My playlist!

They are called: "Under byen" and they are from what I call my hometown in Denmark called "Århus".No, I don't know any of them personally because when I left Århus and Denmark 10 years ago, they probably still were teenagers, and even that I worked for a time in a Youth club in the evening hours, hosting young ambitious musicians, none of the members of this band frequented that club, at least I think.

Another funny thing; first time I heard about them was in 2003, I was living in Dresden in Germany, and we organized an international film workshop in a place called Grosshennersdorf, and had participants from 8 different European countries -among them Denmark- and one of the danish participants brought a CD with this band. One year later I actually saw them "Live" in a club in Dresden.
"Under byen" means something like: "beneath the city".

Dear diary...

...it is mainly all work at the moment. But I should not complain about that, just a little over one year ago I was complaining that I didn't work.
The ReD Door......is the place called where I work now, and it is kind of a digital workshop in an international school in Hong Kong. We are three "experts" working there and we have to support -and educate- students and teachers in using soft- and hardware, in the curriculum, and as you can see is it a room filled with lots of digital stuff. We even have a meeting table to plan the work. Normally it looks a bit empty and I was wondering what the silly plant did alone in the middle, until one day where we had one of our meetings and everyone turned up with their modern life "Diary's", then I realized; the plant got it own kind of "pot", and suddenly it also looked quite nice with the plant as center for all the open laptop lids.
I'm a TV and film guy, so I do the videoing stuff, and mainly in the last couple of months I've been producing film for and about the school, and I'm just about to finish a duple DVD set, containing the theater performance the school did in corporation with an Australian theater company.
The performance was "War of the worlds" and we filmed each performance with 3 cameras, so now we're going to release the DVD with all three shows and a 20 minutes "Making of".It's nice work doing this, although doing all the editing alone can make you feel a bit lonely. Sometimes there is students who dare enter the red door and start doing their own film stuff, but in fact it has been a bit less than I'd expected. But the reason is obvious; film work takes time and a lot of work. Some students have found their way to this digital playground called the "ReD Door".

Dai Pai Dong

The most visitors in Hong Kong knows these small open air kitchens or food stalls you meet on the journey through the streets of Hong Kong. Known as the Dai Pai Dongs are they the equivalent of the German "Schnell imbiss", the Danish "Pølse vogn" or "Grill bar", the English "Borger wan" or "Fish and chips".
These kitchens offers their cheap daily food to pedestrians and the variaty in their sortiment is quite big. Some of them has even foldable tables and chairs, but the mojority is just charaterized by the untidy atmosphere and then the distinctiv smell of fish sauce, and those who knows that, will know what I'm talking about, as you can smell it from a far distance, and once smelled, never forgotten as it smells like something you don't bring in connection with something to eat, but this sauce in fact add a delicious taste to the dishes. At the dai pai dongs you get offered nearly everything the Chinese people eats, and that is quite a lot and many visitors walk away with a certain look in their face.
Some of the eating places in the street has more a similarity with a restaurants, as they have windows and the food you buy is handed out to you in small plastic bowls and styrofoam containers.
Some of the very famous Hong Kong dishes from street vendors is the honey roasted Duck and pork, or the very delicious tasting BBQ pork. And you wont believed it, but these two cantonese specialities is being eaten cold, with boiled white rice and in garlic steamed Pak Choi (green vegestables). Enjoy your lunch>

Bands in my Itunes playlist.

I still haven't got an answer to the question if the band; The white stripes" in fact got the idea for their name from drinking draught beer, and watching the white stripes appearing at the side of the glass, from every sip they took, as I mentioned in my post from the 6th of January.

I especially like their relaxed approach to music, as it seems so natural for them to create great music with very simple effect means.

Photo of the day!

This is still images from some video footage I took on Wednesday the 18th of February, and doing the editing of this footage, this shot particularly stunned me, as it look's like something fake.
It is shot at the sports day for the primary school at the "Ma On Shan Sports ground", and the kid's are doing something called "Tunnel ball".
But I can assure you it isn't fake, it is the real thing and it kind of show's how Hong Kong and it's new cities is like.
I think the colours and the brightness of the images is amazing, and that not just because I took them -or it-, no that was all because of the location and the weather and the colours.

"A boat trip, a cake, a camera and a chorizo" flashbacks from a birthday! #2

I'm not playing pool that often. In fact nearly never even it is free in "the Duke of York" pub in Sai Kung. I can't even say that I go there seldom, quit the opposite, one could take the word "a regular" in the mouth. But then again, not regular enough to be a real regular, or maybe it's because I'm not British.



Craig & Jason made me sign us up on the blackboard to play that evening, among all the regulars on the list to play. I've seen those guys play, all skilled and cynical pool killers, so as I saw the list I put Craig's name first, then myself and then Jason so maybe I could be lucky to play one of them.
Craig though, turned out to be a killer himself, so he went up there and bet Caz, the australian shark, who was to take him on, so my plan pay'd back, and I had to play him.
I did what I could, but it wasn't good enough and I had to leave the table again after ten minutes of fame and attention from the hungry pool sharks who had watched our poor performance on the green velvet, and you could tell how they wanted to come on there, to show how pool should be played.
Then it was Jason against Craig. Craig won again, and then he was left alone with all the names on the blackboard. I think Craig did finish one more of though, but not long time later he again was at the table outside, and we could continue our conversation from before our names came up at this blackboard in "the Duke of York".
What that conversation was about I don't remember.
It must have gone for some time and Graham went to the table once again and manage to stay there for some games, I didn't go up there again and I guess that it will take some time before I'll do that, and I need some secret practice somewhere, I just don't know where that could be.
To be continued in: "A boat trip, a cake, a camera and a chorizo" flashbacks from a birthday! #3

Me Traktor, you Jane's Addiction!

I think I've heard the name of this band before, I even found them in my own Itunes playlist, but now they've really hit me too.

Good stuff.

It is no joke, it's for real!

A colleague from the United States showed me this, and I just have to share this, as it is just too awsome!


And the little fellows just live like that, isn't that just the strangest?

"A boat trip, a cake, a camera and a chorizo" -flashbacks from a birthday!

Valentines day is also my birthday, so it is always difficult to get a table somewhere if you want to go out to celebrate. So I organized a trip on a typical Chinese Sampan, or a tug boat of a kind. It could as well be seen as a kind of a tractor of the sea, in fact the sound is quite the same when it tugs of from the pier, with a deep humming sound.
We were ten people goimg om this trip, and we left Sai Kung at 1.30 PM. The trip would take us around the many islands just outs side in the bay of Sai Kung, and then for lunch at a restaurant on an island called High Island.
Last year at valentines day, we were freezing here in Tai Wan village, in fact whole Hong Kong was cold and humid and everybody said that this was not normal. This year it has been quite the opposite, 26 degrees, but very hazy and foggy on the day, but the weeks before has been really nice, warn and sunny; but everybody kept saying; "this is not normal".














So what is normal then for February, but maybe we have to wait to next year to find the answer to that question, as that will be the third February here we spend here, and then we maybe can start to think about what is the average February weather.
On this day the bay of Sai Kung looked pretty much like the Highlands of Scotland, with the haze covering the top of the hill's around, but the temperature didn't remind anyone of Scotland at all, as it was the mentioned 26 degrees. Here nobody really cared, there was plenty of ice to cool the beer and bubble wine, it was Saturday and the next hours was for nothing else than sit down, relax and enjoy the scenery we passed on the Sampan and the people who had agreed to spent these hours with us.










The first stop was a little island just outside Sai Kung -and in fact visible from our rooftop- called: Yim Tin Tsai. This Island is one of the many abandoned islands and villages in the new territories, but won the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Award in 2005 for the rehabilitation of the St. Joseph's Chapel, a former catholic chapel, and it's affiliated Ching Po School, on this island. The rest is abandoned and to walk through there is to visit a ghost town. In the houses is quite a lot of remedies from the former owners, just left in big piles on the floor, and some of the beds look like the people had to leave in a hurry, without time to take anything.













Stunned by the impressiones of the look into the houses of a complete abandoned village, we all found our way back to our Sampan boat, could continiue our journey around the big island of Kau Sai Chau, heading for the little floating community of Leung Shuen Wan -or High Island- and it's famours Sea food restaurants.














To be continued in: ""A boat trip, a cake, a camera and a chorizo" flashbacks from a birthday #2

Hiking Hong Kong

From the television we've heard about the cold and snowy weather in Europe. Here in Hong Kong is it nothing of that kind, here it is the opposite. It is the beginning of February and the temperature is around 21 to 23 degrees. Just behind our village we have the second highest peak; the Ma On Shan. So we went on a hike one Saturday to climb that mountain and enjoy the stunning view from up ther, which allows a view over the most of Hong Kong and the new territories, even to Shenzhen and the Chinese mainland.