So there is good coffee in hong kong, it is just difficult to find. We ate with the Krishnas yesterday for lunch. I still can't believe that they don't use garlic or onions. Apparently those foods inspire too much passion. No coffee or chocolate either. So I'm thinking that wouldn't a kirshna complex serve as a great front for money laundering, drug sales and prostitution? They obviously wouldn't get high off of their own supply.
So many young people in hk. Last night at the waterfront, it was really like some postmodern college campus idyllic dream run amuck. Kowloon's waterfront holds a vague resemblance to Windsor, Ontario. Not exactly, but it brought back memories of watching fireworks over the ragedy facades of burnt out Detroit. Looking from Kowloon, the city responds with fireworks. Reinventing itself in changing lights. The fog and clouds simultaneously destroy and reshape the buildings peaks and reflect the blues and reds from commercial signage. This is the result capitalism left unfettered. Corporate logos everywhere. This is the future metropolis imagined in blade runner. You just sit there and freak out on how immense and terrible/wonderful the whole thing is. Large groups of kids are singing songs, skateboarding, making out or playing the guitar. Jesus, it is midnight on a monday and the photographers are still doing great business with tourist skyline pictures.
Behind the waterfront sits the Penninsula hotel with a live jazz band serenading... no one from the lobby's rafters. Best place to use the public bathrooms. The stalls are big enough for parties of four. Bill Gates, Donald Trump and the vast of the Love Boat (Isaac too, yo!) are on the walls, so you know the place is reprazenting. I'll stop now. There is more outside.
3/31/03
Michele in HK
Hong Kong in Email - Michele, 3/28/03
" SO-- jamie and i made it to hong kong! it initially seemed tight as we were rather late getting to the airport but once there we breezed through the nonexistent security, or at least, it seemed nonexistent. however, there were no worries as we were blessed with having the South Carolina "Work and Witness" missionary group, enroute to the Philipinesm on our flight. God was on our side. We also had a really neat goody bag from Cathay Pacific, including a toothbrush that may have doubled as a tampon applicator in a previous formation. And I ate chickpeas for breakfast, thanks to my request for a strict indian vegetarian meal. Yum, I guess..... So far we have just been tallking around and marveling at all the lights and the fact that shops are open until after 11 at night and that everything can be bought and sold. People seemingly jump into industry quickly, as you can find hello kitty and pokemon surgical masks on the street. About 2/12 people are wearing masks, it seems, although it varies as most workers on the ferries and trains are wearing them and it seems like most offices are requiring that their employees wear them. It's been frustrating to me as I can't lipread at all. Luckily, Jamie has been a splendid interpreter, assisting with such varied tasks as pricing shoes and finding out where our ferry is.
Yesterday we wandered around Central and Kowloon a bit and we visited an old HK temple called the Man Mo Temple. Jamie actually thought that it was a theme restaurant initially, but I corrected him. It was really lovely but smoky. And today, we took the ferry to Lantau Island where we paid a visit to the giant Buddha statue at the Po Lin Monastery. It felt almost like a theme park due to the influx of folks from the mainland (in this case, HK) and it was interesting to observe HK folks in their religious rituals. The rituals themselves, and the performers, seemed rather un-solemn, not serious at all. And everything, from joss sticks to a vegetarian lunch, was consumed. And it made me wonder about what religion means for these people, and what rituals are performed at home. On the bus ride back to the ferry, we had the opportunity to view peoples' digital photographs as people were passing around their cameras. We also went to a fishing village where shrimp paste is made amd where houses stand on stilts. We tromped around and explored and then took a high speed ferry back to HK and then went to the night market.
It's interesting to be here as a tourist and not a worker, to be staying in a cheap hotel rather than a luxurious appartment. We are staying in one of the "mansions" and it is apparently full of transitional workers and immigrants as well as locals in all economic classes. It is very diverse and it's offering another perspective on a Hong Kong that is extremely homogenous. I don't think that these workers and immigrants actually make HK more diverse per se, as they exist entirely on the margins, there is no space for them within the mainstream, at least not yet. Tonight we saw an Indian prostitute, dressed in a beautiful white salwar kemeez-- she looked very chaste and very pure, almost like an apparition at the side of Chung King Mansions. I wonder if other people, hurrying by, even saw her."
" SO-- jamie and i made it to hong kong! it initially seemed tight as we were rather late getting to the airport but once there we breezed through the nonexistent security, or at least, it seemed nonexistent. however, there were no worries as we were blessed with having the South Carolina "Work and Witness" missionary group, enroute to the Philipinesm on our flight. God was on our side. We also had a really neat goody bag from Cathay Pacific, including a toothbrush that may have doubled as a tampon applicator in a previous formation. And I ate chickpeas for breakfast, thanks to my request for a strict indian vegetarian meal. Yum, I guess..... So far we have just been tallking around and marveling at all the lights and the fact that shops are open until after 11 at night and that everything can be bought and sold. People seemingly jump into industry quickly, as you can find hello kitty and pokemon surgical masks on the street. About 2/12 people are wearing masks, it seems, although it varies as most workers on the ferries and trains are wearing them and it seems like most offices are requiring that their employees wear them. It's been frustrating to me as I can't lipread at all. Luckily, Jamie has been a splendid interpreter, assisting with such varied tasks as pricing shoes and finding out where our ferry is.
Yesterday we wandered around Central and Kowloon a bit and we visited an old HK temple called the Man Mo Temple. Jamie actually thought that it was a theme restaurant initially, but I corrected him. It was really lovely but smoky. And today, we took the ferry to Lantau Island where we paid a visit to the giant Buddha statue at the Po Lin Monastery. It felt almost like a theme park due to the influx of folks from the mainland (in this case, HK) and it was interesting to observe HK folks in their religious rituals. The rituals themselves, and the performers, seemed rather un-solemn, not serious at all. And everything, from joss sticks to a vegetarian lunch, was consumed. And it made me wonder about what religion means for these people, and what rituals are performed at home. On the bus ride back to the ferry, we had the opportunity to view peoples' digital photographs as people were passing around their cameras. We also went to a fishing village where shrimp paste is made amd where houses stand on stilts. We tromped around and explored and then took a high speed ferry back to HK and then went to the night market.
It's interesting to be here as a tourist and not a worker, to be staying in a cheap hotel rather than a luxurious appartment. We are staying in one of the "mansions" and it is apparently full of transitional workers and immigrants as well as locals in all economic classes. It is very diverse and it's offering another perspective on a Hong Kong that is extremely homogenous. I don't think that these workers and immigrants actually make HK more diverse per se, as they exist entirely on the margins, there is no space for them within the mainstream, at least not yet. Tonight we saw an Indian prostitute, dressed in a beautiful white salwar kemeez-- she looked very chaste and very pure, almost like an apparition at the side of Chung King Mansions. I wonder if other people, hurrying by, even saw her."
3/30/03
Radio HK
What Hong Kong needs is a good hip hop radio station. We watched kids in the park ripping the basketball court... there was no appropriate soundtrack. Just honking horns and Sino-techno pop. I have purchased the Mother of All Ugly shirts and plan on wearing it every day. Everyone needs a flourescent orange hawaiian shirt. They just do. Lots of camoflage too. HK is the front lines of the fashion world. It may be designed in NY or paris or wherever. But the shit is made here or is funneled through here on its way to the states.
3/26/03
28 hours
Well we have 28 odd hours prior to takeoff and the ground crew is still frantically finishing staging and preparation work. The wonderful thing about the process is that there is a time on the ticket, and the flight crew doesn't care what the ground crew has finished. The flight crew is leaving regardless of what tasks are actually completed. Obviously the ground crew has enough time for retrospection. As a rule, a chronic underfunctioner requires plenty of last minute maintenance and plenty of time for digressions. Thank god for "material breaches."
3/13/03
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