Foot Fashion

Has this fashion hit the The States yet? They're everywhere in Hong Kong.

They’re perfect for the fashion conscience here in the subtropics who want to wear stylish boots but also want their toes to breathe to stave off the all-too-easily-acquired foot fungus.

A friend of mind thinks that they look like something Robinson Crusoe might have crafted. “Look what I did. I salvaged this pair of boots from the wreckage and with a few deft slices of my survival knife, I fashioned this snappy pair of sandal-boots. Nice, huh?”

Me? I just keep expecting a gladiator fight to break out on the MTR.

But hey, at least they aren’t Crocs.

-Jack

This from our building maintenance crew:

"Hi Folks: I know Paul sent you an email but I just want to reinforce it. Super Typhoon MEGI is beginning to affect our weather now that it's beginning to push the NE monsoon winds coming from China out of it's way and we can expect the weather to deteriorate from here on."

"Depending on it's final track, this typhoon could be far worse than anything that's hit HK for several decades and potentially be serious enough that we will be clearing away everything from outside the building except the heavy picnic tables on the podium - and even those will be put together and tied. 185 km/h forecast maximum sustained wind speed will be bad enough, but at this speed the gusts could reach well in excess of 300km/h - enough to whip anything left outside away and turn it into a missile."

"Please make sure that you totally clear your balconies - all tables, chairs, BBQ's, potted plants etc. must be put inside, and make sure all doors and windows are firmly fastened."

Never a Dull Moment

As a tuition-based, parent-run school ICS is always looking for ways to offset the cost of tuition. They seek out a lot of grants and they do creative fund-raising. The main fundraising event every year is a big one-day event: Walk-a-thon in the morning and a large carnival in the afternoon. It's all scheduled for this coming Saturday.

It's a lot of work, a lot of fun, and raises a lot of money -so much so that the school has really come to depend on it. The school holds the event come rain or shine. The only thing that could stop it is a ill-timed typhoon.

And what do we have coming this Saturday? We have a big old T-8 aiming right for Hong Kong scheduled to make landfall right about when the Walk-a-thon is scheduled to begin. A couple of days ago it was classified as a Super Typhoon -I didn't even know there was such a thing- but it's since been downgraded to a regular typhoon. If the Walk-a-thon and the FunFair are cancelled, I don't know when we find a day on the calendar to reschedule.

Pray that that sucker takes a hard left and heads for Macau. Everybody over there is already indoors playing blackjack and roulette. They can just keep right on gambling while the typhoon passes overhead.

We on the other hand are going to be stuck with 1800 frozen hotdogs.

-Jack

Rednaxela Revealed

Answer to last week's puzzler:

Rednaxela is Alexander spelled backwards.
According to local lore, a Chinese-languange scribe reversed all the letters when he was copying it down and it's been that way ever since.

That's the legend anyways. Either way it makes for a pretty good story.

Or at least a good blog post.

-Jack