Hong Kong Work Trip

There certainly are worse places to travel for work.  I was pretty excited to travel to Hong Kong where we'd get to spend a few days working on the ship during the day and exploring Hong Kong in the evening.

There are some tall buildings in Hong Kong.  The building on the left is the International Commerce Centre and is the 4th tallest building in the world at 1,588 feet tall with 118 stories.

But, it doesn't stand out much since there are tall buildings everywhere.  I was told that Hong Kong is the most vertical city in the world.

Apparently, you need to do other things to make your building stand out.  Some of the architecture was incredible and the lighting at night was spectacular.  One really felt like you were in the movie Blade Runner... only cleaner and sunnier...

Along with the big and bright, there were the expected Hong Kong street signs.

Had to sample some of the local beer.  Not bad for being served in a plastic cup..

The night market.  Only open at night.  There were quite a few interesting things, but after a while, it all seems the same.

We were lucky that there was a beer and music festival going on that weekend.  Sampled a few more... plastic cups be damned...

One obviously needs to control the weeds growing on the wall.  Look what happens when you ignore them too long.

Found this cool store that sold funky modern art furniture and fixtures.  Too bad it would have been too difficult to transport this stuff home.

 I didn't get a picture of all the scaffolding erected around buildings undergoing maintenance.  For such a modern city, they use an awful lot of bamboo to build the scaffolding.  This van is full of the raw materials for a project.

I suppose I should have expected to see this on the ship.  But it was just a bit of a shock to see the Flag of China displayed next to the US Flag.  Diplomacy.

As we got underway, I toured around the ship.  It is quite different than when we work on the ship in the shipyard.  It's much more put-together and they have the planes on board.  A LOT of planes.  It was sometimes hard to get around because of all the planes.

Sadly, a sailor lost his life when he fell from the ship onto one of the barges servicing the ship.  Soon after we got underway, they transported his remains off the ship via an airplane.  They had a very nice ceremony for the transfer and rang him off with honors.  You can see more of that in the video.

I went back to watch the wake for a while.  They were doing some high power runs for evaluations, so  there was quite the churning mass of water behind the ship.  I was never out in the sun, but got a bit too much sun exposure from the reflected sunlight off the wake.  Snow and water are evil...!

Every so often, a supply ship would pull up along side to top off the carrier's jet fuel supply.  They'd shoot over cables and would then suspend hoses across to pump the fuel over.  They'd also rig ammunition and other supplies via the cables.  Most of the palleted food and supplies were carried over by helicopter.  I now know why they only serve eggs scrambled... You can see some of that in the video.

To make the room for moving all that food and other supplies around the hanger deck below, they "stacked" all the planes on the forward end of the flight deck.

It may seem that all I did was watch the cool stuff.  It's only because I can't take a picture of my work place.  Take my word for it, we worked very hard and deserved our little bit of entertainment of watching flight ops (operations).  The squadron leaders get to have their airplanes painted with decorations.  Here is the Diamondback leader...

Here, the Shadowhawks are in the foreground and I think it is the Mace's launching in the background.  Lots of action on the flight deck.

A Carrier Onboard Delivery (COD) flight coming in.  Notice how everyone is standing just outside of the red and white striped line.  That ensures that they are not injured by the arresting wire.  Most are there to ensure the wire is recoiled safely after the plane has landed.

A launch is a powerful thing.

A landing is a skillful one.

The team!