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                Life sure is nice these days.  Things are just fine.  The day to day has been keeping me fairly busy which is why it has been a little while since I wrote to you guys, sorry.  I live in Hong Kong now, and in the first week I found myself with a new job, a new city, a new language, homeless and looking for a new pad, and a new empty page pregnant with adventures to come. 

               

                The first week of work seems like a hundred years ago now, maybe it was I lose track.  A whole group of us started at the same time.  First day nervous awkward conversation grew into a real comradery  in that first two weeks.  We were all put up in a hotel on the British Council’s dime.  It was a pretty nice place too.  It was in Wan Chai, which is a great sleazy seedy red light and western pub district.  At night the streets are lined with ex pats bouncing from bar to bar, Monks asking for donations in their saffron robes, and hookers calling to everyone that walks by from dark door-ways.  As I came to know the other newbies we started exploring the area by night, it seems like every single imaginable sort of food is packed into Wan Chai and all of them become jumping night spots.  I found a great restaurant there called the American house of Peking food.  There isn’t a single American thing in that place, but anything on the menu is the best Chinese food you can imagine.  The waiters are all old men in white button down short sleeve shirts and black ties.  I think they and the place have been there since the 60s.  And on the cheap there are little duck kitchens all over the place where you get a pile of duck and noodles for dead cheap. 

                An interesting thing in Hong Kong, they sit people at seats as they come in.  So if you are one person they put you sitting at a table with strangers.  I take the opportunity to have a nice meal with new people who are treated to the gift of my wonderful company, I am so good.  I had a great time with an Indian man over gyros.  He was out there hawking phones on the street and was able to get his family to come out from India.  We talked for a long time and when the meal was over I was sorry it had to end.  A lot of times though you get sat with people chatting away in a language you don’t know.  That’s why you study the local tongue, always.  Even if you suck at languages like me I find if you make an effort and are ok with people laughing at you everyone really seems to appreciate it.

                I quickly found that I was in the company of some really great folks with the rest of the new folks.  It almost feels like cheating, usually when you are in a new place you feel alone and eager to make friends and feel overwhelmed sorting things out by yourself.  Here we all became great friends on the first day and have a sort of gang.  We have taken over one corner in the teacher’s room and I really get the impression somehow that we have brought a new energy into the place.  Everyone has been super cool about including us in things and everyone has proven themselves to be super cool in general, it’s a good place.

                The British Council in Hong Kong is a seven story high rise that is all school.  The entire top two floors are just for staff, and we are 120 teachers strong.  Of those 120 three are Americans, and one of the other two has had to go home for personal reasons.  I see the other one every once in a while. I don't feel out of place, but sometimes it is a bit strange to be the only one.

                That’s the other thing, all weekend I do kids classes, and I do a lot.  Most of the kids classes are so wonderful, I am so funny, the kids are laughing and running around and having a great time.  I have two classes full of kids that are not as much fun.  One is full of zombie children forced to go to school on Saturdays, a great injustice of the universe.  Another is just all bonkers boys who just will not let me think, god bless them they make me want to jump out the window.  But that’s my job and I love it.  The rest of my week is a bit lighter and mainly teens and adults.  The students here are really cool and I have already learned so much about Hong Kong culture just by talking with them. 

One night Me and Rain (my wonderful Filipino Macao cocktail waitress) found an amazing Indonesian Filipino and Malaysian joint called Cinta J’s.  She took one look at the menu and freaked out, we ordered so much Filipino stuff, including a massive bowl of beef soup that is called something like Bulibula I think.  Whatever it was called it was good stuff, and a bulibula by any other name.

                So there was a stage in the corner and on the stage was a woman wearing a 1980s workout liatard with leggings and a sweat band.  She had a very out flaming gay dude on the keys who in an effortless falsetto was hitting notes octaves above where could go.   They did mostly Celine Dian stuff and Lionelle Richie and Top gun sound track kind of vibe. 

                After a while an older lady came to the stage, the regulars at Cinta J’s seemed to know her based on their applause.  She took the mic and instead of singing she went into a long and stern lecture about how what happened there last night could not happen again and such behavior would not be tolerated and those people should be ashamed.  It was not clear if the people she was talking about were even in the room or what they had done, but this lady was not cool with whatever it was.  Then once she had said her peace she left the stage and the band went into ‘I don’t know much, but I know I love you’ as performed by Aaron Nevile and Linda Ronstadt and nailed it.

                A few weeks later I convinced the other guys that they had to come and check this place out, it was a Monday.  That night there was a full band; guitar, drums, bass, trumpet and one dude had a key-tar.  They were great, the lead singer was a short bald middle aged guy who was clearly drunk off his tree.  The people in the audience didn’t seem to mind and started coming up and singing on the mics karaoke style.  An old Chinese man got up and did an amazing version of I couldn’t dance with another by the Beatles, an old woman and did duets with the drunk band leader.

                After a while the band leader took things done a notch.  Very mournfully, he started explaining “I used to sing here on Saturday night, Friday night sometimes.  Sunday night sometimes.  Those were such good crowds.  Then the boss he said I have to sing on a Monday, and I think that it won’t be so good, I think the crowd won’t be as good.”

So here we were expecting the turn around, here we were all expecting him to tell us how wrong he was and how great we were as a crowd. 

“And so I said ok, I will sing on Mondays.  And the crowd is so bad.  You are not a good crowd.  I hate it.  I wish I was singing on Saturday again.”

And everyone cheered, and they went into another song.  As I left for the ferry he was singing you are so beautiful to me and he was really selling it.  Now everyone in the gang says they want to go back and see that guy on a Monday to try to cheer him up.

I got a place out on Lamma island which is 20 minutes away from Hong Kong island by ferry.  It takes me about an hour to get to work, but I feel it’s well worth living on a beautiful island.  There are two beaches, both amazing if you can ignore their proximity to the massive power plant that looms over the scene.  I have hiked to the other side, which is a lovely walk through the island jungle.  I went on a side trail and was deep in the forest.  When the trees cleared I could see across the small piece of ocean to the back side of Hong Kong island with all it’s sky scrapers.  At night the crickets chirp here, there are 18 different kinds of snakes and I have already had to deal with foot long centipedes.  Apparently I had the good kind because it was black, the red ones are deadly poisonous. 

                Twice a day I go sit in the back of the ferry and let the sea toss me around.  The back is open and outside, so beautiful.  Sometimes in the mornings I use the time to practice my Cantonese, sometimes I let my mind wander.  Sometimes after a long day I let myself drift into a nice sleep, rocked like a baby in the arms of the sea and when I wake up I am in paradise again, I am home. 

                Three weeks ago there was a typhoon, and the news was selling papers by calling it, get ready because I want you to think about this one, the worst storm in the history of this year.  Not the worst storm this year, mind you, not dramatic enough.  It was a Sunday and I was teaching teenagers.  I had already told them, if this thing hits I am gonna get the hell outta here.  Gonna get the hell outta here is the sort of English they need to learn I guess so that’s what I told them.  School is not canceled until they call T8 which means it is a level 8 storm.   A student told me he had gone on his phone and saw that they were just about to call it.  Ten minutes later the senior teachers came into my room and told me to go, they try to evacuate the island people first.  We all scrambled running out the door for a cab to the ferry.  On the way the cab driver told us no more ferrys tonight, which meant that we would be stuck in a hotel room until the storm blows over.  When we got to the ferry we found out that there was one more boat and we were so happy.

                I might never forget the ride home that night.  It was bright day when we started and dark as pitch 20 minutes later.  When we got into the open sea the entire boat started to do the watoosie.  It came and went and came again.  White knuckles where hanging on, the brain going places I didn’t want it to, I opened my third can of beer.

                We came into the dock and they tried to tie us in, but it was like trying to lasso a steer.  The boat lands next to a long pier lengthwise, a rope is tied at the bow and the stern.  Once they tied it down that night was when it got really bad.  It reminded me of an animal fighting captivity, the boat started to rock faster and faster.  A lady I work with who has lived on Lamma for 25 years started to make a dash for the stairs but was caught hanging on with both hands to the railing when the boat started to lurch.  It got worse and worse, we must have been riding that thing for 10 minutes.  A man who worked on the dock came into the control room near where we were sitting and, although I have no idea, based on my interpretation of body gestures and listening to the sounds figured he was begging the driver to take the whole tub back to Hong Kong Island, this wasn’t even close to safe.  And again, without understanding a word I could tell the driver screamed something to the tune of NO DICE back at the guy and went back to the wheel. 

          The boat was basically rocking on it's axis violently.  When the boat rocked one way the window on the second floor of the ferry was getting closer and closer to looking higher and higher.  We were not gonna flip, not really even close, but the angle was progressing in that direction, and the other way it was getting closer and closer to Underwater. And the motion started to make me sick, and I wondered how I was gonna get home.  The boat let up for a minute and I ran for the stair way down but it started again.  I just plopped my ass down on the stair and hung on to the railing.  I could see the gang plank that we was to take us to safety raising into the air and slamming on the ground.  Finally the rocking started to slow and someone hollered to go for it, so in a mad pack of panic I ran with the rest.  When I hit solid ground I tuned and saw the ones that were still on the boat, many friends.  They were standing trying to keep balance as the boat started lurching again.  I stood by the plank with the dock workers, when people ran off I grabbed them and moved them along, making sure they didn’t fall. 

                Finally the last of us were off, I saw a couple coming to get on trying to get to Hong Kong island.  One man who worked for the ferry company stood in the door way with a face that knew he had another ride across the T8 with the ferry coming.  The two people got on and off the boat went.

                The wind was blasting the island, siding was loose on buildings and smacking, the rain had better pressure than my shower.  I ran up and down the main drag of the town looking for tape to tape xs on my windows, I saw my neighbors doing the same and thought they may be onto something.  But the stores were all closing, even though the bars were full of yahoos and yo yos that were gonna ride this thing out.  Me I went home and crawled into bed.  My bedroom is small and has no windows. I could hear the howling wind outside, and I poured myself a nice glass of red and settled into a book.  At midnight I got up and went out on my terrace, the water in the ocean was furious, the trees were quaking.  It was powerful and in the truest sense of the word awesome.  The next day I missed my morning class but taught at night. Typhoons come and go in Hong Kong.

                What else, what else. 

                Luke is a dude from New Zealand.  He and his Thai wife Namu and I have been exploring.  We try to find places to wander around and we go whenever we can.  On Thursdays we have been going to museums lately.  We did the space museum, which was cool but a bit aimed at little kids, and the history museum.  I had been to the Hong Kong history museum the first time I came here, and it is worth a visit I would say.  Two weeks in a row we went to the Science museum, each time on a Thursday, each time realizing when we get there that it is closed on Thursdays. 

                A Scottish dude and I went to the Bruce Lee museum, well that is to say we wandered around aimlessly and had adventures on our way to the Bruce Lee Museum.  We were trying to speak what little Cantonese we know to people, and usually the people would look at us like were we’re crazy and just answer in perfect English.  The Bruce Lee museum is inspiring, it has hand drawn and hand written notes Mr. Lee made on the subject of jet kung do.  I was a few feet away from the yellow jumpsuit worn in game of death.

                Today we have the day off work for the Chinese day of the dead festival where they commune with their ancestors.  I have invited people around for a barbeque at my place, they will be showing up in a couple of hours.  I got a ton of beef and lamb, the fish here is a bit on the pricey side.  I got me a new grill that I gotta put together, and everyone gets all bothered if I call it a grill.  It’s a barbeque in England.  Now I know how Georganna’s husband Andy felt when I gave him a hard time for asking if something was on offer at a store.  Happens to me all the time, all the time. 

                But I got the place nice and clean, no it wasn’t too hard I keep things pretty tidy here.  It is drizzling a little, I hope it don’t rain, but otherwise I got no worries.

So things are good here.  Life is nice here and things are fine.