I’ll normally take any excuse to have a little break during work, but this was serious training for the pencil holder olympics.
Goooo!
Oops!
Clearly not yet ready for Beijing 2008…
… but working on it!My Da Count for today is silliness, you could also call it insanity. What would my life be without it?
There are several words for the state of being alone, loneliness is one but it has a negative connotation, and therefore is almost the opposite of what I want to describe. In all of us is the need for companionship, of spending time with and being loved by friends, parents, children, and lovers, but solitude, and being comfortable with it, is equally important, because we all are separate human beings with our own feelings, beliefs, and thoughts. And spending time alone, and nurturing our own separate soul is not wasted time.
I came across an article by a young woman from India. In Being OK with Me she describes how hard but important it was for her to spend a period of her life alone and become comfortable in her own world. It is a wonderful essay on solitude and why it is not something we should fight.
The problem is that even if you have identified the need of spending time alone, in normal life it’s hard to get. It’s probably the reason why I like the night so much. Then it is not so hard to find the odd free hour to write a post, read a book, hang after a thought, or just bathe in an emotion.
Download Jamie Cullum’s All At Sea by right-clicking and selecting Save Link As.
Today is my first blogoversary… yippee! Come on in and celebrate with me! Raise a glass of bubbly – alcoholic or not – to Cosima Underwater’s first year!
I almost missed it. I was thinking about introducing a few more labels and clicked on the first post one, and there it stood May 4th 2006, the day that I started Cosima Underwater, pretty much on a whim, not actually sure what I should do with it, nor where it would take me.
The second post on the same day was a picture, an HNT picture, and it introduced me to a wonderful community of people. That I met you all, while we were being half-nekkid, made it all the more enjoyable :).
So, on my first blogoversary I would like to thank Os for starting it all. Os, you are my Da Count for today. Without you, I would still be traveling alone in cyberspace… completely clothed. And how boring would that be?
Cheers and kisses,
Cosima
My son and I were just finishing our lunch in the bistro of one of Hong Kong’s largest food halls, when he suddenly stood up, pressed his legs together, and said “Mama, I have to go wee-wee”. The toilets were at the other end of the store, and I hadn’t paid the bill yet.
“Can you wait a little?”
“No, I need to go NOW!”
It was code red on the wee-wee alarm scale. Luckily, our bill was already on the table, and I laid two notes and all my coins on top of it, before grabbing my son and running to the other end of the food hall, dodging other shoppers on the way. We made it… just in time. Phew!
Afterwards, we looked for Easter egg dyes, which our local supermarket doesn’t stock. Although I couldn’t find any special egg colors, the baking section had food coloring, which I hope will work as well. We also picked up a bag of Haribo Gummi Bears.
On the way to the check-out counters, we passed a line of disgruntled shoppers waiting for something. While the front of my brain already had an inkling that this could be the check-out line, the back of my brain refused to believe it… but it was. About 50 shoppers with carts full of Easter supplies were waiting in front of six check-out counters.
I remembered that a second exit at the other end of the store also had a few cashiers, and we went there, in the hope that the line would be shorter. It was, but we still had to wait for quite a while. There were still three shoppers in front of me when one of the cashiers looked at me expectantly. I went to her counter wondering why the people in front of me insisted on using the other.
“Madam, this is a cash only counter.”
Yep… standing directly in front of it, I saw the sign as well.
“I only have a fifty dollar note left. Can I pay with my Octopus Card (a stored value card) ?”
“No Madam. We don’t take Octopus Cards.”
“Well, let’s see how much it is. Maybe fifty dollars are enough.”
“Fifty-three dollars and thirty cents, Madam.”
“I just spent all my coins. Too bad… I guess I have too…”
And that’s when a very nice man standing at the second counter took out his wallet, and gave me a five Hong Kong dollar coin.
He made my day… and is my Da Count for today. Although it was not much money, about 70 US cents, most people would not have done it. I don’t know, if I had. It was such a nice gesture towards a total stranger.
The wet season has begun in Hong Kong, and while most people complain about the high humidity and discuss which dehumidifier to buy, I find the current weather fascinating.
Ok, it’s a little moist… but it doesn’t rain… yet. Everything… the air, clothes, bed sheets is damp, and one has to run the dehumidifier once in a while to prevent mold growing in the closet. But other than that, the clouds are rather interesting to watch, and as an added bonus the moist film lying on everyone’s skin keeps wrinkles at bay :).
Part of the reason why I like this weather so much, is that it let’s me sense nature even in such a densely populated city as Hong Kong. Because a large proportion of Hong Kong’s land is mountainous, it has an odd combination of dense, urban development in the flat areas and natural, subtropical vegetation on the slopes behind them. At the moment, the higher peaks are hidden by low hanging clouds and the vegetation of their slopes has turned into a lush, deep green.
One of these mountain ranges is directly behind the high-rise I live in. All my windows are open, and I can smell earthy, moist jungle and hear birds singing.
Hong Kong also has a surprisingly large number of protected country parks. Some of them are directly adjacent to urban areas, others are located on outlying islands or in the hinterland, and require a little bit of traveling. I think we will head for one of them during the Easter holidays, before the temperature rises to its usual summer level in the mid-thirties (95 Fahrenheit).
image by Hong Kong ObservatoryThis is an earlier post about typhoon season, which I like even better :).
One of the few things I truly missed when I came to Hong Kong is German rye bread. Other North Europeans eat it too, but the rest of the world still needs a little convincing :).
A few years ago, I decided to learn how to bake my own, because schlepping 10 breads back on every return trip from Germany was beginning to get a little tedious.
I searched around the internet, and was surprised about the amount of information I could get. Thankfully, there are quite a lot of websites and forums where hobby bread bakers exchange their knowledge and experience with beginners.
The trouble with rye bread is that it needs sourdough as a leavening agent, commercial yeast doesn’t work. Even for wheat bread, sourdough is a good alternative. It improves digestibility, adds flavor, and also extends the time until the bread spoils. Quite a healthy alternative to all the artificial bread improvers that are added to most breads these days.
At first, it all sounded deceptively simple. Grow a sourdough culture from flour and water. Then, make the dough by mixing sourdough, flour, water, and salt. Let the dough rise, and finally bake it in the oven. Baking with sourdough is an age-old tradition, if the ancient Egyptians could do it, I could too… right?
Yes, I could… after a lot of trials and errors. I now have my very own sourdough culture in the refrigerator, and can bake bread that the rest of the family enjoys eating. But I certainly had my share of stone-hard bricks coming out of the oven, and there is still room for improvement.
Which has let me come to the conclusion that baking bread, that is both healthy and delicious, is really a craft, if not an art, for which a lot of knowledge and experience is required. And I am thankful for all the people that keep the tradition alive. The countless hobby bakers, who share their knowledge on the internet, and the commercial bakers, who go against the trend by refusing to use additives in their breads. They are not necessary, if you know your stuff… or even only half of it, like me.
PS: For a German-language forum on baking sourdough bread go here.
It’s hard to think at all at the moment, let alone think about something positive, because there is horrendous construction noise coming from a flat two floors above me. It has been going on for the whole week. First they jackhammered tiles off (brrrr grrrrrr brrrrrr…), then they took down walls (bang bang bang…), today it sounds like they are doing both (grrrr bang grrrr bang…). Downstairs, a truck is waiting, filled to the brim with grey concrete, tiles, door frames, and smashed toilet bowls and bath tubs.
The high-rise building I live in was build in the eighties, relatively old by Hong Kong standards, and every family that buys a flat has renovation work done before moving in. This is not the first time we had to endure construction noise. I was actually surprised that there was still an unrenovated flat left in the building.
Truth be told, I will only be really happy, when the renovation is finished, and I can hear the voice in my head again. But… uuh, how do I make the switch to Da Count now?… I am grateful for the quiet time we had this morning (the noise only started at ten, such slackers! :), and I am also grateful that the construction crew added an extra half hour to their lunch break today.
I think, I will grab my son and spend the rest of the afternoon somewhere else.
Yesterday, I was in need of comfort food. After a very long break, I went to the swimming pool again to take up my usual work-out routine. Afterwards I was utterly exhausted, my stomach was growling, and I also felt quite cold.
When I thought about what to eat afterwards, I immediately thought of soup. It’s comfort food for me, warming from the inside with lots of ingredients that melt to one wonderful flavor. It reminds me of home, of the soups my mom cooks, when it is cold outside. The beauty of most of the recipes is that they have very simple ingredients, but still taste great. And every family has slightly different recipes for essentially the same dish. I bet my chicken soup is different from yours :).
When the cold season begins in Hong Kong, many restaurants, which serve quite different fare during the summer are converted to Mongolian Hot Pot restaurants. They have special round tables with a sunken pot of stock in the middle, around which the diners sit warmed by the heat source underneath and the warm food. Thinly sliced meat, seafood, and vegetables are put into little wire baskets with long handles and cooked in the broth. After only a short cooking time, the food is ready, and is dipped in sauce before eaten. At the end, the fragrant broth is shared among the diners. It’s a fun way to share a meal with friends, family, or colleagues, when it is windy and cold outside.
But yesterday I was all by myself and opted for wonton noodle soup. All around Hong Kong, there are little fast food restaurants specializing in noodle soup and congee (rice soup) with different ingredients to choose from. Usually the décor consists of formica tables and plastic stools, and as much diners as possible are squeezed around a table. A left-hander like me can upset the seating arrangement of the whole restaurant. Yesterday however, I went to a more spacious establishment. Although the atmosphere was not as fun as in my favorite hole-in-the-wall restaurant, the soup was very good. Thin noodles, spring onions, choi sam, and wonton with juicy bits of shrimp in a wonderful fragrant fish broth.
A few days ago, I was talking to a friend about the change in communication technology that has happened in our life time. I still remember, when my parents got their first telephone. It was “fern” green and had a proper rotary dial. Many of our friends and relatives, especially the older ones, didn’t get one until much later. Whenever my parents wanted to set up a visit with a grandaunt of mine, they called the public phone directly in front of her house. She would come out to answer it …or not. It was a very long-winded affair to tell her that we would come. A few years later, even she was convinced that getting a telephone of her own was a good idea. She chose a grey one and spruced it up with a pseudo-baroque cover.
My grandma, who lived in East Germany, didn’t have a telephone, as only people deemed worthy could get one. Her neighbors downstairs had one, but she didn’t want to use it. She was sure that the Stasi would listen in to every call made to West Germany, and she was probably right. The only call we got from her was when my grandpa died. But she wrote us wonderful letters, which my mother still keeps.
But even in East Germany communication technology made a big difference. Many people were able to tune in to West German television, and tune in they did. One of the reasons why people in East Germany went to the streets to demand change was that they knew that the West was very different from the picture the politburo painted. However, not all was how it appeared on TV. When the wall opened, a son of East German friends told me “It’s nice in the West, but I imagined it to be much nicer. The commercials didn’t tell the truth.” Yeah, they never do.
With my parents living in Germany and us in Hong Kong, our family relies on communication technology more than ever. These days, we are addicted to Skype. It’s free and, even better, the grandparents can watch their grandson in action. A typical Skype call goes like this:
Grandpa in Berlin: Hi Cosima, How are you? Everything well?
Cosima in Hong Kong: Yes, you know, I had the flu, but I am fine now.
Grandpa: So good to hear. Can you please switch on the webcam. Grandma and I would like to see our grandson.
Cosima: Sure, hold on…
And then I chase my son for half an hour – at least – through the flat with my notebook and webcam in hand, while grandson shows his grandparents his latest toys, kindergarten projects, or just fools around.
Sometimes I miss getting handwritten letters, but then I am also very, very grateful for telephones, Skype, Messenger…
They let me communicate in real-time with much loved people living far away, and I am immeasurably grateful for that.
I don’t want to make those of you living in the cold North too jealous, but here in Hong Kong we have absolutely glorious weather at the moment. Today’s high was 25 degrees Celsius (90 Fahrenheit), which is warm even for Hong Kong for this time of year.
After dropping off parcels at the post office this morning, I went for a long walk and later had lunch at an outdoor restaurant. With sunshine like this, it’s just not possible to be in a bad mood. After spending most of the week inside nursing the flu and later doing tedious work for Cosima Inc, it’s such a relieve to spend time outside.
Before you all pack your suitcases and move to Hong Kong, I have to warn you though. In summer, it gets extremely humid and hot, and the still air traps pollutants more than in other places.
But for now, all I want to do is spend as much time outside as possible and let the sun shine on my face. Tomorrow, we plan to spend the afternoon at the beach, building sandcastles and playing football.