Faust vs The Wizard of Oz

One Saturday in early December we were able to go to see Hannah's group at Faust perform some short plays that they had made-up themselves.

It was called Ice Mouth Dragon vs Fire Mouth Dragon.  Hannah was a cheerful mouse who protected the Ice Mouth Dragon with her magic diamond.

Video:  edited highlights from Hannah's group

Towards the end of the school-year, Hannah's school put on a production of the Wizard of Oz.   In the weeks before hand Hannah was often singing the songs at home "how do you get to wonderland..." etc.   The production was very well done and we enjoyed it a lot.

Hannah was so well behaved that we had trouble finding her in the chorus!  Thats a sign of the progress she has made this year.

Solar System Model

On Sunday Hannah, Mummy and I made a 'scale model' of the solar system, at a scale of 1-to-6 billion.   We used the instruction from this link.   It was a lot of fun (at least for Dad).

First, we assembled objects to represent the sun and planets at their relative sizes.   A pink football for the Sun, a yellow pingpong ball for Jupiter, small peppercorns for the rocky planets like Earth etc

1. Sun- ball, diameter 8.00 inches
2. Mercury-a pinhead, diameter 0.03 inch
3. Venus-a peppercorn, diameter 0.08 inch
4. Earth-a second peppercorn
5. Mars-a second pinhead
6. Jupiter-a chestnut or a pecan, diameter 0.90 inch
7. Saturn-a hazelnut or an acorn, diameter 0.70 inch
8. Uranus-a peanut or coffeebean, diameter 0.30 inch
9. Neptune-a second peanut or coffeebean
10. Pluto- a third pinhead (or smaller, since Pluto is the smallest planet)

Then we went down to the long main path of Royal Ascot and placed our planets in their relative positions from the Sun:   Mercury 10 meters, Venus 19m, Earth 26m, Mars 40m etc.

Photo below:  The Sun from Earth.  The sun is the peppercorn in the foreground, and the Sun is the ball placed on a traffic cone just behind Rika in the left back-ground.

Bu the time we got to place-down Jupiter at 135m, we could hardly see our Sun in the glare of the real Sun.  Even with Rika sitting next to it ('god like')

Saturn (247m) and Uranus (500m) were placed down in second half of the main path, hidden from our Sun by a walkway,   In the photo below Hannah is standing by Saturn, and Jupiter is out of sight in the far background, 10m beyond the end of the visible part of this path.  

We put Uranus near the end of the path and found we didn't have enough room in Royal Ascot to place Neptune (800m) and Pluto (c. 1,000m).   Wow! the solar system sure is big!  and very, very  empty!

Bridge Project

Hannah is doing an interesting 'unit of enquiry' at school about buildings and structures, and was given a homework task to build a structure.

She started off building a house but I convinced her it would be more fun to let Daddy build a suspension bridge instead.    I can't think of a better way to see tension and compression.

Version 1.  main span 420mm

So we built a bridge using lego, some thread and Plarail tracks. 

  Amazingly it was able to hold a 400g train  despite the towers not being properly anchored to stabilize the lateral forces.

So I got thinking about the limitations of the design and bought some better thread and 'popsicle sticks' at the craft shop downstairs, and we built a 2nd version on the floor of the lounge,  

Version 2.  main span 840mm, towers 290mm high

This version is cable-stayed design, with strings going through 3 beams each made of 3 popsicle sticks glued together, and anchored to the floor with Sellotape.   The 4 tracks were stuck to the beams and towers  using blu-tack which made it less fragile.

This design has 2 cables per side no trouble bridging 800m, which made me curious how long we could make it.  So I cut some longer strings and next weekend we made another.

Version 3:  main span 1,266mm, 2,100mm

This time I anchored the strings to the floor using popsicle stick beams spaced apart in a classic cable-stayed pattern.  This made it easier to adjust the tension.

Hannah suggested joining the cables together with Sellotape in the middle to stop the track dipping when the train passes across.

The bridge easily bridged the 1,200mm river and Daddy regretted not cutting strings long enough to try a 8 track (1,700mm) version.   But by this point Hannah had long since lost interest.

Video :  Bridge Project

I had to nag Hannah to do the narration for this video to take to school.   The idea was to film shots of Hannah demonstrating the construction in reverse order and we edited them together 'backwards'.

Tooth Fairy

Hannah's remaining front tooth has been threatening to come out for over a week.  It was protruding at an odd angle and Hannah has enjoyed playing with it.

It finally came out on Wednesday when she was chewing a sweet.

Hap Mun Beach

Although it is almost October the weather is still very warm, and very pleasant as the humidity has dropped off.

On Saturday Hannah wanted to go to the beach.  So we took a taxi round to Sai Kung….

and then a kaido across Port Shelter to Sharp Island and Hap Mun (Half-moon Bay) beach.

This is Sai Kung town from the Kaido.  In the background is Ma On Shan and to the left the ridge that Daddy hiked along last month.

Hap Mun is an small attractive beach in a nice cove.

Once again we thanked our good-fortune for being able to live in Hong Kong.

The beach was ripe for improving and H went to work rearranging the sand with gusto.   And the water was very pleasant for swimming. 

Hannah and I swam out to the platform together.  Unfortunately H got a small cut on her foot, but the lifeguards were charming and efficient in patching her up.   

Hannah and Daddy on the raft.

We caught the last Kaido home at 6pm and had dinner in Sai Kung Town.   Daddy chose 'A######'s Ranch',  encouraged by fond memories of 'Texas', our favorite Tex-Mex-Jap steak-house at Opera City in Tokyo.  

AR is "dedicated to delivering top quality real Texan smoke-house foods" and "serves arguably the best American grub this side of the USA".    I'm sure it is a fine example of its type, and the staff were lovely, but it just showed us how Asian our tastes have become. 

The ambience was authentically US right down to the high proportion of super-sized  customers.  The next table had a group of 6 ladies who clearly didn't get to Hong Kong in economy-class seats.  I don't just mean very overweight, but rather morbidly obese to the degree that you rarely see in Asia, and which my med school friends referred to as 'land whales'.    Frankly, I was surprised not to see plankton on the menu.  

And from the menu it was easy to how they had ended-up that way.  With the exception of boiled broccoli (super sized!) everything on the menu was deep-fried, smothered in cheese, and/or dripping in fat.   Even the salads were high-calorie with the lettuce merely a delivery-platform for lashings of cheese and rich dressing.    

We tried the mixed starters - onion rings, deep-fried wings and cheese 'poppers', fried potato with cheese, ribs and nacho chips - but could barely eat a quarter.   Even Hannah found it too 'junky'.   Rika's steak was very good but it knocked her out for the rest of the meal.  I went for the light option of chicken fajitas which I liked but couldn't finish.   Nostalgia then drove me to ignore the clogging feeling in my arteries and order apple-pie with ice-cream .   The pie was nice but remained unfinished, as did Hannah's sundae, when we waddled-out with our bowels wondering quite what had hit them.   We all slept-in on Sunday and I had to fast for the day to recover.  

Picturesque Music

On Friday night Rika, Hannah and I went to the Hong Kong Cultural center for a combined performance by the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra and the Zhejiang Chinese Orchestra.   They performed 'Caprice on Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains' by Lin Yuan and Jiang Ying.  It was a terrific show which used audio-visual to superb effect, and we enjoyed it very much.   

The piece was comprised 5 movements inspired by a famous scroll 'Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains' painted by Huang Gongwan (1269-1354).   During the performance images from painting were projected onto large a screen behind the orchestra, creating a wonderful balance between music and images.

Soprano Zheng Peiqin of the Zhejiang Song and Dance Theatre (SCMP)

I found this lovely way to encounter the painting for the first time.  Since the scroll is quite long  (691cm) it can't bee seen all at once and is best appreciated slowly as a series of small images.  So  I liked being lead around the scroll, and in-and-out of details, along with the wonderful music.

The painting really is a masterpiece and at times I found the deftness of the brushwork almost breath-taking.   It reminded me of being amazed by the brushwork in the Chōjū-jinbutsu-giga 'frolicking animals' scroll in Kyoto (which was painted a century or so earlier).

We also enjoyed the music a lot.   It was only the second Hannah had been taken to a orchestral concert, and the first time she stayed awake.   So I was worried how she would behave, especially as the concert was broadcast live.  But she was very good and listened attentively, and only began to ask "is it going to end soon" about midway through the last movement.

Since it was a great show, I was very surprised that Hall was only half-full.  Especially as the concert commemorated the 65th anniversary of the founding of the Peoples Republic of China, as well as opening the orchestral season.  

Here is the SCMP review (link) and a some links about the painting from Wikipedia (link) and the  China online museum (link)

Tooth Fairy

This Saturday one of Hannah's front teeth finally wiggled loose and fell out.

It didn't hurt and only bled a little.

As before, Hannah took a tough negotiating stance with the Tooth Fairy.  She left this letter under her pillow (and hid her tooth somewhere else just to be safe).