china at The Observer's Log

Posts Tagged ‘china’

Four fun-filled days

8 Jul 2010

I sit here at my kitchen table, rubbing the weariness from my eyes. Not the things you’d normally hear from me, mind you — I haven’t been working too hard as of late (as you know, my big project is done). No, this is from something much better — spending time with my family, and notably you, Monkey.

The last four days have been a lot of fun. Maybe even too much fun. Both of us are pretty pooped. You went to bed and for the first time in a long while, there wasn’t hours of chatter from your room. I think you pretty much passed out. I won’t be too far behind you, I think, but I do wish to describe the fun that we’ve shared.

‘Cuz, frankly, I’m not sure how the heck I survived it all…

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My favourite trains (so far)

21 Nov 2009

I rarely remember my dreams. I have to wake up in the middle of them to remember what they were about, and quite often I’m so tired that by the time I can get my mental faculties together to try and remember the dream, I already forgot what it was. Which is probably good, since most of the dreams I remember make very little sense.

This morning’s dream was an exception. I was talking with someone I know (admittedly, can’t remember who it was) about trains. (Believe it or not, this is not an unknown conversation.) They asked me what my favourite train trips were, and I had said something like “whoa, that’s a tough one, let me think”. Then I started rhyming them off.

Oddly enough, that was about when I woke up … and I kept rhyming. So I figured, heck, that just sounds like a blog post!

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The IOC is living in a dream world

8 Aug 2008

As I was skipping through my various feeds this morning, I came across the following quote from Jacques Rogge, President of the IOC:

Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee, said the Games would “help the world to understand China, and it will also help China to understand the world.”

I think we need to send a team into the IOC’s fantasy world and extract them, because they’ve clearly (and totally) misunderstood the situation.

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Top 25 Trains

14 Jan 2008

The Society of International Railway Travelers just released their list of the Top 25 Trains in the world.

I really gotta remember to join this group.

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Things seen along the way

30 Jun 2005

As we”ve moved along over this journey, I”ve taken pictures of things for posting to the blog. Some of them didn”t make it, for one reason or another. But hating to waste good pictures, I thought I”d throw them into a blog posting for all to experience.

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A side-trip to Macau

13 Jun 2005

One last thing we needed to do before we leave the Hong Kong area was check out Hong Kong’s forgotten half-sister, Macau. Macau was founded a couple hundred years earlier than Hong Kong by the Portuguese, and was originally the heavy weight title holder of foreign trading port until the British dethroned it with, shall we say, some less-than gentlemanly behaviour to get their way (I refer to the events leading up to the Treaty of Nanking).

Getting from Hong Kong to Macau is a fairly simple process: you either go overland (through China, which we can’t do since we’ve officially left China and don’t have a multiple-entry visa), or you take a ferry. While Macau might be Hong Kong’s forgotten half-sister, they seem to have a pretty solid relationship, especially now since they’ve both returned to the stewardship of China. The ferry service is perfectly representative of this — they run every 15 minutes.

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Amy’s ready to kill me, I swear…

12 Jun 2005

I complain a lot.

Unintentionally, I swear, but I do.

(Amy says I like to complain, but I actually hate it. I don”t even realize I”m complaining until I complain. I complain to myself that I complain, and get stuck in a vicious cycle of complaint. But I digress…)

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The dim sum curse lifted

12 Jun 2005

The dim sum curse is lifted, finally! After a few days of trying to figure out where to go, we hit Hong Kong Island to see what we could find. Our concierge had recommended a place called “Luk Yu Teahouse”, which according to the Lonely Planet guide is full of surly staff. When we got there, it wasn’t even close to full — a sure sign of a not-so-good dim sum.

We tried another nearby restaurant that we’d spied a couple of days ago. Didn’t look any better. At this point, I was willing to walk 100 miles for good dim sum. We’d backed down twice on dim sum, going for something that looked decent, rather than what we’d really wanted. I wasn’t willing to back down a third time.

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Paddles up!

11 Jun 2005

For the record, we didn’t it plan it this way. But like many things on our trip, fortuitious circumstance happened to place us in Hong Kong on the first day of the Dragon Boat festival!

Having first tried dragon boating last year, I was curious to see how the Big Buoys (yes, bad joke) do it out here in Hong Kong, where the sport reigns. There are many differences from how I did it in Calgary last year, and what seems to happen here.

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Going uphill to Victoria Peak

11 Jun 2005

After meeting up with Amy, following our mutual attire sizings (and having a snack in a very Irish bar, oddly sitting amidst a lot of very Chinese surroundings), we took a ride up the Victora Peak Tram.

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