Bamboo Scaffolds

One of the things I remember from my first trip to Hong Kong in the mid-1990s is the bamboo scaffolding that you see all over the city. It's interesting to watch the scaffolding rise around a building in just a day or two, with guys hauling bamboo poles up from the street and building the scaffold as they go. This one went up across the street from our place a few weeks ago and now -- as we discovered over the weekend -- there's plenty of noise coming from the work site, which is now covered with the green plastic that's on the left side of this picture.


I wondered, when we moved in, why we hadn't been shown any of the apartments in that building, because a number of them were standing empty. It just got emptier and emptier, and will probably now reopen with much more expensive units than it had before.

One of the coolest things about the scaffolding is that the height of the building doesn't seem to be an issue. I've seen bamboo scaffolds on buildings much taller than this one.

A More Structured Phase

Ah, it’s been a long time, hasn’t it?

I’ll be lucky if I ever get half of my previous readership back, I know. That’s sad, but the last month or so has flown by in a big Chinese blur and blogging has not been at the top of the priority list. Or anywhere near the top, for that matter.

The good news is that I am moving into a more structured phase of my life, which will probably lead to more regular blogging on my part. The bad news – from a blog perspective, at least – is that “a more structured phase of my life” means I’m back at work, which means I’ll likely have less to blog about unless I want to blog about work, which I do not.

(I’m happy to share anything you really want to know about in private e-mails. I’ll just be following the same policy I’ve had towards Shelly’s work for the past 18 months: Any mention of work will only be in a generic sense, and nothing specific about work shall be mentioned.)

In the five weeks or so since my last post (in which I visited Macau in order to activate my new dependent visa), I spent most of my time 1) battling a ferocious head cold that just wouldn’t go away, 2) working on four or five different freelance projects which all came along at the same time, 3) looked for a job, 4) found a job, and 5), failed to have any free time to play tourist in the final days before the job began.

The job is quite a good fit for me, I think. Generically speaking, I’m writing for a company that produces trade journals in a field that actually allows me to use my graduate degree. (This is, I might add, the first time I’ve specifically used my graduate degree since I was actually earning it. I’m sure Mom is happy that her investment in me is finally paying off.)

It’s been an interesting first few days at work, and I’m quite certain that by the time I move back to the US, I’ll be completely unemployable. Why? Well, our style guide is somewhat schizophrenic on when to use US English and when to use UK English. (We typically stick with British conventions like colour and centre and practise but, for some reason, use US English when it comes to centralize or specialize.) Add to that the fact that I’m picking up Britishisms here and there – last week I told Shelly I would empty the bin after I did the washing up – and I will most definitely not write like an American.

Ah, well, that makes things all the more interesting, doesn’t it?