The suspension and oppression of schoolboys dominates the news in Hong Kong on Joshua Wong's 26th birthday

Birthday boy Joshua Wong still looked pretty baby-faced

back on October 1st, 2018...
 

Joshua Wong turned 26 today.  A reminder: he's one of Hong Kong's many political prisoners -- and already has spent some 22 months behind bars this time around.  Something that was well nigh unthinkable just four years ago -- when Hong Kongers did not have genuine universal suffrage but did have a lot more rights and freedoms than is the case now. 

 

As a Nikkei Asia piece from a few days ago observed: "The once-freewheeling Hong Kong has undergone a jarring transformation in the past few years.  The unprecedented mass democracy protests of 2019 were followed by a relentless crackdown on civil liberties and dissent.  Many say these developments, coupled with restrictive and unpredictable COVID-19 policies, have eroded confidence and tarnished the city's appeal as a place to live and do business.

 

"Population figures released in August did nothing to dispel that belief, showing a record 1.6% decline over the past year, largely due to a net outflow of people.  Scores of foreign companies have also pulled their regional headquarters out, with Western business groups vacating roughly 3.1 million square feet of floor space between 2019 and 2021.

 

"Hong Kong officials seem aware there is a problem, even as they doggedly defend the political system.  "Even though we are noble people, there are many nasty people in the world," [Chief Executive John] Lee, a former security official, told patriotic lawmakers on July 6. "That's why we have to do our best to explain [ourselves]."

 

So far, the explaining has not gone well.  And actions continue to speak louder than words for many.  Actions like putting teenagers and speech therapists, never mind political opposition ranging in age from 20-something year olds (like Joshua Wong) to 70-something year olds (like Jimmy Lai), behind bars because they are considered national security threats. 

 

And the latest action that's been causing quite a stir around town: the suspension of schoolboys for disrespecting the Chinese national flag.  As in they were not present at a flag raising ceremony at their school due to their (still) eating their breakfast! (Shame on the school, more than by the way -- a Catholic one at that, as can be discerned from its name: St Francis Xavier's School, Tsuen Wan!)

 

The incident has turned into quite a saga -- with a report on it in today's The Standard being listed as "top news"!   The following are some quotes from the piece: "Many angry students at St Francis Xavier's College [sic.] are demanding the resignation of their vice principal after she suspended 14 students who failed to attend a flag-raising ceremony and "disrespected the national anthem.

 

"The Standard was told last night that a meeting was held on Tuesday between the teachers and vice principal Law Chui-lin" and that "[t]he vice principal broke down in tears at the meeting and she did not turn up in school yesterday morning, though she was spotted by students in the library in the afternoon."

 

A note: The Standard's not a particularly reputable newspaper -- as can be seen by it getting even the name of the school not exactly right.  But... let's continue reading away, shall we? Including about another strand in the tale -- this time involving the notoriously thin-skinned Hong Kong police.   As in: "Police, meanwhile, expressed "strong concerns" over a sarcastic cartoon in local Chinese newspaper Ming Pao, saying it could mislead readers and form a wrong impression of the force .

 

"The cartoon depicts a fully geared riot police at a school to help the principal who seems complaining about students speaking foul language and contradicting teachers. Some students are seen to have laser pens in their backpacks."  And Hong Kong being what it now is (i.e., a place where seemingly trivial matters can result in arrests and incarceration), the cartoonist concerned, known as Zunzi (but whose real name is commonly known to be Wong Kei-kwan) felt obliged to issue a denial that the cartoon was anti-police.  Instead, "It was an expression of how schools should teach students patience instead of high-handed method... [and] a "common" cartoon expressing his views on social affairs."

 

Creditably, "The Ming Pao editorial department said it would continue to professionally provide accurate and credible news content while supporting columnists."  And in a normal place, that would be case closed. But not in national security law-era Hong Kong. 

 

Instead, "Education veterans called on authorities to revise guidelines for students who fail to respect the national flag and anthem."  For example, "Tang Fei, Election Committee lawmaker and a secondary school principal, said according to the school's statement, it had followed the full procedures, including notifying parents and the Education Bureau.  He said that eating during morning assembly is a violation of school rules even if there is no flag-raising ceremony, since there is a schedule and students should be aware of it."

 

And "Priscilla Leung Mei-fun, Election Committee lawmaker and chairman of the Legislative Council panel on education, said students not attending the flag-raising ceremony are violating the National Flag and National Emblem Ordinance, but not the national security law."  Oooooo, thank goodness for small mercies, right? NOT!

 

Returning to the Nikkei Asia piece: ""I think the [international] perceptions [of Hong Kong] have gone from good to bad, and maybe even bad to worse," said Kenneth Chan, associate professor of political science at Hong Kong's Baptist University. "Of course, it has a lot to do with Hong Kong's political environment."  And in view of this kind of "incidents", surely it's understandable?

 

"Looking ahead," the good professor continued, "Very few people will have that kind of confidence or hopeful prospects with respect to the future of Hong Kong under the current state of affairs, under the current kind of government and leadership."  Hell, even some local, pro-Beijing politicians are finding it difficult to have good things to say about Hong Kong.  

 

""Praising Hong Kong? What is there to praise about when there's no substance," one lawmaker said, asking not to be named. "The government needs to actually do something so that we can champion the city.""  Indeed.

To My Nineteen-Year-Old Self at the Hong Kong International Film Festival (film review)

Before the film began...

 

Director Mabel Cheung (at far right) and other people involved 

in the making of To My Nineteen-Year-Old Self

 

To My Nineteen-Year-Old Self (Hong Kong, 2022)

- Part of the Hong Kong International Film Festival's Galas program

- Mabel Cheung, director 

 

Back in 1998, Mabel Cheung co-scripted (with partner Alex Law) and directed a film that was based on her (and Law's) shared history of University of Hong Kong (HKU) students.  The decision to make City of Glass was sparked by news that the university's women dormitory Lady Ho Tung Hall -- which Mabel Cheung had been a resident -- would be demolished and rebuilt.  

 

Close to 15 years later, sparked by the news that the secondary school she had attended was going to demolish its century old Mid-Levels campus, Mabel Cheung decided to make a film about this other one of her alma maters.  But while City of Glass was a nostalgic romantic drama viewed through rose tinged glasses, To My Nineteen-Year-Old Self is a documentary effort that comes across as clear-eyed, and all the better for it.   

 

Spanning a period of 10 years, it follows a group of young Ying Wa Girls' School pupils from when they are Secondary 1 students in 2011 all the way up to their graduation and beyond.  And while all of these members of a historically high academic achieving educational institution do make it to university (where they presumably still all currently remain in 2022), their paths there were not without bumps in the road and they actually are a diverse -- and thus interesting -- lot personality-wise.        

 

With regards to the bumps in the road: some of them are personal; others are generational.  After the screening of the film, a friend of mine confided to me that she felt sorry for the girls (and their generation of Hong Kongers in general).  As my friend put it: secondary/high school should be among the best years of one's life but these girls' time as secondary school students coincided with the Moral and National Education controversy of 2012, the "Occupy" phase of the Umbrella Movement in 2014 and the extradition bill protests of 2019; all of which are impossible for Hong Kongers to ignore.  

 

Even one year before the Moral and National Education controversy occurred, I am sure that Mabel Cheung had little inkling this all would erupt when she was filming a documentary about secondary school students.  I'm sure too that she didn't think the period between 2011 and 2021 would be so eventful -- turbulent even -- in Hong Kong, and been able to forecast such as the tilt towards "localism" in Hong Kong politics in this period, and the horror and anger that has come to be felt against the police force that used to justifiably call themselves "Asia's finest" (but no more).  

Otherwise, I think that she might/would have shied away from having a number of the girls whose trials and tribulations would be recorded on film be Mainland Chinese emigrants and one of them actually aspire all through her secondary school years to become a police officer!  But, actually (of course!), To My Nineteen-Year-Old Self benefits from having these individuals in the mix along with Hong Kong-born girls who, on their own, ranged quite a bit in personality and included a couple of student leader types, a "jock" (who went on to represent Hong Kong in various bicycle races even while at secondary school) and a rebel who dropped out of school for a bit but, nonetheless, ended up at HKU (in the footsteps of Mabel Cheung)!

 

To My Nineteen-Year-Old Self is clearly a labour of love for its director, who's revealed that she largely financed the project herself.  And in many ways, it's a tribute to her beloved old school: whose principals, both the current -- and first male in the position -- Francis Kwan but, especially his predecessor, Ruth Lee, come across as wonderfully caring educators; and whose ethos is admirable indeed, particularly since it appears to be directed at producing good human beings, not just academic achievers.

It's also a very watchable documentary; in large part because its subjects do come across as three dimensional humans, and interesting personalities whose development and coming of age we are privy to via To My Nineteen-Year-Old-Self!  There's little doubt that Mabel Cheung benefited from getting uncommon access to film them -- at school, in their homes and also elsewhere.  But she got this because she was trusted, not just because the girls were ordered to open up to her.*  All in all, I think they recognized that she meant well for them as well as the school as a whole.  And we, the audience, are the beneficiaries of that.  

"Time is precious, treasure every minute of it", is the school's motto.  And here's stating for the record that I value every one of the 136 minutes of To My Nineteen-Year-Old Self; and, like a number of audience members stated at the post-screening Q&A session I attended, I think it would be very interesting indeed if Mabel Cheung were to make a follow-up documentary following the now young women as they go about the next 10 years of their lives! :)

 

My rating for this film: 8 

 

*Update: sadly, it now is far less clear that this was indeed the case.  Some six months after I viewed the film and wrote my review of it, To My Nineteen-Year-Old-Self was pulled from cinemas within days of the start of its local theatrical run "after one of the girls [who appeared in it] said she had “opposed [the film] being screened in public in any form from the very beginning” in a letter published by Ming Pao Weekly" and other people who appeared in the film also voiced their objections.

Targeted protests may bear fruit!

The limestone quarry on Robben Island where prisoners, 

including Nelson Mandela, used to toil daily

 

Close to three and half decades ago now, I was a pupil at a boarding school in England.  At the time,  Nelson Mandela was serving his time as a political prisoner in South Africa, and protesting against Apartheid in South Africa was a really big thing.  Even at my school, where the Torygraph was the newspaper of choice of many of my peers as well as the teaching staff, there were many supporters of that political movement.

 

Full of passion to do something for the cause, a number of my classmates discussed doing such as boycotting fruits and other goods from South Africa.  After a friend from Lesotho (who was the person whose home was the closest to South Africa of any of us) opined that doing such things would end up hurting farm workers and such more than the government, some of us decided against this action.  

 

Alternatively, it was deemed a good thing to boycott British organizations that did business in South Africa.  So one fine day, I went to the local branch of Barclays Bank, which had investments in that country, to close my acccount with it and then walked across the street to put my money in a rival bank.  And of course, I didn't have much (as I was still just a student, after all!) -- but I like to think I did manage to make a small contribution to Barclays' eventual decision to withdraw from South Africa not too long afterwards!

 

Fast forward to present-day Hong Kong and, well, I am indeed still taking part in political actions, including as recently as two evenings ago.  Contrary to what the more conservative of my friends (who look upon me as quite the radical) appear to think though, I actually don't go to every single political protest in town.  For example, I didn't go to the three protests that took place this weekend -- including the anti-extradition bill march over in Kowloon today that attracted over 230,000 participants!

 

This may sound funny (now) but my reason was that, as today's protests was billed as an attempt to explain to Mainland Chinese visitors to what the anti-extradition bill protests are about and I can't speak Mandarin/Putonghua, it didn't make sense for me to go!  Put another way: I really thought that today's was going to be a fairly small protest and would involve protesters actually going up and doing such as trying to engage Mainland Chinese visitors in actual conversation along the route!     

 

While it wasn't quite like this, there are indeed reports of march participants directly addressing Mainland Chinese and seeking their support.  In the process, there was indeed a lot more Mandarin/Putonghua utilized at today's protest than any other one that Hong Kong has seen in recent years.  And considering how Cantonese is the language of choice of most Hong Kongers, this arguably is as surreal a state of affairs as -- or an even more surreal situation than -- the anti-extradition bill rally held on the eve of the recent G20 Summit in Osaka during which 10 different languages ended up being spoken!     

 

Something else that is quite something to realize is that there really (still) are a lot of people who remain willing to turn up to protest against the extradition bill.  Put another way: public opinion has not turned against the protest and protesters in wake of the events that took place late on July 1st.  And today, this protest may have won the understanding, if not the support, of a number of Mainland Chinese visitors to Hong Kong.

Five observations about Penang that probably can apply to Malaysia too ;)

View of the Kek Lok Si Temple's famous pagoda

from within the temple grounds

A modest (but good!) durian stall in Balik Pulau

A sight that's evidence of how multi-cultural and -lingual Malaysia is

One month after spending a fortnight in Spain, I returned to Penang to visit the parents and eat more durians.  While back home, I also made a day trip to Ipoh (which I last visited last year with my mother and my German friend) and Teluk Intan (which I had never previously been to).  In addition, for parts of this visit, I was joined by a friend each from Hong Kong and South Africa, both of whom had never previously set foot in my home state.

Like my South African friend must have felt when I went back with him to his home country late last year, it is really interesting to see one's own native land in the company of foreign visitors and hear them sharing their impressions of it.  Certain things about it that a person growing up in Malaysia can take for granted/doesn't think is all that worthy of comment can be quite novel and/or a big deal if one is not familiar with them.  At the same time, it's also noteworthy when certain of your own thoughts and feelings about a place, its people, etc. also end up being shared by people encountering them for the first time.

The following -- in no particular order -- are five observations my friends made about Penang which I think can be stretched to include (much) of the country, and reckon may make for interesting reading on Malaysia's 61st Merdeka (Independence) Day:-

1) There sure are a lot of schools in Penang.   

To be honest, I'm not sure that there are more schools in Penang -- and/or Malaysia at large -- than in most other parts of the world.  Upon returning to Hong Kong though, I've got to realizing that there do seem to be more schools located on main roads in Penang than in the likes of Hong Kong, Philadelphia or London.  I'm not quite sure why this is -- but it does make them more easy to spot and can end up giving the impression that education is something that Malaysians prioritize by putting front, right, left, and center! 

2) There sure are a lot of religious buildings about too, and quite the variety of them to boot!

Despite not being especially religious, I will readily acknowledge that quite a number of Malaysians would identify themselves as being members of a religious community.  In addition, there indeed are a variety of religions practiced in Malaysia.  So I guess it's true enough that Malaysia may have more religious buildings than many other countries -- and it's also a source of pride and joy to Malaysians that places of worship used by people practicing different religions can be located close to one another, like along Penang's Street of Harmony.

3) There also are so many eateries around the place!!

Whenever friends in Hong Kong ask me where is the best place to eat Malaysian food, I tell them that they need to go to Malaysia.  Yes, there are Malaysian restaurants in Hong Kong but the fact that they all invariably have a variety of dishes on their menu makes them suspect to me because the very best food in Malaysia is produced by cooks that specialize in just a few dishes or sometimes even just one particular dish.  And with such specialization as the norm, this makes for there being quite the number of small but very good eateries sometimes seemingly everywhere in Malaysia!

4) Eating is a super popular Malaysian past time

There's no two ways about it: Malaysians love to eat.  And as I've shared on this blog, I honestly didn't realize that there were people in this world who eat to live as opposed to live to eat until I spent time living in Tanzania.  On a related note: I found in Tanzania that what people ate frequently had a lot to do with what they could afford and what they considered prestigious.  In contrast, Malaysians just are happy to eat whatever they consider delicious -- which can be quite the range of things since Malaysian food draws upon a variety of culinary traditions: not just Malay, Chinese and Indian but, actually, Sumatran, Kelantanese, Hokkien, Cantonese, Hakka, Nyonya Baba (aka Peranakan Cina), South Indian (particularly Tamil), North Indian, "Mamak" (or Indian Muslim), etc., etc., etc.! 

5) Malaysians have quite the sense of humor!

After a Japanese friend in Hong Kong asked me about whether Malaysians are allowed to be polygamous, I told her (and the other friends we were with) about my favorite Malaysian cartoonist and his cartoons addressing that matter that segued into my favorite Lat cartoons.  And when my South African friend visited my family home, I took the opportunity to bring out my collection of Lat books and share them with him.

Something else that got him laughing out loud was my mother and I regaling him with our memories of school rivalry that resulted on our saddling rival schools with some not so nice, and sometimes pretty sassy, nicknames based on their initials.  So, while, say, the boys of St Xavier's Institution liked to think of themselves as "Smart X Intelligent", pupils at other schools preferred to label them "Stupid X Idiot", and how the pupils of Convent Pulau Tikus and Penang Chinese Girls High School hated people telling them that they attended the Centre for Prostitute Training or were Prostitutes and Call Girls for High Society respectively! ;D

Hiking with two good friends in southwest Lantau on the third day of the lunar new year of the dog :)

Out on the hiking trail with couple of friends in Southwest Lantau

 

Not the edge of the world, though it sometimes looked like it! ;)

 

A veritable Chinese New Year flower bonanza this afternoon!

 

After resting for a day (during which I went and watched A Beautiful Moment at the cinema), I got back to hiking ways on the third day of the lunar new year of the dog.  And even though we're just into February, I already have an early candidate for hike of the year in the form of the one I went on earlier today!    

 

Ever since I came across Man Cheung Po and Lung Tsai Ng Yuen (along with a "flying dragon") back on February 12th, 2012 while going along Sections 5 and 6 of the Lantau Trail, I've wanted to go back there and spend more time there as those sections of Lantau Island really did seem to be very pleasant sections of Hong Kong.  And a little more than a year ago, I did return to that part of Hong Kong's largest island by way of the Keung Shan Country Trail that allowed me to avoid having to go up (and down) the many hills of Section 5 of the Lantau Trail.  

 

As it turned out though, I ended up not lingering in the area as much as I had wanted to because the conditions I encountered there were far more misty than I had hoped would be the case.  But thanks to that hike on the second day of Chinese New Year last year, I now knew of an easier way to get to that area: one that seemed very much following again -- as was the case this afternoon!

 

This time around, the weather gods were also cooperative: in that, while it rained a bit in places in Hong Kong in the morning, it was dry where my two friends and I ventured this afternoon, far from misty and even sunny at times, with bright blue skies peeking out from the clouds every once in a while.  And at various parts of our excursion, scenic, even downright spectacular views revealed themselves; with today's visual highlights for me including the spotting of clumps of pretty pink Chinese New Year flowers and a point during the hike when one looked out at a sea so similar in shade and color to the sky that it was hard to see where one ended and the already began!

 

At times even more enjoyable than the beautiful scenery around us, and as far as the eye could see, was the company of my two hiking buddies: one of whom used to be my regular hike companion until she returned to Canada a few years back and is currently back in Hong Kong to celebrate Chinese New Year; the other of whom is the erstwhile regular hiking buddy who coined the phrase "non-competitive hiking" to describe our preferred hiking style.  Here's the thing: I really like that we never obliged to hurry to make particular times and, instead, just walked along at a pace all three of us were comfortable with -- and did quite a bit of shooting the breeze while we were tramping along too!

 

Back when I was at secondary school in Penang, I used to regularly walk up and down the school field during recess while chatting with a friend (or was it vice versa?).  I also made it a habit while attending college at Beloit of spending quality time talking with friends while strolling up and down the campus.  And I have enjoyed my share of conversation-filled long walks with friends when I lived in Philadelphia too. 

 

In Hong Kong, I do quite a bit of chatting with friends over meals and in bars but I also still very much enjoy chatting with friends while doing a bit of walking, or hiking as the case may be.  And as it so happens, the conversations today contributed quite a bit to making this afternoon's hike as fun as it was -- and, to my mind, helped further cement the friendship between the theree of us who went out hiking in Southwest Lantau together today. :)

Snow in Japan!

Snow falling while I waited for my train to arrive at 

Hiroshima Station on the second day of my recent Japan trip

 

I found the snow to be really pelting down and 

settling on the ground the day that I went over to Hikone!

 

 Not a scene I expected nor wanted to see on a Japan visit!

 

For the first twelve years of my life, I only ever saw snow in picture books, on TV or in movies.  On a visit to England a few months after my thirteenth birthday though, I saw snow for the first time and was pretty ecstatic to have had this then exotic -- to me! -- experience.  

 

After I moved to England to attend boarding school though, snow became less of a thrill and more of a bother, especially after it melted and then re-formed into super slippery ice.  And the four years I spent at college in Wisconsin (aka the Siberia of America) definitely made me like the cold white stuff even less, with the subsequent years I spent in Philadelphia -- during which the city would regularly run out of salt for the roads in winter -- making it so that by the time I left the USA on July 4th, 2003, for far warmer climes, it would have been perfectly fine by me if I never ever saw snow again!

 

Since then, I've actually been pretty successful in avoiding seeing snow for the most part.  Indeed, it wasn't until 2015, on a May visit to Norway, that I came across -- and even tramped on -- the cold white stuff again!  And after a brief encounter with falling snow while on transit at Munich airport later that same year, I had not had more encounters with that which can be so pretty to look at but not all that great to be in until my trip to Japan last month!

 

I won't lie: the first time I saw snow falling in Japan (upon coming out from Hiroshima's Okonomimura. where I had just enjoyed a delicious lunch of Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki), I let fly an expletive -- and it wasn't because I was excited by the sight of the cold white stuff but, rather, because I actually was horrified by it!  But after I realized that the falling snow wasn't sticking onto the ground, I calmed down somewhat -- to the extent that the knowledge that snow was falling did not dissuade me from going ahead and journeying by shinkansen later that day to Osaka Funassyiland (and back later that evening) in order to get a 60cm Funassyi!

 

Over the next few days, as I saw more snow fall but almost never accumulate on the ground, I relaxed even more.  Indeed, I could be accused of having become rather blasé about the uncommonly snowy conditions that the Japanese media appeared super excited about; and this especially when the snow that I saw falling on my way to the Asashi Shuzo brewery up in the hills of Iwakuni prefecture also didn't seem to be sticking much at all to the ground.  Thus it was that I wasn't all that bothered when it began snowing once more my train journey from Hiroshima to Hikone, one that involved my switching trains at Shin-Osaka and moving from the Chugoku region over to the Kansai region.     

Some forty minutes after the second train of my journey passed Kyoto though, I began to see landscapes that were distinctly snowy in nature, with the snow getting thicker and thicker the closer I got to my destination that day.  By the time the train rolled into Hikone Station, I was thinking that some of the winter scenery I was passing could easily be mistaken for Siberia's rather than Japan's! 

I have to admit: there was a part of me that wanted to get on the next train out of Hikone soon after I arrived in that part of Shiga prefecture; and this especially it wasn't just snowing when I got there but pelting down pretty heavily!  But after reminding myself that I had experienced similar -- and even worse! -- conditions in Wisconsin, I not only kept to my plan of staying the night but decided to go out and walk around in the town since I was there for a bit before going and getting dinner (and at least one alcoholic drink!) in a nice, warm izakaya in the evening!

 

As I tramped about in the snow, I got to remembering how slippery the not completely cleared paths can get, how wet snow actually is, how few people are keen to be out walking about when it's snowing heavily, and how bleak but also beautiful it can turn landscapes into.  In addition, long before I completed my walk around Hikone town, I was thinking how happy I am that I no longer live in a part of a world where snow falls during winter but also how cool it actually was -- metaphorically that is, not just literally! -- that I was getting to see truly snowy conditions for the first time ever on a visit to Japan! :)   

Two signs in South Africa that had me doing a double take! ;)

I bet this South African musician refuses to answer 

to ever be called by his personal name's diminutive ;b

Two surnames few would ever have imagined seeing

placed next to each other not so long ago!

 

When I was a secondary student in Penang, Malaysia, I had a math teacher who went by the title and name of Mr. Kok.  As luck would have it, after I moved on to boarding school in England, I had a P.E. teacher listed on the faculty roll as "Miss A. Chicken".  Cue major hilarity when I told my boarding schoolmates about Mr. Kok and our thinking how absolutely funny it would have been if Miss Chicken had met and then married Mr. Kok!

 

Looking back, it's pretty amazing that my schoolmates both in Malaysia and England and I never associated the name Kok with anything dirty but, instead, fixated on it sounding a lot like a domestic male bird.  In contrast, when I first heard about a South African musician by the name of Richard Cock, I have to admit to thinking immediately of the dirty word that also is the dimunitive form of his first name and which his surname also can be used to mean!  

 

And, actually, my very first reaction was to reckon that the friend who told me about there being a man by that name was pulling my leg -- only for me to get concrete proof of Mr. Cock's existence by way of our a sign posted up by the road that we were driving along announcing a concert in which he would feature while in Stellenbosch.   

 

Another sign I spotted in South Africa that had me doing a double take, albeit for very different reasons, was that which adorns the Mandela Rhodes Building.  Think about it: Nelson Mandela and Cecil Rhodes not only lived in different eras but represent such different political philosophies and ideals, with one being a commited imperialist and the other being pretty much the opposite!

 

At the same time though, they both were South Africans.  And it's pretty interesting to discover that the Mandela Rhodes Building -- which was built in 1902 -- was known as Rhodes House up until 2002, when it was gifted by its owners (De Beers) to the Mandela Rhodes Foundation which has its offices in this historical building.  

 

Co-established by the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the Rhodes Trust, the Mandela Rhodes Foundation awards scholarships to African students for post-graduate studies in universities in South Africa.  So, rather than it being a joke, the intertwining of the name Mandela and Rhodes in this existence actually turns out to stand for something very cool indeed! :)            

Alcohol-free and vegetarian meals aplenty in Penang!

Puppet Ponyo presided over our table at 

a banana leaf rice restaurant ;b

 

It may not look it but the kacang botol (winged bean) salad

was the spiciest of the dishes on this table!

 

One of my favorite snacks/desserts when back in Penang :)

 

The evening after I returned to Hong Kong from my most recent trip back to Penang found me once more spending time with friends at Sake Bar Ginn.  As it so happened, the previous time that I had drank any alcohol prior to that occasion also happened to be at Sake Bar Ginn a few days before my eight day Penang trip.  Put another way: I didn't drink anything alcoholic while back in Penang this time; and despite there being a particular watering hole there that I do like, it really didn't take much effort to be alcohol free while there! 

 

As I explained to my fairly incredulous friends at the sake bar that I've come to think of as a cross between the eponymous establishments in TV series Cheers and the Midnight Diner movies for me: I prefer to drink during meals rather than outside of them but I also tend to steer clear of alcoholic beverages when eating spicy food -- and as it so happens, a lot of my favorite Penang foods are on the spicy side.  Consequently, my drinks of choice at meal times in Penang tend to be non-alcoholic concoctions like rose syrup with lime and ice or various fruit juices.     

 

Something else that I noticed this time around is that I really do tend to eat a lot more fruits and vegetables when I'm back in Penang; and this even when it's not durian season!  As it so happens, I had a few vegetarian meals on this recent trip, including a banana leaf rice lunch, an ethnic Chinese fried noodle dish known as "cheap mee" because it's traditionally one of the cheapest dishes on offer in Penang and has mee (egg noodles) as its main ingredient, and a large order of the distinctly Malaysian fruit salad-prawn paste combination known as rojak.  And in addition to the many glasses of fruit juice that I drank on this recent trip, I also once again enjoyed eating more than one portion of coconut jelly as well as the flesh of the fruit that serves as its container.

 

More than incidentally, I also love drinking coconut water but won't drink coconut milk and was horrified to discover while living in the West that people there actually drink the latter liquid and have it as ingredients of alcoholic cocktails such as piña coladas!  Something else that shocked me -- and would similarly shock my brother years later when he went to boarding school in England -- was that quite a few people we knew in England (and, in my case, the USA too) had no idea that coconut water existed, since the coconuts found in their parts of the world didn't have any clear liquids inside of them because they already were old and dry! 

So frustrated, in fact, was my brother when trying to convince his boarding schoolmates of the existence of coconut water that he told us more than once that he wished he could bring a young, clear liquid-filled coconut, with him back to England from Penang.  Adding to his vexation was his schoolmates also not believing that coconuts were anything but brown and hairy on the outside, and -- what with it being the days before the internet came along -- his having great difficulty finding pictures of green young coconuts to show them! ;b

The optimal dai pai dong dining season

Where I like to eat on a cool evening :)

It may not look it from the photo but Leaf Dessert

is actually a pretty popular dai pai dong! ;) 

  

February is the coldest month of the year.  That's something I was told during my first winter at boarding school in England decades ago -- and whenever I've lived in a place with four distinct seasons, it has indeed felt this way for the most part.

But whereas I would spent February eagerly awaiting warmer weather to arrive when I lived in Britain and the USA, I often find myself hoping that spring won't come too soon here in Hong Kong.  One reason is that I tend to associate the spring with way too many super rainy days here in the Big Lychee.  For another, Asian winter foods (including Cantonese clay pot rice and laap mei) may well be my favorite seasonal foods of all!

Furthermore, although outdoor dai pai dong like Sing Heung Yuen are open all year round, they really are far more comfortable to dine at in cool -- even cold -- rather than hot weather.  Consequently, I'm more likely to feel up for frequenting them in the cooler months (though it's true enough that even when it's boiling, I still am liable to get cravings for that Gough Street dai pai dong's tomato soup!). 

Another reason to prefer eating at dai pai dong in winter is that cockroaches and their ilk seem far less active out on the streets of Hong Kong in cold and dry weather than during hot and humid evenings!  Hence my being more likely to have dinner at such as Sing Kee, the dai pai dong on Stanley Street whose offerings are famed for their wok hei, and which has featured in such as the Hong Kong episode of The Hairy Bikers' Asian Adventure TV show (as well as is located in the same dai pai dong-rich area in Central where Faye Wong's character bumped into Tony Leung Chiu Wai's in Chungking Express), during the cooler and colder months of the year.

Incidentally, the last time I ate at Sing Kee, I found myself sharing a table with a woman who told me she was a dancer who would be performing at this year's Hong Kong Arts Festival.  And some time ago when I was eating at Sing Heung Yuen, there was quite the commotion when superstar singer-actor Eason Chan appeared on the scene (and indicated, from the way he interacted with the dai pai dong's staff, that he's a regular patron of theirs)! 
 

So to those who turn up their nose at the suggestion of dining at a dai pai dong: now you know what you're missing -- the possibility of celebrity encounters and/or interesting dining companions along with some actually pretty tasty food in atmospheric dining conditions that I actually consider attractive, particularly during those times of the year when the very act of sitting in non-air-conditioned space won't get one feeling over-heated as well as sweating profusely! ;b   

Uncommon ways to enjoy Valentine's Day :)

Standing tall as a singleton on Valentine's Day 2017!

 

This is not least since being single contributes quite a bit

to my feeling free as bird on beautiful days like today :)

 

Before anything else: the photos at the top of this blog post were taken this afternoon as I made my way to my favorite roast goose place for dinner after a thoroughly enjoyable Cloudy Hill hike excursion that I went on with a friend.  At that point in the day, I was on my own as my hiking buddy had hurried home earlier to celebrate the Feast of Saint Valentine with her husband.  But, in all honesty, I didn't much mind since I still was on a high after a very satisfying hike in wonderful weather -- complete with super high visibility and bright blue skies -- during which I had seen Cloudy Hill totally minus cloud cover -- something which, as its name implies, is actually a pretty uncommon state of affairs! 

 

And to think that I would have missed out on this if my original plan for this evening had gone ahead: that is, I had proposed to a good but platonic friend of the opposite sex that we have an anti-Valentine's Day dinner at Uehara.  But since the restaurant turned out to be already fully booked for tonight when I called to make a reservation a couple of weeks ago, we'll "just" be treating ourselves to another omakase dinner there this Thursday instead of this evening!

 

Should it not be clear: here's confirming that I'm so not a fan of this particular holiday and have been known to organize anti-Valentine's Day "dates" with one or more platonic friends, many -- but by no means all (since I've discovered there are married people who don't care for this day too!) -- of whom are fellow singletons.  Among the more memorable of these was the time a few years back when a whole bunch of us went out for a hotpot dinner, reasoning that this kind of dining is extremely unromantic since it's communal and tends to leave diners (particularly their hair and clothes) smelling quite strongly of whatever they had chosen to eat that evening!  

 

And even though there were years in the past when I was in a relationship when February 14th came along, by far my favorite Valentine's Day ever was the one that took place during my final year at boarding school in England.  Early on in the morning, many of us had been filled with dread by the thought of not receiving any Valentine cards; a humiliation that would be very public since the teacher on duty would hand out the mail to students over breakfast in the school dining hall.  

 

But when the time came for the post to be handed out, I ended up being far from empty handed... since my four best friends at school (three of whom were female and one male) had sent me Valentine cards!  As it so happened, I had done the same for them -- and they had also done the same for one another.  That all this had not been collectively planned made it all the sweeter; with the icing on that day's cake coming from various other students having cast us looks of envy, not knowing -- or maybe even caring! -- that the Valentine cards we had received (and sent) had all been to people we loved for their friendship rather than something else altogether! :)       

Housing eccentricities and downright madness!

The Yick Fat Building has appeared in many movies but 

it's a real life place rather than a made-for-movies set! :O

 

Perhaps more amazingly is that there are buildings

similar to it located in the vicinity!

 

Often times, when I tell people that I spent two years of my life in East Africa, they have visions of me living in a mud hut in the middle of nowhere and are kind of disappointed when I tell them that, actually, I lived in homes located in an urban space.  At the same time though, I consider some of them to be among the most "exotic" in which I have spent time in.  

 

We're talking, after all, of such as a place in Zanzibar Stone Town whose directions for visitors to find it ran along the lines of "Go to the Anglican Cathedral and stand near the baobab tree nearby.  Look for the bicycle mechanic shop.  The house I'm living in is located behind it!".  Oh, and there was the fact that another of my Zanzibar Stone Town residences was located in the grounds of a graveyard and had bush babies living on the roof!

 

In addition, as far as physical amenities were concerned, all of the places where I lived in Zanzibar (I bounced around for a bit there and stayed in four different places over the course of nine months or so) didn't have hot water to bathe with, and three of them weren't equipped with fridges (which necessitated my having to go to the market pretty much daily, like most Zanzibaris!).  Still, living conditions weren't half as spartan as when I attended archaeological field school in the Four Corners region of the US my sophomore summer and spent the bulk of my nights sleeping in a tent!

Such experiences along with that of having been a graduate student, I reckon, have made me more able to tolerate poor housing conditions than many other folks.  Yet it also is the case that there are tons of places here in Hong Kong that I simply would never ever want to have to call home.  And I'm not just talking here about the cage homes and tiny subdivided flats that I consider myself immensely fortunate to only have been in courtesy of the Society for Community Organization (SOCO)'s Life in West Kowloon exhibition in a Sham Shui Po tong lau but also the actually pretty high priced microflats that Hong Kong developers seem more and more intent on building.

 

A few years back, Queen's Cube was criticized for having flats with listed gross floor space of 400 square feet that actually had only 275 square feet of "saleable" (or "usable") space -- and went on to inspire the production of a clever "King's Cube" parody video.  But its flats seem palatial now in comparison to those in Henderson Land's One Prestige (the smallest of which are just 163 square feet).  And the madness has continued with an announcement today that Swire -- which is widely considered to be the best housing developer in Hong Kong -- will be making available studio apartments that are just 142 square feet in size later this year!

 

Again, bear in mind that I am someone who has lived in housing that a fair few people would not feel comfortable in.  (In addition to the Zanzibari and Four Corners examples, I've also done such as lived in a group house with four other people in Philadelphia, and attended boarding school in England back in the days where the bulk of the money went to education rather than accomodation!)  And yet, I think that 163 and 142 square feet flats are a bridge too far; especially at their price -- which in the case of One Prestige was close to HK$4 million (~US$515,670) to purchase and in the case of Swire's Star Studios, is looking to cost HK$12,780 (~US$1,648) a month to rent! :O