Easter in Hong Kong

Today is my last day in Hong Kong. It has been a different holiday as I have spent most of my time in the hotel as it has been raining on and off for the past three days.

On the brighter side,I have had curly hair the whole time I have been here thanks to the humidity.

I am staying at the Marco Polo Hong Kong Hotel on Canton Road right beside the Star Ferry. My hotel is not to be confused with the Marco Polo Gateway Hotel which is down the block on the other side of Chanel or the Marco Polo Prince which is at the very end of Canton Road. No wonder my poor taxi driver was so confused when I confidently told him that I wanted to go to the Marco Polo Hotel. Regardless, of that fact I was delivered to my hotel for the price of $HK385. Wow!!!! Hong Kong is expensive.

I have had a great time shopping and even bought a smaller computer and a new IPod Nano 8G. I wanted the red 16 G but it isn’t available in Hong Kong yet.

There is something magical about Hong Kong even in the rain. I loved walking about the harbour late at night and mingling with the thousands of people. Two cruise ships were docked when I arrived. One of the Symphony Cruise Line and the other one of the big Star cruise ships. This morning they are both gone now as during the night I heard the loud horns announcing that they were leaving but another Symphony Ship is now docked and so the thousands of tourists continue to roam up and down Canton, Salisbury and Nathan Roads.

I stayed in a nice room though I was upgraded when I arrived from a Superior with a double bed to a Deluxe with a lounge and queen sized bed which was great. Unfortunately, in the free upgrade, I lost my view and so have spent three days looking at the other side of the hotel and the air conditioning units. As it has rained so much it really hasn’t mattered and this morning I was able to watch a big crane unit come in through the bottom of the hotel and start bring in bring steel girders. OK, not as great as a city or harbour view but interesting never the less.

My favourite thing about Hong Kong this trip has been the store Page One. It is a huge bookstore full of English books. I had the best time. I didn’t go crazy buying books as they weigh alot but I did buy some travel books for my trip this summer. There was also an incredible stationery and things for scrap booking store. I had a great time browsing through there.

I also did community service while I was here as I was stopped a number of times and asked to help students learning English for their classes. I was able to explain how we celebrate Easter in Canada as well as fill out a form comparing bars Hong Kong to bars in Canada. I sort of made that one up as I don’t really have experience of bars in either place. I could tell you about bars in Beijing as many of the ones I go to are similar to the pubs in Ireland. I just hang out with my friends while they discuss the advantages and disadvantages of Chinese beer and wine. I get extcited about the kind of can my diet coke comes in. Lately, we have been getting cans with a flip top instead of the pull tab. This is a big enough thing that it stops all the previous conversation and we focus our amazement on this new development. I think this is one of those new upgrades the Olympics have brought to Beijing.

I have enjoyed being away from the Great China Firewall for the past three days. I have been able to check news and headlines. I have been able access YouTube, Webshots (where all my pictures are located) and all of the blogs I read. It is nice.

Well, it is almost time to shut down and call for my bags to be picked up so I can fly back to Beijing.

Oh yes, I talked to my grown up nephew on Skype because the 22nd was his 24th birthday.WoW!!!!! I also had a short conversation with my sister, my breakfast arrived, about our Dad. It is hard to believe that on the 28th he will have been gone four years but that is something for another day.

Hong Kong is great and I will be back.

Masters Program and YouTube

My life right now as of this very moment seems to revolve around the two topics mentioned in the Title -both of which are causing me a certain amount of stress but for different reasons.

The first is my Masters Program. The good news is I have been accepted into the Masters Program I wanted. After waiting 30 some years to have the opportunity and the resources to continue with my formal education I am extremely happy about this fact. Of course, I also had to wait 30 odd years for the Masters Program I am taking to actually exist. Who ever knew I would turn into a computer geek. No one is more surprised than me. So on April 28th I will begin my journey towards my Master of Science in Education specializing in Integrated Technology Grades 3-12.

I am a keener. I have already completed the ecourse that introduces me to elearning that is required before I actually begin. Good on me. The stress factor comes into play as I realized late last night that I have begun a program that will run through to August 17th for the first semester the very same summer I have planned a four week vacation to Russia, England, Scotland, France, Ireland and Northern Ireland. Ok- not great planning that!!! but the truth is this – if I postpone until the fall semester than I would have the excuse that school was just beginning a new year and I am too busy.

To help the situation along a bit I am purchasing a mini computer in Hong Kong this weekend so I won’t have to lug my heavy laptop all over Great Britain. I also have a 160 G portable hard drive that should do the trick. I hope……

I have also made sure that any place I am booked into will have internet access to some degree. OK – it may not be the perfect setup but at least I am moving forward.

Now onto the problem with YouTube. This takes a bit of an explanation… I am presently enrolled in an online course that the school paid for, on Advanced Techniques for my Interactive Whiteboard in my classroom. I am having a great time learning a lot of things but at the moment I am a bit stimied as I am in the process of producing a flipchart to send to my tutor and need to put in a link that is on You Tube. I tried all day to access it with no success. It wasn’t until I got home tonight and opened my Google Reader that I discovered that You Tube is blocked in China at the moment because of the unrest in Tibet. While that doesn’t really help me, I am sure that my instructor in England won’t ever receive another flipchart with the note that says, “unable to include video due to the “Great Firewall of China”.

On a more serious note:

I came across this blog today through my Reader and wanted to leave the link so that you can access it if you wish. The situation mentioned with the news is exactly what has happened to me in the past 48 hours. The interesting thing is that while CNN was blacked out periodically on Saturday, on Sunday afternoon we saw live feed coming from Lhasa through CNN Hong Kong for a while and then it was abruptly cut off though the story itself was not blocked. The newscaster reported that he was not sure how the feed was being sent from Lhasa to Hong Kong.

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-03-17-n88.html

While I very seldom feel as if I am missing out on anything, this is one of those times when you know you are not living free but under a government that has absolute power and is capable of wielding that power swiftly.

So my small problems with You Tube not being available at the moment are nothing compared to the lack of information that does not get to the wonderful people of this incredible country and the problems that can cause.

My one urgent request is that you scour You Tube and other sites for information on what is really happening in Tibet at the moment. The truth is there. There is no reason in this day and age of instant information that you are uninformed. While I cannot, at the moment, access everything – you can…..

PS As a side note – the reason I was able to find the information in the first place was because of my incredible Google Reader and RSS feed.  While I cannot access the blogs directly, they are fed into my Reader with no problem.

The Great Chinese Firewall GCF

I am a bit hesitant to write this blog today as I don’t want it to be construed by anyone that I am being critical of where I am living and the constraints that I live with. I was going to say “I live under” but that would be totally incorrect as most of the time I don’t experience any difficulty with using the internet from inside China.

That being said, there are difficulties but you learn to live with them and to work around them to a certain extent. I do know that there are certain topics I would never research from inside of China but then there are other topics that I would assume would be problems that I can reach without any difficulty.

I have never been blocked from searching about things that have to do with Christianity or Religion. As a matter of fact, I regularly order books from Amazon including Bibles that I receive without any problem or delay – but that is another topic.

When I moved to China I was very uninformed about the internet situation but quickly learned and then was pleasantly surprised by what I could access.

The internet can be slower in China but then I live in Beijing one of the most wired cities in the world and so it is not a problem. But then all of sudden, for no apparent reason, all internet traffic from Yahoo or Google will suddenly be unavailable. Last night, I had trouble accessing Yahoo for about 45 minutes then it suddenly cleared right up.

I don’t go to websites that may raise flags – for those I can wait until I get out of the country – but then I have usually forgotten about the topic.

I have posted a link to an article I found this morning in my Google Reader that I think is one of the best and well balanced explanations of Internet life in China. I agree with what he has to say….

One of the interesting things I just realized after reading the article was that the self censoring continued even when I was home at Christmas. I automatically didn’t go to sites I wouldn’t use in China. I wasn’t home long enough to become familiar with the world without a firewall. So I guess from that perspective the way China uses the firewall works because I have become accustom to it.

The article is quite long but very thorough. If you come over to China expecting it to be exactly like it is at home then you need to reevaluate but the horror stories of total news blackout etc. is not part of life here or not part of My life.

Enjoy the article. Oh yes, for just a little chuckle – I had to increase the font twice in order to be able to comfortably read the article. The joys of growing older.

By the way, Spring has arrived in Beijing……the weather is warming up during the day……the sandstorms will start shortly. 🙂

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/chinese-firewall.