Commuting to Hong Kong

Intrepid Traveler

2009-03-07T15:11:00.006+08:00

During the first week I was in Turkey, still bewildered by jet lag and heat, we were taken on a walking tour of Ulus, the old part of Ankara. One of the people with us was a man who had been abroad for decades. Deciding he was feeling shaggy, Ed ducked into a barbershop along an alleyway and asking with gestures got his hair cut for 5,000,000 lira. Now that equates to $2.75 USD, but then it was about $4.50. It took about an hour and included a neck massage and flaming the hair from his ears and nose with a small torch.That incident has always since epitomized a truly intrepid traveler. So when Granite decided to get his hair cut off at the end of the CNY holidays, I wasn't going to argue. We walked through the streets of Ranong in the heaviest heat I've experienced in Thailand until we found a espresso/fresh orange juice stand backed by a barber shop.

We went in and told the man that Granite wanted his hair buzzed off. I went and found the right sized guard from the basket under the mirror and showed it to him. The barber looked doubtful, but said okay and started cutting his hair with scissors and comb. I stopped him and told him again that he wanted it buzzed off.The barber slowly put the guard on the buzzers and said to me, "Ok?" Yes, I said. Then he asked Granite, "Ok?" He mimed the action of buzzing his hair and asked Granite twice more, "Ok?" Granite said yes and finally convinced him to start.It took a good long time to cut off that mane of hair. He had to cut much off the length off in chunks with scissors and then start buzzing. It didn't help that after a week at the beach with cold water showers and perfunctory washes, his hair wasn't the cleanest. But after he was done, the barber washed and washed and washed Granite's hair - the little that was left, massaged his head and did the whacking thing that they do at the end of a Thai massage.
It cost, with tip, 80 baht which is about $2.25 USD. Granite was happy and walked away much cooler and looking a couple of years older. I'm still pretty tentative about going and getting my own hair cut in other countries, but I guess over the past six years of adventures, I've raised my own intrepid traveler.

Where I live...

2009-02-12T08:57:00.008+08:00

It has been a long time between posts this year. It's mainly because I'm living more and huddled over my computer less.

I've also been away a lot more this year. This weekend will be my fourth trip to Thailand since August. I feel a bit ungrateful when I think that I'm tired of flying there. Fate will bite me in the butt if I ever complain about tropical beaches.

So, I won't moan about having to go away, but it is a delight to stay home. I love running along the paths and trails of Lamma and checking out the small farms with tomatoes already ripening. I love running under the full moon listening to the cicadas holler now that the nights have gotten warm. I love hanging in one of the four hammocks on the roof and watching the lunar eclipse sneak across the sky. I love that it's already warm enough to tan.

The crowd gathers...

2008-12-09T21:11:00.006+08:00

On the commute home, I have a 40 minute wait between the school bus arriving at the ferry pier and the next ferry leaving. I consistently miss the previous ferry by four minutes. So I pick up some groceries, wander through Mango and Zara or, frequently just sit and wait. I look out at the view that's on the header of this blog and watch the ships go by while Kestrel plays on some railings.
One day, as we walked over, we saw one of the fishermen with a long pole bent over. A crowd gathered almost immediately as he fought his fish. When fish hit pavement, everyone applauded. Since it's Hong Kong, lots of people whipped out cameras and starting taking pictures of the fish.Kestrel borrowed my camera and wormed her way into the crowd to get close. These are her pictures.

Round Island Race - November 23rd

2008-11-30T21:51:00.014+08:00

I still can't believe I paddled around Hong Kong Island last Sunday in an outrigger canoe! It was such an experience. I'd been training for the whole month hoping to make it. Ten of us from Lamma OCC formed the women's racing team for the day and I was lucky enough to make the cut and get to be in the boat. It was such a great time and I’m still high as a kite thinking about it.

The day before the race, we'd paddled the two canoes over to Middle Island where the race would start. It was our last training run and also our last chance to practice sea changes and rip up my legs some more. In this event, ten people paddle around Hong Kong Island, but the boat only holds six at a time. So, every 3, 7 or 8 kilometers there is a sea change.

How it works is that the support boat draws alongside the canoe and someone shouts out the number of the seats of the people who are changing. Then the boat powers ahead and slows down so that the paddlers can get in the water about 100 metres in front of the canoe. We line up in the water and put our hands up so that the steerswoman can see us. She steers so that the ama (the outrigger part) and the canoe straddle us. As they paddle at us at full power, we grab on with one hand and either lift, sling or heave ourselves into the canoe with varying levels of speed and grace. Meanwhile, as soon as we, the new paddlers, grab onto the canoe with one hand, the people in their seats dump out the other side. All people still in the canoe paddle like crazy trying to maintain momentum until everyone gets settled and can join in. It’s a little stressful because if you miss the grab or don’t get in smoothly it really slows the boat down. It’s also painful because the only way I can do it is to throw one leg in and lever it under the seat and get in that way. So for the past month, I’ve had huge abrasions and bruises on the back of my right knee. You can see what they look like and more on this YouTube video: http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZbLAZz3fiw. On the first change, I get in the boat at seat 4 (counting from the front.)

The actual race started at 9:00, but we left Lamma at a quarter to seven to ride over to the starting line. I was about as nervous as before a running race, but in a different way. When I was going to run a marathon, if I screwed up or wimped out, I’d be the only person I let down. When you have lots of teammates, it’s worries about letting them down that filled my mind. What if I got too tired? What if I mess up the sea change? What if my timing is off? What if they wish that they hadn’t let me in the boat? I wasn’t in the boat for the start, so I had hours to wait around nervous.
But finally my chance came. My first leg was pretty short, only 3 ½ km. The sea change went really fast, so it was great for getting the butterflies out. I got out just before we turned the corner to go through the harbour. That began a couple of really long legs for the paddlers because it’s much too dangerous to do sea changes in the middle of Victoria Harbour – one of the busiest harbours in the world. Some people might think that it’s pretty dangerous just to be in an outrigger canoe in that harbour.

As it turns out, they’re not far wrong. We were traveling along pretty close to the outrigger when we looked behind and one of the huge Macao hydrofoil ferries was bearing down full power at the girls. It is unbelievable how big it was and how fast it was coming. Gina’s steering had already been awesome dealing with all the chop and wakes coming her way, but when she saw that ferry coming, she was amazing. You can see in the pictures how much strength she was putting into getting that boat out of the way. The other girls never looked up. They had their eyes in the boat like they were supposed to and kept that power up. If they had stopped paddling, there’s no way Gina would’ve had the momentum to get them out of the way. Everyone in the junk was totally freaking out. But Gina and the other girls in the outrigger were masterful.
Two more ferries came pretty close to the canoe, but one slowed down a lot and the other stayed on the opposite side of the junk from the canoe. At Causeway Bay, I got back in the boat, but it wasn’t a sea change. Getting in the water there is too dangerous, not because of boats, but just because of the filth in the water, so the support junk and the outrigger pull into a little bywater and we just stepped from the junk to the outrigger.
I paddled in that leg for 11 km. (I'm in seat 4 with the black cap on.) We went along the north side of HK and past the Museum of Coastal Defense – I could even see the battlements on the hills. After we turned the corner to go south the wind picked up a little and the chop a lot. I got out for 3 ½ km and then I was back in for my last leg of the trip. It was from Ng Fan Chau Island until the last change at Cheung Hom Kok Point. – 10 ½ km. That side of the island is so beautiful. It was sunny and the spray and the chop were beautiful. It was really tiring of course, but when it came time for the last change, I so didn’t want to get out of the boat. It was the end of my race, and the others were going to bring it home. Claire, Anna and I dumped out of the boat and cheered and screamed them on as they hopped in and took off. Then the woman from the junk threw us a life ring and hauled us back to the boat.The boat was going so well as they finished. They looked so strong, like they’d only been paddling 5 or 10 km instead of 43. There was no slowing down as they powered in to the finish line. The Lamma women’s OCC crew did the 46 km race in 4.49.32!!All of the Lamma OCC team and supporters were so high after that race and for days afterwards. We keep posting more about the race on facebook and talking about it on the ferry. Everyone did so well and worked together so well. The food at the barbecue afterwards was well-deserved, and the beer too.

Training for RIR

2008-11-30T20:26:00.001+08:00

I haven’t been doing much other than paddling for the month of November. I’ve put off blogging, drinking, e-mailing, going out, running, reading or writing for four weeks of hard training. I just started doing outrigger canoeing in October and have spent many long hours training, hoping to make the team for the Round Island Race that happened yesterday, the 23rd of November.We’ve paddled around Lamma Island (24 km) three times, done sprint sessions, technique sessions, huli drills (flipping and righting the canoe), sea change practices, and so much more.
I’d never paddled before, so there was so much to think about and so much that they told me to focus on.

I can’t count the number of times I heard:
1. Rotate your body.
2. Reach two inches further.
3. Transfer your weight from your ass to your paddle.
4. Power in the water.
5. Snappy return.
6. Pause at the front.
7. Clean exits.
8. Paddles in and out together.
9. Bend from the waist.
10. Use your legs.
11. Timing!!
Each Saturday and Sunday morning I spent 2+ hours out paddling, starting usually at 8 a.m. The way to the beach is beautiful on a weekend morning. People are getting their fresh meat from the butchers. Shopkeepers are arranging their vegetables. Old ladies and men are squatting on the edges of the sidewalk with fresh greens or cut flowers to sell. The tourists are starting to choose the steamed boxes of dim sum. I ride the bike through the waking-up village, then continue on past banana plants and vegetable plots out to the beach by the power station.

Plus, there were the Tuesday and Thursday night sessions of paddling at night across the warm water. We were chasing moon paths across the water, dancing ferry lights and avoiding the black silhouettes of fishing boats coming too close.
Not many people get to be out around the corner of the island in the chop and wind where the big tankers sail off to parts unknown. I feel so lucky to get to go out there. When Gina or Mel takes us close to the rocks and we whoosh down the waves through the foam, I try not to wiggle from excitement. My paddling team thinks I never stop smiling.

Proud to be an American

2008-11-05T12:33:00.006+08:00

"OBAMA WON!"
"NO MORE GEORGE BUSH!"
"WE ARE ALIVE DURING HISTORY!"
"OBAMA IS OUR PRESIDENT!"

The little kids of eight, nine and ten ran through the hallways of our school here in Hong Kong screaming and yelling when they heard that John McCain conceded. These Hong Kong kids (many with Canadian passports) are overwhelmingly for Barack Obama.

They said Obama won, but I couldn't believe it. I ran into my room to check the internet and when I saw, I rushed out into the hall looking for someone to hug. A fourth grade girl from another class ran up to me and said, "Obama won, give me a hug!" I swept her up and spun her around. My son was with a group of seventh and eighth graders in the cafeteria, so I could only tell him. He nodded and smiled, but the girl next to him screamed leapt to her feet.

I can't believe it and I can't stop crying with the joy of hope for my country.

Junk parties

2008-11-01T16:13:00.008+08:00

Hong Kong has its own partying solution to too small apartments and crowded bars - the junk party! Imagine a party where you know exactly how much you will spend. Throw in unlimited food and drinks. Figure in only hearing the music you want to hear and only partying with the people you want around. Then count on the most spectacular views of Hong Kong harbor and a light show as well. Well, that's a junk boat party!Last Saturday night I had a junk party for my birthday. Now, it was not my birthday. I actually turned 40 two months ago, but I spent that day mainly alone. Most of the people I know weren't back in Hong Kong and even the kids arrived jet-lagged at eight at night. But I have the sweetest friends! Despite the belated timing and all kind of hassle booking the junk, Catherine arranged for me to have an awesome 40th birthday party!

Twenty-four people came. The theme was 1968, of course. We had Vietnam war protesters and Viet Cong soldiers show up and lots of very short skirts. Even Andy Warhol was there - pretty amazing considering he was newly shot on the day of my birth. I agonized over my clothes, knowing that they were slightly more 1970 than 1968. Nevertheless it worked out all right, mainly because most of the party-goers weren't really up on fashion in the 60's or 70's since they weren't born.

A junk party goes from 7 until 11:30, then we were sent on our way with lots of drinks "to go." (A plus of Hong Kong is that you can walk down the street drinking.) Quite of few of my friends danced until 3, but I had to catch the 12:30 ferry home to Lamma or stay out. I decided that I better not abandon the children, and went home on time. It was a great way to turn 40!

Thanksgiving on Lamma

2008-10-26T20:08:00.008+08:00

I like my pumpkin pies, so when I knew there'd be a potluck, I signed up to bring two. But making a pumpkin pie with no oven involves a certain level of commitment and a serious amount of travel.

I made the pie crusts on Thursday night after paddling practice and mixed the spices with the sugar. In the morning I packed up the crusts, mixing bowl, eggs, cans of pumpkin and evaporated milk, a whisk and a ladle. My commute makes it a little more complicated than putting all the things in the trunk of a car. I had to carry everything down the hill to the ferry, from the ferry to the bus and from the bus to my classroom. Then at recess I did the Fahrenheit to Celsius conversion, mixed up the first pie and put it in the microwave/convection oven in the staffroom. I was so amazed that I hadn't forgotten anything other than a can opener and the kitchen staff helped me with that.

Unfortunately once I put the pie in, I went back to teaching and forgot all about it. An hour and a half later I ran back up sure that the school's fire alarm was about to go off. But some angel had taken the pie out at just the perfect time! So at lunch I mixed up the other and stuck it in. I went back an hour or so later and someone else had taken that one out. It was slightly under-done, but still ok.So after school I taped together boxes to make a double-decker pie safe, covered them with plastic wrap, (thank goodness there are science experiment supplies in the project room) and carried them back down to the bus, to the ferry pier, home on the ferry and back up the hill home. There they waited safely in the frig until Sunday's dinner.

Heather and Matthew hosted the dinner and the other Heather cooked the turkey. Matthew wasn't the least bit tense about it.It was a tremendous success. Almost 50 people came. It was very much the antithesis of the lonely blue I felt last year at Thanksgiving. (If you want to read something depressing, look back at my posts around this time last year.) It was a wonderful community effort that created a marvelous feast. There were lots of babies and little kids running around which made it even more fun.

I love Thanksgiving and can't wait until late November because I think we'll have an American one, too. I'm only worried about hauling the turkey around to bake it. A crispy, juicy, dripping turkey is a bit unwieldy for a backpack.

The Journey is not the Destination

2008-10-21T20:43:00.015+08:00

Whoever said the journey is the destination has never been on my trips. I got up and took the 6:20 ferry from Lamma, kids and luggage in tow on Saturday, October 4th. Then there was the MTR to the airport and waiting in the airport. We flew Kenyan Airlines on a flight to Bangkok (continuing on to Nairobi) in a 767 so old that the lights wouldn't come on in the bathroom. I also have my doubts about the seals in the plane because Granite's ears almost exploded on the way down. Then in Bangkok we took a taxi kitty-corner across town to a bus station, waited for an hour and hopped on a bus for a six hour ride. Here's a picture from the bus stop where we had supper. But even after getting off that bus, we weren't there yet.

Next morning, we got in the back of a pick-up for a two hour ride to the ferry pier. There, we waited for two hours and then took a catamaran to Koh Tao. From there it was only another short truck ride to the beach we stayed on. Here's a picture of the beach. You tell me which is better.I suppose I could write about scuba diving in 29 C water with schools of fish circling me. I suppose I could mention the snorkeling, the beach bars, the mango shakes, the green curry or the banana pancakes. I even heard the song "Banana Pancakes" by Jack Johnson while I was sitting tired from diving all afternoon logging my dive and having a beer!

Actually I have to include this link to the YouTube video of the pancake guy who was just up from the dive resort we hung out at. He was originally from Bangladesh by way of Myanmar to Thailand. He spoke 7 languages. He said that after the first four, it comes easy. He's more entertaining than in the video, but here you go: http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=wGR2zJTbu7U

But if I went on much about the colour of the water or the palm trees swaying; if I talked too long about how the kids and I kept breaking into South Pacific songs; if I reveled in lying in a manicured jungle garden in a raised pagoda having a Thai massage, well... all of you who just had your own tropical holiday would be bored. And the rest of you in temperate climes would just be annoyed.

As a courtesy to you who don't get a week off in October, let me just tell you about our trip home. We left paradise at 3:30 on Saturday. First there was a 2 hour ferry ride followed by an 8 hour bus ride interrupted by one and a half hours in a truck stop for dinner. We arrived in Bangkok at 4:15 a.m., went to the airport to sleep and kill time. We flew out of there at 1:50 p.m. (on another flight to Nairobi by way of Hong Kong) and arrived in Hong Kong around five. Then we took the MTR across town, missed a ferry, waited at the ferry pier and got home at 8 p.m. Sunday after traveling for 29 hours. And they say Thailand is only a two hour flight away. I think I'm doing something wrong!

The Lamma Commute

2008-09-28T18:33:00.010+08:00

I'm still taking a ferry to a bus every day even though I moved. We get up even earlier and stumble down the hill to the ferry pier. It's lined with the bicycles of all the people who converge each morning and evening for the commute. One of these pictures is of the weather before the typhoon. The other is after the typhoon cleared the air - I like typhoons not just for days off school.

The main difference in the commute this year is that it's an ugly ferry. Instead of comfortable airline-type seats we ride on vinyl in a dark box that smells like goats. The commute should be just as beautiful except the ferry line never cleans its windows. So there are many fewer opportunities to take pictures out of the windows. I get a shot every now and again, though.
The typhoon came on Tuesday last week. During the night it passed by, rattling the metal awning on my roof and making me nervous enough that I was glad a child joined me in bed. But nothing was damaged at our place and we got a day off school, but barely. The Hong Kong Observatory predicted it would lower the T8 flag between 6 and 7 a.m. That's the signal that closes schools and businesses. The timing of it was such that the Education Board cancelled school for the day rather than letting kids start the morning trip to school in a T8. But if the typhoon had passed one hour quicker we would have had to go to school. I had to take a kid into the doctor's, so this last picture is the remnants of the storm we got to travel through on our way to Hong Kong Island. It's hard for a camera to see the darkness of menace contrasted with the luminosity of the water stirred by storm but lit by sunlight.

Living on Lamma

2008-09-09T20:20:00.008+08:00

Two Saturdays ago I moved into a new flat on Lamma Island. Lamma is known for its weed, its artists, its seafood and its expat hippies. I haven't encountered much of any of that so far, though I do know one cool artist who lives here.

Here are some pictures of my new place and my rooftop.

I am not yet happy with my commute. The connections are bad and the ferry is ugly and kind of stinky. If I get organized, though, I may get to take a very slow, non-air conditioned ferry straight from Aberdeen to Lamma. Last Thursday I did that for the first time. I got off at a tiny village before the main village and walked the 20 minutes home. It was very peaceful - green and overgrown. Unfortunately I have some sort of foot/ankle injury and can't enjoy the plentiful hikes and runs that are all around me yet. Inshallah soon.

But the rooftop...
The rooftop deserves its own post.

Joshua Tree

2008-09-05T12:29:00.008+08:00

Despite this blog being about Hong Kong, I'm still not ready to face my commute and the bustle of the city. So I'm taking a moment to reminisce about one of my favourite parts of my summer - camping in Joshua Tree.

Joshua Tree has always been one of my favourite places on earth. It's much more than an album, though I do like that, too. From the time I was little, I went camping and rock climbing there, so I was appalled to realize that my kids hadn't experienced the same thing.

Granite, Kestrel and I went out in July for a few days. It's usually way too hot in the high desert that time of year, but it's still fun. I expected to spend the days lolling in the shade panting and then venturing out in the late evenings and early mornings just like the coyotes.

But we had the strangest weather and even got rained on. It made for a perfect, comfortable, relaxing trip. The kids got the idea perfectly: Granite lay about reading on the tops of rocks and Kestrel found little holes to hide and play in.

It was the first time I'd taken the kids camping by myself, and it turned out to be a triumph. We didn't have a very deluxe camp set-up, but I didn't expect any sort of weather. We saw lizards and ground squirrels, hawks, coyotes and lizards. We even saw big horn sheep, which I'd never seen before in all my years of visiting the park.

I took dozens of pictures of the world reflected in Granite's cool sunglasses, but only a few of the world in the side mirror while I was driving. It's always important to be safe.

Vietnam

2008-08-23T22:15:00.004+08:00

The first two weeks of the summer, I traveled in Northern Vietnam. I've just recently started reading about what happened 40 years ago this summer in the war, but it is almost inconceivable that the terrors could have happened in the delightful country I visited. I wrote lots (way too much) about my trip and posted pictures on my trip blog. The link is in the side bar. I really recommend Vietnam for the great food and nice people, for the exotic and the picturesque.

The last days of school

2008-07-15T07:17:00.011+08:00

New teachers who made it through and now are oldies.
Celebrating after the after party in a ice vodka bar.The morning of the last commute to school.I have loved this commute. Every day is so beautiful in its own way.The sun was so bright on the way home. I wished I could ride home in this.

The End of the Year

2008-06-16T13:14:00.004+08:00

Usually I love the cycle of my job. I love the new beginnings and fresh starts. I love sending the kids on prepared for the next year. But I hate the endings.

I am one who has a hard time at New Years and at my birthday every year when I deal with the question of what I've accomplished in the past year. I agonize over new resolutions and over whether I accomplished the ones from before. So the end of the school year is also rough.

This year I'm not moving to a different school, so I'm not leaving everyone I know. But it's also hard not having the end of year ceremony of saying good-bye. There are people leaving this school, but I'm not friends with any of them. Here am I at the end of a whole year without any close friends at all.

So it's reflection and resolution time. I have at least one more year commuting to Hong Kong. I haven't done so very well this year, though I have survived. I wonder what I can do to make it work next year. I have a summer to think about it - another reason I love my job.

"Birthday Parties" or "Slow Descent into Hell"

2008-06-08T20:40:00.005+08:00

While I was typing this blog's description for the seventh time yesterday trying to deal with Blogger's changing of the template, I realized that I haven't talked about life in the suburbs for a while. What's more quintessentially the role of a suburban mom than having a birthday party?

These are the birthday parties Kestrel has been to this year:
Science Magic (with entertainer and experiments)
Bowling (at an exclusive club)
Beads Galore (jewelry making at an Italian restaurant)
Adventure Zone (indoor play area with pizza)
Great Adventure Race (four hours all over the mountains ending at a Mexican restaurant)

So when Kestrel's birthday was coming up and she wanted to invite the whole class, I approached it with a bit of trepidation. It didn't help that she's been talking about it for six months. First we decided on something manageable - a beach party. Then I persuaded her that ten kids would be a lot more fun. But there are only two tables at the beach - if they're full we'd be serving food with kids kicking sand all over it. And more worryingly, it had rained for eight days straight - ten kids in our tiny apartment was, frankly, unimaginable.

But we had luck. It didn't rain in spite of the forecast. No one else was crazy enough to have a beach party, so we had the tables to ourselves. Kestrel and I picked up the kids and more adults at the ferry and then off to the beach where Granite was guarding the table and being eaten alive by little black gnats. Only two of the accompanying adults didn't come to the party. We had helpers or parents, or helpers and parents for almost every kid. The crowds stood around taking pictures and videos while the kids decorated wooden paddle boats with felt sails (our answer to a clown and pony show) and while they ate and fooled around. It was weird and awkward not knowing who was who and feeling like I needed to entertain them as well as the kids.

But the kids had fun. They ran around and played ball tag on the play equipment. Then they made boats and went swimming since the boats didn't sail too well. We had to drag them out for the Subway sandwiches, fruit and cake. Well, except for one kid who wouldn't stop digging in the sand for anything. And another kid who came an hour late, who hadn't RSVP'ed, who wouldn't speak to anyone for the first hour she was there, and who stayed an hour after the party was supposed to be over. Actually having the entire school class at our house in Turkey was a lot easier than this Hong Kong party. The kids in Turkey got along so much better and were much better at social interaction - unless Kestrel just invited some odd kids this year.

It turned out to be a pretty successful party. Glitter got all over the known world. One boy squirted mango juice all over another while they were at the table, but I didn't yell and it didn't get on anything but the other kid. And it didn't rain until Kestrel and I were walking home after that funny little girl and her mom finally left. After fifteen kids' birthday parties, you'd think it'd get easier and more fun. I wonder how many more I have to go?This picture is from the next day when the birthday girl got to learn to ride her first two-wheeler. That was the best part of the birthday, I thought.

Squatters' Village

2008-05-24T14:04:00.007+08:00

Sitting here on my window seat I can see Disneyland when I look to the right. Space Mountain shows among the trees; the fast ferries pass on their way from Central Hong Kong to this perfectly groomed area that I live in.

But when I look to my left, I see the old ferries that go out to other outlying islands and a cement walkway leading to Nim Shue Wan. I suppose since there is a name for the place, it isn't only squatters living in the ramshackle cobbled-together buildings. But I know a lot of the places aren't titled. The first time I walked the path, it was pretty creepy. The path leads between houses with glass cemented into the top of the walls, around the awning cooking areas that have karaoke set up on Sunday, and in some places actually through people's houses.

In two places, people have a house on the right side of the path, then on the left they have a table and cooking area. The area is joined by a corrugated fiberglass roof, and the designated, cemented pathway to the Trappist Monastery (the kind of hike that is in Lonely Planet) goes right through. There are always two or three dogs lying in that shady area and no way to go around, so the only thing to do is just go on. I always think I should say "Afiyet olsun" or "Bon appetit" or something when the families are sitting eating dinner, but I don't know what to say in Cantonese. I've never taken a picture of the inside of the house because I feel weird enough walking through. Some time that no one is home, maybe I can, but I've never been by when it was deserted.

There are garden plots growing bok choi protected from the birds by CD's dangling from red cords. There are big banana groves. I saw a huge black snake on the path once there. The dogs that live in the houses sometimes follow us along as we leave their house and then go off exploring in the bananas. There's a Tin Hau temple and several shrines along the way towards the monastery.

All along the path there are also government signs. They say, "The areas in the vicinity of this sign are subject to landslip risk. Some squatter huts have been recommended for clearance. Locations of the affected squatter huts are available from the Geotechnical Engineering Office at 2760 5715. Please stay away from slopes and stream courses during Landslip Warning Signal, Typhoon Signal No. 8 or heavy rains. For location of temporary shelters, you may call..." I always thought it was kind of benevolent of the government to put up the signs, but this winter, the government did more. Along one section of this "village" the hillside climbs steeply up. So the government built retaining walls behind a bunch of the "huts." It was an elaborate project that took several months and required the boating in and landing of generators, corrugated iron fences, concrete mixers, etc. None of the homes were destroyed either: the workers just went around them. I don't know many governments that would do that for squatters.

Part of the village has been taken over by Filipino workers who don't live-in with their employers, or maybe workers that aren't under contract and so have a more tenuous existence. On Sunday morning (their only day off) great pots of food are started cooking in the open kitchens, and big TV screens with karaoke screens are getting readied for big afternoon parties. I can hear the music some nights from my room. From this sign it looks like lots of services are offered in that warren of buildings. On Sundays also there is an unofficial flea market on the way to Nim Shue Wan where some helpers sell clothes and shoes that have somehow come down to them from their employers'.

This little area to my left is a very different kind of life from the view to the right. Sometimes at the flea market, a helper has her little charge with her while she's shopping. I always wonder if the mom knows where her child has been and the different perspective the child has seen.

This American Life

2008-05-17T23:44:00.006+08:00

When I listen to re-runs of "This American Life" I experience the strange disconnect of a jetlag. You know the feeling, when your body doesn't know where you are and is confused, but not necessarily miserable about it. I don't mean I feel jet-lagged because I'm listening to this American thing in another country, though I haven't heard the program in the States for years. Except once last summer I was listening while driving up and down Pacific Coast Highway looking for a Supercuts (which is in itself a slightly surreal experience.)

I feel the jetlag because each program for me has been overwritten by the landscape that surrounds it. I don't know if overwritten is the right word. Remember when, if you taped a cassette tape too many times, you could hear the words you taped before? It's like that for me - there are story echoes of the landscape mixed with each episode.

If you don't know the radio show, "This American Life" you'll have to check it out at http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Archive.aspx. Each week they have an hour-long show around a certain theme. Some of the chapters are essays, others are interviews or fiction stories. The archives go far back. Some of my recent favourites are: Nobody's Family is Going to Change, Valentines Day 2008 and a horror story for teachers, Human Resources.As I listened to the podcast on my nano and ran through the hills in Turkey, the paths and stories became connected. I didn't know how tightly the stories had been attached to the setting until last week when I was climbing the stairs up to the ridge above Discovery Bay here in Hong Kong and listening to a last-year story. Stride by stride I could see sandy hills with thorn bushes and simultaneously jasmine vines with butterflies. It was like how a camera can focus on a reflection and a scene at the same time, but the eye's focus moves back and forth. I kept expecting tortoises around the next corner and just saw dragonflies. I took turns that were not there and slipped on moss I never would have expected. I'm going to have to watch out for re-runs, or else watch my step.

Mother's Day High Tea

2008-05-11T10:16:00.004+08:00

The Peninsula Hotel has been here for a while. On the third floor, on December 25, 1941, the Hong Kong Governor Sir Mark Aitchison Young surrendered the colony to the Japanese. It was the Japanese headquarters at the time. When my mom and I went to high tea, the wartime atmosphere had dissipated.

Going for tea is one of those things people still do in Hong Kong. There are nice high teas in various hotels, nice restaurants, even the Godiva shop. Little local restaurants advertise "tea sets" for the afternoon where you can get your tea or coffee and a dessert or a bowl of noodles cheaper than lunch or dinner time. But the quintessential, archetypal high tea is at the Peninsula, or at least that's what I'd read. It turned out to be as lovely as predicted. The lobby was elegant and quiet, but full of activity. The actual tea was lovely and so was the food.
There were finger sandwiches, little quiche, cakes, sweets, tiramisu with ground pistachios and other delights displayed on a three-tiered plate rack. It didn't look like that much, but with cups of tea, civilized talk and dainty bites, it was plenty. After, we wandered around and explored. The only thing we missed was the hotel shop. Apparently, it has all kinds of goods like a Harrod's store.

But the most fun was going out together. Last time we had high tea together was in London in 1990. That was fun, but we didn't have as much to talk about and I wasn't grown enough to enjoy the experience as much. Too bad my mom's not here today to celebrate on the day, but better early than never. Happy Mother's Day, Mommy!

Humid is...

2008-05-07T20:20:00.004+08:00

On Sunday I climbed about 850 stairs that went 700 metres up the mountain, then looped around, came back down and went to the Rockpools for the first time this year. The sky was wonderfully clear. I don't understand how I could see so clearly or so far with that much moisture in the air. It was as wet and warm as a when you were a child and a fat adult engulfed you in damp cuddles and sweet breath.
I'm learning about humidity here.
Humid is:

When it's cool and dry in my bag compared to the outside weather.
When my camera steams up when I bring it out into the open.
When there is a level of dampness to the hanging clothes that is the new "dry."
When the dust won't come up with a broom or vacuum because it's stuck to the floor.
When the hassock smells of the house it lived in three years ago.
When I step outside at the end of an air-conditioned work day and my skin feels like I just put on lotion.
When the tops of the books feel wet in the book case.
When my brown wool pencil skirt I wear for interviews is growing mould in the closet.
When apartments float as mirages in the sky.

May Day

2008-05-03T11:21:00.010+08:00

First I really heard of May Day, (other than being a day to leave flowers on a person's doorway, ring the door and run away,) was when a Namibian colleague in Turkey complained that we had to work on the day. Here I don't have to. It's a public holiday and we decided to wander the town taking pictures. I had no idea how different it would look from an ordinary day.

Helpers were sitting all along the walkways as they do every Sunday. It looked like any holiday until we got right into the middle of the town. Thousands of domestic workers were sitting on the street by the Bulgari building, the Prada building, under the Armani walkway, everywhere. Down the street, there was a revival meeting. Hundreds were wearing "Jesus is Lord Church, Third Anniversary Hong Kong T-shirts." On blocked off side streets, other groups of people played drums and danced. Every weekend I've seen the groups of women on stools moving among the picnics and giving manicures. Every weekend there are groups of women practicing dance routines. Every weekend others are stringing together beads to made the most hideous plastic bead flower arrangements. But on May Day it was all this, and more.

Over by the trams, dozens of black T-shirted girls were waiting to get on. Their shirts listed the Indonesian domestic workers demands: 1. Stop underpayment. 2. Reduce agency fees. 3. Increase the two week limit to find new jobs. (An domestic worker who quits her job or is fired has only 2 weeks to find a job or leave Hong Kong. It's a rule that's used by many employers to keep their workers from complaining, quitting or refusing any task.) As we rode the tram towards Causeway Bay, I saw hundreds more of these T-shirts. None of these pictures shows how huge the numbers of workers were everywhere on the streets. It looked like another whole population of Hong Kong had been deposited outside, which is I guess what actually happened. All these workers who are usually indoors cleaning, shopping or minding children were outside with nothing they had to do.

Late in the evening we returned. The revival meeting had quieted down, but the picnics were still going on. Lines of empty San Miguel cans sat along railings and helpers picked through the garbage for aluminum cans and saleable items before going home to their employers' houses.
See better pictures than these at: hkstreetsntowers.blogspot.com

The USS Kitty Hawk and the Torch Relay

2008-04-30T13:10:00.005+08:00

The sailors are in town. I was out in town for a coaches' appreciation dinner Wednesday night and saw them in all their glory.
The USS Kitty Hawk is here for a five day shore leave. In November, they were scheduled to come to Hong Kong for Thanksgiving, but just as they were sailing in, China said that they hadn't followed the proper procedures and wouldn't let them in. Spouses and families had flown to Hong Kong to celebrate Thanksgiving with the sailors, but they were all disappointed and the sailors spent Thanksgiving at sea.

Analysts suggested that the snub of the carrier was because Congress had just given the Dalai Lama its highest civilian honor. But early this year, China let the USS Nimitz battle group with its nuclear reactor, warheads and thousands of sailors to come for a shore leave. This week Kitty Hawk got to come to town after all with its 5000 sailors, cruiser Shiloh and destroyers Curtis Wilbur, Stethem and Lassen.

Tomorrow is the torch run. I'm sure that George Bush saying that, of course he's going to the Opening Ceremony and general US support of the Olympics has nothing to do with the Kitty Hawk's shore leave. Or does it?

Intrepid Sightseeing

2008-04-26T09:44:00.012+08:00

Today is sunny with smog, warm and quiet except for construction and birdsong - the complete opposite of last Saturday. Last Friday started the wind a-blowing and after a play at the Fringe (in which we knew two of the principal actors) we hung out on the rooftop bar in the most delicious wind. It felt warm and moist as breath on the skin, but so enormous. The rooftop was closed because of the approaching typhoon and all the tables and chairs were roped down, but we stood there and drank in the wind.

Shannon arrived as the wind strengthened, and Saturday morning was blowing and raining like, well, like the front edge of a typhoon. The T3 flag was "hoisted." (See http://www.hko.gov.hk/informtc/tcsignal.htm for an explanation of the signals. The short version is T1 - typhoon might be coming; T3 - tie everything down and watch signals; T-8 - stay indoors, schools are cancelled, tape your windows; T-9, T-10 - hope for the best and stay away from rooms with windows. Warning flags are so exciting! I just wish they still fired the typhoon gun over the harbor.) It was T-3, but Shannon's primary sightseeing goal was to go to the Big Buddha, so what could we do? We went. The big Buddha is at the top of the mountain and is as unprotected as anyone would imagine.

There were a lot fewer tour groups climbing the stairs than when we went on Easter Sunday. And the cable car up was closed. The kids and I retreated quickly to the vegetarian restaurant at the monastery, which is well-reviewed, but a huge disappointment. At least we had tons of hot tea until it was time to stand at the bus stop waiting for the next a/c coach to take us back down the mountain. Huge boxes flew by as we cowered behind posts and held our 7-11 hooded garbage bags down.

Here are two pictures illustrating the various opinions of the adventure:

We made it back, recovered our equanimity with ice cream and cocoa and ventured out again for dinner. By now there were thunderstorm and black rain warnings posted. We prepared ourselves with rolled up pant legs, the beloved garbage bags and loads of resolve. After all that, when we left the air conditioned restaurant, the rain and wind had stopped. Sunday was mild and calm. Just right for those less intrepid.

Yesterday's commute

2008-04-15T12:08:00.010+08:00

I haven't stopped taking pictures of the commute; I've just stopped posting so many. Going through the harbor out to Lantau is the most beautiful part of my day, especially in the past week when the air has cleared up. Partly it was the rains starting that washed the sky, knocking the particulates and leaving drops shimmering. Partly it's the run-up to the Olympics. I read in the paper that Beijing just issued a cleanup deadline for a bunch of factories that must shut down or cut output by July 20th, but rumors are that more factories than those covered by this announcement are being shut in the Pearl River Delta to clean up the air.

Whatever the explanation, the air tastes good and the light is beautiful. After nightfall I can see the glow of Central in the sky from my window, the lights of Pok Fu Lam, the darker outlying islands and the glow of ferries on a misty sea that slide across the water like a hand gentling across a bare back.

New Flowers

2008-04-14T16:31:00.006+08:00

These flowers are growing in the hills all up and down the pathways of the water. I saw them on an almost-aborted hike on Sunday.

After getting to ferry I can see from my window (click on Hong Kong Daily Photos), finding out that I had the time 45 minutes off, returning home and coming back, we arrived one bike, one scooter and two hikers at the trailhead. But there was a tall flight of cement stairs. Back we went to the pier to lock up bike and scooter. Then back to the trailhead. Then Kestrel said that she needed a water bottle. Back we went to the pier to buy water. Then back to the trailhead. We climbed to the top of the stairs to find... a cement path. Back we went to the pier to get bike and scooter. Then back to the trailhead. After a few hundred meters the path became dirt, but we carried on half-way to Pui O, until the mosquitoes became too much for little ankles.Around a week and a half ago, the air suddenly became heavy with humidity. Even though it's only around 24 C, so not too hot, everything is thick and wet. To keep the bread from drying out, you leave it on the counter. It's almost impossible to tell if clothes on the line are dry or wet, mainly because they're still wet. Outside feel much better than inside because there the humidity makes everything smell alive. New flowers, honeysuckle, jasmine, the flowers leis are made of (plumaria I think), all kinds of smells that make you want to say words like redolent.

Lost Property

2008-04-12T16:53:00.008+08:00

Thursday, after a long day at school, I arrived at the ferry pier with my little associates and found out that they had lost the house key the day before. Since I'd misplaced mine somewhere on the weekend, we found ourselves locked out waiting for the only responsible one in the family to get off work and bring us a key.

It was a week for losing things. On Tuesday the littlest one had lost her ferry pass, so with all the time on our hands, I had the chance to ask after it in lost property. The ferry worker turned on a big smile because he'd found it himself. She was delighted to get it back, and luckily I made her go back to say thank you because then I discovered the phone I'd just left on the counter.

Then I tried to leave Circle K after topping up our all-purpose octopus cards without paying and the boy walked out with a Gatorade and realized embarrassed that he hadn't paid, just outside the store. Next I mis-counted my change and tried to push an extra $20 on the cooks for our supper of dumplings and sticky rice in lotus leaves. It probably was good and necessary to spend the hour and a half calming down, drinking a pint on the promenade and taking pictures of the evening coming on.

Ferry food top recommendation

2008-04-03T21:28:00.005+08:00

Of all the food I've bought at a ferry terminal, the best by far is the barbecue pork pineapple bun featured here. Sweet, but savoury and only $5 HK, it was great value for something to eat while waiting in the drizzling rain for the ferry to come to take us back to Discovery Bay.
What continues to amaze me is that a planned outing takes the time allotted and does not turn into a long, drawn-out agonizing adventure. Hong Kong is the place for someone who likes the new and exotic, but without the pain.
Here's the latest evidence: Monday afternoon I planned to take the 3:00 ferry to Mui Wo, buy my boy a bicycle and take the 4:45 ferry back. I'd been told the name of the bike shop and knew it was around the corner from where it was before. We found it, tried out 5 bikes, bought one and a lock, took it for a spin along the beach path, bought supper groceries, got some ferry snacks for the way home and sat waiting, watching the ferry come into the bay to pick us up. You know that would have been inconceivable in Turkey.

Bombax malabaricum

2008-04-03T13:41:00.006+08:00

At the end of the cold part of winter, all over town these large, bare trees bloomed. The blossoms are huge and waxy, but become fuzzy as they age and soften in a warm, kid's hand.
I wonder if they are the flowers in the Korean go-stop cards. Common names are Tree Cotton and Red Kapok Tree.
I got these pictures on the Wednesday the kids were home because of the flu scare. We took the chance to preview a field trip properly and walked down from the Peak and through the aviary in Hong Kong Park. It's my favourite place in Hong Kong. These flowers have almost all fallen now, but since it's started raining, spring flowers are blooming everywhere like cheap lingerie.

Easter Sunday in Hong Kong

2008-04-01T21:29:00.010+08:00

I have a friend or two who can manage Easter. They decorate the eggs, bake the goodies, organize the hunt and all. I even have one totally capable friend who goes to church on Palm Sunday and makes pancakes for Mardi Gras! Usually Easter finds me stapling construction paper swiped from school into a box-like shape to make a basket and going out to buy a candy bar or two to put in it. I've even had to use real grass for the lining. But this year Easter was done right at my house. It was because my mom came to visit with Cadbury eggs, baskets, cute Beanie Babies, fake grass, an egg-dying kit, plastic eggs, Hershey kisses and jellybeans! My sole contribution was buying the only white eggs in the store (imported from America) and boiling them.
After a sweet, two-kid egg hunt in the morning and coffee cake for breakfast, we continued to celebrate the occasion by going to the Giant Buddha, Po Lin Monastery and The Wisdom Path. Hong Kong is known for its very specific superlatives (e.g. the world's longest road-and-rail suspension bridge built in the last quarter of the twentieth century), so this Buddha is very precisely, the world's tallest outdoor, seated, bronze Buddha. It has two hundred and seventy-eight stairs to the base of it according my boy's count. Another fun thing about it is you can take a 25 minute long cable car (gondola) ride to get to it. Luckily for us it had re-opened in January after being closed for 8 months for repairs because a couple of the cars fell off last year.
You can only go to the base of the Buddha for free. In order to go inside to one of the higher tiers you have to pay. But the fee is not for going in; what you have to buy is a meal or snack ticket to the nearby vegetarian restaurant. We didn't buy a ticket, but I've read it's actually pretty good food.
While we were up there we started to hear chanting/singing from the monastery nearby. Though it wasn't nearly the call to prayer, it was still compelling. It was a beautiful monastery and lots of people were lighting incense of all sizes in the courtyards. I'd been to lots of temples in Korea and was bored silly with them, but with the prayers loud enough to feel in your bones and the heavy incense smoke, it was all quite other-worldly.
Nearby was the Wisdom Path which is described as "an outdoor replica of the centuries-old Heart Sutra, one of the world's best-known prayers that is revered by Confucians, Buddhists and Taoists alike. The sutra is displayed on wooden pillars placed in the form of an infinity sign to symbolize the immeasurable splendour of achieving emptiness." Despite that description, the pillars were dappled with moss and bark and looked like they belonged on those hills against that grey sky.

More Street Food

2008-03-25T13:11:00.007+08:00

I'm doing well on the resolution to eat more street food. It helps to wander slowly around sightseeing in a group of six - someone is always hungry.

Of the things I've eaten recently, the waffles smelled the best, the fish balls were the cheapest and worst and the octopus had the most interesting texture.

Roasted sweet potato in TST ($18)
Egg waffle (plain) also in TST ($10)
Curried fish balls (tough and repulsive) at the Big Buddha ($6)
Boiled octopus (tender and jellied) at the Big Buddha as well (10)
Sausage ($17)
Roasted corn ($18)

Ok, so they're not the Sequoias, but...

2008-03-25T12:45:00.008+08:00

When I was eleven or twelve we drove through Sequoia National Park. There was a tree that the road used to go through and apparently very big other trees. But I don't quite remember much other than the extreme irritation I felt when I was forced to look up from my book, or even worse, leave the car.

It was this awesome book about a boy who had a real jerk of a father who, in preparation to sending him to boarding school, sent him to a military wilderness boot camp in the summer to toughen him up. The boy learned a bunch of survival skills and then took off into the wilderness on his own. I loved it. I still remember him calling his dad at one point and telling him he'd come home on certain conditions - otherwise he'd just stay out in the woods. What a great book that was!

So yesterday when we looked at a bunch of modern art that's on temporary installation in Central - a couple of Botero's, Modigliani, Indiana, and a some others, could I really complain about my boy reading the third Dune book all day?

Here's the other one sketching a Dali that's in the lobby of the Mandarin.

Ferry food

2008-03-19T15:01:00.005+08:00

Lor Mai Gai is filled with chicken, a preserved duck egg, gravy, some sweet sausage something all wrapped in sticky rice and then wrapped round with a green leaf and steamed. It's yummy, bony, odd and cheap - everything street food should be.

Another of our favourites is the barbecued pork buns. They are $5 each and were great in Korea, too.

There are all kinds of dumplings and fried things and dim sum to buy on the street. I've got to admit that I haven't tried half the options. For one thing, it's daunting pushing through a crowd to try and order something that you're not sure what it is, so you can't just shout out what you want. For another, not all of it smells that great.

But it's spring break tomorrow, starting at noon. I'm going to set a goal to have a different street food every day. Curried fish balls, here I come.

Phlower Phair Photos

2008-03-18T15:35:00.008+08:00

A few years ago, I was entrusted with the filing box of my great grandmother's photo albums. There's a box of loose photos that have lots of my grandpa as a little kid. I can pick him out in an instant even in group shots and he looks like a kid you wouldn't want to have in class.
But most of the photo albums don't have pictures of people in them. There are page after yellowed, sticky page of photos of deer, cars and Disneyland, but the biggest collection of pictures is dedicated to Polaroids of orchid shows.
Here's me telling an enthusiastic Granite about that at the Hong Kong Flower Show:It was packed and steamy in the March sunshine, people and cameras. Thousands of people crowded around each stand of flowers, taking pictures of topiaries, flower arrangements, pots of orchids, garden designs and flower beds. Some were using cell-phones and some were using professional-grade, huge-lensed cameras with tripods. My favorites were the the people taking the pictures of pansies as if they were the most exotic thing in the world.I tortured the kids for several hours looking at orchids. I bought a pitcher plant, a hanging orchid and some air plants. It would have been harder to stop shopping if it weren't for the fact that I had basically no money. Lots of the orchids were $20 HK each, which is less than $3 US! The most frustrating thing is that the four orchids I already have at home keep putting out new buds while I keep waiting for them to die back so I can buy some more.

Blizzard approaching

2008-03-18T15:10:00.005+08:00

You know the feeling of anticipation in the air when there's a forecasted blizzard and all the school is a-buzzing with wondering about a snow day? Well, last Thursday was like that, except it was the flu a-comin'.
The first I knew of it was Wednesday night when from the deepest sleep of twenty minutes in, I heard a ringing that turned out to be my cell phone. Gregory got it and I listened to him tell a parent: No he wouldn't wake me up. No, we hadn't heard anything about a school closure. No, I didn't decide if school would be open. He found out then that at around 10:30 at night the government had issued an announcement that primary schools and kindergartens would close early for Easter break because of the flu outbreak.
The flu outbreak: four children had died in the past week. There were 511 cases total of the flu in the Hong Kong schools. (This is out of a population of 7 million people.) This is not the bird flu.
So we went to school. Most classes had only around half of the kids there. Kids dribbled in throughout the day as the parents discovered our school was open. Rumors spread wildly about which international schools were open and who and when the decision would be made if we should close or not.
The long-term staff told us about being in Hong Kong during SARS. The schools were closed for three weeks then and the teachers had to e-mail work to the students, get it back, mark it and come to school every day. Lots of the ex-pat kids and parents flew out of the country for safety; no one was in the streets; Hong Kong felt like a sad ghost town.
But that was then and only 6 kids at our school, out of a school of 1600, were home sick with anything on the Wednesday before. Nevertheless, mid-afternoon the clarification came down from the government that all schools have to close. After being a-quiver all day over the possibility, once the announcement was made, I was exhausted!
So here I am at school with no students for the week before Easter break. And the government just announced today that two of the four kids who died didn't have the flu. An odd sort of gift from the gods.

Mega-post

2008-03-11T09:39:00.003+08:00

Megabox is a eighteen floor mall that has MegaIce (about half the size Tanya Harding used to practice on in Portland), MegaCinema, MegaEats and MegaKids (a floor devoted to kids' clothes and toys.)
This is how to get there. You take the MTR all hell and gone out to Kowloon Bay in the New Territories. There, you walk through a mall, through a white sky-lighted passageway that looks like the kind of shopping reserved for the international section of a good airport. Continue out into a cemented plaza planted with palm trees with a fountain ringed by old people taking the sun in parkas and towered over by apartment blocks that look like the projects. Then you duck back into an office building owned by the Hang Seng Bank and follow the signs down an escalator towards a free shuttle bus. You line up in the velvet-roped queue for the bus that every ten minutes takes shoppers along more streets that are either bordered by projects or construction sites.
It is quite a site. Picture a square building all in red except for a circular cut-out on the front that is glass. Inside that section is a video screen, bigger than most movie screens, showing commercials, trailers for movies, or music videos. I wasn't really clear on what was showing; I only knew that whatever it was included lots of soulful looks by very big faces.
Hong Kong is a city of malls, so it is almost reasonable to have an outing to one. I was trying to count on the weekend wondering whether there are more malls per people here or in greater Los Angeles. We have 7 million people in Hong Kong and I haven't been looking for malls. But still, there's the IFC, Pacific Place, Langham Place, Landmark, Times Square, City Plaza, Megabox, Elements, Fashion Walk and Sogo. That doesn't count the plus-15 walkways all lined with stores or the retail spaces stacked five high along the street. It seems like if there are escalators, it should count as a mall, doesn't it?
I'd heard a lot about Megabox because there's a three-level store called Spotlight that has Walmart-like craft supplies and a two-level home hardware store, too. Plus, my boy had been to Megabox for a grade-level field trip and wanted to go back, so reluctantly I agreed. But the place was odd enough that it felt like a cultural experience.
I took a pile of pictures of the public art, ceilings and floor decorations, but somehow. for the first and inshallah only time. when I downloaded them onto my computer, they disappeared. [I know that is not possible. I am only reporting on my perception of what happened. Don't give me any suggestions about this. I'm still bereft.] I wish you could see all the craziness. On the Megakids floor the elevators are decorated like the entrance to the Tikki Tikki Room in Disneyland, all "African" masks and spears. The ceilings are hung with great leaves and fiberglass monkeys and parrots. By the elevators are elephants, giraffes and giant mushrooms for waiting. It is mall-cum-theme park.
I wonder about cause and effect because there are lots of Japanese stores there. In one store there were stuffed pink and grey glittery peace signs on sticks and a silicon sparkle-filled bone hanging on a cardboard dog's face. I didn't think that it would actually survive a dog's chewing on it, so I picked it up to look at it. On the back in the little English print it said that it was a wrist-rest for when you're mousing.
But in that store, with all the other oddities there was something so amazing that I'm still thinking about it. In a wall of shelves filled with pillows and stuffed characters there was a yellow rectangular pillow. Other than its legs on the bottom corners, hands on the top corners and smiling face, it looked like any other pillow. But when I touched it....! You will never know the rapture of my hand as it sunk into that pillow! The resistance was like no other pillow I'd ever felt. It was like the rolling of tiny ball bearings in a frictionless liquid. It was like there was nothing but the suede smoothness of skin inviting my hand to rest. And yet, as I pushed deeper the pillow subtly responded as if to say, "Don't trouble yourself. You're making too much effort. Let me hold you." The pillow was around 45 cm by 35 cm and cost $139 HKD. It seemed like too much, but if I can't get it out of my mind, I may have to go back and get it.
There's a MegaEats food court and we wanted hamburgers. But since the only burger restaurant was too complicated, we settled for sushi. It doesn't seem reasonable that a Japanese burger joint with its elaborate list of possible ingredients to add to the burger, multiple combinations of side dishes and high prices would be harder to figure out than a sushi bar, but we all agreed. We ate more sushi than we even wanted to for $12 USD and got our strength back.
After food we went to the real destination of the day, the floor of vending machines. The vending machines were two-high all the way down a hallway, in two alcoves and filling an entire store. Some of them take coins like any machine; some take Octopus cards, (the all-purpose magnetic-chipped card that is used for buses, ferries, 7-11 and everything else); and for some of them you had to buy a special card-voucher and insert it into the machine, turn the handle and the machine would remove that value from the card. What an assortment of fun there was to buy: Pooh bear key chains, Hello Kitty key covers, anime action figures, assemble it yourself catapults, miniature toy dogs, and on and on. Best of all, it turned out that the pillow turned out to be a character. So now I have a little plastic replica to remind me of what I yearn for.
It might not be enough. I may have to go back for the pillow and the pictures. Stay tuned.

Night Market Awards

2008-02-25T15:41:00.010+08:00

Saturday night I went to the Night Market with our first visitors to town. It's always a different experience being one who is supposed to be showing another around. It was a rainy night and the vibe in the market was very subdued: stalls were half set up, stacks of socks were being shuffled around, plastic wrapped t-shirts were being wiped.

At the "Fiery Crab" outdoor restaurant the waitress was pushing the six scallops in garlic for $60. She gestured across the lane for us to check out how fresh they were. There the scallops sat on ice in the rain with live prawns lying around them weakly waving their legs. It looked a little too dangerous and a little too fresh, so instead we had duck and vegetables and all the other basic Chinese delights. The duck came chopped in half, including half of the head and one baleful eye. There was a girl dressed in a Heineken cheerleader outfit who was pushing Heineken, but we drank Chinese beer and were much the better for it.

The last time I was at the Night Market, I had to push through the crowds between each stall. As soon as I walked up to look at anything the seller would be there with the patter and the pressure, the bargaining and persuading, but Saturday the market was populated by sullen sellers sulking on metal folding chairs. The women and men sat in the driest corner huddled over food in styrofoam and looked resigned.

I saw much more tacky items, too. Here are my nominations for the Night Market Awards.
The award for the worst t-shirt saying goes to: Bruce Lee is my Homeboy. (Runner up: When I need a lift, God gives me a push) Tackiest belt buckle goes to: I Heart New York. (Runner up: Rocky Mountain High) Most confused English goes to the t-shirt: What the fucking are you ding? Worst toy goes to: the doll entitled "Banana is a snack?" (Runner up: the blond hula doll that is activated by squeezing her breast.) And winner of tackiest souvenir overall goes to the gold cats waving their hands.

Reflections

2008-02-23T00:28:00.006+08:00

This week the cold broke. The feeling was in everything - the relief of the lifting of the cold. I could see it in the clothes people wore and in the lightness of their walk. It wasn't like when a chinook blows down because that has its own pressure; it wasn't like the softness of the first warm day of spring; it was more like the feeling you get at the end of a hot summer day when the pressure has been building up and finally the clouds pull together and the thunder hits. That feeling of relief that comes with the first rush of rain or whiff of ozone - the air was as different as that when the cold lifted. I know it's hard to imagine it matters so much. I know that it was only between maybe 6-12 degrees. I know that I've endured much colder weather than that for 6 or 7 months straight in Alberta, but somehow it weighed me down. And it weighed everyone else down, too. I didn't notice until they came back, but the crested mynas that sing so loudly above the ferry stop had been silent throughout the "cold snap." On the 18th the Meterological Society lifted the "cold weather" warning that had been effect since January 24th. The coldest CNY in 12 years, the longest cold spell since 1968; it made for a different energy in the city.

What I started to notice as soon as the cold lifted was that I could see shine of the buildings again. That cold air mass had been full of smoke and mist, curling around like the reeks of Mordor. In the last few weeks I kept looking for pictures and kept taking pictures even if I couldn't see any, but it was so frustrating how ugly everything looked. The air had become thick enough that I couldn't even see the reflections in the buildings.

Along with the cold breaking, it has gotten to the time of the year when the sun has come back. By Monday I think I'll see it shining past the Gotham City skyline to find our ferry on the commute. I think I've made it through another dark time of the year. It's one month until Equinox; hold on, you inhabitants of the northern climes.

Look. You can even see the reflection of the tower they're building across the water, Kowloon side. (The one on the header to the blog.)

A stretch

2008-02-17T13:42:00.009+08:00

Of course after a trip to Paradise, in this case the Philippines, I want to go talk about it. But how to justify talking about my holiday on a blog about Hong Kong? Well, I think I've figured out a connection.

The place we stayed was a remote quiet little spot with one restaurant, four bungalows and little else, so I spent lots of time talking to the other visitors and to the scuba teacher that came to certify my boy. He is a Swiss man who used to work for the police force. He specialized in organizing the security for big festivals and demonstrations, a logistics expert. Matt worried about being bored when he retired, so he moved to the Philippines and is running a tour agency. The impossibilities of organizing anything to run smoothly there are keeping him very occupied.

We talked about how the government policies don't encourage any sort of entrepreneurial activities or limits to the birth rate because the government runs on of all the money brought in by people, mainly women, working abroad. He said that the 10% of Filipinos who are working abroad are sending home more money than the wages of the 90% who are still in the country. I also didn't realize that the foreign workers are only allowed to keep around 10% of their income. It is a requirement of their visa that the rest of it has to be sent back to the Philippines.

A trained office worker on Negros Orientale gets around 200 pesos a day wages. That converts to $5 USD. Matt said that his office assistant supports five people on that. It's no wonder why so many Filipinas are here in Hong Kong. And it's no wonder that some steal from their employers. Ten percent of the monthly minimum wage is roughly $40 USD. I can't imagine only having forty dollars to buy day-off food, clothes and necessaries. I suppose room and board doesn't cover tampons. So that's the Hong Kong connection. It's a stretch to be sure, but there I was in paradise while helpers were freezing their butts off sitting on cardboard on the walkways of HK during the "holidays" they got over Chinese New Year.

The Year of the Rat

2008-02-16T14:17:00.006+08:00

We missed the Chinese New Year celebrations this year. Back in November, everyone said that CNY is a great time to stay in Hong Kong. They said it was cool, beautiful and not crowded. They also pointed out that it's the most expensive time to travel in Asia because everyone else is. We thought to vacation during Christmas and stay during CNY, but luckily, as it turns out, I didn't have enough money for us to travel at Christmas if we were to have any presents. So we booked early to go away CNY.

Up until a week before, I was a little disappointed to miss all the celebrations. The decorations were gorgeous all over town with "trees" of mandarin oranges or kumkwats on every corner. All the little shops that usually sell stationary, plastic bowls, buckets and perhaps some twine were packed with red and gold. I suppose the paper and plastic decorations would look tawdry in ones and twos but packed into a lit shop, they were really striking.

I discovered I needed to buy CNY clothes for my kids. The students at school wear traditional Chinese clothes for most of the week before the vacation starts, so I went out one drizzly night to "the Lanes." Right across the street from H&M and Marks and Spencer, an open market is packed into two alleyways. I tried to look and buy some clothes at the stall at the top of the lane, but women kept stepping in front of me and engaging the shop keeper. I wasn't feeling like using my pushy shopper skills I picked up in Korea and refined in Turkey, so the girl and I went down farther into the lanes. There we found another stall with a great salesman. He sold three or four different outfits while I was debating, but kept up the patter the whole time to me, too: "What do you want for you? What else? I can see you have a good eye? Make your husband happy..." After I'd decided on a hot pink cheongsam dress, I asked him what size I needed. I said that I usually wear a 38 or 40, but I wasn't sure. He told me to open up my coat. So I did and he said definitively that I needed a 40. I demurred that maybe a 38 would do, but he said, "No, when you open your coat, I see your hips. Not a 38. I am honest." So I bought the 40.

But when I went home, it was too big. I didn't begrudge at all the extra trip back since I got to tell the man off for misjudging my hips. I told him I wasn't as fat as he thought I was. For a moment he looked worried that I was really mad, but then, that consummate salesman came back with, "I just wanted to see you again."

We left Hong Kong a few days before the New Year. I wore three sweatshirts and shivered walking in the rain to the bus to go to the airport. It was hard to pack because it didn't seem possible that I'd need bikinis and sarongs. I bet a lot of people here didn't even go out to watch the fireworks; and plenty of boys were freezing their heads because of their short New Year haircuts. Next year maybe I'll get to see CNY, or maybe I'll just go to paradise again.

The Cold Part II: The Flowers

2008-01-30T09:13:00.000+08:00

This is part two, so if you haven't read how pitifully cold it is for us humans, please check that out. You need to hear the pathos in my voice and see how frigid it really is before you see these pictures.

There are 500,000 plus people stranded in a train station just 3 hours north of here. The stock market is falling because of the terrible cold. Coal stocks are fluctuating based on wild rumors - can they make huge profits? will the government step in and regulate prices to cub inflation? will shortages continue? will mines be forced to stay open during the Lunar New Year? People are without water and power all over the mainland and more that 1 million police and soldiers have been mobilized to maintain order in airports and train stations and clear snow and ice from highways. It's all happening so close to Hong Kong. Even here people are remembering the bitter winter of 1996 when old people died in their beds because of the cold. But look at these flowers and plants. All of these are taken outside while I was walking home Monday night.

So don't listen to any more moaning from me.

The Cold Part I: In Parkas

2008-01-27T17:39:00.000+08:00

Here I am sitting in my flat in a fleece, wool sweater and red beret looking out at whipping winds and grey skies. This story of the cold starts in August- August 2003. We'd just got off the airplane at the old Ankara airport and I was standing on a torn-up sidewalk in 37 degree heat with a toddler, a 7 year old, 11 big bags, four carry-ons, no cell phone, no phone numbers and no one picking us up. Eventually, we were found and put in a mini-bus to be taken to our new home. The hot wind whipped my hair as I held the two-year old who bounced on the seat excited for her first car ride out of a car seat. And what did Linda talk about the whole way home? The winters. She said how long the winters were, how think and frequent the snow, how the gloom hung over the city, how the cold got deep in her bones. It was unbelievable in the heat and dryness of the day. It was so dry that it made you want to get back in the airplane to plump up.

Well, part-way through the first winter in Ankara, we got snow boots mailed in; snow pants, long johns and toques followed soon after. But I read the weather for Hong Kong. It said that the coldest it gets here is 10 degrees. And I know 10. 10 degrees is a t-shirt, and fleece; it's a turtleneck and shell; it's a baseball cap and hoodie. So we each brought a sweatshirt when we moved. I brought my beret because I've had it since 1996, and I sold or gave away all 16 pairs of our gloves.

And then August came. We got to Hong Kong. It was 34 degrees and raining. As soon as I stepped outdoors I felt the weight and thickness of the heat, but right away I started to hear about The Cold. 'It just lasts a couple of months,' they said, 'but it's a damp cold that gets right in your bones.' 'None of the houses are heated so you'll be shivering in your own bedroom.' 'You'll see.' I kept checking the climate charts - sure enough average lows in January-14 degrees, average highs-18. I was mocked for bringing the cool coat I had bought from Shannon when she moved to Singapore. I was teased for not having gotten rid of my favourite grey sweater I bought before the baby was born.

The question was, how could do you think it's going to be? But last week it started to blow. Today, in spite of people over for brunch and two coffee cakes, one quiche and cranberry orange scones keeping the oven on for hours, people kept their coats on. Here I am, shivering in my own living room. Even three days ago, I was still giggling at the parkas, hats and scarves I was seeing all over town. Today, not so much.

I wanted to have funny pictures of people looking like it's the Arctic, but it's hard to get pictures of the coats of the people walking when you're shivering. I liked these people all bundled up by the fountain outside Dior inside the Landmark building. Check out the thongs on the woman sitting a little farther over. The picture of the girl in the purple tam is right at our ferry terminal. I followed her and her friend for a long time because they were just the cutest with their boots, sweaters and handbags big enough to float home in.

Toys for boys and girls

2008-01-19T19:28:00.000+08:00

I haven't read, blogged, written or e-mailed this past week because I've been too busy with a new toy. I've been playing with my Rubik's cube. Last Saturday I bought one at Toys 'R Us because of my third New Year's Resolution, which is the only one that's likely attainable: "Learn to solve the Rubik's Cube."
When I was 11 I couldn't do it. I remember who could - Jon, Wesley, Darren Okada, lots of other boys - and only boys. I could do the top layer, but that was all. They spent hours working on it, but I know they got hints, too. Somebody bought a booklet from somewhere that explained how to solve it. I'm not sure where they got the booklet, but I have the feeling that it was the same mysterious place where they they got Mad magazines and fake dog poop. In my mind it was all connected somehow with the Dr. Demento show as well.
So on Sunday, I went to 2008 equivalent of the comic book/joke shop at the mall: YouTube. My boy (who's the age Jon and Wesley were) and I spent hours watching the YouTube video, pausing, trying and taking notes. And by Sunday night, not long after he went to sleep, with help of notes, I solved it! I couldn't do it consistently, and had to look at the notes over and over again, but now after hours and hours of practice, it only takes me ten minutes or so. I've spent nights with my wrists twitching and dreaming of algorithms - R U Ri U R U U Ri is my favourite. Just thinking of it makes me want to do it again. The solving is so satisfying.
I have to say that I'd always felt superior when I'd seen adults playing Nintendo DS or their Sony PSPs on the subway. It's not unusual at all to see grown people take them out of their pockets, though usually not from their briefcases. The briefcase set has different toys: Blackberries and Iphones that they use ostensibly for work or for checking Facebook. I guess I can't look down on all the grown-ups with their toys now. And I'm not sure why I thought I ever could because I never leave home without my toys in my pocket or purse: my Nano, phone, camera, sometimes laptop and now my Rubik's Cube.
Try it! We're all much smarter than we were in 1980.
Here's the link to the YouTube video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsQIoPyfQzM&feature=related

Blue Skies Over My Head...

2008-01-12T17:59:00.000+08:00

It is the clearest day I've ever seen in Hong Kong. I know I've said so before, but it seems even clearer today, partly because it was so foggy yesterday and partly because the skyline has become familiar enough that when it becomes clear I see things I didn't realize were there. It's the same principle as being a fire lookout: the view around becomes so well known that the smallest smoke attracts the eye.
As I walked to the ferry this morning I read the headlines in the hands of a woman walking home. It said, "100 injured when Macau ferries collide in fog." The fog had disrupted ferry crossings for six hours yesterday, but after the passages resumed two ferries smashed hard enough to send passengers flying and crack the windshield of one of the ferries. Also a jet foil hit a fishing boat, two fishing boats went down after running into each other and in the same area a Fire Services speedboat smashed into another fishing boat. It reminds me how I'd always been afraid on ferries before they became such a commonplace part of my life. As we cross over each day, we nip in behind loaded container ships bound for other ports; we speed beside hydrofoils, cut in front of sampans and junks, skirt aircraft carriers and cross paths regularly with cruise ships.
I never saw the fog thick yesterday, but I did see the glory shining through the clouds. Today I took pictures all over town because of the clearness of the light. This picture of the plants is in a tiny park, the size of a N. American apartment, that's tucked between raised walkways. The light was especially brilliant because from one side shone the sun and from the other shone an even brighter light - the reflection from the Bank of China building. It was hotter than a greenhouse there and the weight of the air was like June. It looked even better than real life, as if my life were a movie.
I didn't worry about crossing home today. If the ferry crashed on a day like today, it was just fate. Allah Korusun after all. (Notice how high the building in the background is now compared with my banner photo!) Today looked like one of my favourite songs. This song makes me happy, though a little uneasy when I used to hear my three-year-old sing it. Tom Waits on Closing Time:
"Blue skies over my head.
Give me another reason to get out of bed.
Blue skies shine in my face
Give me another woman to take her place.
Ain't got no money,
Cupboards are bare,
No cigarettes and the kids got nothing to wear.
She walked out without a word
Now the only song's singing's that mocking bird..."

Look up!

2008-01-12T02:23:00.000+08:00

It was almost a year ago that I was at the London job fair and the guy who hired me for this job said that he's often thought of writing a guide book to Hong Kong entitled, Don't Look Up. He said that he is still jarred by the incongruity between what he sees at street level and what is hanging above. I completely disagree. So many times I've looked up and caught views and vistas that would be impossible except for the reflections on the buildings. It's like so many big cities where the buildings can keep the sunlight from touching you, but in Hong Kong there isn't the brick - instead it's all glass. My son saw and framed the best reflection picture I've made so far, but it's missing in the morass that is various back-ups, hard drives, dropped laptops and school servers. Today, though, I looked up and saw this.

Orchids Ejaculate!

2008-01-05T23:26:00.001+08:00

I was reading through last year's diary, to finish the old and start the new, and saw that in Prague last year I was worried that I had given up growing things. It was part of a complicated mind shift in which I realized that it may not be necessary for me to ever be able to be completely self-sustaining and live off the land. It was quite a shock for me, and for a year I didn't grow any vegetables, herbs or flowers. But in Prague, I realized that I could grow orchids. Orchids are frivolous, unnecessary, gaudy, excessive, thoroughly decorative and never included in bomb shelters..I bought my first orchid way out in the New Territories somewhere. I'm not sure where I was because I went on a shopping expedition with a bunch of teachers from other international schools. We went to two porcelain factories, a bronze factory, an outlet for a Pier One kind of place and ended up at a flea market. I bought the orchid at the flea market - cheap because one of the flower stalks was bent and imperfect. The woman wrapped it carefully and it made it safely home. This first picture I took lying on the floor after a run. The blossoms have just begun to open. I wish I knew what kind of orchid it is. I've read two books on orchids: The Orchid Thief, of course, which got made into a movie, and Orchid Fever by Eric Hansen. I found that book in Chapters in Calgary and bought it even though I couldn't really afford it. One year I gave it to Grandma for Christmas, but after she died I found it still unread in her house and took it back. The first couple of times I read Orchid Fever I had no concept of Turkey and didn't even notice the chapter about the salep orchid. But now that I've had the most delicious salep from a cart with a huge brass dispenser on the top that was being pushed up the bead store hill in Ulus, it's my favourite chapter.

My orchid's blossoms started very

green, but as they matured they turned more yellow until becoming almost orange. There was dew-like nectar along the stem of each blossom and the base stretched more and more open, waiting. If you look carefully, you'll see a small bump protruding from the hood above the base. I think the orchid needed some bugs because when I bumped the hood, a tiny thing that looks for all the world like a penis popped out, curled and bulging. This last picture shows what it looks like after the flower has been satiated. I have lots more pictures, but I think this is already excessive.

I hope I can get it to bloom again. I predict that my house will soon be full of orchids sitting in their dormancy for 11 months out of the year. Last week I went to the flower market up in Mongkok and bought four more orchids. But they are quite common. Three are just paphiopedilum hybrids and the other I forget the name. Don't worry; I won't go on about them like this. Well, at least I won't until maybe in a year if I get them to bloom again.

"Sad to be all alone in the world?" - Thoroughly Modern Millie

2008-01-01T15:34:00.000+08:00

This is my last post of 2007, though it is January 1, 2008. I'll try and post-date it, but I suspect software will get in my way. There is a transition time on New Year's Day where it's not the new year yet and it's fair to continue with the thoughts and bad habits of the old. At least that's what my hangover is telling me.

I took this picture late on the dying edge of a party at Matthew and Heather's. Matthew was shortening our lives by spraying toxic artificial snow on this little tree that he found in a bin on the edge of the big Happy Valley cemeteries. It was there in the trash with the stand, the water holder and all.

I'm including it in this post because it reminds me of a conversation I had at that party with Heather and a guy who's lived away from San Francisco for 20 years. We were talking of home towns and what it means to be from somewhere. If you've lived abroad, you know the conversation: It starts with the question where are you from? Then it wanders through whether that's an easy or difficult question, touches on what other expats say, ventures toward what your own expat kids say as their answer and compares that to the answers of everyone in the conversation. Then it inevitably moves toward how if someone hasn't lived abroad, this conversation doesn't have any meaning. I don't mean to say that I'm by any means tired of this topic - it's constantly fascinating to hear how people are dealing with the feelings that come with this rootless life. And it's a bonding conversation that works to remind how much we have in common.

But this time we started talking about the long epistles sent home. Heather said that in her first year in Korea, she took pictures all the time and sent home e-mails every time she went anywhere. Gradually the letters became less frequent, though, as she realized that nobody was reading them. Until now, on her third country, she only writes about her travels because her grandma posts them up in the old folks home, proud of her granddaughter's adventures. The other guy agreed. He told how he had taken his family on this incredible trekking adventure in Nepal - really one of the best trips of his life. In the summer back home, a family member asked him what he'd been up to. He started to tell about the trip only to be interrupted in a few minutes by, "We got a new dryer last week." They both said that no one wants to read these letters and descriptions because no one can understand a life that is different from their own, and no one wants to.

That's such a sad thought that it belongs in 2007, not 2008. I hope they are wrong. I hope I'm not just talking to myself.

The Ubiquitous Peak

2007-12-30T11:34:00.000+08:00

This holiday I've been going through the tourist brochure doing all the things I haven't had the time for because of the work, the family and the commute. If I'd known what to notice, I could have gotten an idea about the flavour of Hong Kong from the first when I picked up the tourist brochure in the airport. It's thin enough to fit in a purse or breast pocket. It's full of succinct descriptions. And it includes detailed instructions on how to get there at the end of each paragraph complete with what exit to take out of the MTR. So I've been dutifully following instructions and checking off each attraction.
Here is my required picture from The Peak at night. There's the white "bearclaw" of the IFC that is the terminus for my ferry commute. There's the incredibly red Panasonic sign that makes the harbor glow. There's the "lightning" building which is the new Bank of China building. Somewhere in the foreground is the apartment in which I'd spent an hour of my vacation, tutoring to pay for a loft bed.
The Peak is in a nutshell what I understand Hong Kong to be. It's historic - the tram's been running since 1888. It's full of high end shopping - you are funneled out of the tram into a five story shopping mall. It's kitschy - there's a Ripley's Believe It or Not and a Madame Tussaud's wax museum with local celebrities like Jackie Chan. It's bright and electric - there's a multi-coloured light display on the ceiling of the Peak Tower. There is free fun - a big EA electronic game centre for the kids. It's sporty - lots of nature walks going off in all directions. And it's crowded.

Treacle

2007-12-26T09:12:00.001+08:00

In Turkey I made gingerbread cookies and molasses chews with pekmez. I could buy pekmez, a black sugary syrup, made from grapes, dates or mulberries. Mulberry pekmez I found to work best for cookies, though date pekmez was the thickest. We also used pekmez mixed with tahini for a couple of the years when we couldn't get decent peanut butter and hadn't brought any in. Tahini cookies became one of our Christmas cookies, too. They're not so pretty, but they are delicious. Roll the balls in sesame seeds before they're pressed with a fork like peanut butter cookies.

But pekmez is too thin to use without any modifications to the recipes and I was looking forward to finding the HK equivalen. Now that it's Christmas time, I have been able to buy everything I'm used to: Libby pumpkin in the can with the recipe on the side, Carnation evaporated milk in the size can that goes with the pumpkin, fresh Oceanspray cranberries, Pepperidge Farms stuffing mix, Swansons chicken broth and a 12 pound frozen Butterball turkey. It's not exactly the frontier. If I were British, I could get prepared mince, the mince pies already made or all the nuts and dried fruits for the pudding. But for some reason, there was no molasses.

The kids and I went to a store called Gateway that's in the basement in a local part of town on the recommendation of a guy who knows. It's there, he said, that you can get all kinds of N. American products. It was a wonderland full of products straight from Costco - in Costco sizes! We reveled in the beauty of huge jars of spaghetti sauce, quadruple packs of beef jerky, enormous boxes of cereal, gallon jugs of cranberry juice, kilo packs of coffee, bags of craisins and raisins that were bigger than my purse. We bought Kirkland pecans, cranberry juice, dried apricots (a concession to homesickness for Turkey) and chocolate chips.

But delightfully enough, there was no molasses and I was obliged to go looking for treacle. There's nothing quite so Dickensonian. Here is a picture of the can of treacle I bought. I found it in a fancy supermarket that sometimes sells fresh oysters on ice flown in from Brittany. This beautiful can was only about $2 US, though and so beautiful. It is thick, slow, sweet, black and altogether treacly! That word is so Alice in Wonderland!

If you look closely at the can, you can see in the logo the quote, "Out of the strong came forth sweetness." That is a biblical reference from the Samson story - as in Samson and Delilah. Here's the story: When Samson went down to take a wife, he killed a lion with his bare hands. A few days later, on his way home, he saw that bees had made a hive in the carcass. Samson ate some of the honey and took some to his parents, but he didn't tell them where it came from. When he went down to marry his wife he posed the riddle to the the guests. Out of the eater, something to eat, out of the strong came forth sweetness. If by the end of the feast, the brides guests couldn't guess the riddle, they would have to give linen robes to Samson's guests. For days, they couldn't figure it out until they told the bride to find out. She cried for three days that Samson didn't love her because he wouldn't tell her the answer. He said he hadn't even told his parents, but finally he did tell her. She told her people and Samson had to pay out the linen. But that made him mad, so he went to another village, killed 30 of the men there and took those linen robes to pay off his debt. Then he went home and his wife was given to one of the men who attended him at the wedding. Hmmm, treacle.

The Helpers Celebrate Christmas

2007-12-26T07:54:00.000+08:00

Every Sunday on the above ground walkways (in Canada they call them plus 15's) helpers gather. These are the women from the Philippines, Indonesia and Nepal who work as domestics in everyone's houses. I am one of the few people I know who doesn't employ a helper. On another post I'll explain how much easier my life would be if I did, but that's much too bitter a post for Christmas.
Almost all of the helpers have Sunday off, so they gather to sit together for the day. This pictures is of early in the morning when the first ones arrive and stake out their area with flattened cardboard and picnic boxes. They bring cards to play, music to listen to and of course, cell phones. I've seen people trading manicures, women practicing dance routines, others selling plastic crafts. Walkways all over Central are full from early to late on Sundays. On the way home from shopping this Sunday I saw that under the HSBC building was packed with people. I'm going to go back and check that out another time because it looked almost big enough to be a church service.
Sunday is the days you can see how many helpers are in the city. There are church services in parks; the $10 stores are packed with shoppers; the buses back from Stanley and Repulse Bay are packed with women speaking Tagalog. But it is the walkway picnickers who intrigue me the most. This last week it was almost cool, too cool for me to want to sit on concrete all day. I remembered long days of sitting around Eugene, Oregon waiting away the day, chilly and without the money to choose to hang in a coffee shop. That was the season that lunch cost me $1.10 every day. It was fifty cents for a bun at the sandwich shop and sixty cents for a half-pint of milk. I was making about $650 a month at the office, plus money from being an artist model and from selling quilts at Saturday market. Not a lot to support two people.
The minimum wage for a full-time life-in helper now is $3783 HK. Divide that by 7.8 to get the equivalent in US dollars. There was an article in the paper last week explaining how the loss of the US dollar buying power has made it so the helpers can send much less home each month. The HK dollar is pegged to the US dollar, so their pay is worth a lot less against any of the relevant currencies. The women who were interviewed said that the change in conversion rates made it so they were sending home a lot less money. The families depend on this money, so the woman said that she doesn't eat lunch on her days off and waits to get back to her employers house to get supper.
But this Sunday, you couldn't see the falling dollar anywhere. There were boxes and boxes of foods and around the corners of every territory, piles of Christmas presents waiting to be exchanged. Merry Christmas, helpers. Happy New Year!

Because the format changed and I can't write Html

2007-12-15T23:31:00.001+08:00

All of you who look at this blog from time to time (aren't I feeling optimistic,) will notice that I lost my big picture in the header. I am bereft and may have to spend the holidays learning to write Html. It's not one of the happier prospects on my horizon. I want to write about orchids, the city's night time breath, how Venus doesn't have a magnetic field, the prettiest mall Christmas tree and how one night last week "The Raven" in its entirety came back to my memory. And here I am fighting with formats.

The Diner

2007-12-09T21:04:00.000+08:00

Adventuring out on Saturday to Kowloon, we went to the Night Market for the first time. It was a delight! I bought jade, pearls, antiques, knock-off watches, t-shirts, chopsticks, change purses, rocks, toys and lighter fluid. It was enough to make anyone hungry. One of the best things about that market is the whole sections of street that become restaurant as the evening deepens. We saw people eating piles and piles of clams, mussels and crabs, but I was hungry well before they had set up. So we went into a diner advertising Coke and Black and White evaporated milk. We had roast pork over rice, roast duck over rice, and roast duck and chicken over rice. But Kestrel tried the peanut and papaya soup. I stuck with Tsingtsao beer. The old ladies at the booth behind shoveled the rice from their bowls into their mouths with a rhythm of ages past. Next time I'll order the steamed fish that they did. It was the best corner restaurant I've found in Hong Kong. The owner and waitresses were nice. They all but pinched Kestrel's cheek since she ate the soup. It was as satisfying as wandering for hours in Ulus and having nice pide at the end. And actually it was not much more expensive: dinner for four came to $13 US.

The fog creeps in on little cat feet...

2007-12-08T13:13:00.000+08:00

Every morning there are views from the ferry that are so inexpressibly beautiful. Some days it is the quietness of the water. Some days it's how every ripple stands alone. A tiny two-person fishing boat away in the mist balances against a container ship whose rust catches the morning sunlight. One of the fast hydrofoils coming in from Macau leaves a trail of white that curves far off into the distance. It cuts the water so deeply that even after it is out of sight, the deep bubbles hold together under the water and there is a cloud of green where it passed.
I take picture after picture. It's so great having a memory card that holds over 500 pictures. I want to sit you down and make you look at all of them. And I would if I could think of some excuse to post them all. (There's a photo album of commuting pictures on my facebook page for anyone who is interested.)
I especially love how the mist colours the light in the early morning and leaches the colour out of the light the rest of the day. It makes everything look like the memory of the colour of water. I've really been enjoying the misty days that are still warm even now in mid-December.
But I've been coughing for three weeks now. And at lunch time the grumbly ones who hang out in the staff room too long pointed out to me that there is no mist in December. This is the dry season. It doesn't make the sunrise any less beautiful to know that it's all smog.

Mission Spotlight on Pitcairn Island

2007-12-05T15:46:00.000+08:00

Sunday morning, I ran down to the pier to capture this picture of The Bounty setting sail. Then I ran, camera in one hand, nano in the other up around the point of Lantau that we live on to see it moving quietly through the mist. I don't know if you can see how the light crossed the water and held each ripple still. It looked like the ship was lying in wait and it wouldn't be good to attract its attention.

Recently, Pitcairn Island keeps coming to mind. A couple of weeks ago in the HK Magazine (like The Weekly,) they had an article describing where to go to be alone. It said that HK is the most densely populated city in the world with 16,000 people per square mile, though it doesn't look like that from my window. Pitcairn Island was the first place mentioned with 33 people per square mile. Apparently, to get there from here, you have to fly from here to Japan and then to Tahiti and after that take a 30 hour boat ride which leaves only once every several months. Final line, "But remember that leaving the island is a lot harder than getting there."

The next time it came up was when, in response to seeing The Bounty from my window, a Kiwi friend was talking about the relatively recent news stories that were big in New Zealand. She brought up how, of the 50 inhabitants who are mainly in-bred descendants of the mutineers, six were supposed to be kept in the newly built local jail for rape and incest, though they were still out on appeal because they didn't think British law applied to them. And apparently dancing, public displays of affection and consumption of alcohol are still banned on the island.

That last bit triggered my first memories of Pitcairn Island. I remember watching a slide show in church as a kid. Mission Spotlight came once a quarter with a taped sound tract and "bings" to tell the AV guy to advance to the next slide. It was all about the success of the church on Pitcairn Island where following the arrival of missionaries 100% of the residents had been converted to the three angels messages. Even now the island shuts down for the Sabbath and "everyone lays down their tools for the only day of rest the island knows." If you want, you can even see pictures of Pathfinder Days at the church in the Pitcairn Photo Album at www.lareau.org/pitc.html. What a success story for the gospel.

No Pumpkin!

2007-12-02T15:16:00.000+08:00

I spent all day Saturday on a quest for canned pumpkin and stuffing mix. The kids and I went to four grocery stores, pushed our way through the crowds on the busiest pedestrian intersection in the world, wandered through the nine floors of the Japanese department store to find the food court and jumped off the tram on the way home when we saw another store. That was in addition to our local Park 'n Shop (that even has mincemeat mix for your Christmas tarts,) but there was no pumpkin. It made me feel so much happier not being able to find it. Now I have to make do. Now I have to do without. Now it's so much more exotic and so much more of a struggle to have a belated Thanksgiving dinner with no pumpkin.

Sure, I did find the stuffing mix. Yes, there's gravy mix. Yep, and sweet potatoes. And fresh Ocean Spray cranberries in a bag with a recipe on the side. Not to mention spices labeled in jars and brown sugar. But there is no pumpkin and so I can feel like an adventurer again.

The house is clean, the table laid out and the turkey is sizzling. (It's a Butterball from America.) I hope you have a happy Thanksgiving, too.

Apartment living

2007-11-27T21:08:00.000+08:00

The other day I was going to hang out the clothes when I found that I'd been sent a present from the gods. Caught on the clothes line was an iron bracket just the right size to hang a candle lantern from the grill on the window.

I haven't passed on the blessing in like form; the underwear below came from our house. It's remarkable how long it takes for a clothes pin to clatter 18 storeys down.

Lack of Thanksgiving

2007-11-26T17:34:00.000+08:00

I’m sitting at the ferry pier, looking over at the big cruise ships, drinking a pint of Stella and thinking about not having Thanksgiving. I don’t mean deciding not to have Thanksgiving, but what has already happened – I didn’t get Thanksgiving this year. I didn’t have Thanksgiving because at Canadian Thanksgiving no one like Elizabeth said, let’s have all the Canadians over to your house, it’s the biggest. And no one invited us over. And there are too many people to do all-acad invitations. And it was too hot to think of baking. So there was no Thanksgiving. Now American Thanksgiving has come and gone as well.

All weekend I thought of those I know in North America. I thought of the first Thanksgiving dinner I ever made. My dad, Doug, Tymi and Gary were there. I religiously consulted the “How to Make a Thanksgiving” scribbler my mom had filled for me with shopping lists, recipes and time lines. Before that was the first Thanksgiving abroad in France; one I ate with Bradley and Shelby and all hosted by Mr. and Mrs. Gutekunst so we wouldn’t feel homesick. It was perfect down to the accordion-folded tissue paper turkey from Hallmark. There was the Thanksgiving I made in Korea. Shelby was at that one, too and I made him eat pumpkin pie. We made everything one thing at a time in a toaster oven we got at our wedding. And then of course were the Thanksgiving dinners in Turkey. They were the best dinners ever for friendship, abundance of food drink and laughter, both the Canadian ones at our house and the American at Michelle’s.

Over the years I’ve learned the rhythm of the dinner, the chilling of the cranberry sauce, when to make the pie and peel the potatoes how to cope when there are no mixes and how to cope when there are. Seventeen years of practice, usually twice or three times a year, two Thanksgivings and a Christmas, to get the turkey dinner figured out. It is the only domestic task I feel that I’ve perfected. I don’t mean it’s always perfect (because there are always lumps in the gravy,) but I do prefer my candied yams, stuffing and pumpkin pies to anyone else’s. Ingrid’s brussel sprouts are the best, though.

It’s a school night; we don’t have enough plates; I was sure they have other plans, I hadn’t gotten paid yet. Truth is, I didn’t know how missing it would be like. There we were on Thursday evening having smoked turkey and cheese sandwiches for supper. Sure, we could have gone out for a turkey dinner at a bunch of places in town, but what it comes down to is that we didn’t. I wish I could describe for you the dislocation in time and place that comes from missing Thanksgiving. Maybe it’s just a symptom of not knowing where I am, but over the weekend I thought repeatedly of all of you sitting down to dinner either just now or last month. It makes me wonder how much I’ve given up and what I think I’ll gain from the sacrifice. What essential and lonely questions come from an absence of cranberry sauce.

Dark Things

2007-11-22T20:45:00.001+08:00

Their life story and the history of the world,
Dark things seem to stir feebly in there,
Each were written by the same hand,
In the awful green a bird hangs limp in a snare.

Paths follow along the water’s way,
A clump of trees makes a waiting spot
Danger catches the eye in a red altar,
And incense stands where they rested and fought.

It was something that could only happen to others,
Quietly to their own gods, they swear.
She is tired of the story of herself,
Words hang hotly in the air.

A line of sticks is split and drying,
Echoes of conversations walking by with beer,
The air is heavy and holds onto her,
There is so much unspoken that she must fear.

The air is heavy and moves with her,
Words hang hotly in the air,
A clump of trees makes a shady spot,
Dark things start to stir feebly somewhere.

September 21, 2007

Rosemead, California

2007-11-21T20:54:00.000+08:00

I miss an Islamic skyline. I miss the call to prayer. I miss the silhouette of minarets against a sunset. Sometimes I can hear the bells from the Trappist monastery over the hill, but only when the ferry isn’t coming in or the buses aren’t starting their route. The things that are ubiquitous here are less beautiful and less sensual. In the same way you couldn’t give directions, “It’s next to the mosque” in Turkey, you can’t give directions by Seven-Elevens. Every corner has one for buying noodles for breakfast, fish balls for snack, to charge up your Octopus cash card, to pay your phone or electric bill, to buy the beers you can drink at any park or playground.

Here’s a picture from Discovery Bay, the suburbs where I live. If you look closely you can see helpers from the Philippines herding kids around and Brits with tables full of empties in front of Seven-Eleven. In the evening the lights that are embedded in the plaza floor sparkle with changing color lights. There are orchids hung in pots from the trees and crested myna birds that sound so loud and sudden in the trees, you’d think that they were taped bird song.

I don't think it looks like Hong Kong here. It’s landscaped, groomed and new like Disneyland. It’s easy to feel like you’re in Rosemead, CA just a road or two from Chinatown in a new subdivision. I think there is exotic under the skin. I think I may see it soon. I know there is wild just around the edges.

Mutiny on the Bounty

2007-11-21T20:43:00.000+08:00

The city was nonchalant this morning. Each building looked with blank face towards the harbour while a red sun rose over the peaks and between the buildings: the HSBC, the Bank of China building and the IFC high above them all. I wasn’t feeling so jaded because soon after the passage where the full container ships steam off towards the open sea, we passed the Bounty. It wasn’t the 1787 original Bounty which was sent with breadfruit plants from Tahiti to the West Indies of course. But it was the full-scale replica! For you who know movies, it was built in ’79 for the movie The Bounty featuring Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins. I had my peanut butter and jam breakfast in one hand and missed the picture, but its flags were flying along the rigging and it was beautiful in the red light. She’s going to be in the Central pier during December and then will eventually be berthed right here in my suburb. I think it'll be just off the pier so we can look at her while we eat mediocre Mexican food to the sound of a mariachi band.

The first thing is the commute

2007-11-18T21:01:00.000+08:00

Every time I get a new notebook, after writing my name on the front and flipping through the pages, feeling their tooth, I want to put something cool on that first page. Maybe I'll copy down a quote or maybe I'll glue in a picture that will set the tone for that notebook. But invariably my printing looks immature, the picture is not centred or most often, I write something pretentious and dumb to begin. Every notebook I spoil in the same way. So this blog is really intimidating to start.

Here I am living in Hong Kong, or sort of living in Hong Kong. There are so many things I want to tell about adjusting to being here and not needing to adjust because it's so much like California. But this first post has me stymied. So, I guess I'd better start with the commute.
I've never liked boats really, but taking the ferry across the Hong Kong harbor each morning and afternoon is my favourite part of the day. In the morning the mist is sleepy on all the mini-cargo ships that wait to unload the big ones. Even the dogs on the decks are lying still and waiting for the day to begin. The water is still silver. Besides the anchored ships and the ferries I watch every morning for the little island that has egrets perched in the tree tops and I watch the black kites circling and diving for fish.
I always sit with the kids in the same place, as do all the regular commuters. We recognize all of them and no one who usually rides that ferry sits in our seats. We'd started doing it posh (port outbound, starboard home) but there were some annoying teenagers from the Swiss German school, so we moved to the starboard side for our trip to school. That means that every day I ride along the waterfront and see the sun coming through between the skyline of Central.
This picture, though, is of the way home. The ferry I usually take is open on the top deck and that makes it glorious. The water changes as water does telling the story of the sky's day. I'd expected that. But the whole city does the same.