Typhoon season

A normally busy street empty

Welcome to the Jungle

I f***ing love this city - I think to myself as I'm walking back to my high rise apartment from the city center.  It's wildly hot and I'm drenched in a mixture of humidity, perspiration and rain, but it doesn't dampen my admiration for the jungle that is Hong Kong.

If you thought NYC was the king of concrete, think again.  Hong Kong is a dirty, gritty, raw concrete jungle with a condensed skyline of over 1,250 skyscrapers - almost three times that of New York City.  Even the smallest buildings here are no less than twenty stories high.  Some are shiny and new, but most stand with an ancient layer of peeling paint and sport a thick coat of black pollution.  Sunny days are a rarity, but a welcome occasion, nonetheless, in the months of August through November- thanks to a combination of rain clouds and built up vehicle fumes.  When it does happen that the sun burns through the fog, there immediately emerges an army of freshly laundered t-shirts from every window of every housing unit in effort to have a crisp, natural dry before the next rains hit.  Laundry flag flyings are few and far between in this monsoon friendly city.

 My walk home continues along Queen's Road, which stretches from one end of Victoria Harbor, to the next.  A breeze blows through the dried fish market and I’m assaulted with the stench of dead, dehydrated creatures from sea being sold by the bucket load across Sheung Wan.  Sea cucumbers, squid, shrimps, fish, and other discernible are flattened, colorless and salted, waiting to be taken home to a soup or a medicine.  Weaving in and out of lazy sidewalk traffic, I dodge shirtless, sweaty, hunchbacks pushing rusted green carts packed with flattened cardboard.  Shop owners sit on stools with their shirts up to their chins, revealing a proud belly as they smoke and watch the world unfurl.  White girls in yoga pants hurry off to the next ashtanga class at PURE and heads subtly swivel.  

Although people from all walks and corners of life seem to converge in Hong Kong, they also tend to have one thing in common: they are all actively scratching, clawing and purring their way to the top.  There are little rules to the game of capitalism in HK, an aspect of life in this city that attracts the most millionaires per capita in the world to reside in its quarters.  From Aston Martens, to live in helpers, to designer booty, Hong Kong is a gold digger’s paradise.  Men, if you want to play, trust me, you better be able to pay.

Unfortunately, not everyone gets the pleasure of living in the lap of luxury with personal stylists and home visiting manicurists.  Hong Kong is also home to the highest economic disparities in the world.  It has been recorded that some pay $167 to live in a 16 square foot metal cage in the slums.  Other options cram up to three people into a 50 square foot room.  (That's smaller than my college dorm room.)  Regardless of the salary, everyone works their fingers to the bone here.  Whether it's for appearances or not, office hours are from sun up to sun down.

The final stretch up to my apartment along Eastern street is scattered with century old trees that always send chills up my spine.  Their roots are like snakes seeping onto the road, spewing over the concrete barriers that are trying to hold them back.  The wildlife here is just waiting for its moment to take back the city that once belonged to it.  The literal jungle aspect of Hong Kong is something I highly admire and try to take advantage of as much as possible.  One minute I can be standing in Central, the heart of the city that pulses out life packed with neon sky scrapers and hustlers in suits.  The next, I can find myself on a two dollar ferry and end up on Llama Island, straining to hear anything other than the caw of a wild bird, the croak of a frog or the rush of a nearby stream.  It's all unbridled terrain crawling with wild life.

Have I found the perfect jungle city to match the desires of my adventurous jungle of a life?  Somehow this place is suspended in a perfect balance in a way.  At work I put in long hours, but I enjoy them. I am surrounded by a vicious money hungry culture, but I teach untainted kinder gardeners with a zest for life.  There are plenty of places to eat, and even more to hike.  I've got friends that wear Burberry, and others that have dread locks.  It seems, I guess, I've found a bit of an equilibrium, unlike any other place I have lived extensively.  A girl could find worse places to call home  

To Fathers with Daughters

*For father's day my dad was asked to read a little something for his church in Houston.  In turn, in expert fatherly action, he asked his kids to write it for him, this is what I submitted to him*

If you are a father with a daughter in the crowd, really the only strong piece of advice I can give you is to shower your daughter with not only love, but your undivided attention.  I’m not talking about watching TV together or going to her sports games, or just being in the same room together tolerating each others’ presence.  I am talking about taking the time out of your day to turn off your cell phone, look away from sports center, and ignore everything else in the room but your daughter.  Sit down and talk to her.  Ask her questions about what she thinks, how she feels, and why she feels it.  Then verbalize how unconditionally awesome of a person she is and how nothing she could do will ever change that.

I emphasize doing this because the message that fathers send to their daughters in the early stages of their childhood (and throughout life for that matter) makes a resounding impact on the rest of their lives and who they then chose as mates of their own.  I have had the opportunity to live an incredibly adventurous life spanning a few states, and three continents.  I have observed my share of romances and friendships between the sexes blossom into incredibly beautiful entities to behold.  I have also seen them explode into firery flames that engulf the life that surrounds them.  I still have no idea just what exactly goes on in a male mind – I imagine it’s quite dark and murky - so I can’t really speak for them. There is one thing that I can tell others with certainty about girls:

A girl whose father fails to show her adequate undivided attention, dooms her to spend the rest of her life desperately searching for someone to appreciate her ‘attention deficit’.  Constantly they seem to be jumping through attention grabbing hoops and playing games with incredibly high emotional stakes. From a fly on the wall’s perspective, that looks quite exhausting and incredibly painful.  Fortunately, I stand apart from the crowd of girls who have an attention deficit and stand with those that have attention profit.  It’s much more enjoyable to be in the attention profit crowd, we tend to prefer the company of a beach cruiser and cobble stones to people that don’t think we’re unconditionally awesome.   

Seoul Searching...in Hong Kong

I've done a bit of relocating since my last post, but hilariously other than the scenery not much has changed. Although I do miss my kids and my friends from Seoul, admittedly, Hong Kong is much more my style. Hong Kong presents a girl with a buffet variety of adventures for a girl to get into *wink*

The whole living with nuclear threats from a country being ruled by some pompous dickhead was not really up my alley of comfort.  For the duration of about three weeks I was ridden with anxiety - specifically at night.  I would wake up at any sound outside my window from a starting car to a meowing cat.  My nights consisted of about three hours of sleep, my days, ten hours of screaming kids.  I had a few friends of mine leave based on the advice of an ex CIA agent and was answering to the pleads of my own parents to flee the country.

When I talked to the native Koreans about all of this, they had no response.  I begged for information on what to do if there were to be an attack: on where to take shelter, how to evacuate the school, what to do with children if we were to leave.  My inquiries were met with blank stares.  The native South Koreans were so numbed to the continuous threats from the North that they swept my concerns under the rug.

There were several different threats that were causing me to reconsider my stay in Korea, but ultimately it was a conversation with my father that broke the camels back.

If any of you have a father like mine, you know, are far as communicating goes, dads are usually in the background while mom is asking five million questions that inevitably move one to preemptively end a conversation .  He's calm, cool, collected, nothing really fires him up or moves him to make bold statements.  He didn't say much, but it was enough.

 "Leave Suz.  This is not your war.  It doesn't matter if they don't attack, but if they do, you're 30 miles away and it'll be too late.  I am already losing my dad, I refuse to lose a daughter.  If it's duties you're worried about, I absolve you of them, blame me for any trouble you'll be causing, I don't care, just get out.  Go."    

 He called at 9PM on a Monday night, I was in a taxi to catch a flight to Hong Kong by 6PM the next day.

 I have a friend here in Hong Kong that has been trying to persuade me into moving here basically since he did.  He has already convinced two other friends to make the move so I kind of just jumped on the band wagon.  Since I've been in Hong Kong I feel like there is a world of opportunity here that just isn't available in Korea and doors have already been opening in my favor.  I now have a job, which I start of Wednesday, and I live with a girl whom, unbeknownst to me, I graduated college with.

The story of my adventures in Asia is far from over it's just being displaced to another country.  I'm still searching for that soul...in Hong Kong.

Ballet

Wednesdays are ballet days, and Ballet day is by far my favorite day of the week.  The process of getting there is a bit stressful.  We have to go from snack to tornado like changing into ballet clothes in five to ten minutes.  I pick which group (boys) to stay with and make sure they don't ninja chop each other to death, while the other group (girls) gets to be trusted to go change by themselves in the sand play room.  More often than not, changing consists of me helping one person put on tights, while grabbing scissors away from another, while yanking someone else's shirt off, while tucking someone else into their little tutu/leotard. 

 All the sweat and pain is completely worth seeing how sweet and adorable they can be.

Sumin 

A Valentine's Day Ballad

Today in class I wanted to start a conversation about Valentine's day.  I did what I always do when I want to gauge the knowledge level of a certain subject around the room, I asked each student individually a question.  Today, my first question was, "What do you think Valentine's Day is?"  I got various responses, most of them being something along the lines of "It's when boy/girl gives chocolate to a girl/boy."

My favorite response from that round was from Sumin who said, "Valentine's Day is when Teacher Suzannah and I make chocolate and go to the play ground and run run run (simultaneously moving arms and legs in rapid running motion) and then and then (panting) fall down and and (lays head on desk)." 

 In scientific terms, we're going to get together and gorge ourselves with chocolate until our bodies are so inundated with sugar that we'll have an incredible burst of energy and run until we burn through the sugar. Then, our blood sugar levels will drop dramatically, and we'll crash somewhere on our foreheads in the playground never to be seen again.

I explained that Valentine's Day was the day we all celebrated love for someone special. I asked each student who they were going to celebrate love with.  Most typically responded with "my mom", or "my parents".  The interaction I learned the most from was the following:

Me: "Sophia, who will you celebrate love with tomorrow?"
Sophia: (big grin) "I am going to celebrate with Stephan!"
Me:  "Well that's sweet, Stephan are you going to celebrate love with Sophia as well?"
Stephan: "NO.  I am going to celebrate love with SJ"
Me: "Huh.  SJ, are you celebrating love with Stephan?"
SJ:  "Yes!  We are angry birds together!"

As they continued with their conversation, it dawned on me.....

Bromance has just proven itself to be a universal trans generational phenomenon that has been leaving women across the spans of time and Earth to color sullenly in the corner by themselves.  It's got nothing to do with me and there is nothing I can do to stop it.  I am not alone in this. 

And just like little Sophia today- we have all had our boyfriends look at us and say, "Not today, honey, I'm angry birding with my bro."    

Delectably Not Delectable

I've encountered some pretty strange foods over here so far, but the ones that keep throwing me for a loop and the food items I think are going to be salty, but end up being sweet when I put them on my tongue.  I couldn't really describe the feeling of thinking and expecting that you are going to be tasting salt and really getting sugar.  Like when for lunch one day we had a side dish of sugar sprinkled seaweed.  Everyone knows, seaweed is from the sea, which is salty, thus making so much sense that I perceived the white grains on my seaweed to be salt.  They were sugar and nasty. 

There has been a few instances like that. Like, when we had a "ham and cheese" sandwich for snack.  Upon closer investigation, the ham and cheese impostor was in reality a spam, cheese, mustard and strawberry jelly sandwich. Nasty. 

There was also the time I ordered a ball of Kimbap: tuna in the middle, surrounded by rice, topped with a sprinkling of  dried seaweed and sugar.  That made no sense.  

There is also cinnamon sugar fried chicken, which is actually pretty phenomenal, I'm not angry about that one in the least. Fried chicken is actually a big deal here, there are just tons and tons of fried chicken joints everywhere.  

There is also a great deal of sweet potato usage going on here.  I've had a great deal of sweet potato fries, mashed sweet potatoes instead of mashed potatoes, and the other day for snack we had sweet potato, hard boiled egg, and crab mash.  I don't know the correct term for it, other than: nasty.  

I know I've said it before, but once again, they are pretty sneaky with the fish/squid/octopus.  They really like to just throw in some tentacles in the main meal at lunch or serve this disgustingly fishy anchovy salad.  It's literally just hundreds of dried tiny tiny fish slathered in salt and some other sauce.  Also in category nasty.  

Quail eggs.  They sound like a delicacy, but they're nasty.  They are typically served here marinated in some form of sweet vinegary sauce.  Just a large bowl of tiny boiled quail eggs sitting in a vat of sweet weird vinegar sauce.   

South Korea honestly, just doesn't have much going for it in the culinary arts.  There are only so many ways to eat creatures from the sea.