Steve Lochrin has jetted off to Italy this week for a school trip and it has certainly struck Carl and Hiroko how different his school experience has been. Even though it might seem strange at times and that kids might be missing some of those peculiar “Australian” experiences, what a rich and varied cultural and educational experience it is here.

Cass has flitted off up the hill for a baby shower type show for her friend Kristin, who safely delivered her second girl last week. Named Nyah (which apparently means “dolphin” in Hawaiian) both baby and mother are doing extremely well. Cass finds these baby shows fairly tedious, but the crew of girls going are very pleasant and Cass has gone up with her friend Kathy, who is of a similar mind regarding these showers, so I’m sure they’ll be able to exit stage left if it gets too strange!

We took the “girls” to get their yearly flu injections and thought, while they were severely traumatized, we might as well go ahead and get them microchipped as well. They’re funny little bunnies: as soon as we take them away from their comfort zone (i.e. this apartment), they become wild little scratching, fighting, feral animals, much like they were when I first brought them home. They have always been averse to other people’s company and only reluctantly put up with me, but the carryon has to be seen to be believed. It takes a phalanx of vet workers (4 of them!) to extract them from the cage and hold them down to get treated. They scratch, struggle, moan and poor little Virgy even wets herself in terror…thank god we only have to go once a year!

I’ve been basking in my own glory this week after finishing all my courses and have hardly done a thing! I suppose I’ve just done the usual: worked and attended meetings, boxed and lifted weights in the afternoon, or gone for a surf. One interesting thing in class this week was giving some of my little kiddies some Australian 2 cent coins. I brought a whole tub of them over here, and we watched a video on Australian marshlands, which featured the frilled neck lizard. Suffice to say they were a great hit!

Ross and I had one of the worst surfs ever on Friday afternoon: check the Pointyhat site for the sad details. Speaking of Ross, I’ve been busy organizing a sendoff for him for the last weekend before school breaks up. I’m trying to organize a bus to take a stack of guys over for a surf and a few beers on the Saturday afternoon (June 3), then transport us all back to the Green bar for some evening festivities. It should be a great laugh, as we’ve invited heaps of non-surfers just to come out and have a try: we’re really looking forward to it. I’ve also just put the finishing touches to a Moviemaker project to be screened at the Green on the night. It looks pretty good and is a combination of photos, videos and music along with all sorts of captions and effects…it’s been good fun making it as I haven’t tried that, previously sticking to the much more boring PowerPoint.

All sorts of sendoffs coming up…Chad and Ross of course, but also Clarky and Bob Penry…we’re losing a few too many Pointyhats, I’m afraid! Photos: Virg’n Mary calm again, good surf from a couple of weeks back, close up of my “fish”

Well, we’re pretty ecstatic for a number of reasons this week and we’re both in a very chipper mood.
Reason 1: After a hard slog over the past week and the majority of the weekend, Cassy finally put the middle school play behind her for another year. She did a fantastic job as usual: I don’t think they could get a better person for makeup, she’s no nonsense, lets the kids use their initiative to come up with themes and ideas and then works some magic to put the wild dreams into reality. Anyway, ticked for yet another year

Reason 2: After completing two Master’s degrees, one in Education and one in Science (!) and accumulating more than 76 credit points in the last 5 years, I put the finishing touches on my last two essays Friday night, submitted them, this time to University of Cincinnati, and received my passing grade via email the following day. This has completed my quest for a Masters degree plus 40 credits (my goal), which will place me on the PhD scale for salary purposes at school and a very healthy pay rise. I’m absolutely stoked; I really didn’t think I’d ever be done with all this study. As far as I’m concerned, at 44 and having studied something most years of my life…I’m out. Life-long learning will now take the shape of far less formal lessons I think! Now about those Mandarin lessons……….!

Reason 3: The house is down! Those of you who know our place back home in Merewether will know that part of our view was blocked by a crappy old house in which a lovely old gentleman used to reside. Since his death a couple of years ago, we have been waiting for council to fulfill their duties and demolish the house to return the area to parkland. They had haggled with the estate for years to try to secure a fair price and we had both been filled with increasing dread of late. From Mum’s clippings we were very well aware of the council’s great cash squeeze and we thought it might never happen. Much to our delight we received a congratulatory email from Thurza, who then went around and took some photos for us the next day and sent them. In fact, I then told my sister Sue (living in Adamstown) and my Mum, Denise (living in Hamilton South) of the news…talk about shipping coals to Newcastle!

Reason 4: Just thinking what a great life we have really. We know how very fortunate we are: we’re healthy and happy, as are the vast majority of our family and friends. We live a very privileged life: we’re far from war, terrorism, hunger and horror and it’s something we don’t want to take for granted.

Photos: Our new view!, some excited newlyweds onshore as Ross lurks out the back looking for waves.

Slung back into the work zone with a thud this week, Cass and I have been very busy. The middle school play is on again and Cassy is in charge of makeup, necessitating many after school meetings, a Friday evening and all day Saturday at school for a dress rehearsal. Suffice to say it is not her favourite time of year! I had to give one of my talks to some visiting teachers from Taichung Teachers’ University on Friday. They had traveled from Taichung that day, quite a long trip and just for this presentation so I felt a bit of pressure. All seemed to go quite well and they presented me with some exotic plums in bottles as a thank you!

It was my birthday on Friday and some of the boys here arranged for us to go and have a few drinks after school. This extended into the evening and I was a little slower than usual on Saturday. Cass wasn’t here so I took the opportunity to get well reacquainted with the lounge and watched LOTS of football! I was stoked to get some nice cards from my fellow teachers and some of the kiddies, although I don’t know how they ever discover it is my birthday unless the other teachers tell them. Chris and Val sent a card and a gift which I’ll have fun spending and Mum also sent a card and gift: hmmm what to buy?! My aunt Virginia and family also sent a card for me and Cass, which we were delighted to receive, and I heard from a couple of other people (thanks Hel and Wayne)

Still downloading torrents and enjoying some marvelous Australian trash at the moment. That Biggest Loser show is horrendous really, but I must admit, I can’t stop downloading it to see what happens next! The only blessing is we don’t have any ads. We’ve watched the new show “Thank God You’re Here” (bit of a fizzer don’t you think?) and continue to get the Chaser, which is fresh and funny. Just watched the latest episode of Lost, I’m getting it just hours after it airs in the U.S. and a similar situation with the fantastic House MD. So, as you can see, TV has come a long way from the early days of watching CNN. That used to be the best we could do… All praise the internet! We’re on tenterhooks here waiting for the Knights-Cowboys clash to come on. Should be a ripper: we watched the Knights carve up St. George courtesy of a torrent, the NRL site being very stop-start at the moment.

On a more academic note, I have 4 more credit points to reach the holy grail of 40 credit points above a Masters’ degree. That will be 76 credit points in 5 years, with a year off in the middle. As anyone knows who studies and works, it’s been very awkward, but at least I’ll be rewarded for it in the end. Just got to get those last few assignments in: I’m having lots of trouble getting motivated to finish it all off! (i.e. should be doing them instead of writing this!!)

Carl is on a massive fitness campaign at the moment and although I’m continuing my boxing and weights, he makes me look positively sluggish in comparison. I’ve barely seen him for months as he is always out on some huge bike ride, pounding the treadmill, or in some other exercise task. He doesn’t even seem to go surfing much anymore. I’ve told him he’s becoming a little obsessive, and although I think he knows it, he’s still going. Good luck to him though: he’s a changed man.
Photos: Dave at local beach, Lunch at Murray House, Stanley in HK, Cass at the ubiquitous jeweller’s window! and HK apartment buildings (with pools!)

We’re relaxing on our last day of spring break holidays after a week off. After visiting Hong Kong airport a conservative 20 times over the last five years, we thought it was about time we actually visited the city properly. Armed with our free air tickets from HSBC Visa, a reward for our excessive spending (although always paid off on time, so I wonder why they think we are such VIP customers…?), we tripped off to the airport for our 1 ½ hour flight.

The seamless transportation from Taipei to our room in Hong Kong whispered the 1st thoughts of sleek, modern efficiency. The airport express train ushered us on with Logan’s Runesque calming automated voices and then shuttle buses whisked us to the hotel. We worked out that we walked about 20 steps in all from limo to airport to plane to airport to train and then hotel. This dearth of walking was to be rectified in the next 4 days, however!

The Miramar was “conveniently” located on Nathan Rd in Kowloon and the flash of scores of jewelry shop windows not only captivated Cassy, but enticed her to look in every one of them every time we passed. We also entered many and great discussions were held with hopeful proprietors about various diamonds and pearls. Quite ironically, I ended up leading the shopping charge and had bought a beautiful leather jacket on our first venture down the road on the way to eat tea! In the Mong Kok markets I bought some shoes and shirts as well, but in lightning fast time.
Cass had her birthday on our last day in Hong Kong, so she spent the birthday money from her parents on a very clever addition to some existing earrings: I’m pretty sure she wants to show people, not just tell them, so I’ll leave you in some suspense. I bought her a Louis Vuitton bag, the style of which she’d had her eye on for some time.

We did all the touristy stuff: strolled the Kowloon foreshore by day and night as well as numerous night and day trips on the Star Ferry. Hong Kong island is kind of like Sydney’s Chinatown, ironically with more “foreigners” than that area. Sleek, modern, architecturally daring and exciting, the island oozes wealth and style, and how about that race course in the middle of the city?! We had a number of beers and a trendy dinner in the Lan Kwai Fong bar area on our last night: a wonderful experience for a change, streets absolutely chock full of non-Chinese and a very cosmopolitan style. Our mate here in Taipei, Coombsy, is off to work in Hong Kong next year and challenged me to spot the difference between Lan Kwai Fong and Sydney: not much!

The Peak tram hauled us up to Victoria Peak for amazing vistas and we got ourselves over to the far side of the island to visit Stanley and Repulse Bays. The real estate window announced apartments worth $160 million Hong Kong. Even when you divide by 6 for Aussie $, this place is stratospherically expensive!

Hong Kong was an interesting experience. I described it as Taipei on speed, but it’s more than that. It’s slick and chic, very self assured, a strange mix of unsophisticated mainland Chinese workers, fat expat wankers in suits and the vast majority of people, “middle workers”, Chinese and expat alike. It feels a little like its just hanging on to its “shopping Mecca” tag: we’ve personally experienced better prices and opportunities in other Asian countries, including Vietnam and Thailand. Still, there’s no denying a certain excitement surrounding the place and when you can check your bags at the Logan’s Run train station and then forget about them till you get home, you have to admit its slicker than the patter of all the Indian boys furtively promising “copy watch, copy watch” on every street corner!

After never wanting to set foot in another shop, or look at another item of jewelry, it was rather ironic that we went to the Taipei Jade Market yesterday. I went to “bodyguard” Cassy as she negotiated kilometers of aisles of jades and stones and gems with a stack of cash (the only currency!). She is keen to get some sapphires for an “order” for friends back home, but after scouring every aisle, we came up empty. We have one guy promising to try to source some for us in a month, but we’re not overly confident

Finishing off a lengthy tome this week, I sat back and wondered anew today about our changing world. We beamed a live webcast of the Surfest final from Newcastle straight through to our TV today. Merewether beach in live action: if I’d wandered over the road from our unit there, I wouldn’t have got as good a view. Here we were watching the action, marveling at the crowd, listening to the commentary until we were jolted back to earth by the strident cries of the traveling fixit men wafting up from the streets below our apartment.
Photos: Cass with night skyline, us at the Peak, Stanley Bay, street at night, my hero Bruce Lee!, Lan Kwai Fong bar.