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Carbon Guilt...
Wednesday, Jul 30, 2008 2:16AM / Members only
Let's face it, we all like to boost about our efforts in being environmentally friendly whenever we are asked about the issue...i mean, that's the fad right now isn't?
Few will admit outright that their lifestyles have little consideration for preservation...but we all know that the truth is usually quite the contrary...
Don't be offended; I'm no saint neither. Actually, I'm quite lazy in terms of being 'green' as well, the most i'm doing is to avoid using plastic bag whenever possible; In fact, i usually gets pretty annoyed by people who use the green card all the time to make everyone feel guilty..."oh you are not recycling that?!?" A friend asked.
"No, because there's no comprehensive recycling system implemented by our government and there're no recycle collection bin by a mile within where I live, I can't be ass-bothered to carry this coke bottle to a station in god-knows where..." I answered.
The conversation usually turns sour after that...
But yesterday, while i was driving along the Victorian harbor in Hong Kong (yes, i'm a driver of a gasoline-combustion engine vehicle, that makes me doubly guilty) and saw the smog that was incubating all around us...it really made me feel sick and claustrophobic...
Everyone who have spend time here in Hong Kong understand the extend of the pollution problem, but yesterday was just uncanny, the road side stations recorded the highest ever air pollution index of 202 in the city's history (201-300 being purple, which means that the air is VERY unhealthy), and combined that with 37 degrees Celsius in some area, it could really kill someone. I simply could not make out the Kowloon pennisula while on the HK harbor side...
Now seeing the smog and the road side construction worker, who was standing by my car while I was stopped at a red light, nearly falling from heat stroke, I was hit with a pang of carbon guilt.
Carbon guilt is a new word I learned which means, quite literally, the feeling of guilt for producing too much carbon, from driving or taking the plane. When I first heard of the term, me and my friends kinda laughed at it, we felt that only those who are in the green party and other green crusading organization will actually feel it. I've heard of carbon footprint, but i've never met anyone who have really calculated their carbon footprint per week or per month, not even the few righteous green-minded friends who have condemed me.
Before getting my current car a year ago, I was quite fed up with the whole oil issue and did some research in alternative fuel vehicles. I found that the industry is nowhere being mature and convenient enough for the average person to switch over from traditional gasoline-runned cars. Hydrogen cell fuel uses more energy to produce than gasoline itself, therefore not exactly energy efficient, and electrical cars are just impractical for us in Hong Kong since most of us lack the luxury of having a garage which could charge up the car overnight. And on top of that, coal is used in most of the power plant to produce energy, switching all the cars from gasoline to electric engine will only shoot up the demand for electric energy, which doesn't help matter much neither. Of course, some will recommend the hybrid, but I really don't find the point, because if I switch, I want it to have nothing whatsoever to do with gasoline. I'm quite stubborn like that...
However, the most important issue in regards to alternative fuel automobiles ever being able to see mass-producition is, unlucky for us, the complex political, economical and social interests that loom behind the megalith oil businesses and all sorts of dfferent lobby groups that revolve around it. I simply don't believe that we lacked the technology and will to develop a new sustainable energy vehicle system, but the truth is, many people are making ridiculous amount of money in our current fossil fuel system that they just refuse to give up something so good.
I'm no expert on the issue, but one should be able to see the role oil played in the world events ever since the oil shortage that shocked the world in the 70's. I mean, let's not forget that several prominent members in the Bush adminstration have been former executives and board members of the oil and car companies. And of course, the Bush family itself are in the oil business...
Recently I watched a really good documentary film, Who killed the Electric Car?. The film chronicles several successful production of electric cars, particularly the GM EV1, and what roles the car manufacturers, politicians, oil industry, consumers and other lobby groups played in repressing the development and adoption of this technology. Do watch it if you're interested on the issue, and hopefully it will open your eyes on what these companies or government are capable of...
If you're an optimist, yes, time have changed and people in general are more aware of the problem. There are a lot of people out there doing the right thing, researching and developing new products that are not the best yet, but at least of a lesser evil. I heard that the people in San Francisco are doing a real good job in cleaning up the city by converting a lot of the cars into electrically-runned and even a lot of the taxis are switching over to electric engine. My first response when I heard that was: Why can't we do that?? Well, I guess it takes real bold leadership and a progressive mind to carry through with something like that, qualities I sometimes suspect lacking in our government...
At last, for those of you who can't live without a car but are also keen on impressing others with your greeniness, heard of the Tesla Roadster?? Apparently, this 100% electric car with 265hp are the hottest thing on the market right now, with owners ranging from George Clooney, Matt Damon, Will.i.am, and Larry Page of Google. It's not exactly your Mercedes new SL or SLK, but if you could afford a SL or SLK, why not buy the Tesla Roadster to try it out? Like i've said, it's the fad right now...
Let's hope the smog will clear out soon, I need a mask...
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Pier Politiking 2: Imprisonment
Tuesday, Jul 15, 2008 5:30AM / Members only
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The Real Sin City...
Friday, Jul 4, 2008 4:28PM / Members only
The Kowloon Walled City, the city of darkness, the quintessential concrete jungle...
For many people in Hong Kong, the Walled city once represented everything that are dark, criminal, and uninhabitable. The enclave was in fact full of opium dens, brothels, triads, gambling dens, and had real bad sanitary conditions. But to many others like me, it possessed a sort of beauty that can only be describe as exceptional and ethereal...
Before I go any further, however, I must confess that I've actually never been inside the Walled city. It is no exaggeration to say that this is one of the biggest regret of my life (well of course, besides all the personal immaturity and stupidity committed in the past). By the time I came to hear about and started reading on the history of this special place in Hong Kong, it was already demolished by the government. What a shame, but we'll get back to that, because to talk about the walled city, we must first dip into the muddy water of Hong Kong history...
Most historians agree that the Kowloon Walled City can be traced back to the Song Dynasty (960 - 1297), where the North-Eastern coast of the Kowloon peninsula was the site of a major salt trading port. But it was really in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) that buildings and a new fort were built on the strategic position in 1810 that would later become the infamous walled city. The reasons for the imperial court to do so are simple, they wanted to put a check on the rampant pirates that were roaming in the South China Sea and the British colonial development on Hong Kong island, since only Hong Kong Island was ceded to the British in the Treaty of Nanking in 1841, and it wasn't until 1860 that the colony began to extend inland into the Kowloon peninsula with the signing of the Treaty of Nanjing after the second opium war.
However, even when the New Territories were 'leased' to the British for 99 years in 1898, the British still did not claimed control of the Kowloon City. Many Imperial officials who remained in the area refused to give up jurisdiction which resulted in the British giving the Chinese jurisdiction of the area after numerous failed attempts in forcing the inhabitants out. And eventually, with the turbulent events of the early 20th Century China that saw the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the formation of the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China in 1949, many Chinese refugees, be it anti-Manchurian Triads, the Kuomingtongs or Communists, began to populate the Chinese enclave.
With the British and the Chinese government taking a hands-off policy towards the walled city because of its touchy subject, the place quickly developed into a special zone in which law and order did not apply. Triads seized control of the place, and it grew into the a hotbed for all sorts of criminal activities and dodgy operations that became synonymous with the walled city in our collective memory of the place.
It was during this period, in post-WWII Hong Kong and all the way to the evacuation of its residents in 1991 that the Kowloon Walled City began its continual process of demolition and reconstruction where individual buildings homogenised into an intricate network of communal stairways and corridors linked one to the other, creating a labyrinth of buildings and passages that makes it impossible for an outsider to navigate without getting lost...
Without an architect supervising the construction of all the buildings and renovations in the walled city, the only regulations the residents had to follow were the limiting height of its building to fourteen stories because of its close proximity to the Kai Tak airport, and electricity safety regulation for the obvious reason to avoid fire. Thus, in an effort to build a better home for themselves, the six and a half acre of slum with its 35,000 residents at its peak became a sort of organism, always growing and mutating into its own form...
The Walled city's evaucation and demolition began in 1991 and was completed in 1993. A recreational park was built on the location where the walled city once stood and several relics from the enclave still remain now in the park. But like most project by our government to preserve cultural heritage, it is a complete failure. It is a great loss to not only the people in Hong Kong, but also for anyone who are interested in visiting extraordinary historical landmark, that such an unique structure is now torn down and lost forever. Why haven't anyone suggested on preserving the whole walled city under sustainable development? If it was preserve, clean out, and turn into a museum, I think it would be one of the coolest museum or art gallery ever existed. Walled city is part of China's, Hong Kong's and Britain's history, and like most things in our past, it was first deliberately displaced, then destroyed, and finally forgotten...
Ever since I came to learn about the Kowloon Walled City, I've always wanted to go inside and experience how it was like for the people who lived there and found their own ways to survive in this seemingly dystopian landscape. So whenever I come across a book or article about the walled city, I always try to make it part of my library collection. One of the book I've always go back to is CITY OF DARKNESS - Life in Kowloon Walled City, a photo-journal about the Walled city's history and the people who lived and survived in the enclave. Most of the photos in this blog are grabbed out of the book, and there are a lot more stunning photos inside the book with lots of interesting personal stories from the resident of the walled city.
For those of you who have traveled in and out of Hong Kong in the 80's or early 90's at the Kai Tak Airport, I'm sure most of you did not miss the concrete monolith during the plane's landing, which was always a joy for me to watch the foreigners in awe (or fear) of the close proximity of the plane and the buildings nearby. I remember pointing at the Walled city once when I was young and asked my mom what that piece of land was. She didn't give me a very good answer, she only said that it is a place in which no decent people would want to set foot in. How mistaken she is...
At last, I like to show you a clip of a film shot in the walled city when it was still standing.
Anyone remember Jean Claude Van Damme's Bloodsport??
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEo6ogAnoZ8
I wish Borges could write a piece about the walled city...
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Death at Intervals
Wednesday, Jun 25, 2008 6:49PM / Members only
Imagine this following scenario:
On the first day of the new year, No one dies...
From that day on, your given city no longer produces any dead person, even if he or she has been involved in the most fatal accident or diagnosed with the most lethal disease...
Death has cease to exist...no one will die...
Can you imagine what would happen to a city or a country if that's the case??
Well, that's what the Nobel Prize winning novelist Jose Saramago tried to capture in his latest novel DEATH AT INTERVALS. Like his earlier and immensely successful effort, Blindness (which is already adapted to the screen by the great Brazilian filmmaker Fernando Meirelles and in competition this year at Cannes), DEATH is another great attempt in the satirical portrayal of human nature in the face of some unknown yet serious collective calamity.
Here with DEATH, Saramago tried to capture the confusion, and simultaneously, the excitement of the public when death cease to happen to everyone in the society. How would the governement react? What would happen to funeral directors, hospitals, social services and pensions? And in such time of great social changes, some sectors in the society will fall but other will rise to the occasion, and in this dark and funny fable, we will find that the mafia can be of important help.
I actually finished this book a month or so ago, but numerous scenes and details have always find its way back to me. I don't want to give any of its plot away, but towards the last 1/3 of the book, you will find the story about Death, the almighty undertaker, saddening and touching enough for you to sympathize with her, even though being aware that when our time comes, we will only be too fearful to come face to face with her...
I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading satirical pieces that tell us more about our condition as human being, our selfishness and ignorance. But if you haven't read a Saramago novel before, Blindness might be a better one to start off with. Better read it before the film comes out though, the novel is always better than the film...
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1World1Dream=1Nation1System??
Tuesday, Apr 29, 2008 4:35PM / Members only
