Philips Concert 2006

Concertgebouw, Amsterdam,
October 12, 2006

Starting from year 2003, we regularly had been invited by Philips, the generous employer of my wife, for end-of-year concert in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam. It had always been a classical music concert by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra with qualified conductors and solists, performing fine classical pieces.

In the past years the concerts were held around end of October or in November, but this year it was a bit earlier. Fortunate for us, it happened exactly on our third wedding anniversary. A nice gift from Philips!

The event was started at 6.30 in the evening, and I arrived on time. I traveled by train from my office in Den Bosch and followed by tram in Amsterdam, alighted from the tram in the beautiful spot between the Concertgebouw and greeny Museumplein with nice view of the Rijksmuseum.

My wife arrived some moments earlier by the bus arranged by Philips in Eindhoven, and she was already in dinner queue when I arrived. It was the standard ritual: a buffet dinner at 6.30 followed by nice music at 8.15. We had the similar dinner as last year, with nice selection of appetizers: smoked salmon salad, beef carpaccio, tuna salad, and two different pasta salads. The main dishes were penne in mayonnaise, sausages, and meatballs in tomato sauce.

After filling our stomachs and nice chats during the coffee and tea, we entered the hall to start the musical part. It was still an amazing view entering the hall, with decorated ceiling and balcony and the grand organ above the stage.
That evening we enjoyed the 'Spanish-oriented' pieces by Wagenaar and Lalo before the break and Scottish Symphony by Mendelssohn for the ending.

After a short speech of Gerard Kleisterlee, the Philips CEO, the first piece was opened with castanets sound and we enjoyed the Spanish nuance of the Prelude to De Cid op.27 by Wagenaar, a Dutch composer. It was a pity that it was a pretty short piece.

The second piece was the famous Symphonie espagnole in D minor, op.21 for violin and orchestra, of Edouard Lalo. It was actually not a symphony, but a violin concerto. During his time, composers like to model their concertos after symphonies in which the soloist and orchestra were equal partners. Lalo went one step further, provocatively omitting the word 'concerto' in this piece, hence the somewhat misleading title.

The work contained five very colourful and highly virtuosic movements. All explored the beauty of violin to its fullest. The most symphonic movement, the first one, had a very catchy theme one would never forget once listened to it. The second movement started very light owing to the sweetness of the violin's high tone, but later developed back into similar Spanish rigor as the first movement. A sweet dark habanera rhythm dominated the third movement. The solemnity of the fourth movement, the only slow movement, was mostly sad although here and there sweetness and grandness appeared. The symphony final movement had a grand rigorous character of Beethoven alike and only managed a bit of Spanish flavour. The movement was closed with a special way of playing violin where the violinist simultaneously plucked (pizzicato) and bowed (arco) the strings.

After an uneventful break, the program continued with Mendelssohn 'Scottish' symphony no 3. Interestingly, the orchestra seemed to play the whole symphony without breaks. Perhaps they did not want hand clapping between movements as in the first part of the program. The symphony were very melodious but mostly very atmospheric. Apart from a familiar movement (probably the second), there was no theme easy enough to mumble home. Despite that, the audience honored the orchestra with a standing ovation at the end of the performance.

Cautious of missing the bus going back to Eindhoven, we hurried out the concert hall before the clapping died out. After queuing for wardrobe, we landed ourselves in the second bus back to Philips High Tech Campus Eindhoven and arrived back at some minutes pass midnight.

Blokart

Wijk aan Zee, September 30, 2006

My wife and her colleagues had been arranging some outdoor activities for several times. Last year they did hot-air ballooning, kayaking in Biesbosch, and tandem jumping. After vacuum for quite a while, recently they planned for blokart carting activity. Always fond of speed, I joined the event enthusiastically.

The activity was located at the Wijk aan Zee, a nice beach village near Haarlem. We traveled from Eindhoven by car together with two friends who did the tandem jumping. We arrived at the nice village around noon, and directly went to SunSeaBar cafe, the event provider. Waiting for other participants, we ordered drink and lunch. Finally we were complete, 10 of us, and we got introduced to the blokart.

The blokart was more or less the same size as the normal go-cart, except this one only had three wheels, one at the front and two at the back, bike-style steering bar, and no engine but a high sail above the driver seat.
We got explanation about how to enter the seat, and obligation to use the seat belt and the helmet. After that we were explained about how to steer and at the same time handle the sail. The basic principal was to pull the lower sail rope to accelerate and release it to slow down.

Ready to sail...

Having a sufficient theoretical knowledge, we were told that we would 'sail' along an 8-shaped route on the beach and we should take the corners against the wind direction on safety purpose. We got 5 blokarts so two of us need to take turn. I did the first turn, and the first long line sailing went perfect until I took the corner. Releasing the sail, I had no speed at all after the corner! Well, it happened to all five of us. After the same situation after few rounds, the instructor told us to reverse the direction, so we took the corner along the wind direction. It went much much better, although I felt we had not enough wind.

After about 15 minutes we changed turn. The second batch had stronger wind, and my wife happily took the corners in what seemed to be quite high speed. When I got my second turn, the wind was quite strong. With more experience, I could handle the blokart better and did fast-in fast-out on the corners. At that round I found out the best part of the blokart, which was the corners taking. It was fun to tighten the sail on the long track until the corner and release it on time so it would flap to get the wind force back and took you out from the corner fast. Another fun thing was to overtake on the corners and ensured that you would not hit the others.

Taking the corner

After changed turn one more time, we moved our track a bit because there were more people did the blokart. On that round we experienced the wind changed its direction, so we need to slightly release the sail on the long line instead of pulling hard. Luckily it gave stronger wind on the corners so we could take the corners in higher speed. Quite unfortunate for some of us, the wind was too strong and some blokarts were flipped over while turning. That made us understood the function of the seatbelt and the helmet.

Spending two hours for the blokart, we finished our event with some drinks back in the SunSeaBar. It was a fun experience.

Hong Kong and Macau

September 12-15, 2006

From our 22 summer vacation days to Indonesia, we planned 4 days to visit Hong Kong and Macau. For this plan we chose to fly Cathay Pacific from Amsterdam to Jakarta via Hong Kong and we decided to stop in Hong Kong on our way back to Amsterdam, as a nice wrap up of our holiday. There was a nice thing when we bought the ticket online at the Cathay Pacific website, we could directly chose our seats. So we could select the best possible seats for all our flights...although still in Economy class.

On Tuesday morning of September 12, we flew from Jakarta to Hong Kong, and we arrived around noon at Chek Lap Kok or Hong Kong International Airport. The airport was located on a sea reclamation area next to Lantau Island, the second biggest island in Hong Kong (after the Hong Kong island, unsurprisingly). After the immigration and collecting luggage, we waited a while before the bus took us to our hotel at Kowloon. Through a cloudy and rainy afternoon, we enjoyed the coast scenery along the hilly Lantau Island. To any Mickey and Donald fans, Hong Kong Disneyland is also located in this island.
After about 20 minutes we passed Tsing Ma bridge, the longest road-and-rail suspension bridge (2.2 km) in the world, heading away from the Lantau Island and not long after that we entered a tunnel and directly came out in a fully packed residential area of Kowloon. Finally the bus arrived at Majestic hotel, the place where we stayed, on Nathan Road, one of the Kowloon's main streets.

Not long after we checked in and dumped our luggage, we walked along the shops on the Nathan Road. There were just shops on both sides of the street, any kind of shops from electronic stuffs, clothes, until Chinese dried herbs and foods. We walked pass Park Lane shopping boulevard next to Kowloon Park, an area that reminded me of the Orchard Road in Singapore. After the boulevard we passed a mosque, quite a unique building in such area. After more shops and passed Tsim Sha Tsui MTR (Mass Transit Railway, Hong Kong's underground) station, we turned to Peking Road, a side street of the Nathan Road, which was also full of shops. We walked further to Canton Road, a street parallel to the Nathan Road and along the harbour of Kowloon, until we reached the seaside.

This southest end of Tsim Sha Tsui has several nice landmarks: Clock tower, old ferry terminal to the Hong Kong island, Cultural Center, Space Museum, Museum of Art, a nice long Avenue of Stars promenade, and a wonderful view of the skyscrapers on the Hong Kong island.

Hong Kong Island landscape from Tsim Sha Tsui in the night

After visiting tourist information center near the ferry terminal, we entered a shopping center to look around on souvenirs until finally we back to the Canton Road and further to the Peking Road, searched a place for dinner. I found a HMV store in that area, and managed to buy the newest Iron Maiden album there. Meanwhile my wife looked around and found a place that sold congee. So it was settled, congee for dinner. I picked the standard one, with shredded pork and century egg, plus the 'cakwee'. It tasted very good, the congee was soft and the egg was not too strong in taste.

Having our stomach full, we strolled back slowly along the still busy Nathan Road. The streets were nicely decorated with colourful neon signs in the evening. Near our hotel we visited a night market on the Temple Street. The whole street was packed with hawkers who sold many different things, from clothes until Chinese souvenirs.
After passing through the street completely, we were back to the hotel. We slept pretty well that night, saving energy for the next walk-till-you-drop adventures in Hong Kong.

The next morning we woke up and watched the heavy rain from our room window. After a filling buffet breakfast in the hotel, we bought a big umbrella at a small store in front of the hotel and headed to Jordan MTR station in the rain. We had planned to visit Po Lin monastery at the Lantau Island that morning. We took MTR to Thung Chung, the furthest point that reached by MTR in the Lantau Island. It was still raining when we reached Thung Chung. We went shopping for a while at a supermarket there, bought waters and a box of mooncake. From the bus terminal, we took the bus to the monastery. There was a new cable car track to the Po Lin monastery, but unfortunately it had not run yet when we were there.
The bus trip was through hills on the island, along a small up-and-down but smooth road. After about an hour we arrived at the monastery. The monastery complex was relatively big, but the amazing view was the giant Buddha statue in front of the complex.

The giant Buddha statue at Po Lin Monastery

Due to the rain and lunchtime, we decided to first visit the monastery to have a vegetarian lunch there. The vegetarian food was OK, made from very fresh ingredients. We also bought sweet dessert after the lunch.
After that we walked inside the complex, entered the halls and praying rooms full of incense smell. When the rain was a bit stopped, we climbed the Buddha statue. There was exhibition and archive room below the statue where we could see ancient Buddhism paintings and statues.

Satisfied with our visit, although we should be able to see more (for example walk the Wisdom Path) if it was dry, we took the bus back to Thung Chung and from there took the MTR to Jordan and walked back to the hotel.
After a short rest eating the mooncake, we took the MTR again, this time to Sheung Wan in the Hong Kong Island. From Sheung Wan we walked until we reached Mid-levels escalator, a walkpath along the old part of Hong Kong. It is a hilly area, so the walkpath was supported with series of escalators going uphill. We walked through Hollywood Road, along the pubs in Soho, and visited Lan Kwai Fong, an area full of restaurants. We stopped at Starbucks near the Lan Kwai Fong to plan the rest of the evening.

Finally we decided to move from that central area to Wan Chai, where we could see Tsim Sha Tsui (Kowloon) and Hong Kong scenery from the seaside. We walked from the Wan Chai MTR station via the walkpath over the main streets of Hong Kong between the high towers. Finally we arrived at Hong Kong Convention Center and outside the building we could see the Reunification Monument and Bauhinia sculpture, both were located near the seaside. From that point we also could enjoy the nice view of Tsim Sha Tsui and Kowloon area.

At 8 in the evening there was a Symphony of Light show, a combination of music, lights, and lasers show from the towers and buildings in both Hong Kong Island and Tsim Sha Tsui area. We could watch the show from Wan Chai, with complete view of the lights from Tsim Sha Tsui and laser from IFC Tower, the highest tower in Hong Kong.

The show was ended in about 5 minutes. After the show we took the ferry from Wan Chai to Tsim Sha Tsui. Strolling again along the streets in Kowloon, we stopped at a noodle house. I had noodle soup with inner parts of beef: stomach, liver, and intestine. It was nice and really filling.

On the third day we started early to visit Macau. From the hotel we walked via the Kowloon Park to the ferry terminal to Macau. The ferry was actually a jetfoil boat with many comfortable seats. The one hour trip to Macau was passed smoothly on the big nice chair.

Arrived at Macau harbour, we took the bus to the old town of Macau, passing some big casinos along the way. We alighted from the bus near Senado Square, the main square in Macau with nice classic European style buildings in the surrounding.
After collecting city map from the tourist information center we decided to visit almost all of the touristic spots in the old town of Macau. Near the Senado Square we visited Macau Cathedral, St. Dominic's church and Lou Kau mansion. The last one was a nice old Chinese house that still had original interiors and furnitures.

Walked little bit further, we arrived at the ruins of St. Paul's, the facade of a burnt church. It was located on a small hill providing wonderful view. Next to the ruins we saw a temple of Na Tcha and a section of old city wall next to the temple. Walked to the other side we visited Mount Fortress, the old military fortress of the city. From the top we could see most parts of the old town of Macau.

Ruins of St. Paul's, Macau

Getting further we visited St. Anthony's church and Casa Garden, a classic red-white color building. From there we walked back to the Senado Square and had lunch in a small restaurant in the area. They provided Shanghai style dishes, slightly different style than the Chinese food I know, but still delicious.

After lunch we walked to opposite direction from Senado Square, passing St. Augustine's church with its beautiful stone pavement, Dom Pedro V Theatre building next to the St. Augustine's, and St. Lawrence's church before stopped at Lilau Square, an old natural water source in Macau. A bit further we passed Moorish barracks, an old military building that now turned into office. Our final destination was A-Ma temple, which was quite crowded either with tourists as well as worshippers. From the A-Ma temple we took the bus back to the harbour.
In general I found Macau as an interesting place. There was strong Chinese lifestyle, but the Portuguese culture was still very rich as well. The mixture of these two styles made the place unique.

Arrived back at Tsim Sha Tsui, we spent the whole evening in Kowloon. Once again we watched the Symphony of Light show, this time from Tsim Sha Tsui with full view of towers on Hong Kong Island. After the show we walked along the Avenue of Stars, a resemblance of Hollywood Walk of Fame for Hong Kong stars. We found palms print of Sammo Hung, Jacky Chen, Andy Lau and many others. From the long avenue we walked to the Canton Road and visited Hard Rock Cafe to buy a cap, as always.
Near the Jordan area, we found a restaurant with fusion style. I tried curry noodle soup. It was OK but not as nice as the previous dinners.

On the last day in Hong Kong, we visited the famous place in Hong Kong that we could not visit earlier due to the rainy weather: the Peak. We took the ferry from Tsim Sha Tsui to Hong Kong Central, followed with a double decker bus trip passing the high towers until we arrived at the lower Peak Tram terminal. The ascending trip in the tram took about 10-15 minutes, with a nice view along the steep rail track until we reached the upper Peak terminal.

View of Hong Kong Island from Tsim Sha Tsui in the morning

From the top we could see the beautiful Hong Kong Island and Kowloon landscapes in complete view. Luckily we had no rain that morning. We enjoyed the view from both the modern Peak Tower and the old Chinese-styled Lions Pavilion. We spent the whole morning at the Peak by enjoying the view as well as shopping for souvenirs.

View from the Peak

Around noon we took the Peak Tram downhill. From the lower terminal we walked along the busy streets of Hong Kong to the Stanley Street. We ate dim sum in Luk Yu restaurant, because it was one of the first restaurants in Hong Kong that served dim sum. We ordered about 5-6 types of dim sum. In my opinion the taste was not very special, but maybe because we did not order the correct types.

After lunch we walked to the Hong Kong Central ferry harbour and back to Kowloon. During our visit in Hong Kong, it was the first time we were in Tsim Sha Tsui in the daytime. We once again walked along the Avenue of Stars.

the Avenue of Stars

Around 5 in the afternoon we walked back to the hotel. Once again we stopped for the congee and we also managed to shop a bit before arrived at the hotel.
At around 8 the shuttle bus was arrived and we went back to the airport, leaving Hong Kong in its beautiful evening lights.