Learning Chinese Reading/Writing

Yesterday I spend quite some time to improve my knowledge on Chinese reading/writing. Even though you can easily survive with just English while living in Hong Kong I do think it will be great if I will finally be able to understand the menu’s and signs I see/pass by every day.

I'm using the books from the series 'Chinese made easy' (as on the picture above) but then the traditional characters version. I do really like this book, unlike some other characters learning books I came across this one actually builds it up in a very logical (but still very challenging way...). Quite quickly you will have a good understanding of some of the most frequently used characters.

Yesterday I finally completed the first book of the series and must say it is really cool to walk around Hong Kong and starting to understand more and more of the Chinese words I see around here :).

Really hope I can keep myself motivated long enough to go through the entire 5 books this series has to offer.

K-1 World GP Hong Kong

Picked up my tickets to this event yesterday. Really excited that such a big event will be held in Hong Kong.

According to the last information I can find this should be what the event will look like:

Opening Fights:

Heung Pak Wing vs ??
Wong Man Kit vs ??

Superfights:

Badr Hari vs Peter Graham
Peter Aerts vs Nicholas Pettas
Hong-Man Choi vs Gary Goodridge

Tournament:

Musashi vs Yong Soo Park
Wang Qiang vs Randy Kim
Fujimoto vs Hong Jiang
Sentory vs Taiei Kin

Reserve fight:

Elhan Dennis vs Dong Wook Kim

Bonjasky seems not to be on the card anymore, but Badr Hari vs Peter Graham as a superfight :D. Really looking forward to that one.

Censorship in China

I've forwarded the link of my blog to several people. Shortly afterwards some people in China asked if the link I had sent was correct; as they were unable to open my blog.
To be sure I copied and pasted the link from the browser bar and sent it to them again, but the result remained the same. They were unable to open my blog. At that point I already suspected it might have something to do with censorship. A quick search in google confirmed that blogspot is indeed blocked by the Chinese government.

Why would they block websites like blogspot or why block any website at all (expect for sites with illegal content)?
They don't want the Chinese people exposed to 'unwanted information or news'. But in a country like China, where so many foreigners visit every day. And people have all kinds of options to communicate with the rest of the world; can you really effectively withhold information from them by blocking websites?

Quite sure that everyone I know in China knows about what happened during the protest on Tiananmen Square for instance…

If you have any idea or would like to comment please do so!

International Commerce Centre

Everyday on my way to work I see the progress on the new pride of Hong Kong; the International Commerce Centre.

When finished it will become the tallest building in Hong Kong, and take the sixth place of the tallest buildings in the world.

When finished it will have:
118 floors and a height of 484m (60m taller then the already very impressive IFC)

It is located at the Kowloon side of Hong Kong; overlooking the Victoria Harbour. Fortunately there will be a level dedicated as a viewing platform which should give an amazing bird eye’s view over the skyline of Hong Kong Island.

Currently it is at about 77 floors and 300m height.

Repulse Bay - Not as expected... :(

Yesterday afternoon me and my girlfriend decided to visit Repulse Bay. A very nice sand beech, great place to just sit and relax; enjoy the sunset.But within 10 minutes of our arrival it turned out it wasn't such a great place for someone. Some family had reported that they had seen someone drowning :(. Lifeguards, policemen and divers from the firedepartment quickly started their search. We still hang around for a while, but nobody was found before we left. There wasn't anything on the news about this incident so hopefully it turned out to be a false report.

Tsing Ma Bridge

Found some pictures I took during a hiking trip a while back. They are of the Tsing Ma bridge connecting Tsing Yi (the island I am living on) with Lantau island (where the airport is located).

Visiting the bridge during sunset is really worth the trip....