Tai Chi with a sword

New Converse Allstars

mountain stream west of Shek Mun by Annika VN

in the Video Store

Our local video store has half the videos that a Blockbuster might carry, but they do so in a space that’s one-tenth the square footage. Needless to say, its a little cramped.

An exchange with the young female clerk from last Friday:

Jack: Do you have a copy of Wall-E?

Clerk: I’m sorry, what’s that?

Jack: Do you have a copy of the movie Wall-E.

Clerk: I’m sorry, please spell that.

Jack: W-a-l-l-e.

Cleak: Ooooh, Wah-YE. Why yes we do. It’s right over here.

Train-ing

Recently, we had a red-letter day in the VanNoord household.

Students had a half-day of school and a group of girls invited Annika to hang out for the afternoon and do girlie things (including the obligatory instant photos in the photo kiosk at the mall).

This meant the Annika rode the trains for the first time without her mom and dad.

Granted, most kids in Hong Kong have been riding the trains on their own since they were ten years old, but it was kind of a big deal for us. Well, mostly for her over-protective dad.

But hey, you have to cut those apron strings eventually.

Or so I have been told.

-Jack

Poopiest Birthday Ever

“This is the poopiest birthday I’ve every had!” Annika said. She was being quite literal.

Well almost.

Before the first of the year, the girls had heard of a restaurant called Modern Toilet and for the next couple of weeks they kept pestering Julie and me to take them. We thought that Annika’s fourteenth birthday would be the perfect opportunity to surprise them. Annika knew that we were taking her out, but didn’t know where. We took the train down to the Mon Kok neighborhood, turned the corner, and there it was: Modern Toilet. Annika’s face broke into a giant smile when we she saw where we were. Elise jumped up and down.

We didn’t stop smiling and giggling and making faces for the next hour.

Modern Toilet is exactly what you might imagine. It’s a concept restaurant built around the theme of . . . wait for it . . . yup: toilets.

In loo (pun intended) of chairs, we sat on toilets. Our table was a bathroom sink with a piece of glass on top of it. Food came in either a bedpan or a ceramic pot shaped like a toilet. Our drinks came in glasses shaped like a men’s urinal.

The tile walls were festooned with a wide variety of colorful toilet seats and a long line of urinals that lit up. The pendant lights were shaped like plungers. The music that was playing overhead was periodically interupted by the sound of flushing toilets.
The piece de resistance though was the dessert. It came in a dish shaped like a Chinese squat toilet and of course it was . . . yup, a heaping mound of soft-serve chocolate ice cream.

Yum.

The food was okay, the service was so-so, but the experience was one-of-a-kind. If you live in Hong Kong, it is one of those things that you just have to do.

Once.

The girls seem to have fun. We took a lot of pictures.

The only thing that could have made the experience more awesome was if we’d brought along a table full of adolescent boys.

Happy fourteenth birthday, Annika.

We love you.

-Jack

Modern Toilet

Brace Yourself

Chinese New Years is coming. We are not sure what to expect, but tell-tale signs are starting to pop up everywhere.

I have a feeling it's going to be big.

I see a lot of things I don't fully understand, but I will let you know what they are and what they're for as soon as I find out.

-Jack

pictures by Elise

Elise's Class Leads Elementary Chapel

The World is A Stage

Home-schooling comes with a host of benefits (I’ll save the litany for another time). But home-schooling does mean that tracking down extra-curricular activities means a lot of work. Instead of just staying after school for intra-mural basketball, mom and dad have to enroll the kids in a municipal league and drive them across town every Tuesday and Thursday evening.

One of the many perks of having the girls attend ICS is that all these extra-curricular activities are available -quite literally- in our basement.

This fall Elise took part in the elementary schools running club. This spring she is going to be part of a reading club, soccer, and ceramics.

As a middle schooler, Annika has been able to take advantage of several opportunities. She is her homeroom’s student council representative. She was (kind of) part of the girls’ tennis team. (She was on the roster, but actually played very, very little.)

Last weekend, when our middle school put on a production of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged, Annika was part of the design and stage crew. She did a great job. The kids all did really well. It was the most raucous fun I have had at the theater in a very long time.

Now for the Spring production, we just need to get Annika on this side of the curtain.

-Jack

Your Own Private Idaho

One of the cool things about living on the seventh floor of the school is that we have a really short commute. But there are more benefits that just that. We are a bit of a self contained community here. A guy could go for days –or an entire week- without leaving the building.

In fact, I have.

We have our very own on-site restaurant that serves breakfast and lunch (okay, okay, it’s the school cafeteria). We have our own tech service department (I.T. support), We have access to a fully equipped fitness center and swimming pool. We have not one, but two full-size gyms for the occasional pick-up basketball game when we can get enough guys together.

We can also take in the weekend’s entertainments without leaving the building. The school has a state-of-the-art theater that seats 500 people. So far, Julie, the girls and I have watched a middle school band and choral concerts, a high school production of Godspell, a Christmas woodwind concert made up of all teachers, and a high school production of A Christmas Carol.

Most recently, we watched a middle school production of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged.

I’m guessing that when May rolls around, I will be ready to move off campus, but I am going to kind of miss living in my own personal microcosm.

It’s kind of like living on a cruise ship without the ocean view or the seasickness or the midnight buffet. Or the Las Vegas-style revue. Okay, it’s nothing like living on a cruise ship, but I’m enjoying it none-the-less.

-Jack

Super-Duper

This from this morning’s bulletin at Island ECC church:

Men’s Super Bowl Breakfast Party

On Monday, February 8 at 7:00 a.m., we will be gathering on the 2nd floor to watch the Super Bowl live. Come join us and cheer for your favorite team. This is an excellent opportunity for you to introduce a friend to Island ECC for the first time. Food will be provided. For questions email, men@islandecc.hk

I of course will not be able to attend. I will be busy teaching the youth of Hong Kong about prepositions and prepositional phrases.