A Day at the Races

Last Thursday was Buddha's Birthday, so with the day off, we headed over to Stanley for the dragon boat races. Dragon boats are relatively narrow boats -- they sit two across at the widest part -- adorned with colorful dragon heads and tails. There's a big drum where one of the crew keeps rhythm so the rest of the crew rows together. In this picture, four teams are getting ready to race across to the judges platform to pay respect to the judges.


We were fortunate enough to be standing next to an Australian who had overslept and therefore missed his chance to race for his team that day. He was able to fill us in on a few of the finer points of the races.

Each boat -- there were close to 30 -- was supported by its own junk, where racers hung out between heats and friends and family cheered.


It was an incredibly hot day -- have I mentioned it's summer here? -- so we watched all the warm ups and then took off after one heat. The Hong Kong Maritime Museum was just across the way, after all, and it was air conditioned.

Hot Hot Hot

If you've been reading the big blog lately and have noticed the time and temperature, you know that summer has started in Hong Kong.

It's 9 pm Monday night and still 29 degrees -- that's a balmy 84 degrees Fahrenheit. A week ago, we turned our air conditioners on for the first time, and I suspect they'll stay on until sometime in September.

Read that again: They'll stay on until sometime in September. That's a lot of conditioned air.

This is one time it pays to be going bald. My head should be nice and cool.

To top things off, the rainy season has started, too. We had an amber rain alert yesterday, which basically means it has rained heavily and it might rain more heavily, in which case a red rain alert will be issued. I'm waiting for the black rain alert which, if it happens to come at, say, 8 am, means I can stay home until it stops. There's an elaborate set of rules -- more like laws, I suppose -- that govern the going to and coming home from work when the rains and the typhoons come. I can't expect a snow day in Hong Kong, but if I get lucky, I might get a rain day.

(I actually don't want a rain day, as it means that the rain is so heavy that there will probably be land slips and sink holes and other wonderful things like that. Plus, it doesn't mean that I'll have any less work to do...)

Happy Memorial Day to those of you in the US. Enjoy your day off! And I hope it isn't too hot.

A Week at the Beach

Less than 36 hours after my flight from Seoul touched down in Hong Kong, I was back on an airplane again, this time to Tokyo and San Francisco. Although we were on holiday, my notes from Korea made the trip with me as I had to do some writing, or at least some heavy-duty transcribing and outlining, at the beach. If I didn't, they would be completely stale by the time I got back to the office, and it's no fun to write with stale notes and memories.

My first stop was San Jose for Shelly's cousin Ryan's wedding. My trip got off to a fine start in Tokyo, with some kind of braking problem on our plane which delayed our departure by about 90 minutes. As we taxied back to the terminal, I could feel my mid-afternoon nap in a California motel room starting to evaporate. I used the time to fill out my arrival form rather incompletely. I've filled this form out dozens of times, and I have always supplied a US street address prior to this trip. But something on this travel day made me say that, as a US citizen, I shouldn't have to provide that specific information to my own government, so I wrote down "San Francisco." After all, is it really their business exactly where I'm staying? (In the opinion of the guy who eventually let me in, the answer is "yes," and my arrival form eventually reflected that information.)

After picking up my rental car, my first order of business was to find Diet Pepsi. The Diet Pepsi I can buy here is made from a different formula, so I was looking forward to a US-flavoured Diet Pepsi. Also, I was hoping to avoid falling asleep on the 101. My second order of business was to remember that I was back in the US and that a) Californians tend to drive on the opposite side of the road as people do in Hong Kong, and b) they tend to drive somewhat less aggressively than people do in Manila. Not wishing to get a ticket or end up with head trauma from a head-on collision, I did my best to drive like an American.

Shelly had flown in the day before me, so I was trying to get in touch with her, but eventually just pulled into the motel parking lot and picked up the key she had left at the front desk. I took a shower -- I desperately needed one at that point -- and looked at the clock, only to realize that I actually had time for a nap, as long as I kept it to less than 15 minutes.

I took it.

And at 4:00 Saturday afternoon, I headed out with Shelly and her parents for Ryan and Listay's wedding, which was quite nice. Somehow -- perhaps it was through the magic of caffeine -- I managed to not fall asleep. Or perhaps it was through the entertainment provided by my niece and nephews. I have to say that Sam was looking sharp in his wedding tux.


Dinner was fun. Sitting next to John was really fun. Note that I'm not the only person taking a picture of John showing off with his whipped cream. Is it any wonder that he's such a ham?


My to my wife's surprise, I even danced with her that evening. I felt that was a significant sacrifice on my part. Have I mentioned that I was really, really sleepy at that point?

Sunday took us north of San Francisco, Shelly to visit her best friend Tatyana and me to visit my friend Wal-Mart. When I picked Shell up later that afternoon, she told me she had had "California food" for lunch. I reported that I, too, had eaten California food for lunch: my first-ever trip to the quintessential California fast-food chain, In-N-Out Burger.


And after that, we went to the beach.

There's no place on earth like Dillon Beach, where my in-laws' history reaches back a century and where my father-in-law and mother-in-law played together as kids. (Years later, a neighbor told Nick he should look Kathy up, since they were both at the same university.) Just an hour or so north of San Francisco, Dillon Beach has deliciously cool breezes and frighteningly cold water and a few hundred cottages for rent. If it sounds like I've totally bought into the family's love of Dillon Beach, I have.


We celebrated Nick and Kathy's 40th anniversary, had a hot dog roast, ate S'mores, put on a skit, went on a couple of scavenger hunts and had a number of let's-climb-on-Uncle-Greg sessions.


My parents came out for the week, too, so it was an all-around fun family week at the beach. On Wednesday, I went to San Francisco with Mom and Jerry, mostly to go to Alcatraz, which I had visited before but which they hadn't. I think the fact that I thought it was worth spending $22 to see again probably helped convince them it was worth a trip to the city.


We ate sourdough bread, took a tour of a sourdough bakery, ate seafood on the pier (very touristy but fun to do) and rode the cable car. We also watched the sea lions which have moved in at Pier 39.


The week in California went by faster than any vacation I can recall in recent memory. I even managed to get a jump on my stories from Korea.

Seoul

I'm on the road again, after two weeks -- and approximately 15,000 words -- in the office. This is the first time I've been in Seoul since 1994, when I flew over from Tokyo to visit Dad when he was here on business. Last time I was here, I rode around in the backseat of a car most of the time and didn't really get a feel for the city. This time, I have been up and down hundreds and hundreds of stairs in the city's fantastic, inexpensive metro system, and I have a much better feel for the city.

I had forgotten how completely lost I am when trying to read hangul, the Korean language. Just like the time I visited from Japan, I like coming here because it makes me realize that I can actually read a fair amount of Chinese, even though I would probably tell you I don't read any Chinese. Korea, though, reminds me what it's like to be completely illiterate. I cannot make heads or tails from anything written here, and haven't even started to pick up on shapes or patterns.


But reading Korean in Roman letters isn't necessarily much easier, as the Korean transliteration system lacks any sort of consistency. For example, another sign just down the road reads Teheran-no, with "ro" and "no" both meaning street. I've gone to meetings in Chung-ku and Jung-gu, which are both the same place, and Kangnam-ku and Gangnam-gu, which are also the same place. Whew, at least when I had questions, I could read the imformation sign.


The TV in my hotel room has American TV, sort of, which is a nice treat. I actually get one of the Armed Forces Network's channels, which basically gives me a bunch of different US TV shows with cheesy Armed Forces PSAs. I now know, for example, that I can help reduce rape in Korea by locking my room. (The corollary to this one is that just because we're all in the military together doesn't mean that none of us are rapists.) I can also tell you how to get to Incheon airport via Army bus. Now if only I were eligible for the Army bus...

Yesterday, May 1, was kind of weird. Before buying my airline ticket, I checked whether or not May 1 was a holiday in Korea. Labour Day is a one day holiday in Hong Kong, and a one week holiday in mainland China, but not officially a holiday at all in Korea, at least according to Lonely Planet, the US Embassy and the Korea National Tourist Organization.

But while speaking to a lawyer on Monday, he mentioned that Tuesday is a holiday. Needless to say, I wondered if the several appointments I had set for May 1 would materialize or not. Getting on the metro on Tuesday didn't give me much hope for having any meetings: the train, and the streets, were all weirdly quiet, the banks were closed and most office building lobbies were occupied by a sleepy guard and nobody else.

My first appointment was there, as were, actually, all of them. Labour Day, it was explained to me, is a good communist holiday, so companies with strong unions -- and, apparently, banks -- are closed, but since the government is open, most lawyers are in the office, too, and therefore happy to meet with me since not much else is happening in Korea.

I've had a good, productive trip and have seen exactly one touristy thing, which I forgot to take a picture of, but I do have a few interesting photos. I've done a lot of walking, and crossing the street is something that the government wishes Koreans would do in an orderly fashion:


I took this on Tuesday, so nobody was really crossing at all, but I can report that these arrows are as completely ignored in Seoul as they would be anywhere else.

When riding the metro this morning, I realized that I could buy a CD without ever having to leave the train:


He's asking 10,000 won, or about US$11, so they're probably even real CDs rather than fakes. But after exiting the train, I walked past a guy who had several dozen DVDs spread out on the floor of the station and was selling five of them for 10,000 won. It's just a hunch now, but they were probably fake.

The other interesting thing I saw when I was in a high-end supermarket today were these packages of delicious-looking nectarines:


The price tag says 18,000 won for two nectarines. That's about US$20. They had better be delicious. There was a US$30 melon next to the nectarines, but that seemed like marginally better value for the dollar ... or the won.