Autumn is definitely here with the cooler winds and darker days… but so is the haze, the usual suspect from the Pearl River Delta. It’s not the smelly, smoky sort you associate with the annual drift over from burning forests in Indonesia, but it clouds up the skies and confuses the observatory. The weatherwoman on ATV World a few days ago was optimistic, reporting “it will be sunny on Sunday but you may not notice it because.. yes, it will be hazy!” It’s 23 degrees today, it may drop over the next week so visitors take heed!

Too much smoked salmon being produced

This weekend’s a long one! Monday is a surprise public holiday – the autumn version of Ching Ming (which is in spring). We need to start looking for a man with a van to move our bulky furniture and also look for some boxes or stripey-made-in-China-bags to pack our random stuff. The new place is down the road but it would be incredibly difficult to cart a 6-tier bookshelf (our largest item) even for that short distance! We’re only getting keys on Friday so we’ll probably only be able to move stuff on Saturday. Hopefully, we won’t need to spend too much time cleaning up. The few days in between the old tenants moving out and us moving in is technically for the landlord to do some cleaning work. We’ll see! When this apartment was rented, boy, there was a lot of cleaning that had to be done.

Autumn also seems to signal the appearance of scaffolding all over town. It’s probably safer now in the knowledge that a typhoon isn’t going to come wreck your work with one gust! Bamboo scaffolding is still very much in use in HK and here are some creative ways in which scaffolding has been put to use:

Precision engineering

Our apartment has been undergoing pipe-replacement works this past week, so during the day we are not supposed to be using water or plumbing (we found out when we turned on the tap and heard a loud thumping on our window pane – 21 floors up!). This has essentially meant me spending most of the day out. Spent some in the library and others running errands. Got my temporary HKID card yesterday – I validated my visa during my last entry. Hooray! No more loooooong queues at immigration!