A Collection of Thoughts

I consider myself to be somewhat of an introverted person (disregarding when I'm drunk of course), and so, left to my own devices I generally think about a lot of stuff, and think about stuff a lot. Now, most of these thoughts are about as useful as a chocolate tea pot, but, once in a while, something will pop up which could be worth sharing...so without further ado.

On Hong Kong
I wasn't sure what to expect when we arrived in Hong Kong, but I have to say I thoroughly like it. The reasons are three fold.

1. because English is everywhere, which makes life easy for the china-man who isn't really very good at Chinese (me!)
2. because the whole place is quite compact, and everything is only a short walk (and usually an elevator ride) away.
3. it's got everything. Want a shopping megaplex? It's there. Want to climb a mountain? It's there. Want to go to a theme park? Take your pick from Disneyland or Ocean Park. Want to go to the seaside (I hesitate to claim a beach exists in Hong Kong, but it probably does)? It's there. Excellent.

On the Shanghai World Expo
I was told beforehand that I would regret not going, but I would regret going even more. Well, now that I've been, I can proclaim that that's not the case.


Instead, I was left with a thorough feeling of bewilderment (as well as a feeling of borderline heat stroke) about what I had just seen.

Basically, we walked and queued (mostly queued) for 15 hours, my dear father insisted on taking a million photos. We saw some displays of stuff, from various countries, and I just didn't understand what it was for. I mean, if you were interested in said country, then you probably would have known most of it's foibles - the Dutch farm a lot of sheep, the French make cheese and wine, Saudai Arabia is all about the oil, and so on.

If you were interested in some of the technological displays, then you were probably also disappointed, given that there was nothing really technical to be shown. Instead, it was more of a laymans presentation. It was like watching on the big screen something you would read in the BBC technology news section - something I felt probably wasn't worth the hour of queueing. In the Korea tent, they had 3D TV's on display. Why? I mean, I could have just gone to my local Sony store and had a look there.

All in all, World Expo - worth going once to tick the box. Never again.

On good food.
Someone once said to me: "You can never have too much of a good thing."

Well, they were wrong. I present a case study of myself, who upon returning to China, proceeded to eat pretty much everything in sight. There was no shortage of excellent food, as we were treated to meal after meal by friends and family. Unfortunately, my stomach obviously found this a harder ask than my mouth, and, two weeks into the trip, decided it wasn't taking any more of this abuse.

When your stomach goes on a digesting strike, any food you try and eat inevitably re-appears in vomit form. Such was the case for me for two days. This annoyed me greatly, not because of the vomming, which was quite uncomfortable, but I had to miss six meals of great food. Sad times.

Interestingly enough, my dad suffered no such problems - he's obviously had more practise at eating loads of good food. I should learn from him.

That's all for now.