Pavlova Christmas

I was over the moon to have won 4kg of passionfruit from Cheese Club.  Over the last few years, they had continued to grow in Hong Kong and Asia.  I was a big fan of their service and it made buying dairy products far more affordable in Hong Kong.  Their success had also led them to expand into other areas such as fruit.  With the Christmas period in full swing, they had launched a series of giveaways.  I had signed up to everything I could, and the win of the fruit was a very pleasant surprise.

Still, with 4kg of passionfruit, I needed to think of what to do with it all.  The fruit themselves were delicious, probably the best passionfruit I had ever eaten, but I still had too much of it to just casually eat day to day.

Since it was a festive time, it seemed that the best use of it would be for a pavlova.  This cake from my childhood that seemed to be the specialty of every grandma in Australia was still a favourite.  Making a pavlova was easy, but making a good one usually took a bit more effort and concentration.  I had a good recipe, and now that I had the fruit it seemed to be the perfect time.

Fully decorated, it is a thing of beauty.  After our dinner, Veronica's family all took a slice and quickly embraced it.  Who doesn't love a good pav?

Tram Party Fun

With many people flying in from overseas for the wedding, Veronica and I decided to do something special for all the visitors and the people who were kind enough to be helping us on the day.  We had started our planning back when the coronavirus restrictions were all still in place.  The usual thing to do would have been a dinner beforehand, but it seemed to be less than ideal with potential limits on numbers and dividers between guests.  As we sat eating dinner and contemplating, we saw one of the famous Hong Kong party trams roll past.  This seemed to be the perfect option for us.  As a form of transportation, it would be excluded from many of the coronavirus requirements and it was a uniquely Hong Kong institution which could be enjoyed by both the locals and visitors.  For the next few months, I waited patiently for the booking website to update for the date I was waiting for.  When the time arrived, I immediately booked the red one.  It was the most iconic of all these party trams, and being the red one I also assumed it was the fastest (naturally).

A few months later, the guests started to arrive and so did the day of the party.  We gathered out at the depot in Sai Wan.  A couple of people had been on a party tram before, but for most it was a new experience.  I was excited myself.  This was something that was so much a part of living in Hong Kong as you would see it passing from the street.  The tram itself was something I caught almost every day as well, so it felt like I was sharing a part of my daily life with all the visitors.

The touristy attractions can sometimes be a bit of a disappointment.  They are often hyped up and the weight of expectations can be too much to be met.  I was a little bit concerned that this would be the case with the tram.  How good could it really be?  It was just a tram after all.  A standard bit of public transport that we used on a day to day basis.  Everyone started to board.  We had arranged our own drinks and food for the trip and there was a sense of excitement.  Once on board, I began to arrange the food and drinks as most others went straight to the top to look out at the view.  We started moving off and the entire tram was filled with laughing and chatter.  It seemed like everything was going well.

The tram depot is in Sai Wan, close to Sai Ying Pun.  We had arranged a three hour trip that would take us all the way to North Point, and then on a loop through Happy Valley before returning back to the start.  I walked to the top of the tram and joined in the fun with everyone around.  It was quickly clear that this was already a success.  Everyone was drinking and enjoying themselves.  Looking out at the moving scene of Hong Kong at night, the lights and the activity all moving past with the familiar clicking noise as the wheels passed over the tracks.

Going through Central and Causeway Bay, all heads craned upwards.  The bright lights of the city felt different from the balcony on the roof.  I had been on this tram ride countless times, but being out in the open and looking out unrestricted felt very different.  There was a freedom that made Hong Kong feel so much "bigger". 

There were nothing but smiles on the whole trip.  I was immensely happy that this had turned out to be such a success and everyone seemed to agree. For both the visitors and locals alike, this was an experience that seemed to bring out the best of Hong Kong.

Singapore Stopover

We arrived in Singapore early in the evening.  I'm generally against day flights for long haul flights, it seems like a bit of waste of a day.  Going the overnight flight seems to be the most optimal use of travel time given you'll be sleeping anyway.  We arrived early evening in Singapore, with the three hour time difference, it was very late in Australia and we were feeling a bit tired.  We were hungry though and I didn't want to waste any opportunities to get some food in Singapore.  We had booked a stay in Tanjong Pagar and so we were only a short walk to Maxwell Food Centre.  I missed living in Singapore, and I missed nothing more than the food in Singapore.  The blend of cultures in Singapore is an incredible thing, possibly one of the greatest achievements of Singapore as a country.  The food culture that has developed as a result of the blend is probably one of the greatest benefits they have reaped from this.

We spent the next few days visiting friends and eating.  The last few years of no travel had deprived me of the Singaporean food fix that I craved and I was keen to rectify this as much as possible.  We went around to different stalls, getting chicken rice, char kway teow, prawn mee, all the favourites I had missed.  Everything was always washed down with a strong kopi or a fresh lime juice.

With Chinese New Year approaching, we also got to walk around the night markets that had been set up in readiness for the festivities.  I had fond memories of Chinese New Year in Singapore.  The food was of course always great, but there were the extra special Nonya desserts and snacks which started to pop up around this time that I loved.  The little biscuits and the pineapple tarts would appear on tables around everyone's homes and it was just a happy time to be in Singapore.  

We also made sure to spend some time around some places to get some of our old favourites.  For me, I've always loved the simple Singaporean breakfast of kaya toast, poached eggs and a kopi.  It is a simple combination of foods, but the intensity of the flavours matches the tropical surroundings.  I feel the heat of Singapore as I sit there and the taste of the food and drink seems to cut through it all.  Veronica on the other hand wanted one thing and one thing only, and that was her beloved bak chor mee.  Twice she found herself at the famous bak chor mee stall near Lavendar station.  One of the first ever small hawkers in the world to be awarded a Michelin star, the flavours are intense with the vinegar sauce, and the noodles are cooked to give a perfect balance of bite that still yields.

As we were walking around Singapore, I found myself walking along the underpass that went from Orchard Station all the way to Ngee Ann City.  I must have walked along here dozens of times over the years.  One thing caught my eye as I was walking, it was the "Famous Amos" store!  This store had been here since I was a kid.  It must have been here for well over 20 or 25 years at this point.  Everything else around it had changed and shifted, yet somehow this store had remained strong and consistent throughout all this time.  There was a nice feeling of consistency and nostalgia to see it still here, and so I bought a bag of cookies to munch on back in the hotel.

On the day we were to leave, I wasn't feeling great.  I had been trying to tough it out of the last couple of days, but Veronica convinced me to go to the hospital before the flight.  There the doctor gave me drugs and painkillers to try and deal with the issue quickly.  I felt a bit relieved, but I still wasn't feeling very comfortable when I got on the plane back to Hong Kong.

Yayoi

There was a big new exhibition for Yayoi Kusama being held at M+.  With our memberships, Veronica and I were able to get discounted tickets to attend.  It was a nice feeling walking through the crowded halls of the exhibition.  The coronavirus restrictions had been largely rolled back and so there was an increasing feeling of a return to normality.  Everyone was still masked up, but it was nice to be amongst the crowds again.

The Antony Gormley exhibition was finished which I felt was a bit of a shame.  The near endless sea of little figures looking up at you was quite a dramatic and moving exhibition, but it was also good to see new and famous exhibitions slowly cycling through Hong Kong.  I had been to some Kusama exhibitions in the past in other cities and I was always impressed by the scale of what was put together.  She has always had an eye for scale and some of her more interactive pieces were always quite fun.

I was a bit surprised by this exhibition.  The previous Yayoi exhibitions I had been too had focused almost exclusively on the large installations and the pumpkins.  These were her signature pieces, but there was little else on display.  This exhibition however was far more expansive and tracked her entire career over 70 years.  It was an impressive collection of works to have all in one place and showed how she had developed over the years.  There was only one pumpkin to be found in the entire exhibition, with far more focus being placed on some of the more edgy ideas she worked with when she was young.  One thing that was surprising was her young obsession with sex and phallic objects.  

Seeing piece after piece, covered in phallic objects was not what I had been expecting.  Kusama has become so heavily embraced by the mainstream media with its focus on her polkadots and pumpkins, that I (like many others) had grown to only know her on that basis.  It meant that my entire image of her was a very clean cut and child friendly version, which it seemed was a very far cry from the reality of who she was and what drove her earlier artistic endeavours.

Downstairs in the basement area, we joined a long line to see one of her big installation works.  It was a large mirror room full of her trademark polkadots.  This was more of what I remembered.  After a long wait in the queue, it was our turn.  We were only given 20 seconds inside the mirrored room, but in that short amount of time we were able to embrace the reality warping experience of the infinity mirrors. 

It was a surprising exhibition, it didn't deliver the usual expected "Kusama" pieces that most people have come to embrace.  Yet this was probably more unique and insightful than any of her other exhibitions I had been to in the past.  This look back through her long catalogue of work was a far better explanation of who she was as an artist than the other exhibitions which had provided only a narrow range of her work as an artist.

Taipei

My brother always tells me about how much he loved going to Taiwan.  When he was interning in Hong Kong, he had managed to get himself a cheap weekend trip to Taipei and to this day he still raves about the place.  As holiday locations go, it must be one of the most conveniently located from Hong Kong.  The flight over to Taipei is only slightly more than an hour.  With that in mind, I decided to go over for a weekend to have a look.  I left work and headed straight for the airport.  I got through immigration quickly and I was soon on the plane.  I found it hilarious that even though this was an incredibly short flight, the cabin crew went about doing a full dinner service.  I felt a bit bad for the cabin crew as they rushed out of their seats once the seatbelt signs went off to distribute the food, and then immediately went back to the front of the plane to start collecting trays once they had finished distributing.  Once they collected the last tray, they had to then start with the landing checks!  It all seemed completely unnecessary.  A drink and a snack would have been more than enough.

Once I arrived, I headed straight out to the bustling night markets.  My brother (and everyone who had been) told me that these were the highlights of any trip to Taipei.  They were all completely correct!  I was amazed by the incredible size and density of these night markets.  The sheer volume of food options in only one of the markets was beyond anything I had experienced before, and I was lucky to have visited street food markets in various places around the world.  The food was generally Asian, but it was uniquely Taiwanese.  It was predominantly Chinese in style, but you could see the influences of Japanese culture as well as Western culture on the different offerings at all the stalls.

One dish I found myself going back to several times was the strange ice cream rolls that were made in the markets.  It was a simply flavoured ice cream, wrapped in rice paper with shaved peanut butter brittle and coriander.  The inclusion of the coriander seemed very strange and I was tempted to ask for it to be left out.  I thought more about it though and realised that keeping it was important to ensure that I was eating this as it was intended.  For the very first time at least, I should try to experience it without change.  It all worked out well together.  The herby flavour of the coriander complementing the sweet nuttiness of the other ingredients.

The city of Taipei is an interesting city.  It sprawls out in all directions, with much of it looking a bit run down and decrepit. Within all of the city, there are islands of the ultra modern, none so more than the famous Taipei 101, which was at one point the world's tallest building.  The building reaches up into the sky, but it's a strange structure to look at.  There isn't that much that's actually around it so it looks a bit out of place by itself.

From the top of the tower, there was a view that stretched out far into the distance.  The lights of Taipei don't shine all that bright because it's not that type of city.  It was good to be able to come up this far to look around, but I didn't really understand what the need was for such a building.  Other than national pride, the same amount of office space could have probably been constructed over several building for a fraction of the price.

During the day, I went out to visit some of the monuments of the city.  Taiwan as a country was founded by Chiang Kai Shek and his KMT forces, so their influence is still everywhere.  There are monuments to his memory dotted throughout Taipei, and in the middle the city there is a large park and memorial dedicated to his memory.  The huge square in front of the memorial itself has now been renamed "Liberty Square", which seems a touch ironic given the oppressive rule that the KMT implemented on Taiwan.  Maybe it's a sign of the times of what is hoped for the people of Taiwan.

Inside the memorial, is an enormous seated statue of Chiang Kai Shek.  People stood around to take photos and watch the guards doing their ceremonial shift changes.  There was something strange about looking at this huge statue.  I couldn't help but think back to the statue of Lincoln I had stood in front of not that long ago.  The "style" of both seemed similar, but the subjects couldn't have been further apart.  Whereas one was a man who freed slaves and liberated an entire people, the other was an oppressor who managed to lose an entire country.  It's always difficult to judge history if based only on the superficial memorials we see.

My brother was right though.  Taiwan was great.  There was so much to do and I hadn't scratched the surface.

Sports conducted in an orderly fashion

By sheer coincidence, I was in Japan for the opening weekend of their baseball season.

I'm not sure how I found out, but I wanted to go to a game.  This had long been on my "to do" list, and it helped that I like baseball.

I tried to buy some tickets online, but all the systems were completely unhelpful.  Instead I went directly to the stadium on game day and tried to find some tickets.  Even that was a exercise in patience as all I found was ticket booth after ticket booth that was closed.  It didn't seem like it would be happening.  Finally, I got to the very last ticket booth and found that it was indeed open.  All that was left were some standing room tickets.

They were cheap, so that was fine by me.

I was lucky.  I was watching opening day between the Yomiuri Giants (the Yankees of Japanese baseball) and the Yakult Swallows.  It was a completely full stadium, but I still found myself a nice spot to stand along the 3rd base line.

The cleanliness of the stadium was nothing I had ever seen before.  I had been to a hockey game in Switzerland, but this was even cleaner.  The convenience of everything was also incredible as the stadium had girls with beer kegs on their backs who would bring the beers directly to you.  I thought about whether this was something which could be done in Australia, but then thought the better of it.  This would be a terrible idea in Australia!

The best part of whole experience was the fans.

The Japanese fans are the classiest fans I have ever had the pleasure of attending any sporting event with.  Standing in my spot watching the game, I was surrounded by others who also clearly only had standing room tickets.  After a while, there were probably a few rows deep of people watching the game.  Around the 7th inning, I needed to go to the bathroom so I politely moved away from my perfect spot at the front to go to use the facilities.  Too bad I've lost the spot I thought.  After finishing my business, I made my way back to the general area to keep watching the game and I was confronted by something truly shocking.... the other fans had saved my spot.  As they saw me coming, they even all opened up a path so that I could walk back to the exact same spot I had been standing in!

The Giants got ahead quickly.  As home runs were hit, the crowd roared and began to do seemingly choreographed chants and dances (in their seats of course).  Scarves waved in the air at the precise moment of the chants.  It was a special thing to see, this crowd all moving and cheering in unison.  On the other side of the stadium, the fans for the Yakult Swallows danced and played their musical instruments.  I've been lucky to go to a few sporting events around the world, but for the atmosphere this was definitely one of the best places I had been.