PS.:

Hey there, I completely forgot to report, that Michael won one of the latest Nokia cell phones in stylish red (N 5700 XpressMusic) during a Raffle on raceday and guess who'll proudly carry it around :-) Who needs a boring cup these days anyway....?
...and another funny thing happened - our team was interviewed by a chinese journalist during practise a couple of weeks ago - today I finally hunted down a copy of it and there we were - in the midst of all chinese letter rows, not the slightest clue what they were writing about us - isn't this hysterical? Over 'n out.

Pirates of the South China Sea

High Noon under the mercyless blistering sun - boy did we have a HOT raceday. Blue skies, 34 degrees and even low humidity, we were really lucky. 208 teams and 4.000 paddlers were competing and a couple of thousand spectators were watching which was the hugest turnout in Stanley ever. The news reported that the International Stanley Dragonboat Race is the biggest one day dragonboat event worldwide which is quite impressive.

You can't even begin to imagine the noise level and the crowds, you simply will have to come here and and see for yourself. Each race consists of 9/10 boats and while one race begins the next paddlers are already sent on their way to row to their starting lane. The race course is surrounded by at least 100 junks with partying teams or spectators and from every junk you were bombarded with the hottest but deafening pop & rock tunes while you had to be focussing on the starting signal - difficult task - specially if you rather feel like singing than rowing ;-) I have to admit, I envied the people on the junks, they were really having a blast and that's hopefully where I will be next year, tell me where the party is, I ll be running....

18 Ladies teams were competing. We had to absolve 2 races which turned out to be pretty tough since our 1st race was at 10:30 in the morning and the 2nd one at 4:30 in the afternoon (same waiting periods for our competitors of course) - it's hard to stay motivated and pumped up when you have to wait it out for 6 hours sitting around in the heat and nowhere to go. The 1st heat was satisfying over all, the boat was moving effortless and we managed a place in the midfield. The 2nd one was already ill-fated right from the start since the race was interrupted for 25 minutes while we had to hold out at our starting position - by the time the announcer said "Ready" we were anything but - we were already dripping from sweat, some not focussed anymore and therefore we totally tanked it - we didn't end up last but anyone who is interested in the result of the Desperate Housewives will have to look it up at:

www.dragonboat.org.hk

This is also the Link for the official reports and event photos - everyone who is interested in further details can check it out, the race updates should be in the website by this weekend...my pics should be ready by then too.

Anyway, it was a great experience and although I failed to build up expected muscles like "The Hulk" I loved the physical exercise and can't wait to continue next year. The race will be on june 8th and this time I will captain the boat of the American Women's Association which didn't enter the competition for the last 2 years in lack of a coach. It'll be a huge time commitment (visitors be prepared, I won't have much time starting march 2008) but besides the organisation challenge I also will be having tons of fun.

Following, once again the official Event History:

AIA Stanley International Dragon Boat Championships
Stanley itself had long been an important settlement for fisher folk and dragon boat racing has always been a very popular way to celebrate the annual Tuen Ng Festival. As far back as the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) East and West seemed to mix well here.

In the late ‘60s the local races started to attract the interest of several expats living in the Stanley area and by the early ‘70s the expats were racing against the local Chinese. The Chinese teams always dominated the races so to make the races fairer for all in 1975 the organizers divided the races to allow the expats to compete in a category of their own. This was followed shortly after by the introduction of a Ladies' Competition.

The early races were originally held at Stanley Bay facing Tin Hau Temple and Murray House creating a strong community festival atmosphere. However, to accommodate the ever-increasing scale of the event, the Championships are now run from Stanley Main Beach.

The diverse nationalities of Expatriate Men's Teams remain a feature of the Stanley International Dragon Boat Championships. The event also holds the record for always having the highest competitor turnout as well as the highest company team turnout. Over its 40 year history Race Day has evolved into an amazing festival with competitors and spectators enjoying themselves in a wonderful party atmosphere.

Mr Wang, Mrs Li and Miss Zhang.....

...these are the surnames shared by about 85% of the chinese population, meaning about 291 million, I recently read in a newspaper article. If you happen to know the 100 most popular names in China you can already greet around 1.1 billion Chinese correctly - WOW, that's hard to digest - can you picture all the confusion and cases of mistaken identities?
You gain the impression that I am a bit bored for posting such highly important messages - well, you might be right. I am battling a nasty cold and try to do everything to get back on track until tuesday which is dragonboat raceday. The weather forecast announced 28-33 degrees with sunny skies and if I don't manage to get fit by then I can't row :-( Keep your fingers crossed...over n out

long time no hear

because there's not much worth reporting going on right now...dragonboat exercise, junking, salsacise, gatherings with friends and enjoying the sun doesn't make the computer my first priority these days. The highlight of this week was an AWA (American Women's Association) afternoon tea in honour of their volunteers which took place in the splendid mansion of the most influential indian family in HK. The Harilela family (6 brothers & 1 sister) first came to China in 1922 settling down in Canton before moving to Hong Kong. They mastered the development from hawkers to owning a global billion-dollar empire (hotels, real estate, banks) which is still a family run business. To this day around 70 family members spanning 4 generations plus 40 servants are sharing a 100.000 sq ft compound which consists of the main residence (6 apartments with 40 bedrooms) and an annex with further 30 bedrooms for other relatives - very impressive! As the oldest brother states: "As we were together in poverty we should not seperate in wealth" - maybe we all should take this into consideration for our own families....or maybe better not ;-) Anyway we had a very nice afternoon and it was truly a great experience. By the way AWA had the privilege of this invitation because many of the Harilela's are lifelong members of their organisation. I also heard that 20 AWA members have the chance to get a tour through the house once a year - guess who will be eager to sign up?!

and then there were 14 1/2.....

- nope, the above hotties that's definitely not us - if it were, we would have had a better chance to win our Dragonboat warm-up race on sunday ;-) but let me start from the beginning. After way too much japanese food with my asian friends and a loud, thundery night on saturday, I didn't get much sleep and had to drag myself out of bed early sunday morning. The temperatures hadn't cooled off a bit despite the storm and the sticky, humid air hadn't moved away. When I arrived at the beach at 9am sharp the dragons had already been fed with paper money offerings (feng-shui) but I was flabbergasted to find out, that just 14 of my "Desperate Housewives" teammates and one teenage daughter had shown up for raceday, the others were unable to make it for various reasons. I immediately was ready to hop on the next bus and crawl back into bed but of course this was not an option, sigh! As you can imagine, the outlook was quite grim - to put it mildly - knowing, we would have to compete against 7 other participating teams who not only had their 18 team members complete but also some replacements in tow which was very encouraging to us.

"Participating is Everything" the saying goes, yeah right, but when you train hard you are not very ecstatic about becoming last in the end which we perfectly managed to achieve during various weather scenarios - 1st race: burning sun and hot hot hot, we ended last - 2nd race: completely overcast and sticky, we still ended last - 3rd race: turned out to be more of a wet T-Shirt competition, not only were we dripping wet and didn't see anything upon entering the boat but also a nasty thunderstorm exploded right after our start which scared us so much that we finally beat one chinese team, hallelujah!!!! At least we wore bright, sunny yellow shirts so our hubbies could spot us through the clouds. Lesson learned out of this - for the next 3 weeks we'll better sleep on the boat and steel our muscles day and night!! To be fair, I have to mention, that the majority of the other teams looked younger in their average age and top fit and it seemed obvious to me that they are spending their days and nights either in their fitness studios or practising power/hot yoga 3 times a week.

Despite this minor setback the atmosphere during the day was terrific and it felt awesome to be part of such a traditional HK icon. Finally some facts about the Dragonboat Races:

* The race always takes place during the traditional Tuen Ng Chinese Festival (Dragonboat Festival) which this year will fall on june 19th

* it's hold in various locations throughout HK but Stanley is the biggest event and owns the largest boat rack with 43 boats

* it's an event that attracts individuals, clubs & companies, Chinese & Expatriates as participants

* this year it lists record braking entries which in numbers means a serious over-subscription of over 200 teams - last year there were 183 teams and during yesterday's warm-up race 50 boats were competing

* a team consists of 18 rowers, 1 steersman and 1 drummer, some races even allow 20 rowers. The minimum required are 12, the maximum 20 participants. There are competitions for Men, Women and Mixed Boats.

* The race course length during the warm-up's was 200 metres and during the main race it will be 270 metres - sounds like nothing to you? Believe me, it can nearly kill you if you're not super fit!!

There are easier ways to get a bun......

- still on our sightseeing mission...today we took the First Ferry to Cheung Chau which is the most densely populated of the outlying islands (22.000 residents) car-less and also known as an artist colony. It was still raining cats and dogs so we were surrounded by water all over literally. The arrival at the ferry terminal is always very picturesque because you sail through lines of bannered fishing & house boats. People usually go there on the weekends to get away from the hustle and bustle in Hong Kong - you can either enjoy the beaches, hike between the 2 hilly tips or stroll along the harbourfront and explore some pirate caves or ancient rock carvings, followed by a simple seafood meal.

The main reason we were there was to catch the decoration for the famous Bun Festival which will take place on thursday (Buddha's Birthday) in front of the Pak Tai Temple. "It's a three-day carneval with a procession of floats, lion dancers, chinese opera, etc. which attracts 1000s of visitors and was originated in the 18th century when an episode of bad luck and illness beset the island. In response, the islanders started offering lotus-paste buns to the spirits of the dead and since health and prosperity returned they decided to make the ceremony an annual event. As part of the event, three 13-metre-high (40feet) bamboo towers covered in 1000s of steamed buns (I was told 20.000 pieces in total) are erected in front of the temple and left out for three days. Taoist priests hold the requisite ceremonies to encourage the return of all the restless ghosts to the underworld. Before they come back, the spirits consume the 'essence' of the buns, while islanders and visitors eat the remains."

The most hyped event is the bun competition where people scramble to reach the luckiest buns at the top of the pile. Therefore they're climbing up a fourth, even higher bamboo tower, while throwing the collected buns in a basket which they carry on their back. This year this tower consists of 8.000 plastic buns which was considered more hygienic but lead to an uproar within the residents. When we passed by today everyone was busy cleaning and threading buns and re-attaching them to the towers. Due to heavy rainfalls during the last couple of days the bun decoration disintegrated and needed to be replaced - a real slavery job as we could watch, see for yourself...