Hong Kong Oddities

Greetings! We have done very little worth blogging about in the past few days, but we have been saving up two weird pictures from the city. Apparently, Hong Kong doesn't function like America sometimes.

A basic Hong Kong scene: a busy road, people all around, entering and exiting buildings, and… A lady pulling a huge pile of tires. O…kay...

"Starbucks" here is just like it is in America, until it isn't. Muffin, anyone?

Another Hong Kong oddity: we live by a pond of turtles. It is home to at least 20-25 turtles, and what provoked me to finally blog about them is that some of them seem to have just had babies.

Three small turtles appeared in the pond this morning. The pictures aren't great- it's so humid here that the camera lens fogged up- but here they are.

The two smallest babies, if brought together, would easily fit side-by-side in my hand.

Above: about ten turtles attempting to crawl up out of the water at the same spot. This kind of event isn't uncommon- in the water, one turtle will occasionally try to climb on top of another, even if the second turtle is in motion.

And here I was thinking Dad was the only one who took artsy photos. Congratulations on this photo to A: Mom and B: humidity!

Here is a small baby turtle (sitting on the rock near the far left of the photo)  compared to some bigger turtles.

Now for the fourth and final Hong Kong oddity. Simply taking the stairs up from next to the pond of turtles will reveal a pond of frogs. Up to five frogs hang out there at a time and occasionally converse in  loud tones so akin to a dog barking that the two could be easily confused. One day at the pond, my mom made a discovery. If you look closely at the pond you can see tiny swimming creatures without arms or legs. We believe these to be tadpoles, as they live in the frogs' realm. Here are some pictures.

There is a tadpole at the very center of this picture, and one swimming out of the frame to the right. There are probably more, considering how many tadpoles inhabit the pond.

I'm not sure what this berry cluster-shaped object is. Each berry is about the same size as one of the individual, spherical berries from a blackberry cluster, perhaps slightly larger.

Thanks for reading and looking. Hopefully, that post didn't exhaust our supply of Hong Kong tidbits. See you next time!

Dad Sez!

Dad's profound insights on: travel!

Dad flew to Shanghai this week for work, and now he is attempting to come back. Unfortunately his flight was supposed to land at 10:30 am, and it is now 3:28 pm, and he is just now taking off. There has been a bit of a delay.

"Well, I am taking off at 2:35 of course- that's what the sign says at the gate that I am standing in line at, so it must be so. No matter that it is 2:37, our plane has been at the gate for 40 minutes, so I am sure we will be able to board everyone, taxi, and take off in negative 2 minutes."
                                                     
                                                                                    -Dad

As if matters weren't bad enough, the Chinese are known for not queueing. Instead of forming nice, tidy queues around check-in counters and such, they form blobs. Here's an eyewitness report.

"I have been observing and studying one particular old lady who I know is preparing her flanking maneuver. She just keeps wandering/circling…. looking for an opening…. then she will strike, like a ninja with a giant purse."
     
                                                                                   -Dad

Next up: Hong Kong Science Museum or Disneyland!