13 Towers, 50 floors 8 apartments on each!

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.