Hong Kong

  Dear Family,  The weeks are ticking by and with it my love affair with Hong Kong continues to grow. Cindy came back from England this week. She's been studying there for the last five months and came back only because her visa expired. When we had dinner this week it was obvious that her eyes have been opened a bit to how the world functions outside of China, and she likes what she saw. She did a bit of touring while there, visiting Paris, Italy, and Switzerland, she learned about Instagram and western social media, she discovered western art, and a variety of bits of information and truths that we take for granted. She is now hoping to do her PhD work in the west. We shall hope for that.   It's the end of an era in the Hong Kong OGC. After 17 years, Jennifer Chen is retiring in order to move to Japan to be where her children are. A single mom, she raised 2 children who as adults have immigrated to Japan. After 3 years of not being able to see them during Covid she is p...

 Dear Family, Well, Jenni and Danny left last Sunday night. It is a little lonely with them gone. We had a great time together. But, our work never goes away; so, this is our recovery week as we get ready for Mark, Melissa, Owen and Maci to arrive a week or so from now. We've been very busy working mostly. But we grabbed a few pictures that you might find interesting. While we were tramping around in the mid-levels one evening we found this very cool fire hydrant. We had to grab this picture. In the subway a couple of days ago, Mom said, "Look, there's AJ". You will have to look closely at him. A couple of days ago, we ran across this Italian graffiti artist painting the side of a building.We were among a gaggle of people watching him paint with spray cans (this is a picture of his daughter). We went hiking Saturday on a little island quite a ways out from Hong Kong Island (you can see Victoria Harbor way out in the distance). There are only a very few people on this ...

March 11-17  Dear Family, "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function .”  F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1936. What a great week this has been. We've walked miles and miles, ridden subways, double decker buses, more subways, ferries, mini buses, bicycles, sampan boats, more ferries and more subways. And we have eaten ourselves silly. So many egg tarts, pineapple buns, dumplings, amazing donuts, ice cream, piles of stir fried wonderfulness, and even snake soup. We've talked, and laughed till way too late at night. In short, it has been a magical week. But what it has really done is highlight the terrible place I find myself in now. In the spirit of this blog being a large part of our journal record of this mission I'm just going to prattle on about where my head is these days. After so many months of being very content here, lately I have been moving towards some...

 Dear Family I thought I'd start with a very interesting story. The picture below is of Sue and Ryan McCortney. They are from California and joined us in the Office of General Counsel two months ago. He is a specialist in human resources and their mission is to spend a couple of months at a time in different areas dealing with HR. She also is a lawyer who practiced for a few years before having kids and raising their family. These are two very good, fun people to work with. We had a great time with them here. They just left this last week.  The thing that makes them so interesting is the fact that only Ryan is a member of the Church. Sue is an active practicing Catholic. They have been told that they are the only interfaith senior couple in the church. Ryan always wanted to serve as a senior couple and she agreed to tag along and work alongside him on the HR issues in the church. She goes to Mass every Sunday when he goes to his Sacrament Meeting. She is  a remarkable wom...