Mr. Quick & Two Monkeys

Camp

The middle schoolers all left school en masse on Wednesday morning. In a big trail of 225 students, we walked to the train station. We filled up five train cars as we rode to the Ma On Sha station. From there it was a five minute walk to the YMCA camp.

YMCA Hong Kong maintains a beautiful, five-acre facility here in the New Territories. It was fourteen kids and one teacher per cabin.

For the next three days, we swam in the pool, played ultimate Frisbee, and had cabin devotions together. We had grade-level tug-of-wars, played a round of after-dark find-the-eighth-graders, played a live-action, life-sized game of Clue with the teachers dressed as Colonel Mustard, Professor Plum, Mrs. Claus, The Golfer, and so on. We hiked in a nature preserve and encountered some intimidating monkeys on the trail.

We ate camp food in the cafeteria. We sang one too many rounds of “Fried Ham, fried ham, cheese and bologna and after the macaroni, we’ll have onions and pickles and pretzels and then we’ll have some more fried ham.” We had several sessions of worship and speakers.

We roasted hotdogs and made s’mores. We had a bon fire. We stayed up past “lights out.” The kids ate all the junk food they had packed instead of clean underwear. We all got too much sun and drank too little water.

The kids did skits that included a Michael Jackson tribute, lots of prat falls, and some teacher imitations.

It was thirty years in the making, but I had my revenge on all the camp councilors I ever had. At 7:00 a.m. each morning, it was my turn to bang a large metal spoon on a garbage can lid and sing loudly and off-key “Rise and shine and give God the glory, children of the Lord!” The boys seem to hate it as much as I did when I was the one burying my head under the pillow.

Thursday, I had the opportunity to be the speaker for our evening session. I built my talk around my burn accident in July. My theme was God is in Control. I was a little anxious, but the kids (and my colleagues) responded well.

Some things seem to be the same no matter where you go around the globe. Eighth-grade boys use way, way too much Axe spray deodorant (or “deo” as they like to call it). A boy dropping his shorts on stage to reveal his pink boxers is guaranteed to get the biggest laugh of the night. And sadly, a majority of the eighth-grade girls would rather cluster up in the shade of the one small awning than put on their suits and go frolic in the pool in full view of the eighth-grade boys. Seventh-grade boys who drink coffee (with two creams and three sugars) think that they are really hot stuff.

And Friday afternoon when we were done at the YMCA which was five minutes from the train station and twenty five minutes from school, we simply dismissed the kids. Yup, we teachers all just waved goodbye as the kids fanned out into Hong Kong most of them heading for the train station and presumably home.

A strange experience for this teacher from the suburbs of Chicago.

Hong Kong is a lot more pedestrian friendly and a lot less litigious than what I’m used to.


-Jack

Choco

The Hong Kong weather bureau just announced that this August was the hottest on record. We do a lot of walking in this heat. To cool down and to reward the girls for their long suffering, we've been known to stop at McDonald's for cheap icecream cones.

Sunday, I really wanted the vanilla ice cream cone with the raspberry swirls but the picture menu behind the counter was just out of reach and the Cantonese word for raspberry was escaping me at the moment. (As I ever knew the Cantonese word for raspberry. I don’t even know the Cantonese word for hello.) After two failed attempts to communicate what I wanted, I figured it was easier to just change my order.

I went with the selection that everyone in Asia seems to understand.

Choco.

You thought money was the universal language. It’s not, it’s chocolate. I may not know what 秦 means, but I do understand what Choco is.

Better safe than sorry. If you’re not careful around here, you might get stuck with a green bean popsicle.

We’ve been eating a lot of chocolate-flavored stuff lately.

-Jack

Toto, I've a Feeling We’re Not in Kansas Anymore

So there we were on Saturday night in the home of my Nigerian co-worker and his American-born wife eating Indian curry prepared by their Filipino helper. In China.

We wanted an international experience. I guess we got it.

-Jack

My Mind Has Become Animated

Sisters Cutie Look Burger

When I lived in Japan twenty years ago, the people were hungry for all things western including McDonalds, Michael Jackson, and American-style t-shirts. It didn’t really matter what the shirts said, as long as it had English –or something close to it- printed on it. Many were imports, but some were obviously printed locally. The later were easy to identify because while they had English words on them, they frequently made little sense. Happy Now Meow freind.

With all the cultural sensitivity of Homer Simpson, my fellow expats and I made it a hobby looking for fractured English t-shirts. It was a fun sport because some of the shirts were almost haiku-like in their brevity, beauty, and obscurity. Tomorrow is Peace. Tomorrow is Yesterday.

I was looking forward to engaging in some t-shirt spotting in Hong Kong. Maybe a game of “I Spy the Silly T-shirt” with Annika and Elise would help pass the time on long train rides.

At first, things got off to a solid start. We amassed a few for the scrapbook: Charm of Comfortable to Give Excitement in Life. And then there was Standard Together Inspired.

So far so good.

But Hong Kong 2009, is not Japan 1989.

It all started to get a little fuzzy.

That quirky Cheer You Up t-shirt we saw? We started to see more of them. A whole lot more. Maybe it wasn’t so random. Maybe Cheer You Up was some company’s catch phrase. Or a brand name.

And the Delay No More on that girl’s hat that made us giggle? It turns out that comes from a major cell phone service company. So okay, that makes sense. Kind of. I think.

I would have to be more discerning.

But then I started getting really confused. I began to second-guess myself when I saw previously familiar phrases. It’s the Real Thing. Oh that’s so funn . . . wait a minute, that’s real English right? Everything became suspect. Just do it. That doesn’t actually mean anything, does it? Every phrase on every object started to look random. I’m loving it!

I could see it now. All those slogans on hats, and t-shirts, and billboards, they’re just arbitrary mash-ups that Madison Avenue was passing off as real English in order to sell stuff. None of it really meant anything. It’s all nonsensical, fractured English. Inspired, Just Do It Standard Together!

No, that can’t be, can it. It has to mean something doesn’t it?

I couldn’t possibly begin to tell any more.

Doh! I need a new hobby. This one is making my head hurt.

-Jack

She’s the Man

It turns out negotiating the trains is relatively easy. Inside every train above every door is a color-coded map of the system. Worse case scenario, you get on a train going the wrong way, so you get off at the next stop and reverse directions.

The buses are a different story.

While trains can get you to the general vicinity, buses are nice because if you know what you are doing they can get you right to the door step of where you're going. There are ten train lines in Hong Kong, but there are hundreds of bus routes. But you’re going to have to crack open a very detailed pocket atlas and read some really small print in order to ride the bus.

Julie doesn’t work until noon, so she's been using her mornings to take care of business in and around the New Territories by both train and bus.

Hong Kong’s answer to CraigsList is www.AsiaExpats.com. It's a buy/sell/freecycle website that –by virtue of the fact that it is in English- caters to the relatively transient expat community in Hong Kong.

Julie has been using AsiaExpat.com and her new-found bus riding skills to acquire a few things for our home.

Friday morning before she went to work at noon, she found on AsiaExpat a woman who was leaving Hong Kong, had sold most of her bigger items, and had a bunch of small stuff she was giving away. Stop by and take what you want. It’ll be on the front porch. So first thing that morning, Julie figured out it was the 67a bus she needed and off she went. When she got there, it looked liked the family had already moved out, but sure enough, there on the front porch was a stack of free items.

Julie scored some Tupperware containers, a stack of blank CDs, two bowls, and a muffin tin. She left behind the three bottles of hard liquor -but only because they had been baking in the hot sun for who-knows-how-long.

Last week she bought a used space heater and a like-new rice cooker.

Last night we took the train together to purchase a used DVD player. We met the woman at the Ma On Shan train station. We exchanged the money and the DVD player over the turn style so that she didn’t have to pay to enter the station and we didn’t have to pay to exit it. The whole transaction only took sixty seconds and less than a dozen words, but the whole time Julie and the woman were making the exchange, I kept looking around nervously. It felt like we were conducting a shady, underworld deal.

Julie didn’t bat an eyelash.

She’s a hardened pro at this.

-Jack

Helpful note: It is not permitted in Hong Kong to bring a bicycle onto a bus or a train. But you are allowed to carry on a unicycle.

Annika September, 2009

Elise September, 2009

You’ve Got Your Head in the Clouds (part 4 of 4)

After closing up the cabin per Colleen’s instructions (“After closing the toilet lid, be sure not to forget to put this rock on top of it.”), we headed out with our packs considerably lighter than the day before since we had consumed most of the food we’d carried up.

Five minutes after we were back on the trail, I slipped on a wet rock. My fall was cushioned by the tall grass. I wasn’t hurt, but I was lying on my back, my head was pointing down hill, I had a twenty-five pound pack strapped to my back, and my feet were in the air. I looked like an overturned turtle. The girls thought this was pretty funny.

Half way down the mountain, Colleen’s promise came to fruition: we were overcome not by one but three old Chinese guys –shirts off, backpacks on- jogging down the mountain. I suddenly felt very out of shape. A few minutes later when we finally arrived at the head of the trail, there sitting at the picnic pavilion were our three hardcore old-timers eating the sandwiches from their backpacks.

With the exception of my giggle-inducing slip, we’d made it up and down the mountain without incident. As we were taking the last few steps of our 10,000-step journey, Elise twisted her ankle -slightly. Fighting back the tears, she managed to hobble across the street to the bus stop.

No sooner had we set down our packs to wait in the shade of the bus stop, than our three Chinese speed hikers –with shirts on- approached us having obviously witnessed the mini-drama of the barely-twisted ankle. As the oldest of the three men dug around in his backpack, he asked if he could apply some ointment. Sure. So Elise peeled off her sock and shoe, and sat down right there on the sidewalk so this stranger could apply red flower oil (at first we thought he said rat flower oil!). After he rubbed the ointment in, he firmly held Elise’s ankle in his hands for several minutes to create warmth. As I watched Elise sit there, her foot being cradled by this sixty-plus year old Chinese hiker/healer, I almost wished that I had twisted my ankle. I felt like saying, hey, I’ve got this kink in my left shoulder, have you got anything in that bag for me, medicine man? But our bus arrived and it was time to part ways.

In the back of my mind, I was hoping that we would bump into all-night party dude, so we could tell him all about our exploits up and down the mountain. But in a city of seven million, that was too much to ask.

While the guide books are filled with some great suggestions (Hong Kong Disney, here we come), I am thankful for a memorable experience that was a little more serendipitous. It came about because we befriended a colleague, were willing to commit ourselves to the unknown, and because of my bad habit of saying “How about next weekend?” whenever someone tosses a token invitation our way.

After ascending 1,500 vertical feet and spending the night on a wind-swept mountain top, I fear that the rest of our time in Hong Kong will be all down hill. But I’m guessing Hong Kong’s got a few more pleasant surprises awaiting us.

I can only hope so.

-Jack

Considering that less than six weeks ago I could barely negotiate a single flight of stairs, I am very thankful for the recovery my body has made.