Final Leg of Our SG-Bandung-SG-Hong Kong-SG Holiday

Blue sky came with a price.  As the blanket of thick cloud finally got lifted in our last few days of stay in Hong Kong, the temperature dropped dramatically.  This morning, I was greeted by a cool chilly temperature of 11-degree Celsius.  I kept sneezing not used to the cold weather.  Tonight, as I am typing this blog entry, my nose doesn’t stop running either.  Gosh, I miss the heat of Singapore.

There are good and bad being cut off from the news.  Someone at the dinning table started a conversation, “So you heard the news about that London Eye in Singapore?”  “The Singapore Flyer you meant,” I interjected.  “Yes, have you been up?”  “Yes, once.”  Someone else cut in, “There was a recent power failure.”  OK, I have vaguely heard this news before I left for Hong Kong.

“People were stuck for 6 hours!”

“6 hours?” exclaimed I.  “Do you know what was the first thing people did when they were rescued by the ropes?”  “I have no clue.”  “They dashed to the toilets.”  “How do you know?” I asked.  “It was all over the news!”

Here in Hong Kong?  I wonder if they have seen the video of the guy getting pounded by the tiger from the Singapore Zoo.

“I am surprised that Singapore has power failure,” another someone chipped in.  I too am surprised.  “Do you know what caused the power failure?” it was my turn to inquire.  Everyone at the dining table shook their heads.  And like all good gossips in Hong Kong, the topic switched from Singapore’s “London Eye” to local economy in just a heartbeat.

Hong Kong doesn’t change much.  Still full of people, still very vibrant.  The food is so fresh and good, so value for money.  When visitors see rounds of dessert as well as plates of fruit served at the end of a Chinese meal, their eyes beamed out rays of delight and they asked, “It is free?”  Yes, when you dine in Hong Kong, in such a competitive service oriented environment, the restaurants want you to be happy and come back to them.  Besides, what good is a Chinese meal without the dessert and the fruit?  I wish Singaporeans demand the same level of freshness and food quality, as well as the same level of service quality.  I wonder why we don’t.  Are we happy being charged for every single item in life?

What we do demand, I think, is our constant up-to-date dosage of high quality Hollywood entertainment.  This could explain why Singapore has more varieties in movie titles.  And some of the titles come out much faster in Singapore too compares to Hong Kong.  In addition, if I am not wrong, Singapore has some of the best cinema systems (at least our Cathay Cineplexes do).

When I first touched down in Hong Kong, my brother-in-law Benny told me that in every corner, you can see someone carrying a dSLR camera.  How can that be?  At times I feel uneasy carrying my rather gigantic dSLR camera around in Singapore.  I walk into a mall in Hong Kong and I can see a dozen of people shooting pictures with their dSLR cameras (yes, inside a mall).  I visited a garden with my parents today (see picture above) and I saw two groups of people.  The Nikonians who carried a D200 and above with jaw dropping lenses.  I have not seen what appeared like a 200-400mm or a super long telephoto lens in real life and I saw one guy carrying one like a hand held bazooka.  It is freaking long, take my words.  I think he must have shot all that he can in that garden with his other lenses and was aiming for some out-of-the-world-no-one-else-but-he-can kind of shots.

Another group was the non-Nikonians who appeared to carry much smaller camera bodies.  No conclusion drawn.  Just my observation.

Inside the MRT, I saw a couple carrying the exact camera as mine with a huge tripod.  I feel so at home in Hong Kong carrying my mini-bazooka even with my rather gigantic flash gun attached.  For a brief moment, I was one of them.

Some names in Hong Kong tickle us.  Cynthia found the name “Po Hon Building” funny because in her language, pohon means tree.  I spotted the road name “Average Road” and we both had a good laugh.  There is a GP called “Porky Chan”.  Hmmm.  We have yet to meet someone named Porky in our lives.  And one day I was inside a mini-van and saw the road sign “Opposite Sea”.  I asked my mom where “Opposite Sea” is and she looked at me in puzzlement.  Maybe it is as simple as somewhere facing the opposite sea?

Time flies when you are having fun seems to have some truth in it.  And so we have come to the final leg of our Singapore-Bandung-Singapore-Hong Kong-Singapore trip.  I ponder where we will visit next.