From August 2012

Hong Kong – City Without Ground

If you’ve ever visited Hong Kong you will have undoubtably discovered that the city has three distinct, albeit tangled, levels – street level, underground and overground – which can be navigated by pedestrians via a complex network of elevated walkways and underground tunnels that have evolved over the past 50 years. You can literally walk for miles through interconnected shopping malls, office lobbies, train stations, parks and other public/private spaces. Read more

Yuelu Academy in Changsha

Earlier this month I spent a weekend in Changsha (长沙), the capital city of Hunan province (south-central China), to attend a friend’s wedding. Changsha is typical of every other second tier city in China – sprawling, grey, and heavily polluted with nothing much going on other than the relentless development of high-rise buildings and endless roads. This is not somewhere you would visit for a holiday but I did manage to find one small gem in the rough… Read more

Japanese House Design

The first time I tried Pinterest I dismissed it as being yet another social network for regurgitating others content (and obsessive hoarders), but it recently came into its own when I wanted to put together a collection of traditional and modern Japanese (or Japanese-style) interior design photos. Any minimalists out there might like to check it out – I’ll be updating frequently. Perhaps Pinterest could be considered a new way of digital curation?

Expat or Immigrant?

When thinking about the identity of those living outside their native countries it soon becomes pretty clear that there’s a big gap between how we perceive ‘immigrants’ and ‘expats’ even though in many ways they are essentially the same. Immigrants are seen as poor and desperate job-stealers, while expatriates are portrayed as curious adventurers and cosmopolites. This smacks of double standards to me and I think it’s time we reevaluate the use of these words. Read more

Tap Mun Island in Sai Kung

The amazing thing about living in Hong Kong is that you’re never more than 30-40 minutes away from beautiful mountain scenery and pristine beaches despite most people living the highly dense urban center in the south. One place many friends had recommended to me was the coastal district of Sai Kung (西貢區), on the northeastern side of the territory and a couple of weekends ago a visited a small island not far away. Read more

Hong Kong in 1966

We’ve looked at footage of Hong Kong in the 1930’s before but here’s some more fascinating video from a Spanish television program of what it looked like almost 40 years later in 1966 (via Shanghaiist). It’s incredible to see the first emergence of high-rise buildings that dominate the skyline today and how quickly things have developed within living memory.

A Disturbance in The Force at Apple

Having watched Apple closely over the past few years and thoroughly enjoyed using many of their products that enable much of what I do every day, there have been a number of increasingly worrying trends which have emerged and been reported on recently which I think bear looking at as a whole: Read more