Hong Kong Airport a Great One

Just noodling around here at the Hong Kong airport. I got here 5 hours early, can you believe it? The supposed (free) wi-fi connection isn't working, of course. Jeez, such a drag that wi-fi can be so sketchy. At the last hotel, it only worked in the lobby; in the previous hotel it was like $18 per day. So I'll send this off whenever. Having a pint of Murphy's Irish stout and an excellent corned beef sandwich. This airport is really nice. The building is nicely designed and beautifully put together and there are a ton of restaurants.

The Curmudgeon Thang

Two things I catch myself doing as I get, um, older:

1. Ranting. Lots of things piss me off these days. Bureaucrats, the Republicans, lawyers, money people, our stupid short-sighted leaders regarding energy, transportation, and ethics...ooops, am I ranting about ranting here?

2. Telling stories about the old days. San Francisco when it was still a port, surfing in Santa Cruz before wetsuits, my 1950 Ford… It's all too easy when you get old(er) to bore people with the Good Old Days.

A Way Different Hong Kong

Took the bus to the airport and was it an eye-opener. My other trips to and fro have been on the train. The "Whapoa" district was so different from anything I've seen of HK. Sparkling, new, trendy. We pulled up to the Harbor Grand Hotel in Kowloon. Wow! I've never seen anything this posh. Looks like one of the $1600 per night jobs. Like another planet, so different from the somewhat grotty but characterful and of-the-people Mongkok area where I was staying. For the super rich. Two other reasons I recommend you come into HK on a bus from airport, not the train:

1. There is mile-after-mile of like 60-story newish apartment buildings, glittery and spiffy. The extent of these is awesome. Hard to believe.

2. The HK docks are awesome. Like 1000 times as big as any ports I've seen. 10s of 1000s of containers stacked 10-15 high Huge cranes. This must be where practically all of China's goods are shipped from. A number of bridges, one of them a beauty with spider-webby cables in diamond patterns supporting the 4 or so towers. Like yet another planet. The world is such a big place and it's changing so rapidly, I feel like a hick from a small town gawking.

There's a pretty good jazz trio playing here at the bar, they just did a great version of Five Foot Two...

Misc Notes From the Week in Hong Kong

…There's a juice stand in one of the busiest parts of the city that is 24 sq. ft. The rent? $30,000 per month…The night after I stayed at the printers' plant, I couldn't find a hotel room on the internet to save my soul, other than ones for $400, $600 a night. Trevor, a HK native, has a group of about 100 friends that are connected by an app called Whatsapp, so he put out a message. He got about 10 replies and I found a room…Sign on a bus: "No matter how far you go, remember where you are from." This could refer not only to geographical, but occupational…Hong Kong is vertical; they have just filled in a big section of the bay down by the convention center for more high-rises…The 3 most expensive cities in the world for real estate and rentals are London, Tokyo, and HK; a 1000 sq. ft. condo here is like $800,000…Food is actually cheap if you eat at local restaurants; just had excellent sushi meal for $15.00; dinner last night (slices of smoked duck in broth with rice noodles for breakfast, was $7…weather in summer here is hot and humid, but unlike Rome ("Dog Days"), the city stays as crowded as ever…Streets are actually pretty clean, although there are sewer smells; the city is growing too fast…There are tons of shoe stores; been wearing my Sanuk surfer shoes the entire trip…What they call "hot coffee," or HK coffee is strong dark coffee with canned milk, v. good…Yesterday I had soup with noodles and slices of abalone…I've got the subway figured out; you buy a card that you swipe upon entering -- when you exit, you swipe again and it knows how far you've gone and deducts appropriate amount; subway system is brilliant: clean, trains run frequently (every minute at rush hours), are clean, air conditioned. I got so I felt pretty clever making my way around…Had glass of iced coconut juice yesterday while roaming…

Hong Kong Last Night #2

Hong Kong Last Night #1

Bamboo scaffolding Hong Kong

YWCA Hotel Tonight

In contrast to the two luxury hotels I've been in, here's my simple room for tonight. It's a matter of location, location. Just up the hill from the teeming Mong Kok district, where I went today with Trevor and his friend. To tell the truth, I'm happier in a simple room like this. Feels better. Can open the windows. This is my last night. I've got a ton of photos and experiences, maybe I can get some posts done when I'm waiting for my (1AM) flight tomorrow night. It's 9 and am heading out to eat and be dazzled by sights, sounds, smells, and people. Going to try out my new 1.7 f-stop Panasonic Lumix (G1) lens; everything so far shot with Canon Powershot S95 pocket camera. Is this an exciting city!

Exotic Harley Lady, Exotic Cat, Bamboo Scaffolding in Hong Kong

Stayed on 18th Floor This Slick Hotel Last Night

Going to be skipping around in time a bit here.
Impossible to find hotel in city, so ended up way out here at this "resort hotel" last night. Man! For someone living in a house built of recycled lumber, pretty exotic, eh? Been eating in restaurants where nary a gringo (farang) in sight. That's the way I like it. Abalone soup for breakfast this morning. Hot pot lamb and spring rolls for dinner last night, along with v. high alcoholic Chinese beer. Wandering around in shiny mall-land this morning, these two very polite, very skinny boys said, Sir, can we take picture with phone? Guess I look pretty different in this locale. Tons of stuff to report, will do so when there's time. Adventures every minute…

Unique Hong Kong Fishing Technique

This in a section of Hong Kong built over the water. Don't know what he'd do if he got a big one. I have a lot of stuff to post from the trip, will do so soon. (Book printing is done!) Stayed last night in a big hotel way out on the outskirts of HK, going to walk out to check nearby wetlands area now.

New Video of Our Homestead + '60s Revisited

I ran across Kirsten Dirksen and Nicolás Boullosa (from Barcelona) via Jenine Alexander, one of the builders in our new book. They had done a great video of Jenine talking about the 2 tiny houses she'd built in Healdsburg, California. We ended up using some of the stills from the video on the 4 pages we did on Jenine.
So when Kirsten and Nicolás came to California a few months ago, they came to visit. They've made almost 500 videos, many of them on tiny homes, and Kirsten is a journalist after my own heart. Within 2 minutes of arriving, she was asking questions, filming, and getting the essence of our work and lives. Immediate rapport. Here, several months later, is her take on our work, the homestead, the background of west coast publishing a la the '60s and '70s, the Whole Earth Catalog, Stewart Brand and the influence that the WEC and Stewart had on Steve Jobs when he was in high school. Yes, it's all tied together in a wonderful way.

http://faircompanies.com/videos/view/whole-earth-catalog-revisited-steve-jobs-google-60s/#comments

Surplus, Salvaged & Green Building Materials in Maryland, USA

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "The true cost of owning a home":

Lloyd- I can't find a link to email you, but thought that if you didn't know about this great place, you should:
http://www.communityforklift.com/

Cheers, Enteecee

Tiny Eco-houses of Recycled Materials in France

From Christine Durand in France. Note: these websites are in French.
Bonjour Lloyd,
Here's another beautiful story about a community of professionnal recyclers:

Blue, red, yellow, orange... these tiny eccentric houses are giving cheerful colors to Ossau Village (80 inhabitants), a self-administered village built by ex-homeless persons in the French Basque country.
Ossau Village is at the heart of a community of 130 members which has been accomodating homeless, excluded, or unemployed people for 30 years. They collect, refurbish, and sell second-hand clothes, household appliances, furniture and bicycles, and eat the products of their non-conventional farm.
While renovating its trailer camp, the community has created an eco-building workshop, open to all. Six tiny, ecological and economical houses have already been built with wood, straw or reused materials.

Sunset on beach the night before I left

On the way home from Ed and Marilyn's barbecue:

Builder Ed Stiles

Skipping around a little in time here: Ed Stiles and his wife Marilyn live in a secluded hidden canyon in Marin county, just 25 minutes from San Francisco, but it feels quite remote. Ed has a wonderful shop with big used factory sash windows looking out into the trees. They had a party the day before I left on the trip. Below: shop, house, Ed, and an old treehouse.

Steve Jobs' Last Words: "OH WOW! OH,WOW! OH, WOW!"

From Rick Gordon:
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR, New York Times
A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs
By MONA SIMPSON
Published: October 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/mona-simpsons-eulogy-for-steve-jobs.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Post from Hong Kong

Cathay Pacific is as good an airline as RyanAir is a bad one. The new 777 300 is a marvelous machine. Better than a 747 in myriad ways. More legroom in economy class. TV screen for each seat. 100, that's 100 movies to choose from (I watched 4) and the 15 hours flew by. The airline just has a different approach from United, Delta, etc., which seem intent on pushing the cramped space, bad food, and overall mediocrity to almost the breaking point. All right, all right…
Made my way to the Royal Plaza Hotel, where I thought I had a reservation, but somehow did not. After 20 minutes, they gave me a room on the Executive Club floor. Woo-woo! I have seldom been in such a luxurious place. It's excessive, and a bit embarrassing. The breakfast buffet is unreal. The towels are giant. A button opens the curtains. 4 huge pillows. TV, radio, CD player, game player, on and on. This is Corporate World International. OK, OK… Am I beginning to rant in my old age?
The printing plant (Paramount) is wonderful. From the first whiff of ink, the noise, the hustle, fork lifts flying around, the stacks of paper and printed jobs stacked on pallets, I'm in heaven. And here was the tiny homes book. We made a few adjustments on the first 8-page signature (backing off on the red), and from thereon the press men nailed it. I signed "OK" on each signature and by 10 PM last night I felt confident enough in the process and the guys to get a partial night's sleep. Checking out of luxury headquarters this morning, will spend tonight in a small room at the printers and watch the signatures roll today and tonight. Oh boy! It's good to be alive. I watch the incredible complexity of the process, in this case Mitsubishi sheet-fed 4-color presses, and the sorting, stacking, binding and trimming in disbelief. A big difference these days is the computer-controlled color adjustment.
Hong Kong is a spectacular city. Coming from San Francisco, I feel a kinship. Both cities on the water, both with a sparkle (although this is 7 times bigger). The verticality here is striking. The apartments are cities in the air. The subway stations are on many levels.
Lunch with 5 guys from the plant yesterday. Them to me: Do you use chopsticks? Hey, I'm a regular from Yee Jun's and Sam Wo and sushi bars as I reach for the dim sum. There's a difference between these guys and the press guys in mainland China (where I went for the printing of Home Work in 2004). They're happier. They smile a lot. The guys on the floor of the plant all wear these brown shirts with Chinese lettering front and back and I'm trying to figure out how to get one.
Time to exit hotel, ride the subway, try not to get lost, and meet my guide Trevor, a HK native, who is chaperoning me through the process. More to come…

3 Ways a Tiny House Can Help You Live Greener

by Adam Green
http://greenupgrader.com/17613/3-ways-a-tiny-house-can-help-you-live-greener/

Is This the Tiniest Tiny House in the World? Tiny Houses as Punk Rock (Video)

From Treehugger.com, 28 Oct., 2011:

"From a young man building a tiny house so he can live mortgage-free to an off-grid home built for $2,500, we've featured some pretty impressive tiny house stories on TreeHugger before.

   But Derek "Deek" Diedricksen's backyard is a veritable cornucopia of tiny house ideas that he creates and sells as retreats, home offices and even primary residences. (See Relax Shacks for more details.)

   This self-described bizarrechitect may have created some of the tiniest tiny houses of them all. Using mostly reclaimed, recycled and/or sustainably harvested materials, some of his shelters are little-larger than a human body.

   This really is, as "Deek" says, tiny houses as punk rock.

Thanks to Fair Companies—the same folks who brought us video of a medieval ghost town turned Spanish ecovillage—for another great story!…"

This is a great video. Deek's on. : http://faircompanies.com/videos/view/microbuilder-on-freedom-tiny-homes-few-codes-no-loans/?via=thumbnail