This is what it's been looking like for the past few weeks:
The fog can look romantic, particularly up into the mountains. But it's also brought a new nuisance to the neighborhood: foghorns. The ships in the harbor are now adding their incredibly loud, long blasts to the morning jackhammers and traffic noise. It's taken me a while to get used to this new sound in my environment.At least one group of people is welcoming the fog: smugglers. The newspaper had an article about how the customs folks are rather busy these days, patrolling the waters for suspicious boats. In one instance, they caught a fishing boat with thousands of pirated CDs and DVDs hidden behind false walls, on its way to the mainland.
This foggy season has also kicked off what I anticipate to be a long, hard war against humidity. I've learned that humidity is a real problem here because it encourages mold and mildew to spring up on anything overnight, and once it settles in, it's almost impossible to get rid of. It's not just the bathrooms that are vulnerable: your clothes, particularly leather goods, can also be ruined when they sit around in a damp wardrobe.
So these days, if you walk into any electronics or appliances store in Hong Kong, you'll see big displays of dehumidifiers. This one is relatively small, but you get the idea:
Andy and I bought one earlier this month, one of the largest they had in the store. This beauty has a bunch of electronic controls and holds five liters of water in the tank:
You would think that it takes quite a while to extract five liters of moisture out of the air in our flat, but we are amazed to find ourselves emptying it out at least twice a day. Alas, our air conditioners don't seem to be helping the dehumidifier very much.I am pretty sure we will be getting another one as the summer comes on and the humidity only gets worse. I don't know if we'll be able to find a bigger one. At any rate, we'll need to budget for it -- these things are not cheap. This one cost US$350. On sale!
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