The Harbour Grand Hotel, Kowloon, Hong Kong, is a modern, but luxurious hotel, one that our travel agent found for us.
I was initially worried that it might be too far away from central Hong Kong, but a free shuttle bus that runs at convenient times took us to and from the hotel to the Star Ferry terminal.
The luxuriousness of the hotel starts the moment you walk in the front entrance with a magnificent staircase that I assumed led up to the convention center (or perhaps where weddings are catered for) and a staircase where one could make a grand entrance or exit. Oh, and there’s a chandelier too.
We booked into a Harbourview suite, and it was not only spacious but had that air of luxury about it that made it an experience every time you walked into it.
But the view of Hong Kong Harbour, that was the ‘piece de resistance’
I spent a lot of time staring out that window, and it was more interesting than watching the television, which we didn’t do much of. Most of the time, when we travel, TV is limited to International English speaking news channels.
This time we had several movies included with the room, but I still preferred to watch the endless water traffic on the harbor.
The lounge area had several comfortable chairs, an area for the bar fridge and tea or coffee making facilities and on the opposite side the usual table and chairs for those who came to conduct business
The bedroom was separate to the entrance and lounge. Notable was the fact the room had two bathrooms, one in the bedroom, and one out in the lounge, perhaps for the guests who were having friends in.
We dined in one of the restaurants, Hoi Yat Heen, where we experienced Guandong cuisine. I tried the roasted goose for the first time, and it was interesting to say the least.
There’s no doubt where we will be staying the next time we go to Hong Kong.
Investigation of crimes don’t always go according to plan, nor does the perpetrator get either found or punished.
That was particularly true in my case. The murderer was very careful in not leaving any evidence behind, to the extent that the police could not rules out whether it was a male or a female.
At one stage the police thought I had murdered my own wife though how I could be on a train at the time of the murder was beyond me. I had witnesses and a cast-iron alibi.
The officer in charge was Detective Inspector Gabrielle Walters. She came to me on the day after the murder seeking answers to the usual questions when was the last time you saw your wife, did you argue, the neighbors reckon there were heated discussions the day before.
Routine was the word she used.
Her Sargeant was a surly piece of work whose intention was to get answers or, more likely, a confession by any or all means possible. I could sense the raging violence within him. Fortunately, common sense prevailed.
Over the course of the next few weeks, once I’d been cleared of committing the crime, Gabrielle made a point of keeping me informed of the progress.
After three months the updates were more sporadic, and when, for lack of progress, it became a cold case, communication ceased.
But it was not the last I saw of Gabrielle.
The shock of finding Vanessa was more devastating than the fact she was now gone, and those images lived on in the same nightmare that came to visit me every night when I closed my eyes.
For months I was barely functioning, to the extent I had all but lost my job, and quite a few friends, particularly those who were more attached to Vanessa rather than me.
They didn’t understand how it could affect me so much, and since it had not happened to them, my tart replies of ‘you wouldn’t understand’ were met with equally short retorts. Some questioned my sanity, even, for a time, so did I.
No one, it seemed, could understand what it was like, no one except Gabrielle.
She was by her own admission, damaged goods, having been the victim of a similar incident, a boyfriend who turned out to be a very bad boy. Her story varied only in she had been made to witness his execution. Her nightmare, in reliving that moment in time, was how she was still alive and, to this day, had no idea why she’d been spared.
It was a story she told me one night, some months after the investigation had been scaled down. I was still looking for the bottom of a bottle and an emotional mess. Perhaps it struck a resonance with her; she’d been there and managed to come out the other side.
What happened become our secret, a once-only night together that meant a great deal to me, and by mutual agreement, it was not spoken of again. It was as if she knew exactly what was required to set me on the path to recovery.
And it had.
Since then we saw each about once a month in a cafe. I had been surprised to hear from her again shortly after that eventful night when she called to set it up, ostensibly for her to provide me with any updates on the case, but perhaps we had, after that unspoken night, formed a closer bond than either of us wanted to admit.
We generally talked for hours over wine, then dinner and coffee. It took a while for me to realize that all she had was her work, personal relationships were nigh on impossible in a job that left little or no spare time for anything else.
She’d always said that if I had any questions or problems about the case, or if there was anything that might come to me that might be relevant, even after all this time, all I had to do was call her.
I wondered if this text message was in that category. I was certain it would interest the police and I had no doubt they could trace the message’s origin, but there was that tiny degree of doubt, whether or not I could trust her to tell me what the message meant.
I reached for the phone then put it back down again. I’d think about it and decide tomorrow.
I’m getting to the point where I don’t want to turn on the tv anymore.
I get it. We’re still in the middle of a pandemic, and everyone wants to get back to work, but is it worth the cost of lives?
It raises the question, how much is a single life worth?
Apparently, to some, nothing. We see various countries rebelling against the so-called notion we should be social distancing, staying at home, and stopping the spread of the coronavirus.
It seems some countries, and a section of their population, just don’t care.
And the pity of it is, all those that do the right thing will inevitably forgive those that break the rules, even if they spread the disease because of their foolhardiness.
Our citizens will die, but we will be reluctant to call them murderers. They will find some way to hold the more sensible nations to ransom, simply because they have something we all need, something we turned over to them because we were naive. In a sense we still are.
Consumerism and capitalism, and dare I say it, greed, at its very worst.
But, the alternatives, fascism, communism, and dictatorships is unpalatable.
Something else we have discovered because of this world pandemic is our own stupidity in considering that a global economy was the way to go. All of a sudden everything we had moved to China, and elsewhere offshore, has come back to bite us. No whitegoods, no clothes, everything but food. At least we haven’t sold all of that down the river. Yet.
This is one hell of a wake-up call.
We need to address that self-sufficiency we no longer have. We need to bring back manufacturing, we need, in other words, to become self-sufficient again. No matter what the cost. It seems ems that in sending away everything meant that we sent away out national pride as well.
Made in Australia is something of a hollow joke. Now we get labels that no longer say, Made in Australia, it’s now what percentage is made in this country, and that isn’t a lot.
I suspect it’s the same for a lot of so-called western countries, including the United States.
This isn’t going to be the first or the last time this sort of problem will happen. ln fact, it’s only going to get worse. The thing is, are we going to learn from it?
Yes, we need to fit into the rest of the world but, no, we don’t need to sell our souls to do it.
We need to do something about it, now, while we can. This pandemic might just have a silver lining, if only we recognize the opportunity for what it is.
With my attention elsewhere, I walked into a man who was hurrying in the opposite direction. He was a big man with a scar running down the left side of his face from eye socket to mouth, and who was also wearing a black shirt with a red tie.
That was all I remembered as my heart almost stopped.
He apologized as he stepped to one side, the same way I stepped, as I also muttered an apology.
I kept my eyes down. He was not the sort of man I wanted to recognize later in a lineup. I stepped to the other side and so did he. It was one of those situations. Finally getting out of sync, he kept going in his direction, and I towards the bus, which was now pulling away from the curb.
Getting my breath back, I just stood riveted to the spot watching it join the traffic. I looked back over my shoulder, but the man I’d run into had gone. I shrugged and looked at my watch. It would be a few minutes before the next bus arrived.
Wait, or walk? I could also go by subway, but it was a long walk to the station. What the hell, I needed the exercise.
At the first intersection, the ‘Walk’ sign had just flashed to ‘Don’t Walk’. I thought I’d save a few minutes by not waiting for the next green light. As I stepped onto the road, I heard the screeching of tires.
A yellow car stopped inches from me.
It was a high powered sports car, perhaps a Lamborghini. I knew what they looked like because Marcus Bartleby owned one, as did every other junior executive in the city with a rich father.
Everyone stopped to look at me, then the car. It was that sort of car. I could see the driver through the windscreen shaking his fist, and I could see he was yelling too, but I couldn’t hear him. I stepped back onto the sidewalk, and he drove on. The moment had passed and everyone went back to their business.
My heart rate hadn’t come down from the last encounter. Now it was approaching cardiac arrest, so I took a few minutes and several sets of lights to regain composure.
At the next intersection, I waited for the green light, and then a few seconds more, just to be sure. I was no longer in a hurry.
At the next, I heard what sounded like a gunshot. A few people looked around, worried expressions on their faces, but when it happened again, I saw it was an old car backfiring. I also saw another yellow car, much the same as the one before, stopped on the side of the road. I thought nothing of it, other than it was the second yellow car I’d seen.
At the next intersection, I realized I was subconsciously heading towards Harry’s new bar. It was somewhere on 6th Avenue, so I continued walking in what I thought was the right direction.
I don’t know why I looked behind me at the next intersection, but I did. There was another yellow car on the side of the road, not far from me. It, too, looked the same as the original Lamborghini, and I was starting to think it was not a coincidence.
Moments after crossing the road, I heard the roar of a sports car engine and saw the yellow car accelerate past me. As it passed by, I saw there were two people in it, and the blurry image of the passenger; a large man with a red tie.
Now my imagination was playing tricks.
It could not be the same man. He was going in a different direction.
In the few minutes I’d been standing on the pavement, it had started to snow; early for this time of year, and marking the start of what could be a long cold winter. I shuddered, and it was not necessarily because of the temperature.
I looked up and saw a neon light advertising a bar, coincidentally the one Harry had ‘found’ and, looking once in the direction of the departing yellow car, I decided to go in. I would have a few drinks and then leave by the back door if it had one.
When we are taught about religion, we are inevitably introduced to heaven and hell.
Heaven is the place we all aspire to go up to, though I’ve never really understood why it is up. Of course, all the pictures of heaven are in the clouds, with a set of pearly gates (just why are they called the pearly gates anyway?) and St Peter waiting to ask us the 20 questions that decides whether we pass through, or get the elevator down.
Yes, hell is down. Why? And, for that matter why is it always depicted a dark and full of fire and hot embers?
Now, just taking a step back and thinking about hell, there is a saying, “it is hell on earth’.
Was this saying coined by someone who had actually been to hell and been sent back? Imagine being a reject from hell … that would take some doing.
For those who saw ‘The Good Place’ which ended recently, the notion of hell takes on something of a different meaning.
But, we often say, when at the very bottom of despair that we are in hell. I gather this means that life couldn’t get any worse, which is quite possible on of the universal definitions of what it might be like in the ‘real’ hell.
Or was hell invented by some clergy a long time ago to frighten the parishioners into being good, because the ‘prize’ if you didn’t was a one way trip to, you guessed it, hell.
Come to think of it, a lot of the religious ‘stuff’ is to keep us penitent parishioners on the straight and narrow, though we are allowed to stray every now and then so we have a reason to go to the confessional, where, after straying, we a forgiven for the price of a few hail Mary’s.
And perhaps the unforgiving stare of the parish priest.
So, when we tell someone to ‘go to hell’, what is it we are really wishing upon that person. A fiery end? A meeting with the devil?
Let’s hope that ‘hell’ is just an invention, and that when were finally make it to the afterlife (which is a whole other question that I take issue with) our lives have been such that we know the answers to the 20 questions St Peter puts to us, and we get the magic ticket into heaven.
And hopefully there will be a Red Lobster up there.
50 photographs, 50 stories, of which there is one of the 50 below.
They all start with –
A picture paints … well, as many words as you like. For instance:
And, the story:
Have you ever watched your hopes and dreams simply just fly away?
Everything I thought I wanted and needed had just left in an aeroplane, and although I said I was not going to, i came to the airport to see the plane leave. Not the person on it, that would have been far too difficult and emotional, but perhaps it was symbolic, the end of one life and the start of another.
But no matter what I thought or felt, we had both come to the right decision. She needed the opportunity to spread her wings. It was probably not the best idea for her to apply for the job without telling me, but I understood her reasons.
She was in a rut. Though her job was a very good one, it was not as demanding as she had expected, particularly after the last promotion, but with it came resentment from others on her level, that she, the youngest of the group would get the position.
It was something that had been weighing down of her for the last three months, and if noticed it, the late nights, the moodiness, sometimes a flash of temper. I knew she had one, no one could have such red hair and not, but she had always kept it in check.
And, then there was us, together, and after seven years, it felt like we were going nowhere. Perhaps that was down to my lack of ambition, and though she never said it, lack of sophistication. It hadn’t been an issue, well, not until her last promotion, and the fact she had to entertain more, and frankly I felt like an embarrassment to her.
So, there it was, three days ago, the beginning of the weekend, and we had planned to go away for a few days and take stock. We both acknowledged we needed to talk, but it never seemed the right time.
It was then she said she had quit her job and found a new one. Starting the following Monday.
Ok, that took me by surprise, not so much that it something I sort of guessed might happen, but that she would just blurt it out.
I think that right then, at that moment, I could feel her frustration with everything around her.
What surprised her was my reaction. None.
I simply asked where who, and when.
A world-class newspaper, in New York, and she had to be there in a week.
A week.
It was all the time I had left with her.
I remember I just shrugged and asked if the planned weekend away was off.
She stood on the other side of the kitchen counter, hands around a cup of coffee she had just poured, and that one thing I remembered was the lone tear that ran down her cheek.
Is that all you want to know?
I did, yes, but we had lost that intimacy we used to have when she would have told me what was happening, and we would have brainstormed solutions. I might be a cabinet maker but I still had a brain, was what I overheard her tell a friend once.
There’s not much to ask, I said. You’ve been desperately unhappy and haven’t been able to hide it all that well, you have been under a lot of pressure trying to deal with a group of troglodytes, and you’ve been leaning on Bentley’s shoulder instead of mine, and I get it, he’s got more experience in that place, and the politics that go with it, and is still an ally.
Her immediate superior and instrumental in her getting the position, but unlike some men in his position he had not taken advantage of a situation like some men would. And even if she had made a move, which I doubted, that was not the sort of woman she was, he would have politely declined.
One of the very few happily married men in that organisation, so I heard.
So, she said, you’re not just a pretty face.
Par for the course for a cabinet maker whose university degree is in psychology. It doesn’t take rocket science to see what was happening to you. I just didn’t think it was my place to jump in unless you asked me, and when you didn’t, well, that told me everything I needed to know.
Yes, our relationship had a use by date, and it was in the next few days.
I was thinking, she said, that you might come with me, you can make cabinets anywhere.
I could, but I think the real problem wasn’t just the job. It was everything around her and going with her, that would just be a constant reminder of what had been holding her back. I didn’t want that for her and said so.
Then the only question left was, what do we do now?
Go shopping for suitcases. Bags to pack, and places to go.
Getting on the roller coaster is easy. On the beginning, it’s a slow easy ride, followed by the slow climb to the top. It’s much like some relationships, they start out easy, they require a little work to get to the next level, follows by the adrenaline rush when it all comes together.
What most people forget is that what comes down must go back up, and life is pretty much a roller coaster with highs and lows.
Our roller coaster had just come or of the final turn and we were braking so that it stops at the station.
There was no question of going with her to New York. Yes, I promised I’d come over and visit her, but that was a promise with crossed fingers behind my back. After a few months in t the new job the last thing shed want was a reminder of what she left behind. New friends new life.
We packed her bags, three out everything she didn’t want, a free trips to the op shop with stiff she knew others would like to have, and basically, by the time she was ready to go, there was nothing left of her in the apartment, or anywhere.
Her friends would be seeing her off at the airport, and that’s when I told her I was not coming, that moment the taxi arrived to take her away forever. I remember standing there, watching the taxi go. It was going to be, and was, as hard as it was to watch the plane leave.
So, there I was, finally staring at the blank sky, around me a dozen other plane spotters, a rather motley crew of plane enthusiasts.
Already that morning there’s been 6 different types of plane depart, and I could hear another winding up its engines for take-off.
People coming, people going.
Maybe I would go to New York in a couple of months, not to see her, but just see what the attraction was. Or maybe I would drop in, just to see how she was.
As one of my friends told me when I gave him the news, the future is never written in stone, and it’s about time you broadened your horizons.
The first meaning that comes to mind is a cue is a prompt, often from someone standing behind the camera in a television studio.
That is to say that a cue is some form of signal, a wave, a nod, or verbal.
A cue can also be where a tape or recording is set to a certain place, ready to play. One could assume, if playing tracks off an album of songs, and you wanted to play the fourth track, then you would cue it up, ready to go on, of course, the moment you got a, yes, cue to play it.
Then there is a cue used in a game of pool or snooker, that is a long thin tapered piece of wood with a felt tip.
Not exactly my favourite game, but it’s always the cues fault, not mine.
This is not to be considered with Que which is a shortened form for Quebec, in Canada.
Or que, which for some reason, only in California, is short for barbecue.
Or Queue, as in a long line, or a short one, of people waiting to get on a bus, or waiting to get tickets
In my experience every queue I get in is always a long one, and then suffer the frustration of waiting hours only to be told the tickets have all been sold.
Almost as bad as being stuck in a traffic jam, which is technically a queue of cars, never to get through the first set of lights, and sometimes not the second.
And don’t get me started on phone queues.
Queues are for people who have a lot of time on the hands.
Stranger’s We’ve Become, a sequel to What Sets Us Apart.
The blurb:
Is she or isn’t she, that is the question!
Susan has returned to David, but he is having difficulty dealing with the changes. Her time in captivity has changed her markedly, so much so that David decides to give her some time and space to re-adjust back into normal life.
But doubts about whether he chose the real Susan remain.
In the meantime, David has to deal with Susan’s new security chief, the discovery of her rebuilding a palace in Russia, evidence of an affair, and several attempts on his life. And, once again, David is drawn into another of Predergast’s games, one that could ultimately prove fatal.
From being reunited with the enigmatic Alisha, a strange visit to Susan’s country estate, to Russia and back, to a rescue mission in Nigeria, David soon discovers those whom he thought he could trust each has their own agenda, one that apparently doesn’t include him.
The sight of the Peninsula Hotel is very familiar to all who visit Hong Kong, if not to stay but certainly if you want to see the last vestiges of British influence in what was once a far eastern colony.
That is, we’re talking about the front building, not the new tower at the back. In the older days there would have been a great view of the harbor from the Veranda (that area with the blue striped canopy) where today, breakfast is taken.
We had breakfast, lunch, and the famous afternoon tea in the ground floor cafe.
These days you would mostly see taxis, buses, and Teslas, if not a flurry of Mercedes and green Rolls Royces in the small car park below. There is no clear view of the harbor anymore.
From our room, one facing the harbor we could see the space museum, and on the day we arrived, rain, at times, blotting out the harbor and Hong Kong Island barely discernable in the distance.
As for the room itself, it was excellent, a junior suite, I think, because it had two distinctive areas. Everything was run from a tablet computer, blinds, lights, television, and most importantly, air conditioning. This was the first hotel I’ve stayed in where it was neither too hot or too cold, but just rights.
The bed was very large and extremely comfortable, as were the pillows. Pillows, I’m afraid, are a bugbear with me, as no hotel seems to be able to get it right. They’re either too soft or too hard, too tall, or too shallow. Here, they managed to get it right.
The windows were just the right size not to affect the air conditioning, ie. let too much heat in.
I’m not sure I could say the lounge chair was comfortable, but there was only one, which makes it difficult if there are two of you. I wasn’t going to fight for it.
The desk had a surprise in the bottom drawer, a printer!
And the bathroom, though slightly smaller than expected, had some hint of what it may have been like in the early days. It had both a shower and a bath.
Sometimes the headlines are ripped from the blurb of an international best-selling novel
Take for instance a recent event generated from the alleged electoral interference by the Russians in the United States.
Of course, that’s not the only country interested in having an influence in elections, there’s the Chinese in Australia, though in our case it might see some improvement in the childish behaviour of our politicians.
But in the first instance, how would it read?
Take what appears to be an ordinary student in an American University, who has the ability to find and seduce various men with apparent political clout for the purpose of subverting election results.
This would be rather startling if it was not in the United States because everyone from the national rifle association down knows any politician, federal state or local, can be bought. It’s probably the same the world over. There’s also the fact the femme fatale is not particularly what I’d call a head turner, but on the other hand, some men cannot resist any woman who makes an offer they can’t resist.
In fact, you would have to question the legitimacy of any elected official in that country because anything to do with politics is susceptible to bribery and corruption from any number of organizations offering large sums of cash or kind.
And just look what one in particular has managed to achieve. Any madman and his dog can now print a gun without restriction and go on a killing rampage.
The Russians are the least of US citizens problems.
I don’t think the stacking of the Supreme Court with conservatives is the main objective unless you want to keep your tax returns under wraps and keep out legitimate immigrants, called ‘dreamers’, but it might have far wider ramifications.
I sat this, 50% of the population is female, and I don’t think they’ve lost the right to vote, yet!
But I digress.
The blurb reads on.
The president, recently elected in what could only have been described as an impossible result, suddenly realizes that the American people are now waking up to the possibility of his election victory was not as impossible or legitimate as originally thought, and has his closest aides scrambling for anything to grab the people attention away from the truth.
A person who is suspected of being a Russian spy has been dragged out of the shadows and put on display. Fearing that is not enough, a plan is hatched to go to war with the rest of the world on trade and military fronts, so everyone’s attention will be diverted by what seems senseless tariffs and endless attacks on those who were once allies.
But what’s really going on?
Has the president been bought by the Russians, or does he have a darker and more sinister plan afoot? Are his battles with Russia, China, and North Korea merely diversions?
The balance of power is on a knife-edge and only one man [or woman] can save a world on the brink of nuclear annihilation.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 