And here we celebrated with a great lunch. It’s one of the hottest days so far this year. Time to open up the BBQ and throw on some nice salmon. Add some champers to wash it down and we have ourselves lunch.

On my daily commute there’s a new attraction currently; the USS Carl Vinson is currently moored here in the Hong Kong harbour.

US carriers often visit these waters - although a little less lately due to US/Chinese relationships cooling somewhat - but the current visit makes this more important.

The USS Carl Vinson of course being the ship that was involved in sinking the body of Osama Bin Laden after his killing in an action by US Navy Seals in Pakistan earlier in May. The rear admiral of the ship has been asked many questions about it by the local press, but he didn’t go into answering any of them. Except then to say that they routinely have remains of sailors lowered into the sea by request.

The fact that this ship is now sitting here at close distance to my daily commute brings this world event closer than I’d ever expect.

Unfortunately I only have my phone with me to shoot a picture - and given the distance still to the ship it’s not the best one. Nevertheless - is this the ship that put the world’s biggest terrorist to rest? Or is there more to do still?

Here’s a post to link to a new website that is a nice collection of Dutch expat related sites all over the world.

They’ve included some of my posts there as well, happy reading!

ExpatCentrale is de website met de leukste blogs en relevant nieuws voor Nederlandse expats die wonen en/of werken in het buitenland….

An interesting and typical Hong Kong story happened today:

As I was strolling along my office area during lunch I noticed this excitement around one of the traffic junctions.

Two of the electric trams had collided somewhere smack in the Causeway Bay shopping area. Up to 40 of the
passengers have been injured in this collision - but fortunately no one was seriously hurt and most had minor injuries.

But the interesting thing is all the fuss around these two trams afterwards. I arrived at the scene when both trams
were already empty and all passengers had been carried away.

Still though - I counted FIVE ambulances, THREE fire trucks, FOUR tv crews, and about 50 odd staff of the various
public forces. Most of them were just loitering around, while their managers seemed to be frantically speaking into
their walkie talkies. Nothing happened here at all for most of the time!

It would have taken one of the tramway’s own maintenance cars to get the two trams back up the tracks and
scurry them off to the repair workshop.

This is just crazy!

It’s been a while since I visited the Computer Center at 298 Hennessy Road to find new gadgets, stuff, etc.

Here are two key observations from this time:

16GB SD Cards now sell for a mere 248 HKD - very affordable, and it already hurts that I purchased one just 4 months ago for close to 500 HKD…

The other novelty this time around was the sudden increase in brands and types of digital video players on offer. The ones I found definitely indicate a trend towards low cost, reasonable quality devices, including 8, 16, or 32 GB storage, a 3 or 5 inch screen, and built-in speakers. Plays nearly every type of video format and retails here from 600 HKD up to 1300 HKD.

This certainly isn’t a new category, but the sudden onset of very affordable devices could put these devices into the hands of a wider group of consumers. Similar to what happened in the GPS navigation category some years ago. Unfortunately in the case of the digital video player though - this will be an “intermediate device”. I.e. it will at some point be integrated in smartphones and then the need for a separate digital video player disappears. This is already happening in the area of mp3 players. You can see less of these on offer these days!

Below a picture of some of the video playing devices on offer - sorry for the poor quality.

We rented a car for a day and drove up to Sai Kung. A nice day on the beach with great Chinese food.

For a change the weather is excellent in Hong Kong. No smog and a pleasant 20-25 celsius.

Went to the peak last Saturday with mum and Matthijs for some city gazing.

This picture was taken around 5pm - near dusk. Click on this picture for the larger version.

I pass some of these container ships almost every day. This time of the year full cargo loads with all kinds of China made goods for the holiday shopping season pass through Hong Kong.