Ah, Hong Kong

Ah, Hong Kong! From the adrenaline rush of exiting your seat and getting off first, being first to the travellator, to customs, to the luggage carousel, to the train door (the 23 minutes to get your breath back), to the ticket turnstiles, and arriving first at the taxi queues... It's just a charge that takes over.


After I arrived, the first two days were gloriously clear. Here is the view out my window at the Excelsior late on Friday afternoon.



Then, on Sunday, the wind changed and came in from the north-west, bringing in tonnes of China's atmospheric factory shit.



Flann O'Brien's 'Third Policeman' amused and amazed me when I read of the apocryphal crack-pot scientist DeSelby, whom the narrator is researching and whom he continuously quotes. "Night is optical illusion caused by an accretion of black particles in the air," was one of DeSelby's typicaly weird pontifications. Maybe DeSelby and his decendants have set up shop in southern China and gone into the brown air particle industry with all their might...

And meanwhile another scandal* of the collusion of local governement and business at the expense of the health of local chinese arises. Precis: Factory in Hunan is pumping cadmium, etc... into local water supply. Several dead, many dying or ill.

E@L

* requires payment for full article, either that or have copy placed on your hotel room's door-handle each morning.