A different side of Hong Kong

As many of you saw when I posted these pics on facebook a few weeks ago, there are more to Hong Kong than just tall buildings and people. Hong Kong has an amazing amount of nature and hiking trails, and thanks to the Swedish women's network here in Hong Kong I have gotten the chance to see and walk on several of these hiking trails. 

As soon as you get outside the city and a bit up in the hills you feel that the air is so much better, less pollution and less dirt, instead fresh, moist and green air. It does wonders to the breathing, especially for me with asthma. Of course the actual walking in a varied terrain in a pretty high speed with a bunch of fun and interesting people makes it so much fun. 

Here are some pictures of the wonderful nature of Hong Kong. The hills and trees are green and fresh. The beaches are gorgeous and the water blue. Winter time in Hong Kong is the perfect temperature for hiking, around 17-22C (63-71F), sunny with a light breeze. It's absolutely lovely. 

Beautiful view over New Territories. 

Hike close to the Chinese border. 

Lunch break at the abandoned village. 

View over Shek-O. 

Happy hikers! 

Big Buddha surrounded by forest. 

I was very much looking forward to this week's  hike from Tung Chung all the way up to the Big Buddha. You who went in the cable car that route knows how steep that hike will be :). Unfortunately it was cancelled due to people being sick :(. Get well my friends. I hope we can still do it before hiking season is over. 

Hair model, check!

Since I'm still not working I can do other fun stuff, like participate as a hair model. Yeah, not that flashy really. However, a friend of Honey's cousin needed a hair model with slightly wavy and frizzy hair. Who does she call? Me, memememe! Yep, that's my hair, a little wavy and lot of frizzy. Not to mention the grey showing a little too much again... Anyway, so the hair dresser needed my hair, and I said I can do it. I didn't get paid, but I got a free hair treatment, and that's pretty darn good to me. 

While Teresa the hair dresser/sales woman, treated my hair with a special new product good for frizzy hair they all spoke Cantonese. I was thinking while I was sitting there and people came up and touched and examined my hair, I'm probably lucky to not know what they are talking about, even if I'm sure they were only talking about the miracle that this treatment would do for my hair. You know they could as well been talking about how I have been mistreating my hair. I've gotten it cut once, and barely trimmed once, since I got here, I have a color and high lights that are grown out, and frizzy hair. One of the persons that was watching the treatment actually pointed out to me in English how my grey is showing and that I need to color my hair to cover it. Yeah, I know I need that. I'm kind of hoping that sweet hair dresser Teresa needs a hair model to demonstrate how to cover the grey hairs. She did mention something about using me as a hair color model as well. I hope she was happy with my performance of sitting nice and quiet in the hair dresser chair for a couple of hours so she'll call me again :). 

Me before the treatment. 

After the treatment. 

This is the product series she used, Amazon Series. 

Wine in the snack store?

I cannot stop being amazed over the places they sell alcohol here in Hong Kong. I mean, it's so de-dramatized to drink alcohol here, just not a big deal. And most Hong Kong people I've met don't even drink. No wonder they make alcohol available basically everywhere. 

Wine for sale in a snack store. 

You can buy a beer, wine and alcoholic cider at SevenEleven, and they give you a straw if you don't want to drink directly from the bottle. Of course you can buy all kinds of alcohol in the grocery store. They have often a fairly okay selection, and it's often cheaper to buy at least two bottles, for example one bottle of Penfold's Konunga Hill costs 89 HKD, or buy two for 109 HKD. It's crazy, right? 

There are also designated liquor stores as well, and most of them seem catered to the "fine wine" drinker. I haven't been in to one yet, but when it's time for me to spend money on an Amarone I will be sure to visit a specialty wine store :). 

The weirdest place I have seen alcohol for sale is in a Japanese snack store. In this store they sell all kinds of snacks like chips, chocolates, cookies and Honey's favorite, dried squid (ewww...). Now they also have a selection of wines. It's just... weird, or odd at least, and absolutely fascinating. 

I think Honey told me the age of buying alcohol in Hong Kong is 18 years, but it seems like most stores don't seem to care that much. Again, from what I've seen, heard and experienced so far, Hong Kong teenagers aren't that interested in drinking alcohol, and I still don't know where the day drunks hang out. Of course there are exceptions to this assumption, but over all, alcohol doesn't seem to appeal to Hong Kongers. I guess they do other stuff...

Chinese Grand parents

Chinese people really lives longer. Honey has all his grand parents still alive and kicking. A couple of weeks ago we celebrated his grand ma's 90th birthday. She doesn't hear well, and she broke her hip a couple of years ago, but she's still healthy and the hip healed well. She's walking by herself again, but with a cane. I find that totally impressive. Talk about good genes. Honey's grand dad still walks without any help, healthy as ever. He tells me one of the secrets to a long and healthy life is to eat fish every day, especially eat the fish head. Imagine that...

Chinese New Year

It's the Chinese  New Year celebration, and it has been my first. Hong Kong take this celebration seriously. We have had family dinners and lunches every day since last Friday. Lots of Chinese food and Cantonese. It has been going well though. I know this is important to them and Honey seems to really enjoy it all, and that's important. My most memorable moment was the fireworks last Monday night. We had dinner with family first, then we went to the end of Victoria Park and watched the fireworks. My goodness! Amazing and they would never end! Yeah, that was fantastic. 

Now we have some days to chill. Honey is off from work (since he's a teacher he gets a few more days off than the people working in an office). Yesterday we spent the whole day watching TV-series, went for a 5 mile run, came back and made a home made pizza. It was delicious, relaxing and just great. We both feel well rested now. 

Happy Chinese New Year y'all!! 

First Chinese New Year dinner finished. 

We took Dingding out for a walk in the park. 

Family from both Honey's mom and dad's side gathered. 

Hot Pot dinner. 

Bulletinen

Senaste omslaget av Bulletinen.

This entry is for you who understands Swedish :). Since November last year I have been helping with writing and editing a monthly Swedish magazine called Bulletinen. It is sent out for free to all Swedes in Hong Kong and South China who are registered at the Swedish General Consulate in Hong Kong. All work is voluntary. It gives me great joy and pleasure to do this, both writing and editing. 

We are two people who have done the editing together, but from the next number I will be on my own. Christian has been a fantastic help and inspiration, and has had so much patience with me while I was re-learning InDesign. It has been a great team work, but now he and his wife are moving back to Sweden. 

Our Director/Editor Carina is also amazing to work with. She is always so encouraging and happy. It makes it even more fun to volunteer time and effort to create a fun and interesting magazine with relevant information. 

The magazine gets printed and snail-mailed out, but there is a web-version of the magazine on SwedCham's website for those interested in reading it. Here's the link: Bulletinen. 

Since I still don't work this has been a great way to keep me busy. And it's a lot of fun! Soon time to start working on the next issue :). 

Super Bowl!

Picture from eteamz.com

Super Bowl XLVII!! I guess the good thing with not working is that I can watch this live, even if I don't live in the US anymore (although I still miss it a lot). It sucks that we don't get the actual Super Bowl commercials here in Hong Kong... They usually are the talk of the year. I just have to youtube them later. It's the half time show and Beyoncé is rocking it pretty darn well so far. Now all of Destiny's Child members are on stage! That must be many years ago that happened last. All three are wearing the same looking shoes haha. Just a funny detail really. 

Other than that I think there are kind of boring teams in this year's Super Bowl, San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Ravens. I did not see that coming, well, I think we did see it coming, but I just didn't want it to happen. I mean, where are the fun teams? I am a Dallas Cowboys fan, but I saw early that they wouldn't make it. But at least Peyton Manning should have been playing today with his new Broncos team. He is such a star qb. That really showed now when he changed team and still got them to play his game, and do it tremendously well. Even if Tom Brady is a girl the New England Patriots are more fun to watch. Or see Eli Manning and his New York Giants fight and mess their way forward. See how Brew Brees stand on his toes to look over his defenders to try and pass the ball to the right receiver. Watch Aaron Rodgers pierce his eyes in to the other team before throwing the ball. Yeah, so many other fun teams to watch than 49ers and Ravens, but they were obviously the best teams this year. There will be another Super Bowl next year, and the next, and the next... I hope I am working by then though. 

Who wins this year's Super Bowl? So far it looks pretty good for Baltimore.