The Kowloon Diaries

Mitchell, David - Black Swan Green

The last book I read was about a childhood that had nothing in common with mine, this one is practically identical. Jason, the 13-year-old narrator of Black Swan Green lives in an English village in 1982. He watches the Rockford Files, eats Angel Delight, and listens to his older sister's copy of Fleetwood Mac. (I used to listen to the copy owned by the older brother of a friend - we had to sneak into his bedroom when he was out and put it back in precisely the same place so he wouldn't notice.) He's lower middle class – not rough enough to have credibility with the working classes, not posh enough to have respect from the middle classes. Maybe I'm getting old, but reliving adolescence from the perspective of middle age felt very strange to me. That world existed once and it doesn't any more, so what happened to it? It just disappeared, like the Falklands war and the gypsies and Angel Delight.

Definitely, a great book and his best so far. It's like a prequel to Number9Dream where you find out what David did before he went to Japan. That's something else that resonates with me – my life is clearly in two parts, before Hong Kong and after. The longer I stay here, the more the place before seems foreign.

Temperatures Soar

Hot Asians
(Gascoigne Road)

Spotlight
(Queen Elizabeth Hospital Path)

Cool
(George V Park)

Stumped

A new poem inspired by something I saw today.

Not Really

As I'm aware that tourists wander on to this blog from time to time looking for travel information on Hong Kong, I'm feeling obliged to offer the following advice: Don't come in June, July or August because it pisses with rain the whole time.

Look at these rainfall figures: June - 18.8 rainy days per month, July - 17.8, August -  17.4. You think you'll avoid it? You think you'll be lucky? Ask yourself: When are you ever?

The lost art of reading

An article from the LA Times in which the author is moaning about not being able to read with the distractions of technology. It gets more interesting when he talks about reading as an act of engagement with the world and other people. Reading is so often described as an escape, but it’s the opposite. He writes: ‘Reading is an act of contemplation, perhaps the only act in which we allow ourselves to merge with the consciousness of another human being.’

Sunshine on a Rainy Day

Can't remember the last time I liked a record so much. This is so catchy and expansive and feel good. Come on let's play it again. Living my life at a hundred miles an hour ...

Abandoned Places

I came across a fascinating collection of photos of abandoned places on a website called Unique Scoop. The list includes Kowloon Walled City (below), a coal mining island in Japan an abandoned vacation resort in Taiwan, a coal mining island in Japan, a housing project for Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant workers, a town in Pennsylvania where fires burnt underground throughout the 1960s and 70s, and lots more. The pictures are amazing.