Wednesday, August 03, 2011

Hong Kong Mandarin Oriental Views

As usual, while in HK, I try to stay at the Mandarin Oriental. Its the closest hotel to the office and has a lovely restaurant, bar and patisserie. Very convenient. Views aren't that good, but here are some of them from the hotel room.

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Peering out from the side of the room, nearly falling out, well, would have fallen out if there wasnt the thick glass. Lots of construction going on over a reclamations project on the bay. I remember the first time when I came here, the waterline was on the road, now they have extended this by almost a kilometer.

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The road in front of the Mandarin Oriental which is called as Connaught Road. Its fascinating to see purely British names on this quintessential Asian city.

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Looking up Connaught Road

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That is the Hong Kong Club Building and behind that is the AIA Central Building.

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The Bank of China Tower, the Lippo Building and then the sharp edged Bank of China Building. The building on the bottom is the Legislative Council Building with the dome.

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Here’s the Bank of China Building and then the Chueng Kong Building.

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There’s the HSBC Building.

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A view of the Legislative Council Building. The old style colonial era building looks so incongrous around these tall gleaming windows skyscrapers.

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This is the Statue Square.

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A balcony on top of the Legislative Council Building and backing that is the Bank of China building with a rather grumpy lion in front of it.

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The Cenotaph. I always think of going there but every time I miss out, next time, dammit. I will be there.

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A nice fountain. Adding more moisture to the exceedingly humid air. Thank you.

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Cranes waving their bits around.

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The ferry jetties getting extended and constructed.

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The Hong Kong Cultural Centre cradling the Clock Tower.

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I think that grater building with the CCB sign on top is the Peninsular Building although I might be mistaken. In the front is the Space Museum and Museum of Modern Art and the road in front is the Avenue of Stars. Where you can see a photo of Bruce Lee.

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More apartment Blocks.

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That is an ugly ass big fella of a crane, even mobile. Woweee, big fella indeed.

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Another christmas tree of a crane on the bow of that ship. All the cranes are highly coloured, looks like a child’s play area.

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Not sure what this extraordinary building is but I think this is the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Building. Look at all the antennae on top.

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Lovely Building,

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A closeup of the Lippo Building.

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The top of the Dome of the Legislative Council Building. Have you noticed how most of the world’s legislative buildings have this dome plonked on top of them?

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Some good detail there on top of the roof.

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Nice balconies. You can almost imagine the mandarins walking around on these corridors.

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More views of the Corinthian pillars. How much more architecturally incongruous can you be?

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The Chinese flag flying over the building.

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Entrance to the Metro.

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Traffic queued up.

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Couple of the ubiquitous red taxi’s.

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Four very gnarled trees in the Cenotaph Building.

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View of the traffic on Connaught Road.

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View over Victoria Harbour during twilight.

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Looking up Connaught Road.

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The lights are starting to come on.

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The Bank of China Tower.

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Kowloon

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Some clouds which arent really looking threatening.

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We have closed up shop for the night.

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The Bank of China Building.

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The window cleaner crane is supposed to have some kind of Feng Shui thing going by pointing to the Bank of China Building. Something complicated, dont ask me.

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Peeking between the buildings to see a tall skyscraper perched precariously on the hillside.

Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Hong Kong: Views from the Office

We had a presentation to make and I took the opportunity to take some photographs while waiting for the crowd to pop in.

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That’s where we were having drinks last night. On the Kowloon side.

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Looking up the mountain.

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Looking left

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Looking Right.

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Looking straight up.

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There you go, there’s your answer for everything.

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The building full of erm backsides. lol.

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It really looks like somebody had a wee with that puddle below the feet. See what I mean? on both sides.

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The Harbour view.

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Lots of foliage to make the view look more salubrious.

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There’s the Sauron Tower.

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A long long shot of some geo-engineering happening on that mountain.

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Strange structures on top of that skyscraper

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The world trade centre building in the rear. Looks quite interesting, specially the base. Looks like a chinese seal. no? not the animal, you muppets, but the chop. the seal to seal letters, with the wax. ah! heck!

Monday, August 01, 2011

Hong Kong from Kowloon

In the May trip, we went from Singapore to Hong Kong for a day or so. Popped over to the Kowloon side for a nice little drink and here are the photos from the bar.

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Interesting uplighted tables. We had a whole mess of drinks and as you can see, the blackberries were not far away even here. Well, London was still working so we had to keep on top of things. That’s the bloody problem with working out in Asia, you have to do the local hours and then keep on working late into the night to cover for the Europe and in some horrible cases, also Americas. Fun. Have a drink.

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Peering down the side of the building.

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Looking back at Central.

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Its the clouds which totally fascinate me, how they are highlighted by the sheer amount of lights in the buildings.

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The harbour with a searchlight playing over it.

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There’s our office on the right and the Bank of China Building on the left.

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The Sauron Tower as I call it.

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Another view of the harbour.

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Panning right. The reflections are colourful on the deep oily water.

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There’s the searchlight.

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Came down to the ground and peeked up.