Update from Hong Kong

Our refrigerator is nearly empty, so it must be time to move again.

I wish I was so on the ball that I could say we will be moving shortly, but we have actually already moved. The last three weeks have flown by, first with a wonderful week's vacation in Palau and Guam, followed by a manic two days at work for both of us, followed by a whirlwind apartment-hunting trip to .... Hong Kong, where we're now living. The last week in Manila was crazy, too, with packing and cleaning (thank goodness for Cheryll, who did most of the cleaning), living in a hotel for several days and finishing up all the last-minute social and business stuff.

We're actually in a hotel in Hong Kong tonight, but will be moving in to our new apartment, er, flat, tomorrow morning.

The move itself was not so bad. Our landlord was extremely impressed with how clean the house was (kudos to Shelly and Cheryll for that). Cheryll found a new job on her last day with us, earning the same pay and working the same hours; we are happy that we aren't leaving her unemployed. Living in a hotel and not cooking for a week wasn't the worst experience of my life. And a two-hour flight from Manila to Hong Kong beats the pants off a 24-plus hour flight from Maryland to Manila.

Challenges ahead include shoehorning ourselves into a small Hong Kong apartment, especially after living in a spacious, two-story house in Manila, finding some cheap furniture to sit on and getting our utilities set up, though I think we'll have help from the real estate agent with that.

If you know Hong Kong, we'll be living in Happy Valley, which seems to be an interesting neighborhood with a good mix of Chinese and foreign residents. We have one set of friends here already (friends of Shelly's aunt ... we decided to live here after meeting them for dinner last week) and met the owner of a neighborhood yakitori restaurant tonight. Jack is a Hong Kong native, but graduated from Ohio State and is a major Big Ten sports fan. What a way for me to start!

We'll update you once we get the flat online. Hopefully that won't take more than a few days.

Typhoon Stomps Around Manila

We always miss the excitement.

While we were out of town this past week, typhoon Milenyo hit Manila, knocking out power over most of Luzon and pouring buckets of rain into our living room where, unaware of the typhoon's approach, we had conveniently left the windows open.

Known by the rest of Asia as Xangsane, the Laotian word for elephant, the typhoon lined up perfectly with Manila, dragging its eyewall across the city, knocking down trees everywhere, including in our neighborhood. When we returned home Saturday evening, there was no power at all in our neighborhood, and not much water, since there was no electricity to power the water pumps. I've been through that joy before, when I was without power for three weeks on Guam after supertyphoon Paka struck in 1997, just two months after I moved to Guam. "Gee," I thought then, "what a great idea to move here..."

Luckily for us, the power came back on around 2:00 a.m. Sunday. I know many who were not that fortunate.

These are the branches I pulled out of our yard. Nothing major, really.


It also blew an outside door off its hinges.


And here are a few photos from around the neighborhood...