The other day, Ty’s electric guitar stopped making sound.  His guitar teacher asked if we had a soldering iron.  In my house in the US, I kept a well-stocked garage. My tool collection included a broad array of hand tools, a circular saw, two different electric drills (corded and cordless), several pairs of safety glasses and, yes, soldering equipment. I like fixing things. I did not want to be judged as the kind of person who doesn’t keep a soldering iron around for potential repairs. I now had a mission: find soldering iron, repair electric guitar, restore handy soul.

When we moved to Hong Kong, I figured I wouldn’t need many tools. I was half right.   Building management sends help for blown lightbulbs, clogged drains, dodgy hinges and squeaky floors. But most repairs here are surprisingly makeshift. I’ve heard Hong Kong apartments compared to stage sets.  As long as you treat things very gently, and don’t look too carefully, you have nothing to worry about.

Let me give you a couple of examples of what pass for “repairs” here.  When we had water leak through our windows during the last typhoon, our building (eventually) sent workers to repair the water-damaged paint and plaster. Less than 24 hours after the wall had been repaired and repainted, they sent two more guys with a hammer, a silicone gun, and masking tape.  This is what the wall looked like when they left:

Another repair that left me shaking my head?  My boys play soccer in the squash court in the basement of our building. The soccer goal has suffered some abuse (not my kids, I swear), but it has been “fixed” by the building management. With masking tape.

Masking tape. Perfect in damp environments.

This is not to say there aren’t ingenious fix-its around.  I still marvel at the bamboo scaffolding used throughout Hong Kong (see the end of Gazelles Rock).  We have also seen a supersoaker water gun appropriated with surprising utility as a cleaning tool.  Just yesterday, we encountered this guy loading one with weed killer and then shooting at weeds growing in a rock wall. I particularly appreciated the orange safety vest.

Toy water gun as weed killer delivery tool: entirely inappropriate and totally effective.

So where to find a soldering a gun?  As it happens, mixed in with stationery shops and restaurants is a tiny shop stuffed with adhesive hooks and power strips. Toward the back, there was an entire display of soldering irons.

I love the screwdriver cage “lock” to the right of the display.

I was tempted by the HK$500 blue gun down in the corner, but settled on a an HK$88 model with middle-of-the-road wattage.  A few links of solder were contained in the kit, and I bought an extra packet for good measure.  After all, I may be soldering a lot now that I have the right tools.  Mission accomplished.

At the beginning of the 2013-14 school year, our boys’ school moved out of Hong Kong to the New Territories.  Transportation links exist, but not direct ones. To get to school from our house, I would need to get myself to the MTR (walking, shuttle, or taxi), transfer lines, then take a minibus for another 20-30 minutes. The boys school bus takes about 45 minutes each way.  Even with the challenge of a steering column on the right, and driving on the “wrong” side of the road, a car seemed like a good idea.

With this in mind, awhile back I bought a 2007 Honda Odyssey. I felt this car was a fine choice; it’s able to seat seven and it’s a little banged up so no one would notice new scratches. For locals, this car immediately identifies me as someone too poor (and perhaps too stupid) to get a real car.  It also indicates that Tom is not successful and possibly does not have his priorities straight.  Although a Ferrari, Porsche or BMW might have been a “better” choice, the “best” option for our family would have been a shiny van with window curtains for privacy and heat protection, and a driver to make sure we always have transportation, yet never have to actually drive or park.

The owner of this car has a driver. I know because the building called me down to move my car; the Ferrari was parked about an inch away from my car. Naturally, I insisted the Ferrari be moved first.

Driving in HK is a bit of an adventure.  Steep, impossibly narrow, high-stakes, one-lane two-way roads are common. I’ve had to back down roads after meeting someone coming the other way.  If I happen to be a front-seat passenger, I often close my eyes because the car is traveling nauseatingly close to a rock wall, double decker bus, or aggressive taxi.  We regularly travel a road which is steep enough that an anti-slip coating needs to be re-applied every year. If you have to stop in the rain on the way up this hill, your wheels spin before moving you up and forward again. If you are driving on the relatively wide, flat highways, you better know where you are going because any signage will misdirect you faster than you can say “Wan Chai or Chai Wan?”. I’ve heard many stories of expats regularly losing their way on looping, incomprehensibly labeled roads. I have no sense of direction whatsoever, so the idea of hours lost in the (narrow-streeted) wilds of Hong Kong was daunting. I was comforted by one friend who assured me “it’s an island. you can’t get that lost – unless you end up in Kowloon”.  I have ended up in Kowloon. Thanks to google maps, I have also been (mis)directed onto pedestrian walkways and down hiking paths.  A year on, though, I can find my way to and from the boys school; I know when to slide left when the sign indicates right, the difference between a sign for a tunnel that goes under water versus through a mountain, and I have my own auto toll dashboard reader that lets me speed through tollbooths like a driver in one of those aforementioned shiny vans.

The parallel parking skills I perfected living in downtown Boston do not help me here.  There is almost no street parking, and the garages are usually vertical affairs with tightly wound ramps. One apartment we looked came with a parking space that was above another car – you were required to use some sort of elevator system.  Even the parking space in our own building is quite small – and the short journey to park involves a harrowing turn with centimeters of leeway on either side, and then snuggling up to a cement wall so closely that your side mirror is best turned in.

On the way out, you must be careful not to back in to the black Ferrari, not to ding the yellow Ferrari mere inches to your right, and not to clip the never-moving white Maserati at the top of the ramp.

So far so good. No luxury vehicles have been harmed.

After living in Hong Kong, I know what Tide tastes like.  There are a couple of stores in Hong Kong which import US products from warehouse stores.  They specialize in bulk items from Cosco or BJs – Frosted Miniwheats in a two-box value pack, 72 oz sacks of Chocolate Chips, gargantuan bottles of BBQ sauce and maple syrup, that 5 pack of deodorant you feel compelled to buy but will never use up – that type of stuff. These shops are great for a taste of home, until you realize that many of the items will not fit in your HK size fridge. Once opened, crackers, cereal, or cashews in giant containers will become instantly stale in the high humidity.  Charmin is a nice lift from home, until those giant rolls get slightly damp from the high humidity (most rolls for sale in HK are individually wrapped in plastic, for good reason).

Anyway, both of these shops have proved a great place for us to buy Swiss Miss, Cheezits, the aforementioned chocolate chips, and soap that smells like home (Irish Spring, Cascade, Tide). After a recent shopping trip, Tommy and I each purchased a bottled water (not labeled for individual sale, but sold that way anyway).  As we were walking home and drinking the water, Tommy noted that it tasted like something familiar, but couldn’t quite discern what. That’s because he was tasting Tide.  When you ship scented Tide, Gain or Bounce in a container along with other items like cereal and bottled water, the fresh scent permeates everything. The stores don’t really acknowledge this; one used to have signs near the cereal warning that Americans like their cereal to taste a bit like soap. If you are one of those blessed with a sensitive palate, they advise, think twice about buying, since goods are not returnable. Even when your Cheerios practically suds up.

While most of our friends and relatives in the US have been gripped in a winter so epic it will go down in history, you should be aware that Hong Kong has been suffering through a similar cold snap.  At least you would think so, given the complaints and cold weather warnings here.

Cold ahead! Good thing it will only be “rather cool” on Saturday morning.

It has been “cold” in Hong Kong, when you understand that HK is subtropical and unused to anything even approaching freezing.  Cold Weather Warnings abounded last week and this week.  With night time temps hovering around 9 degrees Celsius (for all my fellow Americans – double and add 30 to convert to Fahrenheit), it feels pretty chilly for a city used to complaining about punishing heat. It does not feel chilly enough, mind you, for my kids to switch to long sleeves or ditch their shorts in favor of pants.

However, many others here embrace the “cold” as an opportunity to wear winter fashions best suited to those in the middle of a polar vortex.  Boots, furs, puffy down jackets, mittens, trapper hats – I’ve seen more winter sartorial statements here than I have in Truckee. If you don’t know Truckee, it’s a town famous for its proximity to Donner pass, where the Donner Party resorted to cannibalism after getting trapped in the snow.

Better still are the Cold Weather Warnings, issued by the Hong Kong Observatory and earnestly reminding residents to protect themselves from the elements.

50 degrees above or 50 degrees below – it’s all relative.

I know it’s been a lousy winter for you all, but consider us here in HK.  Do you know how cold 46 degrees can feel?  Oh wait, you probably do.  Just remember, if you must go out “please avoid prolonged exposure to wintry winds”. Because for most of you this winter, that’s actually good advice.

Most leases in Hong Kong run for 2 years. When we moved here, we were aware that the boys’ school was moving from the city to the New Territories – off Hong Kong Island and over to the mainland, past Kowloon.  We fully expected we would enjoy a year in the city and then move ourselves out to Clearwater Bay or Sai Kung.  It didn’t happen. We like being in the city too much. We arrived at the last month of our lease and dove back into the HK rental market.

If you are an expat living in Hong Kong, you know there is nothing quite so demoralizing as looking at 1500 square foot apartments that cost upwards of US$10,000 a month and are most accurately described as decrepit, rundown, moldy, or filthy.  If you are not an expat living in Hong Kong, I am sure you can’t imagine how on earth something that costs so much could be so bad. The Hong Kong property market is like an industrial-strength bubble. Even when it is “soft” there is no budging many landlords on price. They are much more willing to let an apartment sit empty than negotiate a lower price on a lease. Less money would be losing face.

When searching for apartments, I encountered dead cockroaches, mold-spattered kitchens and closets, warped parquet floors, peeling laminate, naked wiring, creative plumbing, and in one memorable apartment, elaborate swooping maple and frosted glass built-ins that seemed to have dropped in the middle of the floor. We finally asked if we could renovate that kitchen ourselves in one apartment – to be met with the sage advice that it couldn’t be changed because it was “too old”.

After fruitlessly negotiating on two “finalists”, we decided to stay put. Although we did feel lucky – our building had been renovating and ousting residents by raising the rent to ridiculous levels (even for Hong Kong), we were lucky enough to get a flat extension of our lease. We fell back on the real estate adage “location, location, location”. From our current apartment, the commute is a dream for Tommy, the boys don’t mind the relatively direct 50 minute bus ride to school, and we all like being able to walk into the city.  So, we are staying put.

Sometimes, this is the view. But at other times, it’s pretty spectacular!

And when the fog lifts, you get this – just a few hours later.

One of the things I noticed while living in London way back when the boys were little was the vastly increased amount of walking I did everyday. We did not own a car, and we lived in the city where it was easy to walk everywhere. I walked to pick up the boys from school, and we all walked home. I walked to the park and to the grocery store. I walked to go shopping. I ran sometimes, and went to the gym occasionally, but really my main exercise was my everyday commute. In Hong Kong, we do own a car. I drive occasionally but usually I walk, take our building’s shuttle (which stops in two central locations) or take a cab. The boys take a bus to and from school, so the school commute is off my walking schedule. When I do drive (about once a week so the car doesn’t die) parking is so hard to find that I usually end up walking at least part of the way to my destination anyway. I spend some time in the gym, particularly because exercising outside means breathing in air that exceeds the WHO’s maximum limit for pollution, or the heat and humidity impose languor.

In the summers we go home to two beautiful areas that are hubs of physical activity. Scituate is filled with triathletes, runners, cyclists, boot campers and weekend warriors, and Truckee is known for its bevy of outdoor activities. But here’s the thing. In both Truckee and Scituate, in spite of all the opportunities exercise in beautiful green surroundings and fresh air, I move less.

I originally imported a Fitbit to Hong Kong to see if all that walking was adding up to more activity. Did the pollution and heat mean I was spending less time physically active? Or was the daily walking adding up? In the US, did all the working out, the ellipse and treadmill in the house, the fresh air, really add up to less activity? I paid up for the Fitbit One because it uses some sort of voodoo to track stairs, and if I was going to be walking uphill, I sure as hell wanted credit for it. A few months married to my Fitbit proves it. In HK, I regularly average about 10,000 steps a day and regularly exceed uphill steps equal to 25 flights of stairs. Here in the US where the air is fresh? Half that. And the stairs? Not even half. Yikes.

The other day, I went out for lightbulbs and batteries and came home with a pair of bright green pants, an iPad mini, a game involving cat figurines and chopsticks, a hair styling iron which I may or may not ever use, and some pop-up Christmas cards. Festive is the right word for the Christmas shopping season in Hong Kong, and the positive energy in the crowded malls clearly affected my will power.  I’ll admit to loving all the crazy decorations; I think I would be disappointed if there wasn’t something over the top about Christmas in Hong Kong. The mall displays here definitely qualify. Consider the miniature ski mountain complete with lodge and working gondola.  Or perhaps you would prefer the off-kilter red and white explosion at Harbour City.

Even I was moved to snap a few pics of the boys with the mall displays. In a truly Hong Kong moment, a couple of mainland tourists took a break from photographing themselves to also take pictures of the boys, too.

Closer to home, we knew the Christmas season had started when a small brick house appeared in the foyer of our apartment building, complete with a mini fence and a sign stating “work in progress, do not touch”. Soon the house was joined by an elf and skinny snowman. Then came some faux evergreen reindeer with red noses. Then oversize gifts, followed by a real Christmas tree, electric blue lights and a poinsettia or two.

Hmm, what else can we add?

Even after the display became an almost comical overstuffed mishmash of Christmas themes, the decorations kept on coming. This impulse for festive addition stretches beyond just our building. Why have a simple poinsettia when a few mardi gras beads and some purple Christmas balls wired to reeds would be so much more festive?

In general, I find the Christmas decorations that have popped up all over the city a bit foreign in subtle (and not-so- subtle ways).  One skyscraper sports an elaborate light display of Santa being carried away by a multi-colored bunch of balloons. Cute, but weird once you think about it.  Salvador Dali-esque clocks, rabbits, and white elk feature in another display, while ballerinas perched in wreaths prompted Luke to comment “that would be really scary, sitting up there”.  Still, the enthusiasm and spirit surrounding the season is nice to be around.  Who couldn’t use a little more color, a little brighter light, a little more joy?

No matter how kooky the finery, it is fun to see the city all dressed up.  Which decorations are your favorite?

It was just about a year ago that Tommy and I were on our “look see” trip to check out schools and find a place to live. Our last Thanksgiving in Hong Kong was a blur of jetlag and apartment hunting. This year, November 22 was a regular day for school and work, so we celebrated last Saturday.  We shared the holiday with two other American families at our apartment.

In true family fashion, everyone brought something. After determining it impossible to cook a big enough turkey in any of our tiny, finicky ovens, we agreed to buy precooked birds from ThreeSixty, the local organic supermarket. We opted for two unstuffed 9-pound turkeys, thinking they would be more likely to fit in the oven. The cost was just under HK$500 – or about $60 each, and they each came with a free jar of Heinz Turkey Gravy. The two birds warmed up nicely in the oven – and stayed moist and delicious. In fact, those precooked, rewarmed birds turned out to be better than any turkey I have ever roasted on my own. There were no Pillsbury crescent rolls to be found, but “Japanese style soft bun” served us well. The lack of refrigerator rolls was balanced by the abundance of Cool Whip¹and a bewildering selection of cranberry sauces. All the other trimmings were homemade – mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, and apple, pumpkin and pecan pies.*

Pumpkin, Pumpkin, Do-over

While the meal itself was a success, preparing to have guests over for Thanksgiving dinner turned out to be a lesson in what I had left behind.  The pie plate with the cherries? Not with me. The backup pyrex pie plates? Left behind. Extra silverware? No. The three tablecloths that together disguised a makeshift banquet table? Forgotten. Carving knife or carving board? Nope. Enough glasses to offer drinks? um, no. Still, I was able to source most of what we needed. It would have been better if I had remembered the carving knife before the two turkeys came out of the oven, but the 5-inch knife did the job. My hunt for a tablecloth led me to the shopping alleys in Central called the Lanes.  Haggling earned me a length of fabric speckled with mold – and earned the shopkeeper a return visit from an irate redhead. I ended up with an apology and 4 yards of mold-free fabric lightweight enough to wash in our tiny washing machine. Sadly, I could not locate any Thanksgiving decorations, which led me to overpay for a pie plate decorated with harvest tone stripes.  Extra forks were for sale at CitySuper, a grocery store catering to expats. Because I am an expat, and was shopping in an expat grocery store, I also overpaid for those.  This fact was hammered home by a trip to Shanghai Street a few days after Thanksgiving, where the same forks were available for one tenth the price. I found them alongside glassware, carving knives, cutting boards, pie plates and some decorative peacock toothpicks that could have passed as turkeys.

Check out Luke’s handmade decorations – way better than peacocks!

All in all, it was a great holiday, even without the break. Happy Thanksgiving! What are you thankful for?

¹ Did you know Miracle Whip is also easy to find? Now you can visit Hong Kong, safe in the knowledge that two of America’s greatest Whips are readily available. 

^* Corn syrup is not easy to find here.  I did turn up a very expensive bottle of organic vanilla-infused corn syrup in the exact amount necessary for my Pecan Pie recipe. Unfortunately, the vanilla infusion did nothing to hide the smell of the rotten egg I cracked into the nearly finished filling. Fortunately, Tommy found some Korean corn syrup that did a Karo-tastic job in my do-over pie.

We are getting close to selling our house in Scituate. This is the house the kids grew up in – Ty was a baby when we moved in. It has been on the market since we left, but given the lousy market, I never really expected it to sell. We left behind all sorts of furniture, dishes and house things that didn’t make sense to bring here to Hong Kong. All of it now needs to be sold or removed before the closing date. An estate sale is in the works. For anyone living near Scituate: here’s your chance for some nice things for super cheap!  These weren’t things I left behind because I didn’t like them. There’s wonderful porch furniture, perfect for lounging and smelling the lavender I planted when we first moved in. Maybe you’ll also find that perfect location where you can see the kids playing but are far enough away to enjoy a good book. There’s an indestructible bench that could be hosed down after accommodating a good portion of cousins for a summer ice cream feast, and don’t forget the colorful plastic “tiki” seats that let us pack the rest of the cousins around the table. There are the halloween decorations I collected with my boys, for my boys (for me?). The framed Tiffany poster I bought to decorate my first office, but didn’t make the cut for Hong Kong. I feel that picture is never going to get the respect it deserves; it survived 4 jobs and 5 moves. Now that it’s soon to be gone, I’m not sure why I didn’t bring it with me. The list goes on: Jed’s, then Ty’s, then Luke’s bike, our swingset, built by my Dad and Tommy, the random assortment of tools I loved having on hand and have missed here, the blue settee perfectly sized for reading to three little boys. The toys I can’t even bear to write about.

I am thankful for this blog, because rereading my previous entry about the burden of stuff takes me right back to when I felt so overwhelmed by all the things we brought with us. Even so, it turns out it’s easier than I imagined to romanticize the leftovers back in Scituate. I could delay the sale and come home to give all my stuff a proper goodbye, but the one thing that is irreplaceable is time. Is it really necessary to spend it grieving over inanimate objects?  I am trying to shift my focus to imagine all the things being used by others, hopefully helping create a little bit of happiness, delight (i’m thinking of those toys!) comfort, or utility. Please, go to the estate sale and get some of my good stuff and give it a happy home. Respect the Tiffany poster.

All in all, I think I am supposed to be excited and relieved that we actually found a buyer in this market, but it’s more complicated than that.  Selling the house really makes this “assignment” more of an all-out move. That’s not to say I don’t like it here.  I do. Just this weekend we spent an entire day with friends at Shek O, a beachy town on the quiet side of Hong Kong island, turquoise waves rolling, boys boogie boarding, a nice breeze. Lunch was at an outdoor Chinese Thai restaurant, and everyone found something they liked to eat.  The very next evening, we had other friends over to watch the skyline sparkle with fireworks celebrating Chinese National Day.  Hong Kong is such a bundle of contradictions, it hasn’t gotten old yet. I love our city apartment and it doesn’t even feel remotely cramped. Still, I am a little sad to let my suburban life go. I really did love living in that house, building it into what worked perfectly for our family, furnishing it with things I loved. I know I have the most important part of it all with me – the sense of home, the memories, my family. None of which I’m required to dust. It’s all good.

The world seems a smaller place these days for sure – more modes of travel exist, and they are faster than ever. The internet allows global understanding on an unprecedented level, and the US is viewed by many (for better or worse) as one of the leading countries in the world. But after traveling outside of the US, we arrived back in the US at JFK with a thud. JFK is one of the dirtiest airports I’ve ever encountered. Its international arrivals area sported confusing, irrelevant or contrary signage, and was staffed by rude, unhelpful employees who acted as if we were intruding on their spare time.  It does not surprise me that about a week ago, a wayward jet skier wearing a bright yellow life jacket, was able to swim up to the airport, climb a fence, wander over a couple of runways, and walk into a terminal before any airport staff noticed.

O’Hare rivaled JFK in the lack of efficiency (and logic) in dealing with foot traffic and departing passengers. It seemed that most of the TSA personnel were devoting their time to yelling (in English) at a huge, confused crowd of international travelers.  We were directed to line up in lines that contradicted all written signage and worse, seemed to serve no purpose. It was clear from the practiced shouting that this chaos was managed by hollering with inexcusable frequency. How about some relevant signs? Better yet, how about some relevant signs in English and another language or two since it’s supposed to be an international terminal? There are Disney Parks all over the world run with startling efficiency, and those well-developed crowd management techniques couldn’t be applied in places like international arrivals terminals? It’s embarrassing – Goofy could do a better job running JFK and O’Hare.  And I bet Goofy would be a lot less frustrating to deal with than most of the staff, too.

In the interest of giving credit where credit is due, we were delighted by the amenities and space afforded by the new international terminal when we travelled through SFO. Terminal 2 had plenty of space, and concessions included a wide variety of healthy food options, a yoga room and a water bottle filling station. Nice!

The Hong Kong Airport is massive and can be overwhelming when you first encounter the huge hangar like space. It’s the third busiest international airport in the world (and just had a record number of travelers this past July) but manages to handle the volume of traffic with grace. Signs are clear (even to foreigners!) so travelers can quickly find their way, coming or going. Staff is helpful and service-oriented. Security is swift but thorough – largely because of the number of checkpoints and appropriate number of people to deal with the number of travelers. Lines moved swiftly and did not overwhelm the systems and spaces designed to keep them orderly. Baggage claim was relatively simple, and the public transport available is quick, easy and clean.

So I am curious to hear your airport reports.  What makes you a happy traveller?