In my case, that's mostly 1987 I suppose. I don't remember the fact that the year started on a Thursday, but quite sadly I do recall a lot of the bad news - who says things are getting worse when you look back: Terry Waite, a ferry disaster near Zeebrugge, Margaret Thatcher being prime minister yet again, the Hungerford Massacre, Enniskillen and the King's Cross fire. I definitely also remember the big gales that destroyed a lot of trees and property around the south of England and of course Kylie's first record (this was good news though!).

I think I can remember a lot more about 1986, the year I actually turned 9, as that was the year of the Challenger disaster and other not so bad news: Halley's comet, the announcement about the building of the Channel Tunnel, the Mexico '86 world cup, and of course the Osidge School Golden Jubilee!

So how about you lot? Any memories to share of when you were 9?