Where is the windsurfing board? (1)

Jon came back to the center, and had the silly idea that we can go to that no-man beach and fetched his windsurfing gears back. We walked for about an hour to get to the beach with the trolley, hiking up the hill and down, I wisely advised that we are not able to get the 20kg steel trolley up to the hill, through the jungle and down the 500 steps stairs to the little beach to get the windsurfing gear. We should go down to the beach, make sure the gears are in the safe place so that the high tie doesn't wash it away, and we can come back here with a proper sail tomorrow. We can rig up and sail from the little beach back to our windsurfing center. He agreed with me finally, but we already spent 2 hours hiking after a half day of trauma. We were both sweaty and exhausted, walking back home for another 40 mins. showered, ate dinner, and rested up. The next day, we went out again at 10 am despite the weather is still very unstable. It is always like this when moonsoon is happening the low pressure brings in patches of rains and thunder storms. Strong gust and heavy rain fall comes within 1 minute in a sunndy day.

South West Offshore Wind

Spent a week in Taipei to sort out Mom's to sort out the newly arrived helper, Wulan. Wulan is very young, and a great cook. She is patient and quiet, always standing by Mom when she needs help. I just think sometimes she gets bored because there is not much too do. But she seems fne with it. We are so luckly to have her around. We tried to go to the north shoreline to do some surfing practice but the weather was not working for us. The first day it has no waves and the second day the waves are huge, 1.8-2m waves, but wind is too strong - perfect for windsurfing but we have no gear. Finally came back to Cheung Chau, Jon thinks I am more relaxed at home comparing to at my mom's. We wait for a few days for the good wind day, the moonsoon brings strong south westly wind, which is offshore from the beach we normally launch from. It is always tricky to get back to the beach with offshore wind, but we have been windsurfing for years, nothing too bad to worry about. We rigged up and dived into the strong wind, I got into the footstraps, whizzing across the bay planing. Later I checked my heart rate went up to 185 per minute in those andreline filled moments. While I was enjoying the strong wind I saw Jon on his board for a while, it sometimes means equipment failure or injuries. But I can see that he is packing up and started to paddle back to the beach, he is in the middle of the bay, it might take him a while to get to the shore, nothing to worry about. But after 15 mins, I see that he is still around where he was, no progress was made. I realized he was in trouble so I sailed back to the center, changed into a Kayak after confirming his whereabout with binoculars, I went out to find him -he is already drifted to the end of the pennisula, the tie-out current and offshore wind have both pushed him out of the bay in that 20 minutes. I paddled as fast as I can to the tip of the pennisula, but I cannot see him. A windsurfer came by told me that Jon has drifted out beyond the pennisula, i.e., he is out of the bay, he might be in the container shipping channel. I need to report to the marine police ASAP otherwise he might be in danger. I paddled back to the center, ran to the life guard hut by the beach and we agreed we should call the emergency right away. Marine police, Firefighter brigade and life saver units were all out looking for Jon. My guess was Jon must be swimming/paddling to the little beach behind the pennisula where there is no road access. Because it is a sheltered location, there should be no strong current and offshore wind to push him out into the channel. I explained this to the marine police but they cannot see his windsurfing gears on the beach. it is not 1 hours passed after Jon disappeared from the bay, no sight of him on the water, but I belive he is safe because worse comes to worse, he will hold on to the board, it is just a matter of time to fine out where he is. 1 hour 15 mins after he walked back to the center, as I have guessed, he landed in the beach and walked back. I had to make a number of phone calls to cancel the search and thank all the people involved.

Air BnB

Family gathering for Aiden's wedding. It is hard to believe the speed of food disappearing from the fridge, also the number of washing up. Countless number of tea cups and plates, we are eating supermarket bread and self made sandwiches!

Bush Pee

Went out for a Cooroora walk, it was very challenging because near the submit, a little bit of climbing was required on the rocks. It is almost 1/3 of the walk, though it is not very high, the walk is scary. We turned back when the safety chains run out. Later we found that it is only 30 meters away from the top. On the way back to pick up the car, I really need to use the bathroom hence the little detour/spike from the walk.

About Food

I want to say something more about my observation regarding the Aussie foods. I think it is very similar to any North American western food/restaurants. Unless the meal costs you an arm and leg, it is very hard to have a hearty meal where the ingredients are fresh and the dishes taste amazingly interesting (if you have one of those in your neighborhood in these English speaking regions, go there as much as you can because they will close down soon - just heard about the burger joints, Five Guys, are closing down in Hong Kong. They sell junk food, no doubt, but they make junk food from very good ingredients, good grade beef and sinister cream for milkshakes). What is the reason that people are ok with the food standard - it is not bad after all, just average for those restaurants in the high street. My theory is that there is no reference to judge what is good. At home, modern life has squeezed all housewives/househusbands time and energy to prepare for good hearty meal, industrialization of meat productions, packaging and logicstic makes it impossible for people to taste fresh beef/poultry/pork. Just got some feedback regarding the eggs in Australia, we asked why the eggs taste so blend and old in the algriculture giant country? Especially they came from the biggest supermarket chain, which should have very strong barganning power. It is explained that the government culted all egg-laying chicken few years back due to birdflu scare, what's left in the farm are not egg chicken. I guess if the kids who never taste great fresh eggs will think that's what the eggs should be. I belive a good dish came from good ingredient, so it is not likely to have great meal at home, will it be possible to get it from the street? My observation is not likely, either. It is very expensive to dine out, typical high street restaurant will put much more effort in creating the good ambience, good services and providing good drinks rather than good dishes. It pays to be nice, because no customers will give you bad review, especially when the whole street's restaurants tastes the same. supplement after a day away from Noosa:

Recommended by our Air BNB hostess, we drove 45 mins away from the posh Noosa into the less well-to-do farming county. The restaurant is sitting next to the old hotel recently renovated, food is good. The beef short ribs is from the bred of Wagyu X Jersey, smoked then slow cooked. Tender, but a bit too salty to my taste.

Surf Lessons in Noosa Qreensland

Started our Aussie holidays by 3-day surfing lessons. All other people in our group are half of my ages. The instructor, James, is very patient and pays attention to all 7 of us. We took turns to try to catch the waves (at the same time, battling with the rough broken waves and currents at the chest deep sea water in Noosa beach), of course the most important thing is to pop up on the board. Pop up involves doing a cobra, plank, then move the smart leg in the center of the board, and finally, the dumb leg to the front of the smart leg. That was not too difficcult because it is pretty much the same as Ashtanga yoga practice I have been doing for almost 8 years - we generally do 40 to 50 combination of cobra and plank in every practice. The most difficult bit is to catch the right timing when waves come, and paddle to speed up to catch the front side of the wave. Today is the second day of daily 2 hour surfing lesson, from 9 to 11am. We figured it is a bit too much to do it 3 days in a row, we asked for a break, resume the last class on Monday. Noosa head is the traditional East coast Aussie's holiday destination. Clean street, warmish weather (it is close to the winter now, early morning and evening are still cold), lots of nice tree, green bushes on the side walk, fancy restaurants and cafe, fashion shops (people always want to shop). But however fancy the restaurants, the food all tastes average. The ingredients might all come from the same supermarkets we bought our foods from. No comparison and no requirement, everyone is happy with the average food. Where is the food culture (crying)?

BSF Larvae

My original thought was to have the black soldier fly larvae, the maggots, to eat away the beer brewing waste, the spent grain. But they are eating so much when growing up, finishing about 5 kg of wasted grains within 2 weeks. I had to go around town to collect rotten veggies and uneaten foods to feed them. The most surprising thing is that although they eat the hops, Chaff, but the beer hops are keeping everything from rotting which makes them unable to feed on the foor, they do like the rotting matter, fresh food is not so popular. Also, the hops were very wet after fishing them out of the mash brewing pot. That's the easy bit to deal with. I just mixed those with the grains which is not so bad. But the sediment of fermentation is hard to deal with (I think it is just a waste to throw them away). I had to cook the remaining dead yeast, protein and hop remain into the slush. The smell of hops lingered in my apartment for 2 days to a point I start to dislike the IPA beers or any hoppy beer, oops. But the slush is still too wet, because of its anti-bacterial nature, they are keeping the raw chicken head and other fruit matter fresh! It is too strong the sterilizer, I wonder how the frass, the left over from BSFL farm, is going to work with the plants. Without bacterial colonies in soils, it is hard to create a healthy soil. They are turning into pupa, they stop feeding. I have the next project to dry up the worm farm from the slush, the smell was not so good.

Raining Day in Cheung Chau

We moved to the island Cheung Chau about 5 years ago. It started with the weekly weekend visit for windsurfing practice and end up living on the island. The apartment was far away from the pier, there is no vehicles allowed, it takes 10 mins to walk uphill to our complex. The complex is only half occupied, some of our neighours only use the property as holiday home. The landlord gave us the key before we officially signed the contract, we knocked out the old kitchen and put in the new one ourselves. Fixed the leaky roof and flooding balcony. Picked up many funitures from the rubbhish bin nearby, having great roof top to fix the sails, boards and I can finally doing some proper gardening (still on my way to become the gardener, not yet killing thousands of plants). It is 5 minutes walk to the windsurfing beach, birds like to hang out and windsurfing center dog, Fei Fei, likes to visit us. It is raining hard today, nothing to do, we can only wait for the rain to stop and winds to pick up hopefully in the afternoon.

New Puppy

New puppy, Tiger, is joinning the windsurfing center family. Fei Fei is not very impressed.

Prisoners of Anger

April 30th, after hanging in my pass and work computer, said goodbye to my colleagues, wrapping up my contract with AIA for 2 years, and rushed to the 12:45pm ferry back to Cheung Chau. It is getting hot, tourists started to crowd the street of town center. Because this is the starting of the long weekend. We decided to go for a walk while it is still sunny, maybe play with the dogs in Windsurfing center a bit then do some shopping afterwards. Walking back from the windsurfing center, passing the Garden, the pub ran by Melissa and Peter, we were about to stop to chat to Melissa about Fei Fei. Fei Fei is in a habbit to patrol the town center, visiting people she knows (and know her), waiting for treats. As getting closer to the Garden, an old lady and a young girl were shouting at each other, an old guy on the bicycle trying to separate them. With the old guy as the center, the 2 women chased each other in circle, and eventually one caught on and slapped the other. Being slapped and dumbfounded one woke up and chased the other. It sounds like the young girl walked while reading her phone, bumped into the old lady and thus the conflict. While 2 ladies escalated the action, a young man ran over and shouted at the young girl "get your hand off my mother". He then pushed her hard and she fell flat on the floor, drink spilled and the back of her head hit the floor. Things are out of control. Why the anger has controlled the situation? Animal instinct has takent the driver seat, trivial incidents escalate into a serious insult, grudges beared for life. Relationship destroyed and cannot be repaired. I have a few family members are the prisoners of Anger, speaking out of personal experience.

Home Quarantine (7)

I am still logging into work, so the daily schedule is not much different from normal. Get out of the bed by 6am, coffee and cleaning, yoga and shower before 9:15am. Starting to look at the computer until lunch time, break for lunch, pick up the computer again until 6pm. Then alcohol time! Saturday and Sunday makes the big difference, althogh the local police station still calls me every 2 hours, I can sleep until my hearts content. Take all my sweet time to practice Ashtanga and mop the floor again. It is fantastic to have 2 slow days once every week.

I am generally very diappointed with the Chinese media that I can get hold of, perhaps I am just not trying hard enough to look for the articles or newspaper that doesn't simply regergutate the western mainstream media's opinions or news. In general, I don't think these Chinese media are capable of supporting their own investigation center outside of the domestic turf. Sigh...

Picture was taken with my brother and nephew when we met in Appi ski resort in Iwata prefecture before the COVID outbreak. That was a great holidays!

Home Quarantine (6)

Day 7 in home quarantine, I spent time learing Japanese (I vow to get food and drink to my table next time I visit Japan), dealing with work (otherwise I get really too bored) and cleaning the apartment/cooking. The weather has turned great today, the balcony has the warm breeze coming up from the field nearby, bright and sunny day. Who invented home quarantine? Healthy people will be ill if locking in for 14 days!

The picture looks like Jon was trying out the sling in the water market in Thailand - the vendor in the market was very clever. He provided the slings and some fruit seeds or pods, hard as stone. In front of us, some tin cans were hanging on the trees out of the alley way facing the water. We get to shoot the can, if hitting anything, a candy is the reward.

Home Quarantine (5)

One more week to go. The vaccine has claimed 29 lives in Norway, the authority came out sand said we should stop vaccinating the old a frail people very young and healthy people should still be vaccinated. But hello, only old and frail people die of COVID virus. Young and healthy people do not die of COVID - by statistics. What is the rational? The so called health experts probably never study statistics in university, or they are just too eager to get a share of the publicity for their future career development. It has been a good day in Taipei, the temperature has gone up a bit to 20C during the day, no need to have the radiator on. I am too bored and going through the food Mom has stocked up for us. Planning what to have for lunch and dinner the next day. I am also calculating the space left from the freezer so that I can put the food scrapes (we are not allowed to throw away any garbage, they can be virus infused). It is like a 3-D Tetrix game. You eat this, and you have space for more garbage. In Hong Kong, I have my own small composite bin in the balcony, good enough to turn the veggie bits into some neutritions for the plants. But Mom hates nature, she never had a plant in her living space, how strange. The picture was taken in Vietnam a year before last, we were on the Tuktuk texi and thinking we are being conned. It is not about the money lost, it is the feeling of being ripped off that kills me.

Home Quarantine (4)

Almost half-way through, another 7 days to go. My phone buzzes on average every 2 or 3 hours saying I am again running away from my apartment. Even the police officer gets fed up, she asked, how many days are you going to be around.

Back to the virus, I am not a medical expert, so I stand in no position to make the judgement. That's also part of the reason that I started to dig around trying to find more information about this virus since last January. However, the more I look, the more indication I found that media is showing only one-side story. There is no debate, because all second opinions are ignored or discredited in the name of "they do not care about saving lives". There is no science, because I have not yet seen a solid, sound, proper study about how effective masks are - there are tons of pseudo studies about masks, WHO or the media only want to publish the ones providing positive results about wearing masks. There is no consistency, if lock down work is essential to keep everyone safe, why are certain people like supermarket workers are allowed to travel freely? Surely they carry gems like any other living beings. If staying home works, why they ignore the fact that virus can survive on the hard/plastic/metal surface for hours, that means the water bottle you got from the supermarket could be covered with virus. But they tell you staying home is the best thing you can do to you and your family. If wearing masks protects others, why N95 is allowed - the valve in the mask is to allow air flows out, in other words, it filters in, not out. If I see anyone wearing N95 masks, I should be running for my life - but the media nor the government is not telling us this. They only dully repeat, wearing masks to protect yourself and others. There is no truth, no media ever compares the natural number of mortality 2020 and the year before. I was so curious whether this virus is lethal, because I don't see people dying on the streets. So I went to the government website to look for the mortality statistics in Hong Kong. They only published the figures in 2017. There were 80,000 inpatients due to pneumonia and 6,000 death. In 2020, COVID-19 so far claims 150 lives, similar to the car accident mortality a year! Where is the consistency, science and truth? When the whole society abandon those values and retrieve to the option of living in a locked down society because that's the laziest way out, I am really losing hope.

The picture is our X'mas lunch last year, I tried to make Yorkshire puddings, but not very successful. It is so hard to get hold of good piece of meat in Hong Kong (unlike in Taiwan, Mum has stocked up the fridge with great premium meat and produce, we were surprised by the quality of food ingredients in every meal, and casually claimed this is nothing special, huh?).

Home Quarantine (3)

My mobile phone switched between 2 stations averagely around 6 times a day. Every time I got the SNS message saying that I am violating the quarantine rules, I rushed to the landline and called the local police station - explaining that it appears I am away from my apartment but in fact, it is the mobile phone base station playing up on us. It is almost like a game, who gets it first! I am trying to set up the routine during this lock up period. Getting out of the bed by 6, coffee and yoga before work starts. Lunch, cock tail and blogging before dinner. Movies or TV then going to bed. 10 more days to go. I am religiously doing Ashtanga yoga for almost 3 years until now. Ashtanga yoga is an extremely challenging sport, as a practioner, you decide how difficult the practice should be, you decide whether you should try a pose that's one level up, you do it when you feel you are ready. In other words, you are your own instructor. Although it is still extremely fun to practice in the studio with a real instructor and fellow studuents - instructor normally walks around and inspect individual's practice. He/she gives some adivse, but studdents still practice according to his/her level and pace. The same posts and sequence daily (except Saturday) provide the stability. You can change, feeling different during the practice because you had different diet, mood, mindset the night before. How fun it is, it is like doing an experiment every day and I am always anxious to see what is the outcome. Interestingly these few days in Taiwan, I found that I have become a bit more flexible in twisting. I wonder what has changed. Renting the biking machine for Jon, I had to explain to Mom that this is the hamster wheel. She was giggling like a little girl, ha ha.

Home Quarantine (2)

There is only one opinion in traditional (newspaper, TV) and social media, that is, lock down works and wearing masks saves lives. In the name of keeping everyone safe, we give up our freedom and allow the government turn itself into a police state. The second day of our quarantine, we were visited by 4 police officers at the door. Of course, they cannot set foot into my apartment because that will violate the quarantine rules. They came to be sure that we are home, because my phone carrier shows that my mobile phone signal has transferred from one station to another - I think it is due to the 2 base stations shifting the workload to balance the workload. The change of base stations sets an alert to the police station, and they turned up. I think they really just want to scare you into understanding that you are being watched. Nothing else. I suppose the standard protocol is to visit every newbie in quarantine once so to scare them good and proper. Wow, what's running through my mind is the secret police roaming into people's house and taking away whoever they think should be taken away, no explanation and the family's never going to hear from the missing one. If any country can lock up their country men in the prison violently and aggressively like China has done, sure it is possible to quickly control the spreading. But at what cost? I would rather live in a country without these nonsense and with the possibility of getting COVID-19. The great barrington declaration signed by 50,000+ medical expert, doctors explains the situation clearly - young people should live our lives as normal and the government should protect the vulnerable (nursing home), the virus is not as lethal as the media or politicians want you to believe. Plain and simple, but why this point of view is not being accepted or wildly available in media? Because it doesn't stir up panic and fear, it is bloody too plain and boring. I think I need to work on my scotch/whiskey collection now, it is all too depressing.

Home Quarantine

We decided to put up with the 14-day quarantine when arriving in Taipei and another 14-day when heading back to Hong Kong. The decision was rushed because Taiwanese government will impose stricter quarantine rules after 15th of January. The tigher rule says that you have to quarantine under the assumption that one person per hotel room or apartment. For a couple arriving in Taiwan, you are required to live in a separate room that is equiped with a onsuite toilets and shower. The 2 of you should not see each other although living under the same roof. I do agree that there should be no one who do not require quarantine sharing the same living space, but for a couple living and traveling together before landing in Taiwan, what is the point to have them living in separation? The rule is obnovious and, clearly, the purpose is to stop people from traveling back to Taiwan. I suppose most Taiwanese are very happy about the govenment taking action to shut the boarder - the data does support that early closure of boarder is the key to reduce the COVID cases. However, what is the cost of lock down and how much we allow the state to take control over people's life, these questions are left unanswered because people are geniunly afraid of the virus, and that seems to drain all their brain power. No one is allowed to think differently, if you do not agree to the lock down or mask wearing, you are a murderer and have no rights to express any opinions. Murders should be punished, not to allowed to speak - no fair and honest trail is required. I smell great culture revoluation - where science is not respected, statistic data are ignored, only being politically correct and conform with the crowd can save your life. Anyhow, I am of no interest to challenge the rule - it is not so good not to see my parents for almost a year. We flew home, going through various checking points (filling in lots of forms - strangely the government believes in the power of words. As long as you sign into a form that you are not ill enough time, they believe you are health). We are now staying at home, counting the days when we can go out running, hiking or cycling. The picture was taken by our windsurfing friends back in Cheung Chau island, Hong Kong. We picked up windsurfing just 7 months ago, practiced almost every weekend.

I am back in 2021!

The past year was full of events and no events. We are trapped in Hong Kong where people still go about doing their business. For people who can work from home, the most drastic change is that now working is possible when Typhoon Signal 8 is hoisted. I dread thinking about what has changed for those small business owners. Not able to travel or break away from our daily life, we took up weekly windsurfing and signed up for all type of sailing courses, which is pretty convienient in Hong Kong - we are surounded by water after all.

Saving lives

Photo Credit by No one... 

Dad told me when this airplane crashed into the river close to my parent's apartment complex, he was in the bank just next to the river. He saw the breaking news on the TV hanging on the wall in the bank, he turned around and jumped on his scooter, dashing to the river band. It was winter and he saw some survivors climbing out of the airplane standing on the wing/airplane body. His first thought was I need to get to the airplane in the middle of the river to search for other survivors who might be trapped by the seatbelts.
He took off his jacket, dawn vest, and shoes. As he was about to take his trousers off, the police officer came over to stop him, saying they have enough people to work on, it is no good if they have to get Dad out of the water.

English

Freaky Ryokan in Ise coast

Some media described Clinton as "elite" because she used the big words that average Americans will not use. Having 5 or 6 times of vocabularies over normal English speakers, seems to be the must-have if you want to be recognized as the upper class. Churchill was said to have roughly 40,000 words he can use at ease whereas average Joe uses about 4,000. I suppose language is a tool for critical thinking. Only when we can precisely describe an issue, we can put together a list of accurate questions to ask, issues to solve.

For example, when someone says "NO", that could mean:
-I do not understand what you are talking about
-I am not ready to agree with you
-I need some more information before agreeing with you
-You are making me feeling uncomfortable
-I need to discuss this with others
-I do not think I can provide what you want

Language provides the tool to describe different possible reasons.  A "NO" means a lot more than an rejection if we are not being scared away by the rejection.   Wow, it is sooooooo powerful.  English is pretty unambiguous and logical.  It is create for business, used by civilians.  There is no special rules depending on hierarchy.  It is solid, flat, and factual language.  It also creates new vocabularies more than other language. 

When someone has any ambiguity in his/her wordings, you can catch the mistake immediately.  Hence it is great tool for independent thinking.   Wow, I am really inspiring myself to study English a bit better just now.