Marcus’ Blog

It’s been already two months since we moved into the new place. Renovations were done by 20 March and we moved in the weekend following that.

A lot has happened since then already - we’ve had two barbecue parties, and mum and dad visited for a full month. They’ve had a good time as they had their own visitor-room in the top of the house. In fact they have enjoyed the house more than I have the last month due to my trips overseas!

Here are some pictures taken by our friend Jane (thanks Jane!).

Here are some more pictures of the various areas in the house.

Meanwhile - most of the work is done and the contractors are putting last hands to it. The last bits to do are sanding of entire floor, polishing it, fixing some lights here and there, and finalizing the network cabling.

The network cabling is turning out to be the last issue. The TV Room floor cannot be closed as wires are coming out of the middle of it. As a result I can’t get the guys with carpet to come in and finish the room. I had to find a network cabling guy and I think I found one who will do it this Saturday.

Living room:

Matthijs Playroom:

Renovations - Playroom

Bedroom Marc / Nadine:

Renovations - MBR

TV room:

TVroom

If you look in the archive of this blog - you will see our renovations on the previous appartment we lived in - in OCT-DEC 2004.

Now it was time for the next renovations. They were not as drastic as in our previous place (which was a complete gutting down to the bare concrete) but involved more practical changes. After all the new place we have bought was done up very nicely 1.5 years ago.

We have in short: combined two rooms to create a TV room, changed the windows in the two bedrooms on second level, sanded all wooden floorings, various fixes, and then painting and wallpapering.

The TV room (combining two rooms) looked to be the biggest job, as we found all kinds of issues with aircons / networking / cabling / doors as we went through it.

Click on the image below to see pictures of the TV room job.

TVroom

http://picasaweb.google.com/marcusdelange/TVroom?authkey=Gv1sRgCMPK9pDc_4u-ZA&feat=directlink

Here’s a post to link to a new website that is a nice collection of Dutch expat related sites all over the world.

They’ve included some of my posts there as well, happy reading!

ExpatCentrale is de website met de leukste blogs en relevant nieuws voor Nederlandse expats die wonen en/of werken in het buitenland….

The contracts are signed - and we’re the owner of a new place near our old. A little bigger than what we have now, and with a terrace which is good for BBQs!

We’ll do some renovations in FEB / MAR and then will move in towards end of March.

It’s the house right in the middle of below Google Earth image - so we’re now even closer to the beach. We can literally walk up to the beach in our shorts - just bring a towel.

View Larger Map

Matthijs and I went up for a hike to the lookout point behind our house.

He’s doing very well walking up now - a good 300 mtr hill with lots of steps. If the weather stays nice we’ll do some more hikes during the christmas break.

Nadine is in Cebu - so Matt and I had a nice ‘men only’ weekend in DB.

Click the thumbnail for the picture:

Here he is with all his airplanes.

Not a weekend goes by or we do a little bit of playing with the airplanes. And if he’s lucky - he’ll get another one from either mum or dad’s trips overseas.

By now Matthijs knows more about airplanes then his mum - although he’ll need some more time to beat dad’s aeronautical degree!

An interesting and typical Hong Kong story happened today:

As I was strolling along my office area during lunch I noticed this excitement around one of the traffic junctions.

Two of the electric trams had collided somewhere smack in the Causeway Bay shopping area. Up to 40 of the
passengers have been injured in this collision - but fortunately no one was seriously hurt and most had minor injuries.

But the interesting thing is all the fuss around these two trams afterwards. I arrived at the scene when both trams
were already empty and all passengers had been carried away.

Still though - I counted FIVE ambulances, THREE fire trucks, FOUR tv crews, and about 50 odd staff of the various
public forces. Most of them were just loitering around, while their managers seemed to be frantically speaking into
their walkie talkies. Nothing happened here at all for most of the time!

It would have taken one of the tramway’s own maintenance cars to get the two trams back up the tracks and
scurry them off to the repair workshop.

This is just crazy!

This is the first hotel I’ve stayed at that has an indoor Golf course in the basement. I’m in Seoul, Korea, and golf is ‘a way of life’ here.

It’s been a while since I visited the Computer Center at 298 Hennessy Road to find new gadgets, stuff, etc.

Here are two key observations from this time:

16GB SD Cards now sell for a mere 248 HKD - very affordable, and it already hurts that I purchased one just 4 months ago for close to 500 HKD…

The other novelty this time around was the sudden increase in brands and types of digital video players on offer. The ones I found definitely indicate a trend towards low cost, reasonable quality devices, including 8, 16, or 32 GB storage, a 3 or 5 inch screen, and built-in speakers. Plays nearly every type of video format and retails here from 600 HKD up to 1300 HKD.

This certainly isn’t a new category, but the sudden onset of very affordable devices could put these devices into the hands of a wider group of consumers. Similar to what happened in the GPS navigation category some years ago. Unfortunately in the case of the digital video player though - this will be an “intermediate device”. I.e. it will at some point be integrated in smartphones and then the need for a separate digital video player disappears. This is already happening in the area of mp3 players. You can see less of these on offer these days!

Below a picture of some of the video playing devices on offer - sorry for the poor quality.