Amongst the Graffiti

Graffiti Park in Downtown KK

Tagged

It’s a little tricky with a family in tow, but its nice when traveling to not overplan the trip and to leave a little room for spontaneity.

We got into Kota Kinabula late on Friday. We had activities in mind for Sunday, but Saturday was wide open. We slept in, spent some time mapping out the rest of the trip, and then spent the day wandering the city and getting familiar with KK.

We had just left the HSBC bank when we turned the corner and found what could only be described a graffiti park. It was an abandoned building that years earlier had burned down. All that was left of it was a series of square support columns. They had all been painted white and various people had added graffiti over the years.

It was quite the unexpected find right in the heart of downtown KK. Without consulting each other we all started to silently mill about and explore. We spent the next half an hour checking out all the mini-murals and photographing our favorite ones. It was pretty obvious that the artwork had been down by a wide variety of artists because the styles were so different from each other.

It would have been fun even if we had read about the graffiti park in a guide book and planned our visit, but it was a whole lot more fun serendipitously discovering it for ourselves.

KK

It takes a few inducements to convince people to leave behind their lives in the States or Australian and relocate to an international school in Asia. In addition to a salary and a housing allowance, it is pretty standard for international schools here to offer decent professional development stipends.

The biggest educational conference in the region is hosted every year by EARCOS (East Asia Regional Council of Overseas Schools). The four-day conference rotates its location among Bangkok, Manila, and Kota Kinabula in Malaysia. Considering the tropical locations, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the annual EARCOS conferences are pretty popular. This year, the conference was in Kota Kinabalu.

We went several days early in order to do a few things as a family. We stayed in a low-budget hotel in town so that we could afford to switch over midweek to the more upscale hotel where the conference was being held. For the last four days of our trip, Julie and the girls sat by the pool while I attended the conference. This gave the second half of our trip a decidedly different feel than our usual backpacking treks through Asia. I told the girls to enjoy it while it lasted because this was the first and last frou-frou vacation I would be taking them on.

We've Been Reviewed

Our blog was profiled by a site that reviews blogs that are about Hong Kong:

If there is a Norman Rockwell-type of American family, we might have found one in this HK blog. The blog, VANNOORD ADVENTURES, is by an American couple living in Hong Kong with their two young children. The expat bloggers, Jack and Julie VanNoord, are teachers in a Christian international school.

Like many wholesome subjects of Norman Rockwell's famous iconic Americana paintings, the picture-perfect VanNoord family is from America's heartland, the Midwest of the United States. Out of hundreds of HK blogs we've read, VANNOORD ADVENTURES is one of the most notable, family-oriented expat blogs we've come across. This blog is the embodiment of all that is good in some of America's core values -- a sense of fair play, respect for culture different from your own, always seeing the positive side of people, treating everyone as equals, and so on.

Mr. VanNoord has a good sense of humor and the writing in this blog puts Hong Kong and her people in a best possible light: safe, modern, efficient, inhabited by industrious people. Hong Kong is a shining city by the South China Sea to the VanNoords. Through VANNOORD ADVENTURES, a chronicle of an American family's experience and their "adventures" in HK, the mainland, and some Asian countries, readers are presented not only a Christian heartland Americans' perspective; but the perspective is illuminative, thoroughly positive, and at the same time, heart-warming.

Hong Kong Blogs Review highly recommends VanNoord Adventures.

To see the original review, go to http://www.hong-kong-blogs-review.com/Vannoord.php

Short Sabbatical

I will be out of Hong Kong for several days and will resume posting the end of March. Thanks for reading.

-Jack

Nan Lian Gardens -Diamond Hill

Chi Lin Nunnery & Nan Lian Garden

The clock is ticking; no matter how busy I get, I can hear it in the background. I feel a certain urgency to do and see as much as we can before we leave in July. In my mind, I have list of the things I want to do before we go. I’ve taken to calling it my “bucket list.”

Every week for eighteen months now we’ve passed the Chi Lin nunnery and Nan Lian gardens on our way to church. From the window of the 682 bus, we can see the beautiful, dark wood buildings, the elaborate gardens, the bright reddish-orange bridge, and the golden pagoda. Every week for eighteen months, Julie has turned to me and said “We have got to visit there.”

This past Sunday was a beautiful, sunny spring day here in Hong Kong; so we decided that that day had come. After church, we spent two hours wandering the impeccably maintained, traditional Chinese gardens.

For a sprawling megalopolis, Hong Kong does an excellent job maintaining its green space. Lots of city parks; lot of well-maintained footpaths in the hills surrounding the city. But Hong Kong really only has one large-scale traditional Chinese garden and that is the one maintained by the nuns at the Chi Lin nunnery.

It was well worth the trip.

It was relaxing, peaceful, and long overdue.

I can now scratch that off of my list of things to do. Now I just need to find the time to get down to the much ballyhooed Happy Valley horse track.

-Jack

Dude, that Teal Brings Out Your Eyes 2 of 2

After we crossed the border, Bryan led me straight into the Lo Wu megamall complex which is the destination for most of my friends any time they go over the border: cheap massages, cheap custom-made clothes, cheap everything. Bryan was all business. He knew exactly where we were going. Out of the dozens and dozens of tailors, he led us right to his tailor. She greeted him by name. Her shop measured six by ten feet. Bryan and I squatted on little plastic stools and proceeded to flip through books of fabric swatches. Surprisingly, Bryan was honing in on a nice, subtle pin stripe in dark navy. I flipped through the sample books several times, but didn’t see anything that caught my eye.

The tailor proposed that the three of us go into the mall among all the fabric sellers and see if we could find something to my liking. Off we went in the maze of fabric sellers with their wares stacked well above my head. It was overwhelming. I didn’t know where to begin. But Bryan’s tailor gently led me to a booth with a nice selection. I saw some a nice mid-tone brown herringbone. I saw a very nice summer-weight wool in dark grey.

And then I saw it. Tuck behind some paisleys. A bolt of a large-pattern, burgundy, navy, and tan plaid. When I first laid eyes on it, the clouds parted and shaft of heavenly light illuminated it. I heard harp music. It was love at first sight.

I pulled out the bolt and handed it to the sales lady. Our tailor look at the sales lady, shrugged, and said “2.3 meters.”

It cost all of US$8.00.

Back in her tailor shop, I pulled out from my backpack the pair of pants I had brought from home. I handed them over to the tailor. “Same-same,” I instructed her; which is Shenzhen speak for “I want the new pair to match this pair exactly.”

I flipped through her fabric books and found some material for a shirt to match. I handed her the shirt I had brought from home, “Same-same.”

Up here in Shenzhen, it is strictly pay up front –in full. I handed her the equivalent of just over US$40 for the pants and the shirt.

They’ll be ready in ten days.

I will wear them with pride when I am back in Chicago. They will be my-custom-made-in-China pants. A nice keepsake.

I haven’t decided if I will wear them here at my school. If I do, I should probably have a t-shirt made up that I can wear with the pants that says “I went to Shenzhen with Bryan Thompson.” But then again, once my colleagues get a look at my pants, that might go without saying.

Jack

Tuesday, I shared this little story with some Irish acquaintances of mine. Halfway through the story, the husband turned to the wife and asked "plaid?"

She explained "tartan."

Dude, that Teal Brings Out Your Eyes 1 of 2

For some reason China makes it incredibly cost prohibitive for Americans to get visas to their lovely country. While my Aussie and Kiwi friends can get a visa for twenty or thirty dollars, we Americans have to pay US$125 for a sixth month, multiple entry visa. So despite the fact that we live fifteen miles from the Chinese border, all four of us have been without China visas for the last six months.

That is, until last Thursday.

In anticipation of our last few months in Asia, we all got China visas. On Friday, my principal Bryan told me that he was running up to Shenzhen on Saturday and wanted to know if I would like to join him. Well, with a fresh hot visa burning a hole in my pocket, how could I say no?

The first three or four months that I was in my new teaching position here, I didn’t quite know what to make of Bryan. He is highly effective and extremely professional educator. He takes his work very seriously, but he doesn’t take himself too seriously. He is one of the most dedicated educators I have ever worked with. He raises the game of everybody around him. But he also has a wickedly quick sense of humor.

So the first time I saw him wearing a pair of his one-of-a-kind plaid pants, I didn’t know quite what to make of them. When people made good natured comments about his bold plaid pants, he just smiled and seemed to take it in stride. He didn’t really make any self-deprecating remarks, so maybe he meant for them to be taken at face value. True, they were quite stylish; but man, that red plaid was loud.