The Battle against Light Pollution

Victoria Harbour after 8pm last night - when hundreds of buildings were plunged into darkness - source: South China Morning Post




Hong Kong on a very polluted day

Cartoons reflecting on the mood in HK

Swine Flu (source: SCMP)

Financial Crisis (source: SCMP)

Tuen-Ng Festival - Stanley International

Boy, this much awaited day has been pure pandemonium - the weather once again misbehaved badly and it was so windy the Dragon Boat Association couldn't even set up the rented booths the night before. Every team was only allowed to have 12 paddlers per boat - and this after all our hard work, arrghh!! While gathering my team and leading them to boarding I heard an announcement saying "last call for AWA before being disqualified" believe me, that made me got a move on - unfortunately half of the team didn't hear my roaring and didn't manage to squeeze through the crowds that were blocking the beach like a wall - had to wait 5 minutes until the last paddler embarked. Then one of the officials yelled at us continuously in cantonese and we realized that due to the turmoil we had 14 women on board all of a sudden and needed to loose 2 paddlers - long story short, me and my partner jumped out and swam back to shore - sunk my mobile in the process and found myself wet as a poodle with a dead cellphone back on the beach while the other 12 paddlers left. What had happened? Turned out the board indicating the race numbers wasn't up-to-date, great!

Since race #1 didn't go as expected, we decided that the best team must go out to defend our honor in race # 2 which they did.

Race #3 began with the DB Ass. cancelling it and declaring the event for the ladies as finished - went up to the marshalling booth to verify and informed my team, some hadn't even been paddling the whole day and this would have been their first race, bummer - the frustration was endless when I sent them either to the junk or home. 5 min later, another team decided to challenge the decision and we all went up to the head judge - they then decided that the Ladies would race after the very last race of the day and we needed to wait in the pouring rain. While making my way back to the beach someone behind me yelled BOARDING NOW all of a sudden and told me the decision had once again been modified - only 8 of my team who hung out on the beach were available for boarding...the rest of this race has been nothing but a blurr to me, I jumped on the boat without shoes, gloves, knee pads but with my jacket on and my cigarettes instead (I know, sounds like I am a true athlete) since I wasn't part of the line-up in race #3. Our coach managed to get 4 of his Canadian team mates to throw over yellow T's and join us - while ready to paddle out to the starting position, some of my team mates spotted that sth. must be going on and came running back from the shuttle that should bring them to our junk - Canadians out Globe Paddlers in again and off to start but without any focus - I don't even recall who was sitting in the boat - summary - we tanked badly!!

Hey, that was just part of a "typical" Dragon Boat raceday - kidding of course. All is good.