PICTURES OF OUR HK HOOD

As requested, here are some shots of the streets of Hong Kong and what we see outside our door everyday.

Well what is outside our door? A bakery, karaoke bar, HSBC bank, lingerie shop, breakfast restaurant, and the list goes on. Here is Jenn standing on our street followed by a rainy night shot from a tram pulling into the closest stop to our building.

Below is a shot of a tram pulling into the tram stop. The trams are our favourite way to travel on the island. They have no air con and are rickety and noisy but they only cost $2 HKD which is about 30 cents Canadian and if you climb up to the top deck the higher view gives you a different perspective of the streets.

Here is a shot taken on the Star Ferry which travels from the Mainland or Kowloon side of Hong Kong to the Island side (the Island side is known as, you guessed it Hong Kong Island). Riding the ferry allows you to see just how busy the harbour really is. With barges, cruise liners, fishing boats, luxury cruisers, Chinese junks, house boats, the ferry you're sitting on, ...

To take this shot of Jenn I hung the camera out the window and used the widest angle lens I had at the moment. We were riding the tram just to see how far it went. It turned out to be a pretty relaxing journey and as I said before, dirt cheap!!!

The reason I took the following shots was to show the Hong Kong Island skyline and focus on the Panasonic building. The Panasonic Building is a little too far East of Central, which is where all the Sky Scraping business towers are, to be in most of the published pictures of Hong Kong. But if you get a panoramic shot look for the Panasonic building and you'll be pretty much looking at where we live.

Although it looks as though the sun is setting between these two towers, in reality the bright light is just a reflection of the sun by a third building. I thought is was a cool shoot and it also showed a typical Friday evening traffic jam.

Many people who have uprooted and moved away tend to compare their new environment with where they grew up. This is not untrue where we are concerned but our comparison conversations tend to focus on Japan and HK. And I'm sorry to say it but Japan is losing big time. The HUGE park pictured below on a glorious blue sky day has tennis courts, basketball courts, a roller-blading rink, running and walking paths, soccer fields, benches(where the hell were the benches in Japan????), pool and a polo field. Oh yeah it also has trees ... lots of trees(where the hell were the trees in Japan????).

Now yes there are parks in HK but it is a big city too and longest set of escalators in the world can be found in HK. They start in Central and climb all the way up to the top of the Mid Levels. Now it's not one continuous escalator and in the morning they go down but it is a cruisy ride and I couldn't imagine what it would be like having to climb the hill everyday. It is pretty steep.

And that's where we live. There is so much to HK that I would be uploading photos for ages just to give a small two dimensional impression of the city. To be here is a gift for both Jenn and I and even though we miss our friends and families terribly(and you're all welcome to stay with us) we will be better people because of our experiences.

Much Love

DandJ

CAMBODIA TRIP 2005

When Jenn and I decided to go to Cambodia we did so under the task of making it a photographic vacation.

We armed ourselves with all our lenses, camera bodies and tonnes of negative and slide film as well as our digital camera. We were not blessed with a digital SLR at the time so most of the images were scaned. This is how we started every morning in Cambodia

4 AM departure from our hotel to catch the sunrise seen here at Angkor Wat, the most famous Wat in the Angkor complex.

We really couldn't digest how much detail went into carving these stones ...

and literally EVERY stone you looked at was uniquely carved.

In addition to the the detail of the stone carving is the absolute vastness of the Angkor complex. It was once a massive city spreading over 10s of square kilometers with millions of inhabitants.

Briliant orange of the Buddist Monk's robs could be seen flowing through every ruin. The ruins are believed to have a religious history. For those who don't konw, Cambodia suffered many years through civil war and perhaps some of the least humane times in recent history. This has left Cambodia far behind in many respects even when compared to their close neighbours.

Take, for example Cambodia's version of - the local bus AKA pickup truck - 7-Eleven run by a 5 year old boy - Our taxi and driver coming across the bridge - A family wagon(look closely at the whole family riding the motor bike) All pictured below and you'll see what I mean. But Cambodia is lush in many other ways. Take the enormous snail we found while walking through the ruins, it was by far the biggest snail I have ever seen in my life. Or the friendly monkeys that congregated around a fire ant hill (Look at the shot where I am hitting my leg, that's when I found out about the fire ants). And the HUGELY gentle elephants that Jenn really wanted to bring home.

Below is a picture of a ruin site that was meant to be dismantled, numbered, catalogued and reassembled after the earth, which was erroding, had been reinforced. Unfortunatly this process began before the civil war and all the documentation to reassemble the ruins was destroyed and the pieces still lay on the ground numbered and waiting to be put back in place.

So that is a little bit of what we saw and recorded on film from Cambodia. Let me leave you with another gorgeous shot of my wife and a charming picture of myself and some elephant droppings.

OUR FLAT

Well if there are any of you out there that are planning a trip to Hong Kong and want to spend some time in Harmony Mansion (that's our building name) here are a few pix we took when we first visited HK

We also have a bedroom and a computer/spare room to use. We can see the harbour from the computer room and tonnes of buses and trams run right on our street. Which is very convenient but allows us to feel like we are living in the sound track to a scene in a New York movie - minus the gunshots of course.

GETTIN' SKOOLED

It is September now and school has started. The kids are great and I am so amazed at the level of English my students have. There is a huge difference between the K2 (4-5 yrs) and K3(5-6 yrs) kids. K3 kids are speaking in full sentences and fully understand me. But what is more astonishing is they can speak in at least 3 languages. The most common language in Hong Kong is Cantonese so that's the language the children speak at home and in the playground. They are instructed in English and Mandarin in school. My classes are huge by Canadian standards with 30 kids but there is always 3 adults in the class so it's managable ---> so far.