Old Hong Kong in the 46th Hong Kong Brands and Products Expo

A dynamic city keeps changing; old styles become history. Want to see the old Hong Kong? Don’t miss the 46th Hong Kong Brands and Products Expo then.

Old Expo (miniature)

A brief history of Hong Kong Brands and Products Expo
 
Hong Kong Brands and Products Expo started in 1938. It aimed at promoting the Hong Kong industries and brands, and trading. Due to the Japanese invasion, the expo was canceled in 1941 and restarted in 1948.

Owing to the lack of venue, the 2nd cancellation happened in 1974. The expo came back in 1994, but just for that year to celebrate the 60th anniversary of its organizer. A solid return took place until 1998.

From 2004 to 2011, all the Hong Kong Brands and Products Expo were held in the Victoria Park, Causeway Bay. Nowadays the expo looks more like an annual big marketplace. It attracts many locals coming here to do their shopping at a discounted price. Tourists may find the special-themed exhibition more appealing.

Hong Kong Memories Miniature Exhibition

Not every expo has a special-themed exhibition, but this year there is the Hong Kong Memories Miniature Exhibition. Visitors could see over 50 miniatures made by 11 Hong Kong Artists. Those miniatures show the 1960s to 1970s life in Hong Kong and the look of the old expo. Though the exhibition occupies very little space, the miniatures tell a lot about the old cultures of Hong Kong. Many visitors enjoy touring around and taking photos. Some elders take this golden opportunity to tell their grand children the earlier life. Below are the photos I took for some miniatures.

Chinese herbal shop

Chinese furniture shop

Chinese wedding accessory shop

A rickshaw

Public housing for low income residents

Old style buildings

Grocery store

The 46th Hong Kong Brands and Products Expo will last for 24 days, from Dec. 10, 2011 to the 2nd of January, 2012. If you are staying in Hong Kong within the period, welcome to come for this event. The entry fee is HKD10 and there is no additional fee for the special-themed exhibition that locates in the midst of the venue.

When you tour around, don’t forget to enjoy the free trials of foods and drinks offered by some stalls. Discount coupons are available in the shopping guide. Keep the guide and the entry ticket for the “See and Guess”. Participants need to guess the total retail price of the products in a showcase at the Lucky Draw Station. Pick the correct answer and enjoy the lucky draw. The prize, big or small, would serve as a nice souvenir.

Tourist could try many local side dishes in the food plaza. There are also stalls selling different kinds of products, a good place to shop for souvenirs.

Egg custard tart (chestnut flavor)

The opening hours are 11:00am – 10:00pm (Monday to Sunday) except the 12th of December, 2011 (to 1:00am) and the 2nd of January, 2012 (to 8:00pm). There will be no ticket selling and admission one hour before the exact closing time. Welcome to visit this expo. Enjoy yourself.

Author’s note:

For the days without any special event, Hong Kong has many places worthy of visiting. The three articles below will give you some ideas on what to add in your itinerary for your Hong Kong tour.

Hong Kong Travel Guide: A Relaxing Day in Mui Wo

Hong Kong Travel Guide: Hong Kong Museum of Coastal Defence

Hong Kong Travel Guide: Nan Lian Garden

Exercises for Fun and Good Health

A lot of people sit too much and lack of exercises daily. Our health may be at risk. We can save our family by doing some fun exercises together.

Many parents are busy at work; whereas, their children could be sitting too much to study, for TV and video games. They seldom find time exercising in the weekdays. Lack of exercises in the long run could cause health problems. To lower the health risk, kids and adults are suggested making good use of the weekend to do some exercises together. Below are ten recommendations that could help people have fun and maintain good health simultaneously.

1. Jogging

Jog in the neighborhood, in the park, and countryside. Whenever possible, choose somewhere with beautiful sight to make this activity more enjoyable.

2. Running

Some stadiums are open to the public for days without event. Enjoy the explosive force by racing in the lanes.

Running in the beach is also a fun thing to do. Run heartily. The sand will cushion your fall.

3. Hiking

Climb the mountains and get close to the Nature for some wonderful discoveries, for example, beautiful plants, interesting animals, unique rocks and remarkable seasonal change of scenery.

4. Kite flying

Move your body and wrestle with the strong wind to have your kite flying high up in the sky.

5. Cycling

With rentals and various kinds of bicycle available, the whole family could enjoy cycling together. Adopt cycle rickshaw if any family member has balancing problem and make sure the qualified members take turn spending some time on the rider seat to exercise their body.

6. Swimming

Go to the beach for a swim in summer. As some swimming pools open all the year round, don’t make any excuse for no swimming. Create some fun by having competitions.

If you don’t know any swim style (freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke and butterfly), swim with a ring buoy. The most important point is to move your limbs and jump in the water because these exercises are good to one’s lung and heart in particular.

7. Dancing

There are many different kinds of dance. Simply choose a style that allows the whole family dancing together. Enjoy and follow the music to shake your body heartily.

8. Rope skipping

If you have a backyard or garden, clear some space for rope skipping. You can arrange competitions, for either individual or multi-players mode. Who is the first person to fail? Who is the best in one rope skipping? Keep jumping and have fun.

9. Basketball

You don’t need two teams of five players to have fun. Exercise by throwing the ball through the basketball hoop. Move your body aggressively to steal the ball from other’s hand.

10. Soccer

If kids are not tall enough to enjoy basketball, soccer will be a good substitute. Encourage kids to run with the ball, chase after it and try their best to kick a goal.

Pick from the aforementioned or try other sports, always play hard to fully absorb in the exercise to derive the greatest joy. Fun can always go parallel with good health if you choose well and participate in the activity wholeheartedly.

Author’s note:

Summer or winter, there are many appropriate exercises for fun and good health. Play hard to lose weight and be free from obesity and its related health risks. The articles below will give you loads of ideas on what one can do, even for rainy days at home.

10 Summer Beach Sports for Fun and Weight Loss

10 Winter Sports to Lose Weight and Have Fun

Exercise at Home From Head to Toe

Friendship Poem: Know What Friends are for

Know what friends are for, we could build and maintain true friendship circumspectly, and benefit a lot from this invaluable treasure in our lifetime.

Hello, do you have at least one good friend?
Use this checklist for your picking, will you?
Let’s inspire each other the latest trend.
Share news and thoughts, sincere to do.

Dry tears with consolation, love will do.
Offer helps on time to stop any sharp fall.
Never mean, but kind advice is for you.
Mirror one’s image often without call.

Good influences keep flooding in, expected.
Exchange good things to multiply more.
Betrayal is far from reach, neglected.
Willing supports stand by to drive off sore.

Friends start with bronze, be silver and then gold.
May friendships bloom well and will always hold!

Author’s note:

I enjoy writing poetry, which is a good way to share one’s ideas in a few words – for me, usually 14 lines, at around a hundred words. I have written poems on different topics. Some are quite funny or weird. Below is a list for fun reading. Enjoy yourself.

Let’s Rock: A Poem About Childhood

Duffy’s Treasure Hunt — A Poem for Fun

An avowal from the Phoenix in Harry Potter

Examine and Reuse Rubbish

Humans create large volume of rubbish daily. If we examine carefully and use our creativity, we can save many items from disposal by doing DIY work. 

Examples of reused items:

1. The core of toilet paper

(Source and photo: from a newspaper dated September 19, 2011)

We often throw away the core without a thought. However, Junior Jacquet applied his craftsmanship and gave each core a unique face. The core has a new life after the transform. The faces are so interesting that it will be a fun to collect and hang them on a black wall. Cool decoration, isn’t it?

2. Soup can

(Source and photo from Crafty Kids summer 2000 issue)

The soup can is an ideal container for holding stationery (pencils, pens, and rulers), tableware (spoons, forks, and knives), and artificial flowers. What we need to do is clean it thoroughly and decorate the surface. Use your creativity and turn each soup can to an animal. Why not liven up your living area or workplace with some colors and amusing looks? 

3. Milk or Juice carton

(Source and photo from Looney Tunes Crafty Kids January / February 2001 issue)

The carton is always disposed shortly, but with thorough cleaning, painting, cutting, sticking and gluing, it can become a lovely house for your letters, candies or serve as a piggy bank. Convert it to a treasury box or a decorative item in your room. You can also share your arts and crafts with others by transforming the carton into an appealing gift box.

Apply our creativity on the excessive items or residue, we can give many things a longer lifespan, enjoy usage of unique items, save money from buying new items, reduce refuse and be more environmental friendly. With so many benefits, let us take the initiative to run as many DIY projects as we can.

Through sharing your DIY achievements with your family, friends, colleagues and neighbors, you may inspire them to start their own DIY projects. More participation will brighten our days and leave a better world, in terms of environment and resources, to our future generations.

Author’s note:

If you have no talents in arts and crafts, you can still participate in some other projects to make your contribution to the world. The two articles below will give you some ideas on what we can do. We can go green and even have fun at the same time by adopting some new and simple habits.

How to Go Green and Have Fun in Gift Exchange

15 Uses of Newspaper in Our Daily Life

Facts of Tea with Milk

Many people like adding milk to tea, but overdrinking this beverage could be hazardous to health. Learn the facts of tea with milk and drink modestly.

The causes of potential dangers:

1.    Black tea (or red tea for Asian saying) is commonly used in tea with milk. It is a post-fermented tea and the caffeine level is three times of green tea’s. Drinking too much may affect sleep.

2.    People often like adding two teaspoons of sugar to make the tea with milk taste better. This addition counts 30% of the daily maximum allowance of sugar intake.

3.    If evaporated milk is used, the percentage of fat is higher.

4.    For people not growing up with a regular use of dairy products, their bodies could fail in decomposing lactose that is in tea with milk and can induce diarrhea.

5.    Caffeine in tea together with lactose in milk will stimulate the secretion of hydrochloric acid in gastric juice and failure of handling the extra secretion properly will weaken the stomach.

6.    Oxalic acid in black tea together with the calcium in evaporated milk may bring forth calculus.

7.    Tannins in tea will hinder the intake of iron. Drinking milk tea for every meal may lead to anemia in the long run.

The facts reveal several potential dangers; hence, it is important to stop overdrinking. Many people are unguarded concerning the beverages in every meal. The loyalty to tea with milk could engage them in chronic overdrinking. The diehard fans will run a higher risk of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, calculus and anemia.

How to stop overdrinking tea with milk:

1)    Shift to different beverages rather than picking tea with milk every time. Start with the beverage for every meal to avoid overdrinking. Healthy replacements include vegetable and fruit juices. Among all options, water is the best. 

2)    If one drink is milk, another drink is tea, remember to arrange a longer interval between these two separate drinks so that the beverages won’t cause an unwanted mixing up in your stomach to do harm.

Symptoms of overdrinking tea with milk:

For those who are unaccustomed to drinking milk tea, a few sips could be counted as overdrinking, causing discomfort. Stop drinking if you have any symptom in the list below:

a. Rapider heart beat
b. Sleepless
c. Lose appetite
d. Stomach bloating
e. Diarrhea
f. Gastralgia

Fans may drink several cups in a day without suffering from any symptom aforementioned. However, this does not mean that they are free from the health risks.

No matter you love tea with milk or not, always take notice of the facts and always drink this beverage modestly for the sake of your own health.

Reference: A piece of news from Ming Pao reporting an experiment done by a TV broadcast station on drinking a lot of tea with milk, dated September 8, 2011.

Author’s note:

Tea alone has many options available. Each option has their own health benefits, for example, some teas are good for eyes. Despite the tastes and the health benefits, it is worthwhile to learn about the proper way of drinking each beverage and always drink modestly. The two articles below may give you some ideas on what I am saying.

Good Eyes Herbal Tea: Chrysanthemum & Wolfberry Tea

Make and Drink Green Tea Properly

 

Mind your Characters and Take Care of your Money

(Money bank)

Characters affect one’s spending pattern. If you are squandering and want to go for money saving, change your character and develop new habits then.

Characters that promote people to be a squanderer:

1. Too optimistic

Some people are too optimistic and the situation is even worse if they are pleasure-seekers at the same time. Enjoying themselves is a high priority. They won’t adjust their expenditure even they are jobless. They believe money will come in again pretty soon and so there is no need to adopt frugality to depress oneself. On the contrary, they use spending money as an excuse to cope with decompression. After eating up all the saving, stress goes on accumulating.

2. Too demanding

Some people are too demanding, always conscious of the brand products and their latest versions, pursuing the expensive products. They believe high price is justified by high quality. This rigid belief molds the diehard loyalty of famous brands and high-priced products. They refuse switching to the less costly alternative, which may have the same functions, features and quality standard. The rigidity can cause troubles when one's income and wealth cannot afford the diehard spending pattern. Demanding people will use credit card frequently and may go into debt for years.

3. Too capricious

Some people change their mind very easily and they can’t resist the temptation of switching whenever they see something new. They will keep shifting to various brands, different models or even versions for mobile phone, digital camera, computer and branded handbag, etc. An expensive item may be used for a few days or a month and then resold at a low price. Frequent and yet unnecessary changes drain money away from one’s wallet continuously. Capricious people are so accustomed to frequent replacements that they become indifferent to the money loss.

4. Too generous or too casual

Generous or casual buyers do not think or check carefully before the purchase. They often buy things at a higher price, overlooking the flaws, waste money on similarities or duplications, and have purchases that fail in matching their practical needs. When the purchased item is of no use, they will put it aside or give it away. However, for expensive item such as house, let it seat idle or be a gift won’t work. The circumstance is even worse if the item needs an expensive fix before it can be for self-use or resale.

5. Too greedy

Greedy people have difficulty in resisting low prices. They will buy crazily in discount sales, more than they actually need. The results are often an excess, usage below the average, obsoleteness and depreciation. Besides the actual prices, the cost of handling many unused or seldom used items, either by keeping things in order or reselling them to cash back, is a definite loss due to one’s greed.

Have a self-examination see if you have any of these characters and whether you are empowering them to waste your money. If the answer is “yes”, it will be a good investment to change your character in the long run. This involves introducing a new set of good principles to rebuild your money concept and consumer behavior, and reinforce them with a concrete habit development.

To insert a quick control over money out, you can try two basic strategies: freeze your money and set rules, to resist the desire to buy. High self-discipline is required for an effective implementation.

Freezing your money is to put aside part of your income and the accumulated amount should be untouched. You have to keep telling yourself that there is no extra money to entertain a purchase.

Setting rules allow reasons rather than passions ruling the money issue. You can adopt many different rules at a time, for example, only buy new when old is gone, set quota for an item regardless of the low price.

If you have problems on implementing the two recommended strategies, don’t give up easily. Try your best to identify which character contributing to the squander and be determined to change it, which is the source of the chronic problem.

Hope everyone succeeds in spending wisely and be able to save more money.

Author’s note:

If you are a credit card user, I suggested you read the article below to get more ideas on how to freeze your money as this strategy is particular helpful to ensure that you have enough money to pay off in a monthly basis.

Use Credit Card Wisely and Leave No Debt

Examine your expenditure and your possessions; explore new opportunity to cut cost. The two articles below may give you some ideas on saving money in different aspects or contexts.

How to Handle Never, No Longer and Seldom Used Items

10 Dating Tips to Save Money

Stop Being a Looker-on

Many people want to know how to be happy. This good quality is not exclusive to children. Let us be inspired by dogs and recruit the happy feeling.

A beautiful day with blue sky, Sai Kung (a famous suburb of Hong Kong) was crowded with tourists and local people. I expected to have a relaxing afternoon there. Strolling along the waterfront, quite a number of visitors gathered at some thresholds heading downward to the sea. What made people stay and watch as if they were spell-bounded? The charm came from human’s loyal little friends – dogs.

Nearly no dogs could resist temptation of jumping into the sea for a good swim. They kept their masters waiting at the thresholds, watching them having fun. Their spontaneous excitement, harmless naughtiness and heartily enjoyment formed a lovely sight that was eye-catching indeed. Not knowing how to swim, I sat on the breakwater and took some snapshots of these admirable hedonists.

The lively sight and the photo-taking gave me a great pleasure. Down to the sea and up to the land, many dogs had fun. Their audiences were duller. I suddenly realize that many people are lookers-on in the happy moment, as if pleasure is so scarce that there is not enough for each living creature to enjoy equally.  Of course not; there is plenty out there. What’s wrong with us?

Daily life is complex, full of worries, new challenges and troubles. Whatever dominant, many people tire out and fail to recharge properly. We often overlook the reviving pleasure, which is not far away and unattainable as we imagined. Stop awhile, spot beautiful things and occasions around us, and don’t just be a looker-on; otherwise, the limited participation undercut the potential enjoyment. Maybe we should learn from the dogs, grasping at every opportunity to live out happy moments as much as we can.

I hope everyone could learn the secret of being happy and stop being a looker-on. We deserve more. Next time, I will fly my kite high up in the sky instead of solely watching you – good dogs.

Author’s note:

The Nature is often very inspiring. Take a look at the dogs and cats; it’s amazing to notice that humans can learn a lot from these cute animals. Read the three articles below for the amusing tips I discovered so far.

Valuable Things We can Learn from Dogs

Valuable Things We Can Learn From Cats

Learn How to Sleep Well: A Lesson From Animals