Setting up and some walking around

The first shot that caught my eye this morning from window of 20th floor at Ibis hotel, North Point. Lucky I am told, this is the only touring boat ('junk?') of its kind. Soon to have some Hong Kong breakfast of noodles and beef, strong coffee. Rendevous with Stella, my host, and Kit, her assistant -- we went to the first of four venues, the Lok Fu Shopping Center. There, as you can see below, all the glasses came out intact and wondering what the hell just happened. Say hi to Stella!! She is dressing up the instrument a bit.

Below, Stella models a mascot head for Santa Fatina, a character who has something to do with making friends and buying 'accesories.' Peace. Victory. Whiskers.

This was after some wonderful Dim Sum. Very nice folks to work with! We got all our shopping done very easily and the plan for the next day is quite clear. Going to be fun! The mall reminds me a lot of malls in Singapore, very cosy-congested, things go UP, not out. Get your pressed dried duck and preserved duck liver at Lok Fu! The latter presented in very pretty red boxes, like See's candy. Below caught my eye, what a nice package for some oyster sauce:

I'll try to get some more shots of Hong Kong Xmas characters at Lok Fu, like Little Red Riding Hood Egghead, about what you might picture. I thought at first that Cantonese didn't seem quite as sing-songy as Mandarin, but now I'm not so sure. There's a lot of singing in the voice. Stella and Kit are very happy with my phrasing of certain expressions, and I explained that musicians very often are good at "Mockingbirding" (not how I put it). After the mall stuff we caught a train to Kowloon to check out my digs, post gigs, at the Man Hin Lung hotel. This is one small section of a large building, containing also the cyber cafe where I am now. A lot of stuff going on here which I will try to describe in more detail -- suffice to say it may be the kind of thing that inspired the art directors for Blade Runner, their imagining of everything stacked up and crammed into every place it can cram. The Can Cram Manor, among many... (Can't remember the building name right now).

There's a possible (to an extent) DIY Chinese character etymology, if you look carefully at some of them. For instance the idea of "no" is represented with a lot of strokes ending up looking like sharp objects. Danger -- "no" "ouch." I asked Stella if this made sense and she was enthusiastic, also about the character describing sitting, which looks like something, uh, sitting....

Lights in front of expensive touristy place in Kowloon. Lots of picture taking going on. Pose. flash. flash. Have to be there, I think, to appreciate the scale.. the lights are strung way out, all the stuff you see is floating. Below, Santa gives out coupons on one of the main drags, very 42d streetish, actually crazier... was called 'hey boss' quite a number of times as I kept focused toward the harbor, keep the coupons, thanks!!

This is where I will have to restrain as I get better with the digital camera-- the waterfront view from Kowloon to HK Island is awesome, and there are several booths with sample shots of tourists in the foreground to remind us. I'm sticking with these two for now just to give an idea, it's too tempting to throw a lot of blurry pics at everyone. Ok, more later. Do Tse, thank you.