Hong Kong — Parting Shots

30 May 2010

Some final impressions of Hong Kong.


1. Dramatic scenery.


2. Monumental buildings.


3. Crowded streets.

In all, a remarkable place: compact, congested, but quite civilized and highly functional.

Hong Kong — Happy Valley Racecourse

29 May 2010

Finally I have a chance to catch my breath and also catch up on a bit of blogging. Here is a sense of both how wonderfully we've been hosted and how busy I've been. We arrived eight days ago. Since then, I have only had one lunch or dinner at which I was not the guest of someone here in Hong Kong.



One of many highlights was Wednesday's dinner at the club level of the Hong Kong horse racing track at Happy Valley. We were the guests of Professor ST Tan, who heads the Mechanical Engineering Department at HKU. In all, we were about 10, mostly academics from HKU. The meal was a most-elegant buffet in a box overlooking the race track.



No, I did not try the baby octopus on sea blubber! But I did have some other much-less-exotic food that was fantastic. On Rani's standing recommendation, Ingrid bet on a gray horse in the 5th race, but it finished in the middle of the pack. A big surprise to me was how incredibly fast the horses were as they raced around the track. On TV, that speed is not revealed.



A final note: These photos were shot with Ingrid's Panasonic Lumix pocket camera. Its digital image stabilization is remarkably effective in these low-light conditions. Ingrid shot the opening photo.

Hong Kong — Kowloon

27 May 2010

On Thursday, I spent a long day in Kowloon, the complementary part of Hong Kong across the harbor from the island. In all, I visited three universities: Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (pictured below), City University, and Hong Kong Polytechnic University (shown at bottom). At each campus, a student or post-doc with whom I worked at Berkeley is now on the faculty and served as my host: Chris Chao at HKUST, Alvin Lai at CityU, and Frank Lee at Poly.



After a full day of meetings, discussions, laboratory tours, and a seminar at HKUST, Ingrid joined the party and we had a Chinese banquet dinner for about 12 at Poly, hosted by Frank. Then, we had a scenic return trip by taxi, ferry, and taxi back to HKU on the Hong Kong island. The top photo shows the stunning nighttime scenery from the ferry.

Hong Kong — New Territories

26 May 2010

Our host in Hong Kong, Prof. Yuguo Li, took us for an outing on Wednesday morning to the New Territories. This portion of Hong Kong is relatively unpopulated. It is north of Hong Kong island, bordering the Chinese mainland.



In all, we were five and represented great geographic diversity! At left in the photo above is Jan Sundell, a Swede who has lived in Denmark and Texas and is now affiliated with Tsinghua University in Beijing. Next is Yuguo, who is from the northeastern part of China, but who was educated in Sweden and worked in Australia for several years before settling in Hong Kong. Ingrid, of course, was born in South America, but lives in California. Lina, from mainland China, is a PhD student working with Professor Li.



It was a long drive, about 90 minutes out and perhaps an hour back. We spent some time sitting in traffic waiting to go through the tunnel to leave and then return to Hong Kong island (below). In the New Territories, we took some short hikes mainly along the shore line.



After returning, we had lunch at "Joseph's" on the Hong Kong University campus, and then I gave a 90-minute tutorial lecture on indoor particle dynamics. In all, I'm giving four seminars or lectures here in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong — Morning Trail

23 May 2010

Only a few hundred meters up the road from our door is the beginning of a 3 km hiking path known as the "Morning Trail." Each morning since we arrived, we see a steady current of people of all ages (more old than young) slowly climbing up the road to begin the hike.



This morning, after breakfast, we joined the flow. The trail is extraordinary. The whole length is beautifully paved, either in concrete with a slip-proof finish or asphalt. The grading is even and the surface is unblemished. The first portion rises steeply through dense tropical forest passing by exercise stations and resting pavilions. For the last km, the rise is more gentle.



Then, remarkably, at the top, one finds this: A major shopping center! It is also the terminus of a tram that brings visitors up from the downtown area. The views of Victoria Harbor and of the highrise buildings below are stunning!



Addendum: We hiked up to the peak again on Monday morning before breakfast (a response to jet lag). The two photos below were taken on this second trip. The morning light provided nice illumination of the buildings in the heart of Hong Kong.



To the south, as we were ascending, we could see the token wind turbine situated on an island with three tall stacks, presumably indicating coal-fired electricity generation. The turbine looks like it has about 1 MW maximum output. The coal-fired plant probably produces 1000x in full operation. Renewable energy will take a bigger commitment to fossil-free energy than this!

Hong Kong — City Center

22 May 2010

We arrived in Hong Kong Friday evening after a long, bumpy, but otherwise uneventful flight from San Francisco. (Scheduled flight time = 14.5 h; we made it in about 13.5 h.) During the first 2/3 of the flight, I read Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, which Alexis had strongly recommended. The novel is centered on a spirituality theme being narrated by an old preacher as a rambling letter for his seven year old son to read once he becomes a man; it was good company for a long flight.



We were met at the airport by Vincent, a PhD student at Hong Kong University (HKU), and a driver. They whisked us to our accommodations at the Robert Black College at HKU. We have a functional and unadorned 2-room unit. From the desk in the living room, I have a sheltered view over blue tile roofs and between tall trees of the Hong Kong harbor.



It has been very warm and oh so humid since we arrived. Mostly, the sky has been heavy with dark clouds threatening an intensity of rain that hasn't yet materialized.



Saturday morning, after breakfast, we called Vincent and asked if he would escort us around the city center for a half day. These photos were shot on that outing. We took a bus to the heart of the city and visited a few major buildings that Ingrid had learned about in a guide book: the atrium of the HSBC building with large bronze lions and the Bank of China tower by IM Pei, where we could ride the elevator to a 43rd floor observation room.



We then spent a few delightful hours at the Hong Kong Park, a marvel of creative landscape architecture. There, we saw photo shoots of a few weddings (including one with a Chinese bride and an anglo military husband accompanied by bagpipes and six sword-wielding honor guards!). We also visited a lovely aviary, where a high wooden walkway allowed us to see close up an extensive collection of birds. We also saw a moving memorial to the health care workers who perished in the SARS outbreak in 2003, including Dr. Tse Yuen-man, shown above.



We ended the outing with a dim sum lunch in an old-style Chinese restaurant, totally packed, wonderfully chaotic, and remarkably inexpensive (HK$120 which is about US$15 for a full lunch for the three of us).

Flowers and Snakes on Mount Diablo

16 May 2010

May is a time of transition. Life at the university shifts from an always-intense second half of the spring semester to the pleasant rhythm of summer. Northern California's landscape shifts from spring to summer.



After I finished a 3-day stint of grading final exams yesterday, we took a half day afternoon hike on Mount Diablo, starting at the Regency Drive gate and climbing up and around the Falls Trail.



There were still abundant wildflowers, although they were often blooming amidst drying grasses.



We had a startling encounter with this large rattlesnake, situated in half sun and half shade right at the edge of the trail. Alexis was in the lead and walked within a few feet of the snake before we noticed it. It didn't give a rattle, just a sudden movement to shift to a defensive position, with the head poised to strike. I've never seen a rattler in this area before and would not mind never seeing one again!



In all, we saw three snakes, a deer, some squirrels, many lizards, and abundant birds. There were also plenty of hikers out on this warm afternoon, but not enough to ever feel crowded.



We've had late rains this year, and so the creeks were still running nicely. In all, the hike took about three hours to cover the seven mile loop with an elevation gain of between 1000 and 1500 feet.

DTU: The Technical University of Denmark

6 May 2010

Denmark's Technical University is in Kongens Lyngby, a small city about 10 km north of Copenhagen.



The campus is highly rectilinear with a "functional modern" architectural style. The streets have a predominantly orthogonal layout. (Apparently, the campus was built on a former airfield.)



Even though major elements are sterile, the chronically low sun angle at the high latitude combines with the sometimes bright blue sky and fresh spring foliage to generate interesting patterns of form and shadow.

Biking through Dyrehave

4 May 2010

We took a few hours out in the middle of the day on Tuesday for a 15-mile bike ride.



In all, we were five: Ingrid, Charlie, and I rode along with Geo and Jørn. The route was a loop trip eastward through the Dyrehave and then north via bike route 9 (nearby the railroad tracks that lead up to Helsingor), heading southwest along a beautiful bike path, and finally traveling due south along a dirt road through the forest to the Mølleådalen.



This loop became one of my favorite rides when we stayed in Denmark for almost three months in the fall of 2006. The photos include some of my favorite photography sites from that visit. The opening photo shows a lone tree on a small island of a small pond at Hjortekaer in the NW corner of Dyrehave. You can see two earlier shots of this same scene here and here. The second photo is a stately old tree in the NE portion of the park whose dropped branches look like welcoming arms.



The third photo depicts the lovely tree-lined bike path along which we begin our return. The fourth photo is my favorite, with the beautiful white flowers on the forest floor complementing the lovely new green foliage.



The final two shots in this set were taken near a mill pond toward the end of the ride, where we stopped for lunch. (This point marked the end of my ride, because I got a flat tire here and had to be rescued by Gabriel driving a DTU van.) I like the impressionistic air created in the reflection of the northern trees with bright blue sky and white clouds off the slightly foamy surface just below the spillway from the mill pond. The swan in the final photo was very protective of his territory and so this close up was snapped under conditions that were a bit too close for comfort!



By the way, if you use Google Images to search on "mølleådalen," two of my photos show up on the first page. They are shots that I posted at the Trek Earth site. That's cool. Click on the links to see.
Orange house in the fall.
Rådvad in the spring.

Lyngby Sø, Denmark

2 May 2010

Ingrid and I arrived in Denmark today for a one-week stay. Charlie, Lulu, and Rich are here too. On Thursday, Charlie, Rich and I will be giving lectures at the DTU under the title "¡Three Amigos Speak on Indoor Chemistry!" Tomorrow, we are participating in a day-long workshop organized by Geo.



We had a good flight schedule, with an early morning flight on United from San Francisco to Washington DC (Dulles) and then overnight on SAS arriving in Copenhagen at 7:30 AM. After clearing immigration and customs, we took the train to Lyngby and walked over to the Scandic Hotel.



With early check in, we had time to join Charlie and Lulu for breakfast. Rich joined us in the late morning for a leisurely walk around the Lyngby Lake, about seven miles.



In California, spring is threatening a shift to summer. Here, spring is far from finished. The daffodils are in bloom. Some, but not all trees are in new green leaf. Today, the sky was bright blue with a scattering of large clouds, in that wonderful Danish style. The sun angle is low all day long, which creates terrific sidelit scenery.



All along the trail were joggers, bikers and strollers and the waterways were crowded with canoes and rowing shells.



After a nice nap, we topped off the day with dinner at Big Mama's.