Hittin’ the Books

The other day, Julie realized that she has read more books in the fourteen months she’s been in Hong Kong, than she has in the last five years.

It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you only have a 800-square-foot apartment to keep clean, aren’t homeschooling, have no yard to maintain, and only have a ninety-second commute down to the second floor.

Just finished: “Sacred Parenting” by Gary Thompson. Up next: "Justification" by N.T. Wright.

Thanks for Reading

We set up the blog to keep family and friends abreast of what we were up to in Asia. But along the way we’ve picked up a few readers from near and far. Thought you might be interested in seeing the breakdown.

In addition to the expected folks from The States and Hong Kong, we have had the following visitors:

New Zealand: 66
Canada: 46
Netherlands: 34
Ukraine: 18
France: 17
Brazil: 16
Poland: 16
Germany: 13
UK: 8

Viewership has spiked recently. We’ve been averaging about 900 pageviews per month. But as of today, we’ve had over 1200 pageviews in the first two weeks of October. We also had an unprecedented one-day high of 220 pageviews earlier this week.

If anybody is going to Zimbabwe, make sure your click on the blog for me while you’re there.

-Jack

To Dear Alma Mater We Pledge Fidelity

Last Thursday, our school hosted its annual college night. This year for the first time, our school’s guidance counselor invited teachers to set up a table and represent their colleges.

I emailed the recruiter at Calvin and had her send me a box of literature. I started spending time on the Calvin webpage getting up to speed on all things Calvin (hey, nice remodeling of the Fine Arts Center by the way). I made a big “Calvin” sign. I brought my notes to the dinner table to study (did you know that 83% of Calvin professors have achieved the highest degree possible in their field?). Julie pointed out that I didn’t study this hard when I was at Calvin. Too true.

The night of the fair, I decided to forego the too-obvious Calvin College t-shirt and instead opted for the more professional-looking shirt and tie.

The doors opened and we were flooded with enthusiastic parents and high schoolers.

One of my colleagues with whom I love to banter and spar in the faculty lunchroom was set up at the table next to me. She was representing Cal Lutheran which is in sunny Southern California.

She wasn't being quite so self-serious. She didn’t go quite so overboard in her preparations. What she did do though was find a web page that will print out a line graph comparing the annual temperatures of two cities of your choice.

So as future graduates got done listening to me prattle on about Calvin for five minutes and wandered over to her table, she simply pulled out her line graph and showed them the winter-time temperature in Grand Rapids, Michigan versus Thousand Oaks, California.

She had twice as many kids sign up to receive follow-up emails as I did.

Devious and maniacal in its simplicity.

Man, I really hate being bested.

-Jack

Monkey Mountain

Monkey Business 2 of 2

Julie and I instinctively went back-to-back like they do in the movies. She was keeping an eye on the monkeys in front of us; I was keeping tabs on the ones behind us; all the monkeys were keeping an eye on the two of us –or to be more specific, they were keeping an eye on our backpack that I had just handed to Julie.

Just as we made it through the monkey gauntlet without incident, we encountered an elderly couple walking their dogs.

They understood just enough English to answer our question and allay our fears. “No problem.” “Okay. Safe.”

With our courage (somewhat) restored, we continued. It was a good thing we had been assured the monkeys wouldn’t bother us, because a few minutes later we had to walk through what looked like Club Med for primates. About 40 or 50 monkeys were sprawled out sunning themselves in the late afternoon sun. Some were grooming each other. Some were nursing their young. Others were just milling about. Most of the monkeys that were on the path sauntered off as we got close, but a few of the bigger ones couldn’t be bothered. We had to walk within a few feet of several twenty-pound monkeys.

As nervous as we were, Julie and I couldn’t help but be amazed by these creatures. In the midst of being petrified, we would nudge each other to point out a baby riding on its mama’s back or one monkey picking nits off of another. We kept vacillating between “Sweet Jesus, save us!” and “Oh my goodness, look at that little one. He’s so cute” and “Hokey-tooters, look at the red butt on that one. There has got to be an ointment for that.”

I’ve never experienced quite this combination of fear, laughter, and wonder.

It was an intoxicating and heady mix.

-Jack

Monkey Business 1 of 2

The stars aligned and -low and behold- both Annika and Elise had birthday parties to go to on Saturday. Since the girls balk every time we propose going on a family hike, Julie and I decided a hike would be a great way to spend our kid-free day.

Lion Rock Country Park is just fifteen minutes from our apartment. I had heard rumors that if you’re lucky, you can see wild monkeys on your walk.

Let me just say that I really, really wanted to see a wild monkey. But alas, we were three hours into our hike and we hadn’t seen any monkeys.

Then Julie saw some rustling leaves in the trees to our right. Through the branches we could see a monkey about twenty feet away. We spent the next several minutes trying to get a decent, unobstructed picture of the monkey.

It turns out I didn’t have to work so hard. A few minutes down the road, we saw several monkeys in plain sight –including several on the path that we were supposed to walk down. We were pretty excited to see our first monkeys. How cool is that. I got my pictures.

But be careful what you wish for.

A few minutes later, we had to walk past a dozen monkeys that were on either side of the path. As we turned the bend, we realized there were another two dozen monkeys in front of us. We were surrounded. We couldn’t go back and we weren’t too thrilled about going forward. We took a deep breath, said a little prayer, and started walking forward.

The monkeys in these hills have had enough contact with humans over the years to know that backpacks equals food. Monkeys have been known to grab backpacks right off of hikers’ backs. Julie and I did a quick inventory of the food in our backpack.

Peanut butter sandwiches: consumed. Protein bars: still sealed in their wrappers. Pistachio nuts? Pistachio nuts. Shoot. Do you think that they can smell them? I don’t know. Should we throw the pistachios and run? I don’t know. Would you quit taking pictures. Hey, if we are going to get mauled by wild monkeys, we might as well have some pictures to show for our effort.

Splitsville

There are big glaring facts about life in Hong Kong that I miss. Fortunately, I've cultivated the habit of hanging out with people who are considerably smarter than me.

Last Friday, we spent the evening with some friends and several other ex-pat families. While the kids played in the lower level of their flat. We adults sat around the living room and did what we adults do best: chew the fat.

Talk about work gave way to talk about marriage which lead to the topic of divorce. The guy on the sofa -the one in the trendy glasses- pointed out that his kids have almost no friends whose parents are divorced.

What -I said. You need to explain that to me.

First, Hong Kong culture is thoroughly Chinese for whom divorce is relatively uncommon. Therefore the divorce rate among Chinese Hong Kongers is lower than in the West.

Second, the divorce rate among expats living in Hong Kong is also significantly lower than in their home countries. It’s not that people who live overseas are somehow more matrimonial gifted or that living overseas necessarily strengthens a marriage.

As the guy in the trendy glasses continued to explain this, my mind raced ahead trying to puzzle this out before he could offer up the explanation.

I came up blank.

I had no idea why the divorce rate in the expat community would be so much lower.

The answer –it turns out- is quite logical and rather simple actually.

People who are divorced with children usually have custody restrictions -one of which is that they are generally not allowed to leave the country with the children.

The result: not as many kids living with divorced parents in Hong Kong.

Fascinating.

-Jack

Picture: Hello Kitty bride and groom hood ornament.