Wednesday/ at Hong Kong airport

The beautiful poinsettias are from the elevator lobby in the hotel when I left this morning.   The intriguing east-meets-west billboard (for JP Morgan Investment Bank) is from Hong Kong airport where I’m waiting at the gate.  That’s the Empire State Building and Big Ben, of course – but I don’t recognize the buildings from Asia.    I will have to deploy the latest version of Google Goggles and do a picture search when I have more time.   Got to go!   A short stop-over at Seoul and then on to Seattle.

Sunday/ pictures from Kowloon

I hopped into the van that took a colleague to Hong Kong airport for his trip back to the USA.   From there it was just 15 minutes on the Airport Express train south east to Kowloon station, site of this apartment building.   There must be a lot of feng shui in play with its large gap!   The street scene picture is in Tsim Tsa Tsui just off Nathan Road.    The Ferrero Rocher Christmas tree (Italian hazelnut cream chocolates wrapped in foil) is close by as well.    Junks were used as sea-going vessels as early as the 2nd century but in the year 2011 this one has a diesel engine and tools around Victoria harbor with tourists.   And then it was time for me to call it quits and head back up to the Hong Kong-mainland China border with the East Rail Line that starts at Hung Hom station.   I love the station’s wavy roof : a beautiful industrial design that is functional as well, since it lets in lots of natural light.

Saturday/ quick trip to Shenzhen

I took  the 20 min taxi ride for a quick trip in to Shenzhen tonight.  The pictures are all from in and around the Mix-C shopping mall.   I actually went to check out the Kingkey Finance Tower with its 100 floors at night.   It can run gigantic banner advertisements on its curved sides, make flowers drift down on it, or even display bursting fireworks.   (The third picture is an aerial perspective drawing that I found on-line).   Speaking of flowers,  the movie ‘The Flowers of War’ has just started showing here in theaters.  It features Hollywood actor Christian Bale as a Westerner that finds refuge with a group of women in a church during Japan’s brutal invasion of Nanking in 1937 and tries to lead them to safety.    The beautiful big dog was on the outside patio at Starbucks and generated a little stir among the other patrons.  His master is the guy with the big notebook computer.

Wednesday/ Christmas time in Coco Park

We had a project team dinner at the Coco Park complex in Futian district in Shenzhen last night.   (Coco Park is Expat Central in the way that the Lan Kwai Fong area is in Hong Kong).   The dinner was at an Italian restaurant with a red interior and with bronze buddhas and water lilies filling out the decor!   But the thin-crust pizza (as appetizer) was very authentic, done in a wood-fired oven.    I love the crazy diamond-patterned skyscrapers but did not have my proper camera with me.  I will go back and take some better pictures at another time.

Sunday/ arrived in Dameisha

Our flight path took us over the Sea of Ochotsk, just over the northern tip of Sakhalin island, Russia’s largest island at about 1/4 the size of Japan.  There’s the Asiana plane bound for Hong Kong parked at Gate 32 at Incheon airport in Seoul (see me in the reflection?).  And there are a lot of Samsung LED TVs in the airport (it would be sacrilege to have Sonys, right?); this one had a Chevy Malibu commercial on.   Now it’s time to snooze for a few hours before Monday morning is upon me.

Saturday/ Asiana Airlines to Seoul and Hong Kong

I’m at Seattle-Tacoma airport at the South Terminal gates waiting for the Asiana Airlines flight (it’s a regular Airbus A330) to Seoul.   Then on to Hong Kong for a late Sunday night arrival.    A Starbucks at the Hong Kong terminal our agreed-on meeting point for finding the driver for arriving Americans.   The pictures are all from the Asiana Airlines website.

Friday/ packing up

Yes, it’s that time again : to fly to Hong Kong, on Saturday.  I only have to pack one suitcase since I left one at the hotel in Dameisha, so that helps!  (The stuffed snake is checking out the jumping Puma on the t-shirt, see?).  And the little things matter very much : cell phone cord and charger, passport, camera battery charger, medicines and all that.   So even after two dozen trips to the same place, a check list is indispensable.  Got this? check Got that? check.

Monday/ Taxi or Transit?

So .. I thought as I arrived back at Seattle-Tacoma airport on Monday : taxi or train?  Train is officially called ‘Central Link Light Rail’ (airport to downtown), and then I have to take the No 10 Bus from downtown to Capitol Hill to the closest stop two blocks from my house.    Since my luggage was manageable, and I wanted to see how it works out, I took the train.

Here is a comparison :

Would I do it again?  Hmm, yes – if I don’t have a ton of luggage for an overseas trip, and I have the time!

The pictures : The ‘toy’ planes (3,000 ft view) at Boeing Field airport, paper ticket if you’re a bad boy and left your Orca card at home, combination inside-outside picture of Beacon Hill’s underground station, brief glimpse of city skyline on one of the curves, route map that shows the train route going toward I-5 and then north to Seattle downtown from the airport.

Sunday/ north and back on the Pacific Surfliner

We took the Pacific Surfliner (it’s an Amtrak train) from Solana Beach station to San Juan Capistrano (only about 1/3 of the San Diego – Los Angeles rail line shown below.   The first picture shows the tracks at Solana Beach, then there is a map of San Juan Capistrano surroundings.   The emu is from a petting zoo right there (the emu is not for petting, though).   The southbound train was tardy, arriving 35 mins late, but was about 90% full.   The reactors are from San Onofre Nuclear Power Generating Station.  The starfish is from a tide pool on Solana Beach where there was a very low tide.   The sun sunk into the Pacific Ocean at 4.44pm already! so it was time to go.   And what looks like a lunar module from far away is a life guard station from closer up !

 

 

Saturday/ Torrey Pines State Park

It was a beautiful day today in San Diego (could the sky have been any bluer?), so my brother and I went to Torrey Pines State Park and beach for a short hike.    The torrey pine grows naturally only along a small strip of coast from Del Mar to La Jolla, and on Santa Rosa Island some hundred and seventy miles to the northwest.

Wednesday/ arrived in Seattle

Seattle is ‘cold’ and wet but I am very happy to be home.   The Chengdu billboard is from inside Hong Kong airport (if ‘real China’ is meant to say Hong Kong is not ‘really China’, well then, I guess Hong Kong can counter with ‘you got that right!’).  The puppets are from a display at Seoul airport.  In ancient times Korean parents would hang a straw rope called geum-jul across the main gate of the house for 21 days to indicate the arrival of a newborn and to ward off evil spirits (the parents look very happy!).    The phoenix is the latest Hermès scarf on display in their store, the bibimbap was dinner on the way to Seattle (this is before I threw in the white rice, red pepper paste and sesame oil and stir it all together – and before I knocked over a small glass of water on my seat neighbor’s leg.  I apologized profusely and jumped up and got some napkins to mop up the water.   Yes, I’m a clumsy idiot but at least it was not red wine or coffee!).   And finally, the Airbus A-330 from Korean Air that brought us across the Pacific, at the gate at Seattle airport.

Tuesday/ back to Hong Kong

.. for my flight out to Seattle on Wednesday morning.  We went across the border at the Shenzhen Bay (Shekou) border crossing again, and it was nice to have a very short line of cars in front of us to deal with.    The suspension bridge picture is on the way to Lantau island where the Marriott Skycity hotel is, right by the airport.

Saturday/ this weekend’s Hong Kong report

Yes, yes, I am in the Marriott Courtyard hotel as I have done many weekends before.   Too much money and stress to travel elsewhere for the weekend after a long, hard slog at work.  The dragon pillow is from Ikea (I now regret that I didn’t buy it), and the Lego characters and stainless steel tube chess set from Sogo department store in Causeway Bay.   Times Square is close by and always has an artsy outdoor display going at the mall entrance.  This time they had white trees  that reminded me of African boababs, with doll houses and giant lollipops below.   I think the gigantic high-res LED sign at the Emperor Watch and Jewelry store right there, is new.   As for the billboard of the wild-haired – nerds? -throwing the TVs and PCs around : my sentiments exactly!  ( at least sometimes).

The night-time pictures are all from around Central Station on Hong Kong island.    The ‘usual suspects’ Bank of China, Hang Seng Bank Corporation and Standard Chartered Bank are showing themselves off in gaudy night colors.   (Yes, there is a Occupy Hong Kong movement.   But unlike in Europe or the USA, unemployment has been falling in Hong Kong, a minimum wage was introduced in May and there seems to be little fall-out left of the 2008 banking crisis).  Can the billboard’s school kids with their red bow-ties be any cuter?  The building with the LED paneled strips going up is the AIA Insurance building.   And the building with the Season’s Greetings lights is yet another bank building.

Monday/ my own Terracotta Warrior

Check out my little terracotta warrior replica, a gift from a colleague that visited Xi’an last weekend.    The real terracotta warriors date from the 3rd century BC and were discovered only in 1974 (!) by local farmers in Lintong District, Xi’an, Shaanxi province.   It is an UNESCO World Heritage site.   Current estimates are that in the three pits containing the Terracotta Army there were over 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses (the majority of which are still buried in the pits).    I got the second picture from Wikipedia’s entry .. check out the rest of the entry at  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terracotta_Army.

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Saturday/ Hong Kong

I hitched a ride into Hong Kong with a colleague that was taken to the airport.  The drivers that take us there have vehicles with plates for mainland China as well as for Hong Kong.  So we could stay put and not have to deal with the throngs of daytrippers.   Even so there was such a long wait for vehicles at the first crossing that the driver gave up and went to the Shekou crossing all the way over on the west side of Shenzhen.   We caught a glimpse of the 2011 Universiade Student Olympics stadium.  The Google map doesn’t show it but there is a suspension bridge to Lantau Island where the airport is, that gets one across the water.   From the airport I took the train to the city.   The promenade at the Hong Kong Art Museum is one of my favorite places in the city.     The guy in the boat is about to scoop up some floating debris in Victoria harbor.  Nearby at the Harbor City mall a crowd were snapping pictures of Pixar and Disney characters on a Happy Holiday display.   And up the street at the 1881 Heritage Plaza some recent graduates used the display of horses and carriages as a backdrop.  Check out the smart duck, the rose and the chipmink they are posing with.  I guess those are gifts they got from family or friends for graduating.  

Monday/ Seoul connection

It is Tuesday here in China but here are pictures from my connection in Seoul.    We arrived early so I had time to admire a model Korean junk boat and Hermès scarf in the shop windows.  (For Korea the symbolism of the crane goes back to ‘crane dances’ in the courtyards of early dynasties).   Then I headed over to Gate 10 where the A380 ‘superjumbo’ was getting pulled up to the gate.    I used that upper deck jet bridge to find my seat upstairs.    The plane feels more like an airship than an airplane.   As we started to lift off, it felt as if the ground speed was still way too slow (or maybe I was tired and dreamy).     Has the A380 made some inroads into the large jet airliner segment of the market once dominated by Boeing?  It certainly has – looking at the number of airplanes ordered and delivered* by EADS.   Both EADS and Boeing claimed victory after several rulings by the World Trade Organization in recent years in the world’s largest trade dispute.

*As of February 2011 there were 244 orders for the A380-800. The break-even for the A380 was initially supposed to be reached at 270 units, but due to the delays and the falling exchange rate of the US dollar, it increased to 420 units.  In 2010, EADS CFO Hans Peter Ring said that break-even (on the aircraft that are delivered) could be achieved by 2015, despite the delays; there should be around 200 deliveries by that time, on current projections.    As of March 2010 the average list price of an A380 was US$ 375.3 million (about €261 million or £229 million), depending on equipment installed.

Sunday/ Korean Air to Hong Kong

I made it through the gauntlet of security hurdles at Seattle-Tacoma airport.   Out of the backpack and into the tray goes the PC, the iPad, the liquids, the cell phone, the jacket, the shoes .. still not good enough; off with the belt as well that the full-body scanner could clear me.   I hate that scanner!  but at least the TSA personnel put in an effort to be nice and not bark orders at the passengers.   It’s the first time I will fly in one of the turquoise airplanes of Korean Air.  It’s 10 hrs in an Airbus 330-200 to Incheon airport in Seoul, and then 4 hrs in the double-decker wide-body A380 (the world’s largest passenger airplane) to Hong Kong.     

Thursday/ east west home best

I’m home!   There it is : the 787 Dreamliner that was sitting on the tarmac at Hong Kong airport.  I believe it is the one that made the world-first charter flight from Tokyo to Hong Kong on Wednesday.   The tunnel is at Tokyo’s Narita airport; the tubular lighting emitted a low but effective light.   Name the purveyor of the fine silk scarf? (Yes, ‘H’ is the clue).   From the airport’s toy store : stuffed Pokemon characters and ‘Franky’ with the killer arms (but what about his legs? those need a work-out!).   And the kaiseki  (a traditional multi-course Japanese dinner) served on the way to Tokyo was excellent.

Thursday/ at Hong Kong airport

My beer from last night; the view of the airport as I stepped into the hotel elevator to check out; Halloween display in the airport lounge (nice Chinese lantern with the skeleton on).   I smiled when I saw the sign on the airport shuttle train bringing us to the gate, say  ‘alight here’.   Would we say that in the USA? ‘Alight here’ ?  Well, I’m going to alight in Seattle.

Wednesday/ at the Sky City

My colleague and I made it to the Marriott Sky City (airport hotel) here at Hong Kong airport.    Our driver thought our destination was the Marriott in Central District on Hong Kong Island, and we had to explain nooo – the Marriott we want is the one at the airport.     But by then we were in the Harbour Tunnel on the way to Hong Kong Island, so we caught a glimpse of the buildings there before we turned around and made our way to Lantau Island where the hotel is.