Just around the Corner from Us

I thought that I had a pretty good handle on what this city has to offer. But she continues to suprise me. Saturday morning, the girls and I went for a quick hike. Four minutes on the train and twelve minutes walking up a mountain access road and we were at the trail head. We scrambled up boulders in and next to around this river for twenty minutes and cha-ching we were there.

One train stop away from our house and just over half an hour from our door is this mountain swimming hole with a forty-foot water fall. Amazing, I've lived here for over a year and I knew nothing about this until a friend tipped me off last week.

This city continues to amaze me.

-Jack

VanNoords Unplugged

We just finished unpacking our last items in our new apartment across the hall. As we unpacked our belongings, it occurred to me all the items –particularly electronic items- that we are living without.

We live in one of the most modern and technologically advanced cities in Asia, but ironically the VanNoords have turned into neo-luddites. This past year, we’ve reverted to doing things the way grandpa and grandma used to did them.

We drip-dry most of our clothes. Whenever she bakes cookies, Julie has to mix all the ingredients by hand; we do not have an electric mixer. She has to chop all her vegetables by hand. We actually have to open our cans by hand. Julie doesn’t have her curling iron.

Surprisingly, we do own a dishwasher. Actually we have two. They are named Annika and Elise. They girls take turns doing the dinner dishes everynight.

Recently, I spent 45 minutes backing out eight screws with a screwdriver because we have no electric drill. After a decade of shaving with an electric razor, I am back to using cream and a blade.

We bought an area rug for our living room. But once a week one of us has to get down on our hands and knees and brush it with a small whisk broom because we don’t own a vacuum cleaner.

-Jack

Picture: our new view from our new apartment on the other side of the building.

If You Can Keep Your Head When All About You

Being Americans citizens living in Hong Kong, we get the occasional email message from the U.S. Consulate. The following was in my email inbox last night.

One, a "demonstration" organized by the Hong Kong political parties that marches on a government house does not seem like the appropriate response to the recent tragedy in The Philippines. A vigil, perhaps; but a demonstration?

Second, for a the U.S. consulate to issue a warning that makes reference to "anti-American messages" seems to miss the mark. Widely. Hong Kong simply does not have a history of demonstration that turn violent. As if Hong Kong were Chile.

It was and is a tragic event. As residents of a city-state that violently lost eight of its citizens it's hard to navigate all the emotions that the headlines engender. It doesn't help when political leaders are all over the map with their own responses.

Date: August 27, 2010
From: U.S. Consulate

According to media reports, the Consulate has learned that there will be a sizeable demonstration on Sunday, August 29th, regarding the recent bus hijacking in the Philippines. The major political parties of Hong Kong have all agreed to hold a joint demonstration in Victoria Park beginning at 3:00 p.m. and are expected to continue with a march to Chater House. Organizers are expecting a crowd of up to 50,000.

The Consulate advises U.S. citizens to avoid the Central MTR station and the march route on Sunday afternoon. We do not expect any violence or anti-American messages, but advise you to stay clear of the protests.

Even demonstrations that are meant to be peaceful can become violent and unpredictable. You should avoid them if at all possible. Be alert and aware of your surroundings and pay attention to what the local news media has to say.

Philippine Tour Bus Tragedy

Many of you watched the Hong Kong tour bus tragedy in Manila as it unfolded on your televisions two days ago. Hong Kong is reeling. People here are shocked and dismayed. The whole episode is taxing Hong Kong's already complicated relationship with the Philippines. Reactions vary. The Hong Kong government called for Hong Kongers to cancel their travel plans to the Philippines. A friend overheard a man in a local restaurant call for all 250,000 Filippino maids in Hong Kong to be sent back to the Philippines.

The international Christian school community in Hong Kong is a relatively small, interconnected community. One of the girls killed on the tourist bus was a former student of my colleague when he taught at Christian Alliance International (CAI). She was a student of his in AP Calculus. Information is sketchy, but the word we are getting at this time is that the girl, her siblings, and her father did not survive. Her mother was the only survivor from her family.

One of our school's flagship programs is our Week Without Walls during which the kids spend one week in November learning and serving outside of the school. While some of our students stay local many of them travel overseas to China, Malaysia, and elsewhere. I will be leading a group of middle schoolers to Indonesia for six days.

This past week I have been helping the Week Without Walls coordinator get all the information together in anticipation of rolling out this year's WWW offerings.

The two of us spent Friday evening making 250 copies of the twelve-page catalog to be distributed at the Tuesday morning WWW kick-off assembly.

Between printing our booklets on Friday and our kickoff assembly on Tuesday, the tragedy in Manila happened.

One of our thirteen Week Without Walls trips is planned for The Philippines.

We still had our assembly. We still distributed the catalogs. We are still offering The Philippines as one of our offerings.

Once the shock wears off from recent events, I am confident the trip will still be a go.

But in the meantime, we are all a little rattled, to say the least.

White Walls

I've taken over 10,000 pictures since we've been here, and up until three weeks ago, I hadn't printed a single one. Inspired by the massive expanse of white walls in our new apartment and by the prints I saw in our friend's apartment this summer, I decided it was time to finally print some pictures.

We are only allowed to use sticky blue tack on our walls; no nails, no hooks. So I had to get a little creative. For a small fee the local FotoMax in Tai Wai will mount your pictures to foam-core board. That way pictures won't sag or curl in the Hong Kong humidity; but the best part is the pictures are still light enough to hang with sticky tack.

These pictures of Vietnam hang in our family room - a trip I took this summer . . . without my family.

Oops.

Next month I plan to print and hang some pictures above the sofa of the Philippines -a trip we all went on.

That should make everybody happy.

Well, everybody except for our neighbor across the hall who walked in, took one look at the wall, and asked "Where are the pictures of your family? You have pictures of a Vietnamese girl but no pictures of your own girls?"

I guess I''ll have to do a thrid collection by the dining room table.