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.

On flight to Jakarta...

Until today, I had never really thought of why some countries choose to group their names as FIRST and LAST and others as GIVEN and FAMILY or SURNAME...

The flight attendant hands me the customs declaration and the arrival card to fill in. I pull out a pen and find myself mulling over the FULL NAME field unsure whether the given or family name should come first. Then it strikes me: Hartono and Tina had told me: INDONESIANS DON'T HAVE FAMILY NAMES.

Yup, no last names, only first. Now, imagine you have no last name and you are applying for a passport for international travel? You just come up with one. Your last name is given and sometimes given by... yourself! I remember when Hartono's daughter was born and he needed to get her passport immediately to take her to Poland with his wife. They had a double task of coming up with and agreeing on two names for her: first and last! He was concerned about all the paperwork the Europeans would require and I remember recommending that he better give her the same last name as his, or else paperwork trouble was guaranteed.

How funny is this: I am sitting wondering whether FIRST name should come first or last. What a dumb question! So, back to the form: first name first. Except the field says: AS APPEARS IN PASSPORT. Take this: more often than not, in your passport your LAST name appears FIRST! He-heh...

Now, imagine an Indonesian filling out a form wondering which of his names to put as GIVEN! He-heh. And guess what, their second given name is not necessarily LAST! They can give themselves more than two names, if they need or want to, so very often they have three or four. Kind of like those Portuguese kilometer-long full names. And trust me, on an Indonesian form, the Portuguese would have all the space they need for their FULL NAME: the field was reeeeeeeeeeeeally long.

P.S.
The flight attendant was a true beauty. That face of an unmatched proportion and harmony that just strikes you at first sight, that would come out in any crowd and just draw your attention and leave you with your eyes helplessly glued to it. She probably noticed me staring at her as I was diligently looking for the fulfillment of the golden rectangle rule in her face or any other rule that could provide the key to the mystery of this remarkable harmony. And not surprisingly, I was absolutely unable to place her face geographically, although she reminded me a lot of Sayuri, Stephen's wife, half Japanese, half Sri-Lankan. Certainly, she was not Chinese like, surprisingly, most attendants on this Cathay Pacific flight.

No, I didn't dare ask if I could photograph her. If she agreed, I knew her face were going to end up here. Would you ever want your face published on the Internet by a stranger?

P.P.S.
You must have noticed: Asians are not only short; as a rule, they are also very slim (unless your stereotype is dominated by Sumo-fighters). My Cantonese colleague once proposed a theory that it must be in the genes, which sounds quite sensible.

Well, the Cathay seat belt, unlike the American-sized seat belts I am used to, certainly would not fit a Sumo-fighter. It was hardly long enough for me!.

Co-opetition?

When I was about 20 and the Georgian economy had taken its post-Soviet slump, I remember seeing women on the sides of the road to Tbilisi selling fruit: a few grouped re-selling import bananas, next group selling local apples, then another group selling persimmon and pomegranates, then you saw three identical mountain sized piles of watermelons or melons. They never mixed. My minibus passed them every weekend on the way home and back to Tbilisi, and the grouping by product seemed as natural as anything else, a given... Until my Down Under colleagues commented on how weird it was, and that they'd probably sell more if only they regrouped to lure an apple customer to also get the bananas. All these years later, it does seem weird: isn't it natural to target your clientele away from your direct competition?

Given my background, it is only weird for me to be noticing and commenting on the following peculiarity of Hong Kong: stores do get to come in groups, in LONG STREETS of same produce.

On my second day in town, I was desperate for a quick replacement for my crashed laptop. The Google Almighty said there were quite some computer stores in Wan Chai. The map said Wan Chai was one subway stop away. I said, Off I go!

A good two hours later, after I had figured out the subway ticket (Octopus, rather than Oyster, in this part of the world), that Wan Chai is not the same as Chai Wan and is in the opposite direction, I was walking the streets, which supposedly had some 300 (!) computer stores. Except, what I saw was a loooooooong street of nearly identical stores selling bathroom tiles. I've seen streets lined with clothes or jewellery stores, but bathroom tiles?! I don't believe that all the stores of bathroom tiles I had ever seen in my life altogether would come to half the number of stores I passed by in 15 minutes that afternoon.

My gut was telling me that computer stores were unlikely to congregate in this community. So I came up to one of the owners and asked him where he thought I could buy a computer. He surprised me with good English and explained that there were two (only?!) places: Wan Chai Computer Center and a place a few subway stops away. I preferred the place close by.

The Wan Chai Computer Center turned out to be a 'congregation' of at least a couple of hundred vendors (the Almighty was not lying!) crammed on the space of a medium sized department store. I must give them credit: no shop had exactly the same produce as others and the variety was impressive, however the presentation, like anything else in Hong Kong, was pretty crowded.

But wouldn't you agree that it is quite convenient to only have to go to ONE part of town to choose your bathroom tiles when you are fixing up your bathroom? Especially when the variety is just enormous.

The reason I decided to share this today is because on my way to the airport, we were driving through a street on the Mainland, which was lined up with... sewing machine repair shops! How many sewing machines would you expect to break down in one city on a given day? I guess I must add in a city of 7 million, for it must be quite some: although quite dusty, the shops did not at all seem out of business.

Does this phenomenon reflect the local culture, I wonder? If you google 'competition culture' and Asia together, you'd come upon a multitude of Western projects centered around "promotion of competition culture" in Asia, support to Asian competition officials, etc. You also get to come across a very interesting study on Culture and Competition, which does not at all place Asian cultures as least competitive, yet does link competition to cultural values.

Public transportation

Your options are plenty: trams, buses, minibuses, MTR (subway), taxis, ferries...

MTR is very efficient, has an extensive and far reaching network and would take you across the waters from the Hong Kong Island to the Mainland and back. Every station would have 5 or 6 exits marked with a letter and such lettered exits would have two or three exits each. So, that means you can actually surface from an underground station in up to 15 different places. Luckily, local maps tend to reference the lettered exits, so, chances are, you would get out fairly close to where you need to. But do not be surprised if you show up from down under in a different place every time. Yet, if you exited from A and saw a store you wanted to stop by at on the way back, be sure you'll end up checking out exits B, C, D, E and F before you eventually find your way to the desired A with the desired store... The good part is, you get to explore the neighbourhood!

MTR may well be the fastest way to travel across town, but it also has its downsides: you can freeze to death or get squeezed to death or filed off on the sides to blood by the dense crowd. Oh yeah, and as soon as you surface at one of the 15 exits, you'd soak in own sweat and would feel like a defrosted chicken pulled out of a microwave. If you have an important meeting on your schedule with an important suity someone and the etiquete dictates that you wear a no less suity something, be sure your full attendtion during the meeting will focus on wondering what odors the defrosted chicken in your suit emits and what your important suity interlocutor would think.

Next time you have a meeting with the suity someone, you'll know better and will take a taxi. Taxis are cheap and very safe! Dressed up to the nines, made up and perfumed - the incarnation of self-confidence - you take the elevator down and ask the security guard to call you a cab. You observe identical red-and-white Toyotas whooshing by the glass entrance of your apartment building and start getting impatient as the security guard hungs up again, dials for the third time and utters into the receiver these unrepeatable abrupt sounds that you would never be able to understand. When he dials for the fifth time, you wave your hand at him to give up and not bother, make it decisively onto the hot street, confident that stopping one of the dozens of red-and-white clones by a mere wave of your hand will take far less time. Surprisingly, no one is impressed by your hand. Maybe you are on the wrong side of the street? You cross the street and resume waving. You start losing patience, your buffer time is up and if one of these red-and-white empty-seated bustards does not stop RIGHT NOW! you'll be late to your very important suity meeting...

"What's wrong with them?! Don't they want to earn?!" - you reel with anger, as you walk to the parallel street, hoping you'd have a better luck there. Ten minutes later, you are seen on yet another street. Another five minutes later, sweat dripping from your forehead - reincarnation of wrath - you re-enter your apartment building and helplessly ask the security guard to call you a cab. He looks at you compassionately and starts his patient hung-up-and-dail routine all over again. Hopelessly late to your meeting, you eventually spot a cab releasing a passenger by your door and spring out onto the street barely thanking the guard for trying to help you.

Once on the road, you try to relax and strike a conversation with the taxi driver:
   - Do you speak English?
   - A lital. You speak Canton-easy? Canton-easy easy! You know “jo sun”? You know “koon mo lan”?
   - (enthusiastically) Yes, I know “jo sun”! Jo sun! but not the other one… "koon mo lan"?
   - Yes, koon mo nan! Jo sun! Goon monan!
   - Ah, good morning, jo sun! ... Coud you tell me... How can one call a cab here? Could you give me the phone number?
   - Happy Valley eigh to tan - no taxi! Monan - no taxi. Many forenahs, all take taxi.

When you eventually make it into the office, you spot the defrosted chicken staring at you from the mirror door of the elevator with two bruises of sweat-dissolved maskara...

So my preference goes to trams. Their slow crawl makes them too unpopular to be overcrowded, which leaves you with a pleasant warm breeze on the open upper deck, and guarantees you a calm 40 minutes of good read every morning and evening for just $2! These doubledecker trams are a relic leftover of the British rule and their ancient wooden fragility gives them a very romantic look.

Fruit

Today's visit to Wan Chai market has added a few exotic tropical fruit to my experience. To illustrate it, I turned my insurance leaflet over to get the white background and got a few shots of my today's purchase:

Rambutan
Hairy little red fruit, similar to lychee, quite reminiscent of grapes in texture, quite pleasant in taste.









Custard apple
Have not yet checked out the taste, but am much looking forward to it tomorrow.

And I got VERY excited by getting a pack of PERSIMMON - sweet and not at all tart, hard and shiny, just like the ones in Georgia that I have missed so much for the past 8 years!

*** Update on Aug 24: turns out I am fairly apprehensive of new tastes: I kept postponing the custard-apple for several days. Which helped it ripen and sweeten. I was a bit unsure about the smell, when I eventually cut it up, but when I tried it, the taste was divine! Reminds me a lot of a fruit from my childhood vacations on the Black Sea coast: fejhoa, also known as guava. Guess what? They are same family, although they look totally different and compare in size as Earth to Moon! Love custard-apples.

Pace of life

I'd been warned a lot that the pace of life in Asia is a lot faster than in Europe and have been wondering what this actually translates into. When we speak of pace of life in Europe (I'm thinking, let's say, London vs Cannes, or even closer to heart, Warsaw vs Krakow), it is often about the speed: more is going on, people rush rather than walk, there's stress in the air. At end of day, Krakow has always compared to Warsaw as slower, more laid back, relaxed, pensive.

So, should I expect Hong Kongers to be harder workers, always in a hurry, stressed? I guess... except what about yet another stereotype about the Orient: its religions and medicines, its image of balanced, body-conscious meditation guru?

Well, what I see, seems less controversial than I expected. Although some do work late hours, not too much stress is in the air. They walk just like we do, occasionally you'll see someone running to catch a departing bus, but in general, people seem no more or less in a hurry or stressed than what I am used to.

It eventually got to me... IT IS NOT ABOUT SPEED! Or, at least, not about individual speed, anyway... Come think of it: has an ant ever seemed a fast paced animal? Hardworking, true, but fast paced? Well, by the same token, has an ant colony ever come across as laid back or relaxed? That's it. It's about numbers...

Sundays

Domestic help is very common here - nannies, maids, cooks. Exorbitantly expensive as rental space is here, upmarket apartments would normally have a maid-room. As Rita was explaining recently, the locals prefer to hire Indonesians as they find Cantonese fairly easy to learn and can communicate with the family quite well within a year. That's rare with others - Cantonese is not an easy language. Conversely, foreigners tend to hire the Filipinos, as thanks to their American education system, they speak very good English and so communication works out well from the start.

The popularity of those jobs fills the city with Indonesian and Filipino women. Their husbands are apparently leading a fairly lazy lifestyle back home, unable to find jobs and subsidized by their wives. These women don't normally travel home to save the airfare and don't get to see their children often. Sometimes, not in several years.

For the most part, they work 6 days a week and get Sundays off, when their employers are off work and enjoy family time. Sundays is their opportunity to congregate. The HSBC building in the center is the congregation spot for the Filipinos. Indonesians get together in Causeway Bay's Victoria Park.

I did not know all that just a week into my stay, when I got out on my first longer walk around the neighbourhood on a hot Sunday afternoon and, overwhelmed by the crowds, set my feet towards the largest green spot closeby according to my map - the Victoria Park - in search of shadow, quiet and solitude...

The Park turned out to be the same as the one I have been passing by every morning in a tram to work, but on this hot humid Sunday afternoon it looked very different...

Already on approach to the park, the sidewalks were taken over by women sitting on the ground around picnic tablecloths lain with home made foods, watermelon, fruit, or simply with bags of chips or snacks. They were so many, that walking without looking under your feet was impossible: you could at any point step on someone's shoe, or hand, or stumble over their feet.

I assumed them to be the Filipinos until I noticed that quite a few were praying muslims. Romina had earlier told me that Filipinos, much like Poles, are over 90% Catholic. Although my next guess was Indonesians, I did not recognize the faces as similar to my two Indonesian colleagues that worked together with us in Krakow. Maybe Malaysians?

But talks to colleagues at work the next day confirmed, this was the common congregation spot of Indonesian domestic help workers.

These gatherings are a subculture of its own. I've seen two sports teams in identical tee-shirts resting from pratice, a group of young girls learning a dance together, a group of a bit elder women rehearsing a song with notes in hand and that was an impressive choir performance!