Thoughts beyond my life & my travel - Bel

I hadn't had such an interesting day for long. First, a surprise call requested my help to make arrangement for a press conference in a few hours and I'm happy that it didn't happen eventually though it's not hard at all. Why people want confidentiality and all in a sudden want meeting press? The class today was the shortest and my last in the Master's Course. I had no idea about what the professor was talking about. Bioinformatics sounds like another planet to us. Genes, cancer markers snd spectrum. I'm not a scientist! But you can hear jokes in classes and classmates brought cameras with them for photos at the end. I'm not that excited for photos or graduation but I'm happy I've finished them all. So interesting things are endless if you look around. Can you figure out why a dog needs to wear shoes? Well, maybe his master finds it cute but it looks funny. I saw his master enjoyed walking with her dog with shoes a lot. Crazy! Thailand figured out wh...

I received an alarming call last night for seeking medical advice on possible overdose. My little niece took the allergy medications that were supposed to be taken separately in the morning, lunch and evening. But somehow she took all of them in the night time. I understand how my brother and his wife were panic about. As an aunt, I'm worried with anything wrong with the child as well. So I called around at night time and asked any silly questions that every parents want to know. I was a bit relieved when both the pharmacist and the nurse told me that she should be okay, just monitoring her breathing, pulse and chest movement. I even asked her mom to see if she could wake her up, just in case. I was a bit upset that my friend didn't return her call but she's staying with her kid late last night. Obviously my emotion showed when she called this morning. Gosh, how could parents survive over all those panic and child's sickness?

When you take a look of those greeting card websites, you will be surprised with the presence of so many occasions to celebrate. What's that Coffee Day, Vanilla Ice Cream Day, Caveman Day and Tequila Day about? Are they real or made up by the card companies to publicise their sites? So today may be the Happy Teletubbies Day or Happy Latte Day. You just name your day to make it a reason to celebrate with someone you care.

I can see we're in cyber era now. While our family is still having family time watching TV or reading magazines, I found my friends in Ontario spent most of their family time surfing the net in the sitting room. We can hardly live without internet and emails, so it's shocking to find that my PC is dead after I ignore a few computer problems. I'm a bit panic this time 'coz I couldn't locate where my IT expert (my brother) is and again I didn't back up my computer including my assignment. I hope my coming uni project can be done in a computer lab, or else I will have a hard time getting help from friends for installing programme in their computers. What a night! I bet my book reading should go on.

Being embraced by clear water is always refreshing, especially when the weather is good. I realise why I prefer swimming outdoors to indoor pool. Look at the bottom of the pool, you can see lights from the sun, forming form glittery pattern that moves every second. It's like a modern art if you take a picture of it. It's so calm, so refreshing and so contemporary. I just love it.

I always love the song "blackbird" and almost have such an impression on those blackbirds till I saw how they attacked people in Port Credit in Ontario. Now, things are getting worse and read this.

A survey just says that Hong Kong is among the top five countries where people overtime work the most. The others are South Korea, Peru and Pakistan. I'm not surprised that over 40% of us work over 48 hours per week. I don't know since when we really feel bad if we leave work at 5 or 6pm, the official office hours. So I find it odd when I realise those nurses, radiographers and health workers really work close to their shift and fixed hours. Some companies do show appreciation when peoople overwork and give some incentives but many don't. I see some people work up to 11 to 12pm every day and back to the office early in the morning. What is life about? I'm no longer addicted to work to this extent and I don't want to be a slave to work. Should we balance our competitiveness and working hours and make us a more happy city?

It is shocking to hear that there is a nude beach in Sanya, a resort island in China. Imagine a conservative country where people walk nakedly in the beach with no interference by the police. The beach is not officially approved and there is law saying that you will be detained for 5 - 10 days if openly exposed your body in public. But somehow people seem to feel safe doing so. We don't have such kind of beaches and I can't foresee there will be one in the future. Maybe, China is ahead of us and Mainlanders become more open than us, too. See how women are dressed like in China and then look at how we dress. They probably dress much less than us.

The tram stopped in the middle of the street and passengers started getting off the tram. "What's going on" I asked the driver. "There must have an accident ahead of us. Trams line up and stop in front of us," he said. Trams occasionally were being stuck in the middle of the streets because of traffic or minor accidents. But it's different this time. I got off the tram and saw a man was actually taken care by the medics and laying on the stretcher. I was in a distance and couldn't see whether there was blood or not. But there were bunches of people around like the police, the fireman. That shouldn't be minor this time. We really can't tell how close we are to death sometimes. We're healthy one day. Something bad might happen the next day. A few of my friends' parents were hospitalized over the month. Maybe it's about the time we're ready for bad news to come. Just live happily every day.

I never like seeing war movie but Red Cliff is not quite one but demonstrates the wisdom of war instead. The main attraction of this movie was Takeshi Kaneshiro at the very beginning. He's someone good to look at but doesn't quite know how to act. He's got only one look, one expression and sings badly. I'm glad that he actually did act better this time as the historical smart man. I hate watching people fighting and killing in those war scenes. The Lord of the Ring II already bored me to death. But this film was so extraordinary in the way it illustrated how this group of smart and fierce people won the war. The director John Woo even added some humour elements in the film. Too bad that we don't have the chance to see the biggest water battle scene till this winter.

Hong Kong finally passed the anti-racial discrimination law. It's just a trend for us to have such law since we have more immigrants from Mainland China, India, Pakistan and domestic helpers from the Phillippines and Indonesia. It's ok for us not to call somebody "Gweilo" or unpleasant names. But the most ridiculous thing is the "language support" to be required for patients using the public and maybe the private services, too. It will be quite an headache for so many organisations to provide intepretation service in so many different languages. Things may become a lot more complicated and confusing to everyone.

I almost pass through the small alley down one street from where I live every day. This is where the dried seafood shops are located and there are more these kinds of shops down the alley. I'm not a dried seafood fan but these shops make the area more interesting and attract quite some attention from tourists. This alley resembles the one in Macau where is close to my grandmother's old house. Passing through the covered alley in Macau also leads you to many shops but of course not the seafood shops here. Maybe that's one of the reasons why I found the area quite homely.

Nicole Kidman names her newborn "Sunday Rose Kidman Urban". What a name! Can you imagine calling someone "Sunday"? I've had colleagues and classmates with strange names over the years. They call themselves "Apple", "Coffee" and even "Honey". Is she embarrassed to have a name "Honey" at all? Perhaps we run out of names or people prefer a more creative way to name their children. Don't be surprised if you are introduced to "Mai", "Juin", "Strawberry", "Orange" or "Bee" one day.

After a prolonged cold winter, we had a strange summer with so much rain. It is depressing to see the weekend full of rain non-stop and the weekdays are not any better. My planned "swimming" days were ruined with the change of weather, giving me more and more excuse not to exercise. I hate I become soaked when I'm back to the office. It is said that we will have more typhoons this summer and our winter will disappear after decades. It may not happen as predicted but our summer may not be as pleasant as before and the weather is more moody and unpredicable as women. It's more sad that our next generation will encounter a totally different world that we had before. May we see a more lovely day like this.

SCMP sent some reporters to testify whether the love hotels in Kowloon Tong reject gay people for hourly rental service. It's not a secret that people book one of these hotels to have a "tour" of the room and the building decor of Bruce Lee's former house. Tourists usually bring along their wives to book the room for special "sightseeing" programme. It is quite a surprise that these hotels do not allow homosexual couples' booking. My friend told me that they couldn't book the double rooms in Japan as both of them are female. So after all, Asia is still very conservative and sensitive in gay matters. The good news is "that special love hotel" will not be auctioned in the market but be converted to Bruce Lee's museum some day.

I'm working on my uni paper but somehow is distracted by thoughts and the fragrance around me. Who has put on strong perfume in this computer workstation? It's unusual to find such a fragrance in a computer room. I look around and couldn't figure out who is the one. Is it the one behind me? My colleague always know the maintenance head is around 'coz she can "detect" his cologne. We don't always feel the fragrance we put on. Maybe we get used to it or the fragrance was not that strong. It ends up more and more people putting stronger perfume. Fragrance can be very refreshing and adding charms to people but more and more strange perfume are launched these days. We may end up smelling awkward one day.

Every now and then I will take a ferry to cross the harbour. I've never tired of the harbour view here and I find few people taking pictures every time. If I've brought my new phone or camera, I will probably do the same. The building architecture, the lighting and colour arrangement and even the neon signs make this city jungle more interesting. Skyscrappers stretch from one end to the other. Tokyo has similiar city view but it doesn't sit along the harbour and their city is a bit loud with those broadcast from the TV wall.

Why do people feel more alone when travelling by themselves? We all have time being alone in our apartments or sitting in a park by ourselves, but had you ever found yourself feeling more like "alone" when you're abroad? I bet the things around us are still familiar and maybe we feel we're physically closer to our friends, that makes the difference. But people probably don't feel they're alone with internet access these days. So, get a good cup of coffee and bring your notebook. You will find yourself not being all alone. The world has a lot more for you to care for than bothering whether you're alone by yourself.

World Values Survey concludes that the World gets happier and Denmark is the happiest country. Hong Kong ranks disgracefully at 63, worse than most of the Asian countries. Are we that not happy? So I went to the survey website to check it out. Despite my life satisfaction index is higher than average but it doesn't make me a happier person. My average score is more or less like the HK average. I guess our score is lower as most of us live in apartments and we don't have a good sense of belonging in our local communities. We don't have a local community anyway. It's a city, totally a city. BTW, 20 June is said to be the happiest day. If you're not happy even on that day, probably you're not a happy person.

The HKSAR government may prefer to give benefits to families with more babies but more new restaurants offer smaller options of dishes for small families or even singles. Even supermarkets have smaller portions of meat or vegetables for singles or nucleus families these days. At least I don't need to put the loaf of bread in the freezer for weeks and still enjoy fresh food here and then. This sushi is perfect for one for a healthy meal.