Koh Samui

As we were taxiing to the gate, I spotted out of the window the little airport busses waiting outside: no windows, fully open, like little sightseeing trams. They eventually dropped us off… no, not by a door. By an entry into a little alley in what looked like a lush green park. The alley turned out to be the queuing area for the immigration check. Outside. A smile of amusement was playing on my lips as I waited.

The immigration officer made an effort to pronounce “Georgia” and quickly pulled up visa requirements from his records. Looked through my papers, stamped them and smiled ear to ear: “You are my first Georgian visitor!” I beamed as I followed the alley a few meters under an imaginary doorway into the baggage claim area – breezy, warm, humid. No walls, no freaky security. Palms, flowers, ratan chaise longs and parasols. This place puts you in the vacation mood before you even pick up your bag. I later found out that Samui is one of the world's four open-air airports.

I followed the exit sign and faced another one: Gate 6. “Have a great vacation!” pulled me out of my disoriented stupor. It came from another tourist, his wife at his side with a tiny baby in her arms. “Oh, thank you! Uhm… You too!” “Well, we are leaving.” “Oh!” I swivelled around, looking for that exit sign that pointed for me to go this way. Sure enough, arrivals and departures did not seem to be distinctly separated. I figured the ATM and my airport transfer by a little counter in the "meeting area" and set off to my final destination, the Spa Resort. On the way, I was reflecting on how safe I felt and how easy it was to trust locals here.

***
They's put me up in a duplex bungalow, with a hammock and chaise longs on the terrace. Not a bit of concrete except for the foundation; all made of wood, bamboo, banana leaves and straw. The basic tiled bathroom had a large clay jar of water on the floor, a shower, standard necessities and a little lizard in the corner of the thick blue non-transparent window glass. "What a nice little touch!" I thought. When a moment later I noticed a humungous roach lying on his back on the other side of my bed, I got a pang of worry. Will I have the courage to take him out? How many more will I see during my stay? This was not the disgusting type that feeds in unclean kitchens; it was the type that is 10 times the size, but lookes disgustingly identical, lives and feeds out in the nature and flies. I evenually scrounged up the nerve to pick it up on a sheet of paper and carry out the door. For a couple of nights, before falling asleep, I've had to struggle with fear that I might discover one in my bed. I was particularly worried about snakes and once dreamt one.


Up early, I set off wandering to explore the grounds and find the yoga audtorium, which turned out to be an elevated wooden terrace. I spotted a tiny wooden yellow lizard in the corner of a roof log and admired the thoughfulness with which these "nice little touch" lizards were scattered around for decoration. It so happened that the next morning, my nice little lizard in the bathroom was sitting in a different corner and the yellow "wooden" lizard in the yoga auditorium disapeared. The nature is best at decorating...

A few days into my stay, I was enjoying my delicious lunch and chatting with other guests when we jumped in our seats at a deafening female scream. "Snake!" There she was, weaving up the stone by the pool, green like a tree leaf and very very long. After we settled back in our seats, the conversation would not get off the snake subject. One of the men was brandishing his knowledge in serpentology: "It's a tree snake! It flies. It's the only flying snake known! They jump and fly from tree to tree. Scientists only discovered it very recently. They are absolutely harmless. They are venomous, but are not dangerous to people. It's amazing, they flatten in flight and can cover fairly long distances between trees," he went on, scaring the rest of us at the table and seemed to enjoy it. A Canadian girl, who lived in the other room of my bungalow duplex, diplomatically cut the serpentology lecture by sharing she kept hearing someone jumping on our roof and thought it was a chimpansee. I shared how scared I was of insects at night and received a very practical advice from the Japanese woman that was spending her third vacation here: "Ask the reception to have a mosquito net tied up on your bed. I had it done the day I arrived. I tuck is all around very tightly and sleep like a baby." And I did. It helped.

***
This place was not a regular spa resort. It was a detoxing spa, running detox fast and colema programs, in which guests ate no solids and drank only vegetable juices and broths for a minimum of 8 days. The Japanese woman I mention above was on her 24th day of a 28-day program when I came. The programs are complemented with steam room, Thai massages, yoga, Qi Gong and meditations. To facilitate gradual return to solid foods after the fast, the restaurant here specialized in raw vegan foods, which were a true holiday for the palate. I did not come here to detox. I came here to take advantage of everything else: the healthy food, the yoga, the meditations and the peace...

***
- What is your name?
- Irena.
- That means Peace.
- Yes. I am just discovering my internal peace now, and it was there for me all this time. Engraved in my name :-) What does yours mean?
- Gila means Celebration. It is my chosen name. My given name is Anna Christiana, a Graceful Christian. I did not want to be a Graceful Christian, so here I am, celebrating life.

The meditation that followed, led by Gila, was based on Osho's Nadabrahma. The state of relaxation and stillness is achieved through humming. The humming creates sound and therefore inner vibrations which travel easily through the water of our body cells. Apparently, humming at higher pitches connects to the upper parts of the body, the head and the heart, while humming at lower tones helps relax and connect with the lower parts of the body.

***
- Bye... The humming meditation and qi gong will stay with me. Thank you.
- Bye, Peace. 

Language

My first eye-opening discovery about Chinese was that spoken and written language are not a tightly linked pair like with other tongues. Chinese is spoken as either Cantonese or Mandarin with multiple dialects and is written in either traditional or simplified characters. It so happens that the vast majority of the Chinese in the mainland China speak Mandarin, while Cantonese is spoken by a much smaller population in the south, including but not limited to Hong Kong. 

When it comes to writing, simplified characters are used by most of the mainland Chinese, while Hong Kong continues to write using the old traditional signs. This may leave an impression that traditional writing and Cantonese represent a language pair, like Mandarin with simplified signs, but this is false. It is a tradition for the better educated Mandarin speakers to also learn traditional writing. In the island of Taiwan, the population of 23 million Chinese speaks Mandarin and writes using traditional Chinese. So essentially, the Hong Kongers and Taiwanese write the same language, but speak different ones! As popularity of Chinese press from the mainland grows, the use of simplified characters becomes wider used in Hong Kong as well, but most residents would still struggle reading simplified Chinese.

My second discovery – maybe fairly obvious to some – was that Chinese had a totally different concept of “words”, if we think of a word as a written and sound representation of a meaning. All Chinese “words” are mono-syllabic. Every character is always represented by one syllable. A meaning may be expressed by several characters, in which case there would be as many syllables as there are characters. This monosyllabic nature gives Chinese that abrupt, clipped sound.

Because of its very creative representation of meaning through remarkably elaborate and sophisticated characters, I expected Chinese to be a very conceptual language. I was very much surprised by how unsophisticatedly structured and logical it can sometimes be. My first class gave me barely 10 words (numbers 1 to 10) and, at the same time, many basic things to say: dates, week days. January in Chinese is “month 1” and December is “month 12”. Monday is “week day 1” and Friday is “week day 5”. Simple, huh?

That straightforward structure may be complicated at a totally new level: the tones. Monday is “sin kei yat”. Sunday is “sin kei yath”. So where’s the difference? Monday’s “yat” means “one” and is pronounced at a higher pitch than Sunday’s “yath”, which, exceptionally, does not mean “seven”, but “sun” or “day”. Hearing that difference in a class is a totally different thing than hearing it in a conversation. Do not be surprised if I show up waiting for a friend on Sunday, when they actually suggested to meet up on Monday! Many a word sound exactly the same to us, but are very far from identical for the locals because of the different tones used. The tones are not only described by pitch, as notes in music, but also by “direction”, or what we recognize as intonation. A tone can be flat high or flat low, but it can also be going up or down. There are a total of 9 tones. Guess what, with all that complexity to regular speech, they do have intonation on top of their tones and they do sing! Sometimes I wonder if the art of song-writing in Chinese dictates writing the poetry and music at the same time so the words would retain the same sense by the time they are put into music!

Many more interesting observations come from the world of consonants. They are very different from what we are used to. Some are simply not: “m” can be really long, represent a syllable (a character and a meaning) of its own and so is, essentially, a vowel! Hong Kongers won’t hear a difference between “n” and “l”, “b” and “p”, “d” and “t”, but will distinguish dozens of different “ts” and “ch”, which sound identical to my ear. Sometimes a consonant gains on a meaning before it is even pronounced! A short illustration: read “bak” and stop just short of pronouncing “k”, barely getting your mouth ready for it. Now to the same with “bat”, again getting ready to pronounce “t” at the end, but not doing it. To our ear, both words just sound as “ba”, but to the Cantonese speakers they are distinctly different, one means “a hundred”, the other – “eight”.

The world of characters is even more fascinating, so I guess I will need to dedicate a separate chapter to it.

Dim sum or hot pot?

Discovering Hong Kong culinary world is a journey in and of itself. Cantonese cuisine is known for the freshness of ingredients and cooking methods that are meant to bring out their flavour best: steaming and stir-frying. One of the specialties of Cantonese flavouring is dried or preserved ingredients like dried scallops, small shrimp or fish, salted duck egg, fermented tofu and black beans, etc. Herbs tend to be limited to garlic, coriander leaves and spring onions, while spices hardly ever go beyond ginger and white pepper.

Your eating experience can be enhanced if you share it with Hong Kongers: the Western menu is thrown out the window and the true local experience comes in. To fully enjoy it, one does have to stay very open-minded, though. Westerners may have a hard time adjusting to fully accept some local food like organ meats or chicken feet. A special place in local cuisine belongs to roast or barbeque meat: duck, goose, chicken, pork. Cantonese cuisine also offers some of the best fresh seafood: most seafood restaurants would keep water tanks with live fish, crabs, clams, prawns and other sea creatures.

Eating traditions are also very peculiar. It is very uncommon to order a dish for oneself; that only happens in restaurants catering western cuisines. In the Chinese dining etiquette, food is meant to be shared. Orders are normally made for several dishes, which are placed on an elevated rotating board in the centre of the table, so that everyone could easily reach out to every dish. One of the traditional ways to serve food is dim sum – small portions served in steaming baskets or on small plates. Famous “hot pot” is also based on idea of sharing where all diners will dip fresh meat and vegetables into the boiling broth to cook.

Wednesday night at the race course?

Hong Kong offers many things to enjoy for different tastes.

A morning walk in the park leaves an impression that people here lead a healthy lifestyle: you will see a lot of joggers and groups practicing Tai Chi. It is not uncommon to follow up your outdoor or gym effort with a foot massage. Reflexology is very popular here and many do take advantage of it.

Hong Kong is surrounded by water and very picturesque islands. Some deep bays form beautiful beaches (but unfortunately, often dirty) and provide a haven for surfers and windsurfers alike.

This is also a dream place for an avid hiker: despite the striking population density, only a quarter of the territory of Hong Kong is developed because of the mountainous terrain, which, to the joy of outdoor lovers, is criss-crossed with hiking trails stretching for several hundreds of kilometres.



The high-rise skyline of the Hong Kong Island circles the mountains that offer some of the most striking views of the Victoria Harbour traversed continuously by super fast ferries, modern luxury yachts, cruiser boats and beautiful traditional Chinese junks under full sails. No less breath-taking are the serene views from the peaks of Lantau Island or Sai Kung Country Park in the New Territories. 

One of the featured Hong Kong pastimes is horse races. Marketed as betting entertainment, rather than gambling, they are equally popular among locals, expats and tourists. A Wednesday night at the racecourse is a must-do at least once: study the horse odds, make you bets, blend into the crowd and just allow adrenaline pump through the evening. Know your measure, or else your adrenaline might take another pitch in the morning, when you find your wallet empty. Or full!

Business culture highlights

One thing that strikes me as the most remarkable about our local colleagues is that they are wonderful listeners. They would never interrupt you. If you expect questions or comments after your presentation, do not get offended: they won’t come right away. But do expect them a day or two later and plan an opportunity for that. You’ll be surprised by their relevance, complexity, insightfulness and added value for the team’s agenda. 

By the similar token, consensus takes time for individual reflection and side discussions. Do not mistake the nods around the table for agreement, they mean: “You’ve been heard, we understood.” If you happen to take the lack of questions for disengagement of your audience, you are likely to miss a very valuable message: your Hong Kong colleague would never rush expressing an opinion or asking a question that is not substantiated by thorough thought; it is a sign of respect to you.

Hong Kongers are known around the world for hard work and you do find working late hours commonplace here. It has to do with doing everything thoroughly. They won’t ever come to a meeting unprepared and won’t give you a sloppy draft of a presentation or document. I do not believe this perfectionism is about making a good impression or being afraid to lose face; rather I think it has to do with respect for the other person and their time.

An island of diversity and the unknown

I was recently asked to write up a bit for an internal corporate publication about my impressions of Hong Kong. This was an opportunity to summarize all those things that used to be new, different or shocking and ...are not anymore. I have not posted much here lately for lack of time, so let me just share that little summary in several pieces...

 “City of contrasts” has become way too commonplace to be descriptive of any city. Yet, I cannot think of anything that would better portray Hong Kong. You get to see a luxury hotel next to a slum, the high-rise jungle beside a natural park, a Lamborghini swooshing by the elderly crouched over trash they collect for recycling.

I had always thought Hong Kong was an island. Well, it is, but a much larger part of the city is located on the Mainland across from the Island: Kowloon Peninsula and the New Territories. The truth is, at some point it was fully confined to the Hong Kong Island, but ended up growing as a colony. The British, who were in control since 1840s, leased the New Territories in 1898 for 99 years from China to offset the growing influence of other European powers in this part of Asia. When the lease expired 13 years ago and New Territories had to be passed on back to China, the city would have ended up broken apart, had the handover to China not included the Hong Kong Island and Kowloon.

Several people asked me why addresses in Hong Kong do not cite China as the country: isn’t it part of China? It is. It is a Special Administrative Region (S.A.R.) with a very special status. Following the “one country, two systems” principle, Hong Kong has different governance and economic system from China, a different currency, separate phone country code, internet domain, etc. Even immigration regulations are different: more often than not, one would need a visa to China, but not to Hong Kong.

Traffic management

I am a big fan of public transport. The fuel or electricity it uses divided by the number of people it takes from A to B makes it the greenest option. I am utterly irritated by drivers who choose their car over municipal transport, when it is available, and day to day find themselves puffing out clouds of exhaust in traffic jams and complaining about congestion. I love Krakow's public transport promotion campaign (korki-potworki) and am strongly against continuous widening of roads in city centres as it only encourages people to drive more. I am quite passionate on this subject and have always been curious what schemes different municipalities apply to discourage people from unnecessary, or should I rather say "avoidable", driving in cities...

Say, London applies a daily congestion charge of £8, which keeps a lot of drivers away from central areas; they park on the suburbs and use public transport. Stockholm levies a congestion tax on vehicles entering and exiting the city. Apparently Singapore was the first to introduce it as far back as 1975 and to follow up with an electronic system in 1998.

Many cities purposely make their parking fees too high for people to choose to park in central locations. This is probably true of most cities on Earth! Some, like Hong Kong, discourage car purchase by imposing very high taxes on car import. Some cities enforce zoning and permits, restricting entry to some roads to permit holders only. Paris is applying a policy of shrinking road space, essentially closing some roads for transport. Holland is known as a cycling country and the culture has been well supported by appropriate urban planning with cycling paths.

On one of my first weeks in Hong Kong, I found out from a Filipino colleague that Manila applies license plate restrictions: even and odd numbers are only allowed to drive on assigned days of the week, and get fined otherwise. I remember, even with my uncompromising views on this matter, I found this approach too drastic: it does not matter where you leave and what public transport options you have, you do not get a choice to pay for your way in, it's black-and-white: if your license plate ends in 4 or 6, bad luck, today you don't get to drive to work. Despite obvious unfairness and disruptive character of such "blanket" policy, it is apparently amazingly popular and is widely practiced by São Paulo, Mexico-city, Athens and many more major metropolises from the US to China. Some reviews cite the weakness of this method to be the fact that richer drivers can purchase a second and third vehicle to circumvent the ban (!). Ooops.

I also remember American "car-pool" concept, where you are only allowed to drive on the fast lane if you have a passenger or, in some states, two. In Jakarta the rule is applied to most major central streets and is known as "3-in-1" rule: you've got to have at least two passengers to be able to drive through those major streets, otherwise, you are confined to the traffic jams of smaller side streets. I was recently chatting to my Indonesian colleague. My memory still holding on to flashbacks of some of the most scary traffic jams I've seen, I was wondering if she drives in Jakarta:
     "Oh, it would be too expensive. I'd have to pay for fuel, for a driver, for a jockey."
     "A jockey? What is that?"
     "We have a "3-in-1" rule! You can't really drive without a jockey!"
     "So do you look for people that are going in the same direction to pair up with?"
     "No, it's their job. There are very many. They line up by the side of the road and you pay them some 10,000 rupiah (1 USD) so you could go on the 3-in-1 road."

This was a shock that took several days to sink in. Human mind is truly creative! I can only continue to marvel at how ingenious people can get in the face of poverty... and in the face of preposterous public policies.

                                          *****

Kiedy się dziwić przestanę

Zgubię śpiewy podziemnych strumieni

Umrze we mnie co nienazwane

Co mi oczy jak róże płomieni

Dni jednakim rytmem pobiegną

Znieczulone, rozsądne, żałosne

Tylko życia straszliwe piękno

Mnie ominie nieśmiałą wiosną

Za daleko jej będzie do mnie

Kiedy się dziwić przestanę

Będzie po mnie, będzie po mnie

Będzie po mnie, będzie po mnie

Będzie po mnie, po mnie

Słowa: Jonasz Kofta, muzyka: Czesław Niemen

Belated reports on Indonesia impressions

One of the strongest impressions from Jakarta was the poverty. The China town, which was one of our stops on a city tour on Saturday, came as a shock, especially after the luxury of Ritz-Carlton. Our tour guide would tell us that the begging was an "industry" of its own, and that the beggars were earning quite a bit in the street, but that did not make these people look any healthier.

The local wetmarket was a shuttering blow even to my very temperate higiene tolerance. Without any cooling facilities, it emitted the stench of fish and chicken spoiling in the ruthless heat. It took quite a bit of adjustment to start noticing some very exotic foods sold here: from live moving snails and skinned frogs to fermented soya, bags of krupuk crackers, unrecognizable to me fruit and veggies, all sorts of pickles and dozens of banana varieties.

My time in Jakarta helped me see through a different prism one peculiarity of the local economy that used to shock me. I remember when once we asked our Indonesian colleague on an assignment in Krakow about local cuisine: "So, what do you normally cook after work?" - "Well, my cook would make..." We later found out that it was a norm to have a family driver, a cook, a nanny, a gardener. It is not uncommon to have two drivers, two nannies, etc. Obviously, the disparity in income is striking for those of us used to a much more balanced income distribution, but come think of it: this way, an affluent family of what we find to be average income in Europe ends up feeding several families! It first comes as a shock, but aren't those several families better off being fed through domestic help jobs than none at all?! In a country where over 50% of the population leaves below the poverty level, household staff jobs must be a blessing.

At the end of the day, ability to drive through Jakarta does require concentration and dedication that only a full-time driver could develop. Traffic jams here are tougher than anything I'd seen before. Stopping at a traffic light, you'd discover that a two-lane road fits 4 cars plus a few dozen scooters. And in the middle of all that traffic there would be street vendors walking confidently and fearlessly between the vehicles, offering all sorts of items for sale: inflatable pool chairs, useless plastic statouettes, plush toys and the like.

Fresh seafood

I am yet to speak of local cuisine, but for now I just want to share what I cooked today, which was not local by the way... Portuguese style clams, yammy! Aren't their shells just a piece of art, each?

Fresh seafood is plentiful at local wetmarkets. It also gives the markets that peculiar sea water and fish smell, which I would not call particulalrly pleasant, but it is certainly worth while tolerating for a few minutes to get some fresh clams...

I first faced fresh seafood in Jakarta... My hosting colleague picked a live lobster by showing it to the restaurant attendant, who grabbed it from the auquarium and dropped on the floor, promptly turning away to look for the next victim. The poor thing started clawing away only to be grabbed again and thrown onto a scale. For a moment, I hesistated if I want to eat it, but caught myself thinking it would be impolite to back out at that stage. When the plate of garlic & lemon steamed lobster arrived at our table, the only thing I thought of was how yammy it was. It was such a confusing feeling... Does it really matter whether what we eat comes from the freezer or fresh from water? Doesn't it get killed first before getting into my freezer? How hypocritical is it to be standing by the aquarium and feeling bad for the poor fish after you'd just had a meal of shrimp for lunch? That said, I still have not arrived at being able to buy live jumping shrimp...

Hiking in the New Territories

I recently discovered an opportunity to meet new people and to ...hike! I am not a gym girl, treadmills are not for me: I need an effort out in the air, close to nature and I need a direction and a landmark. And considering that I had been missing a proper workout, finding this meetup group was a big deal for me.

My first opportunity was the preparatory hikes to the Hikathlon, a charity event with two routes - 6km and 12 km - with the same starting point in the New Territories. Back home in Poland, 6km even on a challenging terrain feels more like an after-lunch walk, but I had not done that at 33-35C and in 70-80% humidity before and had no idea how my body would respond to it, so I decided to take it slow.

The 6K proved very pleasant despite the heat. The route was mostly through the forest, so we were almost always hidden from the heavy sun. It was hot, but not as hot as my farewell Tatra hike in mid-June.

The hills we were cutting through were covered in very thick forest, the trails were often hardly visible under tall grass, there were plenty of bushes and flowers and ...spiders. Lovely!

Here and there the view opened onto the beautiful shores of Plover Cove Reservoir, a lake made from the ocean, and also onto the Mainland China  (Shenzhen) on the other side of the Starling Inlet. Unfortunatey, the air was too thick and misty (or, as expats always say here, too polluted) for the beautiful views.

I did end up drinking a whole lot of water and the challenge of 12K started looming in the shape of all those bottles of water I would need to carry when I came a week later.

The 12K was very different. It was not just twice as long. Only its first 2 km were in the forest. The rest lay on a fully exposed trail, under the ruthless sun, with challenging slopes. When we had made it to the top, our expectation was flat route for some time and then discent, but more challenges lay ahead and were only starting... 

I had not realized that almost half of the 12K route led atop the Pat Sin Leng mountain range with eight peaks... So even if the tallest peak was 591m, then cumulative height we climbed that day but far far more. Up and down, up and down with sun in zenith and heat at over 33C.

The views would have been breathtaking, but for the mist again... I remember that back home the view from Babia Góra into Tatra Mountains was also quite misty unless you spend the night on the peak and take a look just as the dawn breaks when the air is still brisk. So, I always thought that visibility was a matter of air temperature and humidity... But apparently, the misty views on these pictures have a lot to do with air pollution in Hong Kong.

We had not even reached the first peak, when we thought we were past the third... The route back was just as long and hard as the route ahead. The rest we needed was form the sun, but there was not a tree in sight.

On one of the peaks, I started losing faith that I'd be able to continue at the same pace and was told: "Don't worry! This one ahead of us is the last!" When I eventually climbed it, I discovered that was only the seventh peak. The tallest last was still ahead of us.

This was one of those few times when you appreciate others telling you lies... This was also a great lesson in endurance. We always CAN more than we think... Our mind limits us much more than our body. Or rather, our fear limits us, not our abilities. Never doubt you CAN! Fear has big eyes, they say... There would always be a moment to look back and say "Yes! Made it!" And that's another reason I love hiking: once you are half way through, you cannot back out...

So that's a brief report on the past two weekends. Tonight, I am going for a NIGHT HIKE (7 to 11pm) on the Hong Kong Island and it is just too bad that I do not yet have a tripod, as that is just a wonderful opportunity for some great shots of Hong Kong skyline by night...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

UPDATE 11:30 PM: I am just back from my night hike and feel wonderful! I had never hiked at night before and this was a wonderful experience. Flashlight on the forehead, severall bottles of water in the backpack, we started from a fairly ambitious climb of nearly an hour, after which it was an up-and-down, up-and-down affair. The views of Hong Kong skyline, both of the island and Kowloon were incredible. And even if I had a tripod, the photos would not have reflected the view that opened on both sides of the mountain. It was remarkable. On one of the trails I could see the Happy Valley, flooded with light with teams practicing football and joggers circling the race course, smaller than ants. There was a special pleasure in locating my home building from so far away.

National Day fireworks

I haven't been too regular with my blog. Apologies to those of you who have been checking in so faithfully... I had not expected this page to become so popular! Now it's a challenge to live up to the promise. In my pursuit of cronological accuracy of observations, I am just too far behind catching up, so does chronology matter? No. I'll start with the latest today.

Today is the National Day in China and Hong Kong is celebrating it too: I'm off work today. For all of the Chinese up north, the public holiday is from Oct 1 to Oct 7 to allow citizens home visits and travel. I would not mind that either, but Hong Kong does not go to such extremes, however there will be fireworks tonight at Victoria Harbour.

China's National Day was declared on October 1, 1949 by Mao Zedong by announcing the founding of the People's Republic. Apparently, last year was a very big deal (60th anniversary) with parades in Beijing demonstrating 10,000 troups and military machinery with some 800,000 volunteers controlling the crowds. A historical movie The Founding of a Republic was commissioned for the anniversary.

Speaking of government commissioned, or should I just say, "inspired" movies... A friend from Tbilisi recently posted a link to Red August (2011) Trailer (unofficial) on her Facebook. For quite some time after watching the trailer, I just could not get the old Soviet anecdote out of my mind:

Stalin summoned Maksim Gorky into his office. Puffing on his famous pipe, he said:

- Comrade Gorky, you wrote this very good and successful novel, "The Mother"... What would you say to writing another good and succesful novel, "The Father"?

- Well, Comrade Stalin, I'm too old already... I think someone younger will prove better.

- Well, why don't you try Comrade Gorky? Try... Not every try is a trial, - came Beria's voice from the corner.

For those who can handle the original and appreciate it's uniqueness:

Сталин вызывает к себе Горького:

- Алексей Максимович, вот Вы напысали роман МАТ... так пачему би вам не написать роман АТЭЦ?

- Я бы с радостью, Иосиф Виссарионович, да уже стар стал, может кто из молодых напишет, молодым у нас дорога.

- А ви попытайтесь, Алексей Максимович, попытайтесь, как в народе говорят: "Попытка не пытка", правда, Лаврентий Павлович?

Anyway, this has little to do with the National Day in Hong Kong... But the illustrations do!

Oh, yeah, not less importantly, up north the day was celebrateed not just by some fireworks, but by a lunar probe launch! The news channels capture the event in the following terms:
As part of its ambitious plans to put a man on the moon, China today launched its second unmanned lunar probe to test soft-landing technologies for another mission slated for 2013, the same year when India plans to launch Chandrayaan-II.

Home, sweet home?

Have you noticed that question "Where are you from?" has gone hopelessly obsolete these days? More often than not, the answer you get is "Well, I grew up in XXX, but studied in YYY and have been working in ZZZ for the past 5 years." We are hardly ever satisfied with that vague answer and, in search of binary black-and-white clarity so characteristic of our computer technology era, tend to dig further: "So, where is home?"

After 6 nights in two hotels in Jakarta, I was quite impatient to get ...home. In this case, my Hong Kong home. A very strange concept of a home away from home, but that was it. I was wondering again, what home was and it was pretty simple: a place where one does not live out of a suitcase, but out of a wardrobe and where the loom of packing it all up is not awfully imminent.

So what is my Hong Kong home like?

The location was chosen for me by my employer and although, generally I'm an awful control freak, this time I was much releaved to arrive, settle in and relax without having to go through a not-too-exciting exercise of apartment search. It so happens that the company rents apartments for all short-term assignees in the same place and within a couple of weeks I knew that my neigbours were mostly colleagues from other departments...

The apartment building is located in Happy Valley, a residential area of a much more relaxed pace than most other areas of Hong Kong, and certainly a major relief from the swarming with people shopping centers of Causeway Bay, where the closest subway station is.

I had been warned of the scanty space in Hong Kong's living quarters, so before my departure from home (home-home, that is), I checked the area of the apartment rented for me. It was advertized at 622 sq. feet, which I recalculated into metric measures and found the outcome of some 57 sq. meters to be comfortably comparable to my apartment back home  (home-home, that is).

Well, when I saw it for real, I started wondering if I did the math right... As my Indian colleague explained to me later on, the rented space of apartments in some parts of the world is calculated to include a proportion of the shared facilities like the lobby area, elevators, fire escapes, etc. I would guess that it may just as well include the swimming pool and parking lots, judging by what my 57 sq. m boil down to in the end. But, the way that space is managed is remarkable.

 

The little kitchenette is really only the size of two cabinets. But tell you what? It has sufficed so far! I've only been missing an oven. The bedroom is tiny, but if all you do there is sleep and exercise, why would you need it to be any bigger?

The bathroom was a surprise... Had it not been an obvious space optimizer, I would have thought it was devised for exhibitionists. But well, you roll down the blind and your bathroom is normal. However, once in a while on a beautiful sunny Saturday morning, you could easily only use the thinner transparent roller and enjoy your foam bath in full sunlight!

I would have even said you could enjoy the view outside, but as you may have already noticed, the view is fairly boring... Some could argue that a pair of binoculars could make it more entertaining, but with that diversity of choice, one would not know which window to pick. 

I remember back home (home-home, that is) I was very particular about choosing an apartment without any buildings across, just so I would not worry about others inadvertently peeking into my windows... In here, the windows across come in thousands, so I do not even care...

All in all, I must say, the place is quite comfortable. It is very convenient too: there are necessary shops nearby, a wet market, several restaurants, a few nail and massage spots, etc.

My current address could never be an answer to "So, where is home?", but for the year, the place could not have been any better!

Religious blend

Indonesia is known as a 90% Muslim country. I had first witnessed how devout Indonesian Muslims are in the Victoria Park, on my first Sunday in Hong Kong.

Shortly after my colleague had arrived from Jakarta on her assignment in Hong Kong, we decided to take her out for a welcome drink. "A drink?! I do not take alcohol", she said apologetically with that characteristic drawl. "Well, maybe a juice?", I wouldn't let go. "That would be ok, but before Friday. I start fasting then." "Oh, yeah, I forgot about the Ramadan! So it starts Friday?" "It started already, but women cannot fast during those days, you know." Come Friday, she was very fastidious about her fast, pardon the pun. She'd get up at 4 am to eat her breakfast before sunrise and go back to bed till morning. No drinks or water during the day. It must be a bit easier when others around you also observe the fast, but all of us were disappearing from the office around noon inevitably and very punctually, sometimes discussing where to go right in front of her; she’d always say it did not bother her. I am absolutely full of awe for her dedication in faith. No, she does not wear scarf.

It’s amazing how easily we tend to stereotype. Now, that I was visiting the Jakarta office, I totally expected nine in ten people to fast. But only some did. The canteen continued to operate as usual. Some wore scarves, some did not.

One afternoon, after an especially long workshop session, we got to the canteen minutes before closure. Tired and hungry, we picked up our food, hastily got down to a table and… froze with our forks ready to “attack” our food: our local colleague had just sat down, rested his fork and spoon beside the plate, closed his eyes and clasped his hands in prayer. Christian prayer.

Later in the day, I was working alone in an abandoned office room when a girl came in smiling: “Are you Irena?” An exchange of pleasantries followed. “I was told you are staying over the weekend to sightsee. I’d love to show you around, I’ll have time in the afternoon. In the morning I am seeing a priest.” “A priest?” “Yes, I’m getting ready for my wedding, my fiancé is a Catholic, and I am a Lutheran. So there’s a lot to discuss.” When we got together on Saturday, the dinner was considerately planned after sunset, so that our Muslim colleague could join us after breaking her fast.

My observations were summarizing themselves into an overall perception that various religions in Indonesia are blended very smoothly, that freedom of religion is paramount and well rooted. Nearly 90% Muslim, with world’s largest Muslim population, Indonesia also officially recognizes Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. Irrespective of your religion, Ramadan Eid and Christmas are public holidays.

And just as I finalize this chapter, my ear registers a BBC headline report on the muffled TV: “Religious violence is on the rise in Indonesia. Is it threatening its democracy?”

Food

Our first exposure to the Indonesian cuisine came with the canteen for employees: soto ayam soup, steamed rice wrapped in banana leaves, spicy vegetables, deep fried tofu, gado-gado vegetable mix with peanut sause, fish or prawn crackers made of tapioca flour (krupuk), fried fermented soy bean cakes (tempeh), various meats, roasted or stewed. Surprisingly for me, the common utensils at the canteen were not chopsticks, but a very familiar shining steel fork and a... spoon, rather than knife.

The fourth night into our stay, we were all invited to a team dinner at a lovely place featuring local cuisine. Discoveries included dried squid with sesame seeds and soy sauce, fried shrimp in salted egg, stir fried long beans, mushrooms and a multitude of other dishes.

In addition to daily meals, our workshop was lavishly supplied with very tasty snacks, deserts and fresh fruit, which also reminded me of our office in Istanbul. The snack discoveries included lemper (which I attempted to eat along with the banana leaf, but was luckily stopped in time to save me from an ambulance call) and Tahu Sumedang with green chili. The deserts were so overwhelmingly tasty, that my scale at home greeted me with a scream full of pain: “Ouch, that hurts, get off!”

And on Saturday I discovered a young coconut! It is served fresh with ice, with top barely cut off before serving. You drink it through the straw, sweet and transparent, smooth and luxuriously refreshing. And as you disappointingly suck out the last drop, you gratefully discover that the spoon is served so you could scrape off the delicate white flesh from the sides. Yammy!

Smiley hospitality

The hotel is in the same complex as our office and a huge shopping mall with a multitude of restaurants, so the full work week in Jakarta turned into a hotel-office-mall-hotel-office-mall-hotel routine and I did not get to take in a breath of fresh air in 5 days.

One evening, all three of us set off on a hunt for a large suitcase. We were cruising around the mall in search of a Samsonite and eventually started turning to shop assistants for directions. Some did not understand or speak English well enough, but were very open, smiley and willing to assist. They seemed sincerely upset if unable to help and would normally start looking for a colleague who might know better. Nor did they seem irritated when my friend was explaining his very complicated size demands: the girl immediately produced a tape measure and started diligently checking the height and diagonal of the largest available suitcases, so pleased to be assisting us that a smile never left her face throughout this time-consuming and fastidious exercise.

“I’m having a déjà vu for Istanbul again”, I said, wondering what the feeling was. My colleague caught the essence of it, beaming: “It’s such a pleasure to see people here smile so generously. They don’t smile in Hong Kong. I was so thirsty for a smile, back there they are all just so serious, almost solemn!”

Geofruitography lessons

As we were leaving Jakarta airport terminal, I had a déjà vu from Istanbul… Not sure what specifically brought it up, but I had that feeling many times later during the trip.

Five drivers were trying to lure us into their cabs before we spotted our designated chauffer. When we were already next to the car, a guy on the sidewalk grabbed our bags and started loading them into the trunk, and a second later was all over us, blocking car doors and screaming that we must tip him.

As we got to the hotel, the service staff were running around smiling, taking care of the luggage, getting us seated comfortably, bringing us tea, as the reception was checking us in. We chatted a bit, then agreed to meet in a bit for a drink and went off to unpack. An hour later, I was telling my colleague:
     “Until this evening, I thought that’s what presidential suites looked like. Is your bathroom also the size of a football field or did they mess up with room types on my booking?”
     “Had you not stayed at an Asian hotel before? That’s standard”, said he, unimpressed.

I had spent the whole time running around the suite snapping away, trying to get some of that “dropped jaw” effect reflected in the lens of my camera. No, it didn’t work. I need a wider angle lens! And quite a bit more skill and practice, but that’s minute, right?

The bathroom was larger than my living room, and the bedroom was the size of my whole apartment. I was greeted by truffles and tropical fruit.



The ensemble contained at least four fruit I had not tried before. One morning we asked our local colleagues what they were, describing each fruit in detail. This proved a funny and fairly long charades game, but it helped us figure out that what we ate were passion fruit, snake fruit, mangosteen and longan. The last two are so exotic, that Microsoft spell-check refuses to recognize them.


Below sample fruit shots are courtesy of... the Internet, sorry.

Passion fruit. Slightly smaller than a pear, with hard and smooth skin that feels like plastic to the touch and, if knocked on, leaves an impression of the hollow inside. Underneath the "plastic", there's fairly thick and light inedible sponge-like layer which holds the precious seeds covered in juicy and very tasty pulp.

Mangosteen. Much like the passion fruit, it is very hard on the outside and has a thick sponge-like shell. The edible part inside is soft greyish-white, reminiscent of garlic cloves in shape. It is often sold after it's flower-like top dries off and takes on the dark color of the outer shell, so the whole fruit looks like a grenade. When you see it the first time, it is hard to imagine it to be edible, let alone that it contains such a pleasantly sweet and delicate heart.

 Snake fruit. Yet another fruit that reminds of garlic cloves. They are also pretty hard and crunchy, just like real garlic, except these are sweet and not smelly. There are always three cloves, with a black seed inside each. The shell looks like snake skin, is extremely thin, but hard; it peels off like shell off  a hard boiled egg.










Longan. These are the size of large grapes, but with a hard shell (I broke my nails on them!). The inside contains a large seed, but the pulp texture is very similar to grapes or lychee, or the earlier advertized rambutan.