To the Stars

GODDARD, Kansas - A friend from work wanted to check out the observatory on Lake Afton. I certainly didn't have anything better to do, so we set off going west with a couple of other people.

The journey was on a country road, through the Kansas of my imagination. There were cows aplenty, in a large fenced-in grazing areas, two-lane roads that went straight as far as the eye could see. The conversation was cow tipping. This was Kansas, although every few miles there was an "exburb" development -- the trappings of suburbia artificially placed even farther outside of the city than originally planned. It seems like an odd combination: to live in the country as if it was still the city. But many people, not just here in Kansas are signing up: exburbs are the fastest growing areas in the United States.

Lake Afton is a country campground 20 miles outside of Wichita. Around one end of the lake is a small observatory. I say small but I really have no idea what the average size of an observatory is. I do know the movie "Contact" with Jodie Foster, and in that movie the observatory was much bigger. This looked more like an elementary school with a dome sticking out of it.

After paying our $3 admission fee (for a two-hour program; I love Middle America prices!), we were escorted inside the dome. The schedule pointed to a five point program this evening:

1. Jupiter
2. Vega
3. Planetary Nebula
4. Space Globules
5. Milky Way

It seemed a tad front-loaded to me. Jupiter's cool, and I've heard of Vega, but Space Globules just aren't my thing.

Our instructor screamed astronomer: approaching 50, white pants with a white shirt, nervously running through a presentation he's probably given 30 times.

"Jupiter is the biggest planet in the Solar System," he said -- three times.

I heard much about why Vega is blue, nebula are decaying stars and the comparative sizes of Jupiter's moons. I've since forgotten it all, so that speaks to how worthless it was.

Outside the observatory, we were back to cow tipping when two men approached us and wanted us to look inside their telescopes.

"Is it yours?" I asked one of them, as looked at the M51 Galaxy.

"Hell no," he said. "I couldn't afford this. It's his. He's a pharmacist." The telescope was nearly 10 feet tall -- I had to look at most objects with the help of a step ladder.

They showed us several objects -- the Owl Nebula, a spiral galaxy and M13 -- that brought the sky to life more than rehashed physics lessons inside the telescope. The view from the telescope wasn't terribly clear anyway, the lens wasn't terribly long. But the visit out there was enough to remind myself of the strange things that are above us every night, but usually blocked out by Taco Tico and Wal-Mart signs.

Shopping for Hong Kong's Next Megatalent

HONG KONG - I've never been one for "American Idol." I could never get too excited by a bunch of teenagers from Kentucky squaring off to win the favor of Paula Abdul by singing hopelessly sacrine renditions of Barry Manilow songs. Clearly 40 million Americans, and the hundreds of millions of others who watch around the world, disagree.

Competition does excite me. When I saw that the nearby Westwood mall would be having a "Chinese Folk Singing Competition" this Saturday, I was interested. It didn't matter that the sign advertising it was all in Chinese, and didn't list a time. I was there.

I wandered over to the mall around 1 p.m. This turned out to be the perfect time, as the concert was in high gear. The first performance I saw was two teenaged men, each with guitars and harmonizing in Cantonese. I didn't recognize the song, but they were pretty tight.

There was about 100 people in the crowd, young children, some clutching guitars and all fussily dressed, with their parents. This competition, it turns out, was strictly for children.



The next contestant was a young girl, who was maybe 7. She got up and started singing. The song was "It's the End of the World." Not the REM song, but an old standard, sung in English. Her tone was good, but it was clear she definitely didn't speak English had just memorizied the lyrics.

The judges seemed to like it. There were two of them, dressed formally and gazing constantly at the singers. They were positioned for maximum drama - only about two meters from the stage and blocking part of the audience. For the performer, they were the only thing that mattered.



The third act was better. This person was a bit older, maybe 16, and dressed very fashionably. This was fashionable in the Hong Kong sense, so that meant ripped jeans with a lot of pockets. He opened his mouth, and I couldn't believe it: out came "Wonderful Tonight," by Eric Clapton.

It's a nice song, but this guy didn't have the range or the language skills for it. I'm not sure if he knew this was about a man and his wife, or just generally about life, but by just shifting the accent from the "wonderful" to the "tonight," all feeling seemed lost. He played guitar quite well, but just couldn't connect.

After that I left; I'm not sure what the results were. My vote was with the "The End of the World" girl. But I do know that the definition of "Chinese folk singing" is much broader than I originally suspected. Maybe at the next competition I should enter. I can do a pretty mean rendition of "Crazy."

A Day at the Auction House

HONG KONG - "It's not cheap. But these days, nothing is."


The words belonged to a Englishman, a man of around 40 dressed in an impeccable three-piece suit and one of those white ties that are very much in fashion over here. Next to him was an Asian female, around his age. They conversed in English, she had the same British accent as he. In his left hand, he carried an art catalog. Standing in the center of Christy's Auction House, they blended in perfectly.

My university is paying for this trip, but they're paying me nowhere near the amount of money to justify a trip to Christy's - one of the world's oldest and most respected auction houses. I arrived thanks to a happy accident.

I was on the hunt for an art gallery which my Lonely Planet guide suggested was near the Hong Kong Convention Centre. I wandered through the cavernous building - it appeared especially designed to make a person seem small. There were stores, halls and even a convenience store inside, but I could find no art gallery.

Christy's was on the way to the bus stop. I walked by the entrance oncem, then I turned around and walked by it again. Could I go in? The last auction house I was in was ten miles outside of Albany, and specialized in estate sales. After my freshman year in college, my friends and I would go there to look for cheap road signs to hang in our dorm rooms. I usually spent no more than $10 a night on cheap dinnerware and old road signs.

I'm sure I couldn't get within 100 meters of the Christy's in Manhattan, but here I just walked in. I was dressed in $5 Gap pants and a fake $3 polo shirt, and carried with a faded computer bag. Everything about me screamed: THIS MAN WILL NOT BUY EXPENSIVE ART. But I was let in without incident by an extremely friendly attendant.

Christy's is gorgeous. There is a free tea area in the front, where the live auctions are displayed on flat-screen televisions. The high bid is displayed in eight different currencies - helpful if you're representing a Swiss client with a hankering for Ming vases.

On display were the jewelry of Princess Margaret. The recently deceased sister of the Queen owned an extensive gallery of large diamonds, brooches and tiaras which was very impressive. There was also a preview of an art sale, where I saw several Picassos and even a Van Gogh. It was like a museum, but free and without crowds.

The auction house reflects Hong Kong today. The city is not - as I once suggested - a dying city. Any place where a single print can sell for a million dollars, is the only place in Asia where the royal jewels are displayed, and where dozens of smart-dressed men and women can afford to waste several hours on the middle of a Monday afternoon looking a fabulously expensive items, must be doing pretty well.