Month: March 2010

Cleaned my house today, and started packing my bags for the trip out to Hong Kong, my 3rd, Sunday.   A group of about 8 of us from work plan to go to Macau next weekend (the former Portuguese colony, now a Special Administrative region of China the same way Hong Kong is).   It is across the Pearl River Delta from Hong Kong (lower left corner of map, click picture to enlarge, picture courtesy of Google Maps), and we plan to take a ferry from Shenzhen airport to get there.

I couldn’t resist posting this picture of a house of cards .. check it out.  I suppose it will be gone by the time we get there next week!

Don’t Anybody Sneeze
In Macao, Bryan Berg breaks the world record for the largest house of freestanding cards with his replica of the Venetian Macao. [Photo from TIME magazine, Mar 10 2010]

Two things from my kitchen counter top this morning to brighten up the cold Monday .. General Mills’s latest Cheerios flavor is chocolate, with real cocoa.  Hmm, so there is such a thing as imitation cocoa? and how much is ‘real cocoa’ and how much brown food-coloring?  It tastes so good that it makes me feel guilty, though.  I should eat oatmeal or Pronutro instead !

The other picture is of one of three cuts of silk fabric I bought in Hong Kong (now making its way to Stellenbosch, South Africa).

Saw this on the sidewalk on the way to Starbucks to get some coffee this morning.. hmm !

So I don’t have to go to China to get sum (some) dim sum, see?  Chinese translation and all.  And yes, they say ‘eat me’ and they are delicious, the little dim sums! : )

The rhododendron in front of my house is in full bloom .. the only color that I have in my small front yard at this point.   I will have to do something to it, but of course not being home a lot makes it complicated (sigh).   Bed-time for me, I got a fair amount of sleep last night and I hope to do even better tonight.

Below is the Boeing 747-400 bird that brought us across the Pacific sitting patiently on the tarmac.  (Notice the phalanx of apartment buildings in the background?)  The flight and connection in San Francisco went fine; I made it in around 2pm to my house.  It was a beautiful day in Seattle, sunny with some clouds, 60° F (16 °C) and the trees on my street are full of spring blossoms.   I see construction has started in earnest on the light rail station here on Capitol Hill (where I live).  The newspaper says Starbucks is stuck in the crossfire for allowing guns in its stores. I am not sure if this was a change in the previous policy, or how the controversy came about.  (Gun ownership by citizens is illegal in all of China.)  I will have to catch up with the local and national news here !  And catch up with my sleep.

I am going downstairs for a nice breakfast and then the hotel shuttle will take me to Hong Kong airport.   I snapped this picture looking back from the van that brought us here from work yesterday.  It’s one of the two suspension bridges that runs across Victoria Bay and connects Kowloon and Hong Kong Island.

Below is another ‘spot the translation faux pas‘ picture, of a paper shopping bag on the counter at the dry-cleaners last night when I dropped off some shirts and pants.    Those of us that go home are all packed up for our trip back to the States already, since we’re going to stay overnight at the Hong Kong airport hotel.   Always, always check the Big Three : passport, wallet and Blackberry.   Then almost as important there’s the cell phone charger, computer, charger, medicine, iPod and Bose head phones !  (Yes, I know – I have too many gadgets).

These pictures from a car parked here at work ..  the Chinese bumper sticker equivalent of ‘back off!’.    My colleagues tell me the second picture (same car) is more rude than the first one, roughly translating into ‘I was a bad boy at school so watch out for me!’.   To look up these characters on my translator is a mini-project : I have to scribe it the right way with the stylus, and some of them are just impossible to get right.

Monday is over and only Tuesday and Wednesday stands between me and Thursday.   I’m going home on Thursday! I can’t wait!

This picture was taken in the Tsim Sha Tsui district in Hong Kong on Saturday night.   An Indian restaurant, a kitchen house ware store, 24 hr internet cafe and .. hel-lo!  Van der Merwe’s Camera and Video Shop!  South African flag on the sign and above the sign, see it?  Background note to non-South Africans :  Van der Merwe jokes make fun of Afrikaners , Van der Merwe being a stereotypical Dutch name.

Is this joke too risqué?  Too late, here it is.   The doctor wanted to go hunting, he calls his assistant Koos van der Merwe and tells him ‘Yes Koos, I am going hunting tomorrow, we don’t want to close the clinic, and I ask you to take care of our patients’. ‘Yes, doctor …’ answers Koos.
The doctor goes hunting and returns the next day and asks:’So Koos, how was your day?’
Koos tells him he took care of 3 patients:
The first one had a headache so I gave him TYLENOL.
‘Great Koos, and the second one?’ asks the doctor.
‘The second one had an upset stomach and I gave him MAALOX, doctor’ says Koos.
‘Yislaaaaaaaik Koos you’re good at this and what about the third one?’  asks the doctor.
‘Man! I was waiting for more patients and suddenly the door opens and a woman enters hot and bothered, she undresses herself, and lies on the table and shouts: HELP ME! For 5 years I have not seen a man!’
And what did you do Koos?!’ asks the doctor.
Koos : ‘Why – I put some eye drops in her eyes!’