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S t e r e o t y p e W h a t s a p p Johnnys Trai l Ride to Heaven (For Beginners)

M e e t S o i z i c Zero Carbon Bui lding - A Modern Model to be Green

Goodbye, My LovelyFix MeTo a Fr iend Whom I Havent Seen for Long

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The Land of the Free: Beyond Our TV Screens

D a f t P u n kZ o m b i e F a n a t i c - W a r m B o d i e sPulp Fic t ion : Im Gonna Get Medieval on Your Ass Head! Phil ip K Dick : A Wri ter and Thinker Beyond Borders

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Do you know what is the best thing that God has ever created? Johnnys solemn voice echoed in the washroom. This question was the beginning of the whole thing. By now, I was sitting on the lid of a stool inside a huge changing room. A small bead of sweat glided down my cheek, and dropped onto the package in my hands. I tried to ignore the itchy feeling as I was recollecting every shades of colors of that buried memory. The meditation had already become a necessary preparation for the following ride. There was always a moment of peace whenever a storm was approaching, so that everyone would be shocked to the spine when the real horror came. God did this setting, so as I.

The idleness of that summer afternoon was overwhelming. While I was pushing my way out through a swarm of classmates for lunch, Johnny approached to me and said he would bring me to a very special place, a place that could change your life forever, as he said. This sudden invitation aroused my immediate interest. For him, giving people surprises was as easy as breathing. I let him lead the way, while imagining all sort of se-crets my only companion in high school was going to show me. On the way, none of us talked, we came to a public toilet beside the local library.Then the question struck in (its) the way, a ques-tion about God. One unrelated concept jumped into my mind: All kinds of philosophical thoughts camp up in toilets. Why, human intelligence? Our ability to love? Or the immense pleasure brought by sex? Still, I tried to answer him. None of the above, my dear friend. These are only some very trivial things that most of the or-dinary people would take proud of. How much val-ue could they be* if they are basic possessions of everyone?? I stared at Johnnys sneering face. Under nor-mal circumstances, it was a smile of a rebellious high school boy that most parents would hate; but for now, I could see something more evil hidden beneath his slightly uplifted eyes, something that represented a kind of despise against all human beings. From a distance there was the continu-ous humming of a ventilation fan, and occasional flushes of water from the row of urinals. This place was strangely quiet. Why wasnt anyone using this toilet? Too clean and too odorless. It looked so clean and far from smelly. After a minute of silence, Johnnys voice jumped into the air. Let me introduce you to Mary Jane, the most provocative lady of the world. What? Jane? The face of a girl in my class formed in my mind. Actually, she has many other names: Canna-bis, Marijuana, Dope, Grass, Bud, Pot, Herb, and

Weed. But my personal favorite is still Mary Jane. Hey, isnt her name beautiful? Being totally speechless, I could not look away from his eyes.

*** Well, now it was time. I opened the package. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, once exposed under the dim toilet light, its shinny title immediately emphasized the identity of the book. If an ordinary person took hold of this hard-cover book, he would be surprised by the lack of weight of it, no one could ever imagine the content that was stored in it. Dont you expect to receive a plastic bag with Mary Jane packed in it, even an idiot will know what it is. In order to ship to every single nook of the world, they would put it in a Shakespeare book. No one would take suspicion of the great ol Shakespeare right? Depending on the amount of the order, all sizes and all kinds of literature would come in handy. Thats the way clever people doing real business As I tore off the books plastic wrapping, John-nys voice rose up again, like there was a recorder in my head. The inside of the book was just a stack of papers with a large rectangular hole crafted out at the middle of it, containing weeds. I took out the glass pipe from the bag, examining it with care. People smoking Mary Jane dont use those thin, classy pipes shown in films. We use glass pipe made out of hand blown glass, its thick and short, and easy to get, like a damn dildo. Just one shot can send you to heaven. Every glass pipe looked similar, and within a hands length. Mine had a cylindrical body shape, with the end curved up to be the chamber, a place where the weeds are placed and burned. There was a little hole on the sides of the glass chamber, one for smoking the goodies.. Johnny said he could judge a pipe by its look. Usually those with more color and fancy artworks within the glass, the quality would be lower in terms of the smoking experience. But ,after all, the major difference is depends on the quality of the weed, so I did not care much. My pipe was quite the stylish type, with intertwined blue and black ribbon spiraling up the cylindrical body, that merged and faded into a deep purple haze at the chamber. I really thought Johnny had passed me a dildo when I first saw it, he said he ordered it from the dark web, which had trusted quality and guaranteed by long term smokers. But it was still not as good as his own pipe, which he bought at a local underground market by person, though he had never shown it to me. I closed the lid of the stool and knelt down be-fore it, slowly tearing off the plastic bag of weeds

along the cutting edge. The wild fragrant slipped into my nostrils, and all of my senses were sharp-ened at once with an ecstatic shiver. Nobody could exactly describe the odor of weedsthat smelled like skunks with an oily textureyet nobody could forget it. I carefully took out a green bud and placed it inside the chamber, and tore out a corner of a page from the book to sweep all of the residue on the lid into the pipe. Unlike tobacco, you could not easily get these thingsthere was no room for wasting. I packed all my things and put them aside, and set the bud burning with a lighter, glaring at the al-luring flame as the bud burned and crumbled. The white smoke started to clog within the cylinder. Remember to block the air hole at the side of the chamber with the tip of your finger when you breathe the fume, or else you would end up chok-ing yourself with a large dose of air. After that, open the hole so that the air could be sucked back for burning. Yeah, thats the spot, now take it slowly I kissed the mouth of the pipe and took a very, very deep breath, filling every inch of my lung with smoke. Mary is the mother of Jesus, and Jane means the kindness of God. Hey, isnt her name just beauti-ful? Johnny giggled, so did I.

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I dont intend to hurt your feeling, but I dont think colored cons really suit you. The girl said. I have told you, I am not wearing any cons to-day. Then why are your eyes green? I dont know either, my eyes were like this when I woke up after I got stoned. I swallowed the words back. This is not a right time to get angry, at least not with this girl. If you didnt phoned me at the wrong time I wont be like this, it was you who dragged me directly down from heaven. Damn it, shut up. Still, I think you looked the best when you dress like the way you used to I mean with brown eyes, but not this edgy color. Without receiving any reply, she added a remark, trying to sound as casual as it could be with a smile. It was Jane, one of the rare classmates who was caring enough to talk to me. As a classmate, es-pecially a girl, the frequency she called me out was a bit high, I must admit, since we were total strangers not until half a year ago, when our high school lives started. This may be because she was the kind of person who was born activeno mat-ter what place it was, the air would become vibrant whenever Jane is present. She was also the only one who could merge into every circle in the class. If there was a meter called friendliness, Jane and I

JOHNNYS TRIAL RIDE TO HEAVEN(FOR BEGINNERS)By Jacky Ng

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must be at the two extreme endings. The reason I am here is just because you want me to help you picking up a video game for your little brother? I tried to confirm once more. Right, for his birthday. You know I am not very good at video games. It seemed like I was not affected by hallucination, it proved again this girls beside me once again proved that she always manage to have out-of-no-where-reasons to ask me out. I see. Come on! I can read your mind now, you are thinking I am annoying right? Nope, I just think you are funny. Where would you usually go during lunch? She lowered her voice. Nowhere special, I felt my bag got a little heav-ier. Just hanging around or chilling out at the li-braryI dont like hot days. I am just asking, because sometimes you looked so different in the afternoon classes, like you have just achieved something significant. Sometimes I would be like that after I had read a great book. Examining my face, Janes eye narrowed. Then she patted my shoulder. You really like to read books, dont you? But still, you should try to join the other boys, just to see whats going on in the class, and mingle a bit with them. No, never. I dont want to have lunch with a bunch of idiots who only know how to shake that stupid toy. I laughed with distaste. There was a craze of playing Tamagotchi among the boys in my class. You have to shake the elec-tronic device continuously to raise the pet and made it went about its business. Oh, we girls also think it is a bit childish, but the boys insisted it is a nostalgic product of a cartoon that they all watched when they were kids. Though I think I could never understand it. However, look-ing (at) them doing all sort of brainless things is kinda funny. Having non-productive hobbies is just a waste of your life, Jonnys words popped up in my head. Seriously, they are just extensions of immaturity some people can never get rid of. Watching TV is the most common one. People sit for hours in front of the TV, letting all sorts of rubbish flow in and out of their heads. At the end, our ability of logical judgment, so as our creativity, would decrease. If the world was really created by God, then he must be a man who never watched TV. With weeds you just dont need TV. Jane replied with a forced smile, saying nothing. Sorry. I talk too much. I turned my head away and hid my face. Never mind, I was just surprised that you are so different from the others. For a moment I could feel Jane was peeking at

my face. When I turned to her, a gust of wind sud-denly blew from behind, twirling her short hair and making it danced on her face. After she man-aged her hair, her expression that I just missed was gone, replaced by her normal cheerful face that had countless ideas waving and shimmering in those eyes.

As we moved on I glanced around. The street today looked a bit different, but I could not tell exactly what it was. I spotted my reflection on one of the stand-up mirrors of a clothing store, and was stunned once more that my eyes were stained green. It was not a transparent emerald color, but two marks of dark forest green. Johnny never told me our eyes would be like this after smoking weed, (.) (In) in fact, he did not tell me ANY side effects of it. On the very first time he had already said concretely that smoking weed will not bring harms to anyones way, the possibility of getting addicted was as low as 10%--one out of ten smok-ers. Trust me, you and I would never be the cho-sen one. Johnny said. Hey, what are you staring at? It is a womens apparel. Jane asked, she was peeking behind my back. Oh, nothing, I was just imagining you wear that one-piece dress there, the light grey one. I pointed at the dress and glimpsed at the short blue jeans that she was wearing. Which one? Jane rushed towards the display window. That one with a big fluffy bow tie on the chest. UmmmI can see the dress, but it is light green. Jane murmured. What? It was grey. A beam of golden sunlight slanted through the window, studding the dress with glistening beads. Perhaps from Janes position the sunlight cause less distraction, so she could see the dresss green color, what I could see was just a shade of grey color, faded under sunlight. Suddenly, a wave of impulse shot through my body and my brain warmed up quickly, abruptly I grabbed Janes bare arm. Lets go, its getting late. Jane turned her eyes to me, her mouth was half opened with astonishment. Feeling the trace of urge in my tone, she stuttered. Alalright, I thought we were going in to try on the dress.Her eyes darted swiftly to her arm and looked at me), like a scared kitten. Not until then I did not realize that I was still seizing her arm, and I could feel her tightened muscle was pressing against my palm. II am sorry. Letting go of her, I started to walk ahead without waiting her. Jane hesitantly caught up beside me, hands squeezing the strap of her bag. With her head down, I could not see her face.

It could not be wrong; the sense of mismatch of the real worlds color triggered my urge to smoke weed and got stoned again. It wasnt a suppress-ible feeling, I felt my chest was being grinded by something that was growing heavier with every passing minute, like the feeling you have when you saw your birthday present in a distance of reach of hands but you were forbidden to open it like the feeling you have when your birthday present is at arms length but youre forbidden to open it. Right now I just wanted to destroy all the visible objects around me, crushing, twisting their contour, and mixing them with all sorts of mismatched colors. One fell over the other, I want the world crumbled in my head. Yes, weed could do so; God could do so, God was living in my head. Do you know what is the best thing that God has ever created? It was the ability to introduce God into my body, to gain the power of revolving the world within my palmsthat was, the ability to get stoned. There was a traffic light nearby, with just a glance the green or red light was wiped out. The next thing to mob out was the girl besides me Watch OUT! I reached out both of my arms to Jane as she screamed near my ear, there was someones name in it, maybe that was mine, but I could not remem-ber my name anymore. Now she was in my clasp, shoulder pressed against my chest, if I crush harder she would instantly The world stopped revolved revolving, in no more than the flash of an instant. The gravity vanished, as I was hit and thrown outward from the ground. Everything was in slow motion, as I rose I could feel the gentle touch of breeze soothing my scalp. The surrounding dissolved to a rippling blur, and the light was shattered everywhere like broken glasses. As the world crumbled, everything was so beautiful. Among the ruins were some black threads dancing before my eyes, beneath it wasOh, it was the last thing that remained intact. A girls face, maybe. It was so radiant and powerful, like the sun in the sky; yet it was so gentle and soft, like the tide calming the sand in the deepest and most tranquil night. All the sound came back as I smashed on the in-verted world, with the girl still in my clutch. With-in the low booming in my ear there was a little trickling sound that I had heard before, and was very familiar with: It was the sound of something when it was shaken in ones hand, but this was the furthest I could recognize. Anyway, the long lost time was trickling back with it. I opened my eyes, before me there was a tiny sprout, squeezing its way out through the slit crack on the ground. Its only two leaves opened stretching towards the sky, as if it was waiting for something important to come. But what shook my heart was its dazzling greenery, a color that was as green and fresh as the world could ever withhold.

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Before Soizic and Elodie created La madeleine de Proust, they noticed that only a few French bakeries could be found in Hong Kong, although French restaurants were already quite popular here. There were no candies or cookies from France. We know them because we grew up in French families. So we go: lets try to see if Hong-

kongese like them.We made a big market re-search to see who the com-petitors were. And we were the only one (in Hong Kong) importing French candies and cookies, says Soizic. We realized that there was a possibility to do this, so we studied the market, contacted some artisans (craftsmen), and tried many different

products.Soizic and Elodie spent 6 months traveling in France to visit artisans and taste recipes. When we told them (the artisans) we wanted to import the products to Hong Kong, they didnt even know where Hong Kong was. It was very far for them and we had to convince them. That was hard work.

S e l l i n g F r e n c h C a n d y

Coucougnett the kings balls Soizic: Coucougnett is a cute word in French for men balls.

You know what men balls are?Editor: You mean testicles?

Soizic: Yes, testicles. In French, we use this word to speak with children, so its not rude or vulgar. It was the favourite candy

of the king Henry IV. He had a reputation for having many mistresses and children (54 mistresses and 24 children),

and strong sexual power. So this was made in homage to him. The coucougnettes is a very sophisticated candy

made of almond, chocolate, raspberry, a little of gin-ger, a little bit of alcohol French brandy (Armag-nac) and vodka.

used to eat it all the time when I was a child.

A lot of the products have flowers as ingredients: the coquelicot, which is made of red poppy, and the pra-line rose, which speaks for itself. France is famous for perfume because French have the tradition to grow flowers. 300 years ago, a queen lived in Provence, a region in France that was spe-cialized in leather. The smell was really awful when you create something with leather. So the queen said, okay, we keep this industry because were good in that, but we grow some flowers all around to cover the smell. Thats how we started to grow flowers. Thats why youre gonna find many products with flowers. We have lavender, red poppy, jasmine (although it comes from Asia), violet and rose.

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Speaking of French food, everybody in Hong Kong knows about the baguette (the long French bread), the cheese, the ham, the foie gras (duck liver), but nobody knows about candies. But we have a very big heritage. For example, the Sabl, a butter cookie; Sabl means sand; when you eat it, it becomes like sand. Its from the 16th century. Its very old. And the Calisson is from the 15th century; its something very traditional. Soizic also shows us candies that have stories to tell:

Etoile a la cannelle also known as the Zimsterne

Soizic: Etoile la cannelle means cinnamon star. Its a tradi-tional cookie made during Christmas in Alsace, which is at the border of Germany. French and Germans were always fighting for that region. So the region had culture from both Germany and France. (Germans call the cinnamon stars Zimsterne) The cookie is made of cinnamon and Almond, and is very tradition-al. Every family cooks it during Christmas. So what do you

think of this one?Editor: I think this one is good, but I like the Cou-

cougnett better.Soizic: Ahh, because youre a man.

Nougat the Chirstmas dessertSoizic: The nougat is one of the desserts we have in Christmas in Provence. There are all together 13 des-serts in Christmas (to represent the Christ and the 12 apostles). The nougat is made of almond, pistachios and sugar. Its a very complicated recipe and takes a lot of time to make.

Calisson the queens smile (and Soizics personal favourite!)

Soizic: Calisson is an old word in French to say clin, which means hug. Its so called because of a story: One day, the king was going to marry a lady called Jeanne de Laval. She was quite young but had a reputation for always being in a bad mood. The king asked the cook to prepare something special for the wedding, which was in the South east of France. So the cook took the main ingredients he could find in the region: melon, almond and orange, and created this soft candy. It was offered

in the wedding and the legend has it that when the queen ate it, she smiled for the first time of her life. Its my favour-

ite! I love it!Editor: Is it the taste or the legend that you like?

Soizic: Its the taste. I grew up with this candy. I

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T h e y H a v e t o T r y !

Soizic thinks Hong Kong people prefer what is cute. The physical aspect is important, but I think one of the reasons is that they dont know the product. So if it doesnt look very cute, very beautiful, very colorful, they wont try. So thats also something quite hard for us, says Soizic. Soizic does pick the good looking products in the process of selection, but she always leaves the recipes untouched. She plans on adding a sugar-free hard candy, but she wants nothing changed except the sugar replaced. And thats her bottom line when it comes to the traditions. Thats the only thing we do. We really wanna keep the real recipies. We dont wanna transform. We also want Hongkongese to discover new things. We dont adopt the recipes. Some of them, we just sell. And they have to try because its very traditional. Its a strong word, but we have to educate the customers.

S o p h i s t i c a t e d C a n d i e s

The products are all made by artisans in different regions of France and then imported to Hong Kong. Soizic sees the possibility of moving the production site from France when the business gets bigger, but substituting for the artisans would be hard. Its difficult you have somebody who can do all these different things, people who have all these recipes and have all the equipment, says Soizic.French candies and cookies would be very difficult for amateurs to make. Asked whether any French candies could be DIY at home, Soizic suggests maybe the hard candy. Mix the liquid with sugar, then let it cool and play with the texture of the paste, and thats the farthest we can get. After that, impossible. Very sophisticated candy.Asked how French candies are unique, Soizic gives an honest reply. Everything is unique anyway. But because of the history, France has a very big heritage. French people created many things candies and cookies. So if you go to the States or England, you dont have as many things.Still, good ingredients can set a product apart from the rest. Taking butter for an example, the best butter is in France, because of the cow. In France, the butter comes from Norman-dy, the best area to have the cows. The cows also make different milk, depending on the temperature of the season and on whether the cows eat grass or seeds. The butter made in summer and that made in winter thus differ. As La Madeleine de Proust chooses the premi-um artisans, the ingredients they use are mostly locally-made. The ingredients are traceable and the quality can thus be ensured.

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Soizic grew up in Paris, a special region where you have a lot of things from different regions, so she got to taste a large variety of candies. But since the recipes are complicated and the candies are hard to make, for people living in the rest of the the regions, youre gonna eat all the time this kind or cookies, but you really dont know the other ones except if you go to another region for holiday or to visit your relatives. In France, the choice of candies and cookies are very regional, so the idea of La Madeleine de Proust is to gather all these specialties in one shop. And thats why the hot air balloon is chosen as the symbol.The hot air balloon was created by the two French brothers in the late 18th century and reminds people of transportation in France. The hot air balloon travels all around France to look for the best candies and cookies. Hot air balloons travel slowly, what Soizic and Elodie try to say with the balloon is to take a break, take your time, discov-er all our products, savor them, then go back to your crazy life. But just take it slow.

I n t h e F u t u r e

At this moment, La Madeleine de Proust distrib-utes its products in pop-up stores only. The next step for Soizic and Elodie is to have a permanent shop in the Coming Christmas, but they are still unsure about it. They also hope to have branches. Were speaking with some investors, about going to Singapore, to Seoul, to China, or different cities in Asia.

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A carbon-free oasis in this city at East Kowloon showcases how ar-chitecture could be environmentally friendly in a civil-ized way. This

oasis, called the Zero Carbon Building (ZCB), provides a model platform which exhibits a perfect combination of uses of the state-of-the-art green technologies. Struc-tures and environment are designed in a rather ideal manner. The proj-ect of constructing this area aims at bringing green messages to the public and expanding publics green knowledge.

C I T Y u G r e e n M e d i a / HO Dennis - YING Ching Yiu - CHAN Ka Yan

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A one minute walk from the MegaBox lets one enter this oasis, wherein a 2-storey carbon-free building stands and the first native woodland in Hong Kong thrives. ZCB, in a general aspect, refers to the entire area including the woodland, or even the entire project; but in a more specific way, it is in-terpreted as that carbon-free building next to the woodland. According to the Construction Industry Council (CIC), a government body under which ZBC runs, a zero carbon building refers to a build-ing which makes zero net energy con-sumption on an annual basis (as seasons alter the pattern of energy consump-tion), suggestively by utilizing renew-able energy and recycling waste. Tony Chiu, the director of the design team of ZBC, said, The idea came after several places exhibitions around the world of green buildings to display technologies and raise community awareness of the is-sues importance.

Hong Kong has been accused of being too slow to react to the latest global green situations and solutions. Such a metropolis, with such a high level of energy consump-tion that the world would need more than 2 planets resources annually if everyone on earth consumed ener-gy in the way that Hong Kong peo-ple do, has barely been conscious of how severe the situation is, he added, Companies or any parties are welcome to book the venue in ZBC to show their latest products.

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/03ZCB implements different types of sys-tems for ventilation and cooling. Cross-ventilated layout of the interior is a common strategy, by which air finds its natural path from one side of the room to the other side, to counter high humid-ity and refresh the air. Wind catchers help facilitate ventilation, by literal-ly catching flowing fresh air into the interior with the help of a specifically designed opening on the outside; and they also cool the room down in summer. Light shelves are installed at a very precise angle to bounce solar energy back to the sky. Local modern architecture, for in-stance, in the Science Park, the West Kow-loon Cultural District, and the Kai Tak Cruise Terminal, though some may not be up and running yet, have been using or have planned to use these advanced technolo-gies comprehensively, claimed Tony.

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Natural lighting systems are crucial to save energy. Light pipes, for instance, are highly reflective tubes which bring in scattered sunlight and make it concentrated, replacing elec-trical lights during daytime. Glass walls and windows occupy a large proportion of ZCBs surface area to have more natural light in during daytime but this could have raised the tem-perature inside. To tackle the problem of heating by sunlight, double layers of glasses are used, with vacuum in between as an insulator; and heat shielding shade on the windows give limitations on the range of fre-quency of light able to penetrate the glasses, more explicitly, by allowing visible light but not UV into the building, keeping the room cool in summer but at the same time preventing heat loss from the room in winter.

Apart from utilizing sustainable resources, employing the most efficient way to operate electrical installments when consuming artificial energy also reduces the emission of car-bon. LED lights and intelligent lighting are commonplace in well-developed commercial buildings in the territory. Fans of high volume rotating in a relatively low speed, making energy use more efficient, are widely used at schools. What at ZCB sounds more unusual to Hong Kong people is the cooling system. That water is flowing on the roof already generates a moderate cooling effect. Dehumidification, a separate process at ZBC which is different from the usual combined systems of both de-humidification and cooling, lowers the heat capacity of the air inside and provides an optimal condition for air-conditioning systems to perform efficiently. Cool and dry air is supplied from the floor. Only the middle and the bottom parts of the room are cooled, leaving the upper part near the ceiling warm.

Self-generating energy is promoted for the sake of re-ducing the consumption of non-renewable energy and nuclear energy which are the main electric resourc-es in Hong Kong and even worldwide. Self-generating energy at ZCB includes absorbing sunlight by panels which almost cover the entire roof with a total area 1015 m2. We have got a tilted roof because a slope, adjusted to suit Hong Kongs latitude, makes a better angle for absorbing solar energy, Tony explained, With such a large area of panels, the energy gener-

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Z ated could make up more than one-third of the buildings use of energy. Burning biofuels, which comprise of leftovers, domestic waste, and waste cooking oil, serves as waste recy-cling and energy generation. Its an exist-ing alternative way to dispose bio-waste and its much cleaner than burning fossil fuels. There are currently 3 companies in the terri-tory which collect bio-waste but how many peo-ple have ever heard of it? Tony questioned.

Hong Kong needs local species of plants, Tony suggested, A greater diversity of spe-cies is better for the local eco-system. The native woodland next to the building contains trees of over 40 different native species and takes up a large portion of the whole ZBC site area.

Yes, the green systems sound perfect and one could ask why constructors do not ap-ply all of the above. ZBC is a model, somehow barely a very much ideal one, as there are always limitations when it comes to applica-tion. The ventilation at ZBC requires a de-sirable location. It is specifically designed for a building near the sea receiving on-shore winds which function a lot in the mechanism of wind captures. The large woodland making ZBC an open area, which the building is hard-ly blocked by anything, is also crucial to light pipes, wind captures and solar panels. And these systems significantly occupy a high percentage of ZBCs energy use because what they have to support is merely the 2-storey house. Skyscrapers consume way much more en-ergy. The surface area of a skyscraper, which indicates how much energy from outside can enter it, and the volume of it, which roughly indicates how much energy it needs, do not produce a comparable ratio. It cannot rely on self-generating energy. Besides, an overcast day could substantially affect the intensity of natural light.

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BTaking into consideration the actual environ-ment in Hong Kong, where places are crowded and buildings have to be tall and densely packed, are the above technologies just a brilliant show which draws attention and earnings from booking? Of course, not every building could go with all green systems, said Tony. This is somewhat like a museum, focusing on messages delivery rather than selling products. And if people find an idea too ideal and keep it just an idea, nothing is gonna come true. After any technology, its all about the culture. If everyone accepts a less formal dress code at workplace, they wear more loosely and dont need the air-conditioning to be that strong. If more people look for a green property, contractors would internalize compatible green ideas into their latest design. ZBC is to show everyone our belief and attitude.

Those complicated advanced technologies will hardly stay in mind for long. But thats true: belief and attitude. After forgetting the detailed mechanisms in a couple of minutes, will you still remember, in daily life and on your own, to take the very first tiny step?

Address

G/F, ZCB, No. 8 Sheung Yuet

Road, Kowloon Bay, Kowloon

Contact

2100 9800

Email

zcb@hkcic.org

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The forest smelt like beginnings and ends. Thats what the young man thought of when he walked through the shades of trees, deep in the wood, like a pale ghost.

Dripping with the scent of rotten wood mixed with fresh meadow, the air was carrying the last words and wishes, both from the dying as well as the living. In an ear-shat-tering silence, the young man knew he was not alone. Someone had been, or was here. Dotted here and there, lots of tiny unrelated things was scattered randomly on his way: an empty wine bottle with abstract label he ac-cidentally kicked upon; dusty teddy bear drowning in a shallow puddle; an old college T-shirt with hardly recog-nizable print hanging on a trunk, and a dozen more. Part-ly because of them, he wasnt scared when he saw a pair of giant yellow eyes staring at him, deep in the wood, like burning embers. He knew thats where he was heading. Thats the right way. The only way. With each laborious breath, the man got further and further into the labyrinth of crooked shadows, towards where the wind went and the unblinking yellow eyes.

***

Glaring at the red traffic light, Ross replayed the conver-sation he had with his wife in his head before he slammed his houses door and walked away. Do you remember the day we took this picture? The day at the beach.

Ummm Not really. But I guess it is not easy to find such a lovely beach anymore. Look at the sand; its as white as snow. Untainted. Like something young, fresh and new.

How could you not remember, Lily? As we are not get-ting any younger, lets get marry. Thats your reply. Thats what you told me at the beach after I gave you the bad news I got fired after spending six years at that dead end job. Lets get marry and we did, two weeks later at that church behind your old home. On 29th June 1981. A sun-ny Monday. Still remember what you said after I slipped the ring into your finger? At that time, you just squeezed my hand and whispered from now on, your wish is my command; your happiness is my happiness we said that a lot back then. Its the everything-is-alright catch phrase. Our catch phrase. Dont tell me

Honestly, I dont know. But thats a very nice thing to say. She must be a charming woman. Its getting late, I want to

Wait. Did you see the picture over here? The one with Good

bye,

my l

ovely

by Alex Ling