Coffee designs

The excellent design on my cappuccino at Empark Hotel, Kunming, reminded me of this link to coffee design I had seen earlier.

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Latte-Art
It is quite an interesting read.

Starbucks should do this, it would almost justify their price. Or you could forgo your daily coffee and be a millionaire.

Kunming, China: Reflections on Economy and Culture

It does not take much time for a visitor to see the construction boom. Highways, overpasses, malls, office buildings are coming up in great numbers. There is a six lane highway from Kunming to that matches the American Interstate system. There are plush malls selling high end fashion and many multi-storied condo blocks are coming up. Only time will tell if this is a speculative bubble, or just a natural part of 10% growth. At this stage, it is difficult to say if the freeways are being built because of the growth, or the growth is because of the freeways :)


Another interesting part of the Chinese economy is the low prices. An elaborate meal at the Empark Grand in a private dining room with three waiters for just for the six of us cost us only RNB700. A cab ride of about 45 minutes cost only RNB40. This low inflation again is part of the great Chinese growth miracle.

Our hotel (Empark Grand ) was located in a newly developed area of the city, and is part of a local Chinese group. The hotel was luxurious with wooden paneling, deep plush carpeting, fine tiling and excellent service, but lacked the polished design touches of the established brands. For example, the wardrobe was tiny, though the room was huge. The bathroom had a sunked bathtub and a huge tropical downpour of a shower, but the shaving light was too dim and the shower floor sloped away from the drain. The elevator buttons were configured funny, and hitting one button summoned only half the elevators in the set. I saw this as typical of a centralized planning approach where some boss in Beijing decreed a hotel be build with a huge budget, but no multinational expertise, and ended up producing a product with irritating design flaws.

Another interesting this about the hotel was the number of employees lining the hallways ready to help and open doors for us. Thankfully, tips were neither accepted nor expected, except the cab drivers. Actually, the cab driver did not take tips either, but the word play was fine, no? I guess this no tips culture again is part of the top-down nature of Chinese capitalism, where enterprise is not encouraged in the lowest rungs of the working class.

Another refreshing example of a lack of supply-demand economics was on a hilltop we reached after one hour of hiking. There was a woman there with a small inventory of water and juice bottles laid out on a bench. The bottle of water was only 2RNB (30 US cents). At that point, we would have easily paid ten times that for a bottle of water, but probably the capitalist bug of price gouging has not yet reached this remote part.

A morning in Hong Kong

We (me ans some colleagues) were in transit at Hong Kong airport for six hours on Sunday morning, and we decided to make bold use of the time to visit Hong Kong. The airport is very efficient and getting through customs and immigration was very quick. We left our carry-on luggage at the airport luggage storage, and saved some money by stuffing three laptops into one bag.

The train from the airport to Downtown takes only a half hour. From the train we could see steep green islands jutting out of the water, with pencil thin high-rises dotting the coast. I guess that is the signature look of Hong Kong. We landed in Downtown Hong Kong and the place was quite deserted on the Sunday morning. The first thing we noticed were the lines of young women marching along the streets, sitting on makeshift sheets on sidewalks, and just chatting in small groups. These women clearly did not live on the street, they were too well dressed for that and Hong Kong's laws are too strict to allow that. Thew were not hawkers either because they had no merchandise. All we could tell was they were not chinese, rather they looked south-east asian.

Finding no immediate answers to the mystery, we continued exploring downtown. There was hardly any restaurant open at 9am, and we ended up eating at a small cafe that was serving only breakfast menu. We ordered the exotic sounding "pasta with butterfly", but it just turned out to be bow-tie shaped pasta. Anyway, we ended up having a hearty breakfast for under $30 for four of us.

As we walked on, the hordes of mystery women became more abundant, occupying entire streaches of side-walks. One of us had to give in and ask them. They said they were expat workers (mostly maids) who had left their families behind for work, and were just enjoying a sunday morning picnic. So we learned that to have a picnic, you need no garden, no beach, no nature, just some friends, and a footpath in Asia's financial centre.