African Pavilions

These were African pavilions built on American soil inside Woodland Park Zoo, Seattle. The umbrella-like roofs of the pavilions were made by hay and mud, quite thick and strong, and were supported by several strong tree trunks, planks of wood and smaller branches. Several blankets were hung on the wall. I guessed they were used for sitting when there were guests during visits.

I could feel the coolness, comfort and shelter the pavilions provided from the hot sun or heavy downpour of rain in the African Savannas. If they really ever appeared in Africa, they ought to be considered as the most beautiful and luxurious ones. The smaller pavilion on the right in the top photo would be for storage of food or drinks of water or daily provisions because they were protected against wild animals by vertical sticks knitted with very strong rattans.


Such good experience of an African village could have saved me the air-tickets to the heart of Africa and the time spent on dusty and bumpy roads of the vast continent.

Museum of Flight (3) – Concorde

From the Museum of Flight in Seattle, a visitor may walk to an open site opposite to it by a pedestrian flyover bridge. Several historic planes are in display. They include the supersonic Concorde and the 'retired' US Air Force Ones. A visitor must show the coloured paper belt (actually it is the entry ticket or pass) before he or she is allowed to access to the planes.

Here is the brief description of the big bird, the turbojet-powered supersonic passenger airliner – Concorde (和諧客機). First flown in 1969, Concorde entered service in 1976 and continued for 27 years.

Among other destinations, Concorde flew regular transatlantic flights from London Heathrow (British Airways) and Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport (Air France) to New York JFK and Washington Dulles, profitably flying these routes at record speeds, in less than half the time of other airliners.

With only 20 aircraft built, the development phase represented a substantial economic loss. Additionally, Air France and British Airways were subsidized by their governments to buy the aircraft. As a result of the type’s only crash on 25 July 2000, economic effects arising from the 11 September attacks, and other factors, operations ceased on 24 October 2003. The last retirement flight occurred on 26 November 2003.

It was a big bird at the time of 1969, but it is far far smaller than as those jumbo jets as Boeing 747 and A380 in comparison. The advantage of taking it in the past was that it could fly fast and the passengers could save much time in flying from France or England to U.S. or vice versa.

Museum of Flight (2)

Without entering the Museum of Flight, we could still see other planes in display. Right on the grassy field opposite to the Tomcat I mentioned last time were two to three bombers. One shocked me because it looked like a bomber from Soviet Union. I wondered how the Americans got it. The bombers looked large and heavy, but dull, so I did not take any photo of them.











Immediately before the main entrance of the Museum of Flight were displayed a medium-sized bomber(轟炸機), a MIG plane (米格戰機) used by North Vietnamese and a Harrier (鷂式戰機) .

The Harrier Jump Jet is a British-designed military jet aircraft, formally "Harrier" or informally "the Jump Jet". It deeply impresses me because it is capable of Vertical or Short Takeoff and Landing. It is a very useful and successful plane in the 1960s. The British and U.S. Air Force used most of them as sea planes that land perfectly well on aircraft carriers. They are normally used for attack or bombing.

The Museum of Flight (1)

It was a big day for Philip and me (November 24, 2009) because we could see some combat planes of U.S. Air Force at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.










At the main entrance in the open before turning into the road towards the Museum, we saw three planes welcoming us.

They were Fiat 91 Pan (the green to blue plane), a toy plane rather than a combat one, my favourite, Grumman F-14, Tomcat (202) and a Grumman A-6 Intruder (502). The latter two played important roles in the recent wars in the Middle East. They based on air-craft carriers and carried out combat missions in bombing and air-to-land attacks.

Space Needle, Real and Artistic

My wife bought a T-shirt at the basement shop of the Space Needle in Seattle. I urged her to buy it because it was on sale at a cheaper price.

A few simple strokes by the designer on the T-shirt have already shown vividly the Space Needle in the dark . It could have refreshed our memories of visiting this famous sight- seeing spot in Seattle. We bought the dark blue one because it best showed the night view of the “Needle” against the dark sky. There were T-shirts with Space Needle against a red sky, but it was inferior to the look.

It is our usual practice to buy home some souvenirs when we went to a new country. I remember that when I was in San Francisco, I bought a toy tram which was made in China. The tram came a long way from China and I took it back to Hong Kong, China. In the Australian trip, I bought a toy kangaroo and a cap with the Aussie National Flag at a pier, Circular Quay, in Sydney Proper. I found that they were both made in China. Then at Seattle, we were happy to find this shirt not made in China, but in El Salvador, a country in Central America.

Here I would like to bring out the photo of the real Space Needle by night and the one on the T-shirt. Do they look alike?

Pike Place

Pike Place is famous for its Public Market in Seattle.

It was November 23, 2009 that we went there to watch how the market was operated. The time when we reached there was about four o’clock. The sky was beginning to turn dark and one by one, lights were on.

We descended a sloping road to the waterfront. On the way, Philip decided to park his car near by the market. He asked some workmen for a better parking site and learned that he could park his car at a multi-storey car park quite close to the market. The market was accessible by taking a lift from the car-park up a few floors and by a pedestrian walkway.

To me, the market looked small, narrow and old. There were stalls selling vegetables, fruits, fish and sea food, cooked meat such as bacon and ham, bread, etc. The vegetables were quite expensive here. I wondered if the citizens here could afford the money to buy them. There were other stalls selling souvenirs, ornaments, odd and ends and small art paintings.
On the floors below were shops selling models of cars, boutiques and themed collections of old American articles in different decades in the past century. I was surprised to find a tiny Chinese restaurant, still in service.

At the front of the market, there was a large pig made of copper. We lifted Abby and let her sit on it to have a photo taken. She could not ride so well on it because it had been polished and become slippery by numerous sitting or touching in the past.

The men in the fish selling stall right opposite to the "copper pig" were throwing huge tunas from one person to another. They hurled and caught the fish in a skilful way and they shouted to arouse the interest of the shoppers at the market. We were among the onlookers.

Across the street was another market called Corner Market. We did not go in, but strolled along the First Street where we found the first Starbucks in the world which was opened here in Seattle.

Beside this famous coffee-selling shop, we found other shops selling ice-cream, coffee, tea and beverages, bread, cakes and pastries. One might have a satisfied afternoon tea in one of the shops in this street. Outside of the market, we found a roadside stall selling red pepper. Thousands of red pepper pods were hanging there as if they were sunbathing. We could overlook the Seattle Harbour from there in the open because it was some sixty feet above sea level.

Advertisements inside Buses

Recently, advertisements fill the interior of our double-decked buses in Hong Kong.

This Monday morning, when I stepped into a new tunnel bus (the newest double decker) to Hong Kong Island, I found it full of advertisements.

Looking up the ceiling of the upper deck, I saw the body of a large fish similar to those swimming above an underwater glass-tunnel in which tourists may walk through and look at different kind of fishes.

The feeling was not bad on this bus because I could dream as if I were a tourist visiting an aquarium.

At the staircase, every square inch was covered with components of advertisements of “EGL tours”. sooner or later, advertisements may have become our”must-see” items on buses. The invasion has just begun……….!

A Strange view

It was September 16, 2009. When I walked past a house in Vancouver, I saw this. I quite understood that the complicated spread of wood was the network of roots of a tree. An interesting question came to my mind. Why did the owner of the house dig up the soil only to show the roots? Does the owner like roots alone, but not the tree trunk?

At first I did not understand why there were stones stacked up on top of the stump of wood at the centre of the roots until I saw the logo of Winter Olympics 2010.

It might be that the owner of the house was an artist who cut down his tree and used the wood for internal decoration and left the roots as a piece of art and stacked up stones to create an Inukshuk at his front yard.

What a rewarding sight I got on this very day of my daughter’s birthday!

Inukshuk

The logo of the 2010 Winter Olympics shows a Man made of stone. Wikipedia reveals the secrets as shown below: (The top photo shows "Ilanaaq", the mascot logo of the 2010 Winter Olympics, located on Whistler Mountain)

An inuksuk (plural inuksuit; in English: Inukshuk) is a stone landmark or cairn built by humans, used by the Inuit, Inupiat, Kalaallit, Yupik, and other peoples of the Arctic region of North America. These structures are found from Alaska to Greenland. This region, above the Arctic Circle, is dominated by the tundra biome, containing areas with few natural landmarks.

The inuksuk may have been used for navigation, as a point of reference, a marker for hunting grounds, or as a food cache. The Inupiat in northern Alaska used inuksuit to assist in the herding of caribou into contained areas for slaughter. Inuksuit vary in shape and size, with deep roots in the Inuit culture.

Historically the most common type of inukshuk is a single stone positioned in an upright manner. An inuksuk is often confused with an inunnguaq, a cairn representing a human figure. There is some debate as to whether the appearance of human- or cross-shaped cairns developed in the Inuit culture before the arrival of European missionaries and explorers.
At Enukso Point on Baffin Island, there are over 100 inuksuit. The area has been designated one of Canada's national historic sites.

Inuksuit continue to serve as an Inuit cultural symbol. For example, an inuksuk is shown on the flag and Coat of Arms of the Canadian territory of Nunavut, and the flag of Nunatsiavut. The high school in Iqaluit is named Inuksuk High School after the landmarks.

Officials in various wilderness parks throughout Canada are routinely forced to dismantle inuksuit constructed by hikers and campers, for fear that they could misdirect park visitors from the cairns and other markers that indicate hiking trails. The practice of erecting inuksuit in parks has become so widespread that Killarney Provincial Park, on the north shore of Ontario's Georgian Bay, issued a notice in 2007 urging visitors to stop the invasion of inuksuit. In some areas, including Northern Ontario, individuals have built a large number of inuksuit along the Trans-Canada Highway.

An inunnguaq is the basis of the logo of the 2010 Winter Olympics designed by Vancouver artist Elena Rivera MacGregor. Its use in this context has been controversial, both among the Inuit and the First Nations of British Columbia. Although the design has been questioned, people believe it pays tribute to the inuksuk that stands at Vancouver's English Bay.

This is a contemporary work created by artisan Alvin Kanak of Rankin Inlet, Northwest Territories (which is now in the territory of Nunavut that separated from the Northwest Territories in 1999). It was given as a gift to the city for Expo 86. The land has since been donated to the city, and it is now a protected site. Friendship and the welcoming of the world are the meanings of both the English Bay structure and the 2010 Winter Olympics emblem. Kanak's work represents the strength of his people and the modes of communication and technology before modern Canada.

The Vancouver 2010 logo and the construction of inuksuit around the world have led to increasing recognition of them. There are five authentic inuksuit which were donated - wholly or in part - by the government of Canada: in Brisbane, Australia; Monterrey, Mexico; Oslo, Norway; Washington D.C., United States; and Guatemala City.

Yogurt muesli bars

One of my best friends (old colleagues) came back to Hong Kong recently. In one occasion, he gave me a box of 8 Yogurt muesli bars.

The Yogurt bars carry the taste of strawberry. Strawberry taste has long deep-rooted in my taste buds because I used to feel happy when I licked the strawberry ice-cream cones or cups from a box of tri-colour icecream.

Back to these Yogurt bars. They are not sweet at all. I remember that I dislike the taste of those sweet to extreme chocolate bars or chocolate cakes made by Americans. The little sweetness of the Yogurt bars here never covers up the taste of strawberry and muesli (breakfast food of a mixture of uncooked cereal, nuts, dried fruit, etc.). The latter needs chewing.

Apart from the sugar content, the yogurt bars are healthy because they contain much fibre. Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Kung.

C-:d-:C-:

Café De Coral has always described its service of food to have reached 100 marks, but recently it aims at putting computer pictures to cheer young people. Old people or those who know nothing of computerized scripts may consider that the grades of food have been lowered to C- or d-. Why not turn the “figures” of faces upright so that everybody understands what they mean.

Do you know why the "Copier" (It is not appropriate to say that he/she is a designer) does not use D-: It is simply because the capital letter "D" will bring an impression to the customers that the food served has reached the level of "Dissatisfaction".

The person who puts forward such decorations should be spanked!

Talented artists at CCSC

These photos of paintings drawn by CCSC students bring us to 3 different strange locations:

[1] The top painting shows a woman with a distorted face, eyes on one side and nose on the other. Two of her six fingers on her left hand is holding a cigarette. She is carrying something like a bag with a globe beside it. Her necklace shows her elegance, but the cobra head on her skirt is scary.

The colour combination and distribution is superb. This student possesses great power of matching colours in harmony.

[2] The funny two-headed soldier wearing a single helmet for the two heads is sitting in an arm-chair. His armour is made of leather. He must be a Mongolian soldier on guard outside the Mongolian Bags (蒙古包).

I wonder which “head” gives the command when he fights.

[3] The third painting shows the colourful face of a clown or a Red Indian. He was holding a bird in his right hand. The fingers of this man look as if they are long, bony, metallic claws.

The distribution of colours is good and the painting is giving us a sense of mystery.

Love Hong Kong – Love Beetle

This is extracted from The Standard today, May 11, 2010.

It is about Volkswagen New Beetle Art Gallery – Charity Auction and Exhibition held on May 11-30 at Gateway, Harbour City, Tsimshatsui.
There will be 33 beetles for auction.

The most attractive one is Number 1, the blue car with the night-view of our Victoria Harbour.

Mr. Till Scheer (Managing Director of Volkswagen Hong Kong Limited says that this car represents “Love Hong Kong – Love Beetle”. He added “Volkswagen has grown with Hong Kong over the past years and we have witnessed each other’s development and progress. In this New Beetle we see the stunning nightscape of our fabulous city, reflecting the history and footprint of both Volkswagen and Hong Kong”.

Another four striking cars are:

Number 2 Beetle is the light blue beetle called “Sharks Beetle”.

Abbie Chan (Director of Po Leung Kuk) remarks, “ Sharks represent energy and power. They swim happily in the sea, just like driving the New Beetle – so relaxed and free!”

Charlie Young, Artist, describes Number 4 Beetle as “Little Yellow Flowers”. He says, “These yellow flowers represent all the underprivileged children who have to live in less fortunate circumstances. But as long as they don’t give up and keep moving forward, an optimistic attitude will turn them into shining stars, acting as beacons for a brighter future.”

Craig Au Yeung, a cross-media Artist describes Number 7 Beetle as “Protective Shell”. “Most perfect design in the natural world: EGG
Most meaningful machine: CAR
Combining both physically and spiritually, inspiring creativity and positive energy!”

William Tang, a Fashion Designer calls Number 18 Beetle as “The King’s Calligraphy”.
He says, “I designed the “King of Kowloon” series and it has been a great success. This design was derived from the unique calligraphy of Mr. Tsang Tsou Choi. Many people admire his work and I hope my design will make them smile.”


The other beetles are:

Top row (from left to right)
3 Dream car 5 Patchwork of Volkswagen Memory 6 Beetle in the Wonderland 8 Floral World 9 Molly’s Beetle 10 Patch work 11 Woody Woody Wood and the Magic Flute

Second row (from left to right)
12 Canned Food 13 Love Honey Beetle 14 Sassy Mimi by Ranee_k 15 Fluid 16 Beetle Cat Taxi 17 Smiles around the world 19 My Diary

Third row (from left to right)
20 Milk Beetle 21 Kung Fu Beetle 22 Disco Beetle 23 Private Beetle 24 Ice-Cream Melts on My Little New Beetle 25 Die Kafer 26 Untitled

Fourth row (from left to right)
27 Crazily in Love with Black & White Cow Cow 28 Green World 29 Dream 30 The Goodies 31 Love 32 Yellow Volkswagen New Beetle 33 Green Volkswagen New Beetle

Information Display Board at Sai Kung

It is the worst information display board made by Hong Kong Tourist Board (香港旅遊發展局) I have ever seen.

Let us see how bad this board displays:

[1] The introduction of Sai Kung Town is printed on the left steel bar supporting the board in three languages – Chinese, English and Japanese, but the characters are too tiny for tourists to read.

[2] The map is too simple and rough with no details. The streets and houses are not distinct and difficult for tourists to distinguish them. For comparison, the map at the bottom is extracted from a local atlas. The streets with street numbers and the shapes of houses or buildings are clearly shown. The locations of mini-bus and taxi stations and bus terminus (with bus numbers) are obvious.

[3] There is no indication where seafood restaurants lie on the information board, so tourists have to find out where they are, whereas the map from atlas indicates the names of the restaurants on the Sai Kung Waterfront Promenade. What a big difference!

[4] Places like Sai Kung Tang Shiu Kin Sports Ground are indicated in numbers only. Every time tourists have to look up and down to find out what these places are called.

[5] The photos of sight-seeing spots of Sai Kung shown on the board are out-dated and vague. They lack of attraction to tourists. I don’t know why other new photos cannot replace them.

[6] The outskirt map of Sai Kung is even worse because the shapes of land are not a percent clear. They are like patches of green against those of blue.

[7] The “logo” in promoting Hong Kong as Asia’s World City looks like a combination of a short dragon, fire and fur. I myself don’t find this logo beautiful. How much do you think the cost of making this “logo”? The answer is several millions of Hong Kong dollars. Do you think the money is really worth for that?

Double-Double Burgers

Felix was so kind in taking two photos of Double-Double burgers from In-N-Out before he bit at one of them. He remembered me. He remembered that I wanted a photo of the best burger I had tasted in United States. He really kept his promise under my request.

In my vague memory, it seemed to me that the burger I ate at Fisherman’s Wharf was not a Double-Double. I thought Felix had a better appetite this time than I did last time.

Let us see how Felix described about the burgers.

“We bought some In-and-Out burgers home a few days ago, and remembered to take a photo before we ate. The photos were for you to update your memory. You can see the tomato, vegetables, etc beside the burger beef.”

The Double-Double burgers in the photos look very thick, over three inches. I have to add to Felix’s list – cheese, lettuce and onion (be more exact).

I remembered the worse KFC chicken burger I have ever tasted collapsed before my eyes. On the contrary, this Double-Double stood firmly because the bread was of a stronger kind. I guess I will have to bite it hard when I come to a real one. The feeling must be good for those few minutes of eating.

The French fries of In-N-Out look better than those of our McDonald’s in Hong Kong. The latter which look like thin “steel” rods are "hard" to taste. I wonder if I can eat these In-N-Out burgers or chips for the second time.

Porcelain Dragon Boats

Dragon Boat (Tuen Ng) Festival, five weeks away, is drawing near. Dragon boats are now anchored at Sai Kung, ready for training and competitions. The dragon heads are not yet fixed at the front, I believe, to avoid “wear and tear” or they will be put back after certain ceremonies.

On the table in a restaurant we were sitting, a waiter placed two porcelain dragon boats. The “boats” were loaded with rice-meat rolls in barbecued pork and minced beef. In ordinary restaurants, these rice rolls are piled up, but then they were arranged in a single file in a way like athletes rolling on either sides of dragon boats. What we could not see at that time were the “oars”. Perhaps the “oars” were actually the “chopsticks” in our hands.

Hong Kong National Geopark (香港國家地質公園)

Hong Kong National Geopark was located at the East Dam of our High Island Reservoir. The English and Chinese names of the park are a little strange. I don’t know why it is called “National” since Hong Kong is not a country. I believe the person who named this Geopark would like to raise the reputation of Hong Kong to the world, telling people all around the world that Hong Kong owns a Geopark for its country.

The rocks here are volcanic. Their structures are mainly hexagonal prisms (六角柱體). They look strong and hard, but they break up along the cracks through weathering. From the broken parts, I discover that the cross-sections are not “perfect” regular hexagons as those we see in Mathematics.

Some of these lava-built needle-like prisms did not come out vertically from the ground when they were first formed. They laid in a slanting manner. Some even appeared twisting when they had cooled down. Strange, isn’t it?