The End

This is the end of this blog. I've now finished my semester in Hong Kong. But i must add one final things about meditation, which was the original motivation for this. So in my last weekend i went hiking by myself to Lantau Island. It's such a beautiful place, and i planned to do some meditation in a nice solitary campsite. But my solitary campsite i found on my map was inhabited by heaps of people. That was ok - it was still nice. And i did meditate - for about 15 minutes.

The problem with camping in Hong Kong is that my body clock has switched to big city time, and i can't get to sleep until about 2am. But the sun goes down at 7.00. and even though i'd like to be able to, i can't yet meditate for 7 hours. so i got really bored and rang kyja from my tent.

Kyja arrives in 2 days, and we'll travel to Beijing and Mongolia, and hopefully not get kidnapped by nomadic herders, so that i'm able to arrive back in Brisbane on the 23rd of June.

Anyway, my point is, this is the end of my blog. Sorry it was a bit boreing. Thankyou for reading anyway!

Seeyou Soon!

Sensory Goodness

I just found possibly my ultimate recipe for sensory wellbeing - eat really hot curry, then go for a long run, then listen to bob dylan. mmmmm

i'm trying to study for my psychology exam, and reading a textbook on chinese psychology. i'm still convinced my father is a reincarnation of confucious, or actually confucious. no other australians wear flip-flops inside.

Monopoly!

Yesterday i spent most of the day in a board games cafe. It's just a room up the top of a building, with lots of board games and food and tea. A friend of a friend asked me to go and play monopoly. it was fun, but turns out he's a Hong Kong monopoly champion. That's right - they play monopoly competitively! crazy. So that was my day - failing in the game of property development, whilst drinking camomile tea. (also, i was annoyed because i didn't get to buy Tsim Tsa Tsui real estate, which is the bit of Hong Kong i feel affectionate towards.)

Oh, then we played UNO, which is always awesome, but i'm way too slow. I feel like i was better at UNO when i was 5.

Buzzing Things

Here are a list of things that are currently buzzing in Hong Kong that i hear from my room constantly.

-Construction work outside
-traffic
-something in the sky
-the fan in the hall outside my room
-the fan in the bathroom

Good Poster

I like the description of an event i saw on a poster in the train station;

"Program includes, zhong ethnic dance sway and sway, the milking see saw game with smearing faces. Pretty young maidens etc."

The Buddha of Tourism

The other day me and my mum were talking about the issues of turning religious objects into commercial ventures. She likes to stay in an abbey converted into a commercial hotel.

The Big Buddha in Hong Kong was apparently made in 1997 specifically to be a tourist attraction (and to put good feng shui stuff on Hong Kong, apparently.) At first this seems a bit unusual, but then i started thinking about it and everywhere around the world the most popular tourist attactions are often religious. Like the churches in Paris, or St.Paul's in London, or the Vatican, or Ankor Wat, or the Temples in thailand, or national mosques. So what's so bad about making a religious tourist attraction? I'm trying to think of other religious icons that have been created with tourism in mind, but i can't. Tell me if you think of any!

Maybe the Hong Kong Buddha is just the free market entrepeneurial Buddha. But is it any less 'sacred' as a spiritual icon? When i've visited there's always alot of people worshipping and doing buddhist things around, so it seems to serve both purposes quite well without pretending not to.

Anyway, unless i'm forgetting some really obvious example, i think many Christians would get angry if the church made something with a non-religous purpose. Maybe they should, and see what happens.

Korean films continued...

So i need to explain what happened at the end of that film about dogs. ('m just assuming that nobody will ever see it.)

So the man hid the dog in a cupboard of the apartment basement, and when he went down later to try to find it, he sees the creepy old janitor has taken the dog and killed it, makes it into a delicious soup and eat it.

Then the man throws another dog off the apartment roof, kills it, and the janitor goes to help bury it, then digs it up again and eats it.

Then the man's wife comes home having just bought a new dog. The husband hates the dog, naturally, but his wife is very controlling so she makes him walk the dog alot. One day the dog gets lost. The man freaks out because his wife will leave him if he doesn't find the dog. Meanwhile a homeless bum who also lives in the basement has found the dog and is...surprise surprise....about to eat it!

So a girl who works in the maintanence department of the building and is secretly in love with the man saves the dog from the homeless bum, and returns it to the man.

And everyone is happy. Except for the dogs who have been eaten.

The End.

I love Korean film!!!!!!!

Not Studying

Today i'm meant to be studying. When i got up i planned my day to not constantly eat food, not spend money, and study alot.

I read a chapter of a textbook, then a friend rang me to go out and eat expensive sushi, which i did.

But it has now put me in the mood for studying.

Buildings

Tonight in my study procrastination i wrote a song about buildings. This is about the fourth in a series of songs i've written about buildings. They didn't intend to be about buildings, but that's all i can see outside my window. Even if i start trying to write about something else a building always comes into it somehow. I wondered if this was some kind of local phenomenon and so i read some poetry by a Hong Kong poet who writes in English, but it didn't mention anything about buildings specifically.

The building out my window is particularly interesting because it has light on the top that gradually change colour, and it's a bit hypnotic sometimes. It's good to stare at. Mainly I write about that building, because i feel i have the closest relationship with it.

There are soooooooo many buildings in Hong Kong.