Typhoon Vs Subway

Hong Kong has a really ship-shape public transport system. No truly, for all the crowding, lack of recycling/green space/responsible use of electricity, and general toxicity that is the city, the MTR really can't be faulted.

Most of the time.

There are these great blinky light maps, so even Little Miss What-Space-Time-Continuum? doesn't get lost. Everything is in English and Chinese, so as long as you're not a tourist from the 150+ countries which speak neither, you won't even need a phrasebook. The trains are efficient, the trams are fairly regular, and the buses break the speed limit on a regular basis to drive past you because they're full. The ferry has one of the best views in the world, and is normally only a little bit bumpy.

And best of all, because it is Chinese, it is very, very clean. As in, no food or drink clean. As in, wear masks so you don't breath germs clean. As in, feeling ashamed because you've tracked in a puddle clean. Which is nice, as well as neurotic and intimidating. In Hong Kong, you can jump on the subway without holding your breath to avoid air born toxins, and you simply will not find chewing gum stuck anywhere. It is, in fact, a gum free zone.

The only problem with Hong Kong MTR. The only teensy weensy tiny little thing, is the minor issue of crowding. As you may or may not be aware, Hong Kong's population makes it to just over 7 million. There are, roughly, 16,000 people per square mile in the city. Which means there's about 3 people per square foot. And when there's a typhoon warning ( bearing in mind that the marvelous, clean, efficient public transport just shuts down at 'T8') all 16,000 people within your little square mile try to defy all the laws of physics and anatomy in order to crush themselves into one tube of aluminium and plastic, otherwise known as the train.

Because, you know, you couldn't stand around in the well lit, clean, spacious station and wait for the next one. In two minutes. That's just asking too much, really. Especially when you just got let off work early, and you really do have nothing better to do than beat up that silly white girl with your briefcase, because as a middle aged man with no small amount of paunch, it's both likely and reasonable you'll fit into the space between her and the doors. The space which, incidentally, is smaller than your briefcase...

The Hong Kong public transport system is great, just not when you're method acting a human sardine.

And I know that Typhoon Vicente was a pretty big deal. And I know that more than a few people didn't want to get stuck in the middle of the city during what was essentially a tropical hurricane. But I also know, now, what it feels like to have my face pressed into a strange man's sweaty armpit. And next time? I think I'll take the storm.

You know you're somewhere fancy when...

So, first off, apologies for the unforgivable and excessively prolonged absence. Apparently, reality got the better of me, and for a short while I was hurled into the abyss that is five hour revision sessions, parent society Burns nights, and, horror among horrors, not finding chocolate cereal in the canteen. I can now say however, that it is all over....for now. Currently I'm enjoying the summer, and discovering that speaking French isn't all that great an asset when trying to get a job in Hong Kong, who knew? So I'm teaching myself Japanese. Because why pick the right country's language when you have so many hundreds more to choose from?

The weather in Hong Kong at the moment, for those of you who are curious, is rainy. Yeah, you'd think that moving 6,600 miles to a country widely considered to fall into the 'tropical' category would guarantee a break from certain precipitations. Apparently not. Owing to this, I discovered flip flops are designed to double up as Extreme Sports kit when applied to wet pavement with pressure. But hey, I'm taking the good with the bad, and plan on signing up for the next high speed skating world cup.

Honestly actually, thanks to the vast, sparse, soul destroying sahara that is my search for jobs, I've not been doing a great deal. Started reading Camilla Lackberg's 'The Ice Princess', which is great, but hard to really get into when you're on an island in the South China Sea, and there is a distinct lack of arctic wasteland. So I moved on to Leo Tolstoy's 'Anna Karenina', set in nineteenth century Russia. You know, because I'm logical like that. I watched 'The Amazing Spiderman', which was great, I experimented with making smoothies...

At this point you're probably wondering, if I've done so very little, why on Earth am I bothering to sit down and blog about it?  Because I had done all but nothing, until last night.

Last night we visited the Asian Nirvana, nay, Olympus, nay, the Valhalla, that is Hutong Restaurant. Seriously, you know you're somewhere fancy when washing your hands is an artistic experience. I mean it! I am easily pleased, but in this case I could have been a dinosaur confronted with an artistic representation of a meteorite and I'd have been bowled over. I mean - this sink for example! The tap was a sort of bamboo tube coming from the bottom of a hanging basket. It took me about five minutes to figure out this gorgeous water feature was actually a tap. When I did I experimented for another five.

However, even this gorgeous little novelty could not keep me away from the main restaurant for long, and we'd not even ordered yet. Because apart from the interactive, sculptural vision that is the bathroom, one of Hutong's best features is the floor to ceiling, wrap around wall of windows, opening onto what is quite probably the best view in Hong Kong. Truly, it's enthralling to the point of being obsessively beautiful, you just can't take your eyes away. Before you, a black satin carpet ripples with silver and burns with the lights of the city above. Ships and ferries make their graceful way from one side of the harbor to the other. The buildings themselves bring to mind a 21st century vision of the Tower of Babel.

It's so easy, on visiting Hong Kong, to come away with the negatives. To come away with the pollution, and the crowding, and the excess and the ludicrous living conditions bestowed on the vast majority. But it truly is a beautiful place, and a very very human one. Hutong presented Hong Kong's best face on a silver platter, and it was as entrancing as it was impressive.

As for the food, it stood up to the view, which is a tall order. And it made my brother, affectionately nicknamed the Human Hoover, pause and allow his tastebuds to share in the experience normally sent straight to his gullet. Myself, I was lost for words.

I think that says it all really.

Till next time, all the best.

There are fish in the sea;

God is a saxophonist who goes by the alias of Morgan Freeman; and in the end, everything comes back to Uncle Howard.

It's funny, the things you learn from people. Whether that involves sailing a sixty five metre long ship, or taking a friend wakeboarding, our fellow human beings can be some of our closest friends- and still remain a mystery.

I mean, I get each one of us is an individual- or at least I try to comprehend 6 billion different chances for a new imagination, opinion, spirit and mind. But really- from a fear of fish and cats to the dangers of cursing someone with a wart up the nose, sometimes, though I find it fascinating, I am presented with the most impossibly bewildering pieces of nonsense even I can not begin to comprehend in my own dotty mind.

It could just be me- I'll accept that, I've heard that daydreaming every few seconds and putting the book you just bought back on the shelf in the second hand bookstore you just bought it from is supposed to be a sign you're losing touch. Also, talking to yourself and craving chocolate- though I know that's far less unusual. (In fact, I consider chocolate cravings positively healthy- I mean, a cocoa bean is a vegetable/fruit/berry- whatever the real category is.)

But I try my best to find out about normal people- I watch them on TV, and read about them in books. (We haven't yet wired up the broadband to my hermit cave, but we're working on it. The satellite man will be the first guest in years, and I've cleared out all the pythons for him.)

Seriously- I have a terrible sense of humour, even I don't understand it. I have a friend who may never get above a C in an exam, and still remains one of the most intelligent, diligent people I've ever met- I know the most decent gentleman in the world, who at late thirty something is still happy to be openly promiscuous with every female he comes across. I look at reality, then flip back to the one Jacqueline Wilson book I ever read- and I don't get it- I mean, am I missing something?

In the immortal words of Sue Sylvester- "Is it me?"

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I expect my ever so slightly skewed perception of everything from my brother to floating blue beach balls belonging to white haired chinese men may be somewhat responsible for the apparent oddity of even the most sensible people I come across.

However, I'm fairly sure it's possible it's them too. I cannot imagine sharing every experience, every spoken word, lesson learned, book read and dream or nightmare dreamt with even one other human being. Biology and genetics aside- can you imagine the multicolor mess of experiences that build each human being?

I mean, I'm sure it's easy enough to consider from time to time- to let it flash across your mind, but if you really think about it, really make yourself try and imagine that many scenes- the acting out of a liftetime, and then multiply it by six billion, the result will make the amount of stars in the sky seem numerable.

On the Star ferry, crossing Victoria harbour, or on the parade of sail in Antwerp, or the sailing festival in Aalborg- one thing repeatedly struck me.

My Mum used to say to me that beaches are graveyards- fantastic, beautiful, halfway points, the cemeteries of the sea. I realised, suddenly, that cities are the beaches for human beings and their oddities.

It sounds bizarre, but give me a moment to explain- beaches are what's left of 'la fruit de la mer'- the 'peoples' and wildlife of the oceans, the objects they've constructed, and given their lives to- to have as shelters, birth places, and opportunities for exhibition.

So a collection of buildings, on occasion so cluttered they seem to be overflowing, inhabited by hundreds of thousands of people, who live there and leave their mark and build their heritage upon the foundations of their homes; a collection of buildings that are often as different in shape and size as a daisy and a rose; a collection of buildings made for shelter, exhibition, safety.... Are the two really that different?

How many stories lie in a building? Even a boring old apartment block will have hundreds- and each one will be the result of an individual personality, an individual set of emotions and experiences, some of which will have been played out inside all four walls.

You can look at a city like Hong Kong, or London, or Paris- and you can consider those six billion epic stories- about anyone, from a janitor to a Duke- each dotted and flavored by preference: Uncle Howards; not leaving New Shoe's on table; an inherited love of the ocean- and maybe you'll start to realize, as I'm trying to, with the proof right before your eyes, that the human race- though faulted, predictable, and often primitive- is just as varied, and brilliant as the universe it inhabits.

I may have been some time...

Well, you've got to love Captain Oats, what with the heroic last words and all. You probably don't love me as much though, and it's understandable- I mean, I haven't posted in...how long? You see, THIS is why I never used my diary... Anyway, I'm NOT going to bore you with trips to Cambridge, Typhoon 8's in Hong Kong, random excursions to Wales and Somerset. I most certainly will NOT be mentioning scaling waterfalls and bathing in fresh water streams- or speed boating and yacht racing and nearly ripping my leg open in shark/pink dolphin infested South China sea on a paid job. And there's no way I'm even mentioning the massive black, yellow, red and green spider that was in the banana plantation next door and looked like something from a joke store in a completely non funny way. I'm not going to bore you with tales of the burmese python having been caught after eating a dog a month, including huskies. I will not drone about going boogie boarding in Australia, or missing the Perseid meteor shower but seeing wild dolphins, the milky way and numerous shooting stars. Surprisingly however- that then leaves me without that much to say. Oh well, maybe next time.
From somehwere in Australia, listening to 'Daydreamin' Blues', Kat.