Earth Hour Hong Kong

Earth Hour「地球一小時」 (March 28, 2009) is a major and global awareness programme aimed at giving people a glimpse of what global warming is doing to the planet. This year, Hong Kong is finally participating in this event with landmarks across Victoria Harbour being dark for an hour. Even the famous tourist light-show "A Symphony of Lights" is going to be suspended for one night. Around 1 out of 7 people (which is around 1 million) people will take part in this activity to show awareness towards the problem. I hope you can! Earth Hour is global, not only in Hong Kong. The programme aims to reach 1 billion people, the more people you invite, we might be able to make it to 2 billion!

WWF's Earth Hour Sparks Hong Kong and Worldwide......
世界自然基金會「地球一小時」策動香港與世界......

It's as simple as a flick of a switch! Literally.

Wii!

Airline Mogul

Today, I'll briefly introduce Airline Mogul, an online game I've been playing for the last few months.

Introduction
Airline Mogul puts you in the position of an airline CEO and let's you decide where to fly and how much to charge for fares. The thing I like most about Airline Mogul is its clean interface compared to other free simulations such as Airline Empires. In addition, the forum lets you add information on your airline like a press centre capturing every moment of your progress. You can also add ads there. Here's some of mine (my airline's jetGreen).

                                                                                                                Anyway, good luck in running your airline.
However, I must warn you. This may take up a lot of your precious time, so play often, not everyday.

Poverty Around the Globe

Case 1: Poverty in the US
I remember when I was in Boston, my dad used to drive my family around the city. At almost every single red light, a homeless person would take a tin can and walk down the line of cars begging for money. It's just sad.......We wanted to help them, but how?? If we opened the window and gave them some money, they might rob us. We all felt insecure around them, sometimes they even tried to open people's car's doors.

Case 2: Poverty in China.
Recently, there was a news report regarding wrong use of the term 'AIDS'. Some people were pretending they had AIDS and threatened motorists with a needle dipped in blood. This is a horrible situation, would you pay money or would you rather wanna get pricked with blood from an AIDS patient? If you didn't pay, you might get AIDS (if the claim was true). People everywhere would call the police, but the police couldn't do anything. They couldn't verify if they really had AIDS, so they were off the hook every time.

Case 3: Poverty in Hong Kong
Hong Kong, a world class city. Are there any homeless people here? Yes, but fewer than most other cities. The government here uses a number of tactics to prevent homeless people from gathering on the streets. First up, they've replaced nearly ALL public benches with new ones designed to prevent a homeless person from sleeping there.

Second, it makes lots of laws and regulations which prohibit homeless people from staying in a few public places (e.g. inside on MTR Stations). Finally, it adds a lot of homeless shelters (though not enough) to handle the homeless.

Still, poverty is still quite serious with many people just taking free newspapers not for the purpose of reading, but for recycling. At the entrance of one MTR station near me, the elderly take english newspapers, though they don't know how to read them, purely for the purpose of recycling. Many people here (over 80% elderly) go through dumpsters and collect paper for one again, recycling. It's great for the environment (reducing waste), but also really depressing.

More about Hong Kong poverty here (Youtube):

Poverty in Hong Kong [Part 1]
Poverty in Hong Kong [Part 2]
Poverty in Hong Kong [Part 3]

For our participation in last year's blog action day, please refer to this post

Beijing 2008

Almost a week ago, the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony was held. For those of us that weren't there, we saw it on TV right? However, we later found out many parts of the Opening Ceremony was fake including the 'footprints [of fireworks]'. Even the part of the girl singing was fake, another girl was singing but she couldn't go on stage because she was deemed 'ugly'. It's outrageous.

Let's hope the 2010 Vancouver or even 2012 England one will be a LOT better

Cost of running a Car

Ok. We're back after a long break with a post.


Here in Hong Kong, the government encourages public transport as much as possible. Therefore, the cost of running a car here is extremely high even if you don't drive it much. For example, you have to pay HK$1000/month (US$128) just to park your car.
You guys over in the U.S. are complaining about high gas prices at US$4.1/gallon, we're paying US$8.4/gallon, double of that. Insurance here is also very high plus many hidden charges such as tunnel fees.

So remember, never, ever try to buy a car here.

Tour Hong Kong

We are excited to announce that we'll be launching a whole new blog, just for foreigners and tourists to learn about Hong Kong attractions and the ways of a HongKonger.

After a long period of analysis of the online blogging community, we found out that tourism is a huge topic. This new blog is a huge milestone for us, and may be successful compared with this one. If you have any suggestions or objections, feel free to contact us.

Running out of Numbers

In Hong Kong, whether you're 7 or 90, everybody has a cell phone. They come in all different models, from the black-and-white Nokias to the newest Sony Ericsson 5.0 megapixel camera phone. You must think that a lot of phones are needed for Hong Kong's 7 million population, and problems may occur, currently, HK is suffering a crisis with phone usage. The problem is not the phones itself, it's the phone numbers, Hong Kong is running out of phone numbers rapidly. All phone numbers in the region currently either 6XXXXXXX or 9XXXXXXX, but now, phone operators are running out of numbers and are pleading for a number starting with 5 or even extending the numerals to 9. In the future, I'll be able to get lots of money for my phone number :P.