Back to School

After just over a week of getting my bearings in the city it was back to school and back to work. Through a colleague of D's I had managed to get in touch with the supply manager at The Canadian International School, which is in Aberdeen on the South-West of the island.

After a quick email and a couple of phone calls, it was decided that I would complete a day's cover in the lower school, within the PE department. I thought that this would be the best place to start, to help get a feel of what it would be like working in an HK school. The staff bus picked me up from just outside the apartment building at 6:40am, which meant that I got to school an hour before the start of period 1 at 8:05.

As with most buildings in HK, the school is an architectural marvel and has been built into the side of a granite hillside about 150m high. This means that you walk into the building on the 9th floor, with the middle and upper schools taking up the 9 floors below the entrance and the lower school accommodating the 5 floors above the main concourse.

The Canadian International School

Having established that I was covering the VERY lower school, it was time to head to the junior sportshall (1 of 3 sportshalls) to prepare for my first foray into teaching in HK. Having thought I may have to teach baseball or american football, I was pleased to hear it wasn't one of these, but even more frightened to find I would be teaching 3 hourse of 'scooter ball'. This turns out to be a mixture of handball and ice-hokey that is played with the kids sitting on small trolley like apparatus (as shown below) and pushing themselves around using their feet.

Trolley Ball Trolleys

After three lessons of trolley ball I had had quite enough and was pleased to find out that the afternoon session was a little bit more within my sphere of knowledge. A nice multi-skills session with 3 different prep classes. I am definitely built for secondary school teaching however, as after a day teaching the little ones, my back was in pieces. However, as the school day finished at 1430 and the bus home doesn't leave till 1620, I decided it was only right to try out the schools 140 piece fitness suite. The staff at the school were great to me all day and I look forward to a couple more days next week, when I'm going to be covering some other subjects which should be interesting, as long as it's not mandarin!

I have also heard from the American International School in Kowloon and the English Schools Foundation about some more supply work, so I will hopefully have enough to buy that iPad in the not too distant future. Keep those early morning call coming!

Catch up again soon!

Live long and prosper!

Kowloon, The Museum of Hong Kong and our new favourite shop

Taking advantage of another bank holiday on Easter Monday, we decided it was about time we went over to the mainland to explore Kowloon and the range of activities on offer. We set our sights on the Hong Kong Museum of History and decided that we would not take the ferry over, instead we would take the MTR over and the ferry back in the afternoon. It was another overcast day, with a few spells of sunshine, but the temperature was still pushing 30'c and humidity was at about 85%.

The museum is a short walk from central Kowloon and advertises itself as the definitive collection of natural history, social and cultural exhibitions tracing the history of Hong Kong throughout the many dynasties that have effected it, right up to the growth of modern day Hong Kong.

After a short MTR journey we arrived in Tsim Sha Tsui on the mainland, just across from Hong Kong Island. In case I haven't mentioned it so far somewhere, all MTR trains not only have a fully functioning, polar temperature, air conditioning system, but also manage to transmit reception for every phone network in China along the ENTIRE underground system. As well as providing free Wifi in every MTR station that you can use as much as you want. The place not only puts the London underground to shame, but makes it seem like the London system is stuck in the 19th century.

The Hong Kong Museum of History (as seen below) is a modern museum with exhibitions on the different phases of the cities past. It starts with a natural history exhibition looking at the geological development on HK. However, even with my geographical interest, there were only a certain number of rocks I could look at before tedium set in. After swiftly moving onto the exhibition concerning the growth of the population of HK I soon got lost within the many, many, many dynasties which have shaped China. 

The Hong Kong Museum of History

The museum also featured a section on the different tribes that first made up the general population of this tiny island and also some of the customs that they developed that still continue in modern day Hong Kong and China.

Tradition Celebration Lanterns (I don't know what they celebrate though... concentration was waning at this point)

More celebratory lanterns

Traditional Dragon Headmask

The next section of  the museum was a bit more uncomfortable for us colonial commoners as it examined the British takeover of HK and the opium trade wars that led up it. After a 10 minute video that went something like CHINA=GOOD, BRITAIN=EVIL we left the cinema room past some rather unhappy looking natives. Doing our best to pretend to be French we swiftly made our way out of the museum and headed for a spot of lunch.

Over lunch we decided that we were cultured out for the day, but instead of heading back over the bay, we decided to try and find a particular shop that we had been looking to visit. The offending store was an outlet of American Eagle Outfitters (Think Jack Wills meets Abercrombie & Fitch, but about 1/3 of the price), which we had been tracking down to visit for a few years now. Well the troubled started as soon as we walked through the door, and about two hours and two and a half thousand Hong Kong Dollars later, we were the best friends of all of the staff in the shop and weighed down with a few rather large shopping bags.

Our new favourite shop..... American Eagle Outfitters

At this point we thought it best to head home, and after counting the change in our pockets decided the cheapest way back would be the Star Ferry from Kowloonside to Wan Chai on Hong Kongside. These antiquated boats rather look like a cut and shut boat made from the front end of two very old and battered vessels. They did however deliver us safely to our destination and for the price of about 70p we couldn't really complain.

Hope you're all still awake. More from me very soon I am sure.

A Peek at The Peak

Making the most of the extra long weekend over Easter we decided to go up to Victoria Peak and take a look at the view of the city from the highest viewing platform on Hong Kong Island. Having been told that it would be quiet due to it being a Chinese national day of mourning and grave sweeping, it turned out that we were not the only ones who fancied a trip up the peak for the afternoon. The queue for the tram to the peak was about 50 minutes, and in typical Chinese fashion you were permanently pushed and barged by those behind you in the queue. They seemed to believe that D and I were the sole reason that the queue was so long.

Peak Tram

Peak Tram again.....

The tram ride itself was brilliant. The carriage rises astonishingly quickly from the station and soon you are looking out of the window over half of the city. As the tram continued to rise toward the peak, like on our earlier boat trip to Lamma, I began to see Hong Kong as the urban metropolis that it has become. In both directions along the coast all you can see is high-rise apartment and office blocks. It is the height of the housing blocks which are most scary, with each one being no less than 40-50 floors high.

Once at The Peak we were quick to realise why people told us to pick our day carefully to go up. Although all of the buildings in the city were visible, there was a layer of smog over Hong Kong which meant that most sites were only visible through a slight haze.

View from a very hazy Peak

Another view from a very hazy Peak

Just to prove we are actually in Hong Kong, in case you were starting to wonder.

The urban metropolis that is Hong Kong

 

We will be back up the peak as soon as we get some clearer days because the view is not the same with the haze. We will also head up in an evening as well, as the lights from all of the buildings are said to create one of the most memorable sights in Hong Kong.

I will sign off for now. Catch up soon!

An Evening on Lamma Island

After my days rambling around the city, D and I set sail for Lamma Island with a group of her colleagues on the firm's boat. There were about 14 of us as we headed away from Central Pier on our way to dinner on the island. The view from the boat as we moved around the coast westwards was quite incredible. At 8 o'clock every evening the biggest buildings in HK compete with each other in a light show which lights up the entire North coast of the island. The boat trip took about 45 minutes and took in some of the most amazing cityscapes that I have ever seen. The bay was also full of algae which turned fluorescent blue as they were disturbed by the boat which was also an awesome sight, which my camera failed to capture in the dark.

Dinner was a seafood restaurant where you knew all of the fish was fresh because it was sat staring at you from the tanks as you walked in. There was a mixture of food, some good, some bad and some outright disgusting. The company at the meal made up for the food and the harbour was a quite, picturesque location which was as far removed from Hong Kong city as we have seen so far on our trip.

I apologise for the photos below, my camera struggled in the dark and also its pretty hard to hold a camera still when stood in a rocking boat!

Hong Kong City Centre as we left the harbour

IFC Building (The Batman building again)

Another slightly out of focus cityscape!

I will leave that for today, keep checking for more posts on the worlds best/most boring blog!

A Wander Around Hong Kong

On my first day on my own in the city, after I had tried to sort out my job I though I would go for a little stroll around the city. My little stroll ended up taking up the whole day and also taking in most of the City.

As I do not want to bore the life out of you all with this blog, I will try to turn it into more of a photo journal of D and I's exploits in HK. This is probably best done through as many pictures as I can take and as little waffle as possible from me.

My wonder took me all around the city, I passed through Causeway Bay, Happy Valley, Wan Chai, Admiralty and Central. I will try to explain what all of the pictures are and where they are in Hong Kong.

Happy Valley Racecourse

My slightly odd shaped stitched together photos of Happy Valley

Above is a race-goers dream. A stunning racecourse smack bang in the middle of one of the biggest metropolises in the work. Happy Valley is buzzing every week and by the look of the stands as I was walking around, it can probably hold most of the population of Hong Kong too. Looking forward to having a little flutter on the 15th April with a few of the guys from D's office! Will feedback to you guys once I sampled the place for myself.

These flats below I am sure are popular with horse racing fans as they are right on top of the track with a grandstand view of the grandstand and track.

Some Prime Happy Valley Real Estate

My stroll next took me past the Hong Kong Stadium where in a couple of months the greatest team in the world (I'll give you a clue it starts with A... and ends in ...RSENAL) will be playing against reigning regional champions Kitchee FC. I'm not sure how good being the reigning regional champions makes them, but I don't really care to be honest.

Hong Kong Stadium: Home of the Hong Kong Sevens and soon to be ARSENAL!!!

The next stop on my little walkabout was a sport of lunch with D. I met here in her mega-cool office block and headed over the Pacific Place Mall and to my new favourite place in Hong Kong, GrEAT international supermarket. Apart from being ludicrously expensive (everything is anyway) it has the tastiest looking selection of food and fresh food stands that I have ever seen. After I had demolished some rather tasty lunch I dropped D back off in her ridiculous building and thought it best to take a few snaps of her ridiculously designed office block. Below are a few choice snaps, but to be honest I could have taken pictures of the place all day if I didn't have more of HK to explore.

Lippo Centre, Hong Kong

The Lippo Centre again (I'm getting better at this photo stitching malarkey aren't I????)

My wanderings after lunch took me to the International Financial Centre (IFC to those in the know) and the worlds 2nd biggest Apple store!! Still no iPad to report, will have to find work first! No malls in this place seem to stock normal, mid-range brands, its all luxury watches and super expensive clothes, and the IFC mall is no different. To those of you uncultured who are not sure which building the IFC mall is at the base of its the one that Batman jumps off of in The Dark Knight in order to get into the shorter building nearby which is Lau's headquarters.

The International Finance Centre (Batman jumps into the smaller skyscraper on the right of the photo)

I realise that I have done more waffling than I promised at the beginning of this post so I will sign off now for this time.

May the force be with you and hello to Jason Isaacs.....

Arriving in Hong Kong

Having arrived at 7 o'clock in the morning last Saturday I spent the majority of my first day in Hong Kong trying to stay awake. Having met D at the door to the apartments, she then gave me the Grand Tour of our 'studio' flat. That took all of about 30 seconds, and although it is relatively modern, we will have to get used to living in each others pockets for a while. The maid cleans it everyday, but that does have to mean you've got to be on your toes and get up quickly in the mornings. The kitchen is as wide as a microwave and included the luxury of 1 plate, bowl, fork, knife and spoon when D first arrived. Luckily the Swedish have invaded HK as well as the rest of the World and a quick trip to IKEA sorted us out for a few essentials.

The flat is supposed to be 300 square feet, but I reckon its unlikely that it is more than 170! After dumping all of my stuff off in the room we went for a wonder around Causeway Bay.

This was a real introduction to life in HK with 100s of people at every road junction and every building a neck-breaking height! There were neon signs aplenty and smells of all descriptions (most disgusting but the odd nice odour). We had a look around some of the malls and shopping centres of Causeway Bay, there seems to be a mall around every corner which all seem to be full of top-end, way-out-of-our-price-range shops from Bvulgari to Burberry.

We also had a look around a couple of supermarkets which were interesting to say the least and again full of 'interesting' smells. The prices seem reasonable, but there are plenty of products which are inexplicably more expensive than in the UK. A pot of Elmlee cream for example (about 80p in the UK), for some absolutely unknown reason costs £4.80 in HK.

After a wonder around the streets we headed back to the flat to have some dinner and after a couple more hours of trying to stay awake, finally went to bed for the first time in what was theoretically 29 hours.