Reconnecting With Old Friends.

Yesterday was a day of many celebrations. It was the start of the summer holidays at my old school and Linda's last ever day of working there. Plus Emily and Fely, who used to work there, were both in town for a visit. This gave us all a good excuse to get together for dinner. Emily, who now lives in Vancouver, was pining for Peking Duck, so Linda booked a table at The Peking Garden Restaurant in Tai Koo Shing.

As usual I set out earlier. If I can, I like to combine meeting up with seeing or doing something else. This time I decided to go to Central and take a look at The Summerfest Inflatable Wonders of The World. These have received quite a lot of criticism, so I was interested to take a look and judge for myself.

Street art near the Summerfest.

Street art near the Summerfest.

Inflatable Wonders of The World is an attempt to use A.I. to create inflatable replicas of famous buildings. The idea came from an Armenian A.I. artist called Joann. The five buildings that have been created are: Stonehenge in England, The Arc de Triomphe in Paris, The Leaning Tower of Pisa, an Egyptian pyramid and the moai of Easter Island.

Map of the site.

If I have understood this correctly, Joann creates an image rather than an actual inflatable piece of art. So she takes a picture of The Eiffel Tower and changes the tower in the picture into a giant inflatable object which looks interesting and quite funny. Here people have actually created the inflatable object itself. There are some problems with this. For a start the inflatable created is going to be much smaller than the real object. Also it's surrounded by ropes holding it down and these don't look aesthetically pleasing. Neither do the devices next to the buildings that are used to inflate and deflate them.

Entrance.

Then, although this is not an issue for me, many Chinese people do not like that the images are all completely white. White is a colour associated with funerals and death here. The stone henge replica in particular has been likened to grave stones. Apparently the buildings are lit up at night, but I have not seen that.

Entrance.

Personally I think it's a lot easier to criticise something than to do something. The creators of this display liked the images they saw in Joann's work, had a go at actually making them and haven't entirely pulled it off. It's an experiment , learn from it and move on.

However, I do think there are several ways the exhibition could have been made better. The way it is now there are just the five inflatable buildings. These would have been more interesting if they had been put in a more relevant context. For example, some models of camels outside the pyramid, a little street cafe next to the Arc de Triomphe. Or even just some large 2-d pictures of the place these buildings are located in dotted around them.

Failing that then these art works clearly worked better when they had a function. I say that because the only building people were spending a lot of time with was Stonehenge, because it doubled as a bouncy trampoline. It was possible to go inside the pyramid, but there was nothing in there when you did. A mummy, a display about Egypt, something Egypt related to look at would have made it better.

Lots of people were posing for photos with the moai, so I guess they were quite popular, too. These were all the same image in different sizes and might have been better as a selection of different styles of Moai.

So here are the inflatable Wonders of The World:

The Arc de Triomphe was clearly having a bit of a bad day, so perhaps I shouldn't even mention that.

The Arc de Triomphe was clearly having a bad day.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa wasn't exactly very convincing. I wonder if an activity involving trying to straighten it or almost topple it might have been more fun.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa.

The pyramid, as I've said above, could have done with a few Egyptian things in and around it. Someone who criticised it likened it to the tents the police put around the victims of traffic accidents, but when you consider the Ancient Egyptians built pyramids as tombs maybe this isn't quite so inappropriate.

Pyramid.

Pyramid.

I'd love to see the real Moai on Easter Island some day. In fact of the five wonders I have only seen the real version of two: Stonehenge and The Arc de Triomphe. These Maoi looked like cartoon images to me, but as I said they were at least popular for photographs.

Moai.

Stonehenge was in my opinion the best of these inflatables. It actually looked quite nice from certain angles and people were clearly enjoying interacting with it, so it was really quite successful.

Stonehenge.

Stonehenge.

Stonehenge.

Stonehenge.

Stonehenge.

Anyway THE most popular thing I saw when I was there was the puddles on the AstroTurf. It was a roasting hot day and one little girl who had quite clearly had: 'quite enough of the heat thanks' escaped from her mum and hurled herself into one of the puddles then began to throw the water all over herself. She soon started a trend with several other overheated children joining in. It was quite entertaining to watch though I wasn't tempted to participate.

The puddles were the most fun.

This little girl certainly loved them.

Happiness as known to only the young.

Anyway I had seen enough and headed off to the MTR, passing a few other interesting things on the way and taking a couple more pictures.

Paris Olympics.

Paris Olympics.

Cute statue.

Butterfly sculpture.

Advertising a sports day.

We were meeting for dinner in The Peking Garden Restaurant in City Plaza, Tai Koo Shing. This is the same restaurant we came to for Yang's birthday.

Ice-skating in City Plaza Mall.

It was lovely to see Emily and Fely again. Fely could actually just join us for a short time as she was meeting friends for dinner elsewhere. She's only back from England for nine days and so had way too many things to do. Emily is in Hong Kong for a month and so can take things at a more relaxed pace. It was hard to believe how many years had passed since we had last seen each other. Time moves on so fast. I taught one of Fely's daughters when she was seven years old and now she is in her twenties. How did that happen????

A photo with Fely.

Sarah, who now works in a different school, had been on holiday for a few weeks already, so she had already found her inner chill.

The food is really good in this restaurant. We had ordered a set dinner that included Peking duck.

Miss Yang in full photographic action.

We had a tasty vegetable appetizer.

Then we had some pan fried bean curd skins. I normally find bean curd a bit tasteless, but this was actually really good.

Pan fried bean curd skins.

There was a cold chicken dish which was ok, but personally I only really like the skin of poultry if it's crunchy and this was soft.

Chicken.

I disgraced myself with the steamed pork dumplings stuffed with soup. I pressed too hard with my chopsticks and lost the soup which is apparently the best part. Everyone else approached them much more carefully.

Pork dumplings stuffed with soup.

There was a prawn dish in a very tasty curry sauce. The sauce was so good Yang took it home with her to freeze and eat later. We don't like to waste food if we can avoid doing so.

Prawns and broccoli in curry sauce.

We had imitation shark fin soup. This tastes fine when you add the vinegar sauce to it, but a bit bland if you don't in my opinion, but it's a popular dish here and since it's imitation its not endangering sharks.

Imitation shark fin soup.

I really liked the cabbage and ham dish that arrived near the end. I don't know why but I absolutely love cabbage.

Cabbage and ham.

And then the pièce de résistance the Peking duck. Crispy pieces of duck, served with spring onions and cucumber, then flavoured with a sweet bean sauce and wrapped in a wafer thin pancake. Heaven!!

Crispy Peking duck.

Another dish that I was surprised I really liked was the eel. I'm not sure I have ever tasted eel before. I certainly don't like the look of eels, but this was actually really delicious. It was just as well I liked it, as when I went to the washroom at the end of the meal everyone (well I actually suspect Yang) had piled all the remaining eel onto my plate. I was already so full, just the thought of food made me queasy, but I still managed to eat it.

Eel.

Dessert was a cake made from yellow peas, apparently it's a speciality from Beijing. (It's not up there in competing with chocolate gateau or cheesecake, but that's just my opinion.)

Yellow pea dessert.

It was great to get together, catch up on all our news and have a good chat, but then came the next surprise of the evening. Suddenly we caught sight of Vanessa, who also used to work in our school, passing by our table. She had come to the restaurant with her husband and was as surprised to see us as we were to see her. It was great to catch up with her, too and to learn that Vanessa is certainly making the most of her retirement with lots of travelling around the world.

A photo with Vanessa.

It was a great evening and with so many past and present staff members it was a very fitting end to Linda's last day at KCIS.

Emily, Sarah, me, Linda, Yang.