Black Rain

HK has a rainstorm warning system with 3 levels:

Amber: >30 millimeter rainfall per hour

Red: >50 mm rainfall per hour

Black: >70 mm rainfall per hour

The HK observatory is quick to issue such warnings which are then posted everywhere throughout the city. The whole city is pretty organized about handling and level of rain. Platic bags for umbrellas are distributed at the entrance of any building so that rain-soaked umbrellas dont wet all the floors. MTR stations have large drying fans at the entrances to speed up the drying process of shoes. An efficient drainage system ensures that the city doesn get flooded.

On Thursday, typhoon Chanthu was in southern china. It wasn't close to HK but close enough to ensure some heavy rainfall. Rainstorm warning black was issued. What does nadja do? grab her umbrella and roam the streets (or should i say 'streams' that used to be streets)...

Street Markets wait out the rain by sitting in 3 inche puddles of water

& streams of water pour down the roofs onto the sidewalks:

City Uni of HK

Eventhough uni was the reason I went to HK in the first place, I didnt have any pictures of the place until the last couple of days. You really dont take photos of the places that you spend most of your time at. Although in our case we weren't at uni that much: 4 times a week. Anyway, the City Uni campus is pretty compact. The main building is a little older but everything inside is new. They have good lecture theatres, hallways and a bookshop:

My two classes had a good mix of people from HK and mainland China:

All in all, the courses at city u were a good learning experience. The interraction with students and the mindset of the professors and guest speakers were very insightful. Here are some examples:

• One guest speaker made it very clear that 'us westerners' (looking directly at all the exchange students) have no idea what customer relationship management really is, and he poked fun at how much value the western world places on contracts. In his speach he held up a pretend contract in the air and waved it around to show how much it disgusted him.
• The CEO of the South China Morning Post denied that media censorship was even an issue.
• Another guest speaker talked for 30 mins about how president Hu Jintao 'plans' all his official visits up to the last detail-up to what he wears like this fact is some sort of revelation. However this was the only speaker that openly stated that all media is 'an act'.

Peak to Aberdeen Trail

Our last hike in HK started at the top of victoria peak and winded down the back side of the HK island mountain, past Pok Fu Lam reservoir, to Aberdeen harbor. We decided to hike in the late afternoon and we arrived in Aberdeen right after sunset.. perfect timing. We actually discovered how nice it is to hike in the late afternoon compared to mornings or during the hot mid day sun. good thing we figured it out on our lat hike :) Aberdeen is known for its floating village and floating jumbo restaurant.

City Pictures

HK by day & by night

a typical HK street

I scrolled through my posts and realized there is a lack of city photos. HK is afterall known for its expansive skyline. My blog makes it seem like I'm on some sort of hiking vacation in a park. Rest assured, I spend most of my time immersed in a bustling city that is home to over 7 million people. My appartment is smack dab in the middle of the older part of Kowloon in one of the many (scarily) skinny but tall buildings, surrounded by markets and busy streets galore. The journey to any destination here is an adventure. Property is one of the most expensive in the world, and housing complexes are unfathomably large (single housing complexes can be home to over 10,000 people).

Lamma Island

This is the second largest island out of the four that we've visited and hiked in HK. It's most prominent feature is the coal power plant which is HKs largest source of energy. Next to the massive powerplant is one windmill (HK is going green!). This was our second trip here, we wanted to explore the south side of the island, since we missed out on it the first time, and enjoy another yummy seafood lunch :) So off we went...

The hike started out great, slight incline, mostly in the shade, walking through jungles, past banana plantations and across a couple of lovely beaches. There were even some delapidated houses with jungles in the living room. More enourmous neon spiders were around too but we're used to them by now ("just duck under the tent-sized webs"). Then came the killer: neverending stairs up and over a mountain in the middle of the day, no shade, no wind, heat coming from above and below. I swore never to hike again. Luckily it was a short-lived promise (but we did take a 5 day break from hiking) :)

==> Me attempting to create shade

Our exhaustion was rewarded with a lobster lunch! I also got to try abalone for the first time... which, ive decided, is overrated. It has the consistency of an eraser (yes, i have bitten into one of those too). Lobster however is always scrumptious.

Seafood

Dried or fresh, food here is very seafood oriented. Makes sense, giving HKs fishing history and geographic location; surounded by ocean. The seafood experience is not for the faint-hearted or squirmy. Most seafood is alive until right before being cooked. Restaurants display rows of blinking, squirming crustaceans, shellfish, slugs and fish for you to pick and have cooked away from sight...

...while in wet markets your choice of seafood is gutted, descaled and beheaded so fast its heart still lays beating on the massive wooden chopping board:

The smell of dried & salted fish, mussels, abalone, scallops cannot be escaped when walking through the streets of HK. I like it. It will always remind me of HK.

MTR

Mass Transit Railway. Some facts courtesy of gov.hk:

• At present, the MTR system consists nine lines
• There are 84 stations along over 170 kilometers.
• Standard class adult single journey fare ranges from HKD $3.5 to $51.
• The nine lines carry an average of about 3.7 million passengers per weekday.

If you catch yourself traveling on the MTR between 8-9 am or 6-7 pm, you can expect a pretty solid reenactment of the phrase 'sardindes in a can'. People with claustrophobia, beware!