A Foggy Day in Kowloon Town, and My 7th Decade begins!

Woke up to a rainy and murky morning with fog/low cloud obscuring the view across the bay. By the time I got out to catch the train to work, the rain was pretty light, but you would have thought that it was a Yorkshire winter the way that local people were all bundled up, and had their umbrellas raised. It was in fact 19ºC and misty - positively balmy by English standards! On the way, noticed a big bed of these flowers in bloom, blowing in the wind.

On the train, a map of the East Rail Line I travel up to get to the college.Notice the sign telling you to "Mind the Gap". Just like London tubes except they are more frequent and on time…

One thing Hong Kong cannot be accused of is being quiet - even on the trains, there are television screens broadcasting occasional snippets of news between raucous adverts.  Good mobile telephone reception everywhere though…

At the station, noticed this advert for UK Universities - 45 on this poster, but did not spot UWE.  Clearly, one of the strategies for saving UK HE funding.

Taught the students about Professionalism in Computing this morning, befor leaving them with the great old academic standby of a self-study session (just as the UK-based UWE students get). Actually, these students will read the papers and watch the videos I asked them to. On the way out of the college, spotted this bed with great big hunks of tree bark in - that's what I call woodchip!

Walking back to the station, saw this fly-poster. looked like some kind of protest (but I might be completely wrong, of course).

Got back to the hotel room and Su, who gave me a lovely card and presents this morning. Found this surprise from the hotel - a delicious cheesecake, as we have found out this evening!

After this, we went to have a slap-up Chinese lunch in the hotel restaurant to continue my 60th celebrations. This was delicious, and we got served "birthday buns" as another surprise.

Outside, the weather was really murky.  This was the middle of the afternoon!

Repaired to our room for a coffee and to let the lunch go down. Su had bought me some dragon-themed gifts for my birthday, so I continued in that vein by photographing this dragon fruit in our room.

We took ourselves off for a walk up the Tsim Sha Tsui promenade to visit the Museum of Art. Didn't go to the visiting British Museum exhibition.

Looked at other parts of the museum.  Admired this 13th century carving especially, as well as some of the pottery and the calligraphy.

After that we went for a look around the Space Museum, inside this dome - some fun stuff, some non-working exhibits, so didn't stay very long.

Came out at the bottom of Nathan Road - not Su's favourite place after she spent too long going up there yesterday.

Walked back to the hotel and had a couple of really nice Margaritas to round off the day, before writing this blog post. On to Facebook next, as Su tells me I have lots of birthday greetings.  A big shout out to my fellow birthday sharers - Mike Green, Lynne Houlden, Frank Maddix and Neil Ferguson!  Looking out of the window, the murky Hong Kong night and lights really reminds me of Ridley Scott's "Bladerunner".

This day last year was also my birthday unsurprisingly.  I spent most of it in the Multimedia Lab at UWE - I seem fated to teach on my birthday, even after retirement!