Happy New Year!

Holiday celebrations begin early in HK.  Over-the-top Xmas decorations start to appear on November 1st, right after Halloween.  It seems to me that there's a competition to fit in as many plants, trees and decorations as possible in any given public space.  The lobby of our building (on the left) is not very spacious, and less so with the large tree and plentiful poinsettias!  The malls are all decked out with trees and cartoon and seasonal characters.  And Xmas would not be complete without the local ballet company performing The Nutcracker.  Last, but not least, is the constant drone of Xmas music - although we have yet to hear Jose Feliciano's Feliz Navidad.

Some of my ongoing activities have wrapped up for 2010.  Instead of having a regular book review meeting in December, the book club enjoyed an end-of-year dinner at the Phoenix Restaurant.  Amazing how lively we all became with two or three glasses of wine in us.  We each brought a favourite book, explained why we chose it, and then exchanged them during dessert.  I chose Gweilo, a memoir of a HK childhood, by Martin Booth.  It's considered a classic by expats living here.  We'll be resuming our reviews at the end of January, beginning with the Orange Prize winner, and continuing with the Booker, the Pulitzer and Commonwealth winners.  (Not sure how much I will be contributing to our discussions, since I've recently picked up and quickly put down The Lacuna and Tinkers)

This term's English conversation group at King's College also came to an end.  I'm sad to leave my Secondary 7 (senior high) boys - they're a lot of fun, but also very serious.  As Christopher (third from the right) explained - their lives will be over if they don't succeed in their "A Levels" in March and manage to get into the right program at the right university.  They all study until midnight each night, even during the holidays.  Life will resume for them after exams, I hope.  During the weeks we met, I learned a lot about the educational system here, and also realized that aside from being coerced into achieving high marks, they are just regular boys with voracious appetites and interests in everything from music (Michael on the far left and Christopher), to botany (Edgar on the far right), and sports (the rest of the group).  Ben (second from right) said that if he doesn't do well in his exams, he will buy a motorcycle and bum around Australia!  I wish them all every success.

One of the most popular tourist attractions in HK is the Big Buddha on Lantau Island.  Jeff and I have not been there yet, nor have we been to Disneyland (waiting for Kyle to visit), or Ocean Park (but we will be there tomorrow to attend a wedding!).   I did manage to visit the 10,000 Buddhas Monastery in Sha Tin with a few ladies from the AWA.  I'm sure there are more than 10,000, but we only had a few hours to visit the temple, and I couldn't count fast enough.  The path to the temple is quite steep, but lined with life-sized gold-painted buddhas, each with a different face.  There are also thousands of colourful ceramic buddhas, as well as pagodas, gazebos, and columbaria.   We were intrigued by the sign cautioning us not to give alms to the monks - we often see monks begging in our neighbourhood, and now I'm sceptical ...

Living in HK, we basketball junkies are desperate for any hoops entertainment.  Jeff and I were therefore very excited to see a blurb advertising the 18th 3D-Gold Super Kung Sheung Cup being played at Queen Elizabeth Stadium from December 14-19.  Because the information on the website is all in Chinese, we had no idea who was playing, the age of the athletes, nor the level of their skills!  Our 50HKD tickets ($6.50CDN) entitled us to front-row, centre-court seats for a triple-header.  As you can see from the photo, very few people showed up for the 5 p.m. game (5th place between India - undernourished-looking players - and a team from Mainland China).  Jeff and I were the only gweilos in the crowd, except for Norman Black, the coach of the Philippines team (yes, I spoke to him, and yes, he played in the NCAAs and in the NBA - three games with the Pistons).  The caliber of the players was slightly better than Canadian high school, but not quite university level.  We lasted through two and a half games, and left when the American team (mostly Division II dropouts) was ahead by 20 points.

The low point of the evening was our dinner.  We opted for the jumbo hot dogs instead of the dumplings, and yes, they did taste as bad as they looked!

Before we left for Penang, Malaysia (next blog), we managed to get in a wonderful hike along the Wilson Trail.  We took the MTR to the eastern end of Kowloon, and then hiked up the road to Devil's Peak and the Chinese Permanent Cemetery.  We passed the ruins of an old fort, long abandoned, with a spectacular 360-degree view.  We then hiked down the hill to Lei Yue Mun, a fishing village noted for its seafood restaurants.  We had a delicious lunch outside, and then slept all the way home on the subway!

It's been an amazing year, full of surprises and full of history and culture.  Our lives have certainly changed:  Jeff works harder than ever, but we love exploring and learning about HK and Asia in our free time.  We never tire looking outside our window at the magnificent skyline of this exciting city, and feel very fortunate to have this opportunity.  Thank you to Helen and Lou, Shelley and Issie, Cousin Lou, and Nancy and Randy for visiting with us.  We're looking forward to our next group of visitors, starting with Suzanne and Robert next weekend!

We wish all of our family and friends a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year.