Typhoon Fengshang (Frank)

Fengshan has touched down in Hong Kong as a Signal 8 typhoon. It's pouring outside with heavy winds. Schools and government buildings are closed and everyone is couped up in their apartments waiting it out. This is the same storm that caused the terrible ferry disaster in the Philippines, thankfully it has weakened quite a bit since then. I am actually a little underwhelmed by the ferocity of the storm, I really thought a Typhoon 8 would have sharper teeth. I've seen far nastier weather in HK over the past couple weeks. My colleague who's from London said, "I've played golf in worse weather."

Baby Shower

This past weekend Ingrid and Mommy hosted our first event in Hong Kong. We had a baby shower for our friend Tess and it turned out great. Baby Showers are not common in Asia but fortunately for us it is a very easy concept to grasp. We played the typical shower games...Baby Price-Is-Right (HK$ of course), the how big is her belly yarn game, etc. Ingrid as usual was a hit with her big blue eyes, fair skin and hair, not to mention the motor boat noises she wont stop making with her lips. All an all it was a fun afternoon of eating and meeting new friends. Now all we have to do is wait for Ingrid's newest friend to arrive in late July...

Lizzie and Ingrid Make the Papers!

Lizzie and Ingrid are climbing the ladder to Hong Kong celebrity-dom! Until this point their fame has only been on the city's sidewalks but now they've made it into the local press. Their visit to the photo exhibition yesterday resulted in a photo shoot and an interview and this morning they graced the pages of the Takungpao Daily newspaper.

Wikipedia describes the newspaper as the 'mouthpiece of China's communist party' and being funded wholly by the PRC. I Babelfish'd the Chinese text and it speaks of Elizabeth "closely hugging 9-month old daughter Ingrid" and frequently being "brought to tears." Lizzie's quotes are full of praise for the central government's handling of the disaster and she closes with "China's leaders fully demonstrated genuine spirit of leadership." Well spoken, brownie points for us with the local authorities! Internet Police: If you're reading this, you can send the complimentary Beijing Olympic tickets directly to my office address. The Internet story can be found at http://www.takungpao.com/inc/photo/photo_cont.asp?nid=922105&cid=1176&c=&id=319018

Excerpt from the article: 從三藩市來港定居的Elizabeth 昨日帶著九個月大的女兒Ingrid參觀抗震救災圖片展，在一群父母在學校的廢墟上捧著孩子的遺像的巨幅照片前，Elizabeth久久駐足。她緊緊抱著女兒，目不轉睛地注視著照片，眼中滿含悲傷的淚水。「身為父母，經歷這樣的事情實在是太不幸了。」Elizabeth覺得圖片展上每一幅圖片都會說話，讓她感同身受，數度落淚。當看到災後中國最高領導人紛紛趕赴災區的圖片時，Elizabeth說：「中國的領導人充分展示了真正的領袖精神，讓災民充分感受到了來自政府的支持，非常難能可貴。」

Kung Pao!

On a lighter note...this story almost slipped through the cracks today and it would have been a shame because huge props are due to Beijing. China's central government has had to handle multiple heavy issues in the past 6 months, so this one must have come as a relief. In preparation for the Olympics, the government has distributed a translated menu to local Beijing restaurants that properly labels several staples of Western "Chinese" cuisine. So as the throngs of foreigners descend upon the Beijing Olympics they will have their Kung Pao Chicken! The government is still working on translations for such local favorites as "Husband and Wife's Lung Slice," "Chicken Without Sexual Life" and "Sauteed Happy Family." Give the people what they want!
Article: http://uk.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUKPEK12085720080619

"Together We Will Rebuild"

"Together we will rebuild China" read the admission sticker for the photo exhibit Ingrid and I viewed today. The show was sponsored by a local Chinese newspaper that has dedicated heavy coverage to the earthquake and its horrible aftermath in Sichuan province. I have to say...it was marvelous. The topic and the mood is obviously completely heartwrenching, but the image captures and the level of photojournalism was mind blowing. The images spoke for themselves, which in my case was a good thing because the whole expo was captioned and presented in Chinese characters so I couldn't read a thing anyway. Neither could Ingrid.

An English speaking docent who is from Sichuan shared with me that many of the people in these areas never even knew what an earthquake was prior to the tragedy. Now they are trying to relearn life without, in many cases, a loved one. I was literally breathless as I carried Ingrid by the images of the parents weeping and wailing as they came to realize their dear child was missing, their sadness made heavier by China's 'One Child' policy that left many with their only offspring lost in the rubble. So intensely sad. A Chinese soldier was scheduled to give a presentation on his rescue experiences as I was leaving and I was so sorry not to speak/understand Mandarin to catch his speech.

One picture totally took me off my emotional guard. It was an photo of thirty or so adults lined up in three rows one in front of the other each holding an 8 x 10 framed photo of their child, all of who had perished in the quake. There they stood holding a picture of their lost child, there I stood holding my little daughter Ingrid. Such a sad fate to lose your child...there isn't much a parent wouldn't do to protect their baby but these poor strangers never had that chance. So sad.

My China

Another book signing! This afternoon Ingrid and I joined local food enthusiasts at the cookbook signing by Kylie Kwong, an Australian born chef of Chinese descent who has become a local celeb thru her books and television travel cooking gigs. She gave a brief but interesting presentation where she spoke of the Kwong family tree -- it being the largest Chinese immigrant family in Australia and herself being the second daughter, of the fourth son, of the fifth child, of the fourth wife of Kwong Sue Duk (her Great Grandfather) or something like that. I was trying to keep the genealogy straight but Ingrid was practicing her vocals so I had to keep the Ing quiet.

We purchased her most recent cookbook, My China, which is a collection of recipes, photos and stories about a trip she recently took to track down the ancestral Kwong village in Guangdong Province. It is a great book and inspires me to cook, and as I leaf thru it it's clear that I am becoming more accustomed to my surrounding hemisphere. The photos of jam-packed, open-air wet markets don't turn me off, I instead find them strangely charming. Charming in a 'I can't believe they are eating that' kind of way.

Happy Father's Day

Happiest of days to all the fathers out there.

Cake Shopping

Yesterday Ingrid and I hit the streets/malls of Hong Kong's Central District to see what we could find for Daddy's Day. This is a town of luxury goods, every brand is represented from Prada to Bvlgari to high end European labels that I never knew existed until I moved to Hong Kong. If you want it, you got here. Let's add, if you want to pay about 1.5 times the U.S. price then you got it. But Ingrid told me that she wanted to get Dad something a little more personal than the Grand Prix de Monaco Historique watch he has been eyeing. After all she resisted getting Mommy the 101.5 carat diamond we saw last weekend at the Four Seasons' exhibit of the Sotheby's Diamond Collection. Hong Kong truly is a town for the wealthy shoppers of the world.


To help make my point yesterday I discovered one more way to spend some serious money and it was on birthday cakes. At the Mandarin Oriental's Cake Shop desserts come in all shapes and sizes, cakes in the shape of fancy handbags and cakes made to look like Carmen Maranda's signature headwear. It was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory meets Park Avenue. The Chihuahua cake was my favorite...I pictured the dog loving birthday boy or girl getting the first piece which would of course be the chihuahua's head, what an honor. Yet another upside to living amongst the uber wealthy shopping set is that though I couldn't/wouldn't buy a lot of these high fashion items I get to see some very creative ways to spend.

Rain of Biblical Proportions

It has been raining pitchforks over the last week in Hong Kong. In fact, local weathercasters are calling this past weekend's storms the worst on record in the past 124 years. Friday evening thru Saturday morning saw an astounding 410 millimeters of rain fall over a 12 hour period -- that is 15.7 inches! Dad, you'd have to get a larger rain gauge. They raised the Black Rain signal which means rainfall will eclipse 2.75 inches in a single hour. It was crazy -- Streets flooded, drains overflowed, street sinkholes gobbled up cars, cats chased dogs, it was crazy.

Hong Kong is situated at the base of "The Peak" a large mountain that towers over the city. To combat landslides the government has poured concrete over much of the Peak giving it a hard-candied outer shell that protects the earth below it. So rainfall just rolls off it and streams down into the city (see video.) A drastic and unsightly approach, but remarkably effective in times like this.

We were quite happy to endure the storm from our perch in the clouds. That is not an exaggeration, it was as if we were living in a cloud as the view from all our windows was nothing but greyness, punctuated by frequent lightning bursts. The old trick of counting the number of seconds from the flash to the thunder to determine the strike's distance proved that several strikes must have been hitting our building. There was no time to count. It was wild.

Dragon Boat Races

This weekend Hong Kong observed yet another bank holiday, this time in celebration of the Tuen Ng Festival. Also known as the Dragon Boat Festival, the holiday commemorates the death of Qu Yuan, a poet and former Minister of the state of Chu in Imperial China, who made the ultimate protest against a corrupt government by drowning himself in the Mi Lo River in the province of Hunan. The story goes that local villagers raced their boats toward Qu Yuan in a vain attempt to save his life, beating the water with their oars and sounding drums and gongs to scare off the fish trying to eat him. This event occurred over 2000 years ago and ever since the Chinese have staged dragon boat races up and down the country's coast.





We headed out to Stanley on HK Island's southern side to take in the contemporary version of dragon boat races which have become quite a corporate affair, with 20-person teams representing the city's multinational investment banks, law firms and corporations. Corporate yachts and party junks draped with corporate banners line the short competition course while everyone else, including us, view the races from the beach. There is also a Bay to Breakers element to the event as many teams dress up in crazy costumes. No nakedness though. The last B2B I went to I saw a man wearing nothing but a pair of Oakleys while playing an alto saxophone. We didn't see anything like that, Ingrid is safe for yet another day.



The races are a sprint lasting only a couple hundred meters as the contestants paddle furiously to the cadence of the bow drummer. The races last only a minute or so but the paddlers are completely gassed by the time they reach the finish line. As the weather was beastly hot and humid I figured their fatigue was an even tradeoff to being able to splash about in the refreshing water. It was a fun event, as was the post race block party along Stanley's boardwalk where the victors drank their spoils.

Go Team!

The Cardinal is headed to the College World Series!

Happy Birthday Grandmas!

DEAR GOLDEN GRANDMA G AND GOLDEN GRANDMA H, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU BOTH! I MISS YOU AND WISH THAT I COULD BE WITH YOU TO CELEBRATE YOUR SPECIAL DAY. IF I WERE WITH YOU I WOULD HUG YOU, KISS YOU, GRAB YOUR EYE GLASSES, PULL YOUR HAIR AND CLIMB ALL OVER YOU. BUT BECAUSE I CAN'T SHOW YOU, I WILL JUST HAVE TO TELL YOU THAT SOMEONE IN HONG KONG LOVES YOU BOTH...IT'S INGRID. MAYBE NEXT YEAR I WILL BE ABLE TO GIVE YOU A LITTLE HANDS ON LOVE.