Showing posts with label shatin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label shatin. Show all posts

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Moments Captured: Hand phone version

Sometimes you just bump into scenes thats so memorable but then your DSLR(AKA Big Camera) is back at home and someone has leased your compact camera(AKA Small Camera) permanently.

You will just have to make do with an alternative: Your hand phone camera.

They are typically not such a beauty like those I would share on Flickr (as shown above), but the object of the scene and its implicit meaning could have compensated its lack in beauty.

Here it goes:

Scene 1: Dinner in office
Location: IDS Lifung Centre, Shatin HK






Description: 8:30pm in the office, dinner? Mini Pizza hot dog, fried fish skins (YES! Say "OMG they eat fish skin " my westerner friends) and a can of iced lemon tea.

Worked till 10:30pm after this quick dinner.


Scene 2: A crystal-ed SLK
Location: The Element, West Kowloon, HK












Description: wow....


Scene 3: 搵雞唔洗返大陸 又平又靚根記有
("You don't have to travel to Mainland to look for CHICKEN, we have them here nice and cheap!"--$29)
Location: Wo Che 禾輋, Shatin








Description: A good laugh... saw this during a supper gathering with my colleagues in Wo Che. (In case you don't know, chicken is the alternative tongue-in-cheek expression for prostitute in Cantonese/Mandarin)


Scene 4: I thought it was a bus ticket
Location: LCC-T, Sepang, Malaysia






Description: The boarding pass Airasia gave me in my last return trip from KL. Handwritten, almost like another bus ticket I had on my trip from Penang to KL.
Is this how they cut cost? (Note: Airasia is an airline, and I am suppose to board a plane with this ....bus ticket-look alike thing)

Scene 5: LP 3427
Location: Siu Lek Yuen, Shatin, HK












Description: To all my Penang friends=YES THEY HAVE "LP" NUMBER PLATES! (To my non-hokkien speaking friends, thats not a nice word to use in hokkien, period.)

Scene 6: The Earth House
Location: Yongding Perfecture, Fujian Province, China











Description: A visit to my mum's ancestral culture (after being in the city where my dad's ancestral culture originated from-Xiamen), the Hakka people's Earth House 土楼。
This one is well known for its tilted pillars. According to our guide, the carpenter of this structure were pissed by the commissioner of this earth house, decided to show him how good he is, so he made the pillars tilted but still the entire house is as good as other earth houses.
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Hope you enjoy, would you leave me a comment and tell me:
1. Which scene is your favorite/least favorite?
2. Whats your most memorable hand phone moment captured?

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Why does the Hongky Cross the road?

Area around my office->
Okay, as some of you have already been told, I am currently working as an intern in Hong Kong. To be exact, its a company in Shek Mun, Shatin (沙田石門).

So, there are a few ways to get to work. But most of it, I have to walk the final 100 meters from bus station/train station/shuttle bus station before I reach my office.


A little history before I begin on my main topic. The place was basically a former manufacturing block for Hong Kong when the Pearl of the Orient was a major exporter of manufactured goods before Mainland China emerge. When that happen, the place basically transform into offices for logistics companies and manufacturers who moved their site to the Mainland.Many of the tall buildings is what I call a "vertically accessible warehouse". Unlike warehouses in Malaysia which lie flat and spread wide on the ground, it is tall with 10 stories at least and goods are being transported to different levels with giant elevators.

Hence it is the sort of place where you see tall office buildings along with heavy vehicles around the place. Looks kind of odd to me when I first saw it.(Will talk more about it in my next entry)

Shek Mun Industrial Area
The area around my office, heavy vehicles are common during peak hours.


Okay, I am getting to my topic now.

Because of the highly dense 'office population' in the place coupling with heavy traffic of trucks and trailers, zebra crossings are plentiful in this place. To get to my office from the bloody train station, I have to cross 5 crossings,all with traffic lights.

You know, traffic lights is not smart enough. They are programed to show red lights and green on a fixed 'schedule'.Hence you will probably see a bunch of Office Ladies/Office Uncles standing by the street when there are no traffic at all, because the traffic light is showing RED.

I was like....what the.....the road is straight and it is clear of traffic, and people stand there and wait .....5 minutes for the traffic light to turn green???

I mean, if it is in penang, People has already crossed the road by no time.

Okay,...I thought...maybe its because people here are more 'civilized' and they obey laws?????? So I, was like the other guy, waited there as well, as it would look odd if I cross the roads while others stand so still.

The worst part is you have consecutive red lights at the 3 crossings before you reach your office. It is Summer, and even in 830am, Hong Kong's sun could kill. So you would really like to get to the comfort of your office ASAP.

Then, once in a blue moon I was late for work (as in I was a few minutes away from 9am when I reach the train station.).When I reach the crossing.....gosh, ppl are standing by the road with no traffic at all just because of the stupid red lights. Now I realize that it looks civilized and stupid all at the same time.

I care not the red lights and rush cross the road (after making sure that the coast is clear of traffics).....and then......here is the point of the whole thing...people started following me crossing the road..!!!!

what the heck????
I was so stunned, I thought you guys are civilized my dear Hong Kong friends??? Why do you follow a Malaysian cross a road on a red light?

I did a few experiments about this day to day during lunch hour and after office hours.It seems that I am right: The Hongky, will be so obedient to the regulation when everybody else is obedient, but will be as reckless when somebody else did the first moves, at least when it comes to 'Jay Walking'(crossing the road illegally)

So it comes to the central question of this entry: Why does the Hongky cross the road when a Malaysian make the first move?