Intense!

I returned from a trip to Hong Kong a week or so ago, and naturally people asked me how it was.

My answer: Intense!

I went to Hong Kong to do workshops on The Art of Balance and Cultivating Creativity with participants in the 2018 Asia Yoga Conference. I came back with vivid mental – and literal – snapshots of this fascinating city. And I also now have sense of family connection with the amazing collection of people that the yoga conference organizers have created.

This post is a brief excursion to that place and some of the people I encountered there.

With my next post, I’ll be back to business as usual, hopefully with a first installment of a new book inspired by the response to one of the workshops I did in Hong Kong. I’m tentatively calling it Cultivating Creativity: A User’s Manual for Liberating Your Imagination from the Bondage of the Mundane.

First, a few shots to show how the conference used my Flower Mandalas.

Now, a bit of Hong Kong.

It was raining and hot every day I was in Hong Kong except for the last one, but I still managed to see a few things and to take 512 photos.

I was immediately struck by the architecture, and especially by the patterns incorporated into the buildings and their reflections of and in adjacent buildings.

Then there were the street scenes from the ubiquitous foot bridges that pedestrians use to cross the street and stay out of the rain (and smoke cigarettes, hand out pamphlets, etc.). And the skyline scenes in the harbor separating Hong Kong from Kowloon:

When I lived in New York City long ago, I was tuned into people shots. I’ve gotten away from street photography, but a bit of that way of seeing started to return in Hong Kong.

On my last day in Hong Kong, the sky cleared and I took the cable car up to the Big Buddha near Lantau Island. I’ll end this brief tour of Hong Kong with some images from that trip.

At the end of The Terminator movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger famously intones, “I’ll be back.” I understand the sentiment. Now that I finally have a toe in the waters of Asia, I’ll be back!

– David

Merch
Flower Mandalas “Merch” Page

Books
The Art of Balance: Staying Sane in an Insane World on Amazon.com
The Art of Balance Cheat Sheet (free eBook)
The Art of Balance Meditation Cheat Sheet (new!)
The Art of Balance Addictions Cheat Sheet (new!)
Paths to Wholeness: Fifty-Two Flower Mandalas
52 (more) Flower Mandalas: An Adult Coloring Book for Inspiration and Stress Relief
52 Flower Mandalas: An Adult Coloring Book for Inspiration and Stress Relief
Paths to Wholeness: Selections
 (free eBook)

Copyright 2018, David J. Bookbinder
http://www.phototransformations.com
http://www.transformationspress.org
http://www.davidbookbinder.com
http://www.flowermandalas.org

14 thoughts on “
Intense!

  1. Hi David, How are you? I know that jet lag is an experience in it’s self. I was wondering how your trip was ; and I am happy for your experience. Thank you for sharing your wonderful photos. I love all the textures and reflections in their cube like architecture. Your amazing lobby photo is fluid in motion and the floor is so shiny that it looks like it’s hovering over another level. I truly enjoyed all your photos. The landscapes were great and your people shots were very expressive. Most important for me to mention is how beautiful your mandala looked and how it’s displays were exceptional. Best wishes. Diane

  2. wow, you’ve captured Hong Kong & its people beautifully! I am also glad you managed to find your way to the big Buddha. I just started reading your book, the art of balance. Thank you again for the workshop, it was eye opening!

    1. Hi, Becky. Thanks! I wondered how people who live in Hong Kong would view my tourist-eye view, so I’m glad this worked. I’ll be interested in what you think of the book. And hope to make my way back to Hong Kong relatively soon!

  3. Wonderful photographs, but that’s no surprise! What a gift this trip was for you–and your students. The Mandalas are stunning. I hope you’ve managed to catch up on your sleep by now.

    1. Thanks, Davida. Surprisingly, I’m still jet-lagged! My body wants to stay up late and get up early, not exactly a winning formula. But I’m getting there, and the jet lag was a small price to pay for the experience.

  4. Extraordinary photos of people, architecture, your mandalas enlarged and resonating in another dimension, the sense of a city like nothing I have ever seen. Connecting with depth and meaning in the space of a week surely a profound and life-changing experience. I use this phrase maybe too much—the stars were aligned—but there is something about this that is transcendent.

    1. I don’t know about the stars, which seem vast and indifferent to the fate of mortals, but it was a fortuitous event, and I do think it will ripple into the future in interesting ways.

  5. Great glimpses of HongKong, dude!

    Nice travelogue/overview. I liked the people shots. Some of them, I think, really caught the person in a pose that revealed who they are, i.e. the guy taking a selfie, concentrating so hard with his tongue between his teeth.

    I doubt you could bring any of those mandala displays home, but that would’ve been incredible.

    Good work, as always, from Bookethbindermeisterburger.

  6. Intense is right. The mandala is beautiful in all its settings. Meanwhile, the Hong Kong scene is really beyond my comprehension, some kind of postmodern combination of a miracle and a nightmare. I have always been able to find some place, circle of people I could feel comfortable in. This, at least from where I sit in my 86th year, looks like the essence of anomie.

    1. Perhaps because I started to make friends there rather quickly, Hong Kong turns out to be one of the few places on the planet where I seem to have encountered a lot of kindred spirits in a short time. The heat and humidity and level of activity were all … intense … but there were also many islands of calm.

  7. Hi Dr Bookbinder.Lorna here.
    Ty for sharing your wonderful adventure and the photos are amazing!
    Congratulations.

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