Keeping Up Appeareances - more from Beijing

Turns out there was more faking going on during the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics than we first thought. The foot prints firework was fake, the girl didn't sing live, but now more nice facts are emerging from the Chinese capital.

Remember these 56 children who were representing the 56 ethnic minorities of China? Turns out now that they were all Han Chinese - the ethnic majority in China with over 1.2 billion people. Of course that wouldn't have been a problem, if they had not told the world that these children all were chosen from the ethnic minority they represented. It also would have been less of a problem if they hadn't faked other parts of the ceremony too. What do you mean, 'control freaks'?

That control freak image is being reinforced by the stories that emerge from the training and selection procedures for the girls who present the Olympic medals. They were asked to strip naked, then were measured to make sure they had the right proportions. If they didn't have the right proportions, they could still join the training to be cheerleaders. Training for the three minute procedure was tough, the girls got up at 5am, started training at 6am and didn't get back before 8pm. And that during six months prior to the Games.

All it shows to the world is a government that is so desperately trying to control every aspect of the Games that the rest of the world only gets more convinced that they are doing exactly the same with the people they represent. Or are supposed to represent, because democracy still is a relatively unknown idea in modern day China.

Tribute to the REAL star

There we go, the little Wei Peiyi who was the real voice of the national anthem for the opening ceremony of the Beijing olympics. Respect!

Hyacinth on an Olympic scale

The game is called 'keeping up appeareances' and the setting is Beijing. A couple of funny little anecdotes show that the Chinese are up to their old tricks again by trying to pretend everything is perfect in their Glorious Nation.

The funniest one is the story of the little girl who sang the national anthem at the opening ceremony. She was so cute and won the hearts of Chinese and other people alike. Lin Miaoke is her name, and since ehr performance she's a star in China. But wait a minute - what performance? Turns out she didn't sing at all, she just faked it like a true Britney. When the selections took place, the part officials choose a different girl, the 7yo Yang Peiyi to sing the song. They agreed though that she wasn't quite cute enough (her teeth weren't all that straight, imagine) and that could bring down the image of China. So they swiftly decided to let her sing the song and look for a much cuter little girl to stand there at the opening show. Job done, China looked perfect once again.

Second example. For some of the events the turnout has been a bit low, with too many empty seats in the stadion even though the events are sold out. Reason for this is that sponsors often get tickets they don't use. Tis of course was not on, imagine the world would think that the Chinese don't know how to organise the games. So they've decided to bring in randon people in yellow t-shirts to fill the empty seats. Job done, stadions are full and China looks perfect once again.

The funny thing is that no one really cares about these things, except for the Chinese. They so try to be perfect that in the end they just look desperate. And we all know that people who seem desperate are just not attractive...

8-8-2008

8-8-2008... Since the number 8 is very auspicious for anyone who's even remotely Chinese, today is an exceptionally lucky day. Only once a century this number combination comes up, so women all over the country have been planning to have babies today, and those who are not yet giving birth are queuing to get a caesarian done. All to get that baby - preferably male, of course - out on this lucky day.

Also opening today: the most controversial Olympics ever. I'm looking forward, not to the sports bit but to see how the commie authorities will be dealing with the public. It ain't looking good, but you know they will get away with anything...

8-8-2008 is approaching...

http://www.amnesty.org/

Xi Yan / Yin shi nan nu

Two of my favourite movies (ever) happened to be on sale at HMV when i walked in last night, so bought both dvd's. Xi Yan ('The Wedding Banquet) and Yin Shi Nan Nu (Eat Drink ManWoman) are both directed by Ang Lee before he went on to make films like Sense and Sensibility, Hulk and Brokeback Mountain.

Bloody ripoff

Now that I moved to Hong Kong, I have to register with the Consulate General of Belgium in Hong Kong and Macau. Great fun, filling out another form with data you have already provided to the London embassy before... Surely there is a central system that keeps track of where people go?

Anyway. After registration, I am supposed to apply for a new Belgian ID card. Because all Belgians need an ID card. Which they are never going to use if they live abroad. If I travel to Belgium I will be going around with my passport, which I have to take anyway. So what the hell do I have to fork out another HK$ 141.9 for? Apart from getting money off you, I see no point whatsoever in ID cards for Belgian citizens living abroad.

Thunderbolt and lightning...

Another amazing thunderstorm passed over Hong Kong last night. The sky was electric, the lightning was so strong and frequent that I could see perfectly well without having to put on the light in my room. Thunder was loud enough to make my windows shake.

Next: the sirens of the fire brigade all over town...

(Just discovered that the Hong Kong Observatory keeps track of lightning. There were 3059 cloud-to-ground lightning strikes last night, plus another 1332 cloud-to-cloud.)

To Croc or not to Croc???

Dilemma, dilemma, dilemma. It is raining a LOT in Hong Kong. It is also warm. You want to wear shorts. What footwear do you choose? Trainers get soaked. Flip flops? Either the sole slides over the slippery pavement, or the soles of your feet slip off the flip flops. Nike sandals would be great, but I haven't found them yet.

So... I must admit, after the so manieth time I almost broke my neck on the slippery pavement, I have been very tempted to get a pair of Crocs. They're lightweight, they're ok to get wet, they're open so the water flows out and your feel stay cool, and... they're BUTT UGLY!!

I can't honestly be seen wearing these monsters. But they're ideal footwear in this climate. Dilemma, dilemma, dilemma. I may buy a pair in a discreet colour (if that is possible) and hide whenever I see someone I know in the street. Or should I try to blag it and walk around with this ''it's so uncool it's cool'' attitude?

No excuses...

http://www.lifeclever.com/learn-35-languages-for-free-in-itunes/

Cantonese is in the list too... I guess i don't have an excuse anymore, now that I bought an iPod... Oh well, i can still blame it on the fact that i don't have an internet connection yet so nowhere to download the podcasts :)

*in stitches*

Yeah, I know, it's bad to make fun of people, but this one is too funny. Sent the wrong number to someone and she replied to my e-mail to say that the number is not correct. So far nothing wrong, but the way she put it just got me in stitches, it's so funny!!

I tried to call you by the phone number you advise me : #3356 1060 but seems this line is not working. I have the sound is beeeeeeeeeee!

I mean, really: I have the sound is beeeeeeeeeee! *lol*

Sales - part deux

Speaking of Jehova's W's (see previous post), a friend of mine reminded me of them earlier this week. He didn't encounther the Watchtower Crowd though, but the tactics were similar: he got caught by a Mormon. I'm sorry, my friend, the story is too funny to keep it for myself :)

So he sends me this e-mail saying this Mormon guy 'somehow managed to get his number off him and leave him with a pamphlet'. My reply to this was that he obviously had given the guy his phone number. A minute later his answer to this arrived in my inbox:

'Totally not my fault! He had blue eyes and he kept smiling at me!'


Slapper :)

Sales

One phenomenon that still baffles me here in Hong Kong is the door-to-door sales people who call at the office. There I am at my desk, minding my own business, when all of a sudden the doorbell rings and someone pushes a namecard in my face with the name of a hotel and her contact details. If it's not a hotel, it is a stationary company, someone selling magazine subscriptions or little perfumed bags 'to make the office smell nice'. Come to think of it, with the currect smell of pain and thinner we are getting from the renovation works on the floor below, that one could have come in handy.

Maybe i should request a free night in each of the hotels they advertise, so i can check whether it is good enough to house our precious visitors.

Somehow I'm still expecting the Jehova's Witness to show up at some point to sell me a bible and a Watchtower. Ah, memories... ('Quick, switch off the light and pretend no one's home!')

Most Advanced Police Force In The World

Chinese police on Segways... But is it the real Segway, or is it the Chinese fake? :)

Another holiday, another beach

The 1st of July is yet another public holiday in Hong Kong. This time it's all about the reattachment to China in 1997. Ever since a demonstration for democracy takes place on that day.

An expat myself, i obviously take democracy for granted and so I headed for the beach. Another public holiday, another beach, that's how it goes. This time I ended up going to South Bay beach with Josh and his friends. It's a nice beach. Fairly quiet, lively but not too busy, and nicely framed by lush greenery, rocks and a nice view towards Deep Water Bay. Every ow and then an announcement is made that the water is polluted and people should not go into the water. Then again, pollution is a given in Hong Kong, so not too many people actually care and neither did we. No visible effects so far, I think we'll survive.

The weather

What does one talk about when there is nothing else to say? That's right: the weather. I had a look on http://www.worldweather.org/ , a very informative site offering a great deal of information on the climate of most countries in the world.

Have a look at the schedule above. See the amount of rain we get here in August? Now go onto the site and check for Brussels: 68mm for that month. So stop moaning about the weather over there :)

Tropical Storm FENGSHEN

The typhoon that caused mayhem in the Phillipines on the weekend reached Hong Kong last night. By then it had come down to a tropical storm, but it was still strong enough to cause the typhoon signal 8 to be raised - the highest level warning. Offices, schools and other buildings were closed. Public transport came to a halt. Everyone was advised to stay indoors and wait until the storm had passed.

And so we did. Got to the office around 3pm, so having a rather short day. The glorious weather we had on the weekend (spent sunday on the beach with my friend Josh and with Jason who was visiting from the UK) has disappeared again and we are back to very dark skies and LOTS of rain. It is now 530pm and outside is as dark as if it were midnight. Even darker, because the lights are not on yet so it all looks very much like Gotham City. I'm starting to see why they decided to film the latest Batman movie here.

Cebu

Re-reading my blog to see what I haven't mentioned yet about the last couple of months. One of the things I got up to was a trip to Cebu in the Philippines, courtesy of work. It was one of these incentive trips to keep the sales guys happy, and since I am doing their administrational backup I was allowed to come along.

Normally these weekends are very boozy affairs. Lots of alcohol, lots of bad-boy trouble, noisy, obnoxious. None of that this time, or at least very little. Already the guys here are more mature in a way than most of the sales guys in the London offices. So it ended up being a really nice, relaxed weekend at the Mactan Shangri-La resort.

It started off well on thursday night. Upon arrival at the airport it turned out that only half of us had a ticket. The payment for the seconf half of the team had not gone trough and the person in London doing the booking had professionally ignored all warnings. So Joris, the guy with the company credit card, had to take out 15000 HKD to get us all to the Philippines.

We arrived in Cebu airport at 315 in the morning. Not an ideal time to arrive anywhere, and certainly not there. Our hotel was only booked from Friday night, so we had to find a way to pass the time untilt he room was available for check-in. Told the driver of the shuttle bus to the hotel to take our bags there, and drop us off at the casino.

The casino was... 'interesting'. When you think casino, you think in Vegas terms. Not this one. In the lobby some people were watching soaps on tv. The casino itself was like a third-world version of a casino, everything looked a bit old and run down. Including the guests. But hey, we had a blast! My colleague Kelly got a jackpot at the slot machine, loads of coins came out so she thought her expenses for the weekend were sorted. Until she found out the next day that with all these winnings she could just about get a Club Sandwich at the hotel...

Jiro, Ceri, Kelly and myself left the place early to see whether we could check in at the hotel before time. Kelly and I had to wait for an hour for our room, so we walked down to the beach. Beautiful. It was just before the actual sunrise, so picture pink- orange skies with a few clouds, over a deserted beach with blue, clear water. All we could hear were birds, the soft sound of the waves and occasionally a fish jumping out of the water.

The hotel itself is a fairly large affair, with a lobby that looks like the set of a 1960's Bond movie. Open on all sides without windows, so birds fly through and the air is always fresh. The room was similar, true tot he Shangri-La's reputation of style and comfort.

That evening, after a day of relaxing on the beach and some snorkling, we went for dinner at the restaurant of Abacà, the resort a bit further down the road. Must have been some of the best food I've had, in a lush setting with a beautifully planted garden all around.

After that: clubbing. Now that was an experience. We ended up in a club that played brilliant R&B and hiphop, with one of the most mixed audiences you can imagine. Straight, gay, young girls with old white guys... the works. Some guys ended up in a tittybar down the road, the group fell apart, but we all had a great time ;)

Saturday: swim a bit, snorkle, relax on the beach. Then dinner at the famous seafood restaurant at the Shangri-La, and then clubbing again. As soon as we entered the club the guys were struck by a girl with pneumatic breasts that were almost popping out of her dress, dancing on a little stage. I got the picture right away, but it took them quite some time to catch up on the fact that this was in fact not a girl. As a matter off act, about haf the girls in there were in fact guys - or somewhere in the process of changing from male to female.

Great night though, danced until I was soaking wet. Next day: relax on the beach. At some point it started to rain, we were all sitting by the beach bar under the umbrella trying to keep dry until Jiro and I decided to just give up and run into the sea. So we did, but one of the guys from the hotel did seem a bit panickey and was urging us to get out of the water. We went back to the table, were making jokes about the sea being struck by lightning etc, when all of a sudden there was the brightest flash of lightning, it was as if someone was standing right next to us with a camera flash. We all shut up in suprise, and before we could say anything there was the thunder: one single bang, louder than any thunderbolt you've ever heard before. It must have been right above our heads. Pretty impressive!

Not much to tell after that. Back to HK, arrived shortly before midnight. Nice weekend, enjoyed it big time. It was the first chance I had to really talk to most of the people I work with, they're a great bunch.

Don't ask - found this online :)

Back!!

Aha - after more than a month I can access Blogger again here at work. So let's see, what happened in the last month?

Well - we had rain. Rain, rain, rain, and more rain. A lot of it came down on June 7th, when thunderstorms and heavy rainfall caused 39 landslides, two casualties, floods everywhere and knee-deep mud in some areas. One of my colleagues told me that the balcony on a building next door to hers was hit by lighting and broke off. Another friend told me how they got stuck on the 33th floor because the elevator got flooded. In the end they walked down, which was bad but not as bad as what the two people experienced they met on the stairs: they were walking up to the 35th floor...
Me? I slept through it all :)

Started playing squash. Three weeks ago for the first time, couldn't walk for a few days afterwards. Was a bit better the next week, and last week i hardly felt anything. Tomorrow is the next session.

More to come tomorrow, I am now off to go to the gym. After months of inactivity on he gym front, i now have a week long free membership which allows me to try out Pure fitness. Let's give it a go!

That's all folks. Until tomorrow, most likely.