Taking a hike

Physical exercise. Good Lord.

The entire ELT department was forced to go to a country club in Tuen Mun on Friday, March 28th, for a day-long teambuilding extravaganza (Design got a trip to Macao by helicopter!) -- this was less awful than I expected, in fact. But it was still moderately awful.

In the evening, I mooched around and had dinner, then met up with my Irish mate R at the Old China Hand in Wanchai, which was full of yahoos in town for the Sevens (both the OCH and Wanchai, that is). I miraculously acquired a table, which we later gracefully ceded a portion of to a lady from the Scottish borders so that she'd have elbow room to eat her pub food. At one point while R was in the toilet, she told me my Irish accent was less pronounced than his. Tempted as I was to go for some form of pretence, I instead simply explained why that was.

The plan for hiking continued--I stayed over at R's flat in North Point, and in the morning we had breakfast (noodles with spam and egg, mmmmmm) then walked to Quarry Bay, briefly stopping off so I could show R the location of the "secret bookshop" in a book distribution office at Taikoo Shing.

We had selected two easy, Level 1, stages of the Hong Kong Trail -- Stages 6 & 7 -- from the Serious Hiker's Guide to Hong Kong or something to that effect. What we didn't realise was that to get to the beginning of Stage 6 of said trail from Quarry Bay, one must climb a reasonably steep incline, Mount Parker Road, for about 45 minutes. (At left, a very rough delineation of our route. Click for enlargening.)

We also forgot to bring water, an elementary mistake, foolishly assuming that here, like on the mainland, there would be at least some small refreshment stalls if not constantly badgering vendors of water and knick-knacks. We were wrong. There would not in fact be anywhere to buy water for another 14 kilometres.

There wasn't too much climbing after that, and we walked down the other side of Hong Kong Island's central ridge of hills along the edge of Tai Tam Reservoir and along to Tai Tam Bay itself. Most of the route is concreted, but the nicest parts were those on a twisting bare-earth path, where one has to be more careful of tripping on roots and rocks but is surrounded more convincingly by countryside. The contrast with urban Hong Kong is startling, and it's often hard to believe you're on the same island. Particularly so for R, who lives in one of the busiest parts of the city.

About three hours and a bit later, we arrived at a small village, passing what's said to be the only remaining agricultural land on HK Island en route. There we drank a can of Pocari and two bottles of water each and watched middle class types fiddling with Hobie catamarans on the beach. A twenty-something Cantonese couple at the next table talked loudly and dimly on such topics as names ('I like the name Sophie so much I will call my baby that even if it's a boy') and celebrities ('Barbie and Ken split up? So is she single now or what?').
At a further along table, two English expats of the familiar gruff, bullet-headed type discussed money and enterprise in a thoroughly cliched way, then surprised us by striking up conversation with the proprietor in fluent Cantonese as they settled the bill.

We left and managed to get lost in a village consisting of half a dozen buildings. It was a location for unexpected linguistic ability, and an old Chinese woman addressed us in perfect English, correctly surmising that we were looking for the way to the bus stop. 'Up the steps,' she told us and pointed the way.

Ah. The steps. 750 steps, in fact, winding up the mountain side. The trail itself may be easy, but getting to and from it certainly isn't. I can say with certainty that this was the hardest part of the hike. Mercifully, a minibus to Shau Kei Wan MTR station pulled up just as we reached the top of the steps, and before you could wheeze 'thank God for that' we were back in the crowds and hubbub of the north side of the Island, which was quite the culture shock.

I didn't get too sunburnt, which is nice. But if you're going to take the same walk, bring water, seriously.

I am off to Jakarta this afternoon. Now, I was only there three weeks ago, but since that was to spend a Saturday afternoon and the whole Sunday sitting listening to a pre-marriage course in a language I don't speak in order to get a you-can-get-married-now certificate*, it wasn't exactly quality time. I gather the weather in Jakarta is mostly thunderous and precipitating heavily, so if anything we will be forced to spend time together. It being Holy Week, mind you, we'll also be in church a lot.

Despite the fact my flight doesn't go till about 4pm, I availed myself of the In-town Check-in service at Central this morning on the way to work. Now all I need to is turn up to the airport on time and, ideally, remember to buy some Easter eggs.

I recorded a new song recently. See what you think.




* technical term

Getting about

A rehash of the good old "where have you been" map, but this time I filled it in according to languages I speak well enough to read the paper. (I restricted myself to official languages.)

So below is a map of the countries where I speak the lingo. What I surmise from this is that I should learn Spanish. And possibly Russian. Maybe Arabic.


create your own visited country map
or check our Venice travel guide

Return to Son of Grindstone

Back to work after a four-day weekend for the New Year. (Happy Year of the Rat everyone, incidentally.)

Work is reasonably tedious, partly because I've been seconded off the storybooks and onto mock exams for the HKCEE, which isn't quite as interesting.

I didn't do much with my holiday but catch up with sleep. Luckily, my Christmas presents from home arrived on the 6th of February, just before the holiday. Although slightly miffed that CK got more than I did, it did mean I was able to enjoy over the weekend the Apocalyptica DVD my brother got me (as well as an Esprit scarf, which would normally be a terrible gift for someone in HK but with the current cold spell has been very useful), as well as the film Strings and an I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue double CD from Mum.

Strings came with a gift tag describing it as "bizarrely beautiful", which is pretty well spot-on. It's "the world's first integrated string-puppet feature film", set in a fantasy land where everyone is a marionette with strings that reach up to the sky. The story is perhaps a little generic in outline -- and the ending weak -- but it has some breathtaking set pieces, and the overall product is amazing. The opening scene sets the tone well: an aging king commits suicide by cutting his own head-string, without which the marionettes die.

Acquire and view this film if at all possible.
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More Tales of the Fighting Mongooses

So, I've managed to win a couple of races, but my first attempt a "deathrace" didn't go so well. In fact, my driver ended up dead, although she did still earn me $570 for coming in 10th.

Basically, if you're in some kind of post-apocalyptic motor racing event where every has machine guns mounted on the bonnets of their cars, do not take the early lead.
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Days of Blunder

I've recently signed up to a Mad Max style online game called--for some reason--Dark Wind. It's free (clue one as to me signing up there), and is a turn-based driving game in the vein of Car Wars.

My gang of anti-social gearheads rejoices in the name The Fighting Mongooses.

I managed to finish first in my first race, largely because the only other human player was reduced to a flaming -- and, crucially "turtled" -- wreck after a head-on collision, leaving me to cruise to victory. The track there was a figure of eight, which was interesting. I was sitting in third after the first hairpin (the NPC cars tend to smash into one another on the narrow straight leading up to it) and thinking things were fine. "Here comes the fun part," says the other player, and it was only then that I rotated my camera to reveal what we were about to try and dash in front of to cross to the other loop of the 8 .. the selfsame churning peloton I'd felt so smug about outpacing only seconds earlier.
The other player came a cropper on the following lap, as we tried to make the cross shoulder to shoulder. I felt a bit bad about that -- we both hit the same two cars, but I escaped with only a fishtail and some tyre wear, whereas his driver lost a limb!

My second race, I only managed second and that again by dint of consistency--the other players raced off ahead while I struggled with the bouncy off-road buggy track. There's a hare and tortoise metaphor in there somewhere, but I won't belabour the point.
More tales of the Fighting Mongooses to come at some point in the future, I imagine.


In the real world, things have been a bit stressful, with me juggling lots of work with indefinite plans to travel at some point. I need to go to Jakarta in either March or April for the pre-wedding course thing one has to do (which will be even more thrilling in a language I barely speak), and I also have to get to my grandfather's funeral, and I don't know when it will be yet... it's all very well leaving time so that far-flung relatives can make it (mostly from Australia) but it doesn't much help us, people, if you don't give us any notice extra.

Still, I'm trying not to panic. It hasn't been all bad. HSBC turned me down for a credit card despite me earning more than twice the required amount (gits), but another provider of the exact same card has kindly stepped into the breach. My old flatmate Paul visited for a week at the beginning of January en route from England to Beijing and slept on my sofa--it was rather nice having him as a flatmate again. Our friend Alex J was also down from Beijing, so we were able to enjoy a bit of a reunion with those two and me, as well as Rudi. On the day Paul arrived (though he missed this out as he arrived 12 hours later than he'd planned, on account of confusing am and pm), we went for tea at the Peninsula, where we were at the next table from Jean-Claude van Damme. JCvD looked, in a word, bewildered.
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Happy new year

2008 is upon us. In a scant six months or so, it will be safe to go back to Beijing, post-Olympics. Well, apart from all the toxic particulates in the air, anyway.

I jetted over to Jakarta to stay with CK and her family, on the 22nd of December. The flight was with Cathay Pacific, which was pretty good. Not as good as China Airlines, though (rolling seatback movies instead of on-demand... the privation!), probably because Cathay has bigger fish to fry than the Jakarta--HK route.

I arrived in time for the traditional new year floods, with plenty of submerged fields visible during our descent to Soekarno-Hatta, but the roads were clear (except where disgruntled locals had set fire to a bridge on the airport toll-road) and the rain was mostly just a reason to occasionally have to shelter under an awning for a while.

Over Christmas itself we went up to a mountain region outside Jakarta called Puncak, and stayed in a rather odd little resort of holiday villas large and small, available in a variety of configurations and styles named after world cities. The difference between the "Monaco" and "Monte Carlo" villas, for example, was lost on me.

The purpose of this mountain retreat (close to the presidential summer residence, no less) was for weather-avoidance purposes, cold and rainy being considered preferable to hot and rainy. Lest the reader become envious, be sure I was not spending Christmas in utter opulence. You may well read "villa" and imagine fancy summer-houses with kidney-shaped swimming pools. These were not quite so grand. They weren't bad, but I was forced to reacquaint myself with washing in the traditional Indonesian shower, which is not so much a shower as pouring warm water over oneself from a small bucket with a panhandle.

At Christmas Eve, we went to midnight Mass in a large church that's part of a sort of retreat complex with an attached monastery. It was here, amid a congregation of a couple of thousand, that I achieved what I think is my largest scale only-white-guy-in-the-room moment to date.
To get there, you proceed up a winding road through a village (paying several small tolls en route, which seems pretty common around there) and then up a hill, punctuated with stations of the cross, before you reach the auditorium-like church proper. It's not exactly somewhere you'd happen across by accident.

Crowds were big on Christmas Eve, as you'd imagine. You had to get there early, and pre-Mass entertainment was laid on for the waiting throngs. I think I did OK with the Indonesian-language Mass itself. The hymns were easy enough to interpret, though I put this down to the rather generic lyrical content of hymns worldwide.

We returned to Jakarta by the afternoon of Christmas Day, much to the concern of little Nikki, CK's niece, who was anxious to get home and thus to the presents.
We stopped off for lunch at a restaurant in the town of Cimory which is bizarrely based around dairy products. Not all the food, you understand, but they have a shop that sells yoghurt and fresh milk and that sort of thing. And the playground has a Frisian cow theme. It's exotic foreign food in Indonesian eyes.

Nikki was then further dismayed to discover that not all the presents were for her.
I got her a drawing set and a Lego ambulance, which as tradition dictates ended up being put together by adult males--her dad and his brother-in-law.

(I got shirts, cuff-links, a dressing gown, chocolate, that kind of thing. You know. Luckily, I had learnt the Indonesian for "cuff-links" the day before (it's 'manset') so I was able to say thank you properly.)

Post-Christmas it was the usual round of malls -- Mangga Dua, Artha Gading, the other one -- stocking up on new clothes, formal shoes for work, knock-off PSP games (5000 rupiah each!) and so on. I briefly considered buying a low-cost and low-quality bass guitar, but didn't have room in my luggage. I don't want to spend too much on one, since I don't really play it, but I do want to get away from recording bass parts on a guitar and then digitally dropping it an octave. It just sounds a bit odd sometimes.

I also unfortunately got a bit of a bad stomach around the 29th or so. More unfortunately, CK told her mum, which led to extreme fussing. (Note to self: anything you say in the house will be repeated to everyone else...)

We went for tennis on the Saturday morning. Now, in this I had been misled. When they said "do you want to play tennis?" I thought they meant we'd go and, well, play tennis. Not go and have tennis coaching for a couple of hours. Still, I gradually remembered how to hit the ball vaguely where I wanted (after an eight-year hiatus) and scored a couple of points in the doubles game we eventually played. Doing anything with my right arm was a bit of a struggle for the next 24 hours, though.

New Year's Eve featured dinner at Sizzler's, who were woefully unprepared for a rush of customers, and the food wasn't great when it arrived. 2008 was heralded by some increasingly out of control fireworks nearby. CK and I had to settle for New Year hugs, since kissing in public is Not Done in Jakarta. In fact, on the way back to the car, we took advantage of the darkness therein for a bit of the old kissing, at which point the alarm went off on the car next to us. Even the motor vehicles are against public canoodling!

I flew back on January the 1st, feeling rather glum. I am not terribly happy to be back in Hong Kong, but what can you do?