Long Long time since...

... a post has been made and I must apologize to all of you for that... I am very committed not to let this blog - and here I quote Mike Tyson - fade into Bolivia 'cause ideas as such usually start out well but as time goes on... Well, NOT IN THIS CASE!!!

The last few weeks have been very very quiet and to tell you the truth I haven't been involved in many trips, explorations or races that I could use to make a killer entry into the blog and get you guys to read such entry with baited breath (like you have been reading every single one of them up to this point). The obligatory weather report: it is just as cool as in February and we are in April, no sign of heat but the humidity is here... I don't remember the last time the sun came out from behind the fog, mist, low clouds, pollution or whatever you want to call it. I am sure that spring in either Budapest, Boston or Toronto is much nicer than the one in Hong Kong.

I just concluded another what I hope will be a successful training period as I am preparing for the Nagano Marathon in Japan on April 19th. Cool temperatures and low humidity should be the key to go sub 2:40. I am chasing this dream and I hope it will happen this time 'cause the motivation is fading a little. I hope it's just the sign of a long season which started a week after my arrival last August. My legs feel it and my mental approach suffers as well so I am hoping that I can do one more big thing in Japan coming up in 2 weeks. More on that later, in about a month or so. After the race I will spend a few days in Osaka and Kyoto with Marce (a very dear friend/ex-coworker from Toronto).

For Easter I will head to mainland China for the first time since coming to Hong Kong. Paying over HKD 300 (around CAD 50) for a single entry visa, we were able to book an overnight bus trip from Shenzhen to Yang Shuo. It will be an experience as many of my local co-workers were surprised that we would have the guts to attempt such a trip. I thought they worried for our possessions being stolen but it turns out that they mostly feared due to the poor driving ability of the drivers. It will be a quick trip and this place is probably the best introduction to life in China away from big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai as it is much much smaller but yet it is the biggest tourist attraction around. Many stores are geared towards tourists coming from HK and Easter should provide for a great atmosphere. I am heading down there (or up there?) with a friend that I have met through running, Steve from England who is in town teaching ESL as well as English literature in a local school. It promises to be an interesting trip, pics and stories to follow... Check out some info on the place on wikipedia...

I would like to write a few lines on a much lighter and far less interesting trip I took a couple of weeks ago. Sitting home on a Saturday morning and having just finished my weekly cleaning session (yes, i have instituted such a thing) it was 11 am and I was looking for some new things to do and new places to visit when I stumbled across a note from a co-worker who recommended visiting this small island about a 30-35 minute ferry ride from Central Hong Kong called Cheung Chau. It is a quiet island where the only way in-and-out is through the water which makes it peaceful, clean and quiet. Not so much in the central area of the village where seafood restaurants line the shore hoping for travellers to grab a quick lunch as they get off the ferry from Central or grab a nice dinner before heading back to urban jungle of Hong Kong. A few minute walk away from the port area, Cheung Chau turns into a quiet island 'resort' with quite frankly not that much to do. There is a path that my guidebook recommended that I follow and that's exactly what I did. It passed a few local temples, some smaller streets, supposedly famous local restaurants, a walking path through the nicer residential areas, a Catholic Cemetery and ending at the cave of Cheung Po Tsai. It really is nothing special but - as I later found out - there was a character based on this pirate in the movie 'Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End'.

Well, check out the pics by clicking...... HERE

I am glad some of you guys are planning to come out to 1. visit HK 2. visit me 3. temporarily extinguish my homesickness... Is there such a word?

One more thing: Hungary beats Malta 3-0 and is in 2nd place in World Cup soccer qualifying for South Africa 2010. Oh boy, what it would bring to the country if those guys could make it....