12 Days in Hong Kong

Mike was invited to present at the Synthetic Biology 4.0 conference held at the Hong Kong University of Science at Technology earlier this month, so we went a bit early and traveled around the impressive metropolis for a week.


Hong Kong was a fascinating experience for the senses, and very easy for the non-Cantonese speaking Western visitor. HK was a British colony fom 1860-1997, so many things (including signs, menus and public transport announcements) are in both Cantonese and English.

A short list of favorites from the trip:
- Attending Diana Krall's first concert on her China 2008 tour
- High tea at the Peninsula Hotel
- Nighttime view of the harbor... from our hotel room!
- 25-minute dramatic gondola ride up to the Buddha on Lantau
- Riding the funicular up to the Peak
- Shopping shopping shopping
- Dim sum at Maxim's in City Hall
- Walking through markets and the Graham wholesale district
- Hiking on Lamma followed by a very fishy lunch (yum!)

The DNA Age

Here is a NY Times article describing the Personal Genome Project. My boss, George Church, is the project leader and a subject.

Wrap it up.

Skipping rocks at the park

This is the last set of Spain images, and good thing... we have pictures from a wedding, Chicago, and Hong Kong coming down the pipeline.

This little set is from the last 3 days of our trip, which we spent in Madrid hosted by my cousin Katie, her husband (and awesome cook!) Javi, and fab kids Fiona and Ivan. Mike and I had just moved to Copenhagen when Katie and Javi were married in 2004, so we were able to hop down to Madrid for the festivities. This was our first (and long overdue) visit since then.

We did a little sightseeing in Madrid, but the focus was on spending time with the Perez-Hill family. (A second visit to a city is always nice as things like the transportation systems seem familiar, and a feeling of needing-to-see-it-all is not as pressing.)

My cousin rocks... we're going on 25 years of cracking each other up...