Meat

For a vegetarian, it can be pretty hard to socialize in Hong Kong. Most activity focuses on food, from grey pork-filled meat balls to brilliant red spicy squid. My body hates that I'm skimping on the tofu and veggies, but I have to say... I love the group cooking excursions. This includes the Easter barbeque.

In the neighborhood of Shek O on the south side of the island, there are backyard-style all-you-can-cook BBQ venues. Complete with coal grills, raw squid, karaoke, and Japanese marshmallows that can't catch fire. These marshmallows just melt as they cook. Quite a change from the Jet-Puffed ones in the U.S. that flame up like medieval weapons!

Former coworker Ben's "early retirement"-barbeque.Around the metal mesh grills are our coworkers, ex-coworkers, and their partners/friends. I'm in the middle in white.

Fun fact: If you zoom in on Winnie's hand (she's the second from right), you can see her brilliant 3-D glittery nail art.

Lovin' Lamma

Hong Kong is arguably the commercial center of Asia, with Prada stores, glass skyscrapers, and 6-lane highways to match. Yet for US$3, you can hop on a ferry and leave all that behind. Which is exactly what I did this weekend. Here is a sampling of life on Lamma Island.

The main "road" between villages...

View from the ferry terminal, which doubles as a bike parking lot. At the top of the hill is a windmill. You can almost see one white blade against the sky.

Raw meat delivery to the butcher. She gets fresh chicken, pork and beef delivered daily by ferry. The delivery woman wheels cargo from the dock up the hill several times a day.

Vegetable vendor selling leeks, spinach, and turnips (I think)

Vegetable garden with streamers to scare off the birds. It works! The birds sing happily from the perimeter of the little plot.

Finally, I saw an out lesbian couple. This is rare in Asia - of the 30 or so lesbians I've met here, all are straight-acting in public. This beautiful couple turned a few heads, but mostly folks ignored them. The lovebirds wandered around in their dreamy-eyed state of bliss. Perhaps this really is paradise. I can't wait to bring Brenda.

suits in the sand

The businessmen are everywhere in Hong Kong.
It's impossible to truly escape the corporate atmosphere of this city.
Here they are sporting the latest beachwear fashions.


For women, boots and a lot of pink are in order, no matter the occassion.

Green Power

It all started with Laura innocently asking "Wanna join my friends on a fundraising walk?" and ended up with a 10k trek over the Hong Kong mountains through the jungle.

To combat the unhealthy pollution and battle climate change, the good people of HK host fundraising hikes and adventure races (scaling rock walls, running across hot sands, you name it) to gather donations for Green Power, which educates kids about environmentally-friendly practices. I knew Brenda would be proud.

Below is Team Walkie-Talkie! We had the UK, South Africa, New York, Canada (I think), and even New Jersey on the trails. Laura's the 4th from the left and I'm the 3rd from the right in the blk/white stripe pants...

The starting line. All those tiny black dots in the distant horizon are the backs of people's heads. There were 3,000 of us. At times the trail was only 12" wide.
View from the hiking trail over the south side of Hong Kong Island. See? It's not all skyscrapers after all. Through the haze are some mountains rising up out of the sea.

Pop Star

Two notes about tones:

1. I am tone-deaf. Guitar, keyboard and voice lessons have all proven fruitless.

2. Chinese languages are tonal. (I think this is how I accidentally called my friend Ben "chicken" when I tried to pronounce his Cantonese name, much to his buddies' delight.)

Yet magically, on leap-year-night, I was on stage, microphone in hand, singing Cantonese songs. The setting was a hotel banquet hall for our company's annual Lunar New Year event. Now a banquet may sound formal to a Westerner, but out here the dinners are more like a gameshow/variety show with massive amounts of food and wine for the audience. In between What the Funky Taste and Bingo, I was a contestant on the east-meets-west singing competition.

The Westerners took turns wearing oversized DJ headphones and trying to replicate the songs we heard, while the Cantonese-speakers guessed what we were trying to sing. It was hilarious, as the senior executives did improv Elvis tunes when no one could guess theirs, I pantomimed violin and keyboard lovesongs, and my mentor hopped off the stage to serenade the ladies in the front row, Backstreet Boys style.

Maybe it was just leap-year luck, but the audience voted me for second place - better than my mentor but no match for the South African woman whose song was guessed in 5 seconds flat. She won a trophy, and I won a new nickname... Pop star.