Golden Days.

The Golden Pui Tree.

Took Peter out to our sports club bar yesterday. It's his birthday month, so we were able to get a free bottle of wine and a discount on our food. Pretty good, I thought. We had to take the wine and food as take away though, because restaurants here close at 6pm at the moment, so we ordered beers, sat looking over the closed swimming pool and waited for our take away order. We ended up with quite a lot of food so I decided it would do two days of dinner.

Enjoying his beer, but wishing he could go swimming

I had calmed right down on the lockdown front and we've been eating some of the extra food we had bought in for it, but since I've stopped working, I often wake up at night and sometimes I make the mistake of looking at the news on my phone. There was an article about the whole of Shenzhen, all 17 million people who live there, being locked down for six days and being given only one day's notice. Shenzhen is just across the border from here. In fact it's likely we caused their outbreak, as many Hong Kongers went there to escape the virus here. I think Shenzen only had about 300 cases. We are now on about 30,000 a day. The same article mentioned Hong Kong lorry drivers not being allowed into China any more, due to our sky high infection rate here. All of this started me panicking that we didn't have enough food in. I was intending to go walking today, but ended up shopping instead.

There are two supermarkets where we live. I went to Fusion first and it was really well stocked and not too busy, so I started to think I was worrying about nothing. Anyway I bought vegetables and meat that can be kept frozen for later.

Then I went to Wellcome, the other supermarket here. I use this more frequently. What a contrast! This managed to have absolutely nothing that I wanted or normally buy here. I left feeling really annoyed. When I got home I read another article saying food supplies to Hong Kong will not be affected by the Shenzhen lockdown. Who knows what is going on in life any more? It's all so confusing.

The only good thing about going to Wellcome was that I walked past some stunningly lovely trees, and just in time too, as many had already lost their flowers.

These trees are apparently known as Yellow Pui Trees, though I think they are also called golden trumpet. They are native to South and Central America, and are actually the national tree of Venezuela, though there's quite a few around here, too.

Golden Flower against Greenery.

Golden Flowers with green and blue background

Golden Flowers against Blue Skies.

Golden Flowers against Blue Skies.

Golden Flowers against Blue Skies.

Close up of a flower.

Branch of Golden Flowers.

The funny thing was I forwarded some of my golden trumpet photos to three friends and two of them instantly replied by sending me golden trumpet photos they had taken in Hong Kong on the very same day.

My friend Jason photographed this tree in Po Lam.

My friend Iris photographed Che Kong Temple in Sha Tin.

Actually I did not mean to publish this entry yesterday. I was intending to combine it with today's walk, but I accidentally pressed publish. However, now that I've done today's walk, I've decided to do a separate blog on it and put all of today's golden pui pictures here.

Golden Pui and residential blocks.

Houses and Flowers.

Houses and Flowers.

Golden Pui with Tsueng Kwan O Velodrome.

Golden Pui.

Golden Pui.

Golden Pui.

Golden Pui.

Me with a Golden Pui Tree.

Me photographing a Golden Pui Tree.