Yiiiiiiipppppeeeeee (YVR to HKG: the King is back in Kowloon)

7 am.   Way too early.  I could sleep for so much longer !!!!

I'm not sad about leaving Vancouver, where somehow it's only natural to think about covering my webcam with a band-aid.

It's also worth getting up early for a chance to leave me room right next to a major construction site !

9:30 am.  I think Zulema's face says everything that needs to be said about Vancouver weather

 11:15 am.   We have boarding passes for the flights to Hong Kong and to Phnom Penh.  The newest thing to check in is that it's ALL done on a machine and one doesn't even get to talk to an airline clerk anymore.  Unfortunately, this means that one doesn't even get to ask for a special seat anymore.  The bloody machine just spits out a boarding pass and I have a window seat for the 13 hour flight.  Great, another aspect of flying that has become more similar to swine being transported in a truck.  This will just NOT do !  

1 pm.  Two glasses of wine later ;-)  I'm stuck in my window seat, because the plane is sold out.  Darned.  But at least the Cathay Pacific clerks are kind and nice about it.  The even apologize for the plane being late by 10 minutes !!!  In contrast, Air Canada never even once apologized for a 2.5 hour delay earlier this year!   Ah well, I'll manage to survive in a window seat.  And if not, I'm sure the person in the aisle seat will be willing to switch after i asked them 5 times to please let me out ;-)

I'm looking at an LCD screen in the gate area showing golf.  There is a digital clock next to it with the YVR logo.   The time it displays is 20 minutes LATE. You got to be kidding me.   The official YVR time display is off ??   Congratulations!  .... and the first inbred award of 2017 goes to ...... !

Go ahead, we want you to miss your plane

8 pm.

After 14 hours of 80 mph headwind, the Cathay Pacific tin tube finally lands in Hong Kong.  Longest time I've EVER spent in a plane.  Since we've been flying with the day, the window blinds were closed during almost the entire flight.  

The highlights of the flight mostly happened when I opened the blinds.  Flying over the coast of Japan just north of Tokyo, seeing Taipei glowing in the early night,and an UNBELIEVABLY gorgeous view of the lights of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon glowing through the very sparse clouds.  No picture of that last one; I was too busy staring at it with an open mouth ;-)

The coast of Japan

Taipei

TIRED in the Airport Express

A quick walk to the waterfront after checking in and at 10:30 pm it's FINALLY sleep time (around 6 am Vancouver time)

4 am Hong Kong time.   That's enough sleep.   I already had an eventful morning, because on the way out of the bathroom at 2 am I did the thing again. I rammed my little toe with full force against the door jamb. Yes, I'm 95% certain that I broke the bone in my little toe AGAIN. This must be the FOURTH time now that I've broken this particular toe.  PERFECT timing, LOL, today is the first day of 30 that will see me walking around a LOT ;-)

At 5 am my coffee drinking, instant soup slurping, and other hub-bub have tortured Zu out of bed.  Who can sleep with this kind of activity going on in a tiny Hong Kong hotel room?

6:15 am. Time to go!  The Ding-Ding station is less than a block from the hotel.

Zu is happy because it's physically impossible for her to hit her head on the ceiling. I'm not that lucky.

After a bit of walking,we get to board the very first Peak Tram of the day.

By now I know my way around the peak to the very best viewing points both towards the south and the north

Note the picture perfect posture ! Or is that perfect picture posture?

What are we looking at?   A sunrise !

Did I mention that Zu is a BIG fan of the actress who plays Holly Golightly? 
(An ad for the Mme Toussaud Wax Cabinet on the peak)

I already know all the best viewpoints up here, so I show them off, LOL.

The Vetruvian gerMan

After 5 trips here and after running around the building 4 times, I FINALLY have figured out how to get to the Peak Tram again !

EVERYONE jumps out of their seat and takes picture during their first downhill peak tram ride !

Zu is getting the quick exposure to Hong Kong.  She doesn't have to discover anything (But isn't that at least half the fun????), she only has to follow her guide, yours truly.  A picture from the Star Ferry heading over to Tsim Sha Tsui.

On the Star Ferry

And now is probably a good time to explain the strange title.  

Meet the King of Kowloon.  (Wikipedia will explain who he was if you click on the italics)

Given my last name and that I've been to Kowloon, I obviously paid attention to news articles about his royal highness.  

But there is more.  Probably about 6 or 7 years ago, Fabulous Fiona, my hairdresser, returned from a trip to her hometown (Hong Kong) and presented me with a present.  

 A T-shirt sporting the calligraphy of none else than the King of Kowloon. For a while, this also was George's favourite T-shirt and he got lots of compliments of it when he was wearing it in Hong Kong just before he died.   So it should be obvious that I made very sure to pack this T-shirt before the trip.  






And of course, I am wearing it when visiting one of the last two remaining pieces of the King.  

This picture having been taken, one could say that this T-shirt has come full circle. It has its own history.  A history full of friends and love. How many pieces of clothing can one say THAT about?  

11:30 am.  We made it back to the hotel, and made use of my local knowledge to buy some palmeers and white wine on the way back.  SOMEHOW, I've managed to empty more than half that bottle within the last hour.  Ah well. Check out is at noon, and I actually leave the remnant third of the Marks&Spencer wine in the room.  

2 pm. After breezing through security and emigration, Zulema eats her first pseudo street food inside Hong Kong International Airport. Personally, I don't have anything to prove anymore and did realize that with 39 HK$, a Burger King Fish burger was much cheaper than the cheapest Chinese noodle dish, so I went with the fish burger.  Just don't tell anyone about the Budweiser beer I drank with that, LOL!

3:20 pm.  The 20 hour layover is over and it's time to board a plane that takes us to the heart of darkness ;-)

Last minute preparations or T minus 1 day

Yes, snow does look kind of pretty.

But the city's inability to clear snow makes this a pain for cyclists

The colour and expression of my face should be safe-explanatory.   ENOUGH with the friggin cold, PLEASE ! 

While I am delighted to leave Vancouver, there are people I am going to miss.   Grandma, of course, but also my daily morning wine suppliers, foremostly Eda and Regina, LOL.

I can't imagine the day starting any better than with Eda pouring wine

T minus 30 hours

9 am. I could sleep forever.   The cold, the darkness, and my middle name must have combined to evoke hibernation genes.

But NOT today.  I have too much to do.   Return the rental car, shop for and visit Grandma, empty my room of anything that shouldn't be here when I check out tomorrow.  At 10 am it seems overwhelming.

1 pm.  Laundry is done (don't want to leave dirty clothes in the car!) and shopping has been completed.

4 pm.  Back from visiting Grandma.  I wish someone would look after her while I'm gone, but there is no-one.  I don't like leaving her all by herself but I also need to get out of here.  A dilemma that is solved by a selfish but necessary action.  
Pouring rain and gloominess have replaced the sunny deep-freeze outside and I can feel my already questionable mood deteriorating even further.  I'm starting to understand why Russians drink so much and am very much looking forward to that 9 oz glass of White Rascal at Earls after Zulema gets here.

5:30 pm.  I fill up the rental car and return it.  The bill is high, but they actually gave me a very good deal for the 3 weeks that I had the car. They didn't even call me to check when I'd return the car because they know that my alternative and much preferred mode of transportation is a bicycle and they realized that the icy nightmare of the last weeks was NOT conducive to cycling.


8 pm.  Zulema arrived, we had pizza at Earls, and I drank 4 glasses of wine.  My mood has improved considerably, LOL. 

on y va (or I wish my body were where my mind already is)

Only a few more sleeps and I'm sitting in a plane again taking me out of here.   And it can't come soon enough.  

T minus 7 
Only superior driving skills or a guardian angel saved me from totaling my rental car.  See, Vancouver doesn't clear any roads anymore. Yes, the very major roads are mostly cleared, by even minor major roads are covered by an inch-thick layer of black ice (That's what you get when mushy snow gets compacted by car tires and freezes).  People are walking on egg-shells and I've seen many people fall just trying to push the pedestrian-crossing button at traffic lights.  It's the 3rd of January today.  The snow fell last year.   The city is doing NOTHING anymore.   I guess the money for road-clearing comes out of the city budget while that for broken hip bones comes out of the federal health care budget.  Pathetic.
Anyhoo, I turned right into a street.   It went slightly downhill at first after a bit it became STEEP.  Of course, it was covered in black ice, so I couldn't back out.  What to do?   Ok, lets CREEP down the hill inch by inch (literally, I came to a complete stop every couple of centimeters as long as that was possible). But then even that failed and I went into a free slide.  No point breaking anymore, only once in a while to see if it worked.  I manage to clear the two cars parked on either side, even though the car has acquired a rotating motion.   That STOP sign is coming closer QUICKLY.  Oh, and on the other side of the stop sign the road keeps going downhill, only even steeper than here. And at the end of the next downhill section it's a curb and a grassy knoll.   GREAT!   Quick thinking is required.   If I keep going downhill I'm dead (Grassy knolls do that ;-).  The stop sign is almost here. Just before I slide without control through the stop intersection I turn the steering wheel right, hit the gas, and hope for the best.  SOMEHOW, the car finds a tiny bit of grip and TURNS RIGHT.  It misses the car parked on the far side of the street I'm skidding into and after a frenzied sequence of breaking,more gas, more steering, more breaking, I come to a stop.   I still can't believe that I and the car came out of that unscathed !  Lots of other iced-up roads are now blocked by city barricades.  I assume they only do that after someone calls them to bitch after totaling his car or a serious accident.  Yes, that's right, they BARRICADE the streets instead of sanding them.   Even DURING one of the heavy snowfalls the city of Vancouver admitted that out of its 40 snowplows only 10 were operating "because the weather forecast didn't call for that much snow".  BRILLIANT ! 

Well, I survived that and various other NITWIT obstacles placed in my way. However, despite CAREFUL walking I failed to navigate the slippery streets properly yesterday and landed on my right butt cheek.  It didn't even hurt, must be getting fat, LOL.

T minus 6 
Today I visited my hairdresser Fiona for the Indochina-Cut (TM).   We get along well, LOL, to put it mildly.  I've been following her through at least 5 salons for the last 15 years.  And I've infected her with the travel bug.   She'll be in Europe for 3 MONTHS this summer (visiting her daughter) and I already told her that I'd hunt her down for a haircut during that time.   I showed her pictures of Koh Rong and she started making that noise "ooooooohhhh" that I've heard a few times now when people see the white beach and the turquoise water.

Wilhelm pointed out that it will be a win-win situation when an 'experienced' Indochina traveler will hit the subcontinent together with an absolute Asia novice, as will happen next week.  
Zulema will get to see the worthwhile gems that I've found so far and I'll get a renewal of the WOW effect, which diminishes over time. 

I had got used to having horrible Wifi in my hotel in the few years.  But now it seems to have spread, LOL.  Denny's Wifi hasn't been working properly in weeks and now the Wifi of the Vietnamese restaurant around the corner only works half the time.  WHAT is going on?  The fact that old infrastructure like roads, bridges, and railway lines, are in pathetic shape I can understand.  But how can a country fall behind in information technology if it wants to play a worldwide role this century.  Sure LPG and fossil fuels sound great if you listen to Christy Clark and Donald Trump. 

I know THIS MUCH

 But then Clark's highest academic merit is her high-school diploma (she did study political science and religious studies at university but never graduated) and while Trump has earned a bachelor in economics, that doesn't necessarily give him qualifications in understanding science.  Unlike the chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, who used to be a research scientist with a doctorate in chemistry, and is putting all her effort into eliminating nuclear and fossil-fuel-based power plants in Germany.   There are many exceptions, but usually it is best to only talk about things one at least has a fleeting understanding of.

T minus 5
I'm reading The Cambodian Daily.  For the first time since the '70s, the number of landmine victims has dropped below 100 in 1916.  Just for comparison, I go to the Vancouver Sun web-site to see what happy news a Canadian newspaper can deliver.  Yes, I suspected even before opening the page that I would be disappointed.  Vancouver murder numbers on the rise in 2016 !  What surprises me is not the actual number of murdered human beings, but the number of people that could not be identified.  What's going on?  Is the police just slow or is the latest thing in murder modus operandi these days to cut off finger tips and to remove teeth to eliminate the possibility of using finger prints and dental records ?  You can guess which possibility I think is more likely ;-)

T minus 4
It's January 5th today.  I get an e-mail from the PR card processing centre telling me that my application has been received on December 12th.  WHAT in the world could be the POINT of this e-mail.   You couldn't send that on December 13th? 
Anyhuu, the e-mail also contains a unique client identifier (UCI) and a link to check your application processing status. So I try to check the application status, after all they've had the application for almost a month.  

Yup. 
I almost expected it: 
Checking the processing status is BROKEN.  I type in my name and the UCI and the stupid thing says "We can't identify you based on the information you provided".   

Isn't there ANYTHING that FUNCTIONS properly in this country?   Not that I expect much from white Canadians: they'd rather evoke the spectre of the 'failed immigration policy' to blame it on someone else than actually fixing a problem. (Coincidentally, that is also my prediction for the chances of Trump's promise of making America 'great again'. Good luck if all you have to work with is a bunch of ignant racist whiners !)  But what about all those immigrants to Canada?  They at least should still be able to think!  But they probably prefer Google as their workplace to a Government department.  NO, don't even think of mentioning racial stereotyping, LOL.

But it's just another example of how tediously effort-filled life in the Western World has become.   Sure at some point I will get a new PR card (assuming that the application will not be rejected on some technicality).  ONLY then will I be able to make an APPOINTMENT (waiting time about 30 days) to submit the APPLICATION for a new passport (waiting time 8-10 weeks).  

The forecast predicts more snow for tonight.  6 days have passed since the last snowfall and East Vancouver side streets are STILL covered by a sheet of at least 1 inch of ice.  That should be fun, seeing a full-fledged pandemonium develop with the new snow.  Maybe at some point someone will have the bright idea of spreading sand on the ice.  Oh, NO, hang on, that costs money, so the chances of that are VERY slim. 

The highlight of these days occurs when I meet Denise, Hans, Kathrin, and Marc for drinks in the evening.  This is actually fun ! 

T minus 3

My mother calls me at 1 am.  Joy.  What is the emergency you wonder?  There is none, she just hasn't been able to figure out the time difference between Canada and Germany in the last 30 YEARS !   No, she just decides to tell me that her TV no longer works.  She doesn't get the clue when I ask her in return whether she wants me to call her if any of my belongings break, and continues into a direction I won't even mention here.  After every single one of these phone calls I recall the fact that my cell phone does NOT roam in Cambodia and therefore will NOT ring when I am there.  I AM looking forward to that !

My word in someone's ear (even though this post hadn't been posted yet).  MIRACULOUSLY, 5 days after the actual snowfall, the city sent out trucks to East Vancouver to spread sand on all the side streets.  I'm not exactly sure what took them 5 days to realize that this would be a good idea, because during those 5 days NOT a GRAIN of sand was thrown on the ice.  And driving on sand on ice works quite well actually.  

Within the last hour, I realized that I'm in for more of an adventure that I bargained for.   My travel companion is a zip-line aficionado ( aficionada?).  On the island where she will be spending her birthday is a "Rope Adventure Park" that includes two zip lines.  

When I saw the above picture I instantly started wondering whether the operators have a LOOOOONG ladder to rescue decrepit people once their old hands are too tired to hold onto the blue rope, or whether they can just haul in the old meat using the red rope.  I think I might just find out within the next two weeks.

Yes, I DO realize that this lousy post has no direction or sense at all.  But I decided to publish it anyway, just in case at some point in the future I'll be sitting somewhere nice and am contemplating whether returning to Canada is a valid option.  

To close this post in a less whining manner:  I just discovered this morning that Bourdain's Parts Unknown episode about Vietnam is now on YouTube, in its entirety. Unfortunately it's in a bit of an annoying slow-motion mode, to circumvent copyright laws.  But it's still worth watching ;-)

And when Bourdain says: "I keep coming back."    "I HAVE TO !", I know exactly what he means.

Out with the New and in with the Old ( or We don't pray for love, we just pray for cars )

It's New Year's Eve.   The clientele residing in my hotel seems to have changed to out-of-towners from Langley, who are here to experience Big City Life over New Years.  No, I'm NOT mentioning that because of it's sadness (Anthony Bourdain pointed out that American Liberal's contempt for America's Bible-bashing and gun-toting red-neck-country contributed to Trump's election win) but because of what happened last night.   Although to be fair, I'm not even sure whether it was Langley residents that were involved in the fist fight that brought the North Vancouver Police out in force:

Everyone is treating this night as if it were something special.   Everything will be much better after tonight, everyone seems to be thinking.  Sorry, the world changes if people act differently.  I don't see a sign that people are actually changing their ways.  

And I don't see them changing. A line in  this Weeknd Song says it all. People just pray for cars!  But he got the earnings disparity wrong.  While he sings  "Made your whole year in a week too, ya", reality is much more ugly: Canada's top paid CEOs will only have to work until 11:47 am TODAY, first work day of the year, to earn MORE than the average Canadian worker will make in the entire YEAR.  Can one honestly still say that they EARN that money ?

A good night's sleep later, the new year has arrived.  It is COLD outside

But it's not as cold as the feeling I have about the future.

Remember Martin Luther King Jr, the assassinated civil rights leader?

I stumbled upon a quote today:

Martin Luther King Jr. August 16, 1967:

...And one day we must ask the question, Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society...

Funny things with assassinations. They are usually ordered. And if you read the official story of King's Assassin on Wikipedia, it sounds just as unbelievable as the story of JFK's assassin.

Hmm.  Seems that pointing out that inequality makes for dangerous living.

Of course, the new year is going to bring nothing new. more likely the exact opposite.  The members of Trump's cabinet own MORE wealth than 1/3 of American households.  THINK about that one for a second or two.   

It means that all these people have accumulated wealth at the expense of A LOT of other people.   Because face it, Money is NOT MADE, it is paid by someone else. There is a reason for that old saying "Behind every great fortune there is a great crime". Does anyone actually believe that these people will stop getting richer at other people's expense now that they are IN POWER?   About as likely as wolves not eating sheep anymore.

Hmm.  Something that reinforced a line of thinking about youth growing up these days in cities like Vancouver , I saw a documentary today by Noam Chomsky "Requiem to the American Dream"  (It's on Netflix).  And it contained a very troubling line:  Even during the great depression, when things were bad, there was hope that things would eventually get better.  There is NO hope today.

And the reason for why there is NO hope these days?   This is my personal opinion, but I suspect I'm not far from the truth.  Everyone who STILL has ANY disposable income is too busy buying iPhones or other CRAP to worry about the people who do NOT have that luxury of 'extra;' money.

I think my point is made by the above picture.  I found it on Google Images.  It's from a website called "10 funniest homeless signs ever".  The title of that website says more about people than this entire post.

So, after all that you will hopefully forgive me for not wishing you a Happy New Year.   I don't do small-talk.

Happy New Year, Edward Snowden (or Je suis Snowden)

I just watched Citizenfour, the documentary about the Snowden thing.

The whole film is on YouTube, and it's very much worth watching.  
HERE IS THE LINK.

It is particularly worth watching NOW (Trump days are near) that recent articles are painting Snowden as a Russian spy.  Here is one of these articles.

Nineteen Eighty-four was 33 years ago and things have become much more sophisticated.