Bali

Posted by Shelly


In October we spent a week in Bali, Indonesia. The first few days were spent at a beautiful hotel on the rural east coast. Other than early morning or late afternoon walks up the coast we never left the hotel property. The hotel was on a rocky beach from where hundreds of local fisherman depart every morning at 4:30am and return three hours later with buckets full of fish (barracuda were biting when we were there). We snorkeled, swam in the pool, read, napped, and enjoyed massages.



After four days of complete relaxation we hired a car and toured the island. We stopped at Tenganan Village that still follows a traditional tribal lifestyle and saw some 14th century cliff carvings at Yeh Pulu.



We spent the second half of the week in Ubud. Ubud is in the middle of Bali and is surrounded by rice terraces. Many artisans live in Ubud and the surrounding villages resulting in wonderful shopping opportunites.

Batik is one of the types of art that is famous in Bali. Greg and I took a batik making class from Nyoman Suradnya, an artist who shows his work internationally. This was my first time to batik since 5th grade art class. First we drew our design on stretched cotton and then we copied our design with melted wax. Next we used watercolors to paint the cotton. Blending is a lot harder than one might expect. The next step involved painting over all the watercolors (leaving the background blank) with a second coat of wax. Then the cotton was dipped in indigo and dunked in boiling water to remove the wax and set the colors. We spent more than 5 hours in the artist’s studio (beautiful open air buildings in the family courtyard).



Bali is 95% Hindu so the local dance performances are based on traditional Hindu stories. One night we went to see the Kecak Dance, which is based on the Hindu epic Ramayana and tells the story of Prince Rama and his dramatic rescue of Princess Sita, who had been kidnapped by the King of Lanka. Perhaps most impressive was the continual chanting of more than 100 men, who clicked their way through an hour of "chak-achak-achaka" sounds. The show ended with a dancer in a trance who ran around through very hot coals.



Both Hindu temples and flowers are plentiful in Ubud. Often the statues of the gods at the temple gates get fresh flowers tucked behind their ears. Offerings are made to the gods for every pot of rice that is made. Offering plates including rice and spices and flowers are put on the grounds and somewhere high up. The high offerings are for the good gods and the ones on the ground are to appease the bad gods. In some instances even the family scooter gets an offering.



75% of Balinese food uses a mixture of about 12 spices as the base seasoning. We took a cooking class at a local restaurant. The chef spent over an hour introducing us to new spices. We made satay, which tastes much better when stalks of lemon grass are used instead of wood skewers. We also made chicken curry, coconut vegetable salad, grilled mackerel, and coconut milk shrimp.



Other than artisans and shopping, Ubud is also famous for the Monkey Forrest. Greg went, bought a bunch of bananas and wisely hid them in his backpack so that he would be able to navigate his way through a horde of monkeys. According to his story, he sat down on a bench and unzipped his backpack just enough to reach in pull out a banana. Before he was able to pull a single banana out, a rather large monkey had climbed on top of Greg's backpack, bared his teeth at Greg and stolen the whole bunch from him. At least she shared.


Not sure where our next trip will take us, but I am already looking forward to it.

Five Years of Wedded (Mostly) Bliss

We celebrated our fifth -- ! -- anniversary last month, and did what all good married couples should do. We went to China.

We initially thought of that Paris of the Pearl River, Shenzhen, renowned for its Wal*Marts and masses of Hong Kong shoppers and factories and, well, little else. So we turned our eyes northward, and headed instead for somewhere that wasn't Shenzhen.

Guangzhou fit the bill, and while its reputation as a prime tourist destination is not exactly sparkling, we found it to be an interesting city to spend the weekend wandering.

We rolled into Guangzhou's eastern train station, where all rail traffic from Hong Kong arrives, late Saturday morning, and, upon seeing an incredibly long queue, immediately abandoned our plans to take a taxi to our hotel and opted instead for the subway, which got us into the city centre, where we then hailed a taxi completely without a queue. The thing about many Chinese cities is that the blocks are incredibly long and the cities incredibly spread out. Factor in that the best hotel deal was not immediately adjacent to a subway line, and we ended up in more than a few taxis. (In retrospect, there's probably a reason our hotel was cheaper than one that was right on the subway line, but I digress.)

We wandered into a Brazilian restaurant for lunch, which, of course, is exactly what you think of when you think of Guangzhou. But this was just the first of many pleasant surprises we found in the city. We spent an interesting hour at the Museum of the Peasant Movement Institute, where I saw what I am quite certain is my lifetime allotment of pictures of Mao. We then visited a museum full of artifacts from the Nanyue King's tomb. If you ever need to see a life-size shroud made out of jade and red thread, this is the place to be. When we rented MP3 players for the guided audio tour, we had to leave a deposit of RMB400 (US$53). The clerk wrote down the serial numbers of each of the four RMB100 notes Shelly left, and we got the same four notes back. It might have been interesting to pay with 20s.

We finally ended up at the Chen Clan's Ancestral Hall, which proved to be quite photogenic both inside ...


...and in the backyard sculpture garden.


Saturday evening, we decided to take a cruise on the Pearl River. While it had the risk of being cheesy and touristy, it also had the benefit of being cheap. We finally found a small "Muslim food" restaurant for dinner, where Shelly had the best (and freshest and longest) noodles I have ever tasted. (Sadly, in my quest for the perfect fried rice, I ordered fried rice. This cook playing with noodles in the front window should have been my first clue to order noodles, not rice. After all, he wasn't making rice.)


Total cost for an anniversary dinner for two: about US$2.50.

Our cruise turned out to be really nice, and very popular. After the traditional Cantonese stampede to get on the ship, we all found out that we had assigned seats. Not that you couldn't change -- the boat was only one-third full, probably because there is so much competition for evening cruises on the Pearl River. There was a continual parade of boats all lit up with neon both in front of us and behind us for the duration of the cruise. I understand why it is such a popular evening activity: Guangzhou was quite fetching from the river, and the water is cleaner than I expected it would be.


On Sunday morning, we headed to the market, which was closed, and then across the river to Shamian Island, which is notable for at least two things. First, Guangzhou seems to have preserved more of its colonial past on Shamian Island than Hong Kong has in all of Hong Kong. This is obviously not really true, but the buildings haven't been torn down to build highways, the old British post boxes are still standing, and the island feels nothing like part of a massive Chinese city.

The other thing Shamian is notable for is for hosting huge numbers of Americans who have come to Guangzhou to adopt a baby. The US consulate is next door to a large hotel, which is apparently where everyone stays while they're in the adoption process. We felt quite out of place when we wandered through the lobby, as we were the only American couple there that wasn't pushing a stroller.


Shamian is also a peaceful place, with few cars and lots of parks to wander through. As we were leaving, a man stopped us.

"Are you here to adopt Chinese baby?" he asked.

"No, we're just looking," I replied, which Shelly pointed out probably wasn't the best choice of words.

I ended up chatting with the guy for a few minutes, and learned that he brings his son to Shamian every Sunday to sit on a park bench and do his homework. "Other parks aren't free like Shamian is," he explained. "And here, I can practice my English."

On our way back to the market, we even found out why the river is so clean. There's a guy who paddles around in his little boat, picking up all the trash floating on the surface.

Mail Call

You know, not really as unobservant as this post makes me out to be. I've commented, at least to Shelly, for several months on the new 90-cent stamp issued by the USPS, the one that features my former home of Guam.


But today, when I opened a letter from Grandma -- and lets face it, in this era of e-mail and next-to-free phone calls across the Pacific, Grandma accounts for the bulk of the mail I get -- I was reminded of this incredibly beautiful stamp yet again. That letter, by the way, took 24 days -- October 5 to October 29 -- to make it from Eastern Iowa to Hong Kong. Is it any wonder nobody sends snail mail anymore?

Back in March, the USPS had this to say about the stamp:

Hagåtña Bay (international price) 90 cents – on sale June 1. The Postal Service will issue this stamp in the Scenic American Landscapes series to honor the Territory of Guam. Located approximately 1,600 miles east of the Philippines in the Pacific Ocean, Guam is the largest and southernmost of the Mariana Islands. Approximately 212 square miles in size — roughly three times the area of Washington, D.C. — Guam is home to a population of approximately 158,000 people, including native Guamanians, known as Chamorro, as well as others of European and Asian descent. Today the island is a popular destination for tourists, with some 1.5 million people visiting the island annually to enjoy its natural beauty. The stamp features a photograph by Michael S. Yamashita of a sunset of Hagåtña Bay in Hagatna, the capital of Guam.

I lived on Guam for three years in the late 1990s. It was a fantastic three-year period: I had an interesting job that gave me incredible access around the region, I learned how to dive and I went snorkeling practically every day. It also was an incredibly expensive place to live, and I'm sure I lost money on the deal.

So thank you, Grandma, for the great Guam stamps. Keep those letters coming!

The Round Robin Visits

Posted by Shelly

40+ years after graduation, my aunt is still in close touch with her college friends, all teachers or retired teachers. They get together twice a year, usually in southern California. However, twice they have traveled overseas together. A few years ago they met in England, and this September the “Round Robin Gang” came to Hong Kong.


One friend and her husband are now working at the Hong Kong Canadian School and we live on the same street. The group sandwiched a trip to Beijing and Xian, China with two long weekends in Hong Kong. We enjoyed having Karen stay with us, meeting everyone and acting as tour guides.


It was fun to hear everyone’s impressions of Hong Kong. One night we went for Chinese food. In Hong Kong fresh seafood is live seafood (people want to choose their own fish from the restaurant’s tank located in front of the shop). A common dish is steamed fish prepared with spring onions, ginger, a bit of soy sauce and a splash of sesame oil. Since the brain, cheeks and eyeballs are considered some of the best parts of the fish, steamed fish is always served whole. This was surprising to the group and Greg further entertained them by eating both eyeballs and the cheeks. [The cheeks were delicious. I ate the eyeballs on a dare. I'd do it again, but probably not without a dare. -- G]

Chickens are also served whole. We ordered a fried chicken. After frying the whole bird, it is cut up into large-bite size pieces in the kitchen and then arranged on the plate to look like a whole bird (head and feet are usually put on the serving plate). Strangely no one wanted to eat the chicken head, but everyone did photograph it.


Hong Kong has very little flat land. There are a lot of hills, stairs and overpasses. Even though the group was in good shape and used to walking, they did find all the stairs a bit tiring. This made me very happy as I am always happy to have an excuse to have a foot massage. Chinese foot massage start with soaking feet in a large wooden bucket filled with hot soapy water or medicinal tea. After about ten minutes of soaking, the massage starts. In addition to treating all the pressure points on the foot, the masseuse usually continues up the leg as far as the knee or mid thigh and sometimes even offers a quick shoulder massage at the end.


Foot massages are painful in the best possible way. Hour long massages cost less than US$10 in China and are US$15-25 here in Hong Kong. Several of the Round Robin had more than one massage and one even branched out to try the “ear candling” service.

Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Dogs and their Poop

Posted by Shelly

Many people in Hong Kong have dogs – both large and small. Dog walkers are supposed to clean up after their dogs when walking them. Most walkers are quite good at this. As soon as a dog starts to squat, the walker will quickly slip a piece of newspaper between the dog's legs to catch, well, whatever drops out.


This is then wrapped up and dropped in the nearest dog poop collection box. I'm not sure what this box says about who walks the dogs in Hong Kong, but it must say something. There is no Chinese on this box, only English and Tagalog, the language spoken by most of the Filipina housekeepers in Hong Kong. Does this mean that the authorities believe that only English-speaking foreigners and Filipinas pick up after their dogs? Or that Chinese never take their dogs for walks? Or, maybe, that dogs owned by Chinese don't poop?


Extra polite dog walkers even carry a squeeze bottle filled with water to dilute any spot where the dog pees. As Hong Kong is mostly cement, this is a nice touch and helps the streets not smell completely like dog urine. Apparently, though, a dog walker recently did not clean up after their dog in front of our building as the following sign was posted last week. You can click on the picture below if you want to read it more easily.

Kill the Germs

Posted by Shelly


Ever since SARS, the Hong Kong population has been extra-cautious regarding personal health issues. The buttons in elevators are often covered with a sheet of plastic with a sign posted indicating that the area is sanitized every 30 minutes. Alcohol or alcohol gel dispensers are regularly located in office building lobbies and restaurants.

And Pizza Express, a local Italian restaurant, reminds you to keep, well, one hand clean:

October Catch-up

Gosh, what a surprise. Six weeks have sped by without a single blog post. Shelly has been doing her part and has written three posts, and I haven't even gotten them posted. I'm going to post a bunch of stuff today without backdating it, but most likely, the last thing you read was September 9.

And just to follow up, the new iPods did finally make it to Hong Kong, and my old iPod held out just long enough to keep me entertained on my daily commute to work and walk home. Thanks to Uncle Larry for sending me a story about iPod costs around the world. Hong Kong is the cheapest place in the world to buy one, so I upgraded at the right time!

Work has been crazy. Somehow, I've taken on way more than I should have. We're in the process of doing some reorganization at the office, and I'm not exactly sure of what my role will be next week, much less next month. In the process of the reorganization (brought about my editor's resignation), my boss's boss's boss came over from London to see what we've been up to (part of the reorganization has changed my boss's boss's boss from someone in Hong Kong to someone in London), and he seemed shocked by how much I've been doing, which gives me hope that I may be able to do less in the future, as he asked me how I could possibly think about the big picture and what's best for the magazine with all the copy I'm churning out. He also called me "the most prolific legal journalist in Asia." I got the feeling that this was a role he did not think I should have to have, which gives me hope for the future.

I also got a nice raise when our new financial year started in October. I will never again get a 17% raise. Hopefully, I will never again be as underpaid as I was prior to the raise.

The reorganization has given me some opportunity to redefine my role at the company. I hope to move a step higher on the organizational chart and become responsible for the magazine I've been writing for. My boss was responsible for much more, and I didn't want to take on her role, which was more of a manager role. I am enjoying my writing assignments way too much right now to give them up completely.

What else is new in Hong Kong? We had company in late September and early October when Shelly's aunt came to visit. She was actually here as part of a group of college friends that still get together periodically. One of the members lives in Hong Kong, and everyone packed up and flew halfway around the world. (Karen's friend introduced us to Happy Valley a year ago, which is how we came to live here. When we recently met friends of Shelly's cousin who were moving here, we invited them to Happy Valley for dinner. They live here now, too, so the circle goes on!) I believe Shelly has a post on Karen's visit that I'll post shortly.

Somehow, I managed to get enough work done that Shelly and I took a week's holiday in Indonesia in mid-October. It was an incredibly relaxing trip. I can only remember one other time when I needed a holiday as badly as I needed this one. I have some photos that I'll post.

So, with turmoil at work and my parents arriving for a week's visit on Friday, my life doesn't appear to be slowing down much. Time is really flying by. I also need to buy a new computer, as the one I'm using has been beset with problems since the beginning. I had a bad memory chip almost immediately, then I broke the screen in Manila, my hard drive died a year ago, and my CD/DVD drive died in April. I've fixed everything except the CD/DVD drive. It's now having trouble turning back on after being shut off, which means I'm leaving it on all the time. I've reached the point that it is more cost-effective to just buy a new machine, and now that the latest update to Apple's operating system is on the shelves, I'll be buying soon.

I'll be buying the extended warranty this time, too. (Though in fairness, at least part of the problems would not have been covered. Shelly and I have each dropped it, so I'm frankly surprised it works at all.) (Shelly would point out that she didn't actually drop it. In truth, Shelly placed it on my desk incautiously and Fat Choy did the actual dropping. Shelly would also probably point out that my desk was too cluttered for her to find a good place to put it, but that's another story.)

September: Where's my iPod?

That brings me mostly up-to-date. September is not apt to be much better for me, work-wise, so I can't promise that I'll be much more prompt this month than I was last. (Actually, I should not have much freelance work, so my evenings will at least be more free...)

Last Wednesday, Apple announced its new iPods, which came just in time for me. I started looking for a new one about two weeks ago and quickly discovered that there weren't many left in Hong Kong. A quick check with Brad revealed that the new iPods were due to be announced soon. When I bought my current iPod in early 2005, I bought it one week before they released a new model, with more features at the same price as I had just paid, so at least I dodged that bullet this time.

But now I'm stuck waiting for the new models to make it to Hong Kong. Some of them are in, but not the one I want. I hate being the fanboy who rolls up to the Apple store every day asking if the new iPods are in yet, but the truth is, my old iPod is lurching towards death, each day getting a bit worse. I've been told the new ones will be in Monday, but I was also told they'd be in Saturday, so....

August: Mahjong

Also in August, we sort of learned how to play mahjong. Mahjong is a very popular game in Hong Kong; you can often hear tiles clacking when you walk the streets, especially on the weekends.

So one evening when we having dinner with some Chinese friends, they decided to teach us.


I can't really say that I learned how to play mahjong. It's like baseball in that while you can quickly understand the basics, there are so many complexities to the game that you'll have to play it over and over and over again before you really start to get it. I mean, I now know the basic rules to mahjong, but if I hadn't had an assistant, I never would have been able to play the game.

We did learn the Chinese character for "fat choy."

August: Singapore

Also in August, we both went to Singapore. This must have been Shelly's 20th trip there, but it was my first. Unfortunately, I was there for just over a day, so I didn't have much opportunity to see much of the city. (I had an oh-so-wonderful schedule of leaving Hong Kong at 8 pm on Wednesday and leaving Singapore at 8:15 am on Friday. It was a terrible way to visit Singapore.)

I was in Singapore for a day for an interview and a few meetings with law firms around the city. In between the meetings, I was able to see a few things, eat some Kenny Rogers chicken and some great Indian food for dinner.


It was rainy much of the day, so I spent more free time than I would have liked to in shopping malls. But I did make sure I visited Singapore's famous Raffles Hotel. I wandered briefly through the lobby and shot a few photos and then wandered back out. I'm sure the rooms are fantastic, based on the lobby and the grounds.

My meetings did give me lots of opportunity to view Singapore from tall buildings.


In the foreground is a tiny part of old Singapore, on both sides of the river. The government and courts are on the far side, and old houses -- now converted mostly to restaurants -- on the near side. Also on the far side, you'll see one of the oldest cricket grounds in Asia -- it's right up there with Hong Kong's. The flying-saucer-like building on the left is the Supreme Court building. After my afternoon meetings, I walked along the river and had dinner. Then, I went back to my room and worked, and then got up really, really early for my flight home.


In such a short visit, it's hard to really report on a city. Singapore has very clean air -- a great change from Hong Kong -- and nice, wide streets, which result in much better traffic flow than Hong Kong has. But I really do prefer old cities, and Singapore is definitely a new city, which makes Hong Kong preferable for me.

August: The Simpsons Movie

My plan was to try to back-date everything to the date it happened, but that's just too much hassle, I'm so far behind. So instead, I'll use this week to post some of what we've been up to for the past month.

One of the highlights of the past month -- for me, at least -- had to be The Simpsons Movie, which try as I might, I could not convince Shelly to see with me. My brother-in-law Jim had better luck convincing Lisa to see the movie, but Lisa was only slightly more enthusiastic about the movie than Shelly would have been.

I did convince Shelly to play around one evening and make avatars on The Simpsons Movie website.


I'm not sure I quite like the nose and mouth on mine, but my wife insists it's accurate. I managed to lose the password to her avatar, so I re-created it without her, but I think I was quite kind in re-creation.

One of us is a hottie. :-)

The Cat Who Eats with a Spork

No, not ours. But it will give Fat Choy and I something to do when Shelly's gone.

Too. Much. Writing.

My brother asked me a good question recently. I had written to him, telling him that I generally produce somewhere in the neighbourhood of 10,000 words a month for the magazine I write for. His response:

Do the 10,000 words per month have to form coherent stories? Or is it strictly a word count?

After this month, I find that to be a particularly good question, because my output this month has been not doubled, but nearly trebled. Late this afternoon I wrote my 28,374th word of the month. And by “of the month,” I really mean “of the past two weeks.” My work has consisted of four chapters of an annual legal directory we publish, four separate stories for the magazine and a massive news section for the same magazine. (I’ve produced well over half the magazine’s content this month, which is – and hopefully shall remain – an aberration.)

It’s little surprise, then, that I haven’t blogged in three weeks. When Brad complained that his RSS feeds weren’t showing new posts, I offered to send him a draft of my chapter on corporate law firms in Vietnam, which he promptly declined.

Smart boy, that Brad. The Laos chapter is much shorter.

***

My day got off to a roaring start this morning.

Shelly is in the US right now, first visiting family and then doing some work, and the cat is feeling her absence. Shelly usually wakes up sometime between 5 and 6, though lately she has been waking up even earlier.

So, at 4:30 this morning, Fat Choy decided it was time to get up. She was very persuasive with her arguments. Or maybe it was that she was very loud. Or maybe it was her repeated head-butts to my face. After finally giving in, I was up at 5 and couldn’t go back to sleep. (I don’t remember the last time I was up at 5, but it must have been to fly somewhere. It almost certainly wasn’t because I *wanted* to be.)

What this boils down to is that, after I put the dishes away, brought in the laundry, hung out more laundry, surfed the Internet, etc., etc., etc., it was 6:30. So I went to work. The No. 1 bus from Happy Valley is very empty at that time of day, which is exactly what Shelly has been telling me.

Oh, and the cat? As I was sitting at my computer at 5:15, she curled up on the sofa and went back to sleep.

***

This evening I’m in the process of updating the blog. You’ll see a couple of things back-dated to the approximate date they actually occurred. I know that mass updates aren’t really appreciated, but I’m sure there is some reason I haven’t been blogging lately.

Oh, yeah. It has something to do with those 28,374 words. Anyone want to read my chapter on Cambodia?

Yesterday Must Have Been An Auspicious Day

Posted by Shelly

Buddhists in Hong Kong pay homage to the gods that inhabit the land. This is done by leaving offerings of food and drink and by burning incense and fake paper money. In return for leaving these gifts for the gods, the Buddhists are asking for the gods to bless the building and the people in it. Depending on how fervent the believer this ritual can take place anywhere between twice a month and several times a day.


I visited a printing company a few months ago. The salesperson who gave me the tour introduced me to his boss who was burning the fake paper money in the hallway of the building. He told me that she did this every time she went through the entrance of the office as a wish for lots of good business to come their way.

As an earlier blog entry mentioned, my co-worker's mother-in-law came and blessed our office shortly after it opened. She brought several foods, incense and money. She lit the money right under the fire alarm. There was plenty of smoke, but fortunately th alarm did not go off requiring 20 floors of office workers to evacuate.

Our apartment building has incense lighting stations in two different areas of the stairwells (on the top floor and a mid-level floor). As far I can tell, incense is lit here twice a month.


Outside of buildings you can often see a small shrine area built into the foundation. This is where the offerings can be left. Common foods to leave for the gods are deep fried pork, steamed yellow cake and fruit.

This weekend must have been an important time to make offerings. On Saturday when I was walking around the track at The Jockey Club, two grounds keepers were offering the most interesting offering I have seen to date - 2 cans of Pepsi Max, 2 bottles of Beer, several Snickers and other snack foods. The beverages were opened (who knows, maybe Chinese Buddhist gods don't have thumbs). By the time I had circled the track a second time, they were done burning the money and had taken the offering away. On Sunday night while walking around the neighborhood I saw 6 groups of people out burning incense or money. This morning on the way to the bus there were several food offerings that had been left out overnight.

Entrance Exams

Posted by Shelly

Since my co-worker’s daughter just went through Hong Kong’s high school entrance exam process, I have learned a lot about the Hong Kong education system.

Hong Kong has a British-style school system. There are 6 years of primary school followed by 5 years of secondary school. Instead of 7th grade or 8th grade, they refer to their year of school as Form 1, Form 2… At the end of Form 5 (11th grade) students have finished their compulsory education. If they want to continue, they need to take a standardized government exam. Most students take tests in 9 or 10 subjects. The test is several days long and is held every spring.

On August 8, the results were announced. A perfect score is 30 points (the total score for your top 5 highest subjects). Most subjects have a total possible score of 5 points, but English is weighed heavier with a total possible score of 8 points. If their scores are high enough, students will continue on the university track and attend an academic high school for an additional 2 years – Forms 6 and 7. At that point they will take their entrance exam for university (A levels and O levels).

Students who don’t do well on the high school entrance exam can transfer to a technical school for Forms 6 and 7. Schools announce the expected minimum test score for acceptance into their Form 6 and 7 program in advance. Hong Kong’s secondary schools are ranked into 4 tiers. Many top tier schools set their expected acceptance level at 16 points or higher.

(Nine boys and 1 girl received perfect scores this year. The girl is only 14. One university contacted the girl and offered to accept her now, without even attending Form 6 or 7. )

At 8:30 am on the morning of August 8th, the students went to their schools to get their test results. If they received a score that meets or exceeds the advertised minimum of the school they want to attend, they turned a Form 6 and 7 application into the school by 11 am. Before 1 pm, the schools had informed each student if they had been accepted. Students who were not accepted had until 2 pm to submit an application to their second choice school, which notified them by 5 pm if they were accepted. This pattern of 2 application timeslots per day will continue through Friday afternoon. The TV news will advertise how many remaining openings there are at each school.

So, if a student received 16 points and had been attending a top tier school but were not accepted by their current school because the spaces were already filled by students with higher results, then the student would have to decide if her 2nd choice school is another top tier school where they may or may not get in, or if she should drop to a B-tier school where she would have a very good chance of being accepted. Each time a student has to apply at a different school, the number of openings will have decreased. It makes for a very stressful 3 days.

200,000 students finished Form 5 this year. There is only room for 45% of them to stay on the university track. If a school had 200 students finish Form 5, they might only have space for 90 students in Form 6. From this they will offer 80 spaces to current students and save 10 spaces for outstanding students from other schools who want to transfer in.

***

Students pay huge amounts of money to private tutors in order to prepare for the exams. In a recent newspaper story, teachers in the public schools were complaining that students were sitting in their classes, ignoring the lectures, and doing their homework for their private tutors.

The tutors' advertisements tend to be over-the-top. This ad, from the back of a bus, is actually very subdued, despite the fact that the guy on the right says he has "Math-e-magic Power" and the guy on the left has (or is part of, I'm not sure) "Super English Force". Something about that phrase tells me that K. Oten is better at teaching test-taking techniques than actual English.

And that's it from here, other than to add that we have "Super Blogging Force".

That's One Confused Storm

As you can see, Pabuk is one confused storm, changing direction yet again. I just wanted to let you know that, at least in the part of Hong Kong where we live, the worst of the rain and wind were over by the time I got home from work. It looks like Pabuk will wear itself over Macau and southern Guandong province, and then will be no more.

So now, it's on to more important questions: Will I make it to The Simpsons Movie tomorrow, or not until later? It (finally) opened here on Thursday, and I've been driving Shelly crazy waiting for it, since it opened pretty much everywhere else in the world two weeks ago.

The Return of "Pabuk"

After our disappointment at having to go to work yesterday, I was surprised this morning to wake up and find an alert from the Hong Kong Observatory that we were back under Typhoon Condition One. By lunch time, we were back in Condition Three. An hour later, the Observatory announced it would be hoisting the signal for Condition Eight, and we started turning off our computers and heading home. Pabuk had turned back towards Hong Kong, and had once again strengthened into a tropical storm.

(There's no two, four, five, six or seven, just one, three, eight, nine and ten. There's a history of the warning signals here, if you're interested.)

Here's the map from the Hong Kong Observatory web site at 5 pm this evening. Hong Kong is the big red asterisk.

I left the office sometime around 2:30. I headed towards the bus stop, planning on taking the bus home until I saw the huge lines of people waiting to get on board.


I decided that it would probably take less time to walk home than it would to wait for the bus. It wasn't raining hard at the time, and it wasn't at all windy, and while both picked up during my walk, they have once again subsided. Shelly says the subway system was more crowded than she's ever seen it, and made the Tokyo subway at rush hour seem almost spacious. Getting a little wet during my walk seems like a good trade off.

Everyone had their umbrellas open, even when it was only misting. Hong Kong sidewalks are narrow enough as it is, but it was nearly impossible to dodge the umbrellas today.


Most of the stores in the mall on my route home were closed, though grocery stores were still open when I got home. There's not really any rain or wind, but I suppose it might pick up as the storm moves past us.

At any rate, I'm home early, just like there was a snow day.

No Snow Day

Tropical Storm Pabuk has weakened into a tropical depression and is currently about 50 km southwest of Hong Kong, and there are no winds whatsoever where we live.

In other words, I'm getting ready to go to work.

To Storm or Not to Storm?

I've been waiting for a typhoon -- or at least a tropical storm -- since we moved back to Asia. We missed one in Manila last year (it hit when we were apartment-hunting in Hong Kong, actually). We haven't had one yet in Hong Kong, but that might be about to change.

All day today, we've been watching Severe Tropical Storm Pabuk fly across the Taiwan Strait, lining up for a direct hit on Hong Kong. Now this is just about the best of all worlds: The storm isn't terribly strong, but with a direct hit of even a small storm, we're likely to get the day off. It's like having a snow day in Iowa, only warmer.

(Pabuk, by the way, is named for a kind of fish in Laos.)

The truth is, I'm spoiled when it comes to typhoons and tropical storms, because my first real typhoon or hurricane experience was with Supertyphoon Paka when I lived on Guam in December 1997. (Click that link, as it's actually pretty interesting reading.) Paka had sustained winds of 150 mph when it hit Guam, and one gust was measured at more than 230 mph, so it's been really hard for any storm since to live up to Paka.

Around 5:00 this morning, the Hong Kong Observatory hoisted typhoon signal number one, which means that a storm is within 800 km of Hong Kong and could affect us. The storm was tracking slightly north of Hong Kong and flying across the strait at 44 kph. If it had maintained its speed, it would have blown in overnight and been gone by morning, so we were quite happy when it suddenly slowed down to 20 kph and adjusted its course directly for Hong Kong. Remember: Small storm means not much damage, but direct hit means probably no work.

All afternoon, it continued its track towards Hong Kong. With its new, slower speed, getting the day off was looking better and better. We expected the winds to arrive any moment and, with them, the hoisting of signal number three, which means there are sustained gale force winds. But about 45 minutes ago, it started to weaken. It became Tropical Storm Pabuk. The Observatory says its future is now in question due to the influence of another tropical storm in the area.

After all the excitement today, it's looking more and more like I'll have to go to work tomorrow. And it will be just like waking up and discovering that the promised blizzard hadn't actually left any snow behind.

Tax Time

It's tax time in Hong Kong and I have completed Shelly's first tax return.

(It's actually a few weeks past tax time, but there are provisions for first-year tax payers so that we're not actually late. We pay taxes here based on an April 1 - May 31 fiscal year calendar, not the calendar year.)

As Americans, we're "privileged" to pay taxes to the US, even though we haven't lived there for nearly two years. The US is one of one two or three countries that requires its citizens to file a tax return based on income earned overseas, which means we get to file two returns. (It's true that our tax liability to the IRS usually ends up at zero or near zero, but the fact that we have to file and report overseas income really chaps my hide, so to speak.)

The best things about filing taxes in Hong Kong are that 1) the tax rate is just 15%, and 2) the return is really, really easy to complete. For example, here's exactly how I completed Shelly's return this evening:

7:00: Turn on the TV. Turn on Prison Break.
7:13: First commercial break. Gather a pencil, Shelly's tax forms and the calculator on my mobile phone.
7:16: Watch TV.
7:27: Second commercial break. Start reading the instructions. Fill out return.
7:32: Watch TV.
7:44: Third commercial break. Double-check my work. Determine it is correct.
7:46: Finished watching TV show.

Total time: approximately six minutes.

Just for comparison, I kept track of how long it took me to do our US tax return in March. Granted, our US return involves a rental house, a small business and a variety of forms we have to fill out because we live overseas, but I spent more than 12 hours gathering materials, reading instructions and filling out forms. And the truth is, that 12 hour period was probably less than it would take most other people, because, well, I am a highly-trained, IRS-authorized enrolled agent. Plus, I used H&R Block's Tax Cut software so I wouldn't have to make all the calculations by hand.

What makes the Hong Kong return so easy? Well, on Shelly's return (I won't have to file one until next year), I filled out precisely three lines: how much money did you make, how much was the value of the housing provided by your employer, and how much did you give to charity? Inland Revenue will calculate tax liability for us and send us a bill.

The downside to paying taxes in Hong Kong, besides the actual act of paying taxes? Hong Kong doesn't have withholding tax like we do in the US. This means that when we get our 15% tax bill, we'll have to pony up that much cash. Fortunately, we're the type of people who can save money, so it won't be a big deal. Most people I know in Hong Kong put away 16 or 17% from each paycheck, which guarantees they'll have enough to pay their tax bill at the end of the year with a bit leftover for a night out.

Barcode Art

Posted by Shelly


Most offices and many homes in HK have 5 gallon drinking water dispensors. You can order water from many different companies including Coca-Cola. My office recently switched providors and is now drinking water from Coca-Cola. As a signing bonus we received
8 cans of Coke Zero. (In HK there are 4 packs, not 6 packs.) The cans sat next to our mugs for several weeks before I noticed the unique shaped barcode.

People Watching at the Beach

Posted by Shelly

I visited Clear Water Bay recently to enjoy a morning at the beach. It took 3 subways and 2 buses to get to this beach in the New Territories. I had a great time people watching. This is some of what I saw.

This gentleman and his yellow ring are all set for a day at the beach. While inflatable rings are very popular, I was surprised also at how many adults were wearing the inflatable arm bands children use when learning to swim.


It is common to see HK people do warm up stretches/exercises before entering the water. This man has to win the prize for most enthusiastic with his rolling stomach crunches. He was like the Energizer Bunny. He just went on and on and on…


This is another example of someone doing their stretching before entering the water. However the added twist here is that this woman obviously does not want her skin to be exposed to the sun (yes she actually entered the ocean in these pants and long shirt). I wonder why she is at the beach instead of at an indoor pool.


There were some cute bathing suits. I call this one Miss Ballerina Butt.


There were also some not so attractive swimming outfits. I have never seen the t-shirt go under the bathing suit before.


The beach was in a very nice bay. To the left you can see 2 sets of shark nets.


These surround all the public beaches in HK. The sign below shows why they are important.