alo missee copee watchee??

No I don't want a watch or a fake gucci bag or a chess board or any other item of clutter that will add to my already excessive 17kilos of luggage. Wandering the markets and malls of Hong Kong without the ability to purchase (for fear of never making it up any hills ever, let alone anything bigger than a hill) is a bizarre but vaguely liberating experience. There is no doubt that this city is all about consumption - clothes, bags, shoes (mmm new shoes), cameras, computers, you name it. And its all very cheap which makes it even harder to resist, but resisting I am.

Having managed to get a visa for CHina before I even left the airport (main purpose of this little detour) Ive been enjoying my unemployed status, reading, walking, seeing the sights, people watching, going to museums and galleries and honing my people dodging skills....the list goes on. My fear of not being able to cope with so many people after the space of New Zeealand were largely unfounded (once a Londoner...). It is great to be in a big city again, and one with a functioning public transport system although I could do without the pollution - the air is rank with fumes which create an atmospheric haze (aka smog) across the city.

Ive also been to Macau, the old Portuguese trading port just across the water. Hong Kong doesnät feel particularly British to me (if you ignore the presence of English and double decker buses), but Macau feels very European at least in the old part of town. The streets are tiny and there are almost as many igrejas as there are mopeds. The new part of town is basically one big casino now (no I wonät be returning early having blown all my hard earned cash...).

The olympics are everywhere over here, advertised by some latern pandas doing every sport imaginable. Said pandas are to be found at every major attraction (will add some photos when I have my technical issues resolved). The government is clearly going all out on this one. I read in the paper the other day that they are currently looking for 18-24 year old women to hand out medals at the games. Not just any old women, no...these women must have equally proportioned faces (equal distance from forehead to nose, length of nose and nose to chin. eyes three tenths the length of their face etc etc) and their body must not be an abnormal shape (it didnät say what constituted an abnormal shape...) comedy - think they'd let me try out?

Anyway times up. Will post photos soon.

PS Keyboards are Qwerty, some have characters as well, but having some trouble locating punctuation as you may have noticed!