Almost a week ago, I did a post about all the hustle and bustle here in town, with people out shopping and crowding the subways and the buses, and suggested that Chinese New Year — which began Monday — looked as if would be madness, here in Hong Kong. And then it began … and […]

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Here was the plan, on my day off: Catch a ferry from Central and go to Lamma Island,  which I visited back in October, and hike over the island and maybe have lunch at the fishing village. Here was the reality: Heading toward the ferries, deciding that the No. 5 wharf was the one I […]

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People here already are polite. To a point where Americans who aren’t from some homey smalltown in the Midwest would find almost jarring. People in the subway tend to give up their seats for older people. Folks stand in line and never jump it. They aren’t loud and rude to each other. In four months, […]

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The Chinese love panda bears. Well, who doesn’t? The adorable little (well, actually, they’re big) black and white creatures. Wouldn’t you like to hug one right now? But the Chinese may have the edge on the rest of the world, in the realm of Panda Love, because pandas come from China. So they have a […]

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This is New Year’s Eve, in Hong Kong. The Lunar (or Chinese) New Year begins on Monday, Jan. 26. But so far, today, Sunday, has been the quietest day of my four months here. Almost stunningly so. It’s as if half the island’s 1.2 million people have disappeared. And maybe they have.

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I will know a lot more about it 5-6 days from now than I do at this moment, but I’m beginning to realize that the Lunar (Chinese) New Year is a big deal. A very big deal. It’s Friday, and the holiday doesn’t officially begin until Monday, but I already can feel the eagerness and […]

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This is my opinion. After nearly four months of something approaching total immersion in international soccer, by the NOW cable network in Hong Kong. I’m not saying these are the best clubs in the world, in terms of playing ability. I’m saying these four have more people the casual soccer fan has heard of (and […]

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Plumbing here is not quite the plumbing most of you in the States are familiar with. It is odd. Puzzling. Segmented. Compartmentalized. Rationed. And not quite dependable if you live in an older building. This is what I have learned about HK plumbing, in four months here:

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Americans tend to think the rest of the world knows all about us, and thinks about us a lot. Pays close attention to our doings. How many times have you heard some idiot jock exclaim, “We shocked the world!”? And mean it. Because, sure, everyone in Africa and Asia and South American thought American Team […]

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He is out there nearly every day, maybe 10-12 hours a day, at the top of the stairs leading down to the Johnston Road exit from the Wan Chai metro station. Sitting on a box only a few inches high, his two-string instrument in front of him, sawing away. He has to be 70 years […]

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