Dresden - Hong Kong

How to tease your dog.

2012-01-15T20:23:00.000+08:00

I just got this one, and I just have to share this with you.

Friday the 13th and more random stuff!

2012-01-13T10:38:00.004+08:00

Got to be something happening today, as it is Friday the 13^th,isn’t it?

Not that I can say that I am the most superstitious personin the world, but there is always something about the 13^th andespecially when it is a Friday.

For us, there will be something special happening today.

Friends we haven’t seen for about 5 years is at this minutein Hong Kong, and therefore we are going to meet up later in the afternoon forthe magical Margarita Therapy, offered by the “Agave” restaurant in Wan Chai.

Dec is the guy here on the right side, writing a greeting to us on our wedding night.

Last time we saw each other must have been on the night ofmy farewell party in Dresden, sometime in July 2007, so there will be a lot tocatch up on, so maybe it is understandable that I am excited and a bitimpatient at how the hours are dragging along endlessly.

Maybe after the reunion, I can even man my self up to a weepost here, but on the other hand, who is interested in seeing pictures andreading the minutes of two old friends reunion at an obscure location in WanChai in Hong Kong.

And now to something completely different: North Korea.

Yes, North Korea. That country has a special attraction tome, like I want to go there and see for my self, how it is there.

I’ve been reading and watching a lot of stuff about and fromthere and also been listening to one of my students –from South Korea- and hisdescription of the place and relationship between the north and the south.

And still I am amazed by it, and curious. I even get more curiouswhen I look at Google Earth and zoom into the north. Try it, it is amazing aswhen you see it together with South Korea, you realize that only onedestination is named in the North: Pyongyang, the capitol. No other cities orrivers or any other thing that is categorized and equipped with a name in everyother country in the world. And even as you get closer and closer, you getnothing else than the country with its cities, mountains, rivers and roads,like the way you in reality would see it from far up there where the spyingcameras for years has provided us with these images of our planets surface;without any names.

Now I have to get back to this student of mine, who Imentioned just before. He showed me yet another film made by a tourist who’dhad the possibility to visit the country and to film there. Have a look yourself, and read the comments he got to this video.

I will not comment any thing else, just let the film do itsown work.

Pyongyang Style

Click on the link up here. As the interface for blogspot.com has changed, it isn't possible to embed videos from other services than YouTube -or at least I haven't found out how.

"Something nice"

2012-01-11T16:40:00.001+08:00

Happy New Year.

That is something nice to say to people when you meet them for the first time after the New Year has started.

Basically it is nice to say something nice every day, but often we just don't do it -enough. Then someone get's an idea and put up something in public, and suddenly people cannot stop saying things in public.

This blog provider has changed the interface, and I have to get accustomed to this new way of doing everything, but it will slowly get there.

Phnom Penh calling!

2011-12-31T11:48:00.001+08:00

The very last day of 2011. Are at Phnom Penh airport withJohn Denver’s evergreen; “Leaving on an Airplane“ playing on my mental mp3device.

I am leaving on an airplane, leaving Cambodia and finishingof this years Christmas adventure in Cambodia.

Have been here since the 21^st of December andhave visited the place that more and more seems to be our chosen Christmas home;the city of Kampot, located south in the country and with access to the gulf ofThailand and to the jungles and mountains towards Vietnam.

Cambodia has so much to offer visitors who are not afraid togo out exploring on their own in the rural countryside, and we are filled withgood and exciting experiences from our little Christmas trip.

Well, maybe I will manage to upload some of the best photosfrom there and also leave some small stories about life and habits in this nicedeveloping country squeezed in between Vietnam and Thailand.

Happy New Year to everyone when ever it is your turn as the clockof the globe ticks down.

Today is for education!

2011-11-23T16:20:00.001+08:00

How to make the news for TV?
That is just what I try to teach and explain every day, and then I found this high quality example on the video sharing platform some days ago.
I think you deserve to see and learn as well.

I do excuse some parts of the language used in this news clip, but there is no way I can change that.

Music clip of the 22nd 11enth.

2011-11-22T12:53:00.003+08:00

"OK go" from Chicago, Illinois. Never heard of them, until today.

How did they make it to the music clip of the 22nd 11enth then?

Well, working with young people gives you a lot of impulses and inspiration, and this was one of those kinds of thing happening.

Some of the students are working on a film from the swimming gala a while back, and then we were talking about music and then searching for some inspiration on that major video sharing platform you know, you can find on this internet.

The music is all right, but that is not why I've chosen to put this up. No, I put it up because of the videos and the amazing choreography in them, and that it is all done in one shot, in one take so to speak.

It is a very cool concept and so full of fantasy and surprises and I wonder how much time they must have been rehearsing and how many takes they had to go through, to make it all come out like it did.

Enough of talking, enjoy.

They even do different video versions of the same song, here exemplified by the song: "This Too Shall Pass".

Again the one shot strategy and some planing and timing.

and then it gets even more weird and nerdy, but very entertaining.

Bali Blog.

2011-11-17T09:15:00.002+08:00

Since the last post, my routines has for sure changed. At this moment I'm sitting at a beach hotel in Seminyak on the southwest coast of the Indonesian island Bali. But this is also a change of routine from the previous four days. Since we -me, a colleague and 13 young students- arrived in Bali on the 12th, we have been living on an organic farm on the northeast part of Bali. The farm was run by one family, who has decided to go completely organic and offer room to visitors who would like to experience the traditional Balinese farming life. The farm was placed between the rice paddy fields in a rural district and only accessible by foot over narrow pathways between the rice fields.
At the farm we were sleeping in small typical stilt cabins, which during daytime was open to all sides, and at night time got closed by rolling bamboo curtains. There were some electric plugs there, but no internet. For the students this was maybe the biggest challenge and even bigger than the one cold shower and the one not flushing toilet, which furthermore also was with out a roof and placed quite central not far from the small houses where we all slept, ate and spend the time when we were not doing hard manual labor in the fields.
To be honest, I was quite nervous myself how I would adapt to this environment, and I was certainly thinking how the students would adapt. Coming from the highly developed and quite sterile world of Hong Kong, where every possible facility to ease human life is available, and where facebook is a more natural mean of communication than the face to face dialog, I for sure had my doubts and was just waiting for the mutiny to start. To this fear came the real hard labor we were doing under a merciless burning sun. We were digging holes in the ground and planting banana trees. 33 was the number. And not that we were only digging the holes, we were as well digging out compost behind the pigs and the cows stables, transporting it in buckets and sacks to fill into the holes around the new banana trees.
But no mutiny came. The students stood the distance and also helped each other keeping up the spirit and a positive atmosphere and work ethic. Best of all, they came to me in the evening and said how much they enjoyed their opportunity to try out this kind of life., and even when the task for the next day was announced -turning a plain grass field into flower beds to growing carrots- there was no angry response or any argument, that this was to hard and they would not do it.

Sorry, but I have the next task on in a few minutes, so I have to stop for now. We have to go to the beach for 3 hours of hard surfing.

It is Friday the 11th of the 11th and tomorrow is the 12th of the 11th. And so what?

2011-11-11T18:34:00.001+08:00

Bali Blog.

It is Friday again and that is nice, no mistake about that, but this Friday has been a bit weird and so awful busy.

It is now 20 minutes past 6 in the evening, and I am still sitting here at the school while some of my film students are filming at a kind of music carnival. It will go on until about 8 PM I think. Then after that I have to get home and sort out some clothes for the coming week. Just some shorts and t-shirts, underpants, flip-flops, some old shoes I wouldn’t mind to loose, and some other light stuff. This has to go into my bag pack, and then next morning at 6:30 I will be heading to the airport to catch a plane for yet another work trip.

This time I will join a colleague and 13 of the young year 12 students on a trip to Bali. We are going to spend about 8 days there, and will be working on an organic farm in the north of the island, but will as well get some time at a surf school at the beaches in the south.

We will be blogging from there and from the other destinations in Southeast Asia, where our year 12students are working on different projects in the week to come.

If interested the link is here:

http://casweek.rchk.edu.hk

What a hard life it is!

It's Friday!

2011-11-04T08:06:00.001+08:00

Todays little youTube!

2011-11-03T16:05:00.002+08:00

It is a film from my own backyard -or is it front-garden?
Unfortunately it wasn't me who made this little film about peoples wishes and visions.
It is a nice and positive little document from a very busy and crowded area; Mong Kok.

Go and animate!

2011-11-03T14:24:00.002+08:00

Go online and sign on to Goanimate.com. This is an online tool which claims that you can make animations, and that it is easy and fantastic.

As it is my job to try to find new ways and tools for education, I tried to knock on that door and got the acceptance to step in and develop my own little animation.

At GoAnimate, you get some templates to work with, like a set of different locations and some different figures as actors.Then you just have to type in a sort of a dialog and then after 2 minutes -says the introduction- you can publish your own super animation.
Well, all of that isn't quite right. It takes way longer and you have to hope that not a lot of other students or teachers have the same idea at the same time, coz then it is a killer.
I managed to make a wee 12seconds animation about some pool balls talking, and as I hit the button saying publish it was with a slightly uneasy feeling. It all just sounded too good to be true; "create an animation in two minutes?"

And it was too good to be true. After having shown the progress indicator saying "publishing" for about an hour, the computer I was working at, lost the connection to the internet and I had to start all over again.

I did and managed to kind of recreate the little film, and this time it was successful saved and published.

If you feel like it you might be able to watch the wee film here.

GoAnimate4Schools.com: Talking numbers by Jorgen Mortensen

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate4Schools. It's free and fun!

Old style LP Cover Design of the day!

2011-11-01T16:06:00.002+08:00

That is just so embarrassing right now. Here I tell you that it is the old style LP cover of the day, and then it turns out that it is a CD released in 2009.

I thought it must have been older as I saw it, as it reminded me of the comic with the "Fabulous Freak Brothers".

So here is a little taste of of it then.

"Poor Old Dirt Farmer".

Music of the day!

2011-10-31T11:27:00.003+08:00

The last day of October and we need some music.

At their concert here in Hong Kong in August, Red Hot Chili Peppers didn't disappoint any by playing this old song as one of the extras.

Weird Music clip of the day:

In the late 90ies, Bjørk was one of my absolute favorites, and I remember sitting late at night at a friends house watching MTV and wondering what on earth was going on in this video.
Today I am more experienced, but I still have no clue.
But it look nice.

Far east in -on Okinawa?

2011-10-20T21:26:00.002+08:00

Helloooo.
Or should it be aloooo.
Cant really tell but we are somewhere far out in the ocean east of china.
We`re in- or on- Okinawa island.
Since this summer where our holiday trip had to move house,　Okinawa was one of the destinations we wanted to visit, but could`nt coz the time limit of the move and holiday, but who can get everything right?
So now i`ts autumn and we`ve got visitors again, they are always in it for some new experiences, so now it was finally the time for visiting those islands.
Now we are 4 days into the visit, but I cannot show any pictures yet. I only want to tell you that there might be a chance for some photos - and stories- later, when we are back and have some more relaxed time.
I would seriously like to be more relaxed when writing on this blog when travelling, but it always seems to be a hazel to my travel partners, and therefor to my self, coz who wants to be left out being boring, or worse: `no you are not writing this one on the blog`!
If the next post is in Danish or German, you should know why?
By the way: the islands around Okinawa is just stunning.

Happy Birthday China!

2011-10-01T13:37:00.006+08:00

Guilin in Guangxi Province.

Today is Chinas Birthday. The first of October 1949, Chairman Mao Zedong proclaimed the Peoples Republic of China.

In Hong Kong this will be celebrated with a big party with a huge fireworks at Victoria Harbour at 8 PM.

I doubt we will be going to see that though. Imagine more than 1 million people trying to get there and get a spot with a good view.

We’ve done this before, once from a restaurant just at the waterfront, and once on a Party Junk direct on the water in that very same Victoria Harbour.

Instead to celebrate this Birthday, I decided to post some pictures from some of our travels to “the mainland”, as it is called here in the “Special Administrable Region” of Hong Kong.

No doubt that there are many issues about China that can be discussed and things that should be improved, but one thing I would like to mention; travelling in and through this huge nation is exciting and there is one thing to mention, one thing where China as a travel destination beats the most of the Western countries; It is still a very safe place to travel.

Lijiang, Yunnan Province.

Dali, Yunnan Province.

Longsheng Rice Terraces, Guangxi Province.

Lijiang, Yunnan Province.

Dalian, Liaoning Province.

Xiamen,Fujian Province.

The Great Wall, Beijing.

Qingdao, Shandong Province.

Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province.

Yanji, Jilin Province.

Harbin, Heilongjiang Province.

Poetry in the time of online tools.

2011-09-28T17:15:00.003+08:00

Once I've said that I never known any software or application that in it self could create art or some sort suggestive narrative.
Then I did try a new experiment today using googles online translation.
I'd written some sort of neo punk cross trash poetry in Danish.
That I fed into the translator and let in turn it into some form of English. Then back to Danish and then yet another turn to English. A third generation online translation, a translation without any reflective effort to transfer a desired meaning from one language to another.

Anyway I kind of like the brutality of the words and the way odd pictures invades my mind, out of nowhere other than a cold electron brain.

Here it is, I call it:

Through patches to survive
I breathe, exhausted
striped
anchored.
The stench from a store boot
breathing resistance
and hidden under a filtered tenderloin
background light is green.
discomfort
when I can again be a man?

Angry young man?

"You do not get it, do you?"

Variability is ready substitutes.
Nix of confusion Lies
tubers clusters with the wording and dissonance
scratchy
a fanfare of pride
Cut along the fence
and deprived of the awareness of our daily bread
hands sew earwigs in butter with wire.
Sweat!
Yes, I sweat.

Eventually, it was winter again

But strangely half and hollow
to see fresh snow transform into an Jesper Klein on the accelerator in the chest freezer.
A wood chipper
a murmur,
pointers car flips and cook,
words, which grows
believe my word on Thor, so great.

A combined hedgehog part of jellyfish arthritis and splat them off
Windshield wiper just could not take it anymore, man
And bread -
"Did you really broke?"
"Yes!"
"What do you eat?"

"No, dammit, what I mean is whole lot collapsed!"

Audio Visuals of the day. Category Music Video.

2011-09-10T08:00:00.005+08:00

Trying not to repeat my self I stumbled over a kind of philosophical problem. By titling this post; "Audio Visuals of the day", I kind of limited myself from possible posting any more Videos or music today, didn't I? So the only thing to do was to create categories for Audio Visuals. It is a hard ship to be a blogger, right?

The music today is from New Zealand, and again inspired from my good colleague Mr. Dufty. Yes that is the "kiwi' one who sits right next to me -on the right side- in the office, and who always has either music bumping out of the loudspeakers or the noise of some obscure Rugby Union game. Both mostly to origin from down there, on the other side where the national symbol -a bird without wings- is named after a fruit, and there is more sheep than anything else.
Except fresh air.

One of the good things by working in an international environment is, that you get to know so many new things that you might never had encountered without, like for example this band; "The Datsuns". Get to know more by clicking here, or there I mean, click on the name.

Great song and video -audio visual- but I seriously do excuse the bad language, but think this is as well one of the characteristics of those "kiwies", the use of bad and foul language.

Election in North Korea.

2011-09-06T16:46:00.002+08:00

I found this interesting and fairly well research blog about the secret nation of North Korea.

Why on earth do I want to put a link to a blog with that subject here? Because North Korea has always fascinated me because it is so isolated and therefor sort of unique in this world of conformism. Not coz I would like to live there, but a visit there would not be rejected from my side.

North Korea Blog.

Coming soon to a screen near you.

2011-08-25T11:04:00.004+08:00

David Fincher is one of my absolute favorite directors ever. Since his debut with Alien 3 in the beginning of the 90ties, I have watched all of his following films, and seldom I have been disappointed.

His next film is out soon, and that is the US remake of Stig Larsons international bestseller "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo".

Enjoy the trailer here today.

Awesome music, explicit dynamic editing, extreme talented; David Fincher.

In comparison the trailer from the Danish - Swedish version from back in 2008, which wasn't bad either, in fact it was a real good movie and I can only ask myself the question, why Americans always have to make their own version of successful european movies?

Correction.

2011-08-25T10:33:00.002+08:00

The other day I posted a clip as being a trailer presenting the new Tin Tin movie, or rather I posted what I -wrongly- thought was the trailer for new Tin Tin movie.

Well as you for sure has realized; it wasn't.

What I posted was a teaser for the video-game coming out together with that new Tin Tin movie.

So now I want to correct this and present the real movie trailer.

I am sorry for any inconvenience caused by this mistake.

Comics as movies!

2011-08-24T17:32:00.002+08:00

It seem to be a kind of trend that famous directors now turn their attention towards the old comics to get inspiration or new stuff for their films.

Yesterday it was about Spielberg and his view on Tin Tin, today it is Tarentino and how he has grabbed the 60ties comic icon "Modesty Blaise" and turned a film out of it.

Here is the trailer for that, but with no date of world wide distribution.

In the 60ties was another attempt to abduct Modesty Blaise to the big screen, and for me the whole look and the style from back then seem to fit more close to the comic and the style created by the author Peter O'Donnell.

Dagens musical flashback!

2011-08-24T17:29:00.002+08:00

One of the absolute greatest ballades of the 70ties.

Advertising!

2011-08-23T16:57:00.002+08:00

Yes it is a bit odd, but I do choose to bring this advert here on the blog.

If a movie trailer is advertising, which I guess it is, isn't it?

Anyway. In December 2011 Steven Spielberg and Peter Jacksons version of Tin Tin's adventures will be launched, and I am waiting in excitement. Nearly like back 30 some years, when it was library day at our little village school, and every one wanted to be the first in the library to secure a couple of the Tin Tin comics for him or her self. Or the excitement on a Friday afternoon after school, when the danish television had an about two hour program for children, and part of that was the animated adventures of Tin Tin. Awesome and great entertainment. And then now again this winter, a new era of Tin Tin.

Enjoy.

Music clip from back then...

2011-08-23T09:10:00.004+08:00

From my colleague next to me I can hear Black Sabbath coming out of his speakers. Oh yeah, those good times back then. And I think Ozzy will say the same, even he might be more famous now with reality shows and s....

By the way: "S..." means SUCH and not what you thought first.

This one is just the classic Black Sabbath isn't it.

The video is awesome. The only thing I can say is; "please do not move, it is hard for the cameraman to operate and move those big cameras they used back then.

Notes from a house moving experience

2011-08-20T08:23:00.003+08:00

My good friend Mr. Dufty told me that change is always good. He can be right, but there is always so much work related with the kind of change, which came to our lives on the 25^th of June.

On the 9^th of August. Our house was all packed up and put into boxes and stabled meter high in the living room.

There was only a couple of small things left to do before the removal guys would come the next day.

Left in the kitchen were some small plates, some cutlery, a toaster and the water cooker. As I got out of the bed that morning, I found Catriona in the kitchen trying to boil some eggs for our breakfast in the water cooker.

I couldn’t stop giggling, but had to ask why she didn’t use the toaster so we could get fried eggs.

Later the same day, I had to go to the new address to met some folks from IKEA who was due to come to set up the bunch of things we’d bought.

The former occupant had moved out 4 days before and we’d been there to take over the keys and settle the lease contract with the agent and the owner. The house had been cleaned, but needless to say, I found some dirt along the wall where a cable hider had been mounted. The only thing I could find to clean that up was some antiseptic tissues I had in my bag and a paintbrush I found left in a plastic bag in the Japanese shed on the roof top, so I found myself on my knees on the floor, cleaning old dust away with that before the new furniture could be installed.

Later that evening we traveled to the Hong Kong Asia Arena and enjoyed the opening of The Red Hot Chili Peppers new world tour.

A great concert was the event that settled our last night in Tai Wan Village.

Solutions and numbers!

2011-08-20T08:09:00.004+08:00

My brother is a clever man. Again he could knack the Quiz about the Japanese sign posted recently.
Though he suggested it was the logo of a removal company, he was only partly right. The right answer is that the logo is from delivery company. But I guess that removal or delivery company is so similar so it counts. My brother has won a breakfast in our house, when he come to visit.
Yesterday I found the visitor counter on this number down here, and I just wonder who was the number 16.000.

If it was you, please let me know.

Getting online again.

2011-08-18T16:48:00.003+08:00

Here is the first impression for you of the new view from our balcony and rooftop.
I know that it is pretty much the same like from the old place, even we are a bit further away from the water and at a different angel. Before we were facing east mainly, now it is mainly south.
Anyway, tonight the internet and telephone provider will come to our house, so I hope that our services will be relocated by later this evening, so I finally can work from home again.
Let's see.

Another view

2011-08-17T16:21:00.003+08:00

Now it is a fact. We have not only got another view on the outside world, we have got a new house to live in.
Last week we got packed all the boxes and practically filled the whole living room with all our stuff.Wednesday the 10th at 9 in the morning, 8 guys from a removal company showed up at our old address and that was the end - or culmination - of a long and annoying task that had started on the 25th of June, on the first day of our summer holiday. Yes, that was the day our landlord showed his greed in a meeting we had with him about a renewal of our lease.
He demanded an rent increase of 45 %, and because we wouldn't accept that, the first 2 weeks of the holiday was spent on house hunting.
That was not an easy task, as all lease prizes has gone up rapidly in the last 6 months here in Hong Kong, and I guess that was also the ignition that started the greed to rise in our -former- landlord.
What we saw of houses in those two weeks that was on the market for the budget we were willing to pay, was for sure depressing and I will not even start to describe it. Only can I say that some nights when we finally got home from the hunt, we were absolutely depressed and disillusioned.
We were even ready to move away from the area we have been living in for the last 4 years and which we really like, but a lot of other people like it as well, and that is also a reason for the expensive rent.
Anyway to cut this short. We had an amazing lucky stroke after the first week, and now we have moved into a similar house as the one we had before, with a rooftop and a view -even it is not quite as nice, it is still a view and it is still nice. It is a bit similar to the former one as it is the same bay we are looking at now, just from another angle.
I promise to post a photo of that view soon. First of all I have to take one -photo- and second we have to have our internet and telephone sorted, but that will hopefully all be done by the coming week-end.
What I can do though, is to show a picture of the kitchen, we've kind of managed to put together from various items , found in a range of different shops and on top of that, a picture of my first cocked breakfast in that place.
Did I eventually mention that we got that place for the same amount as we've paid the last four years. That is the best thing that came out of all the stress.

Quiz of the day!

2011-08-04T03:18:00.003+08:00

Guess what kind of company this sign stands for?

Music of the day!

2011-07-31T16:28:00.002+08:00

"Pretty Fly" by The Offspring

And then the same song covered by the amazing band from Helsinki "The Leningrad Cowboys".

Japanese diary. Vol. 2 "Breakfast, Osaka".

2011-07-31T16:17:00.004+08:00

Got woken up at 8 am by a gentle knock on the door.

The first thing on my mind; “Where am I?”

I found myself on a futon on the floor, lights coming from a narrow gab between the curtain and the window frame, and then it knocked once more, this time a bit more persistent.

Oh yeah, now I got it, I’m in a hotel in Osaka, Japan and yesterday evening we’d ordered Japanese breakfast in the room at 8.

I got up, threw on my shorts from where I’d stepped out of them on the floor next to the futon the evening before and managed to get to the door without stepping on Catriona, who had dug herself deep under the duvet, on her futon on the floor just next to mine.

Outside the door I was meet by a bowing Japanese lady standing in front of a push wagon containing 3 different trays with a number of black plastic bowls, small and big. She mumbled away in Japanese and entered our room while balancing one of the trays –also without stepping on Catriona, who still was covered up under the duvet- and then placed the tray on the low table in the room. Still speaking away in Japanese she went to collect the next two trays, which she also arranged on the table. Then she left walking backwards, still bowing and talking, towards the door and left.

Now Catrionas face peeped out from underneath her cover and it was obvious that the smell from the trays on the table was gently dragging her out by her nose, and soon we sat there, on the floor at a low table in a Japanese style room, ready to try a Japanese version of breakfast.

What was it then?

Well, first of all there was a big bowl of plain rice, some Miso soup, slices of grilled salmon, some white imitated fishcakes, omelette roles, different kinds of pickled vegetables and a marinated salted plum. And of course, a pot of tea.

That was a really good start to a long day, spent walking around the streets in the Osaka city center.

Japanese diary. Vol. 1. Osaka

2011-07-28T13:52:00.003+08:00

The first impression of Japan was in Osaka as it was the first stop on the Japan 2011 tour.

Being the 3^rd biggest city in Japan, here the impression of the crowdedness of the large Japanese cities was evident.

After getting installed in our hotel in the southern center of the city –a typical Japanese room, a ryokan, with rattan on the floor, a low table and two futon’s rolled out on the floor- we headed out to investigate the closest neighbourhood and find a bite to eat.

The difference from the crowdedness we know from Hong Kong was obvious. Hong Kong has less space for much more people, which forces the buildings in the air, here in Japans 3^rd largest city, they seem to have more space so the buildings were much lower and laid out in small narrow streets. But like in Hong Kong, the major roads and train tracks were constructed like elevated bridges over –and between- the houses.

On street level the traffic was much less so that pedestrians and bicycles had an easy time in the narrow lanes. My first thought was, that it reminded me a lot of Holland, with small cramped houses and loads of bicycles zigzagging in and out between pedestrians and cars.

It was nice just stroll through those narrow streets and breath in how the life went by in an Osakan neighbourhood. Loads of small restaurants, eateries and bars were in the area around the hotel, and all over there were people going in and out. Outside the eateries there were written menus, but these didn’t help us much as they were mainly in Japanese. What did help were the big displays many of the eateries had in their windows, of the different dishes made of plastic. In that way the hungry visitor can visualize the dish they might feel like eating. For me these plastic “sculptures” of food had the exact opposite effect, and was rather repulsive.

Maybe it was the large number of options or was it rather our insecurity about this whole new experience that made us rather too indecisive to go anywhere of the places, but ended up in a little inn, that served typical “Osaka” octopus balls.

After that we literally hit the floor.

We need some music!

2011-07-26T16:06:00.001+08:00

Bad Religion: "Sorrow"

First pictures from Japan!

2011-07-26T10:12:00.004+08:00

Back in Hongkers and trying to get our heads sorted after the Japan experience and forward to the house move which will have to take place in about 2 weeks.
Here the first little treat. The Mortensens in Kyoto.
And one of the amazing "Shinkansen" bullet trains -we called it "the duck train"- we'd been using a lot in the last weeks. A terrific means of transportation, which took us with over 300 km/h from city to city in Japan.
Osaka - Fukouka - Nagasaki - Hiroshima - Kyoto and back to Osaka. In between we used other trains on smaller lines to smaller cities, but that has to wait for a little bit, now we are starving and there is nothing in our house, so we have to face it and leave to town to find some food.

Our last hours of Japan

2011-07-24T21:40:00.004+08:00

We are back in Osaka, it is the last evening of this years summer trip. Our Friend Kimiko has come from Kyoto to say goodbye to us and take us to a sushi restaurant just close to the hotel, thank you for that Kimko.

It has been a very nice experience to travel around in Japan and just now I feel a bit sad that it is over for now, but anyway, for us in Hong Kong Japan is not far away and we can always come back to explore more.
For others who wants to visit Japan on a trip, the best advice I can give is to apply for the Japan Rail Pass. This gives you unlimited access to most of the Japanese rail system, and to the fantastic "Shinkansen" trains, which connects most of the major cities.
They are comfortable and very fast, about 300 km an hour. When I get home I will post the link where you can apply. Only visitors living abroad can apply and get this train pass and you need to show your visiting visa stamp in your passports to get it at the station.
The prize can seem overwhelming when you see it for the first time, but I can assure you; it is worth it.
There will be more when I am back home, first I have to digest the best sushi experience I have ever had.

Japan 2011

2011-07-21T08:12:00.003+08:00

Good morning everybody. Are currently in Kyoto in Japan on Holiday but will be back in Hongkers on Monday the 25th of July. It has been a kind of stress full start to our summer holiday this year. As we finally got the holiday, we had a meeting with our landlord about extending the lease on the house where we'd lived for the past 4 years. I didn't turn out that good, he wanted a 45 percent rise on the rent. 45 percent! We offered him a 25 percent rise, even that was also a lot, but he was persistent - that greedy man - on the 45 percent, so we declined and suddenly found us in the situation that we had to find a new place to live before we could go on holiday.
Thank god that we'd been a bit lazy and hadn't booked the trip yet, and so we spend the first holiday week on house hunting. And as it was looking the most desperate, we got a lucky stroke and found a place not that far away from where we are now, the same kind of apartment with a roof top and a view onto the water, and the best thing; to the same rent as we have been paying for the last 4 years.
With that settled, we could start concentrating on the summer trip to Japan.

3 boys trip to Yunnan tour 2011. Vol. 1.5

2011-05-17T19:32:00.008+08:00

Albrecht has never been to Mainland China before, so he was very excited.

I have and I like it, but I feel that I need to go a lot more and need to learn the language.

The third one in our little boy’s tour group, Greame who is a colleague of mine and Albrecht’s English teacher, has been there quite a lot, he even lived there for numerous years in different parts, and yet he is from Australia, he speaks and reads Putonghua –or mandarin- nearly like a home grown Chinese person. And this fact can make a visit to China so much more prosperous.

Us three boys started our Yunnan tour in the Capitol, Kunming

That this trip was to be Yunnan was kind of my fault because I have always wanted to go to Kunming.

Why?

Sorry but I really cannot tell why.

In fact I do not know for sure why, maybe it had some romantic reason, that I thought that in the rural south west of China, I could find some of those mental pictures which is hidden somewhere deep in side my mind, like the images I saw for me as a child when my mother told me about China for the first time.

Maybe it has to do with Tea., as Yunnan is one of the major producers of Tea in China, and always when we go to our local Tea Shop, all the best Tea Cakes comes from Yunnan.

Anyway I do not know why, but the opportunity came this year as we have young Albrecht living with us. He has never been to China and Catriona wanted to go home to Scotland to visit family, so I decided that I would take Albrecht on his first China mainland experience, and in that case, one place is as good as another, right?

So I kind of made the decision:

“Hey Albrecht, at the Easter break we’re going to Yunnan”.

“Where is that?”

“In China!”

“Is it close to Beijing, I would like to go to Beijing?”

At this point I had to play it a little bit tactical, as I’ve been to Beijing –it was nice, certainly- but I didn’t want to go there again, not this time, I wanted to go to Yunnan because I’ve never been there.

So the tactical manoeuvres started.

“Beijing is nice, but it is not like the real China, it is the capital and therefore a lot different, more like big and international and not so, hmm, Chinese, I guess.”

I could see on Albrecht’s expression that the tactics had done the trick.

“But I would really like to go to Beijing!”

“I guess that you will get the opportunity at a later time.

Yunnan is in the southwest part of china with borders to Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar to the south and Tibet and the majestic Himalaya Mountains due west.

The Capitol, Kunming, was an important location for airline traffic in the early years and especially after World War 2, when civilian aviation was growing and more and more far east destinations became reachable for flights from the old world. After the jump over the mighty Himalayas the planes needed a rest, or more correct, to be refuelled for the next leg of the journey, and this was in Kunming. “The Hump” it was called back then and this expression is still to be fund in various places and descriptions in and about Kunming, and it is the name of a very nice and friendly youth hostel in the centre of the city.

Though we didn’t stay at this Hostel, it became a sort of base for us, the time we stayed in Kunming. Not because we could meet other travellers or eat western inspired food there, no, it was because of a formidable rooftop terrace with the most stunning view to the city centre.

That they also did serve a pretty good coffee and wasn’t fussy about you hanging around for a couple of hours on the rooftop, either to relax or just killing time waiting for train- or airline departure, makes The Hump a place to visit, should it happen that some of you readers plan a visit to Kunming.

Next time a bit about city feeling in Kunming and th beginning of our trip further west towards the cities Dali and Lijiang, and you can meet this fellar and a couple more like him.

Back to base!

2011-04-27T09:00:00.001+08:00

This easter mainland trip is about to end. After a week of touring a bit around the Yunnan province, we are back to the starting point, Kunming. Sitting at the good and nice rooftop at the Hump Youth hostel in the center, all the images of the past week are flashing through my mind.

We just arrived back at Kunming this morning on the over night train from Dali. It was a pleasant way of travelling. Over night trains in China is a good and cheap alternative to spending nights in hotels and you get somewhere else doing it. Some times the trains is too full and crowded, but there is always a bunk for you to sleep. This train though, was not full at all, and so we had the 6 bed compartment to our selves.

Now it is just about killing the time until the flight will take us back home, to Hong Kong.

I guess I then have to make some effort and upload some photos from the last week, as it has been a really good experience, and we've been out in the rural country side, visited villages and places where the real and true life of Chinese peasants could be observed.

So stay tuned for that.

The Mainland

2011-04-19T13:09:00.002+08:00

Holiday. We are of to the mainland for 8 days of rest and adventure. We, are Albi and myself. WifeX has left to visit family in Scotland, so this is going to be a boys day out.
Hope to be able to post some small notices as we get along.
See you soon.

Originals and Covers!

2011-03-22T14:49:00.002+08:00

Once again it has been my brother who has thought about the paraphrase I posted last time, and this time he was absolutely right with the answer.

It is The Beatles and the album is Abby Road and was released in 1971.

So thank you to him for participating and congratulation, he has won!

But what is it that he has won?

What can you in fact win in this online competition?

To be completely frank with you, then it was never my intention to promise any prices in this competition, but he gave me an idea himself in a e-mail he send me recently.

So here it is; the “Prize” you can be rewarded to, if someone (other than my brother) ever is going to reply to this competition, then you can win the right to suggest a cover song, and I will post it as part of the cover song series on this blog. Because this was what Henrik did in his e-mail. He suggested that I should put up Kate Bush “Running up that Hill” and compare it with a cover by the Dutch Gothic Band “Within Temptation”.

Yeah, and why not?

Kate Bush:

Within Temptation:

Then it is that I want to add another cover of this song, and this one is my personal favourite.

Placebo:

&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;

Paraphrase of the day #2

2011-03-14T14:29:00.001+08:00

Wow how great it is to be back, not!

I have had a kind digital recreation in Yangshou China after the Apple Education Summit in Singapore.

After being some kind of connected to the world wide web nearly every day since Christmas, it was good again to be disconnected that and instead connected to the nature and the environment around.

But now it has to do with the "Paraphrase of the day" question I posted a while ago. Not that I have forgot all about it, no I just let it take some time and hoped that somebody would try it out. But not really, again it was only my brother who noticed and gave it a go. Good on you Henrik, but you are wrong, it is not a painting by Rembrandt.

The Painting I had in mind is painted by James Abbott McNeill Whistler and is a portrait of the artists mother and called: "Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist's Mother" and is painted in 1871.

I know it is a very paraphrased paraphrase and that it is lacking many of the details, but on the other hand it is a paraphrase.

And so is the new task for you guys out there, or maybe mainly to my brother again. Today I am not trying to do a paraphrase of a more or less famous painting. Today I've decided to do a paraphrase to a more or less famous Album Cover!

So here it is, who made the Cover you can find paraphrased at the top of this post, what is the Album called and when is it released.

Out of the office!

2011-03-07T11:25:00.004+08:00

Came home from Singapore at 1 in the morning, and now I am going to the airport once again for another business travel -if you can say that when it is an educational travel.
I am heading north to Yangshou in China, where I am going to spend a week doing some education outside the classroom. 47 students will join me and two of my colleagues for this week of hiking and other stuf you can do up there.
I was there in October with Cat, Hazel and Rickey, but what ever; it is always a nice place to go.
Two worlds in 24 hours.

Singapore Sling!

2011-03-06T10:40:00.004+08:00

When Ngiam Tong Boon felt bored one day in 1915 and invented the cocktail now known as "The Singapore Sling", he probably didn't know what it really was, he had invented and how this would be the kind of attraction it actually turned out to be for the "Long Bar" at famous "Raffles" Hotel in Singapore.
For me this story, and the Singapore Sling it self, was one of the only things I knew about Singapore -apart from the fact that it should be one of the worlds cleanest Cities, with a harsh policy towards littering and chewing gum- and to go to Raffles Hotel and enjoy one of those drinks was "the" thing, I wanted to do when visiting Singapore.
As I got there I realized that I was not the only one with that idea, and here we are coming to what I said at the beginning, that Ngiam Tong Boon didn't know what it was he invented back in 1915.
The bar at this old and well established Hotel was absolutely packed with visitors, and in front of ALL of them on the tables were; Yes right, a tall Poco Grande cocktail glass containing some red fluid; "The Singapore Sling".
So imagine this; this bar is open 7 days a week, it might not be packed to all times, but in the evening I guess that it is packed for the most of the time, and all of these people come there to drink at least one Sling at a price -yes picture this- 20 Euros, for one drink.
It is not that big, it taste amazingly good and is easy to sling down, just as a tasty fruit juice, so the turn over is huge in that place as well. So once again; imagine that there is about 200 people in that bar, all of them having a Sling, take the photo, down it and out they go checking the "done that list", and the new visitor takes over the table and the whole thing repeat it self again.
I were there with 4 friends and we spent maybe 25 minutes in there and then we were out again.
So the turn over could be about 400 people an hour, so 400 red drinks goes over the bar every hour and the 20 euros times 400 goes the other way to the cashier, that is amazingly 8000 euros an hour.
What a money machine, and that is what I think he didn't know, that guy who was a bit bored back in 1915.

Singapore Online!

2011-03-05T08:47:00.003+08:00

Good morning Singapore.
I am at School Of Arts Singapore at an Apple Educator conference. It is early in the morning and there is a lot of networking going on around me at the moment. Networking in double meaning. There is a wireless network here so all Apple Educators can be online, and there is the "other network" going on as well; people walk around and actually talk to each other -well some of them, not me at the moment, as I am reporting to you guys.
There will come a better and longer report from Singapore later when this conference is over, and you will see Singapore sling at Raffles Hotel, and maybe get a sight of an old friend I haven't seen for a long time.

Of to the keynote.

Traktor blogs!

2011-03-01T11:51:00.000+08:00

Your Favorite Tractor | AGWEB.com

Music of the day!

2011-02-22T09:37:00.002+08:00

Radiohead is back with what is called a locomotive of an album!

2 years after Thom Yorke announced albums as being "dead", the 5 schoolmates from Oxford is back with a new release. But again, as with their last release in 2007 " In Rainbows", you can only download this digital album form either www.radiohead,com or www.kingoflimps.com.

Here a little preview of what might be up -or in- there, in cyberspace.

Paraphrase of the day!

2011-02-21T14:36:00.003+08:00

A famous painting inspired me to this photo. Can you tell me which painting it is, who painted it and who does is portray?

Thank you to my good colleague Mr. Dufty, who posted as a model for this paraphrase.

If you have any clue, please leave a little Comment.

The Famous City Derbies.

2011-02-17T14:24:00.002+08:00

At this coming week-end there will be yet another of the famous football Derbies in Glasgow, Scotland; the tense and thrilling "Old Firm"game between Glasgow Rangers and Celtic Glasgow.

This scottish derby is one of the most intense and classic in the modern Football world.

But it is not the only city derby that literally can & for sure will divide the city for the day it is on.

Yesterday in evening in Hamburg, Germany there was another derby, and this between Hamburger Sports Verein and the the much smaller club from Hamburgs "Reeperbahn" district; ST. Pauli.

HSV is here the more success full club, and the only club in Germany which has never been relegated, or played in a lower division or league, than the "Bundes Liga".

ST. Pauli though has. They have been up and down like they were clerks in an old fashioned lift some where in the financial district, but although the club is riding up and down through 3 divisions, their fans has never lost their devotion to "their" club.

If you do not know the result from yesterday, I can tell you that the smaller of the two won it, and that for the first time since 1977.

Viva ST.Pauli.

If you go down and look in my list of links I've lined up further down on the right, you will also find a link to ST. Pauli.

In Buenos Aires, Argentina, you can find another of the worlds famous and classic "Derbies".

"Boca Juniors" against "River Plate".

Look at this fine little documentary from the BBC, and you will know a bit more.

Should that be funny?

2011-02-17T11:03:00.005+08:00

I realize that I have have put some links to other web sites further down on the right side at this blog.

One of them is called something like : "Danish Humor, not political correct".

Maybe you've seen one of these sketches at one point, or maybe not?

It is two younger danish guy's, who has kind of invented a Danish version of the fabulous

American cartoon Artist Gary Larson , who got most famous for the "Far Side Gallery".

Every day a new strip appears on this site in English, so if you need more I can just suggest that you log on and go explore some of their strips. If you are not too lazy Click here! or you can go down and find the link on the right side.

If you consider your self as an intellectual type and want to know some background information, you can click here and READ some stuff about them.

One of my favorites the last weeks is this one.

One of my favorites Gary Larson strips is this one with the cows:

Crispy crackling for the Rabbit.

2011-02-13T21:39:00.004+08:00

It happens at about the same time every year and it is one of the events I start looking forward to from around Christmas time and onwards, until it happens. It is never on a fixed date as it alternates and has something to do with the lunar calendar and the influence of football devotion on some Sai Kung fishermen.

This year this event happened Wednesday the 9th of February. I was not prepared for tt to happen as soon as it did this year. Normally it is always at the first trainings after the Chinese New Year holiday, but as the good football team “Sai Kung Yacht” has become, let us say, less constant and not as frequently as at the beginning when I joined, which is now about three years ago.

But as always in this new era of the team, I got a SMS or an e-mail from captain and manager Perry, telling me whet ever the training was on the following Wednesday or not. I received that notification from him on Monday afternoon, saying that the event was on at 6 PM and then the game would start at 7 PM.

I was thrilled and excited and also a bit surprised, as I’d not expected it to be that quick after the holiday. On that day I hurried home from work at about 4:30 to be able to be at Sai Kung Sports Ground at 6 PM. First I had to get to our house to change from the professional job related clothing to the more relaxed and sport related football outfit. There was just time to bring some close to the dry cleaner before I found my way to the sports ground.

The set up there was a bit like I had expected. Captain Perry and a couple other players were already there, mocking around preparing the stage for the main character of the evening. That main character isn’t really a character as such, not like Perry, our captain or anyone else from the team, no that special guest isn’t there to be there for a long time, it is just there to show of a bit and then get eaten.

It is part of a Chinese ritual at the lunar New Year, and it to welcome and celebrate the new coming year and to get even with the ghosts and spirits, so they will bless the team in the following year. Incense and fake money gets burned by all team members, good Chinese schnapps get pored out on the ground and apples and oranges and then the special guest gets lined up as an offer of appreciation. But not for long, soon a big knife gets tucked into the back of that little special one and cuts it into bits and pieces for us all to eat.

And then we all play some football with greasy fingers.

It is the evolution, baby!

2011-02-11T11:51:00.002+08:00

What an awesome animation to a great song.

What disturbing images and horrible content.

Unfortunately is the reality.

Albrecht's new world!

2011-02-10T21:03:00.002+08:00

It is about to become normal now, having a “son” in the house that is. Going from two till three has meant some changes in the Mortensens household. New routines and a different kind of work flow. So far it is working very well, and I think all three involved benefits of the new experiences. Albrecht has now created his own blog where he is giving his own account of his meeting with this diverse million metropolis, known as Hong Kong.

The link you can find here, but I have to say that it is in German, but it also has a lot of nice pictures, and these can be viewed and enjoyed by anyone.

That doesn't maen that he will be neglected on this blog though, when he deserves it, he can still be mentioned in a post every now and then.

Poetry for February!

2011-02-10T14:22:00.005+08:00

New Farm Tractor

SNUB nose, the guts of twenty mules are in your cylinders and transmission.

The rear axles hold the kick of twenty Missouri jackasses.

It is in the records of the patent office and the ads there is twenty horse power pull here.

The farm boy says hello to you instead of twenty mules—he sings to you instead of ten span of mules.

A bucket of oil and a can of grease is your hay and oats.

Rain proof and fool proof they stable you anywhere in the fields with the stars for a roof.

I carve a team of long ear mules on the steering wheel—it’s good-by now to leather reins and the songs of the old

mule skinners.

Poem by Carl Sandburg

(1878 - 1967 USA)

Picture in picture!

2011-02-07T20:03:00.002+08:00

There must be a way to kind of disguise the fact that I just want to show some good music here sometimes. Often I just find some cover versions and act like this is something great, or I can try to take the approach of being professional, and use the music clips as kind of examples, showing different techniques in the video editing. Like today where I will show you the picture in picture effect.
This technique can be used to show different actions taking place simultaneously. This effect is as old as the video media it self and has been used in many years. I have found some good songs to show you some very creative ways to use this video effect.

This is a very clever way of using the picture in picture effect. It looks easy and spontanously done, but is has maybe been more difficult to do than a traditional music clip.

Books.

2011-02-02T15:45:00.004+08:00

This is the week where we can rejoice the second New Years celebration in less than two months. One month ago, it was the first week in 2011. Again on this coming Thursday we can celebrate yet another New Year Party, and we will be the in first week of the year of the Rabbit. This means that this day will be the last day in the year of the Tiger, which is my sign on its way out.

There should be some decisive events happening to you when your year is up, and in these last days, I guess I’ll be wondering what has happened to me this past year. Just as a little comparison to what happened last time at the year of the Tiger, 12 years ago. It was 1998. That year I turned 36, left Denmark and went to Spain to study for a semester. And I never again came back to live in Denmark. In Spain I found a reason to go to Dresden, and so on it goes.
So obviously I was very excited one year ago when we were about too enter the year of the Tiger, because I was wondering what on earth could happen to me this “Tiger” year? If nothing serious will take place the next two days, I think I can conclude that this has been an astonishing eventless “Tiger Year” for the Tiger himself.

One thing I know that has been happening a lot in the past year is that I have read quite a lot of books. Without exaggeration I think that the amount of books I’d chewed myself through in the Tiger year, by far outnumbers the amount of books I’ve read the last 12 years, if not even beyond that.
The trigger for this was Stieg Larson and the dragon tattoo girl trilogy, and as I’d finished those I felt like some kind of vacuum and a kind of abstinence for the thrill of a good night time story. As Stieg Larson died even before these books came out and turned into bestsellers, left him out of the loop for a continuous bed table supply of entertainment.

I read some other books, and yes, they were OK, but not in the same complete addictive way. My brother wrote to me in an e-mail that in Skandinavia, there were other very skillful writers like Hening Mankell, Jo Nesbø, Håkan Nesser etc.
In the summer holiday I’d brought a brick of a book by Ian Rankin, but the long light summer nights in northern Europe and my addiction for a good story, didn’t leave that one last long enough for the whole extent of our trip, so when we arrived in Aberdeen in Scotland, it didn’t take long before I found myself wandering the book shops there, exploring the bookshelfs on my hunt for the next story fix. I ended up in the section with the letter “N” Two names there infiltrated my mind. They were next to each other on the shelf. Jo Nesbø from Norway and Håkan Nesser from Sweden. After reading the summary on the backside I made my decision. A Swedish writer yet again: Håkan Nesser. Two books went into my bag, and later in the house of Catrionas sister, when Catriona was playing with her niece and left me to occupy my own time, I snuggled up somewhere and fell into his universe of murder and betrayal.

Håkan Nesser is a good writer, but yet didn’t quite get up there where Stieg Larson had left me. After finishing the first of the two books –“The Minds Eye”- I knew that I had to go on the hunt again. At the time we’d arrived in Denmark, so I went to a Bookshop in Horsens to have a look. This time I went straight for the Norwegian writer; Jo Nesbø. There were a whole lot of his books, so I just picked one out, turned it around to read on the back. Something about a police officer hiding in Hong Kong after some devastating experiences in a former case back in Oslo, but someone gets send out to lure him back as even more devastating events had happened and they needed his skills once again.
Sounded good and familiar because of the Hong Kong connection, and of course as I were in Denmark, it was in Danish. Also a good thing for me, taken in consideration that I do not very often find books, here where I live, in my first language.

After returning back home after the holiday, I swallowed the about 700 pages in about a weeks time, and got hooked again. This time not because of an anorectic girl with a dragon tattoo, this time it was a huge Norwegian police detective, who has as much trouble living his own life, as he has with the murders he is set out to catch. I was hooked again, and knew that there was more of the same stuff out there, but could I find it in the bookshops here in Hong Kong? Jo Nesbø and his series about the troubled policeman; “Harry Hole” is now a bestselling author world wide, and I found his books in English in Aberdeen, so why not here in Hong Kong.

I found some the first time I went to one of the big bookstores here. Two of the titles were there; I bought them and felt happy. The two titles I found was number 3 and 5 in the series, and the first one –the one I bought in Denmark- is the 7th and the last one so far. The problem is that there is a kind of continuity in the books and there are always some cross-references to previous events, and so I some times feel a bit left out, as there has been something happening before, what I don’t know about.

Now I have gone into the habit of always checking the major bookstores when I’m around. On that way I’ve found another couple, first it was number 6, and in Laos this Christmas I found number 4 in a secondhand bookshop, and the funny thing was that it was in Danish. I read it before we even came back.
Then here at the beginning of January, when I was out showing Albrecht around in Central, I just wanted to check a tiny bookstore, and there found book number two. This will be my fix for the holiday and when that is finished, I only need to find the first one, and then I’m through the merits of Harry Hole. As the first one I read was the last one, it is only logical that the last one I read, has to be the first one.
Check Jo Nesbø and Harry Hole out here.

Utopia!

2011-02-01T13:49:00.003+08:00

I guess everybody dream about a visit to Utopia or even better, they would like that the world is like that so they could live there.
But why is this so that the word or the thought of Utopia has this effect on people, what is Utopia exactly?If you ask me, I’ll just say out of my free interpretation and subconscious farmer knowledge or belief, that it is a beautiful place somewhere in the nature, and somewhere where everything is in harmony, where pleasure has conquered hardship and struggle. It a place where you can lay around on soft cushions to enjoy the view out on the riverbanks by a lazy river submersed by sunshine. Utopia is a location where people of different nationalities will mix up without any racial loathing. It is where someone will bring you one nice cocktail after another, and should you feel a bit of hunger, food would be delivered with the next cocktail.
People there feel alive and in no hurry to get anywhere or rushing to get anything done, they will have no immediate obligations, only relaxation and pleasure.
Say’s my naive peasant wisdom, just so, out of the blue.
“Utopist” is what the socio intellectuals would say to that and continue by adding, that there is no such place, and that just the thought of it is; -yes, “utopia”.
To that I can say: “I have been there” and it was just a little month ago or so, this Christmas (that just was), and Utopia exists and that it is in Laos, in Luang Prabang and if you no one will believe what I’m telling, I can provide some photographic evidence here.

Originals and Covers!

2011-02-01T08:58:00.005+08:00

It is the week of the Chinese New Year celebrations. Every body is on their holiday.

The school is (nearly) empty, only me and one of my colleagues are at the office today, looking at each other. No students and no teachers around, so here is fairly quiet and to be honest; not much to do.

off cause I can always work on some editing, trying to get a bit into some of those theater performances from last week. But then again why should I, it is a job the students should do, they want it to be filmed, they need some practice in editing, so here you go. I will think of something else I could do for now.

What about some music?

Good songs are good songs, whenever, however and whoever!

Any similarities between these two videos?

Both start with a shot, containing a car.

And what do you think about this one. From back then in my own teen time.

Well, I can't really say that the "Bay City Rollers" had such a big star in my music universe at the time, I knew them and listened to them when the hit parade was on the radio, but thought -as I can recall seeing this again- that their outfits was kind of silly. But again: who could know that I was going to meet and get married to a Scottish woman and furthermore; be wearing a Kilt at my own wedding?

Flashback: "The day I was a tree and a toilet". Chapter 2.

2011-01-23T21:21:00.004+08:00

8 o’clock in the morning we were set to meet at the Children’s Library. It was a foggy morning in Luang Prabang. The temperature was pleasant, yet a bit chilly in the early hours. Close to our hotel we found a little eatery for a bit of breakfast.
Laos has very good bread and coffee. That might be some reminiscence from the French influence in the country, and so a typical Laotian breakfast, is a baguette like sandwich with some kind of pork meat pate. None of us had that though at this morning, I had a sandwich with bacon, eggs, horseradish, some shredded carrots and a nice dressing, and Catriona had an omelette as I recall.
We were the first to arrive at the Library, where Chantha, the manager showed us around while waiting for the rest of the party. As they had arrived the box with the books and we were loaded onto the back of a tuk tuk.. 10 minutes later the tuk tuk arrived at the Mekong riverbank.
A huge number of different sized boats were anchored side by side. At the improvised bamboo pier a little boat was lying waiting for us to embark. That was the Library Boat and the captain and a smiling female teacher was welcoming us onboard.
Along the walls of the boat -if you can say that- there were books placed in holders, so when the Library boat came to one of the small villages along the river, the children and their teachers could get on board and read.
Apart from us, Chantha the manager, the female teacher –which name I cannot remember- and then a young volunteer called “Gow”, were onboard and our captain sat the course up the river towards the little village school, somewhere up there, which was going to receive the box of books.
A stunning ride lay ahead of us up the mighty Mekong river, and we had a pleasant time either watching the wilderness along the banks of the river or to chat or read in the books for the Laotian pupils, the ones that was in English, that is. The young man joining us, tried in his best English to explain where we were going, and tried to teach us some simple phrases in Lao. The fog was still hanging over the trees at the banks, and made the view to the hills and mountains further back, like a dreamy opening of a adventure movie. After some time the fog just disappeared, like when you snap with your finger and then the sun was shining from a clear blue sky.

After about one and a half hour we were approaching the village on the left riverbank. Gow was on the phone, I guess to tell that we were approaching and to ask where the boat could anchor up. Suddenly we saw this little army of children running through the bushes in the dense jungle, and down to the sandbanks at the river, where they lined up to have a look at the visitors.
As we stood in front of them, they were all lined up in perfect rows yelling a Laotian greeting simultaneously.
Then the funniest thing happened when we introduced our self, all of them repeated exactly what we’d said, like: “Hello, my name is Jørgen, or Bob or Catriona, Yvonne or Larissa”, and again all in chorus from thirty something small voices.
The female teacher –which name I still can’t remember and the young man told some stories and told why we were there and what we’d brought for them, and all of this happened on the riverbank. The sun had meanwhile gained in strength, or to say it in another way; it had become pretty hot, and out there on the river bank, with no real shade, we could feel it, so the children was told to walk into the shade of some bushes, and while they were sitting there, Gow, the young volunteer and the female –what was her name again- started to tell a story, using some hand puppets and some props like a cardboard tree and a cardboard toilet building, both placed on sticks. I then volunteered to hold them as the backdrop of the story, which presumably had something to do with normal hygiene using the toilet, and something I guess they need to bring to the children in the most remote and rural parts of Laos, embedded in a funny little puppet theater story.
So that was why a had to act like a tree and a toilet at the riverbanks of the Mekong River on Christmas evenings day 2010.

Good stuff from the 80ties gets better in the 00ies!

2011-01-22T18:37:00.002+08:00

Gary Numan, one of the synthesizer musicians from the 80ties meets up with Trent Reznor at a concert in London in 2009.
Here the original from back then, and how it turns out when he joins Nine Inch Nails some 20 something years later.

On stage with Nine Inch Nails!

2011-01-21T16:32:00.001+08:00

Could sound like some musicians dream, to be on stage with Nine Inch Nails. Here you can try out how it is to be a rock star at a huge concert.

Albrechts Cooking School. Vol. 1

2011-01-19T18:56:00.002+08:00

The good thing about getting a “son” aged 16, is that you can start teaching some cooking skills right away. I mean when he is so matured, that he wants to go so far away from home for 6 months, to live with the two of us who has absolutely no experience in parenting, then he must be grown up enough to start cooking for him self –and us.
Albrecht stated that he couldn’t cook. So he got a cookery book –Asian Cuisine- and had to choose a dish he –and I- would make for dinner, as the first lesson in the art of cooking.

His choice fell on this receipt:

Chiang Mai Noodle.

Preparing time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 15 minutes
Serves 4

500 g Hokkien noodles (or what ever)
1 tablespoon oil (peanut oil is the best as the wok gets pretty hot)
3 red Asian shallots, chopped
6 garlic cloves, chopped
2 teaspoons of chopped red chilies
2 teaspoons of red curry paste (from a glass)
350 g of chicken or pork meat in thin slices
1 carrot cut into Julienne (thin sticks)
2 tablespoons of fish sauce (from Asian grocery)
2 teaspoons brown sugar
3 spring onions, chopped
Chopped fresh coriander

1. Boil the noodles in boiling water 2 to 3 minutes, drain and keep warm.
Heat the oil in a wok. Add shallots, garlic, chilies and curry paste and simmer for 2minutes while stirring.
2. Add the meat to the wok and fry untill it changes colour.
Add the carrot sticks, the fish sauce and sugar and bring it to a boil, keep stiring.
3. Mix the noodles to the meat and add the spring onions as garnish, simmer for 1 minute and serve on plates with the chopped fresh coriander on top.

Good job "son".

Flashback: "The day I was a tree and a toilet"!

2011-01-19T14:44:00.004+08:00

Chapter one.

I guess that many will agree on this one; Christmas evening’s day can be pretty predictable in terms of what is going to happen. Here I do not think about what could be inside the wrapping paper around the foreseeable Christmas presents tucked away under the unavoidable Christmas tree in the obvious Christmas decorated living room.
This is needless to say that this is when you come from a certain culture, and a culture where this Christmas thing is something and important.
For the writer of this Blog Christmas evening’s day –last year it is already- turned out this way.

We’d arrived in the city of Luang Prabang in Northern Laos on the 23rd of December by bus from Vientiane.Friends of ours -Bob, Yvonne and Larissa, who was also touring in Laos and Cambodia- had arrived the day before us, and had not surprisingly explored the city and the surroundings a bit. When we arrived I had a txt message on my phone to call them at their hotel, for the reason that they had an idea, what we could do on Christmas evening’s day.

Here I need to make a little excursion in the story, and go back one month in time, to tell something related to our work at an International School here in Hong Kong, and show a video.
The students in year 12, has to do something called CAS week. That means that they will take some action including Creativity, Activity and Service, That can be done in many specific ways, such as going to for example Laos and Cambodia to help an organisation called “Schools to Schools”, with their work setting up and supporting schools.
In November a group students and two teachers went to exactly Luang Prabang to help and sponsor a project there called ‘Library Boats”. These boats is a typical Mekong river boat, equipped with books and designated to go up the Mekong river to remote villages hidden in the jungle, and where they do not have normal access to books and or other educational material.

A group of students went to Laos to help and support the Library boat in Luang Prabang.

From this trip we got to know this noticeable project, and naturally this was in our mind when we decided to go to Luang Prabang.

Now in the story we're back in Laos at Christmas time last year, and we'd arrived in Luang Prabang, and the text message from our friends.
So when I called the hotel where our friends was living to get to know what the idea for Christmas evening’s day was, I was not so surprised of their suggestion for the next day.

They had already been to the library and talked to the manager. Obviously she could remember the work our students had done one month previously, so we were welcome. We decided to sponsor some books, some pens and notebooks and some balls and other toys. So the deal was that we should meet at the Library early in the morning, to go with the Library boat up the river to a little school in a village, which had not yet had the visit of the Library boat, and there we could hand over the book gift our-selves.

From two to three!

2011-01-09T10:23:00.004+08:00

Why is this blog called: "Dresden - Hong Kong"?
Well, a long time ago both members of this strain of the Mortensen family -the rest is still somewhere in the Danish landscape and the other part in Scotland and England - lived in this nice town in eastern Germany. When we left Dresden to seek new adventures here in Hong Kong, my colleagues from work sat up this blog so i could tell how life turned out, here far more east than the Polish border. That is why it is called :"Dresden - Hong Kong".
As you also can make out when reading the older post, is that we have hosted some friends from Dresden here in the new "heimat", so the connection Dresden - Hong Kong is also in that way maintained.
And then now this connection has come to meet it's biggest challenge ever!
For the next 6 month we will be 3 people here in the house in Tai Wan village, as we are hosting a 16 year old teenager from Dresden. He is going to study at our school and be living in our with us, so it will be a kind of like having a teenager son, but not having him from he was a baby.
I think we are all a bit excited how this is going to work out for him here with us and at the school.

Music Videos of the Day: "Pictures of Matchstick Men"

2011-01-03T14:55:00.002+08:00

I've been on the hunt again for good cover versions of great songs.

The original from 1968 with a very young adaption of the Jeans look Rock-band Status Quo, and then the some what underrated US band; "Camper Van Beethoven".

And here the real thing from 1968. I just love the hair!

Happy New Year and welcome twenty eleven!

2011-01-01T12:22:00.002+08:00

Twenty - ten has matured to become twenty- eleven. Still in Laos in the capital Vientiane. From Luang Prabang to Vientiane is 420 kilometers. Normally not that much of a distance, but here in Laos, where the infra structure still is very basic, it is. 12 hours and about 4257 curves later you find yourself at the Nothers Bus Station in Vientiane. A bit groggy from a night of turning and turning around in the bus seat to try to find the most, or the least uncomfortable way to sit, or what ever you will call the attempts of wretching the long european legs in between your own seat, and the seat infront,where the passenger there, had bend it as long back as possible, in her attempt to be comfortable, and sleep so the hours would go faster. Not.
The space between those seats in the V.I.P special Airconditioned bus was for sure not designed to suit tall people, but they were kind of not suitable to smaller people either, so there I was with both legs stretched out in the aisle, with my upper body dangeling around in the beat of the movements on the road A 13 up and down the curves on the mountain sides in nothern Laos.
Enough of complaining. All in all it was worth it, the bus ride I mean. But now I know that the next time we visit Laos, I will try to find smaller distances to travel by bus, to break up the journey. It is a place worth visiting. It is rual and overgrown with jungle through the mountanious landscape. The roads are mainly in very poor condition and the few of them which is considered as the mainroads. can be compared with the single track roads in the scottish highlands, with the exception, that on these roads in Scotland, you will meet no heavy trucks or hourly tourists busses, running in both directions.
At this moment we are just killing time at our last destination on this Christmas trip.
We will fly out at 3 Pm to Hanoi, wait there for 4 hours, before the last leg back home, to Hong Kong.

Sabai Dee from Laos.

2010-12-26T21:33:00.002+08:00

"Sabai dee" means hello in Lao, and you can hear that all the time when you meet people on the street and where ever else. We are now in Luang Prabang in the north of Laos, and has been here for 3 days. It is a nice place and I've been surprised how calm and relaxed it is, when thinking of how many people is coming here. Maybe it is because the city is big ebnough to digest them all, even it is a small town of only about 25.000 inhabitants. More I think is has to do with the locals, as they do not excess the fact that many people come to visit. It is all very calm and the city is spread over a very large area, so it kinds of absorb all the visitors.
It is a stunning beuatiful town on a tiny tongue of land between two rivers, and the fact that it is a former royal capitol, can explain the many extreme fine and nice houses in french colonial style, which dominates the oldest part of town. Most of these are nowadays turned into Guest houses, hotels and restaurants, but nayway in a very modest form.
The trip here from the new capitol- Vientiane, where we arrived on the 19th - was long and hard, about 12 hours on a bus, on busy dusty roads at first, and then over some mountains on very narrow roads, where the bus had to fight with steep passes and a load of huge trucks on the way down. It is a hard trip and you only want to do it once -if you can avoid it.
But now we are here we do not regret it, only thinking that the next time we will fly into Luang Prabang and leave Vientiane out of the schedule, because it isn't really worth it.
It has just been Christmas and we celebrated it this way:
Freinds of ours who also came here before us, had arranged a trip with the local "Libraryboat" to a little village two hours by boat up the Mekong river. The library is a charity organisation, and you can sponsor books and learning material to the small schools in the villages. We sponsored some books and pencils, and went with the library boat to the village to hand these over. On the beach we were met by the whole school and their teacher. First they sang a greeting to us, then we got to talk to them and we did some language games before we could hand over these small gifts. But for them it meant a lot to get some pens and a scetch book each, and some reading books for their class. This was the oddest Christmas eve day in my life, but worth it for the response and the over 30 smiling faces.

Merry Christmas

2010-12-19T14:02:00.003+08:00

This is going to be the last Hong Kong post in twenty ten. Next post will be from the peoples republic of Laos. We are at gate 47 at Hong Kong International Airport and waiting for our flight out. First stop Hanoi and then an hour later we board for Vientiane in Laos.
We will spend all Christhmas in Laos and at Christmas eve and Christhmas day we will be in the former Royal Capitol of Luang Prabang.
In my suitcase I have two pair of shorts and 8 t-shirts. That will do, at least I hope so.

Bye for now.

From Treasure Island to the Plastic Beach.

2010-12-05T21:09:00.003+08:00

First Sunday in Advent, so merry Christmas to all of you around the world and I hope you will have a nice and cosy day, inside or outside or whatever the weather allows you to, in your part of the world.
The Christmas month started for me on a beach, and compared to what I’ve heard about the weather in Europe, we have had the most fantastic weather period with average temperatures of 26 degrees and a clear blue Sky.
But back to that thing I mentioned with the beach. On the 1st of December I joined our year 6 team and went with them on a nature experience camp on Lantau Island.
The Camp is called “Treasure Island, and is managed by a group of young people from places like New Zealand, the US, Australia and the UK. They run this camp for students from Hong Kong and offers activities like water sports, hiking and trekking and rope courses. It is a tradition that our year 6 goes there every year in December, but this was the first time that I got to join them.
And what a nice experience it was, not only for the students, but for all of us who went there.
The venue at Pui O beach on the south side of Lantau Island is just amazing, and when the weather turns out like it did, it is nearly as being on holiday. Well apart from the 167 students, who are all around you, I mean. We all slept in tents 2 minutes from on of the incredible Lantau Style beaches, and most of the day and evenings were spent on or around this beach.
Back to the civilisation on Friday afternoon, I started to boot my self up to the visit to another beach on Friday evening. This time is was a visit to the Plastic Beach, and the guide to this was the band Gorillaz.
And what a visit this was. It was kind of a mixture of concert and going to the cinema. To every of the songs, there was a movie playing on a huge screen on the stage, over the band. So if you couldn’t see so much of the band on stage, there was enough to look at on the screens. But there was a band there I just have to say, and they did play real instruments, I believe.

Mo-Concept tventysixth-eleven-twenty-ten!

2010-11-26T12:45:00.003+08:00

Concept is concept, even when it gets changed a bit. I am sure that it is not only I who thinks it is annoying to have to look at that bearded face every day, so now you will only see it once a week.
On Wednesday next week it is over anyway, as we enter December. Or what if I continued and tried to get a real Santa Beard before Christmas?
It is not really like it was meant to be. I cannot get those two sides to grow very long and hang down below the chin like a decent "Fu Manchu". Maybe I should go to the locay africa hair extension shop and ask for advise or even some help.

TGIF Video

2010-11-26T12:39:00.003+08:00

In some way this looks like the life of an ordinary human being like me, just put into a simple shot.

Only Friday afternoon the spinning stops for a while, but just to be continued the following Monday.

Kliche!

2010-11-19T16:21:00.003+08:00

This one doesn't need much presentation, it present it self.
A kind of documentary and presentation of one of the danish bands from the 80teis and 90ties, who did have huge influence on the development of the danish post punk music scene.

Music for the 19th.

2010-11-19T15:52:00.002+08:00

Poor Ireland, they might be broke but still they have some bloody good musicians. U2 for example. They even also went in front when it came to protect and help the poor and weak people and minorities. So maybe we will soon see a new version of the "Band Aid" concept, with load of top of the pop Irish musicians joining together singing; "Economy moves in Mysterious ways".

Fantastic song though. In 92 I was happy having this on vinyl, and happy when I got MTV and sometimes they played songs I liked on my 13 inch black and white astronaut helmet kind of TV.
Now I can find what ever I want and embed it to a blog, and U2's songs are still as good.

Nice, I think.

Mulled Wine & mulled aquavit!

2010-11-18T21:09:00.005+08:00

If I am not completely wrong, then the Christmas Fairs’ back home in the old Countries has been going on for a while.
And how nice is it to tug yourself in a big warm coat on top of a nice woollen sweater, maybe some long johns under thick trousers, some of grand ma’s home made woollen socks and some big boots with a thick sole, and then start strolling along the long line of decorated stalls, listening to the Christmas tunes playing in invisible loudspeakers, and with the sound of the dry frosty snow, crunching under your thick foot soles, while you are looking for small and big items, which would make your Christmas even more Christmassy.Then when done with all that stuff; meet up with some friends and head for the nearest “Glühwein Bude” – the German word for a stall where they sell Mulled Wine, which is the part of Christmas Fairs’ I recall the best- and then just stand there with a warm mug of Glühwein between your hands, joking and doing small talk, and watch how the crazy Christmas busyness passes by. And then have another “Glühwein”, and this time with Amaretto added as a kick-starter. Hours can pass like that with an accumulating amount of mugs in front of you, meaning longer and longer strings of words to make a sentence.
For sure you will not be frozen on the inside when getting home. You might be a bit more talkative, and still have some jingle bells summing around in your head, and for sure you will have forgotten the bags with all the unnecessary Christmas Crab you bought, Knowing this outcome, I normally jumped the shopping part anyway, and got straight to the “Glühwein Bude”.
In terms of Christmas Fairs’ –or say markets- Germany was indeed outstanding, where there were several “Weihnachts Märkte” in each city –obviously depending of the size of the city- and in what I call my German hometown; Dresden, there was quite a few in the different areas of the city. Other great Christmas Markets I know and have been to, is the one in Nuremberg maybe the most impressive, also in that way that the backdrop of this old city covered in a cold cover of frosty snow, kind of add the right mood to the whole thing.
Why on earth am I getting into this now? I do not like the way Christmas is being celebrated back there where I come from. To me it has lost its original true meaning. The way it is build up now is exaggerated and materialistic values and manners are overexposed.

Anyway, here in Hong Kong I will spend my next two Saturdays at Christmas Fairs’.
But in comparison with the above described, there will be no match.
The one coming this Saturday is the Christmas Fair at the Danish Seaman’s Church here in Hong Kong. There will be plenty of stuff to buy; Christmas decorations and other typical Danish and Scandinavian stuff, and there will be the typical Danish “Smørrebrød” –open sandwiches’- and then Hot Dogs. Yes right you can get them all over the world, but not just any kind of Hot Dog, no; this is THE WAY Hot Dogs should be served –this is maybe the only subject where you can call me narrow-minded or even a gastronomically barbarian or racist, and it is true; in this matter I am – and that is the Danish way, the way you will get it an any “Pølse vogn” (Hot Dog stand) any where in Denmark, with ketchup, mustard, remolade, crunchy roasted onions, raw chopped onions and pickled cucumber slices on top.
The second is the Fair at our school, and I attend because it is for a good cause and it is nice to see our school filled up with parents, friends and then the colleagues.It is only that silly thing when I attend these Hong Kong Christmas Fairs’; I do not get into any kind of Christmas mood, I guess I need the cold, the darkness in the evening and the snow.
Example on this Saturday to the Danish Fair, I leave the house at about 10 AM, wearing a T-shirt and maybe short’s and flip-flops. I will get to the venue, I will meet other people dressed all like me, and we will all sit outside around a swimming pool with our beer and aquavit, sweating and trying to gather the spots hidden in the shade. Jingle Bells will sound from invisible loudspeakers and children and childish adults will walk around with a silly white beard and a red pointy hat saying: “Ho Ho HO”, while trying to sell raffle tickets, Christmas biscuits or home made Christmas Décor, wearing flip-flops’.
But like back home in the old countries; there will be no mulled wine, only mulled aquavit, as they cannot keep it cold. Anyway I am sure I will not be frozen inside when I get home, I will not have any silly Christmas stuff, I will either forget it or -like last year- sell it for more money, than I paid for it to a drunken Rugby player somewhere in Mong Kok.

Music Video of the Day:

2010-11-18T16:25:00.003+08:00

Does stars need to be real people?

In Japan they now have the Hologram Star: "Hatsune Miku"!

It must be easy for the musicians, if the lead singer gets too bitchy -some times lead singers do that- they can just switch her off.

The audience should be real though.

Flashback: "Salanderland, July 2010!

2010-11-16T21:22:00.004+08:00

On the 13th of November, I went into the 7-Eleven shop on Chan Man Street in Sai Kung and bought three 0,5 liter bottles of water, three cans of "ICE" beer and a packet of chewing gum.

On Monday the 10th of January, Lisbeth Salander went into the 7-Eleven Shop on Götgatan on the island of Södermalm in Stockholm, where she bought shampoo, toothpaste, soap, yoghurt, milk, eggs, cheese, bread, frozen cinnamon rolls, coffee, Lipton teabags, pickles, apples, a large package of Billy’s Pan Pizza and a carton of Marlboro Lights.
No I’m not sure which year this was, but who cares; it is just fiction anyway.

Like travelling around with a tourist-map in a foreign city, to look for great architecture and important historic places, so the visitors can now travel through Stockholm, equipped with the “Millennium-map”. This map you can purchase in the local tourist office, and then you can find and visit all the important places, which played important roles in the story about Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomquist, in Stieg Larssons “Millennium Trilogy”.

As mentioned somewhere before: these books were the main reason, we started our Europe tour in Stockholm this summer. And by saying this I want to be honest; yes, we also bought this map and found as many of the places described, as we found interesting.
It was a good way to embrace and see the city in another way than by staggering around to the most common tourist places, and it lead us to areas of Stockholm, we would never have located otherwise.
But it also was a bit awkward, to chase around from place to place where some fictive persons from an authors mind, should have experienced this or that.
In fact it all started before we even got there, as I booked us into “Freys Hotel”, where one of the baddies from the books also prefer to stay when he visit Stockholm, not that it was that much an important location in the story, but mainly because it was only about three hundred meters from the main train station, and so we could just walk the distance after arriving with the Arlanda Express.
But back to the 7-Eleven shop at Götgatan; no we did not go in that shop, there were already to many others with the same idea, but we did go to “Kvarnan” on Tjärhovsgatan, where Lisbeth Salander meets with the „Evil Fingers every Tuesday.
This should be one of the oldest pubs in Stockholm, and it was a nice place, but surprised me in that way, that it wasn’t that dark and Gothic, as I had imagined the place to be from the story.
It was more or less kind of ordinary restaurant at the first view. We were having some drinks at the bar and around us at the tables; decent citizens were sitting having their dinner.
Judging by the plates of food the waiters were carrying out from the kitchen, it could be a good option for a real nice dinner.
Time and time again a group of people entered the place, looked around, took some photos and disappeared down some stairs to the basement. After a while they came back up, talking and making gestures to a person among them, who seemed to be a guide, then they would have a look around yet again, take some more photos, before wandering of through the exit again, without buying a single drink.
That must have been joining the guided „Millennium Tour“ which you could also chose to attend, if you were not so used to read a map. At that time I found that a bit odd, I mean to walk around with a guide, who told about and showed these places where fictive people has done lot of different things, but as I think about this now: I cannot see any difference from when I visited New Zealand last year, and were travelling on the back of a horse, to different places where they had been shooting some scenes for the movie; “The Lord of the rings”. That is also fiction. Or what about a visit to “Disneyland”?
But maybe this is what Stockholm will be called in some years: “Salanderland”.

Fu Manchu @ fifteen eleven twenty ten!

2010-11-15T20:35:00.003+08:00

Concept or not? If concept, then it has to be real.

I'm really doing my best, but i have some problems by getting the beard to be long at the ends, so they can hang down from my chin like the real Fu Manchu beard. Maybe I have to cheat and go to one of these shops who do hair extensions, and ask if they could do a beard extension instead!

Flashback: Glasgow, July 2010.

2010-11-14T20:39:00.006+08:00

Among all the other advertisements and pamphlets’ in the tourist information center on George Square in Glasgow, this one stuck out in the section of “dining and drinking”’ by claiming to represent the oldest pub in town, “ The Scotia” on 112 Stockwell St.
I was in the information center to look for information about a visit to “Celtic Park” and how to get there. It was Catriona who found it and picked it up, maybe she was looking for venues for Scottish folk music, or just good and fun bars to visit in the evening. If she showed it to me immediately as she found it I cannot recall. I was too occupied to get one of my dreams to come true; to visit Celtic Park in Glasgow’s east ends, and I guess Catriona by another dream; to go shopping in the fancy streets in the busy city center.It was still quite early in the morning, and the weather had decided to show it self from one of its better sides -speaking of Scotland- than the day before when we had arrived by bus from Edinburgh. That day it had been raining cats and dogs from a heavy clouded low grey sky, which seemed to rest on just on the roofs of the buildings.
This day with its blue sky was different and invited to a day out. I got on the suggested bus from just around the corner and soon I found my self on my way to fulfilling a dream
This is not the story though, so that has to wait.
Meeting up again after these actions of the day, the rest was set out o be let to the unknown. And here the pamphlet with the “The Scotia Bar” came to play kind of a main role.
What is a holiday without experiencing the local establishments, and go for the ones far out of the well-beaten tracks.
The adventure of Glasgow pubs started at “Sloans” on Argyle Street. And now it starts to be a bit curious, as also the establishment claim to be the oldest in the town. It is a nice establishment, hidden away in a passage from Argyle Street, and has an outdoor beer garden area, two more floors over the bar, where the upper floor is a fantastic ballroom form the late 18 hundred. We went up the amazing staircase to have wee look inside, and what a great location.
Next stop was down at the river Clyde to locate “The Scotia Bar” on Stockwell Street.

It was easy found, but just across the street another establishment drew a bit more attention at first -“The Clutha”- as they had an outdoor serving area, just at the right spot to catch the last sunbeams of the day.
Scottish pubs have a certain atmosphere. They are always busy. You always meet all kinds of people and if you are open and curious, you can for certain be sure that you will end up having a good chat with the people sitting around there.
As we entered, there was a little handful of guests dotted around in the room, one at the bar and some others around in the corners on the benches.
At the bar is always a good place to start, if you can find a spot. This time of the evening it was not a problem, as only one guy was sitting there, so we joined him a the high stools. Not even a half pint later, we were in a conversation with him and the young man behind the bar. ”Was the Scotia Bar really the oldest in town, and was it in fact haunted, as it had said in the brochure from the Tourist Centre?
Both the young man behind the bar and the guest at the bar shrugged.
“Maybe it is. There is some who claims to have seen something, but you should go to “Sloan’s” on Argyle Street; they are for sure haunted”!
And then the conversation was on tracks, and got more and more personal. Names and occupation got exchanged and more beer ordered. Suddenly we got company by two ladies -working colleagues on the loose. I bet they had started enjoying life just after work, as they were in “a good mood” as they arrived. One of them found my Scandinavian accent “admirable”, why; I really cannot say, and sometimes I had to get Catriona to translate the heavy Glaswegian accent of hers, so I could continue the conversation.
The evening ended up like this; one of the two working colleagues on the loose, grabbed a guitar from behind the bar and started singing, and what a voice she had. She could easily have been someone famous from TV, which apparently also an older gentleman from one of the corners meant, as he was constantly mumbling something out aloud to no one in particular, as he was sitting on his own.
My translator (Catriona) assured me that he had appreciated the singing, and that he had meant the singer should be on TV singing, and not here for a few people in a bar.
The other lady started an argument with another older gentlemen; about what I really have no idea, but he left and she was still wound up, so the other guest at the bar tried to calm her down, abut soon she was arguing with him, so he also withdrew back to the stool at the bar next to me.
Cheers! So all in all, that was a good night at the –maybe- oldest pub in Glasgow.

Twelwe Eleven Twenty Ten!

2010-11-12T11:09:00.003+08:00

So this was my 24 hours of an Island camp for this time. I would love to have stayed for another day, but couldn’t spend the time there because of other tasks to finish before Friday.
I can only –once again- praise the opportunities Hong Kong offers for outdoor adventures. All over the country parks, there is Camp sites dotted around in remote places to offer the youth all possible adventures and outdoor experiences.
Our group of year 9 was on a small Island in the bay outside Sai Kung, where they were sleeping in tents, cooking under open sky, and then taken on hikes in the j=hills, mountain climbing and kayaking. It is all organized and run by a company called “Asia Pacific Adventures” and their team of highly qualified outdoor educators, takes the students through all the adventures.
I was joining one group who was set out kayaking for the whole day in the waters between some of the many islands in the area that defines Sai Kung Country Park. And what can anyone want more as a part of your work? A day out on the water in a kayak, the temperature is around 25 degrees and it is sunny.
I was covered in sun cream, was wearing a kind of Middle Eastern scarf around my head and neck, had water and snacks in the cockpit (it is really called that) and then I was just enjoing to see the students stepping out of their comfort zones by getting to know that they can do more than ride the MTR on their own.
Amazing to see how a 13 year old can actually grow an inch in front of your eyes, when they realize that they had just crossed a 1 and a half-mile channel of water between two islands only using their arms and legs, and then jumped into the water from a 2 meter pier, before they have to get them selves all the way back to the camp, again by crossing the same water channel in a kayak.

I am going to Camp!

2010-11-09T12:38:00.003+08:00

Year 9 are out on something called EOTC, and later today, I'm going to join them on an little island somewhere outside Sai Kung. Thats is why I am wearing my sunglases. The jacket I am wearing because the ICT guys has put the AC to freezing temperatures, but I do not quite why, cos they are sitting themselves in their office wearing big jackets. They could switc the AC of or turn it a bit down.
Back to the year 9 on the Island. They are sleeping in tents and living without any wireless internet connection and they are not even allowed to bring any phones or Ipod/ pads. I am sure that I am going to meet a group of misserable characters out there, and maybe I should hide my crappy PCCW cellular phone, so they do not attack me, just to have some bottums to press and some kind of digital gadget to attach to and connect to facebook.
So, I am not going to shave tomorrow; I could, but I do not want to. I want to feel the wild and rough life on the Island, only inhabited by desperate year 9 stuents living in tents, some wild boars and some porcupines. I really hope to see one of them!
By the way; EOTC means "Education Outside The Classroom".

Flashback; Denmark Summer 2010; The Meta Mermaid!

2010-11-09T11:03:00.005+08:00

Denmark is known world wide for lots of different things, and some, which I do not want to name here at all.
One of the things I do want to mention is the little Mermaid located at Langelinie in Copenhagen. The little Mermaid could be to Denmark what the Manneken Pis is for Brussels doesn’t look like much, but every tourist has to get there and see it.

Logically I’m not that often in Denmark, and when I’m not in Copenhagen because my relatives and friends lives’ somewhere else. But this summer it happened again that I did a trip to the capitol.
Catriona has never before been to Copenhagen before and I’ve never been to Glasgow either, so because we were going to visit both Scotland and Denmark in summer anyway, so we did a deal and paid a visit to both cities.

In summer Copenhagen can be a real nice experience, though it does depend on the weather, but where doesn’t it.
The long and light summer nights combined with summer temperatures, can keep the most people awake into the long hours - the birds hardly keep quiet either. The Sun sets at around 11:30 PM but still, it doesn’t get really dark, and at about 3 or 3:30 the sun rises again, ready for a new turn.With it’s about 1 and a bit million inhabitants is Copenhagen the -by all means- biggest city in Denmark and it has a real flair of capitol and metropolis alike, just in a much smaller scale than you will find it in London, Paris or Rome.One of the biggest attractions is the little Mermaid at Langelinie. Not that it is that big, no in fact it is tiny, and once before I was there, I heard how some other tourist in a low voice told each other, how pathetic small she was, sitting there on a large rock at the edge of the water.
This summer though, she wasn’t there. She had taken a trip to Shanghai and the World Expo, where she was one of the big stars. She was sitting on her stone in the Danish pavilion.
A great idea when you ask me. But when that was decided there was a lot of debate going on in the state of Denmark, but that is not what I am going to get into here.
Instead of her at Langelinie in Copenhagen, there was a big screen and a live transmission of the Mermaid on it from Shanghai, filmed in exact the same angle and same size, like the visitors would have seen her “live” at Langelinie.Only because we did have a hotel close by, we went there to have a look at this “Little Meta Mermaid”, live on screen from Shanghai.
I must say I really like the idea with the live streaming of her when she was away on duty, so to speak, and now when the World Expo has finished, she is returning home to her old spot.
And maybe then Denmark should do the same thing with a camera and live broadcast her from there to somewhere. Why? Maybe that could keep her safe and prevent more damage and vandalism like that what has been done to her in the past; twice someone has cut her head of, one time only half, then someone did saw her arm of and she has been dressed in a Burka. (Look here for more.) I am sure that nothing happened to her while she was in China!

Fu Manchu!

2010-11-08T15:04:00.006+08:00

It was itching and kept getting stuck in my t-shirts when I got dressed or undressed. When I was in bed at put my head on the pillow, it felt like my chin was lifted up by hundreds of small whiskers.
Finally this morning it was time before heading towards work. The razor had its problems, even that I changed the blade for a new one -Gilette Mach 3 or not- the 7 day beard did put up an eminent battle and the evidence was left behind in the bathroom sink.
Thousands of small black and grey studs was left, glued to the sides of the sink, like small fish cought out at the bottum of a dried out lake.
And the first stage of my own private Fu Manchu?

Like Wilhelm Tell; yes the man in Switzerland with an Apple on his head, but here also with a Fireball in his mouth.

Once upon a time in Hangzhou: 餃子 “Jiaozi!”

2010-11-07T19:45:00.007+08:00

They are very tasty and you can eat them both for breakfast and at anytime else. They can be steamed or fried, can be with meat or with vegetables or both and they are not just a Chinese specialty. In France and Italy, they call their species for Ravioli, in Russia they are called Pelmeni, and in Poland and other eastern European countries; they are Pierogi.
In Germany they have something like it called Maultaschen, and I could go on like that for a while, I think.
This is about the Chinese Dumplings: “Jiaozi”. These dumplings are very common in the Chinese cuisine, where especially the northern provinces enjoy them throughout the year, and elsewhere to special occasions.

During the Easter break 2010; the Mortensens went on a school exchange trip to China's Romantic Capital of Hangzhou, joining our head of Chinese language; Mr Yu and 17 students from year 9 to 11.
We visited a college there and our students were accommodated in private homes to develop their Putonghua (Mandarin Chinese), and we had an apartment on the campus.
Every morning a friendly young woman - Ms. Yu- who took us to the schools cafeteria for breakfast, picked us up. It was a huge room with mounted tables and chairs and designed to feed the around 3 thousand students, who was studying there and lived there in dormitories.
At the time we got there, only the teachers who also lived on campus, was there for breakfast. We had to line up in front of a little hole in a big glass wall, which separated the eating area and the kitchen, where they gave out the food. Just like in a bank or at the post office. Behind each of the food stations, stood 4 women in cooking uniforms serving the hungry masses the food they asked for.
When us two “Gweilos” got into the line together with Ms. Yu, a lot of giggling and whispering began among the women around the food trays, and as Catriona came up infrot of them, all of them gathered together with the head and their ears close to the hole, so they could hear what she would like. With some help from Ms. Yu, she managed to get an overview of what was available, and she started ordering, and every time the ladies said the word in Chinese and Catriona tried to pronounce it after them. This was a source for some great entertainment for the ladies behind the counter, as they stacked the named items unto her tray. When she seemed to have finished they asked “Jiaozi?” and pointed on the nice looking dumplings on a tray at the back.
Both of us know these dumplings from our China adventures before, and for sure these “Jiaozi’s” should be on the tray for a decent Chinese breakfast.
As it became my turn al the smiling faces once again peeped through the little opening in the glass wall, and as the word “Jaoutzhe” came out of my mouth, they nearly all fell backwards in a huge laughter attack, but pulled themselves together and dumped a huge portion to my tray.
I felt somehow embarrassed, but what; I could only try again to pronounce that word by listening to Ms. Yu at my side and carefully watch her lips while she once again very slowly said; “Jiaozi”.
Whatever; the ladies had decided that I needed some of the other stuff they had in their pots, and soon I stood there with a huge mountain of various unspecified food items on the tray, ready to walk to one of the tables, where Catriona and Mr. Yu and his family already sat, and very experienced maneuvered their breakfast into their mouth with chopsticks, while Catriona were still chasing one of her “Jiaozi’s” around the plate with hers. Before I could leave from the food handout spot, one of the ladies presented me a kind of round ball on a plate and made it clear that I really should taste this one, so that also found it’s way onto my tray, and I was ready to begin my own battle of finger artistic and chopsticks.The breakfast was indeed very tasty; even I couldn’t manage all of it. The “Jiaozi” went down first, then some kind of omelet with chives, some bread with herps and finally the tennis ball sized ball, they ladies had insisted me to try. It was some kind of sticky rice ball, with some sweet bean paste inside in the middle, and the outside was covered in sesame seeds, which stuck onto the sticky surface. It was very nice and a good sweet finish. But man, was I stuffed. I decided that the next morning I would insist only to take what I chose myself, and then less of it.
As we all left, all the happy faces behind the glass wall was again all stuck through the hole, laughing and waving.
Very friendly people those Chinese.
This turned out to be an ever-returning ritual. Every morning when we came for breakfast the same kind of show, just that they now knew what we liked, and even if we were a bit late and all the Jiaozi’s was gone, they’d save some for us on a tray behind, where no one else could see them, and then when we came, they proudly took them out and shoveled them onto our trays.
On one of those late days, we happened to be the last ones havinv breakfast, and just after we'd got our portions, all the staff from the kitchen came out, and started to line up them selves, as we'd done. Now it was they turn to be served and have their breakfast.
As a part of the cultural exchange program, we were going to make dumplings from scratch one of the days we were there. So that morning we got meet in the meeting room by a bunch of year 4 students, who should help us doing the shopping in the supermarket for all the ingredients, and then later back at the school a section of the cafeteria was transformed into a kitchen, where we all –our 35 students and another group from Auckland in New Zealand – were going to produce a huge amount of “Jiaozi’s”. That was very interesting, and on that day we could eat as
many as we liked, and even then there was so many left, that we tried if we could pay back our depts to the kitchen staff, by offering them the leftovers. They just laughed. Some of them tried our deformed Jaiozi’s, and kind of signalled back, that they were good, but again; they are very friendly those Chinese!

Decision day for the MOustache.

2010-11-07T06:00:00.005+08:00

So now I've got the verdict of which kind of MOstache I have to grow. Late Yesterday the final bids came in and our comMOunication manager could spend some time putting together a list and design a poster with all us the poor souls, who now has to get up earlier in the morning and go to the bathroom and look into the mirror and try to design -and maintain- a MOustache for the next 3 weeks.

Here is a clipping from the official list with the verdict:
The Fu Manshu style MOustache!

As I saw the result of, I must admit that I were pleased that the good colleagues from the LIRC -which is our library, and who put the bid in for me- didn't choose one of the outragous ones, allthough the one they pointed out for me, will be hard to grow in only a few weeks.

An odd dream!

2010-11-06T16:01:00.010+08:00

Previously on this blogg, I told I had some of the magical "Sun breeze" mixture cocktail on the Junk boat last night, and that you never can know what is going to happen after drinking that stuff.
Well I got home and to bed and slept very well, but I had this odd dream; I dreamt about the french impressionist painter Claude Monet, and that he was joining the fabulous Mr. E in the band; Eels. They played together in a new music video on a Junk boat on the lake in Monet's famous garden in Givernhy in France.
Mr. E was sitting on the top singing and playing a Harp while Monet was standing at the front with an easel, painting loads of his famour Haystack pictures with different coloured laser lights on the top.
Both Monsieur Monet and Mr. E had these big weird beards, they are so famous for.

Everything was beautiful and very colourful like Monet's paintings, and the tune was a new one, at least I never heard it before, I think it was called; "Blackbirds hiding in the beard of mine".

When I woke up I looked like this:

I can only explain it this way; The "sun breeze" mixture had been influenced by a recipe from a famous druid from somewhere in Saxony in Germany. I know this man and his amazing ability to create magical stuff, and so the ingredient of his mixtures must in some way have found it's way to Hong Kong, and now is the secret of the magic of the "Sun breeze" cocktail, served on entertainment Junks on Victoria Harbour.
Anyway, I have to shave today so there is not so much harm done, only that I have to plan more time doing it as normal.

(Thanks to Herr. Frank from Dresden for his magical touch.)

5 hours delayed live coverage.

2010-11-06T01:24:00.007+08:00

Friday night and it was spend on a Junk trip on Victoria Harbour, between what is called; "the Island and Tsim Sha Tshui", or just TST.
A Junk is a kind of floating bar and restaurant, which you can book for a private gathering and spend for a night partying on the harbour.
They will provide all the booze you can drink and the all the food you can eat and everybody pay a fixed prize, and then it just evolve.
Tonight the weather wasn't the best. Since yesterday some heavy rain clouds had covered the territory, and today it started to rain. Just a little bit, but enough to spoil the roof top dancing, what normally makes those trips something special. Especially when you have a look around and can see the lights from the Sky Line on both sides of Victoria Harbour, and everybody has been drinking about 10 beers or 5 liters of something called the "Sun Breeze" cocktail, which is a mix of Vodka and Cranberry Juice, and is a kind of a magical drink. It tastes like some fruit juice, and you drink it like that, but you never know what s going to happen, so I'll have to wait till later when I find out.

We was apointed to meet a the pier in Causeway Bay at 6:45 PM to get out and ready for the dayly Light Show, which kicks off at 8 PM, and involve all the major buildings on both sides, and it includes laser show and every possible light design you can magine on the buildings.
And as the Junk rolled on the waves through the harbour, the light show started and there from a Junk in the middle of the harbour we had jusrt the most spectacular view on that event.

MOrtensens MOvember.

2010-11-05T09:31:00.003+08:00

Today is the 5th day of the MO, and today it is the day where people can do their bid or the MOst outrageous MOustache, and on which individual who can do the best effort growing it.
If you support me, I am sorry to tell you that I am quite low down on the betting table, and to be honest, I do not expect to climb the latter either. Anyway, I will continue the fight and hope I can manage some silly MOustache by the end of this MOnth.
By the way; if you think that you can see a major change from yesterday, then it is because I got myself a haircut yesterday afternoon.
Another by the way: See the thing I use as a light source at the bottom of the picture. I finally found a way to use the Ipad I got some time ago in a useful way. So now I will always bring it out with me on shootings, either as a light source or a reflector, as it is quite useful that way.

The standings so far at 9:45 AM local Hong Kong time:
The bids is in Hong Kong Dollar.

Mo Grower - Top Pledge
Mo Braund 20
Mo Brasher 16
Mo Broome 200
Mo Cotton 900
Mo Coventry 20
Mo Day 100
Mo De Melo 20
Mo Diamond 100
Mo Duffy 10
Mo Dufty 20
Mo Fahy 20
Mo Faire 150
Mo Farmer 150
Mo Gillis 35
Mo Hansen 500
Mo Hogan 20
Mo J Morgan 50
Mo Johnson 5
Mo S McCann 20
Mo McManaway 100
Mo McRorie 10
Mo Mortensen 20
Mo Newhook 50
Mo P Morgan 150
Mo Reid 15
Mo Ross 250
Mo Spivey Jones 100
Mo Thomas 50

Concept MOvember!

2010-11-04T13:40:00.004+08:00

When you have started a concept, you have to follow it through, so here it is; my growing beard on the 4th day of the MOvember MOustache.

Once upon a time on a Football Pitch!

2010-11-04T13:26:00.005+08:00

It seems like my football team has decided to be active again, so they've booked the pitch every Wednesday in MOvember, so yesterday evening I was on the pitch struggling against the opponent team, and my own condition, which for sure has been better.
Until a year ago, we were playing twice a week so that was ideal. The pitch had to be maintained and a new surface had to be placed so it was closed for 3 months from October 2009 to December.

As it opened again In January I was so hungry for playing again, so I called Capitaino Perry to ask when our training was going to start again.
"At the moment," he said, "we are not enough players, the MOst of them are training for the Dragon Boat Races".
So week after week I was e-mailing, text'ing and phoning Capitano Perry, to ask if there was any football going on.
MOstly the answer was no, but one evening in late February, they decided to meet on the pitch for a little game, but mostly it was to do the Chinese New Year ritual again, before the new season started.

This is a ritual where they bring a roasted piglet, wine and some fruit for the gods, some incense sticks and a load of fake MOney to burn, to show that they do not value the hunt for material goods.
If you want know MOre about this, you have to go back some MOnths and find it in a post from February or March, this year.

I was sure that this was going to be the start of a good and frequent football season with training every week, like we’d been used to the year before.
But no, it was not. The weekly communication died a bit out, as it was always: “ no training this week”, so I just let it be, if there by any chance could be a possibility for some action, Capitano Perry would phone me or he send a text with a short message like: “7 o’clock, game hard pitch, OK?” or he could phone me saying: “We have booked pitch every Wednesday this month at 7 o’clock!” and I would go excited home from work, get dressed into the soccer kit, go past the drinking men at the little “dong” down at the bottom at the road, and tell them, “no, sorry no beer tonight, I m going to play football” and I would then wander of, really desperate wanting that beer, but I was going to play football for two hours, so I had to wait.

I would then come to the pitch in good time to warm up a bit (kick a ball from two meters to another other player) and would watch the kids from the Brazilian Soccer School do their practice, before we would start.
Twice I found my self all alone waiting there, which was quite odd, as the team always was a quarter of an hour early or so, and then when I stood there alone and watched how the time got closer and closer to seven, my phone would ring, and I would hear Perry saying something like: “ Oh, sorry, but I was wrong, we didn’t book the Pitch today, I have made a mistake, but next time, OK?”
I would then walk back home and be met by the stirring faces from the drinking men at the little dong: “ we thought you were playing football until o’clock, didn’t you just say that 15 minutes ago when you left?”

So now I just want to see if this new attempt of serious hobby football will last longer than to next Wednesday, but one thing is sure from yesterdays event; my legs are a bit sore, but it was worth every aching muscle.

As a little remark to the new year “piglet ritual evening” on the football pitch;
No, I did not take part in that training, after eating the piglet and drinking the wine.
As I’d tried to phone every week for two full months, and nothing had happened, I'd given up and decided to accept an invite from some friends to meet for some beers and a burger at our local US American Rip and Burger Joint, called Anthony's Ranch, on a Wednesday evening, normally I would never agree to do anything on a Wednesday night, as that was the Football night, I thought..

Getting ready for Christmas, or what!

2010-11-03T17:48:00.003+08:00

Yesterday a colleague of mine told me that there was only 30 working days left before the Christmas break. So today it must be 29 days, right?

This means about 6 weeks to the next holiday, which sounds quite nice, but it also means about 6 weeks to the beginning of a new year. No more 2010. And yet another year has passed, and how on earth did that happen, without me really realizing it?
I think I just got use to write 2010, and soon I have to write –and get used to write- 2011. Two thousand eleven or twenty eleven, sounds actually not as bad but never as good as the one we’ve got now, but that is something that has already been up here, so let us leave it with this now.
I guess that at this time of the year, Europe is already completely decorated for Christmas and that every shop tries their best to get people to buy and buy and buy. That is what I can remember from living in Europe, every year the Christmas decoration came out a bit earlier than the year before. Quite so, that it was beginning just after the Schools autumn break.
Thank god it isn’t like this here in Asia.
They do something special at Christmas time, but it hasn’t at all the same hysteria and complete Christmas maniac around it like in the culture I come from. And I am not sad about that, and do not miss it a bit.
Maybe this has also something to do with the weather and the temperatures, coz who on earth feel the Christmas mood in 24 degrees wearing a t-shirt, shorts and flip flops, while staggering past some silly Santa figures and some Reindeer's or like here, some silver plastic horses, dragging a sledge full of parcels, not I.
By the way; these photos are from last year, there is still no Christmas decorations anywhere.

State of the MOustache :

Day three of the MOvember; it is starting to feel like sandpaper on my face.

Music of the day!

2010-11-02T20:35:00.005+08:00

Again today, another Canadian band. The Cowboy Junkies.
This one could also be on a all favorite cover album. Nice, slow and mellow and what a voice.

And now one of their own songs, but still a certain charisma and again that voice.

Late afternoon message!

2010-11-02T17:13:00.003+08:00

Yeahh, this is me done then for today. I can go home to my roof top and enjoy this view for an hour or so.This is how it looks from our roof top and that is very pretty, I admit, but the problem is that the biggest part of the year, you cannot stay up there because of the heat and if it is not that, then it can be rather cold in January and February. But now you can actually manage to stay up there for some time, and enjoy the view and the sun.

Todays state of the MOustace:
No, there is not really anything to see yet, and I guess there will go some days before it is going to be interesting, but a concept is a concept, so here is the days MO shot.

Early Morning message!

2010-11-02T06:41:00.003+08:00

Naturally it depends where you are on the globe, if this is an early morning message or midnight message or even early evening. Here it is a quarter to seven and I slowly getting ready for a new day at the office, so to speak.
Hong Kong has turned it self into winter time again; means that it is now at it's best.
The maniac humidity and extreme temperatures has gone, and it fells now like the best of a northern European summer. In the morning a bit chilly but when the sun gains its strength in the morning, it becomes nice and warm, where the temperature will goup to about 27 degrees. All the small annoying biting sandflies and midgees has also vanished, so now one can leave the house, waering shorts and t-shirt, without any insect repellent.
At last; just saw in the morning news that China are going to do a dor to dor peoples count, and they will finish this in only ten days, to get an acurate number of the population in this huge country. Imaging a dor to dor count of over a billion people; I wonder howmany they'd send out counting?

Silly things:11 friends!

2010-11-01T19:41:00.002+08:00

Which one is me? A little help could be that I am also clean-shaven in this photo.A silly post as number 400. Yes this is post number 400 in about 3 years.
If I just wasn't so lazy sometimes, it could have been about 900. On the other hand, who want to read and see so much rubbish.

Music of the day!

2010-11-01T19:30:00.002+08:00

Introducing you to the Canadian band; "The Tea Party".

Clean-shaven for the MOvember!

2010-11-01T12:57:00.008+08:00

The first of November. Up a bit earlier – about five minutes - to go to the bathroom for the shave, which is so important on especially this date.
It is the start of the MOvember MOnth, where men should grow the MOst fancy MOustace, to raise awareness of Men’s health issues and especially towards prostate cancer.
At the end of MOvember you can pay and aMOunt of money and so vote for the best lookalike MOustache grown on one of the male participants, the MOney raised can go to various charities.

2008:

I do not think that I have raised a lot of MOney the last two years I have participated; maybe the “lookalike” look wasn’t “Lookalike” enough for the best attempt. But as the head teacher in my old primary school always said on sports day; “it is not that important to win, it is important to participate”.
I really think he believed in that, and didn’t just say it because he knew that we were a bunch of no good farmer kids, with out any athletic skills or MOtivation.

2009:

I think I did post something about this back in 2008, but there is no need to try to go back to see if you can find this post, I’ll post the pictures from my two last attempts here, just for the information, and maybe to give me a bit More MOtivation, At the top of this post I have posted a picture of different MOustace styles, and you can then advise me which style of MOustace to go for this year, by adding a comment with your suggestion to this post.

2010?
This is the clean-shaven version, so let us see how ugly it is going to be this time!

Music Videos of the day!

2010-10-31T20:28:00.003+08:00

Today the band is from Australia and is: "Regurgitator". Ever heard of them?
Nor had I, until one of my colleagues from down under shared his Itunes library on the network. Now I often listen to their refreshing and very diverse sound universe.

13 Towers, 50 floors 8 apartments on each!

2010-10-31T08:38:00.008+08:00

I Hate working at weekends, and this weekend has been one of these times when it had to be, and I in fact kind of volunteered doing this, so you wont hear me arguing any more in this post.
The students in year 12 will go on some “Creativity and Service” trips in November where they will help and support small local schools in Cambodia, Laos and India. It is a project we have participated in for some years now, and it is called: “Schools to Schools”.
Here is a video from one of those visits to Cambodia in 2008.

Our students travel to help and to teach some English, to refurbish classrooms and to bring books and other learning material to the hosts in the countries they visit.
To have something that could show the students in Cambodia, Laos and India, how it is here in Hong Kong where we live, the idea came up to make a small film about students life in Hong Kong, and that way show parts of the city, the Airport and a typical Hong Kong Home.
So that is what this work is; We are travelling around Hong Kong and film how one of the students get’s a “visit” from a friend abroad, and then show’s her around the city and to his home.
So it is not the worst kind of work, as that was pretty much what I would have done anyway, I mean touring around in the city, just not with a group of students and filming equipment.
Our “main character” was supposed to live in one of the many new high-rises in one of the many new settlements around Hong Kong, and this one is very closed to the Airport. These kind of settlements is something, a they are build anywhere where you have some space or can reclaim land, and then they shoot up in the air in record time, and there is everything there; shopping, entertainment and always a good connection to public transport and a MTR Station.
Just to give a little description of the dimensions of these estates I will line up what our host told us about this single estate.
There is 13 towers each of 50 floors and with 8 apartments on each of them.

For Hong Kong circumstances the apartment is quite spacious, so they are used to house families, and then we can start calculating. A typical family could be anything from 3 to 5 people, so if we take the average of 4 people in each flat then we will come out with a number like 20.000 or so. This is like the size of a bigger town in Denmark, but in just a small -but tall- area.

It can blow your mind and when I think of the village where I grew up, all of the inhabitants could have living in a couple of those floors, nad I cannot stopping thinking what the students in Cambodia, Laos and India might think when they get to see the life style of Hong Kong.

Music Video of the day!

2010-10-29T16:00:00.003+08:00

Gorillaz: Will visit Hong Kong in December, and we are going...
Back in 2001 I bought the first album. I was living in Dresden and my brother and family came to visit from Denmark so I took them by car to Poland and the Czech republic. In the car we only had this one CD, but anyway after three days none of us was really tired of the music, I even think my brother went out and bought it when they returned back to Denmark.
I still enjoy the Gorillas while driving, so maybe that is why I choose this video for the video of the day.

Enjoy the ride...

Odd food picture of the day!

2010-10-29T12:01:00.004+08:00

There is a saying that Chinese people eat everything with it's back to the sun. Not only that; they also eat it in many different ways of preserving and preparing it, or none at all.
Like these two dried versions here. First there is the Geese and then on the other photo, a Bamboo Rat -which is a little mammal living in the bamboo Forrest in the mountains, or at least I think as I saw this example in the the rice terraces in the mountains, and I have nowhere else seen this on a Menu either.
The other thing in that picture is a bird of some kind but I couldn't find out what that is.
I am not that fussy about what I eat, and the last three years here in China has for sure widened the palette of what I've tried throughout my life so far, but I still can't imagine to buy this Bamboo Rat on a stick, and start chewing on it.

Fainting Goat Cats!

2010-10-28T10:34:00.002+08:00

I've had them earlier in this blog; the Fainting Goats. That is goats in the US who has this yhing, that they apparently faint when they are being chased or scared, for which purpose I'm not sure. For me it would be silly to faint and fall over if being chased, then you will for sure be caught and probably eaten. But maybe the hunter just gets too surprised seeing your "food" just faint and fall over, and then gets scared and confused and so loose their appetite or better; run away!
But now I saw this on another blog I read; Fainting Kittens. Unfortunately there is no explanation and no original sound on this clip, so I do not know if they get scared by a sound or something like that, but this is odd and kind of cute.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.