Excellent kebabs in Hong Kong

When in Hong Kong and sick of both Western and Asian food, consider grabbing a kebab at Ebeneezer's.

Dr. Leung for Shoes, Wanchai, Hong Kong

It is often quite hard for me to find shoes my size in Asia - not even in Hong Kong or Singapore. As such, during those times I am not back to the West to purchase shoes, I must have them repaired. An elderly gentlemen, Dr. Leung operates out of a small shop space right next to exit A3 of the Wanchai subway station.

Red sea in Shenzhen

While blue-green algae attacks the Tai Lake in Wuxi in the northeast of China, Shenzhen and Hong Kong are dealing with red algae in the seas.

Red tide of algae hits Shenzhen coastal area

By Jonathan Yeung (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-06-07 07:03

SHENZHEN: A marine algal bloom commonly known as "red tide" has returned to Shenzhen bay, causing serious pollution and killing off many marine plants.

A red tide is caused by a buildup of marine plankton that consume oxygen while releasing toxic substances into the water, killing off fish and plant life.

"This is the biggest red tide that has ever appeared off the city's coast," said Zhou Kai, a marine expert with Shenzhen's municipal sea fishery environment monitoring station.

He said this marked the third time this year a red tide had appeared off Shenzhen. The first appeared near Shenzhen bay in January and another appeared near Dameisha last month.

Based on the monitoring station's observations, the most recent red tide is mainly west of Shenzhen. The infected area is about 50 sq km. Sea to the east of Shenzhen appears to be free of the plankton at this stage.

"We strongly urge the public to stay away from the polluted sea areas and not eat sea products from there," Zhou said.

A red tide has also been spotted near neighboring Hong Kong in the past few days, with as many as six beaches in Tunmen and Qingshan Bay being affected.

The government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has reminded people not to swim in polluted areas.

Zhou said the red tide would recede if it rained. "But the weather remains sunny and hot, which means the red tide is here to stay for now," he added.

He said the recent weather conditions were favorable to the plankton.

A lot of rain has fallen off Shenzhen's coast in recent months, pulling nitrogen and phosphorous up from the sea bottom. Plankton feed off these nutrients.

This, compounded with the hot weather, has helped the plankton breed and spread, Zhou said. He said the red tide would not cause major economic losses because very few people were breeding sea fish in the affected areas.

"But the foul smell of the dying algae will be unpleasant for the people living in the affected areas, and the tide's annoying red color will also mar the pleasant view," Zhou said.

Double Sadness Internet Hell in China

I spent a week in China on business. To my dismay, I was all but unable to access my www.netidentity.com e-mail account (Boyd@JonesEmail.com ) and many Web sites in the West were incredibly slow or blocked by the Chinese Internet censors -- or both. Gmail worked well though (for the most part) and I tried to move all e-mail traffic to Gmail during that week.

Truly Internet hell. "Double" in the sense that the sites like Wikipedia.org remain blocked by the China Internet cops -- and in the sense that the Taiwan earthquake in late December 2006 (and the cutting of underseas cables) is still slowing Internet access in China.

Things were a little better in Hong Kong (I assume Hong Kong has some Internet access redundancy of some sort) and back to normal when I returned to Taiwan (although the earthquake cut cables south of Taiwan, Taiwan's access itself to the Internet cloud was not affected).

No! Really! We REALLY don't want Hong Kong dollars!

The big news is that the RMB has hit parity with the Hong Kong dollar. The Hong Kong dollar has been fixed since the 1980's at 7.8 to US$1. Yesterday, the Chinese Yuan hit 7.8 to US$1.

The results were to be expected in Shenzhen. Sure enough, I was in a taxi. I gave the taxi drive a choice -- break a big ole RMB 100 note or accept a HK$20 note. He could not decide but really did not want the HK$. I tipped him RMB 0.50 and then he accepted the HK$ reluctantly.

No thank you to Hong Kong dollars!

Having spent the last three years or so in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (across the border from Hong Kong), I became accustomed to using Hong Kong dollars (HK$) occasionally for anything from taxi fares to meals. In the near past, the HK$ seemed to have a bit of a cachet in Shenzhen.

However, in the last four months or so, with the rapid appreciation of the Chinese yuan (or renmibi, RMB), the HK$ has fallen out of favor -- and fallen hard. The RMB was pegged at about 8.2 / US$1 , but now is on par with the HK$ at about 7.8 / US$1. I think consumers realize instinctively that the RMB will appreciate further as well.

As a result, Chinese in Shenzhen now eschew the HK$. You almost can't give the stuff away! Case in point, a recent taxi fare came to RMB 20.6. I gave the driver a RMB 20 note and a HK$2 coin. All I had. The driver refused the coin although that would have been a rather robust tip by Mainland Chinese standards (tipping of any sort is not done in China). He said "I can't give this away."

Great Asian Internet disruption of 2006 continued

Although 90% of the sites I visit are not affected, I have noticed that sites hosted in Hong Kong or Mainland China are loading VERY slowly indeed. Sites and e-mail accounts hosted over there.

Furthermore, many friends in Hong Kong and China continue to complain that maybe they can get Skype to work, but not MSN Messenger and that foreign sites (such as blogspot blogs) load very, very slowly for them if at all.

Great Asian Internet Disruption of 2006

The earthquake last night near Taiwan seems to have caused quite a lot of Internet access issues:

My colleagues in China report huge problems accessing foreign sites and Hotmail and Yahoo mail. I, in Taipei, Taiwan, however, have had absolutely no problems today accessing any of the "usual suspect" sites such as Yahoo, Google, Gmail, Blogspot, Techcrunch, etc.

One friend in Taiwan indicated that he is accessing Web sites rather slowly though.

Photos from ITU with Hulion

At ITU Hong Kong with Hulion.















Albert Yao and me.















The Hulion (video conferencing) gang and me.

Only white people for market surveys, please

Upon crossing a border into Hong Kong, there are often staff taking surveys of tourists. They are very professional with PDA's and short, to-the-point questions. However, they seem to only ask foreign (white) tourists questions. I am almost always accosted to reply to their questions. And, I have often seen these survey takers only asking other white people (often there are only a few white people crossing the border with me in a sea of Chinese). My concern is that these surveys are thus unrepresentative.

Perhaps the ethnic Chinese are unwilling to answer these survey takers? Or are rude?

Choking the Chinese chicken

Beware! Do not bring poultry back to Hong Kong from China or the Customs Man will choke your chicken! :-)

Hong Kong airport

The Hong Kong airport -- one of the -- if not the -- most efficient, comfortable and eye-pleasing
airports in the world.