Plenty of good beers to sample at Beertopia 2018!

Chilling at Beertopia early yesterday afternoon

Still standing and imbibing after several hours at the craft beer fest!

A far busier scene at the same event come evening!

It was sunny and hot when I got to the Central Harbourfront shortly after 12pm, the official start time of day 2 of this year's edition of the now annual Beertopia craft beer fest.  The crowd was on the thin side but I didn't mind -- and, to be honest, preferred it that way as I'm one of those people who actually likes to drink in quiet, mellow surroundings rather than feel a need for there to be a party atmosphere to get me in the mood! 

Upon walking around and surveying the scene, I was pleased too to note that three out of the four breweries whose offerings I was looking forward to imbibe had them on tap rather than just bottles or cans.  On a related note: while there appeared to be fewer beer booths about the place this year than last year, a greater percentage of them seemed to have draft beers on offer this year.  On a probably not unrelated note, I also liked a higher percentage of the beers I tried at Beertopia 2018 over the previous year's.    

I already was on my second 6 ounce glass (actually, plastic cup) of beer when two friends joined me for some beer imbibing of their own.  Soon after two other friends also came over for Beertopia, things got rather crazy after our party was gifted with more than HK$500 worth of extra beer coupons by an organizer pal!

By the time I decided to call it a day several hours later, I had enjoyed ales from: Shanghai's Boxing Cat Brewery, whose very reliable Contender XPA was what I chose to begin the imbibing with; Japan's Far Yeast Brewing Company, whose Tokyo IPA was deliciously crisp yet also smooth; Brooklyn Brewery, whose Defender IPA as well as Brooklyn East IPA are both very drinkable; Edinburgh Beer Factory, whose brown ale proved to be a pleasant surprise; and Belgium's Vedett, whose Extra Ordinary IPA actually lived up to its name!  I also tasted but didn't care for brews by Chicago's Goose Island Brewery, Lebanon's 961 Beer, Germany's Zoller Hof and Hong Kong-New Zealand collaboration Seven Brews.

With lots of coupons still to use up after all that, I ended up getting nine bottles of beer to take away and share with friends (except for the Samuel Smith Imperial Stout, which I plan to drink all by myself one cold winter's day!).  One added thrill of the day came from meeting Brooklyn Brewery's brewmaster, Garrett Oliver, and telling him that I began drinking his beers in the late 1990s in Philadelphia and was happy to find that they're now available in Hong Kong too!

And for those who wonder: no, I did not have a hangover this morning.  Yes, I did drink quite a bit of beer yesterday but I also made sure to drink a good amount of water throughout the day and make sure that I lined my stomach with food.  Also, it may come as a shock to some people but I actually tend to sip my beer -- as opposed to chug it -- so as to be better able to taste it.  In addition, I actually don't like getting drunk because, among other things, I really don't like feeling nauseous or that the whole world around me is spinning like mad afterwards! ;D

Golden Job reunites an ensemble that is no longer young but still can be dangerous! (Film review)

My screening choice for this week :)

Golden Job (Hong Kong-Mainland China, 2018)

- Chin Kar Lok, director and co-action director (along with two others)

- Starring: Ekin Cheng, Jordan Chan, Michael Tse, Chin Kar Lok, Jerry Lamb, Eric Tsang

A confession: I had very little idea of what Golden Job was about prior to my heading to the cinema earlier this week to view it.  I actually didn't even bother to find out who its director, scriptwriters, etc. were.  All I knew was that this was an offering which had the main stars of the Young and Dangerous series back together again -- and, frankly, that was enough for me because, if nothing else, I know that Ekin Cheng and Jordan Chan have great chemistry, and the latter is one of those actors I really would love to see more of but haven't had that many opportunities to do so in recent years.

I'll also be honest here and state that if I had known that Jackie Chan was one of the people behind this crime actioner, I'd have hesitated to check it out.  Ditto upon finding out that Erica Li Man is one the film's three co-scriptwriters (along with Kwok Kin Lok and Heiward Mak).  And there are harsher critics who would say that I'd then have been spared a couple of valuable hours that could have been used to better purpose, including by watching a better made movie with a plot that had fewer holes in it and proceedings that didn't require as much suspension of disbelief.

Here's the thing though: Even while my brain was telling me that Golden Job has its share of dumb movie moments, I still was entertained by this offering which has the Young and Dangerous gang playing globe-trotting mercenaries who seem as much at home in far flung parts of Mainland China, Bucharest, Montenegro, and Kumamoto and Fukuoka, Japan, as in Hong Kong.  In addition, I happily bought into the idea that the majority of these men could be more golden hearted than many a non-career criminal -- as can be seen by their main motivation for enacting their most ambitious and pretty risky heist stemming from their wanting to get valuable medical vaccines to a pure-hearted doctor (Charmaine Sheh) working at a refugee camp in Africa!   

 

Frankly, when viewing this kind of offering, it probably is more important that the action scenes be visually impressive; and, as can be expected of a movie where Chin Kar Lok has had a hand in directing its action scenes, many of them -- particularly those involving car chases -- are indeed that.  Also counting very much in the film's favor is that, even though they play different characters in it from the triad ones that made them famous some two decades ago, Golden Job provides its featured acting ensemble -- supplemented by Eric Tsang in an elder statesman role -- with ample opportunities to show once again that they really do work very well together.

Further successfully pressing the nostalgia buttons was the re-utilization -- on more than one occasion -- of one of the Young and Dangerous theme songs.  Hearing it actually made me quite emotional, though not as much as a key dramatic scene that is a great example of how (heterosexual) Hong Kong men aren't afraid to cry and show how much love they have for one another (as well as how good at dramatically emoting Jordan Chan and Eric Tsang really can be)!   

Something else that I found myself appreciating while watching Golden Job was how Ekin Cheng is one of those personalities who has aged pretty well -- maturing into a man with gravitas from the pretty boy that he was labelled as being back in the 1990s, and also maturing as an actor to have the requisite gravitas and charisma to seem like a natural leader of the band of heng tai (blood brothers) at the heart of this film.  (And no, I'm not just writing this because today happens to be his 51st birthday -- and I happened to walk by him on a Shau Kei Wan street earlier in the day! ;b)

My rating for this film: 6.0

Standing up and rallying for Hong Kong on China's National Day

Joshua Wong rallying the crowd (of protesters)

on China's National Day

Certain Hong Kongers' way of "celebrating" the 69th anniversary

of the founding of the People's Republic of China ;b

 

Between the radical and the apathetic -- and monitored

by the authorities? -- on China's National Day

 

This past weekend, I -- along with seven other willing volunteers -- took part in a beach clean-up on Cheung Chau.  Though our number was on the small side, I nonetheless was cheered by our spirit along with effort.  In addition, I took quite a bit of comfort in there being a number of Hong Kong residents being willingness to sweat and sacrifice for a greater cause -- and, in so doing, show up the idea that Hong Kongers don't care about the environment and about Hong Kong to be the fallacy or outright lie that it is.

 

I'm not sure how many of the people who took part in Saturday's beach clean-up also were out protesting on the streets of Hong Kong this afternoon.  But I, for one, do consider taking part in protest rallies against China's tightening of the screws in Hong Kong to be as much my civic duty as a Hong Konger as my going out and helping to clean Hong Kong's beaches.  Put another way: I consider both to be efforts to make Hong Kong a better, more liveable place.  Also, among the things that really impressed me about the Umbrella Movement was how many of its participants did seem to care for the environment.  

Like with last Saturday's beach clean-up, today's protest march didn't attract that large a group of participants.  At the same time, it's also true enough that today's event did attract at least 100 -- and maybe even 200 -- times more than Saturday's.  In addition, I can say with utter certainty that the number of people who marched from Causeway Bay's East Point Road to the re-opened Civic Square in Admiralty -- not even including those who joined and/or left mid-way! -- far exceeded the number of (clearly paid) pro-Beijing counter-protesters who tried to hassle and heckle the march's participants at two points in Wan Chai as well as the activists waving Hong Kong Independence flags who assembled at one point along the way.

 

I realize that there are many people in Hong Kong who have decided -- after the occupation of key thoroughfares in Hong Kong for 79 days in 2014 yielded no immediate results -- that organized non-violence is not an effective way to lobby for democracy or political and human rights.  Some of them have decided that a greater radicalism is the answer, others that all resistance is futile, and still others that what they primarily want to do is sulk or flee.

 

While I understand why they feel the way they do, I reckon that dejection and passivity is not the answer (along with the kind of radicalism that the vast majority of Hong Kongers associate with criminality and look upon as headed to a dead end).  Rather, my way is to stand up, speak up and rally for Hong Kong (while I still legally can) -- and knowing that doing so in public and enmasse irks Beijing and its lackeys makes it feel all the more worth doing (and encouraging fellow Hong Kongers who love Hong Kong to turn out to do the same)!

Beach clean-up at Cheung Chau's Tai Kwai Wan

Trying to give tender, loving care to a dirty beach

The more willing hands to work at cleaning up the beach, the better!

A respectable haul after just a couple of hours' work

by eight pairs of willing hands :)

After a four month summer hiatus, I figured it was time to go clean a beach once more this weekend.  The original plan had to go back to work trying to add a dent to the piles of trash on Cheung Chau's regularly badly polluted Tung Wan Tsai (aka Coral Beach).  But close to two weeks after Severe Typhoon Mangkhut paid Hong Kong a visit (or, at least, very close call) and hit the island particularly hard, there was uncertainty over whether the trail leading from the built-up areas of Cheung Chau down to that beach as a result of trees having fallen down and other typhoon damage in the area.      

Given the choice of going to work on a supervised beach on the same side of the island as Tung Wan Tsai and another unsupervised beach on the other side of Cheung Chau from it, my group of eight volunteers decided to go check to see whether the latter could do with some loving care.  After seeing that the main beach at Tai Kwai Wan could indeed do with some cleaning up, we set to work on it for a couple of hours; over the course of which we found, gathered and bagged up quite a bit of trash.

Like at every beach I've been to for beach clean-up activities in Hong Kong (be they on Cheung Chau, Lamma or Lantau), a good percentage of rubbish found at Tai Kwai Wan's beach consisted of styrofoam and (other) plastic items.  While there, I also saw the too familiar sight of ghost nets as well as plastic sheets wrapped around tree branches, be they broken off or still attached to living trees.  In addition, I came across hundreds, maybe even thousands, of plastic microbeads -- which can be hard to differentiate from sand from a distance and are fiendishly hellish to separate from the grains of sand that they lie on.

Noticeably different though was how much smaller the chunks of styrofoam and plastic found at this particular beach were from those we usually find at Tung Wan Tsai.  One possible reason for this is that they're older/have had more time to further break up; a sure sign that this beach hasn't been cleaned much -- if at all -- in years.  Almost needless to say, this made my group's task more difficult -- and also more frustrating; with one needing to work harder to have the satisfaction of filling up a trash bag than when there are larger pieces and/or items to pick up and clear away!

Another factor that contributed to our task being on the demanding side was it getting on the hot side as we reached midday.  Seeing the pretty red face of one of our group members got me thinking we should halt our activities before the temperature peaked for the day!  On the plus side weather-wise: we all felt the kind of breeze that signals to us that summer may finally be coming to an end here in Hong Kong; and we all agreed that it was much better to work under the sun than in the rain that has been unleashed on so many days this super wet summer (that came, ironically enough, after an unusually dry spring)!   

Reflections over moon pics and viewings this week! :)

This month's full moon :)

 

Not so full moon but I like that you can see texture in the photo!

 

Mid-Autumn night in Victoria Park :)

 

Last night, I introduced a friend visiting from Britain to the pleasures of strolling about in urban Hong Kong after dark.  In Central, he exulted at the veritable light show that I've come to think of as pretty normal -- not least because it occurs daily rather than on special occasions -- courtesy of lit-up high-rise edifices like those of the Bank of China Tower and HSBC Building.  Meanwhile, I really enjoyed on this particular evening, the nearly full moon was so beautifully visible -- and also surprisingly yellow -- in the night sky too.    

 

At a couple of points during our walk, I considered taking my camera out of my backpack and snapping photos of the moon.  In retrospect, maybe I should have.  But I didn't do so because I've actually been doing quite a bit of that this week courtesy of such as the Mid-Autumn Festival and one of its traditional activities involving moon viewing!

 

As long time followers of this blog will know, I also do make it a point to go view the Mid-Autumn Festival lantern displays held at Victoria Park on that festive occasion.  I did think of skipping doing so this year though because I had got a preview of this year's alien lanterns in the days leading up to the event while walking through the park some days earlier.  But on the day itself, I decided to venture to the venue to catch sight of the Tai Hang fire dragon (which would be making a rare foray out of its home territory).

 

As it turned out, I found the crowd in Victoria Park to be way too large for me to get proper glimpses of the fire dragon (like I've managed to do in Tai Hang itself in previous years).  Also, the evening of the Mid-Autumn Festival this year turned out to be on the damp side -- and while it had stopped raining when I headed over to the park, the rain returned midway through the fire dragon's appearance in that venue.  

 

While some members of the crowd took this as the cue to call it a night, what was the clincher for me was when many of those that chose to remain got out their umbrellas to further obscure my view!  So I didn't manage to get any good shots of the fire dragon this year.  Still, all was not lost since, thanks to the rain, I got photos of some wonderful reflections on the wet Victoria Park football pitch surfaces of the lantern display that I must admit to thinking are more visually impressive than the moon pics I've taken this month! :)   

Some thoughts on alien encounters in Hong Kong ;)

An unexpected sighting in Hong Kong :O

Some illumination a few days later ;b

Seeing stars and spacecraft (as well as aliens) at Victoria Park! :)

The day after Severe Typhoon Mangkhut buffeted Hong Kong with winds that were strong enough to get Hurricane Signal No. 10 raised for several hours, I ventured out of my apartment for the first time in some 36 hours to get stretch my legs and get some fresh air.  Over the course of my doing so, I came across scenes of tree carnage (particularly in Victoria Park), instances of dragonflies behaving rather unusually, and two large forms that had their wrappers on but still obviously were meant to look like extra-terrestrial beings with extra big heads!

After I stopped laughing at the sight of them, I quickly got to realizing that these alien representations were supposed to be part of this year's Mid-Autumn Lantern Carnival at Victoria Park.  And while they look rather bizarre, the connection between them and the moon could be said to be as obvious as that between the heavenly body where a goddess is suppose to reside according to Chinese legend and those heavy traditional Chinese baked goods known as mooncakes.  Also, goodness knows that those in charge of deciding the themes for the Mid Autumn Lantern Carnivals in Hong Kong have come up with weirder themes in the past (including the time when giant lanterns shaped like a stick of fishballs and egg waffles went on view at the Mid-Autumn Lantern Carnival!).

A couple of days later, I got the chance to see the alien-themed lanterns and a bunch of others all lit up.  All in all, I reckon that they made for quite the kawaii sight and the sight of the smiley aliens got me recalling a story a teacher friend told me years ago that she and I found amusing -- and also rather illuminating with regards to the mindset of young Hong Kongers.  

Over the course of tutoring a couple of 12 year olds, she had decided to ask them as part of their English conversation practice to tell her what they'd do if they encountered some aliens in Hong Kong.  Hailing from the US as she was, my friend expected to hear answers that emphasized the, well, alien-ness of the extra-terrestrials and maybe also their threatening nature.  Instead, those young Hong Kongers -- whose home territory is remarkably crime-free, particularly when compared to other places with a similarly high degree of urbanism -- told her that they'd take the aliens they encountered shopping at the local department store or maybe even to Hong Kong Disneyland!

Clearly, they didn't look upon aliens as threats -- and just assumed they'd be friendly.  Consequently, the natural thing to do would be to be nice and friendly back!  And yes, Hong Kongers are not known for being super friendly but, in all honesty, I do feel that I've found my share of friends -- many of them good ones at that -- over the course of my more than 11 years now in the Big Lychee.  So this Mid-Autumn Festival is as good a time as any to register my gratefulness that this has indeed been the case. :)  

Art -- and free food and drinks -- on offer at the 2018 South Island Art Day!

Works by Kesang Lamdark on display at Rossi & Rossi Hong Kong

 

Another piece by the Tibetan artist that's part of his

Knock, Knock solo exhibition

 

Robin Moyer talks about his photographs on display 

at Pékin Fine Arts (Hong Kong)

  

Years ago, when I lived in Philadelphia, some friends and I would venture to the artsy part of the city on the first Friday evening of each month.  There we'd find the streets where the art galleries were located bustling with people checking out the art on display in spaces which  they'd not think to venture on other occasions and also stuffing their faces with complimentary canapés (and often enjoying them more than the art on view in the galleries offering free food and alcoholic drinks on the night!).

 

I didn't see any free food at the first of the 12 galleries and artist studio clusters participating in this year's South Island Art Day that I set foot in yesterday.  But alcohol (in the form of chilled cans of San Miguel beer) was on offer along with art works by Tibetan artist Kesang Lamdark and Italian artist Giorgia Vigna at the spacious Wong Chuk Hang premises of the Hong Kong branch of Rossi & Rossi,.  

 

Considering that the art work on display there including images clearly inspired by the Tiananmen Square "tank man" and that bring to attention Tibetan self-immolators along with one showing a woman performing fellatio, it probably was for the best that one didn't have anything solid in one's mouth (and newly churning about in one's gut) when viewing them!  And the day before the opening of the West Kowloon terminus of the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link designed to more closely link Hong Kong to its behemoth of a northern neighbor, such works served as a reminder that there still is quite a bit more artistic and expressive freedom allowed in Hong Kong than over on the other side of the border between Hong Kong and Mainland China.

 

At the second gallery I visited yesterday afternoon, I found food, drinks, art and more: specifically, a talk being given by longtime TIME magazine photographer Robin Moyer, whose photographs are the subject of an exhibition at the Hong Kong branch of Pékin Fine Arts whose title is given as My China (1976-Present) on the gallery's website but -- and I don't think it's accidental nor a small matter -- My China, My Hong Kong on the South Island Art Day program.  Again, there was clear evidence of the differences that exist between Hong Kong and Mainland China at this second venue; including in the form of a photo taken at Tiananmen Square in the summer of 1989 which, as the man who took it noted, cannot be shown in Mainland China but can be openly displayed in Hong Kong.

 

Before I decided to call it a day in Wong Chuk Hang, I visited two other art galleries and one cluster of artist studios; all of which offered more -- and arguably better quality -- food and drinks than either Rossi & Rossi or Pékin Fine Arts, but also had far less interesting and impressive works on show within their spaces.  All in all, it got me thinking when exhibitors know their art isn't great, they try to make up for it -- and make their visitors happy -- with food and drink (including alcohol)!  And since they did try to be nice that way, I'll be nice in turn and not mention their names (but will note them down and not pay visits to these places the next time I go art gallery hopping in Wong Chuk Hang)!! ;b