we're busy doing nothing....

Today we had another lovely saturday - following the torrential rain, thunder and lightning storm of Friday morning, today was another beautiful, hot and humid day.

First stop was the coffee shop on Princes Terrace (see pic) where Rus and I had a rather tasty sandwich each and then we walked from Central to Sheung Wan to the Lomography store to pick up some more films.

We crossed the road to go into the park nearby and found a bridge over a large Koi lake where there were baby terrapins, koi's, eels and many other fish! Ice cream and a walk later, we were back in Central where we spent a few hours (doing not much but enjoying it nonetheless) and then headed back up to our apartment. A short sleep later (saturday afternoon siesta!), we went to the supermarket and picked up a roast chicken for dinner. Tomorrow we're off to Lamma Island to do the walk from one side to the other and are taking a picnic!

In 16 days we will be flying back to the UK, so we will enjoy every minute of free time we can between now and then...

Em n Rus x

Gallery Updates

New pics have been added to Em's Lomo Gallery.

Pics here

Megabox Karaoke Pics

I have added a gallery of pics taken at the Megabox Karaoke Night, Kowloon Bay, Hong Kong including us 2, Khush from the UK office and many of the Ericsson HK team.

Pics Here

Khush at MEGABOX!!!!

Video of Khush, Ethan & Brian on the mics and various members of the Hong Kong Ericsson team at Megabox Karaoke, Kowloon Bay, Hong Kong

Happy Birthday Martin!!!!

We'd like to wish my brother Martin A Happy 50th Birthday today!!!. Hope you have a great day, sorry we can't be there but we'll see you pretty soon when we get back.
Love from us both.

Megabox

Last night I met Em and her work colleagues from work and we went to "Megabox" in Kowloon Bay. By shuttle bus from the MTR station. Megabox is a Mall, Ice Rink, Cinema, Karaoke etc etc.
And what a brilliant evening it was!!!!, We had our own karaoke room with en-suite and buffet and waiter service for drinks!!....The karaoke machine worked in numerous languages, had multiple microphones, a good sound system and had all of the tongue in cheek hits!!!.....classics like "My way", New York New York" etc etc. It was great to meet some of Em's workmates as well as seeing my old work colleague "Khush" from TTVUK (Now Ericsson of course) who has been here this week and fly's back tonight. A very funny guy.
Altogether a really fun, humourous evening!!!
After leaving a few of us got a taxi back to the mid levels and had a Black Sambuca nightcap in another bar before heading back. Thunderstorms rumbling through the night we're pretty good here too!!
I reckon there will be a few rolling into work a little late this morning!! :). I'm really glad we got round to doing this while in the east as it was a must ever since seeing "Lost in Translation", I know it's not Japan but pretty close none the less, and they certainly know how to do karaoke here!!, The place was really impressive!!!
A really good evening!!!. I'm still laughing about it!!

Champions League for Tottenham!!!

I was up early today to check the result of our all important match away against Man City, And was delighted to find we won 0-1 and are now confirmed in the champions league for next season!!....Big congrats to Spurs!!!. And in the final game of the season we're away at Burnley whilst the gooners are at Fulham, Lets hope fulham can do us a favour so we can put the icing on the cake and take Arsenal's 3rd place from them.
I've been hanging around the island today as tonight i'm meeting Em from work in quarry bay as we're off to Kowloon Bay for some international Karaoke!!!!. along with practically all of Em's work!!!....i'll let you know how we get on....LOL

Run around in the New Territories!!

Today I decided to set off up to University in the New Territories to see just how long it takes to get there. I had to do this as some of the places I'd like to visit are only available by one or two ferries a day and they generally leave early in the morning so I wanted to know what unearthly hour i'd have to leave to be able to do them.
University is a stop on the East Rail Line and is the location of what is actually the University of China, and not the University of Hong Kong which is actually on Hong Kong Island.
This campus is pretty impressive to say the least!!!...with the station predominately serving the Uni exclusively. Centre's for everything from Sports Science to Marine Biology, Dedicated running tracks, football tracks, Everything Tracks!!!!
The place was sooo Uni driven that I found it hard to find a way to the waterfront and Ma Liu Shui Pier which was the only thing I was there for anyway. Eventually after doing a mile loop I finally got there. And got a chance to check out the timetable ( A major secret it seems as although I've seen mention of it, it's been in a 2 times a day vague kind of way). Not really helpful when you want to know when the bloody thing leaves and gets back, if it does at all!!!. Anyway....sorted now. It was on leaving the pier that i noticed the discrete subway back to the MTR......I obviously walked in the bloody wrong direction again, Im beginning to think it's a bloody conspiricy!!. I swear the chinese don't want us to visit these places and so make sure there are NO signs whatsoever!!!.
I made my way back via Sha Tin with the intention of stopping off at the 10,000 buddha's monastery but ending up getting lost again!!!....still... at least I got to have a look around what turned out to be a nice place (after my initial impression of it being the Hong Kong equivelent of Croydon, I'll make it to the monastery at some point before I leave.) Got a few photo's there then decided to head back to the end of the east rail line at Hung Hom to try to walk to the ferry pier where I got a boat back directly to Central rather than having to change 2 times on the MTR. Got the boat, and home....via the Wheel for a nice cold beer. It was hot today, mostly overcast and cloudy but 29 degrees with humidity like a steam room....Nice!!!!.
Needless to say Em was suitably impressed after immediately breaking into a massive sweat after having to leave her cosy air conditioned fridge!!!!.
Indian Tonight!!!!.

Scorchio - a great weekend

After a truly exhausting week, and an extremely early night on Friday after rolling in from work at gone 8pm, the weekend really picked up!
Saturday morning, Rus and I adorned our summer clothes as the temperature is really high and sunny at the moment, and we went to Victoria Park, Causeway Bay. As it was Labour Day (1st May and coincidentally, my nephew, little Andrews 5th Birthday) the park was heaving with fillipino and chinese - all lining the sidewalks, the walkways over the roads, chattering and eating and enjoying the nice weather.
Rus showed me the boating lake, topiary gardens and on my request, we walked over to the harbour side and we walked along past all the boats moored. We also saw a guitar in the water acting as a buoy, which was quite novel.
When we were done with park, we caught the MTR to central and went to our favourite haunt in the nice weather, Pier 3 bar overlooking the piers, waterfront and all the famous bits of Hong Kong skyline. We polished off some grub, had a couple of drinks each in the shade and headed back home for a much deserved siesta - which ended up being around 3 hours (oops).
Finally, I finished my latest Uni assignment, which has taken up all my time out of working hours for a few weeks now and sent that off, ahead of the deadline on wednesday.

Today (sunday) we woke up leisurely and packed our sun tan lotion, beach towels, mosquito repellant and headed off to the piers again (note, that in our free time, we tend to steer clear of shopping, which seems to be the main past time here) and took the slow ferry to Lantau (again) and took the bus to Cheung Sha beach - this time with no fear of sunburn or mozzie bites, which generally are the quickest and most effective way of pissing me off....
When we got to the beach it was so hot we found a shady area and proceeded to soak up the atmosphere. Rus took some pics and I read a book other than Psychology or Social Sciences which was a nice change.
Spot of lunch at the Thai restaurant on the beach (which, is the second Thai establishment that we've been too that find it impossible to bring out 1) your food at the same time as your partners food and 2) your complete order!)
After waiting for the sunset (which happened behind a dirty great big mountain, so we missed it anyway) we took a bus trip back to the Mui Wo, had an icecream on the front and caught our ferry back to central.
Topped the day off with an Uncle Russ coffee for Rus, and a blister from my flip flops for me. All in all, a great day.
Love Emma x