I am sitting in Clints apartment. Outside, a typhoon is pelting Hong Kong with rain and electricity. Thunderstorms across the HK skyline are very pretty…
And so here is another belated blog entry. I aim to recap on a few things that stand out in my memory, the entries will get more infrequent from here on in. Why? Because I have a job. Long days, fatigue, you know the drill. All will be explained. But now you must once again begin to plough through the cyberslurry of what is commonly known as…the candy mandible…
Saturday 30th July
Today is Lantau Island Day. The weather is rainy, appalling. Perfect for a hike…
The plan is, I will cross the island’s short axis, from Tung Chung to Cheung Sha Beach, where Clint and some of his workmates are attempting to windsurf.
Tung Chung is a dull, strange place. It is yet another of the many towns around HK that have gone from being small, isolated fishing villages to becoming large, highrise towns within the space of less than a generation. Sha Tin, where I had been a few days ago, is another such town, where hundreds of apartment towers were built to accomodate vast numbers of chinese immigrants in the mid 20th century.
In the case of Tung Chung, I am assuming that it has also developed to meet the demand for airport personnel on Chep Lap Kok Island close by. I leave it behind as quick as I can, and head for the Mountains.
I wind my way up Tung Chung Road, and order a set lunch at the Po Hin Monastary vegetarian canteen. The meal isn’t great. And I can afford to be critical. I am accustomed to the generally very high standard of eats one must provide if they want to make it in this town. The soup is very strangely flavoured, and while I don’t hate it I don’t want any more. It’s very fragrant, with some dried mushrooms, red bean and other curd floating in it. Next is the mock crispy skin duck, yawn. This is then followed by two dishes, mock chicken(mushrooms thinly sliced in a gelatinous salty sauce) and finally house-made tofu with a fresh tomato sauce. The tofu is very fresh and soft and is definitely the meals redeeming feature.
The nuns beam at me as I hit the trail once more, straight into the monsoonal rain.
The trail up to the mountains is beautiful, with lots of little mountain streams and waterfalls, with rock pools to cool off ones feet in. The rain keeps coming down, and I hold the umbrella close.
And so this hike is going well, or so I think. I have not yet entered…
The Valley of the Spiders…
After a solid hour or so of walking, I make it down to the last stretch of sloping forest leading to Cheung Sha Beach. The trail is not concreted like many others, and is therefore not well defined, hemmed in by foliage, a green tunnel of sorts. As I turn a particularly sharp corner, I run into my first spider…
The common spider in Hong Kong is quite large, black and has yellow streaks and enormous fangs. It could be described as a colourful cousin of the Australian Huntsman Spider. It spins its web in localised areas, ie never consciously across paths like some Australian Spiders, but often in clear breezeways, where it can-surprise surprise-catch things in mid flight. This spider has caught a human, one that freaks and chucks a nana and paws at his trembling face for a good minute, yelping.
This sets the tone for the afternoons descent, and from then on every 3 or so metres I encounter another spider encroaching on the path. Mostly I have to hurl huge rocks at them, there are no good sticks around. When I can make my way past them, I raise my umbrella and crouch and crabwalk forward, feeling silly.
This method becomes questionable when I spy a creeping movement from the corner of my vision, on the underside of my umbrella, ie centimetres away from my head.
I throw the umbrella to the ground, and watch gaping as a spider casually makes its way across the underside of my umbrella. A wonderful, unnerving afternoon in the valley of the spiders!
Monday 1st August
Monday morning comes around again. Clint goes off to work, and I set out on my jobsearch once again. Once the interviews are over and the calls have all been made, I set off towards Tai Po on the KCR East Train. I hire a mountain bike near the station and start pedalling like mad towards Plover Cove Country Park. I come across San Mun Tsai, a small fishing village with scenic harbour views of a giant concrete tidal wave breaker. The village is quite unique in these parts, I think. It is a small Christian community, and the church near the entry is probably its biggest building. I wheel my bike along the villages answer to a Promenade: basically a transition space between the inner private dwelling and the storage space/deck overlooking Tolo Harbour. Again, you can see right into peoples material lives. It is all lovingly ramshackle. Soon, construction of a luxury 12 storey apartment complex will be completed nearby, overlooking this enclave. I find a refreshment shop and drain a beer. I look down at my stomach, which is threatening to turn into a beer gut, and reason that I will be pedalling like mad all afternoon and so I can drink as much beer as I wish.
In Hong Kong I am finding I drink beer nearly every day. It is simply the most refreshing drink after a day in the subtropical haze. The local brew of choice is Tsingdao, from the chinese city of Quingdao. This city was one of the few small german colonies in Asia, and so guess who taught the locals how to brew beer? Apparently there remain a number of old German half timber dwellings in Quingdao. That’s even more bizarre than seeing Portuguese architecture in Macau! Soon construction of the new Disneyland in Lantau will be finished, and so these strange architectural mishmashes will pale in comparison. Even the MTR train that takes you to this Disneyland has windows shaped like the silhouette of that infernal talking mouse…
I never quite make it into the Country Park. I only see its violent mountains in the distance. I should come back here. It is stunning…
Tuesday 2nd August
This morning at about 11am I get the call. You got the job, congrats, now, can you come in today at 2 to start work immediately?
The caller is Gavin, a Director at Terry Farrell and Partners. Excellent, I think, this was my preferred place to work anyways. Trouble is, I have another 3 interviews lined up that afternoon. And so it is agreed that I can start the next morning instead.
I go to all the other interviews. I notice that one is much more relaxed when one knows they are inessential. It is nice to talk to different people though to see where they are coming from.
Wednesday, 3rd August
I find out why I was already required to start work yesterday. A competition entry is due tomorrow. And so for my first day of work I help a guy called Roy put together some presentation boards for the Design Competition entry until 4am the next morning.
I am thinking: "it’s good to be back…"
Friday, 5th August
Friday evening I go out with some guys from my new work, Francois the French Canadian and Cedric the cool Hong Kongker. We drink beer and then eat hotpot. Squill are back on the menu, they can also be called Pissing Shrimp I find out. You broil them alive, and you have to watch that they don’t nip you, they have one really large claw.
Cedric leads the way to a great little club in Wellington Street called Senses. Definitely a Hong Kong chinese crowd, but with a few gualo(foreign devils) faces as well. There is a really beautiful little terrace on the mezzanine floor ideal for first kisses, or dancing without care, and generally surveying the streets and the like. Cedric leans on the parapet, looking out at the grimy streets of Sino-Gotham and, taking a swig of beer, makes a sweeping gesture with his arm, and says:
" One day I’m gonna own this city."
The club has musical instruments lying around as well. This guitar-wielding indian guy is trying to hunker down with another guy who plays sax, and a bongo drummer.
Somehow they sense my yearning for la musica, so soon I am holding a guitar as well. It is all a little funk driven for me, all Jack Johnson-ey, even bordering on the fearsome Santana at times. Another guy plugs in a Korean Fender Telecaster knockoff and after about two strums breaks a string. Everyone cheers. We keep strumming and then I also break a string. It is all over.
Saturday 6th August
Saturday evening Clint and I get invited to Sean’s abode on the mainland, in a little village called Hang Hau. The Ashes are playing on TV (Sean has satellite), and there will be both aussies and brits in the audience. I arrive later than the others, having worked Saturday, and having been thwarted by a mad taxi driver. Sean rents his apartment from a Hong Kong architect, and the place is stunning. It is a really great pad on the third floor of a little building (little by HK standards), walls lined with woven fabric and bamboo fibres, everything very summery and casual, yet appointed with a fastidious eye. The other guests are immersed in the cricket as I arrive. An enormous table groans with food. Over the course of watching Australia lose the ashes, giant top grade steaks arrive from the BBQ, and we eat way to much imported cheese. Sean is everyone’s hero. Hans, a Belgian, displays a surprising interest for cricket. He has obviously been hanging with the Australians.
Everyone gets fuller and tireder. Sean suggests we see his rooftop terrace. And we are all gobsmacked. A night time view of the countryside, with the glow of the city from behind the ridge. This is the coolest rooftop ever! From this point on, I decide I am willing to spend more per month on rent if the apartment I find has a roof top or balcony.
The taxi ride home is a long one, and there are four of us: Hans the Belgian, and the three Australians: Bob the Melbournian, Clint the Port Lincolonian/Adelaidian, and me. Our taxi crosses the toll bridge across the harbour. The city is beautiful tonight.
Sunday 7th August
I started reading Sherlock Holmes tonight, thanks James for the book. It can’t wait for the London fog, maybe the misty marshes of Tai Po will have to do…
And I got the Avant Gardners DVD in the mail. I watched it, drank beer and ate peanuts. Thanks to the sender. I point you to my new Blog section, "Southern Austalgia" towards the end of this entry.
Thursday 11th August
I have worked for over a week. The work is challenging, the projects are fun and the people in the office are generally pretty cool and driven. It is a really good atmosphere to work in actually, so far. It is one of the coolest buildings in Hong Kong. Going to the toilet is like going below deck on the Titanic, so many portholes and strange, futuristic/nautical details. And this first week, I’ve had a window seat which looks out over the city. Rain and thunderstorms look good. A little bird even landed on the window sill and said hello. . In my photo album there are some photos of the office building where I work. You’ll find the link at the end of this entry.
So this afternoon some of us who are working on this one hotel project each get memos. Tonight we are invited to dinner, all expenses paid, at a Japanese restaurant called Sushi Sawa in Causeway Bay. And I’ve only worked on this project for, maybe, three days…I feel like a fraud.
And the food is the best ever! Wow, the sashimi is perfect. We find fresh bundles of red and green seaweed hidden under giant leaves, and the fish melts in our mouths. Then there are little sushi specialties as well, like salmon sushi with mandarin peel and roe for example. We wash all this down with an 1800ml bottle of sake. I vow to have a quiet Friday night…
Friday 12th August
…Which of course is impossible in HK. And so once again we find ourselves in Le Jardin, a great bar overlooking Rat Alley in Lan Kwai Fong. It’s a great social space, and has a nice fortified feel to it. After some hefty drinks, it’s downstairs to the Malay/Indian restaurant for some dinner. A fantastic, unpretentious place to eat and eat and eat. We are with brits, who unabashedly proclaim this some of the best curry joints ever-which is saying something when England has such a large indian population. Well, that is my night ended. I walk on home, feeling rather beat.
Saturday 13th August
So I have looked at some flats today. One is large, maybe a bit daggy but cheap by HK standards-4700 bucks Hong Kong for 2 big bedrooms overlooking the Hollywood Road/ Queens Road intersection. I’m very very tempted. I see some others that suck big time. All in all it is a good primer: I am starting to form a picture of what to expect. I MTR it to Kowloon Tong to see Festival Walk, a new shopping centre that we researched earlier this week at work. Again, there are some photos of this in my online photo album. I was reading a book by Rem Koolhaas and his Harvard buddies called "The Harvard Guide to Shopping." It’s some nice, stylised, polemical writing and it paints a picture, like most work by this guy does. I think though that for the first time, I was able to come away with a very positive frame of mind. This sort of cultural critique often seeks to cloak itself in critical coolness, that wry journalistic writing that usually makes the reader feel like they’ve gained access to the exclusive club of human insight for a few minutes afterward. But this time, I realised that these ideas are nothing if they are not applied and tested. Hopefully, there is a project we are working on in the next few weeks that will warrant some application.
Actually, Festival Walk is a good looking shopping centre. The escalators are all mirrored, and the blurred reflected human traffic gives life to these retail spaces.
Oh, and I succumbed myself here and finally found a manbag. It was half price at Ballys, which shouldn’t disguise the fact that the bag still cost way way too much.
But, like every good shopper with his new acquisition, I am happy.
Southern Austalgia.
This is a new section of my blog. I don’t know if it has a future. It serves as an outlet for my homesickness and all the other things I crave.
First off, we have the "5 Things I miss most about Adelaide" feature article.
1. The smell of eucalypts after fresh rains in Belair National Park.
2. The crisp blue water (and NOTHING ELSE) of Maslins Beach, the nicest beach in the world.
3. Buzzing with Coopers Pale, listening to buzzing music at Adelaide pubs.
4. The lack of good music here means that my status as a metrosexual will soon be
complete, with the belated acquisition of an Mp3 player).
5. A café that makes a decent coffee. Eros comes to mind…
6. riding a pushbike in the city without fear of dying.
Then there are the people as well, but I will stop here at the risk of turning all gooey n schmalzy etc. Maybe next week…
And before I go, here are a few links to other friends online Journals you could have a look at…
