a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
This is from a recent Wall Street Journal : a guy that takes his folding bicycle with on international trips to save his company money on taxi fare. And he refuses to fly business class on 16-hr flights to India, he says. ‘I would never dream of spending an extra thousand dollars to stay in a hotel room that’s slightly more comfortable than the bed I get in a $100 hotel room. Why would I do that with an airline seat?’.
Wednesday was Tomb Sweeping Day. I found the colorful little shrine on the sidewalk in Hong Kong near the hotel (those are incense sticks in the tray). Some enterprising individuals have started to offer tomb sweeping as a service, but it is not without controversy. Can one really outsource the activities that go with remembering someone very personal and close? (No – the point that the cartoon from the South China Morning Post is also making).
Life goes on in Hong Kong after the conclusion of a bitter election for new Chief Executive. Leung Chun-ying or Leung CY was elected by the 1,200-member Electoral Committee over Henry Tang and Albert Ho in a campaign marked scandals, dirty tactics and smears. The city also had some protests against the Electoral Committee, saying every resident should get to vote (of course). Then last week there was the arrest of two billionaire brothers Thomas and Robert Kwok who run Hong Kong’s top property developer in a high-profile corruption probe. They proclaimed their innocence at a news conference yesterday, and were released on bail.
The pictures are all from Monday night.
Our belated holiday weekend (the Qingming Festival or Tombsweeping Festival) has arrived. We are all very happy – double happy – to get a break from the grind on the project. The start-up went well, but it is always necessary to stick around for a few weeks to coach the new users and to work out any remaining wrinkles with the new system. So Sunday night finds me at my old haunt – the Marriott Courtyard – on Hong Kong Island. I took a coach bus from the Shatoujiao border crossing to Kowloon Tong station, and from there a taxi to the Marriott on the western side of Hong Kong Island.
By Wednesday morning it was time to pack up and check out to go to the airport for my flight back to Hong Kong. By now I was a ‘pro’ at using the Metro and finding the Airport Express train at Seoul station. Confession : it’s not that hard to be a pro when you have an interactive map of the Seoul metro on your smart phone! Still, it takes a few run-throughs to know which exits from the stations to take. Take the wrong one, and it might be a long walk to the next street crossing because you’re on the wrong side of a busy highway!
The War Memorial of Korea is a sprawling facility with military hardware on display and coverage of wars fought on the Korean Peninsula from ancient times. The most recent one of course, was the Korean War of 1950-1953. I also made a stop at Yongsan station where the electronics market is but did not buy anything. (1. The new iPad is not yet on sale in Korea. The 4G frequencies in the country are different from what the iPad has been designed for and some of that is still being worked out. 2. I cannot possibly lug around even one more device with me on my travels, anyway).
My first stop of the day was at the fish market at Noryanjin station. Then I went back to Seoul station to go check out the exterior in daytime. After that I made a quick stop at the Naedamun street market and then went off to see if I could find the cable car boarding station for Seoul Tower. I did, eventually!
I read about the GT Tower East with its wavy exterior and had to go and take a look at it. It is by Gangnam station (use exit 9) between several other modern financial company buildings and Samsung buildings. Sunday night I went to check out Itaewon – the gritty expat area with bars and nightclubs, popular with US army personnel from the base nearby.
The two ancient royal palaces in Seoul are connected with Saemungil Museam Street and Sejong Main Street. I first went to Gyungbokgung Palace and then I walked down to Changdeokgung Palace, spending a lot of time in the underground museum with its entrance at the statue of a seated King Sejong The Great. I only made it to the entrance of the second palace, and plan to go inside tomorrow.
My trip from Hong Kong airport went very well. My plan to get from Incheon airport in Seoul to the Marriott Courtyard hotel at Seoul Times Square was not too bad, either. I did have a little trouble spotting the hotel in the dark and wet weather at my arrival at the closest metro stop. It was just a four block walk but the darn Marriott hotel sign was on the opposite side of the Times Square buildings (of course!).
I’m in the hotel at Hong Kong airport, on my way to Seoul, South Korea for a long weekend. It’s not warm there yet, but at least warm enough to walk around at about 7 °C (44 °F). There is rain in the forecast for Friday, but it should clear up by Saturday.
(It’s actually early Thursday in the hotel in Dameisha). The pictures are all from the flight to Incheon airport in Seoul, and at the airport itself. Good news from North Korea is the announcement that the NK government has agreed to implement a moratorium on long-range missile tests, nuclear tests, and nuclear activities at Yongbyon, including uranium enrichment activities.
I made it through security and now I’m waiting for my flight to Seoul. It looks like our flying machine is an Airbus A330-300. It’s 11 hrs to Incheon airport and then 4 hrs to Hong Kong for a late Wednesday night arrival. So the rest of my Tuesday is about to disappear in thin air and I will have to catch the outcome of the Michigan Republican primary election on the other side!
I’m packing my bags for one more trip on Asiana Airlines to Hong Kong via South Korea’s Incheon airport (outside Seoul). Incheon airport was constructed over water about 1-3 meters (3 to 10 feet) deep. These types of airports are inevitably subject to some subsistence. Incheon’s is expected to be about 2.5 cm (1 inch) over the next 20 years. Hong Kong’s airport appears to be the best-engineered marine platform in the world and had hardly budged since 1998. Then there is Japan’s Kansai airport built over the sea 5 km off Osaka at a depth of 17-18 meters (56 to 59 feet). The world’s longest 2-tiered bridge connects it to the city nearby. It sinks 2 to 4 cm 
in any given year, so in 20 years’ time, it may sink 40 to 80 cm (16 to 33 inches). Yikes! .. however, the soil engineers from Osaka University are confident it will not sink completely into the ocean.
And here they are : this past trip’s purchases that I brought back.
It’s still Saturday but I’m in Seattle and thrilled to be home. Check out the pictures and their captions from the trip out of Hong Kong with a stop-over in Seoul.
The week went by in a flash, and I am on the way home to Seattle. I sent a last urgent e-mail when everyone was boarding the bus for Dameisha. From there we had a van take us through the border. Right now I am in the Marriott Sky City hotel by Hong Kong airport for my flight out in the morning. The first three pictures are from Shenzhen and the two bridge pictures from Hong Kong on the way to Lantau island where the airport is.
On Wednesday night we had a beer and a burger/ a British fish-and-chips at the Sheraton Dameisha to bid a colleague good-bye that is leaving the project. (The project is nearing its completion for all of us anyway). The LED decorations are still in place outside the hotel, and add some cheer to the winter nights. The Water Sky Hotel across the street has a new white sign. Very nice, but I miss the old yellow neon tube one that it used to have. At least the warm red one for the Meisha hotel close by, is still in place!
Friday night found nine gringos (foreigners) upstairs at the Tequila Coyote Cantina., a Mexican restaurant in the Futian district in Shenzhen. There was even a page with Tex-Mex items on the menu. After some translation difficulty for our request for a pitcher* of margarita cocktail mix, the restaurant improvised and brought the good stuff out in a Carlsberg beer pitcher.
*the Chinese word for pitcher is ping 瓶
These pictures are all from Shenzhen’s Futian district, from the Central Walk mall and the mix-C mall. There is still evidence of the start of the 2012 Year of the Dragon everywhere.
