Fog Horns and Drag Racing

One of the nice things about Hong Kong is there are no allergens in the air that bother any of us.  We have never been able to keep windows open in our house because Dave and the kids all suffer from seasonal allergies.  We're able to keep the windows open here.  This is nice from about November through now.  Soon we will have to close everything up and turn the air conditioner, or air con as they call it here, back on.  I enjoy having the windows open while I can.  However, it does have it's disadvantages.

Dave and I are always talking about the fancy cars here, Maseratis, Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Porsches, etc.  The people who drive them speed like crazy whenever they can.  There doesn't seem to be any place to really drive them the way they are meant to be driven.  Just the other day Dave was telling me that someone at work told him there are frequent drag races late at night on the road to Shek-O.  That night/early morning we woke-up to a drag race on the main road outside our complex.  We could hear it like they were in the room with us.  The strange thing is, that road is narrow and full of curves.  A horrible place to speed.  Just the week before we saw a Lamborghini that slammed into one of the cement catch basins on the side of the mountain.  We think he just took the curve too quickly with a car coming in the opposite direction.  The cement catch basin was levelled and it took two hours for the tow trucks to get the car off of the road.  Thankfully we didn't have anywhere to go in that two hours because no one was getting anywhere fast with only one lane open.

As you have seen from pictures, the South China Sea is right in front of our house.  On a clear day we can see many freighters on the other side of Stanley.  This morning I woke-up at 4:45 to the sound of fog horns from the ships.  They went off every couple of minutes.  Needless to say, there was no going back to sleep!  When I finally got out of bed 30 minutes later I couldn't see 10 feet out the window.  Good reason for the fog horns, but not good for sleep.

We frequently hear people talking outside at all hours of the night.  There is one man who swims in the cove early every morning and makes a strange wake-up call before getting in the water.  Dave plans to join him when it warms-up a bit more.  I wonder if he will join in the wake-up call as well.  I will let you know.

I know some of you reading this have lived in cities and know all too well about the noises that come in through windows at night.  Most of the time I find it entertaining.  However, I would prefer that all of the noises came before 4:00am so that I have time to go back to sleep:)