Hong Kong!!

Greetings from Honkers! It's my third day in and I've set up my room and feeling settled and very welcomed by everyone here at Crossroads. When I stepped in to my new home (which is the flat I stayed in when I came here last year) with Liz to greet me at the door, I suddenly felt like I'd hardly been away at all and infact that I'd just popped up the road for some milk or something.

I had a good flight with 4 (heavenly) seats to myself as it was a very unfull plane - what a luxury! I was rather surprised to exit the airport and be greeted by a decidedly wintery air. Hong Kong is having an unseasonal 'cold snap' which would actually be rather nice if I had brought my coat and other winter things such as warm socks to wear to bed. The first night was a bit hard but I'm all set now and I'm sure will be wishing it was cold again before we know it, so best to enjoy it while I can.

As it was a very late night on Thursday, I had a slow day on Friday, unpacking and catching up with friends new and old (lots of hugs) and an early night. By Saturday I felt sufficiently rested and ready to go, so it was off to the office to work on some posters for the new AIDS Life Xperience "game". See more about Life Xperience here.

Today I had a big day out on the town with Katrina (who I knew from my church in Rozelle about 4 years ago and who first told me about Crossroads). She took me to her church which meets in a Kowloon Christian school and afterwards we went to a Chinese restaurant of the Peking region and enjoyed some wonderfully tasty morsels of all kinds thanks to one of the girls there being a food person (home ec teacher) and knowing the best things to order (as well as speaking Cantonese which really helps). It was one of those long slow meals in which dishes just keep appearing to surprise you, all rotating around a great big lazy-susan with an endless supply of Chinese tea to sip... as well as great people to share it with. Wonderful!

Katrina and I then went to see a rather unusual 'exhibition' called Our Life in West Kowloon. It was an incredible eye-opener and I was suddenly quite sorry that I decided to leave my camera at home (I know, madness, but my back is a bit sore from heavy luggage and I was determined to take as little as possible thinking to myself that I have plenty of tomorrows coming up for photos)... Anyway, possibly I was able to experience it better without having a camera stuck in front of my face. Basically it was in an old crumbly 8-story building where people are living in unbelievably cramped conditions. We were taken through to a number of the small units where people have temporarily vacated for various reasons and given a real taste of their lives in this place which we all would find completely intolerable. Many are elderly, jobless, mentally ill or new migrants and the exhibition is seeking to be a voice for these voiceless and forgotten people. To put names to faces and tell their stories. On 2 of the floors, single apartments were subdivided by partitions into 7 'units' where individuals and families would each live in a space smaller than my bedroom, most of them without windows, all sharing one toilet and shower and very small kitchen. All their washing is done by hand and hung over the outside landing on prodruding 'clothes lines'. This is one of the families that lived in such conditions and here is a small extract about them:



Fung Pak Wing lives with his wife and two sons in a window-less 40 sq.ft. partitioned room, in a shared-apartment with seven other households. Fung's sons have to study on the back stairs, as they don't have a table at home and their tiny room is stifling. They either construct 'a desk' by putting one plastic chair on top of another with a pillow in between, or simply work on the steps of the back stairwell. All their homework must be finished before sunset, while there's still enough light. However, despite this harsh environment and neighbors' complaints, the two boys study diligently. In school, they are doing well, and getting great results. Only when they're set assignments involving photos or I.T. does homework become a real problem, since they have neither a camera nor a computer. So, although they hope to do well in all their subjects, this may not always be possible.

To read the rest of this story and find out more about the exhibition click here. Hong Kong is a very wealthy country but there is much poverty here and Crossroads supports many of the charities that are helping these needy people. It was a valuable experience to see this sort of poverty first-hand.

On another note, I have uploaded some of the photos I took while Tina and Phillipa were in Sydney the week b'fore last. Check them out at the 'Tina & Phil in Sydney' link under My Pics to your left. It was so fab to get a good top-up of family before I left. I've added some captions to the pics instead of writing all about it here. If you click on the first photo you can then move through them all with captions. Sorry there's no pics of HK yet. Stay tuned.. there'll be plenty to come... Also, mum said she had trouble leaving a comment. I've fiddled with some of the settings... hopefully it will be possible now. If not I'll have another go. Would love to hear from you!