MRT. Double deck bus.

I like how the symbol for the bus is like a face. It's kind of cute. Many things are cute in Asia...

No day is complete without Hong Kong milk tea

Work life balance...

Walking around just seeing others working and their environment I notice that for many in China work doesn't always clearly end. On the end of the day they may play mahjong at work or eat together either cooking together or getting some food. In the west were maybe getting obsessed with that we feel overworked and are often encouraged to find a balance and do clearer separation. I'm starting to wonder if this is the right path. I'm thinking that our works are so "artificial" by not being hands on that we don't reallly enjoy them.

It seems that we've eliminated all healthy physical work by automating them and what remains is mostly manually feeding the machinery of virtual paper shuffling.

In Hong Kong I meet many people with high education in area of engineering/technology but there isn't many jobs in that sector it seems, so many works with sales or business or trading instead, and local services.

Buildings seen today

As foreigner I find old and deterioated buildings more fun and fascinating than newer ones.

The one with the tree is the top part of fruit and veggies warehouses, contrasting with the new ones on the background. It strikes me that these warehouse buildings have their counterpart in Amsterdam, where they now are nicely renovated and highly priced.

Best picture of the day?

Of the 61 pictures of today I seem to like this one the most.

Short visit to Macau

They've got lots of casinos but we just walked around in the old town. Up to the castle. Using TurboJet its only 1h boatride away.

Late note noodle

Tepanyaki.

Me eating shrimp and not enjoying it. But the Kobe beef was good. The beefrolls however was the best.

Typical hk subway.

Here's the missing video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38SL2aefL5c&sns=em

How to clean your dishes using tea before dinner.

Merry Xmas

Simple day. Here are some interesting moments. A really narrow toilet door. How to clean your dishes before the meal using tea.

Haircut-park-meditation-didnteat

Today I got a haircut and beardtrim. The price was 38 hkd. The prices are funny to me as the numero is very similar to the Swedish crona when I grew up. But not only that. 1hkd is about 1sek. So its the same.

I managed to visit the Hong Kong plum village Sangha. By chance I pick the only day they are open this week, and not only that. A friend was there from Beijing which was the reason they were there. So I got to meet her as well as do some meditation. Afterwards we had veggie food.

No I do not eat the tube clams. That'd be quite hard for me. I saw one move.

Now. On the bus home to sleep.

"Far away from civilization"

I am quite fortunate to have some friends that put me up. In the new territories were in a small simple patched up shack. Simple but quite comfortable.  It takes 15 minutes walk to the nearest road! Not what one expects for Hong Kong!

SneakerAlley

So today I went to Mong Kok today to check for extra mobile phone battery today. There I came across the Sneaker Alley as I call it. A whole street with designer sneakers. In Sydney I was looking for some and in 5 stores there you can find maybe 4 or 5. Here there were at lest 15 stores each with hundreds.

No I didn't find any battery as my phone is to new.

Giant Buddha requires

that you climb many stairs. Finally I made it!

But Buddha was empty (hollow)!

On the way to see the giant buddha...

We take the "crystal bottom cable car".

In China they love to gamble

This is the wall to a garden of a neighbour. Their garden is beautiful. Not sure if they have time to gamble really.

Dog toys

You know the plastic toy for the dog that quacks like a duck? Here is another variant.

Jonas eating sashimi!

Finally! You think. But you're wrong yes I ate it but still didn't eat fish!

How is this possible? In Hong Kong there is Vegetarian Japanese restaurants with mock sushi. Ie it is vegetable or gluten or such made to look and have same texture as FAQ fish.

I'm enjoying a lot of good food here.

Hong Kong - daoist temple

Were about to have vegetarian breakfast.

By chance....

the book that I'm reading just had the characters be in Hong Kong - that's where I'm going right now!

Netbooks a surprise?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/16/noughties_review/page7.html

My turn to be surprised. Once when working for IBM (no it wasn't a good personal fit)  I remember being at Almaden talking to some there. I was seeing clearly that laptops was the future. I couldn't get out of my mind that they were so very similar to the once so common and cheap home computer. However the price was all to high. There wasn't, in my mind any good reason for that. They should be cheaper since its all integrated!

The Macs were all integrated. But even more expensive. Apple must have made a lot of profit on their monopoly platform over the years.

Now netbooks are here and are fully capable PC's, and they are suddenly cheap. It used to be that smaller was more expensive. But that's probably because exec people were willing to pay for it.

Now its the future. Only problem for me: it makes it difficult to easy rationalize paying much for the smaller capable smartphones.

Who knows maybe they're next in line?

How much cheese do you get if...

...you half a half slice of cheese?

It seems to me that that a such a slice is bigger than a quarter slice :-D

.sigh

Ti quan yin

Tea time on my balcony. Just heard another good friend is going to be in Hong Kong when I'm there. Joy!

.sigh

Melgbourne river area

I have to say that I'm impressed by how Australia is revitalizing city areas and making them livable and walkable w much public spaces. I didn't realize it untill towards the end that San Fran is pretty bad in this aspect. You're supposed to have a car and drive. Somewhere. Even SoMa area is getting more lively, but where is the green in the city? There is little feel of space.

.sigh

Luna park melbourne

.sigh

"more bang for their buck" ...

...the police said about brothel ad in police mag.

.sigh

Its eve in Sydney and 36C - I enjoy it

I wonder how the Japanese Puppy Cakes are doing today...

.sigh

Your mama didn't cook this...

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At korean bbq

.sigh

Cheap labor w extra profit for Australia

The Australians have an interesting scheme that allows foreigners to stay maybe 8 months on a holiday work visa, this surely fills a lot of temp jobs.

Then for people who legally cannot immigrate they can become "students": As long as they're "studying" they can work fulltime. Since the "studying" costs a lot in fees to the colleges and universities this is like a high tax. Its one of the major "exports" for Australia. That and coal it'd seem. The country is full of natural resources easy to "harvest".

I'm not sure if I'm critical of the system. But I see a lot of people working really hard (6-7 days a week) in order to pay so that they won't have to leave.

.sigh

So this guy is walking his goats in Hyde park!

.sigh

Monk picture

.sigh