On working days I take a daily ferry from Discovery Bay to Hong Kong Island. It’s a 25 minute ride, and on a nice and clear day as today, the sights are great.

I was too late to make this picture well, but two giant Maersk containerships were on their way out today. It was a nice angle, but before I got my camera phone ready, our high-speed ferry was already too far.

Still makes a nice picture though:

Hong Kong is still one of the busiest ports in the world - although no longer the biggest one. And other South Chinese cities are growing much faster then Hong Kong. So these big containerships in the Hong Kong harbour may at some point be a thing of the past.

Here’s just a review of all links in this site devoted to the renovation of our place in Discovery Bay. I noticed some people came back here and asked me questions about it, so I listed all previous posts on the topic in here. 

You can click on the “Renovations” category in the Tag cloud on the left or click below:

http://www.marcdelange.com/category/renovations-discovery-bay-hong-kong/

Below are all previous posts, the most recent one on top.

• 3 Jan 2005: Renovations done & we’ve moved
• 3 Jan 2005: New Antique Furniture?
• 21 Dec 2004: Tight deadline
• 19 Dec 2004: Wooden floor
• 04 Dec 2004: Buying stuff for your house
• 04 Dec 2004: Wat is er deze week allemaal weer gebeurd in huize zeevogel?
• 21 Nov 2004: Water pipes and electricity
• 14 Nov 2004: Bare to the bone
• 07 Nov 2004: Earthquake?
• 06 Nov 2004: Knock on wood…
• 06 Nov 2004: Tearing down the place
• 05 Nov 2004: Renovations Started!!
• 12 Sep 2004: We own a property!

marc@marcdelange.com

Cool - tonight the new fiber optic lights built into the DB plaza pavement were switched on.

These little lights are almost invisible in daylight, and at nighttime they switch on and cycle through the whole spectrum of colours. So one moment the whole plaza looks blue, then it turns red etc. The pictures below don’t quite convey the true atmosphere but it’s really neat.

I remember I looked at this type of lighting for my house when we were renovating it - but it was insanely expensive. So this must have cost the Hong Kong Resort Company a good piece out of our management fees as well - problably best I don’t know how much exactly.

Today I decided to check how bad my stamina is with a hike up DB peak - one of the peaks closest to Discovery Bay, about 450 meters high.

Well, I made it in exactly one hour,and nearly died only three times on the way up… So depending on what shape you’re thinking of you could say i’m in good shape.

What I like about hiking up mountains is that you get this feeling a couple of times that “you’re never going to make it” while you’re gasping for air and your legs are about to give up. But every time it just takes like 10 minutes to get back your senses and your breath and continue.

We’ve been sitting in renovations for quite a while now. First our own flat, then our flat building, and then the plaza was up for renovation. So actually in the last 1.5 years not a day has gone by without construction going on in our vicinity.

The plaza is still quite far from being finished, but it’s starting to shape up and below pictures give a glimpse of the plaza new style.

Our local developer and owner of Discovery Bay - the Hong Kong Resort company - is the one responsible for this all, and I do have to say the end result is starting to look good. I can’t say the same thing about the process they’ve taken to get here; it’s been an endless succession of periods of progress followed by periods of inactivity. Inactivity apparently caused by ‘external factors’ such as licenses, supply shortages etc. These aren’t actually external factors in my view, they’re all part of basic project management and should not happen at all!

I guess this will take another 4 months to complete, maybe more…

The playroom in the resident’s club is one of Matthijs fav hangouts. There are always lots of other kids to play with and there is a “ballenbak” (no idea what that’s called in English?) filled with loads of balls to play around in.

Floors are well padded and as you see in the video - when Matthijs drops at one point, he just gets up and continues walking - without a shout, cry or tears. That wouldn’t be the case back home on our hard wooden floor…

Enjoy the video.

The redevelopments in Discovery Bay town centre are still not complete. But finally a new place opened - an Irish place that has Irish pub grub as well as Indian curries. Quite good food actually, and good service. Only a detail is that they didn’t have their alcohol license done in time, so you can’t order beer or wine for consumption inside as yet. Currently, they let you go to the wine shop next door, buy a bottle, then come back and open it in the restaurant…

They’ll get their full license early September so till that time it’s retail prices on bottles of wine.

Hong Kong’s liquor licensing laws can work out a little strange!

I came back after work this evening and noticed an even bigger mess around the plaza.

This morning only one tree had been blown over, but this evening I counted another three trees lying horizontally - an unhealthy thing for trees.

I haven’t seen it this bad since I’ve been in Hong Kong, and the “Number 8 Signal” wasn’t even hoisted.

I guess the gusts have been unexpectedly strong here in the DB plaza.

In addition, all Cathay Pacific inbound and outbound flights have been canceled till 9am tomorrow! That means my wifey Nadine will be stuck in LA a little longer and come home a bit later. Another friend of mine was diverted to Manila as his plane couldn’t land in Hong Kong.

What a mess.