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- Celestial 天上: Purveyors of the finest Asian Dub since 1992.
Listen to (and purchase) all four albums here:
www.hongkongdubstation.com
Wanna be friends? peter(at)drummusic.net
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VIDEO PLAYLIST Kowloon, Hong Kong Moon Palace Trans-Mongolian Express Shanghai Nights Pounding Waves |
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"The Beat Of The Heart" by Celestial 天上
Wednesday, Oct 28, 2009 5:13PM / Members only
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Faking It. Or Not.
Tuesday, Jul 21, 2009 4:04PM / Members only
On this the 40th anniversary of one of Mankind's Greatest Leaps, I've been reminded of a trip of exploration I once took myself. In 1991 I flew from Hong Kong to Beijing and boarded the Trans-Mongolian Express to Moscow. Except that I didn't really: it was all a fake. It was recently pointed out to me that I must have faked the whole trip as I've never gone back and done it all again. And it's all true - all these years I've been saying that I had more important things to do with my time and money than repeat a trip I had already made - but actually, it was all a complete fraud, as I never made the trip in the first place. It was an elaborate scam. There were about 40,000 people involved in managing all the different facets of the hustle, all of whom I've had to continue paying huge amounts of money for their silence. Just the 120 people alone in Mission Control, err sorry, I mean the "Railway Station", who are the kind of beautific honor-bound individuals, dedicated to the search for Scientific Truth, have cost me a small fortune to remain schtum.
The photographs and video of the trip were all faked in a huge studio in Sai Kung, Hong Kong, at the cost of several million dollars. Here is a picture of me supposedly standing on the platform of the Trans-Mongolian Express:
Obviously it is a fake, as there are no stars in the sky. "But shurely" you might say, "the light from the sun would obscure all stars in daytime" - but everyone knows that Mongolia is so far north, that stars can be seen all day and all night.
Here is a picture of the train itself traveling through the Mongolian heartland:
Obviously it's been completely PhotoShopped, as Mongolia could never actually look like that - although I'm not sure PhotoShop actually existed that long ago. Perhaps it was just a scale model.
And here we see a picture of some of my supposed souvenirs, the "rocks" picked up along the route:
Well of course, these are all fakes as well, bought from a little man in Hollywood Road.
Why did I bother faking this trip you might ask? Well of course there's the obvious political reasons, to get one over on the Commies, and strike a blow for freedom and integrity. And impress girls. Also it has been suggested that the technology back in 1991 simply wasn't advanced enough to get a train all the way from Beijing to Moscow? I''m not quite so convinced by this argument - as I'm fairly sure that trains have been transporting people around the world well before (and after) my supposed trip. Of course there's been a few accidents - but train travel is still probably (nearly) as safe as flying.
No: The real reason I faked it was because I was scared. Scared that I might get a tummy-ache, or get ripped off for a few dollars by some sack-bound peasant somewhere along the route. Much better to suppress my desire to explore and travel, and take the easy (though much more expensive and troublesome) option of faking the whole thing. Of course I'm not going to reveal exactly where the faking started and ended - did I actually fly to Beijing, for example, or just stay hidden away in Hong Kong? Did I get the visas, a furry hat and a big coat? Or not? Sorry, I don't feel like giving everything away.
Ah - the beauty and wonder of true exploration, that has driven man since the earliest days to circle the globe and head out to the stars. Well, some people anyway. Others prefer to come up with feck-witted, arse-brained, non-scientific conspiracy theories and spread them through the interweb, and unfortunately others choose to believe them. Their loss. And the Wonders of the Universe are all mine.
Read More Here>. -
"Gone" by Celestial 天上
Thursday, Jun 25, 2009 11:45AM / Members only
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Herps & Mutts
Wednesday, Jun 3, 2009 8:25PM / Members only
"Herps" are how herpetologists refer to the animals they study - which usually covers both reptiles and amphibians, i.e. snakes, frogs, lizards, etc, and so there isn't one term that covers all these classifications. Anyway, I'm definitely not a herpetologist, but I do see the odd snake (and other creatures) when I'm walking the dog in the morning, up the mountain above where I live on Lantau Island.Just over a week ago I encountered a smallish Cobra, that didn't seem to be moving very much and seemed to be swollen all along it's body. On getting its attention it turned towards me and opened its mouth - then out came another snake, a Red-Neck Keel-Back, dead of course, but more or less the same size as the Cobra. The Cobra then disappeared into a drainage hole, and I relaxed - they are the most aggressive of Hong Kong snakes, allegedly. The next day, the dead Keel-Back had moved about 10 metres down the catchwater. I can only assume the Cobra came back for another go at digesting it, before realising it was probably too large...Then last Friday I rescued a puppy halfway up the old road - part of a pack of wild dogs that have been hanging around the area ever since the new Tung Chung Road was being built. This one was only a few months old, one of a litter of four I've seen up there,; undernourished, mangy and nervous, but she seemed to relax once I picked her up, and even wagged her tail. She's now with the Lantau animal rescue organisation if anyone's interested: www.pals.org.hkOn Sunday morning I came across a discarded python skin - of course all snakes shed their skin as they grow - and the snake was probably far away by then. This was a particularly good specimen, and my dog Lily was very interested, but also scared. Although she's only got a brain the size of a walnut, she seems to instinctively know that snakes are dangerous. Not bad for a Lantau Golden Receiver. Mind you - whilst it makes sense to be nervous of live snakes, surely a cast-off skin is considerably less threatening? But after I picked the skin up and hung it on a fence, Lily starting barking at it as it swayed in the wind. Then, as she was barking, she stepped back on a rock, the rock moved and she completely freaked out, jumping about three feet upwards and backwards through the air. I laughed out loud. Then I folded up the snake skin, took it home, and hung it across a Frangipani in my garden. On seeing it there both my two-year-old daughter and grown-up wife were both somewhat skittish:
And who can blame them.Five minutes later into my walk that morning, I happened upon a small Red-Neck Keel-Back with it's jaws firmly clamped around a frog. As they are venomous, though they rarely harm people, I didn't want to get too close, but got this picture just as the snake let go of the paralysed frog:
You can definitely see why they're called Red-Necks. I then moved on quickly to allow her to finish her meal in peace, and also because Lily, the walnut-brain, had suddenly got somewhat more courageous. Home for breakfast.More on Herps and Mutts soon. -
Happy Holidays!
Thursday, Dec 18, 2008 12:59PM / Members only
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- “Celestial 天上” are a Hong Kong based collective who have produced a series of four albums:...
- Occupation: Musician , Music Producer , Composer
- Gender: Male
- Total visits: 23,561
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June 23, 2008
