High death tolls in China industry

It is not the first time I´ve read about it since I first came to Hong Kong, but the article I refer to here states that 127 000 Chinese workers are killed annually in industrial accidents. Not too long ago tens of men were killed in a coal mine accident, and we hear about them almost on a daily basis. It is tragic and disturbing that this many people in a country undergoing so rapid economic development have to work under such poor conditions. This is of course the biggest and one of the many obstacles that China has to face in its transformation towards change and what many people here are worried about. The gap between the poor and the wealthy is only getting wider and it seems nearly impossible to assemble the nation as a whole to prepare for the future. Hopefully the workers in industrial areas will meet a better tomorrow.

A perfect night out

Thursday - went out dancing in LKF after being to an incredibly cool jazz concert at the philia lounge seeing and hearing Eugene Pao - apparently one of the best guitar players in Asia?! He was truly fantastic and the band members (a contrabass player and a pianist) were also amazing! After the concert we all went out clubbing and me and Jay danced four hours straight untill they actually kicked us out of the club! =) Had a goooood time!

litt huminf faktisk!

I en artikkel i Aftenposten om spill for skoleelever i Oslo blir det skrevet at utviklingen av læringsspill for skoleelever Oslo kommune foretar seg nå vil føre til mer effektiv læring. Jeg håper de klarer å utvikle noe som faktisk er interessant og bra å spille, hvis ikke vet de ikke hvor mye tid og penger de kaster ut vinduet. Spillmarkedet er ekstremt vanskelig - uten at Oslo kommune skal begi seg ut på det - og enorme summer brukes for å utvikle og teste nye spill. Det sier også noe om hvor raffinerte spillerne er og hvor høy standard de setter før de setter seg inni et nytt spill. At de nå setter fokus på nye læringsmetoder er godt og at digitale hjelpemidler blir tatt i bruk er enda bedre, men jeg håper de har tenkt gjennom en god løsning før de nå begir seg ut på spillteknologiutvikling selv.

(lack of) Easter activities in HK

Vi vara toorristaa
To all of you at home in Norway who have been enjoying horrible snowy, cold or warm sunny Easter weather at a remote cabin in the mountains of Norway - they don´t celebrate Easter in China. It is coincidental that their festival to honor the dead falls on the same weekend as the Western Easter holiday. Wednesday 4th of April was the day when all Chinese go to visit their ancestors graves - og which most of the mainlanders in HK need to go to the mainland to do so - which fell on the same day as we chose to cross over the border to show Camilla´s parents who were visiting, what China is like. Well, needless to say, they got a funny experience of what a crowd of about 250 000 Chinese looks like. They were practically running like "five year olds in an amusement park" (camillas quote) whenever they saw an opportunity to sneak further ahead in the sea of people who all wanted to cross over simultaniously - no queue culture here..

A practical thing about being a city in between two cultures like HK is that they can choose the best things from both cultures - including holidays it seems, a benefit which they apparently are taking advantage of, by adding Easter as a holiday where they can get extra days off from work, but thats about it. So, not too many things that resemble a normal Easter as most Western people might be familiar with except a few weird things imported from our culture such as waitresses wearing bunny ears and stuff. I was pretty happy when Camillas parents presented me with an Easter egg of good tradition filled with Norwegian liquorice! =)

As a result of us lacking a travelling plan during Easter and having visitors, we´ve been guides most of the time (thus we finally managed to take a photo of us with the famous HK Island as background - see the top photo). When we haven´t been guides, we´ve gone out and looked at the nightlife of HK. That lead to some fantastic photos of me and Camilla smoking cigars in a bar called Castro. Behold!

Dance event at CUHK

There was yesterday a big dance show at CUHK - apparently it is an annual thing that everyone in HK know about (fact retrieved from a local CUHK student, so who really knows?! ) Anyway, I went to one rehearsal to be in this show, but realised that I had been put in the wrong class.. Hardcore Hip Hop.. AND I would be away three out of four weeks of rehearsal because of my travelling to china and malaysia.. It was nice going to the actual show to watch it though! It lasted from 7:30 untill 11.30 which a bit too long, but okay and every hour was packed with choreography - not just the dance acts in themselves, but even the two guys talking in between in mandarin, of which we couldn´t understand anything... The whole audience seemed to like it, so I took it as a sign of them actually hitting their target and being funny. So I just enjoyed the show and the bits of things I could extract as wisdom about cultural differences. One pic is of the four best dancers that were on stage performing the coolest hiphop - pop´n´lock choreography to 70s music, and the other one of two excited spectators!

Tribeca

A big big party was arranged at Tribeca - a cool club in HK. We of course attended it, unfortunately Camilla fell ill that very same day (or the one before) and so she couldn´t come! Here are some photos I manage to get hold of from Marcus - a Swede that had brought a camera with him and was willing to use it.