My Hong Kong adventure continued on Sunday, when Marc, Claire and I took the tram up to Victoria Peak. (Oh, I skipped lunch for all you food people: it was Japanese fast food.) It had been cloudy all during my stay up until that point, and since Sunday was only mostly cloudy, we played our hand and went up for the view. The tram runs on a cable with two cars balancing the weight of each other. The steepest angle of assent is 27 degrees, though it feels much higher because your body is so used to being on level ground.
The top of the Peak gives your a beautiful view of downtown Hong Kong and Kowloon, with some outlying areas in the distance. The fog obscured some of our view, so instead of soaking in the vista, we hiked around the top of the Peak. We passed several residences of wealthy people -- I hope they telecommute...otherwise that's one heck of a trip to and from work. The nature of Hong Kong is interesting: in addition to some pretty flora, we encountered butterflies and salamanders. The end of our hike led us to the Peak mall, where we did some shopping, and bought some McFlurries from McDonald's (sometimes you just can't beat American food).
On Monday, Claire and I took the MTR to Wong Tai Sin, a popular Taoist temple. This was by far the least touristy place we had been to--for the first time we were the only white people on the subway car. Speaking of white people and the subway, several of the ads on the MTR are blatantly racist, displaying white people as dumb and foolish. One (video) ad has two white salesman trying to sell a copier by rapping to 5-year-olds. Another has a picture of two Chinese teens in bed, with two white (computer generated) parents sitting on the sides of the bed with blank expressions on their faces: the text of the ad encourages parents not to be shy about talking to their kids about sex. I guess since we ruled them for long enough, they're allowed to make fun of us? Or something like that...
Back to the Taoist temple, while I did forgo lighting incense with the Chinese, I partook in drawing numbers. There are sticks labeled 1 to 100 in a "Que Bueno"-sized can, which you then shake until one of the sticks falls out. I drew 13 numbers, they were: 79 97 1 40 34 46 50 46 34 100 54 12 51. I had two repeated numbers, which makes me think my shaking was not random (a random shake would produce at least two repeating numbers only 16.5% of the time*). I seem to be a centered person, given my numerical distribution:
1-20: 2
21-40: 3
41-60: 5
61-80: 1
81-100: 2
Of course, Claire insists that each one of the numbers has its own special fortune for me, but I don't really believe in that stuff.
Tuesday I went to Lantau island to visit the largest sitting, outdoor, broze Buddha in the world. The Buddha is right next to the Po Lin monastery, who served me this great vegetarian lunch for under $10. After paying my respects to the Buddha and wandering around the monastery, I decided to hike Lantau Peak (the second highest peak in Hong Kong). Lantau Peak is best known for its sunrises, because most sane people would not hike it in the afternoon heat. I am, however, not most people, and I readily helped prove the prevailing wisdom here that white people are idiots.
Slowly but surely I climbed the winding stair to Cirth Ungol stone-stair path to the peak, desperately hoping that the clouds would cover the sun. (Somehow I managed to pick the one mostly sunny day to climb the peak.) Though there was vegetation on the path, it provided little shade. I finally made it to the top, at which point I was rewarded with an indescribably amazing view. (I half expected there to be a Buddhist monk waiting for me there as well: I had decided that the one question I would ask him/her would be "what did I have for breakfast.) Lantau Peak is above a cloudline, which makes it really cool when a cloud breaks upon the mountain, similar to waves on a rocky beach.
*I estimated this percentage by subtracting the chance of no repititions ((100!/87!)/100^13=44%) and exactly one repitition (((100!/88!)*(13*12/2)) = 39% from 100% = 16.5%. The resulting 16.5% also includes three-of-a-kinds (and four-of-a-kinds, etc). So, I guess to be more accurate, if you counted four-of-a-kinds and above as "two repititions," but not three-of-a-kinds, then that would decrease the percentage by another 1.6%, leaving you with abut a 15% chance. Let me know if my math is wrong.
Dude, those are for fortunes. You're supposed to only pick one number and see what your "horoscope" is for the day. :P
But I saw people picking *lots* of numbers...and fortunes, phhht, histograms are much better.
No comment on the mathematics, but could you please spell 'repetition' correctly in the future. It's not like all your cool toys don't give you access to a dictionary.;)
Oh yeah: I'll promise to use punctuation properly, too (see "." where "?" should be).
Well, I blame my brother for having neither the Opera nor Firefox plug-in for spell checking installed on his laptop.