Week 7 (Sept 13 - 19, 2009)

T1, T3, T8, T9, T10

No these are not references to Terminator movies nor an attempt to popularize a new quinary numeral system, these are the Hong Kong's warning signals for tropical cyclones or typhoons (and don't ask me what happened to the numbers in between).

To summarize from the Hong Kong Observatory's website:

T1: Stand-By; tropical cyclone within 800km

T3: Strong wind likely as result of tropical cyclone (40+ km/hr, gusts to 110 km/hr); don't go near the water and hold on to your hat

T8: Wind speeds of 60+ km/hr with gusts over 180; city all but shuts down - workers go home, buses stop running, don't go outside

T9: Wind speeds increasing

T10: Hurricane winds 120+ with gusts 220+; duck and cover

Last Monday I awoke to T1 notices scattered throughout building lobbies. By afternoon it was raised to T3 and in a sudden surprise the "pre T8" message went out at 4:00pm declaring T8 at 6:00pm.

This creates somewhat of a problem. At T8, EVERYONE goes home. To make it even more exciting, most transportation shuts down within two hours of the T8 signal. Put these two together and what do you get? About 7 million people trying to go home at the same time (ok so that is an overestimate only those out working, shopping, studying, or doing something else away from home has to go home but that still leaves the number I'd wager over 4 million). If you want some visual aids to help imagine try these (pic 1, pic 2).

One's options aren't very good. Do I leave now and beat the rush? Or should I wait it out until the madness goes away? Oh wait, I can't otherwise I can't get home (well technically taxis are still out to make a buck but finding an empty one may be a task plus I don't know if they begin charing the T8 special fare).

With so many options most everyone began vacating the office to enjoy the long and relaxing commute home. I even may have made the evening news. At the bus stop I frequent (and so do thousands of others) a camera crew from a local TV station was filming the excitement of people pushing, and struggling to get home, creating veritable human sardine containers out of the double-decker buses. Even though I may have had my 1.23 seconds of Hong Kong TV fame, I didn't scan the Cantonese channels when I got back home to see whether my face appeared. Maybe I was disinterested or maybe was afraid to witness the combination of my expression (being squeezed on all sides by eager commuters...I don't think I even had to walk - I could have probably been carried onto the bus by the throngs surrounding me without any effort) and hairdo (remember at T3 and Pre-T8 winds and humidity were pretty high at that point).

After all that fun, what did I learn.

1) If you want a day off of work, hope for a T8 (but first thing in the morning not after you've already got there)

2) Adrenaline surges are extremely effective at impeding sleep. Our T8 lasted about 16 hours - the first half of the night I was conveniently woken up every minutes when the wind rattled the windows, so hard in fact I could feel the vibrations moving the bed. And just when you were almost back to sleep a nice little gust would come along where you swear the windows were about to shatter. Which leads me to the next point...

3) Invest in some quality ear plugs (or perhaps good sedatives). It was until probably 3 AM or so that I stumbled out of bed to search for the travel kit from the journey over. Luckily, the airline provided ear plugs since even the 24 hours stores probably weren't an option as that point.

4) Have connections with the HK observatory. In such situations they control when the T8 signal is lifted which in turn means everyone back to work 2 hours later (repeating the exciting commute). BUT if you can bribe someone to keep it at T8 until 12:01pm then you get the rest of the day off (and can make up some sleep). Unfortunately, however, I do not have connections yet with the HK observatory but may start hanging out meteorologist networking events just in case. The T8 was lowered to T3 at about 10:30 AM.

And after all that fun, words of encouragement from others: "It's good preparation. You might as well get used to not getting much sleep now anyway."

"Climb every mountain, search high and low" (not once but twice) 
"And in the naked light I saw...ten thousand 'Buddhas' maybe more"

So as Saturday strolled around I decide to brave the heat and humidity yet one more time in order to hike a small mountain to a monastery. In order to do so, however, I had to make my first preparatory stop at the Hong Kong Space Museum where I took in the feature "Extreme Planets." (I'll let you figure out what that has to do with a Buddhist Monastery.)

While the museum and movie weren't entirely all that invigorating I was surprised to learn the movie was created by Clark Planetarium (formerly Hansen Planetarium) I believe and a place I loved in Salt Lake City growing up as a kid. Kind of strange to see the words "Clark Planetarium, Salt Lake County" in large letters with music on a overhead planetarium screen half way across the world. I suppose that's one of the "miracles" of globalization.

Away from the air conditioned dome and towards the mountain. This time, for real, I'm headed for the monastery. After my arrival, I saw the Buddhist statues high on the hillside blended amidst the sprawling green foliage. Before me was a large white gate with gardens and pagodas which I assumed was not part of monastery but part of the path to the monastery above as there were multiple staircases leading up every which way. As I climbed up and up (going through one liter of water on the way) I beheld beautiful waterfalls and smelt the burning of incense. I passed many alcoves with Buddhist figurines on my way up. Upon reaching a series of buildings I soon realized that this definitely wasn't a monastery, it was a cemetery. To be completely accurate it is best described as a memorial site. Dozens of small buildings each with hundreds of names of ancestors and loved ones who had completed there time on earth. I felt somewhat awkward walking by individuals and families who had come to memorialize their dead. I guess it is a reasonable thing to have on a path to a monastery though. Problem was, I soon found out, it wasn't the path to the monastery. After reaching the top of the memorial hill I looked down to take in the spectacular view and reflect on the fragility of life. As I turned around a tall, wiry fence separated me from the courtyard of the monastery temple, just a few meters away. Best part was, there was not gate and no passage.

I had travelled this far out into the new territories and felt almost obliged to myself to fulfill  the purpose of my journey. So I slowly made my way back down the hill to the gate of the memorial walked a few steps across the parking lot and onto another path. I then started my journey up the same mountain again to the 10,000 Buddha Temple and Monastery. This time I felt confident about my journey since I could easily see there were going to be a lot of Buddhas.

The path, however, is misleading because those statues are not the 10,000 Buddhas of the 10,000 Buddha Temple. I would venture that the 10,000 Buddhas are the ones in temple shown below. That's probably about 1/4 of the room - go ahead and count if you like if you disagree with my hypothesis.

After a nice vegetarian meal, I made my way back down the mountain (again) and onto my final destination for the day; another alcove of meaning and cultural significance and perhaps home of one the world's biggest beagle houses.

More photos from this week's adventures. Also, note below the new feature for emailing blog updates if interested.