School Trip To Hong Kong Flower Show In Victoria Park

As a kind of culmination of their learning about plant growth, the K2s at Rockstar’s Kindy attend the annual Hong Kong Flower Show held in Victoria Park in the Causeway Bay area… Last year I vaguely remember reading about it in the school weekly update emails too, and wondering what it was all about…. And it turns out to be decidedly bigger than I’d expected.

Unfortunately the day is also hotter and sunnier than expected – and crowded – or we would’ve stayed beyond the school trip hours, because there really is quite a lot to see and Rockstar was taking pictures on his iPod and everything. (We would look around later and realize that lots of schoolmates had disappeared – and learn that at least some of them had sought refuge in the air-conditioned comfort of the nearby public library where they could also finish off their Flower Show Booklets… I was all Darn! Why didn’t we think of that??)

Instead, this is Rockstar at the end of the day, scrawling some of his most horrific writing ever (well his lower case writing anyway still needs work) on sofa. No readers, his writing is not in pic - at right is MY horrific writing because that's the bit parents are supposed to fill out after talking to their kids about the day

As usual, we’re handed a school activity booklet with pictures of some of the exhibits to find within the park (like the South African booth his teacher points out – which has some un-Hong-Kong-looking plants and flowers and an opportunity for me to ask Rockstar why different countries have plants/ flowers that look so different i.e. due to their adapting to different climates, how much rainfall they get, etc), as well as fun floral exhibits:

Every flower show should have flower banana heads doing bamboo dance...

And flower penguins...

And flower totem poles...

And flower stone warriors... (Note Rockstar checking out the pics he's taken....!)

Rockstar's hot, blur face in front of the flower pandas...

"Nemo!" Rockstar's classmate observes...

(Rockstar has never watched Cars or Nemo or really any of them but he knows many of the characters – well done Disney Marketing)

Yes - flower pandas, fish and marine life - it must be the Ocean Park exhibit!

"He's got the whooooole wo-orld, in his hands, he's got the whole wide wo-orld..."

Oh sorry – “On the back of his hands…..” People kept taking pics holding that globe up so we tried to follow suit… Didn’t work out very well because I’m actually being jostled while I take this, and well, Rockstar’s hands are facing the wrong way – it was so sunny I couldn’t even see that on the iPhone screen til we looked back at the pics at end of the day…

And then all that sunlight beating down (all the Southeast Asians must be thinking we’re wimps haha) is making the kids hot and cranky (btw the temperature can really swing which is why the kids were in layered longs – tonight/ tomorrow it’s going to drop some 8-10 degrees Celsius), so we stop for ice creams…

And so it’s ice creams! And this is possibly the first ice cream cone Rockstar has ever finished, probably rather strangely due to the fact it’s a school trip and so the ice cream should also be taken seriously (I know it’s weird, but this is how Rockstar seems to think – he of the spitting out hard candies halfway in a tissue when we’re at home because he’s “had enough sweet things”)…

 Ahhhh obsessive mum alert – he’s just hot…

Flower pyramids... Now I can get the I Wonder Why Egyptians Built Pyramids...

And so we see the great pyramids as they are meant to be seen, with ice cream on our chin…

And Sailboats (note elderly person posing for a pic - btw this flower show is a real hit among the elderly locals as well as school kids... In fact I don't recall seeing many (or even a single) obviously foreign person in the throng, except maybe some of Rockstar's classmates and their parents)

See, not a spare seat in da house...

Wondering what all the talks are about, I took a pic of their itinerary…

Rockstar was distracted, or he would've asked me to read some of it and guffawed at the "Talk on Diarrhea" on the first day...

And South African Consulate-General exhibit... (Really liked how different and exotic their flowers were)

Note the guy bending in hot sun to take closeup pic...

Obviously, the flowers are real rockstars… Well almost…

Recycled oyster shells! Looks right up HK Wetlands Park's style!

And not too far away, terra-cotta warriors guarding a Great Wall Of China...

<Insert corny remark about how at HK Flower Show we get to see a mesh of such different cultural exhibits coming together and all that jazz>

And I didn't get a chance to get closer to this interesting-looking exhibit of a chinese (woman/ deity?) because Rockstar and classmate are boiling again…..

Though we did try for a brief respite from the unrelentless sun, by elbowing through the crowds at the stalls…..

Umm.. Any ideas what these hanging things are that they're selling?

And some more...

(At some point I overhear one of the mingling teachers mentioning how seeds can look very different based on how they are spread about – by wind, by birds/ animals…)

They had a lot of these smaller flower booths too, I spied a cocktail dress of huge lilies or something as well, but too crowded and hot to wrestle through and get a shot...

"Shall we get the catnip for my friend?" Umm.... Aren't those for cats to chew on? What do you do with them when you don't have a cat, can you fry it up, use as a garnish....?

Rockstar thinks a plant “pet” gift would be fair exchange for such a yummy ice cream cone (and I can’t seem to get enough of low-maintenance “pets”)…

I note some of the little potted plant prices are about the same as at Japan Home Center… (But it’s a flower show! Buy a plant! Seeds! T-shirts?) You wouldn’t get nearly as much variety… or festivity… or….

Don't ask. I don't know what it is.

Rockstar eventually picks up……..

Spike The Hedgehog at home with one of the few rocket ship drawings I managed to save before it got obliterated in a flood of wind, motion, friction, exhaust flames and scribbly lines to show how fast and furious the ship is going.....

This thing in a smiling cactus pot whose name is now Spike The Hedgehog… (After I said no to some very spiky cacti he wanted to bring home to show the dog (can you say poor tender wet nose?))

(And his classmate overheard I guess and obediently picked the most un-spiky succulent in the bunch….. (named Toast And Jam, which his mum says is his way of saying he’s hungry…) The Rockstar however is intrigued. “What kind of jam?” Strawberry, and the Rockstar nods approvingly. A lesson about grownup vs kiddie “priorities” comes to mind 😀)

I'm surprised there aren't more flower dragons, this being Northasia and the dragon year... But then CNY was a real dragon-OD...

Tsuen Wan District won this event, but I didn't get a good pic (it's the exhibit to the right of the pic) for keeping up with the boys purposefully striding through the exhibition toward the far exit where our ride is waiting...

This one won second prize in the same event but again I couldn't stop long enough... And by now we can't see many other turquoise-and-navy uniformed kids around either...

Another hastily snapped pic...

There’s at least two or three local schools on trip, though I don’t notice any clutching of mangled, sweaty activity booklets. (In fact the whole show looks very “local Hongkie” right?) By now, some of Rockstar’s schoolmates had retired to the nearby local public library (they would later explain to me they have playdates there too) to escape the heat and finish up – since I had forgotten there was a library there we got into the car. Which was just as well………….

Zzzzzzzz

Because you can guess how this story ends.

We did the rest of the homework after he woke up at the end of the day, but the writing bits were turning out mangled – while naming the parts of the flower I noticed he’d written “metS.” “What’s wrong with it? Stem, what…” and for a sec I was What, Is He Now Dyslexic?? 😀

Next morning I showed him his previous “benchmark” writing (like the “Zippety” sketches) and remark we are having a Crisis of Quality, before stepping in the shower… When I emerge, he smugly shows me the pic below – can’t pretend this happens often, Rockstar doesn’t draw/ write that much at home, mostly only what he does at the Kindy (and sometimes I wonder if the school manages to salvage anything for his end of the year folio because the few times he draws at home he will keep going until the entire thing is covered in “motion lines” caused by wind, arrows… Ah well, every once in awhile as long as I know he can produce something, he can go to town and scrawl all he wants the rest of the time.) 

At the flower show with classmates, ice cream cone and choosing cacti in the shop (at right)... No, didn't tell him what to draw from his trip. Still rather amazed, to be honest.

 I shall dub this the Get Off My Back Drawing. Done with ballpoint pen, no less.