I think my block hosts the morning practice for the Hong Kong amateur hammering club - there’s noise from beside and above, and definitely more than one hammer at work in each location. Maybe I’ve taken a room in a manufacturing facility that only works weekends? It’s interesting to study how much the press is controlled in the content that they can publish. Newspapers only ever seem to show the activities of President Hu’s government in a good light, or as a purely factual discourse. They had a minor field day when Hu met President Bush to discuss matters concerning [View Full Entry]

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A slow day in work, I’ve finished an inconclusive study into why wheelnuts occasionally drop off certain buses on certain routes, always the nearside rear wheel. There doesn’t seem to be anything particularly odd about the vehicles or route, but there’s plenty of evidence to suggest there’s a problem somewhere. The highlight of the day is Japanese for lunch… Walking home from the train stop before my own, the number of street beggars in this part of time struck me, often older men and women holding bowls. It seems that beggars in the UK are rarely older, although [View Full Entry]

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After work this evening I went back to the tailors for my first fitting. If today is anything to go by, I’ve bought two one-armed jackets and trousers that completely cover my shoes. The tailor was a completely different animal today; as he slipped deftly around me adding pins and adjusting folds he barely spoke, except briefly to compliment me on my shirt: It was only £5, from the UK. Very good cut, sir. Tailored? Err, no. House of George at Asda. Excellent quality material sir. Pure cotton. Well, it is pure cotton, [View Full Entry]

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Anybody who’s going travelling, please bear in mind - it’s quite a lot of work to produce a blog entry every day, and some won’t be that interesting. Today I went to work, had a walk and came home to have tea, wasn’t really hungry so I went to the library. Apologies to those who wanted high drama and tales of bravery and woe - I’m tired, so early bedtime. To digress slightly… Tales of bravery and woe were told by knights in days of yore. Nights invariably follow days, and days are what it would take to walk from England [View Full Entry]

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After a day in work I decided to set about getting the tailor-made suit that Hong Kong is famous for. I’ve been warned that prices here are likely to be similar to those in London or Paris, but I set a price of HK$1300 for one suit in my head, around £100. A suit at that price (or maybe two) would be a bargain. In the shop recommended by Lonely Planet, the window and glass door appear to be tinted thickly silver but the haze doesn’t clear when I walk in. The Indian proprietor is just spreading some joss sticks and [View Full Entry]

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After a trip to the market in Causeway Bay to check that off-the-peg suits are expensive - they are - I get back to find the outside door of my apartment block is closed (as usual) and locked (as usual) but the keypad entry system is dark and doesn’t beep in the usual irritating manner when I bash some buttons to gain entry. Nonplussed, I start trying all of the four keys I was given when I moved in - none open the door, which is just below my first-floor window. It looks pretty unscaleable though, so I head around the [View Full Entry]

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Whether China is Buddhish, Taoist or Confucian, it’s Easter Sunday and I’m 6000 miles from home, alone, eating a complimentary Easter bunny in a five-star hotel room and watching traffic. It’s surprisingly stressful surveying the scene as suicidal scooters weave between coaches and taxis and the occasional roar of a Ferrari V8 splits the air - what do I do if I see an accident? Ignore it, or go and explain in Portuguese that the whole thing was laid out in plan view for me and I still have no idea who was at fault? I give up and watch the [View Full Entry]

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Arthur meets me in his car for a weekend in Macau - we head to ferry terminal (and back again for my passport) and we’re met in Macau by a stretch limo and we’re shown the sights briefly before the driver takes us to the hotel. The Mandarin Oriental is a five-star hotel which is owned by the same company as many of the casinos in “Macau, the Vegas of Asia”. An ex-Portuguese colony, the region makes over half its GDP through tourism and gambling, and it seems Arthur’s family are quite high in the pecking order for handling this revenue [View Full Entry]

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I head to the clothing market in Mong Kok to hopefully pick up some bargains on shirts for work. The market is heaving with people and crammed with ‘bargains’ to be had on souvenirs, but there are some items of interest. I pick up five reasonable-quality shirts for under £25, and she throws in a tie to sweeten the deal. The next stall has some reasonable ties too so I stop by to have a look through the selection. The stallkeeper points out in Spanish that she has belts and wallets too, assuming that’s my mother tongue. Since I only wanted [View Full Entry]

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Still placed with the Technical Services department, today I’m touring various depots to see some project work which is currently going on within the company. A design is under consideration for conversion of three double-deck vehicles to open-top tour vehicles, and two single-deck MAN vehicles are moving back to single-door configuration with added luggage space for use on the airport route. The latter project is considerably more mature, with one vehicle already tilt-tested entered service. The two vehicles undergoing conversion are with an external contractor at a depot in Sha Tin in [View Full Entry]

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