Netherlands’ Shame

Published
by
cecilie
on February 6, 2010
in Injustice, Media, corruption and politics
. 6 Comments

In Amsterdam, the only brave man in Europe is on trial for speaking the truth about fascist ideology ISLAM. I let the brilliant Pat Condell condemn this trial more eloquently than I ever could (Condell has a series of anti-fascism statements on YouTube, all worth listening to):

Yes shame on the Netherlands. It’s quite incredible that something like this could happen in a country formerly regarded as the vanguard of the free countries in Europe. We should be thankful, once again, that we live in Hong Kong.

Enough Of This Selfishness

Published
by
cecilie
on February 3, 2010
in Beauty, Beer, Cantonese, Cards, Environment, Travel, food and language
. 0 Comments

I don’t want to have wonderful Guangdong province all to myself anymore. It’s too selfish! I’ve started a new service of funky, surreal TOURS.
No carbon footprint woes, no hassle, no need to learn Chinese (although you can) and no frisking for crotch bombs! Guangdong province: Your closest holiday destination. Why not start at Chinese New Year - the biggest ongoing party in China?

Tracking Tax Money … Creating Jobs … Part … ? Don’t Know. I’m Losing Track

Published
by
cecilie
on January 28, 2010
in Beauty, Environment, Government, Hong Kong, corruption and politics
. 4 Comments

Not long ago I was poking a little gentle fun at a certain fence.

I said - in jest, right? In jest, that a fence almost as tall as me was a weird thing to put around bushes, flowers and stuff that’s meant to beautify the place, because what it did was hiding everything in the beautifying spot. And it was made of plastic, that goes without saying.

Therefore imagine my joy yesterday when I walked past said beauty, or beautifying, spot, in a parking lot as it happens, to find it completely fenceless!

Apart from the inevitable sign complete with its own little roof saying this beautification spot was selflessly planted by the urban … yeah. some kind of department, I thought it looked not bad, now that we could actually see it again.
Alas, I spake too soon. This morning I saw the reason for the un-fencing, and it was that they (presumably the same people) are removing all the plants.

I naturally asked why, to be told: They are ugly! We will put new plants instead.

Hm. I’m not a plant expert but the old ones looked perfectly all right to me - green, standard HK government issue sitting out area kind of plants.

I’m only saying this in case you’re ever wondering what your tax money is spent on.

Thank God! Civil Engineers Rescuing Us From Nature Menace Again

Published
by
cecilie
on January 26, 2010
in Beauty, Environment, Eyesore, Government, Hong Kong, Newspaper, Pollution, corruption and politics
. 4 Comments

It has been touch and go for a while on Hong Kong’s so-called green lung Lantau Island. After pressure from some misguided, evidently brainwashed individuals, HK’s civil engineering, drainage, concrete, railing, transport and environmental protection etc. departments, were forced to plant bushes and trees, as well as some grass, on dangerous slopes along the South Lantau road, to cover - wait for it - CONCRETE!  a few years ago.

 

Naturally, this has irked all those gallant and hard-working engineers no end. How can anyone see the fruits of their incessant efforts to put food on the tables of engineers and create work for local company Yick Hing when it’s all covered up?

The whole of the South Lantau road would, by rights, have looked like this:

if it hadn’t been for the moans of those insane greenies, who rambled on about concreted hillsides being an “eyesore.” That’s right, they were talking about beautiful, pure, no-insect harbouring concrete.

Now that particular tide is thankfully turning. Only last week there was a complaint, yes, a complaint in the SCMP about rocks on Lamma Island being covered in concrete, with that misinformed moaner saying the rocks had been there “since the beginning of time.” What - he’s never heard of statistics?
If they’ve been there since the beginning of time, it can only mean that they will start not being there any moment.
And now the lunatic green fundamentalists are finally getting their comeuppance. Last week the engineers from the various departments, encouraged by their success on Lamma, started taking back the South Lantau road, restoring it to its former splendour.

Removing trees, shrubbery and other growths in which all sorts of animal and insect menace inevitably will lurk, engineers, assisted, as always, by tireless Yick Hing, have brought those rocks clinging precariously to the cliff-face out in daylight anew, and covered them in concrete - only in the nick of time. In only another
20 000 years those rocks would have moved several millimetres, leading to untold misery for motorists and other civilians.

Concrete. Your vanguard against nature.

Overcast and All Is Well

Published
by
cecilie
on January 25, 2010
in Beauty, Environment, Government, Hong Kong and food
. 5 Comments

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Nay, because in sleepy backwater Pui O, a “winter’s” day can be just as temperate and with more nuance. I was just thinking that when bovine hardman Max hove into view, eating his way through a large swathe of grass, throwing innocent shrubbery behind him.

I was thinking, how can they stand to eat all that bloody grass? But they probably have a good life, those water buffalo i Pui O. Enough grass, water to swim in, fights to be fought and poo to be reflectively dropped (Gardening enthusiasts - if you’re looking for good manure you should take a trip to Pui O; there’s enough ready dried manure here to last you a lifetime.) And all that without the spectre of the butcher’s knife on the other side.

The only enemies the water buffalo have are villagers and government officials, but as the latter so far just look at the buffalo as a nuisance and not as food, my horned friends should feel relatively safe. I said relatively.

Hong Kong Hangs On To Traditional Values

Published
by
cecilie
on January 24, 2010
in Beauty and Hong Kong
. 1 Comment

Love it. Love it. IFC2 (88 floors high) was built using only bamboo scaffolding. It’s a pity that such a traditional art as bamboo scaffolding leads to such awful buildings popping up everywhere like worms on a corpse, but: Got to love those agile, lightning-quick scaffolding-artists!

Them Boys Them Boys Them Cowboys

Published
by
cecilie
on January 22, 2010
in Beauty and language
. 3 Comments

In Chinese, calf, cow and ox are the same. Cow! Therefore what’s in English “Year of the Ox” is in Chinese just “cow year.” Year of the Rooster: Chicken year. Year of the Ram: Sheep year.

It’s funny how the English language must choose the male of the species to represent every year in Chinese astrology, when it’s nothing of the sort in Chinese, a sexist language if there ever was one.

Anyway, came across these delightful water cows this afternoon; they were training for future rights to have all the female cows to themselves. In mid-fight one of them started pissing and that was the sign: Straight back to nibbling leaves on trees as if nothing had happened. Yeah, we can learn something from them.

Depraved Teenager Gets What She Deserves

Published
by
cecilie
on January 21, 2010
in Injustice, Media, Newspaper and religion
. 5 Comments

Saudi court sentences 13 year old girl to 90 lashes (no, not eyelashes but being beaten with a whip by grown men in uniform) for - wait for it: Bringing her mobile to school. Wow. Justice prevails, eh?

That girl should count herself lucky. She could have been gang-raped by four policemen or something, which would have resulted in death by stoning - for her.

Saudi, lovely Saudi. This is the country western, so-called democratic countries are fawning over, inviting its leaders into their banquet halls and presidential palaces, hanging on its every word while it spews its oil-money into funding muslim terrorism around the world.

Even North Korea seems attractive compared to Saudi Arabia, but then it’s just a poor country with only the threat of nuclear weapons to back it up. The Saudis have all that lovely cash, that shiny, shiny oil. Yes, we certainly must respect those cultural values, admire that religion of peace.

These Suspicions … Where Do I Get Them From?

Published
by
cecilie
on January 20, 2010
in Environment, Eyesore, Government, Hong Kong, Injustice, Pollution, Uncategorized, corruption, politics and property
. 3 Comments

Hm. What’s going on? Walking around the great city of Hong Kong I see local people - about my height or shorter, weighing not very much, not bulging with insane muscles or dragging hundreds of kilos of excess flesh around. But, as usual, my eyes are lying. For it appears that Hong Kong people are huge, enormous mastodons one and all, and also worrisomely unsteady on their feet.

And aggressive? Why, they just can’t see for example a fence before they want to throw themselves on it and rip it to shreds. Or how else would you explain the photo above: This huge production has been going on in a tiny little stream in sleepy backwater Pui O for about eight months now. I thought there must be some major drainage works or laying of huge underwater cables to Cheung Chau or beyond - (yes I know CLP did that five years ago but they are always digging up the same bit of road so why not lay the same cable?) however yesterday I found out from a worker that it has all been to exchange this type of railing:

with this concrete wall:

“It’s for safety!” the worker, amazingly working for local triad construction company Yick Hing, added helpfully. Of course. The government must have been panic-stricken at the danger to all those lives walking on that road, feeling compelled to throw themselves onto that flimsy metal railing only as thick as my arm and at least two years old, and blasting through it, crashing to a certain watery death.

Only good old reliable concrete can save those gigantic fence-tearing maniacs from an untimely demise. That must be why workers from the same company and at the last minute are now also replacing the railings on this death trap:

with concrete. When I asked the workers why they were removing these railings, they said they were “broken.” Really? Risking my life for investigative journalism I shook all four parts of the railing. Nothing. Then I threw myself on them with a not inconsiderable force. Not a millimetre of budging.

This raises the interesting question: Is our government now psychic, on top of all its other admirable qualities? Can it predict that in some unforeseeable future, for example the day after I don’t see any signs of a length of railing being broken, that it will be?

Or could it be that all the destruction work, concreting, digging up the same bit of road, putting up of ludicrous, unnecessary railing, cutting down of trees, dumping of construction waste, useless so-called improvement work and the relentless march to turn Pui O and the rest of Lantau into Tsuen Mun is because this government is so damned corrupt, pouring unlimited money into the pockets of the same two corrupt local construction companies?

Don’t know, really. It’s hard to tell.

Groovy Guangdong

Published
by
cecilie
on January 19, 2010
in Beauty, Cantonese, Cards, China, Dudes, Media and Travel
. 0 Comments

Another thrilling and surreal weekend in the great hinterland, this time in a place I’d never been, Yengdak (Yingde), a little under four hours’ train trip from Shenzhen.

I travelled with P, a tall Australian man whom people, unfortunately but not unexpectedly, mistook for my husband. He certainly knows how to say “He’s my cousin! Spread it around!” in Cantonese now, as this became my war cry since the little town held an unusually high percentage of China Drool (Beautiful Dudes.)

Here’s the lobby of the best (and only?) hotel in town, the Conch. Normal rooms: 360 yuan. Suites: 480. Last Saturday was an auspicious day to get married, and the hotel was crawling with drunk wedding guests, one of whom came running towards us, gripped our hands and shook them while he went on about how he loved foreigners. All deep purple face, dark brown teeth and with a cloud of bai jiu (Chinese rice wine) wafting about him, he pulled me to him and kissed me. And don’t you think he jumped up on P and started kissing him too. Talk about good omen!

You could easily cross the town on foot in a few hours, and everywhere was covered in a red carpet of fire cracker debris because of the aforementioned weddings. We started worrying that the whole town would be busy at wedding parties so there would be no night life, but not only was the biggest, best (and only?) club in town right in our own hotel, it was also full of beautiful dudes and ‘hostesses.”

But I have to say, if you’ve come to the Conch Club for the good conversation, you may want to look elsewhere. All conversation had to be written down as the thundering drums and bass tore through your cortex like a team of insane combine harvesters and settled in your spine where they proceeded to shake all your moorings loose. We thought we were saved when this guy came and invited us to a private party upstairs because his wife had seen us on the train where I had commented favourably on her good looking baby (son, naturally) and come to the conclusion that we were “kind people.”

She was now at home guarding the baby while her husband was out trying to pick up women wife had spotted earlier … a new form of modern living? It turned out the private party, full of whores, was even louder than the club because of the inevitable karaoke. But free!


As well as having fantastic hovelage (picturesque hovels), rivers, canals and lakes, the town was also full of greenery in the shape of little patches of vegetable plots spread all over the town and in the most built-up areas. And most of all: Instead of little insect-like, underbite-sporting, nasty little yappy dogs that you just want to stomp on, Yengdak is full of real-sized, well kept, friendly dogs who, like their owners, love foreigners and like nothing better than jumping up and kissing them.

Uber-town! Groovy! Guangdong - your closest holiday destination!