updating the un-updatable

So, time keeps passing by quick. No time to write, no time to do anything but work and trying to relax during the few hours of the evening spared. Nothing has changed at work and I'm still quite busy. Lucky for me, however, the tide will soon turn, and the work-load should decrease a little after this and next week. I'm so looking forward those times.

To break free the vicious circle of work, we had a three-day weekend. Friday was a public holiday and since I had been working like a madman for the past few weeks before it I managed to arrange everything in a way that I could actually have the whole weekend off without having to go to the office.

The reason for the holiday remained a mystery to me but I didn't really care why I was having an extra day off, as long as I could keep it. I asked my local colleagues for the history behind the holiday, but I couldn't really get a clear answer from either.

The first explanation was that a virus (plague, perhaps?) was ravaging in the old China thousand(s) years ago, and people took themselves and their cattle, and material wealth up to mountains to survive it. And so this holiday was somehow celebrating the survival story of these people.....
I don't know, it just sounded a bit weird, and I'm sure there must be more behind a national holiday.

The second explanation was that once there was a Chinese man called Bill, who had long hair and he did some cool stuff. And this day was to celebrate Bill.

Whichever, doesn't really matter.

Having three days off was great! Really, really, really awesome to have a little time to other things again and not worrying about work-stuff. So, me and Chi went around Hong Kong for Friday and Saturday - and on Sunday we did the ultimate relaxation-day-of-total-awesomeness!... so on Sunday we basically just sank into the sofa and watched TV all day.

Unlike an average tourist, we went to random places you wouldn't really go to if you were following guidebooks to Hong Kong tourism. Our weekend contained places like Tsuen Wan, Shum Cheng, and Tuen Mun - traveling with a taxi, bus and a mini-bus (which was way cool!).

I think I've mentioned this before but it's really great having a local with you to show you around. Of course it takes some time to go through the traditional tourist-sites which are, I suppose, a must visit - but after a while all that is very boring and you yearn for other things. So, with a local to guide you, you can find yourself in places that normally only the locals go to. You get to see the local life-style, you get to see how what the life here is really like - not just the surface.

A workable example would be a tourist going to Finland for a week. First few days in Helsinki in some semi-good hotel - walking in the shopping areas, and cultural areas. Then, a remaining days in Rovaniemi (or other tourist location in Lapland), seeing Santa Claus, skiing a little and taking pictures of reindeer. Then going back to their home country and saying: "oh boy, oh boy! Finland is such an awesome place!"

Granted, Finland may be an awesome place - but that person only saw the surface and knows nothing of the actual life in the country. Instead of going to Helsinki, go to a city like Valkeakoski, or instead of going to Lapland, go to a cabin to swim/sauna/barbecue. Instead of doing something fun, just stay at home and do nothing - that's what Finns do. Hah, or whatever. The point is, as a tourist you only see the place as it was designed to be seen by outsiders. You never see what truly lies beneath the surface. Ok, so most people actually don't care about that and really only want to see the surface, the monuments and churches, and famous sceneries, and all that. I don't. I want to see life.

Ah, getting off-track a little.

So, anyway it's nice to see these kinds of things. Going to restaurants where I'm the only gweilo, going to areas where I'm the only gweilo. To my surprise I've learned that many expatriates who come to Hong Kong know very little of these things. They stick to their own group of people, and have a bit of an elitist attitude towards local customs - and of course both these reasons lead them never to try new things. You won't be able to experience Hong Kong to the fullest from LanKwaiFong, that is my point.

That's all about that.

Now, just for fun I'd like to put in a few funny facts to put things into perspective for you all.

Tuen Mun was one district in Hong Kong I just visited for the first time. I had thought it a smallish town, much like Tung Chung. When I got there, I was instantly in a humiliating sense of awe. This "smallish town" is actually home to 502,000 people (Helsinki: 565,000). Why this was such a surprise to me was because the area is over one hour traveling from the central areas of Hong Kong so I expected it to be rather unfavored location for living.

What about Tsuen Wan, then? I had been there a few times before but found it a really shady and not very welcoming. I thought it must be a bit poorer neighborhood and for low/mid-income local people. Well, I was wrong again. Tsuem Wan population is 288,000 (Tampere 206,000) and "Its residents enjoy the highest income in the New Territories. " (Wikipedia)

Ah well, so I don't know much about this place after all. I just need to go to these place and see for myself. Within Saturday I passed several towns with size equal to the Finnish capital and major cities and didn't even know it.

Below a map of Hong Kong for reference.



Returning to my closing paragraph of last time, I can now say the danger is over and the missing tile has been replaced. As seen from the picture below, pedestrians can once again step on the steps without care of danger!

"Well, I looked in my mom's closet and saw what I was getting for Christmas, an UltraVibe Pleasure 2000." - Eric Cartman

Long hours

Here I am again. Office at 19:00, one hour overtime done already and no certainty of when I can go home. Hopefully within the next hour anyway.

Now, some of you might think 'how come I am doing overtime but still can write to blog. It'd make more sense to do work first, go home and then write to blog.' Well, I am now working with 50 to 250 megabyte picture files, and with my old hamster-powered disgrace of a computer it takes a whole-lotta time to do anything. So, while I save, resize, render, open, close, whatever, I can write. Cool.

Anyway, I've been working a lot with pictures now as I am designing some marketing materials and stuff related to that. I must say I love this part of my job. It's actually the one thing I volunteer to do! If, in this company, there is a task that requires creating some new images, edit old ones - or whatever related, I'm the man for the job! Actually, one of the best things in this company I work in is, that I can try a lot of different things and slowly I've been starting to find out the things that I actually do like to do, and the ones I'm not a big fan of. Hence, when I - in some inconceivable future - decide to change to another company, I will already know what I really, really, really want to do. So, I know what kind of training I should get, and what kind of jobs I should seek for.

My life just got better: I found a 0.6 liter can of Carlsberg from the office fridge. Yummy, it's cold too!

Anyway, I must repeat myself again from my previous posts and note that nothing much has happened here. Being busy and doing overtime continuously makes decreases the amount of 'normal' life a person can have. In fact, for the last few weeks I have been working both on Saturday and Sunday too (albeit not full days) and it is likely I will work this weekend too - and definitely next weekend. I can't actually very clearly remember doing anything specific during the last few weeks. Mostly I just remember working. Sounds like a fun life, doesn't it?

It's funny how just some years back, if someone had told me I'll be a "business man" working in Hong Kong, in an office and doing overtime until nervous breakdown, I would've probably laughed at that person. Yet, here I am. And the strange thing is, I don't really mind about it. Sure it's a pain in the ass not being able to do the things I like, but after a while you kind of just go numb of doing work. With such little personal time you don't really bother making any plans - and with no plans for the afternoon, it suddenly doesn't feel so bad to do a few hours extra.

It's a sick world we live in. I'm glad my workload will ease down a little after few weeks. Then I can take a bit easier again - I hope!

Ah well, I'm almost done with my work for today... Almost ready... Still need to do some print-outs to check if my designs and coloring is ok.

So, I'll just leave you now with a picture taken in Hong Kong a few days back. You can ponder upon whether it was absolutely necessary to have all those road cones with blinking lights to warn of a missing tile. Or whether they could've fixed it with the same amount of trouble than putting those cones there. So, yeah.. ponder upon it.

At the calm between the storms

"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect." - Stephen Wright

So, finally I decided it's time to do a little post again. It's been a long time, I know, but I couldn't help it! I'm so overloaded with work I simply don't have the energy to write, nor the time. Or if I did have the time, I couldn't write anything with a clear conscience knowing there's work to be done - and it won't get done if I'm writing my stupid blog.

I won't go into details of what's keeping me busy as it's all work-related and not within the general topic of my blog - nor do I want to tell too much about my work anyway in public. Let it be said, however, that I am currently working on a number of things in which I have no prior experience so it's been a hell of a learning process to get all things sorted - and going back to fix things I did poorly not knowing better. Well, maybe next year when I'm given a project such as this, I will be better prepared.

Anyway, today is Friday and though I plan to come to work tomorrow - again! - I think I can take one half an hour to update on things. Friday means, in theory anyway, that I can take a bit easier and relax. Hah, we'll see about that.

Mostly things are the same in Hong Kong. Our whole office is packed with work at the moment, but aside from that things haven't changed much. Markus now lives far enough from my place, apparently enjoying his time (read his blog: he's the happiest and most up-beat person I have ever met! /off sarcasm)! Other than that, my free time is mostly about balancing time between dosing off at my laptop or going out with Chi. Both OK options.

For a long time I've been reading a lot of books, and for a while I had a higher goal for it too! See, I wanted to read books that had movie adaptations made of them - just so I could finally take part in conversations of "which is better: the book or the movie?" and actually know what I was talking about!

So, about what I found:

I started with Michael Crichton's books (surprisingly many books of his are adapted into movies), and I actually read most of his work. Jurassic Park, albeit a really good movie does not come even close to the depth of the book! I couldn't believe the book could be so much better but it was! Usually what I have is a good book and a crappy movie - much like it was with one other Crichton's movie adaptations, Congo. The sequel to Jurassic Park, Lost World was, as a book, almost even better than the first one - while the movie already was going down. Actually, the movie and the book have basically nothing in common. I can't understand why they'd make all those changes from the original work, which just made so much more sense. Other books with movie adaptations from Crichton: Eaters of the Dead (13th Warrior), Andromeda Strain, Sphere, Timeline, Rising Sun, and some others I probably forgot.

With Crichton, every single movie adaptation was worse than the book. Jurassic Park as a movie was great, but not as great as the book.

After I ran out of Crichton books to read, I started with Bram Stocker's Dracula. Again, as a movie, Coppola's version with Gary Oldman, Keanu Reeves and other people I don't remember by name, is totally awesome! I through-heartedly enjoy the movie every time I see it. And until I read the book I thought it's the best thing ever! Ha, fooled I was! Read the book, damnit, it's so much better!! The plot-line is roughly the same as in the movie, but it's in so much depth, the characters are better (not as shallow as in the movie) and it has a lot of cool details that keep you reading the pages way past your bedtime.

After Dracula, I came to the possibly worst book I have read all this year. I mean, it's a classic and highly appreciated work of literature, and has one of the world's most famous protagonist and arch villains. However, what every book-enthusiast has missed is that the book sucks like nothing has sucked before. I'm talking about Shelley's Frankenstein. It's crap. I should watch the movie (it's been so long since I last saw it) so I could finally say I've seen a movie that was better than the book. The problem with Frankenstein is that you don't really give a damn about anything that happens in the book. You don't care about the main characters, you don't care what happens to them, and you don't give a damn about the personal hell of Victor Frankenstein. Love of his life dies at the end half of the book (sorry for the spoiler); by the time it happens the reader knows exactly what will happen - and when it does happen, it's said in just a few sentences. There's no emotion to it. "Whoops, she died. Oh, well.. let's keep going." This repeats all-through the book. You are not surprised, you are not connected to anything. I bet the movie is better.

After being betrayed by man-made monster, I decided I'll go back to Vampires. I watched the movie Interview with a Vampire and finding it an excellent movie I though the book must be even better! I was right, and now as I'm just finishing the book - first of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles - I can't wait to read the rest of the Chronicles.

Vampires are cool and saying that probably makes me goth. But being goth is better than being a damned emo.

"All those who believe in psychokinesis raise my hand." - Stephen Wright

Monkeys in the attic

Just a quick post now.. no time, no time at all. Damnit. I'm like an electric monkey with a plasma-banana in an anti-nebulatic hyper-cage which I just can't reach because my electric monkey-fingers don't have enough dexterity and the plasma-banana is run by an improbability drive anyway, so even if I got it it'd change form and I wouldn't like it anymore. Yes, worrisome! Oh, and I have a lot of work to do at office so I don't have time to write.

Maybe tomorrow; maybe the day after; maybe next week I will have time to write something.

I just hope the work-load will ease, I hope I can sleep one night again peacefully and have one day without stress.

A monkey.