河國榮, An Aussie in Hong Kong

It feels like we're living in a cloud. The floor takes a long time to dry after being mopped, and envelopes of just-delivered mail are dampish and soft. In Hong Kong, this weather phenomenon doesn't usually occur until the beginning of Spring. In fact, it is normally the accepted indication that Spring has begun. But we're still in Winter and this 'cloud' weather is already here. It's not normal.

For the past few weeks, the weather has wavered between being cool and extremely dry, to being damp as it is today. It's the perfect weather for colds and flu, and many of my acquaintances have already come down with something. I myself caught a slight case of the flu from our Indonesian maid.

I have a 200GB external hard disk which has developed serious media problems. A surface scan of the disk produced more than 900 bad blocks with 2 million blocks remaining to be scanned. After three days of scanning, I cancelled the scan. The Maxtor Diamond Plus is less than 2 years old but because it's an OEM, the warranty is only 1 year. Consider carefully before you purchase an expensive OEM external drive. It might be cheaper to buy a lower capacity drive and swap the bare drive for a full-warranty high capacity drive yourself.

Anyway, I had a quandary. The 200GB drive contains full resolution film scans of many of my photographs. The thing which many people tend to forget these days is that digital media can evaporate before your eyes and there's no way to get the material back, whether it be Word files, your favourite music (Apple iTunes music store) or your memories. A lot of people are backing up to CD or DVD believing the hype that the media will last for 10 to 20 years not realising that there are different grades of media, that CDs don't last as long as DVDs, that DVD+RWs don't last as long as DVD+Rs and that with temperature changes and exposure to light, NONE of these are certain to last over time.

Today is one of the few days in the year that you can park your car anywhere you like. Unlike other countries like Australia and the U.S.A., people can only park their cars in designated stretches of the road. If the sign does not say "Parking", then you can't park there; period.

So what's so special about today? It's the Chinese New Year. For four days, people don't have to go to work. They get to spend time with their friends and family and relax or get bored as the case may be.

Driving is a part of the culture that is Hong Kong. Most people don't drive because they cannot afford to buy a car, and public transport is pretty good even if it is controlled by government and large corporations with self-pointed motives. I have driven in Hong Kong for most of the 18 years that I've lived here and am now very used to it. That doesn't mean that driving here is easy for me but just that it's familiar.

When you drive in Hong Kong, one of the first things you realise is the attitude of other drivers. In particular, everyone seems to be in a rush. It's more noticeable when you return from a relaxing holiday as I just did. After driving in Queensland Australia for two weeks, driving here in Hong Kong just really got on my nerves. The worst thing about it though is that the rush attitude is contagious so even if you intend to take it easy and remind yourself that rushing might not even get you to your destination any faster, you'll still eventually end up rushing anyway. It's extremely difficult to avoid.

There's a good article over at CNET News.com about Attention Deficiency Trait (ADT). I've seen similar symptoms in my own life. For example, I tend to work on multiple tasks at home; including home repairs; at the same time, moving from one task to the next until they're all finished. I have a hard time completely finishing one task before beginning with the next.

Many many years ago when I was still a young person growing up in Australia, a New Zealand evangelist by the name of Barry Smith used to make the rounds of the churches preaching about the future of the world. In very basic terms, his message was the usual "repent or die with everyone else". Many people did convert and become Christians at the time but the end of the world didn't come. However, Barry's message was much more than simply that the world was coming to an end. He included many specifics, his (divine?) interpretation of the prophecies found within the bible. A few of his specifics may have been wrong but many were correct although they occurred much later than he had predicted. You can't fault him on that. Throughout history, many evangelists and foretellers of doom were very enthusiastic to see the end of the world sooner rather than later. Even now, we really can't be sure how close the end is, and if it will in fact actually occur.

The last time I wrote about the weather here was back before the Chinese New Year when it was foggy and wet. Guess what? It's still foggy and wet. In the last eight weeks or more, we've only seen six or seven days of warm weather with sunshine. Otherwise, it's been foggy and wet. The only difference now is that the temperature is on the way up with average temperatures of mid-twenties (that's celsius for those of you in fahrenheit countries). By summer time, the temperature will be up in the high twenties and sometimes near the mid-thirties. It can get very warm here.

Living in the fog, the humidity is very high. The tile floors inside the apartment and outside the back door are still creating water without any help from us or the dogs. It makes it very difficult to keep the apartment clean when the floors are constantly wet or at least moist.

You know the weather is changing when the pets change the way they sleep, or rather the surfaces they sleep on. Yes, the weather has finally warmed up here in Hong Kong. The fog has left us and although we still cannot see blue skies because of the nice pollution we get from our large neighbour, the weather overall is great; not too cool and not too hot. We're averaging around 28 degrees celcius, probably warm enough to go for a swim which we probably won't do anytime soon even though we live literally 10 minutes walk from a beach.

When the weather cools, our dogs scrunch up the blankets we provide them and then sleep on the blankets. Now that the weather is warming up, they're choosing to sleep on the tiled floor instead where it's cooler, so cool in fact that considerable moisture builds up in front of their faces on the floor as the moisture in their breath condensates upon contact with the cool floor.

Since owning the Canon 350D camera, I have been taking many more photographs than I've taken in many years. I have also had to spend an inordinate amount of time loading them onto my iMac, converting to tif and then touching up and converting to jpg (in three sizes). By touchup, I don't mean opening the photos in Photoshop. In fact, I don't own Photoshop. All of my touchups are done with a scanning and image processing software called SilverFast, developed in Germany and sold around the world. A lot of professional photographers know about the software; many non-professionals don't, only aware of Photoshop which by the way is too complicated for me personally; it's true.

I remember back in the days of SARS, the scenery in Hong Kong was fabulous, better than anything I'd seen in all the years I've lived here. I had to wonder why this was so and the only answer I could come up with was pollution. At the time, masses of people were staying at home, afraid to go out. Most people would continue to work to continue providing for their families but going out for entertainment or food was simply out of the question. Combined with the effects of the economic depression in effect at the time and you get a situation where the number of cars on the road at any one time was only a fraction of what would be normal.

( Fiction; ie, it's imagined, made up, invented, sort of, and it's not about me! )

eight fifteen a.m. just enough time to say my prayers before going to the office, only if we cut across the lanes into the exit though. if we had to go all the way down to the bottom and back up the other side to get to the car park entrance, I'd be late for work. crossing the white lines may be illegal but I can afford the fines.

prayers are all done. time to get to the office. things have changed a lot recently. I thought I'd be retiring soon. had to get that big project all organised so that I'd have a decent salary to fall back on after retirement. if it wasn't for all those noisy buggers complaining about the way the project was set up for bidding, it would've been finished by now too. oh well, doesn't matter anymore that I've now got this big promotion coming up. I'd dreamed about it but just didn't think it'd actually happen, or come so soon. all that shoe polishing finally paid off.

The bombing in London has been very high profile news all around the world. It's not surprising. Bombs going off in the middle of London; and more than one bomb at the same time; is very disturbing for most of us. If it happened in the middle of Iraq, we wouldn't think much of it even though we should. After all, lives anywhere in the world are lives and as such are valuable no matter who or where they are. The important aspect about the bombing in London though is the information being provided by the governments and the media.

In acting class, one of the things we are told to remember is that nothing is as it seems. Stereotypes should be avoided. Not all fat people are slow runners. Not all black people have excellent singing voices or are amazing athletes. Not all caucasians eat bread every meal of the day, or even potatoes every meal of the day. And not all politicians are corrupt although it can be difficult to find one who is not.

The price of petrol has just gone up in Hong Kong; again. We're now paying HK$12.66 per litre for normal grade petrol and HK$13.66 for high grade petrol. It's very expensive here but the oil companies don't mind increasing the price every chance they get anyway.

The latest excuse for increasing the price was the world wide cost of oil which recently hit US$61 per barrel, possibly the most expensive it's ever been. It's good and it's bad.

One of our friends left us today. We took her to the airport and watched her leave after being a part of our lives for the last two years.

Asih; that's her name; was originally hired to look after my mother-in-law who with serious symptoms of diabetes and heart disease needed 24-hour care. Shortly after hiring Asih, my mother-in-law passed away.

Our own maid's contract was almost up for renewal and for various reasons including the fact that Asih could speak Cantonese, we decided to let the other maid go and stick with Asih.

I had already decided not to visit Hong Kong Disneyland for quite some time to come, pretty sure that there would be a rush to get in when it first opened and that there might be all kinds of problems as the park adjusted. But when my friends offered us Rehearsal Day tickets, my wife and I bit the bullet and agreed to go.

I've been to the Florida Disneyland park in the USA twice. My wife has been to both the Florida and Japan parks, so this visit was going to be a comparison trip even if we didn't plan it that way. We were sure that the Hong Kong park wouldn't be as big or as grand as the other parks but we were curious none-the-less.

I've been watching a lot of the amazing "CSI" American television series lately and something occurred to me while watching it. For the justice system to work, a certain assumption has to be made; that all police work can be trusted.

If a case against a criminal is built entirely on evidence collected by the police, then the courts have to assume that the police-provided testimonies and evidence, and everything about the evidence is true. If not, then no case would ever get prosecuted.

Overall, the weather here in Hong Kong has been dismal for the past six months. We've had much more rain than usual and blue skies have been rare. Unfortunately, even when we did have blue skies, they carried a heavy tinge of brown thanks to the increasing levels of pollution coming across from China. There's nothing we can do about the pollution except be grateful for the blue skies when they do appear.

Because blue skies are becoming rare, I sometimes spontaneously run off up the hills and mountains around Hong Kong to admire the view. This happened one fine day in the beginning of July when I took Batty and Siu Bak with me up a near by mountain. I took my camera with me too so I have a few photos to share.

While driving on the expressway to Causeway Bay 銅鑼灣 to make some arrangements for my trip to Indonesia next week, I couldn't help but notice that the sky was very unattractive. It looked pretty much like the skies you'd see in big China cities like Guangzhou 廣州. I really wanted to stop on the expressway and take a few photos but the policemen wouldn't have liked that.

Later on, on my way home, I couldn't resist the urge to try to get a few photographs. I surmised that the North Point ferry pier 北角碼頭 might allow me to get far enough out into the harbour to be able to see Central 中環 around the expressway. I was wrong but the view wasn't too bad anyway and I came away with a few reasonable shots.

With reference to the TVB soaps, there are a few things I feel I should say, especially after reading the comments to my previous article Hail Hollywood TV.

First. Most of the main actors and actresses are really very good at what they do. Working for TVB is not easy, especially for them. While filming any one series, the average main actor works 18 hours a day and sometimes more, averaging perhaps just 2 or 3 hours of sleep a night. Between scenes or between showers, they have to read their scripts, understand what's going on and work out how they're going to act the scenes. They carry their own scripts around with them (these days usually in an aircraft hand-luggage suitcase on wheels), remember what clothes they wore for each scene and do lots of other stuff that the actors in Hollywood never have to worry about. It is also not unusual to get the scripts only hours before the scene. That makes it very hard for the actor and there's nothing they can do to change the situation.

When our previous helper left us to go back home and re-marry, she introduced her friend to us who was very eager to work for us. In fact, all of her friends wanted to work for us because we're fair to our helpers. Apparently, many Hong Kong people aren't.

The new helper has proven to be great to have around. She has no problems with our dogs, loves to take them on their walks; even though it requires three trips per walk, two walks per day; works consistently all day without any prompting and keeps our flat cleaner than our previous helper. All in all, we are lucky to have her.

She became sick a couple of days ago; vomiting, headache, dizziness. I took her to a doctor in a near-by clinic. He; a youngish thin doctor with unbrushed long 60's type hair; said it was gastro-enteritis and prescribed vomit-suppression tablets and pain killers. Gastro-enteritis is usually virus related so taking antibiotics would not help. Antibiotics only kill bacteria.

The other night, I heard a professional singer recording for a music show. He was really good but I couldn't help but wonder if he was singing a song or singing a vocal exercise. The vocal range of the song was extreme with rapid movement between real voice and falsetto notes.

Popular music in Hong Kong has lost any sense of feel. In an effort to differentiate themselves, singers have moved to songs making heavy use of falsetto. First there was one singer, then another and then another. Even Jacky Cheung was persuaded to follow suit. The apparent opinion is that if you can't sing falsetto, then you're not a professional singer.

I'm always trying to get good photos of some of the birds around our home. I'd love to get a photo of the owls that live here but I've only seen one of them once in the two years we've lived here, and I've only heard them; a pair of them calling out to each other; once on another night.

Apart from sparrows, there are only a few species of birds living here. There are pigeons which are difficult to photograph because they're so easily unnerved by onlookers, and there is another species of bird, one with red behind its eye and more red under its tail. I find them especially attractive and try to photograph them whenever possible. Both the pigeons and these 'red' birds live in pairs, always with the same mate.

True story.

It was supposed to be a straight forward operation, a small one, a simple one. Cut a small hole above the bronchial airway, pull the large oxygen breathing tube out from the mouth and push the new smaller tube in through the hole.

My brother-in-law Joe had a stroke almost two weeks ago. A blood vessel in his brain had developed an aneurism and while walking the streets of Macau, it burst, streaming blood into his brain. He knew immediately that something was wrong and asked a nearby policeman for help. He was transported to a hospital and treated. He had lost consciousness well before getting to the hospital and his situation was serious.

This time last year, there was a spider population explosion. Hong Kong is host to a rather large black spider with a golden back. During this period known as 回南 'return of the southerly winds' last year, these black spiders could be seen everywhere.

This year, things are different.

A few months ago, I did an interview with people from Apple Daily for their online education site. Little did I know that it would become quite an extensive interview and writeup, even getting some banner time in the main Apple Daily site.

Overall, the interview is pretty good. The one thing I am disappointed with is the sound recording. Some of the interview was recorded indoors at my friend's coffee shop Prestigio (she also serves fair dinkum home made Malaysian, Singaporean, Western, etc food) in Sai Kung. Some of it was recorded outside the restaurant. Because of the noise from passing traffic, I voluntarily increased the volume of my voice with the intent of guaranteeing a recording that the reporters could take home and hear without difficulty.

It's a fairly typical day here today in our home, except perhaps for the sun which for the first time in several weeks is shining down bright and hot; whoops! correction... the rain has just begun falling... again... oh well.

Outside, I can hear the chirping of one of our friendly neighbourhood tailorbirds. Occasionally, doves can be heard cooing to let their partners know of their whereabouts. There's also the low continuous rhythmic chanting of one of my wife's sisters as she prays to Buddha.

In my home, we have a table, a chair, a bed, a sofa, a refrigerator, a television and many other household articles. If I hit them, they don't feel pain. If I drop them, they may break but they will not be aware of it. They are simply material objects.

In my home, there are five people. We eat. We live. We cry. We laugh. If someone hits us, we feel pain. If someone betrays us, we hurt. If we are injured in any way, we know. We are aware.

In my home, there are eleven dogs and one rabbit. They feel joy when we return home from a day's work. They feel hunger before a meal. They feel lonely when the people are not home. They feel apprehension when they have done something wrong and see me approaching. They envy those who sit close to us. They speak. They cry. They even shed tears.

It was Tuesday. My wife and I had things to do at Telford Gardens. My wife and her sister were hungry for something Chinese, and I wasn't, so they went off to their choice of restaurants while I began making my way to Starbucks for a coffee. On the way though, I was side-tracked by a young lady who recognised me from a veterinary clinic I had visited a few times with Rose our rabbit.

The lady was trying to rescue a kitten and asked for my help. The kitten was behind some building materials stacked up against the wall facing the outside carpark and crying out loudly. While the lady used a plank to force the kitten out of hiding, I waited on the other side and grabbed her when I had the chance. Little did I know how much of a wild cat she was in spite of her small size. She instantly spun around and clawed at me with everything she had. She even managed to bite me at least once, but I quickly grabbed her gently and securely, covering and holding her head with one hand and holding her body with the other. She stopped moving but growled angrily from time to time in protest.

The truth is that everyone wants to be happy. The reality is that apparently, most people are very confused about how to be happy.

For years, advertising agencies have been using images and movies of seemingly very beautiful and happy people to sell products, everything from beer to jewellery. The core of their message is that you'll be happy too if you consume or own whatever they're selling.

The reason that this advertising works is a deep-seeded psychological need for people to be part of a community, to be accepted, to be 'one of the gang'. Many organisations use this need to their advantage. Beer and cigarette commercials imply that if you're not drinking their beer or smoking their cigarettes, that you'll not be welcome by others in the community, or at least if you do drink their beer or smoke their cigarettes, you'll have 'better' friends and more of them. Many young people have come to believe these messages.

It's been an extraordinary six months since the play finished.

My vocal chords were severely damaged by the over-singing before and during the show. Even with six weeks of minimal speaking to relax the chords, they remained sensitive to exertion of any kind. In August, a friend asked me to sing and my voice was gone and my chords were sore after just two songs. A stressful three to four weeks in September only made matters worse. Things around us have calmed down now and I have begun the slow process of rebuilding my singing voice but it will be at least a month before I can sing anything serious.

The first time I was in Hong Kong, visiting with a student from The University of New South Wales in 1985, we were hit by a #10 typhoon. At the time, I believe I was staying with his family in a hillside home made of tin and concrete next to the now non-existent 荔園 amusement park. It was quite an experience, although the hurricanes in Australia can be even stronger. In my hometown in Queensland, a hurricane lifted a hurricane-proof roof off from a motel and dropped it elsewhere!

Today though, here in Hong Kong, my family and I are staying indoors. No one in Hong Kong is going to work. Everyone is waiting, waiting for the biggest typhoon we've seen in a while pass smack right over the middle of Hong Kong.

Just a note to let everyone know that I've been invited to participate in the World Series of Mahjong competition! I leave home to catch the ferry to Macau in just a few minutes. Wish me luck ;-)

I haven't been over to Macau for a very long time. Casinos and casino gambling don't interest me. It will be interesting to see how it has changed, and if it has changed for the better. I suspect that a lot of culture and history has been lost which would be a shame. Glass and aluminium can become boring very quickly.

Cheers all.

The Mahjong competition was fun. I didn't get far, but the event was well planned, the rules were great to play, and the people; competitors and crew; were great.

I didn't make the second round of the competition. I carelessly provided the winning tiles for a few games, even when I knew that those tiles might very well be the winning tiles. I won't do that next time. Yes, next time. If I'm free, I'll go back next year although I'm quite sure the competition will be even harder.

The interesting thing about this competition is that it was designed to allow as many people as possible internationally to learn and enjoy the game. To that end, the organisers found a mahjong guru and they designed a set of rules that was the middle ground between Cantonese mahjong which is too minimal and restrictive for an international game, and Taiwanese Mahjong which is way too complicated for all but the fully dedicated players. The rules are available from the organiser's web site. I'm sure a lot of you will find the various 和 sets very interesting.

The competition will be much harder next year because several online mahjong sites in at least three languages including English, Chinese and Japanese have licensed the rules from the organisers and will be launched within the coming months. People all over the world will be able to learn and practice the World Series rules online. It'll make a big difference to the game.

By the way, I learned to play mahjong a lifetime ago in a game centre in China Town, Sydney, Australia ;-)

I can't wait to play again next year.