Hong Kong & Kowloon: sea of people
In September '07, off I went to work on our recently delivered B777 simulator to Cathay Pacific. I'd always wanted to visit Hong Kong, for decades in fact. So many people crammed into so much cement, steel and bamboo, meandering about green steep hills and caressing the ocean; Hong Kong has no counterpart, save for a distant New York, it too unique in having a forest of sky scrapers, the original urban canyons. The city is a mix of old and new; towering bamboo scaffolding about ultra modern glass, steel and concrete towers, open air markets (butchers too), ancient remedies peddled on the streets. [2010 comment: I've not been to mainland China in decades, so this might not be so true anyway!]
Time lapse movie of Hong Kong harbour at night [Canon 300D - click play twice - 6 MB file - original is twice as large]. The scintillating buildings is due to colour lights programmed to shift.
Time lapse of apron buzz at Manila airport (I took a holiday away from Hong Kong) click play twice - one day I'll do a proper one! this was a quickie with all on board and staff giving me rude looks to get onboard!
Although staying for two weeks at the Regal airport hotel which is connected to Terminal 1, it's only 30 minutes by train to Hong Kong, and when you wake up to this view from your hotel room every morning!
I got access to a Cathay Pacific B777-300 (not an ER) at the airport gate after much trouble obtaining an apron pass, to take measurements on the flight controls with the customer's test pilot and test engineer. A nice experience - these guys have great jobs. It is so bright as compared to the simulator so that the screens are washed out here. I feel far more at home in a C150, no pilot look here! Cathay is a wonderful customer to work with; they deeply know their *stuff*, are professional and curteous to a fault. :o)
The simulator I'm quite proud of, having the electric flight controls I helped CAE design, and the wrapper that allows dumping our legacy code into our cutting edge environment. Cathay pilots have shown much interest in this new simulator as they are receiving their first 300ER versions of the B777 from Boeing this month (Sept '07).
A restaurant and small market under tin roofs, buried in the urban jungle.
It is near impossible crossing many of the busy streets in downtown Hong Kong, so elevated walkways provide shelter from the sun and a quick way to get around - they include escalators to get about Hong Kong's hills. They meander amidst the myriad shops and restaurants, so you're often starring at patrons munching their meals through second or third floor windows (300 mm imagined stabilized lens, F/5.6 not adjustable).
Panoramic view of Honk Kong's harbour from Kowloon. Scroll as the image is wide. The internal reflections are from the UV and polarized filters which I forgot to remove.
On sundays, Philippino live-in maids congregate in the center of Hong Kong *en mass* for a day long chat in their native Tagalog. Some areas has hundreds so weaving through to get by is the norm.
Adorned slim trolley meandering the streets of Hong Kong.
Busy city scape - sadly, the sky is not very clear in *autumn*, hampering good photo taking. If only I had a vertical density filter! I'm no pro at Photoshop, but it could have been done there too.
Scrapers jostle for the big sky.
Kowloon shopping district: carpet of people, brisk business, consumption all about: I love these shots, so busy - reminds me of Blade Runner the movie, just add rain, more blue light, and strange foreign voices.
...and to complete this near perfect trip to Hong Kong, I took a holiday in the north of the Philippines province's of Ilocos Norte, at the Fort Ilocandia resort, an old Spanish installation, now owned by a Hong Kong enterprise and mostly catering to mainland China affluence. In nearby Laoag city, I was always stared at as few westnerners visit here. I counted 5 in 1 week, hotel included! The beach was decent, and the waves plenty fun. Ilocos Norte people have a language of their own called Ilokano, very much different from the national Tagalog language. They speak the two and English as well. They're a proud people having resisted many *invaders* in the past, and were isolated from the rest of the Philippines by mountains until the common bus mades its way through :o)
I had the beach all to myself, day in day out - monsoon season! Which meant 5 foot waves that I dove into giggling as a child. 90 minutes up the coast was my true destination, the Pagudpud beach, supposedly a great place to spend a week. I made it once, and decided to stay at the fort. It was a lovely beach, but with few waves.
