Vince and Fion's New Place

The first thing we did just before moving was to get some of the walls painted. Pure white was just too stark for us. We chose a neutral yellow for most of the flat, and a warm red on two walls for contrast. Eventually though, most of that red wall was covered by dark brown shelving for books and CDs.

We also had a small, two seat sofa made and a bureau for the television and audio-visual equipment. The cushions for the sofa took longer to arrive than the frame for some reason, even though all of it was custom made. That explains the temporary, mismatched pillows you see on the sofa.

It wasn't only the couch which had to be shortened. We didn't have enough width to the living space, so we had to reduce the size of the television bureau too, or else it was have made access to the balcony door too difficult.

We always intended to hang some artwork or calligraphy above the television set, but we never got around to it, and that wall was always somewhat bare looking.

You might also notice that we have mirror along the hallway wall. When you live in less than five hundred square feet, you have to do everything you can to get an illusion of space. Also, since we painted two walls red, we wanted to reflect a bit more light to help make up for the light absorbed by the darker coloured walls.

The final thing we did was convert from two tiny, tiny bedrooms into a single usable bedroom; the wall dividing the rooms used to be right between the two bookcases. In place of one of the original doors, we used glass panes, and where the other door used to be we just left it open. Again, this was to bring more light in and a greater feeling of openess. When you have so little space, the last thing you want to do is make it dark and cramped feeling.

Of course, what these pictures show is "just moved in" clutter. After we got settled in, the flat was much tidier...

These final two pictures don't really have anything to do with our Mongkok flat. As a matter of fact, I took them when we were living in Tinshuiwai; at that time the Wanchai convention centre was still under construction! These pictures are so old, there were taken with a film camera and then scanned in using a flatbed scanner.

I had always meant to include a few pictures of Hong Kong in the Scrapbook entry for our old home but I never got around to it. I'll include them here even though the skyline is different now. If our building had existed ten years ago we might actually have seen these views, but there are taller buildings that block it out now.

And this final picture is a view of Hong Kong Island's south side from the Ocean Park cable car. I wonder why Ocean Park never really took off in the say that, say, Sentosa in Singapore did? Underinvestment maybe? Anyway, now that Hong Kong has a mini-Disney, I wonder if that will help them out. People could come and hit both amusement parks (and maybe the casinos in Macau) on the same trip.

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