Hong Kong travelblogue, episode three
Still very busy these days, but had a little time today, so I thought I would post some more. Today's episode involves a description of my daily trip to work.
One of the coolest things about my experience in Hong Kong is the tram. It is a double-decker street car which is powered by overhead electrical cables. Some of the cars appear quite old, maybe even dating to the 30s, but are well maintained and upgraded. The nearest stop is about one block from my apartment and lets me out about one block from work. There is a fixed fare of 2 Hong Kong dollars for a trip of any length: the equivalent of a little more than 25 US cents. However, the cars themselves have no environmental controls at all apart from windows that open, so people who need air conditioning (i.e. not me) might be pretty unhappy about this arrangement. Anyway, here's a picture of the tram approaching my local stop (you can barely see the wires overhead, sorry for the blurriness):
One other interesting aspect of life in Hong Kong is the proliferation of McDonalds restaraunts, which occur with a greater frequency than even in New York (although probably not a greater frequency than Starbucks in New York). Here is a picture of the first McDonalds I pass on my tram ride:
Here is a picture of a building under maintenance that I took from the window of the tram. Note the material used for scaffolding: bamboo lashed together with little plastic ties. At the bottom you see that they've constructed a net to catch any falling debris. All scaffolds are built this way in Hong Kong as far as I can determine, even for new construction. The guys working on them scamper up and down like monkeys, wearing safety harnesses that are rarely attached. This was a bit shocking the first few times that I saw it, but I guess they've been doing it this way for a long time. Anyway, here's the picture:
As my 10 to 15 minute commute progresses, I pass another McDonalds:
Once I disembark ("alight" for the British people out there) from the tram I pass... yet another McDonalds:
On this particular day, there was some more building maintenance being performed on a nearby building so I took some more pictures of the scaffolding:
With a nice closeup:
And an even closer closeup:
And finally I arrive at my destination, Sino plaza, where the offices of Eclipse Options (HK) Limited are on the thirtieth floor:
And this concludes today's episode. I seem to have misplaced the pictures I took on the Green Power 25K hike, which I had planned to post for this episode, so I will post those in a future episode if I can find them. Stay tuned for the next episode, where I post some pictures taken from our office windows on one of the few sunny days that I've seen here.
One of the coolest things about my experience in Hong Kong is the tram. It is a double-decker street car which is powered by overhead electrical cables. Some of the cars appear quite old, maybe even dating to the 30s, but are well maintained and upgraded. The nearest stop is about one block from my apartment and lets me out about one block from work. There is a fixed fare of 2 Hong Kong dollars for a trip of any length: the equivalent of a little more than 25 US cents. However, the cars themselves have no environmental controls at all apart from windows that open, so people who need air conditioning (i.e. not me) might be pretty unhappy about this arrangement. Anyway, here's a picture of the tram approaching my local stop (you can barely see the wires overhead, sorry for the blurriness):
One other interesting aspect of life in Hong Kong is the proliferation of McDonalds restaraunts, which occur with a greater frequency than even in New York (although probably not a greater frequency than Starbucks in New York). Here is a picture of the first McDonalds I pass on my tram ride:
Here is a picture of a building under maintenance that I took from the window of the tram. Note the material used for scaffolding: bamboo lashed together with little plastic ties. At the bottom you see that they've constructed a net to catch any falling debris. All scaffolds are built this way in Hong Kong as far as I can determine, even for new construction. The guys working on them scamper up and down like monkeys, wearing safety harnesses that are rarely attached. This was a bit shocking the first few times that I saw it, but I guess they've been doing it this way for a long time. Anyway, here's the picture:
As my 10 to 15 minute commute progresses, I pass another McDonalds:
Once I disembark ("alight" for the British people out there) from the tram I pass... yet another McDonalds:
On this particular day, there was some more building maintenance being performed on a nearby building so I took some more pictures of the scaffolding:
With a nice closeup:
And an even closer closeup:
And finally I arrive at my destination, Sino plaza, where the offices of Eclipse Options (HK) Limited are on the thirtieth floor:
And this concludes today's episode. I seem to have misplaced the pictures I took on the Green Power 25K hike, which I had planned to post for this episode, so I will post those in a future episode if I can find them. Stay tuned for the next episode, where I post some pictures taken from our office windows on one of the few sunny days that I've seen here.