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Week 9: 5/29/05

FAQs

Hello wondering wanderers!

Now you have to wonder no longer, as we attempt to address your most pressing questions to date regarding Hong Kong and other random Chase Family facts.

1. You guys are looking so skinny! How much weight have you lost? (I think this one takes the prize!)

Well, thank you for the compliment, but looks are deceiving. We've now been here two months, and I was expecting to have lost those last ten "baby weight" pounds from my almost two year old "baby". It was totally natural to assume this, as when we were in Japan with no car, both Mike and I lost about 30 pounds apiece from walking everywhere. We figured that the same would happen here. We made a minor miscalculation. We don't walk anywhere here! The Parkview is not within walking distance of anything, so to get anywhere, we have to take a bus or a taxi. We've been taking taxis most of the time, since when you add up the fare for three bus tickets (Ben is free), it comes out only pennies cheaper than taking a taxi, and taking a taxi is way more convenient, conformable, and fast. I personally get less exercise here than I did in Lomita with our giant backyard. At least there we all had a good romp in the yard almost everyday, where here the gorgeous green grass is treated with so many toxic chemicals that the one day we decided to not observe the "Stay off the grass" sign, we were confronted by a groundskeeper who said the grass would make us very, very sick if it touched our skin. Lovely. There is a wonderful gym on site, but no childcare, so if I wanted to go work out, I have to wait until Mike makes it home, which means working out after 8:00 or 9:00 p.m. and missing out on the precious few minutes Mike and I have together each day. No fun. Mike is indeed dropping weight, as he runs to catch the bus from the train station and he walks the jobsite every day. Our diets have not been the best, as the easiest meal to make ends up being pasta, which when eaten on a regular basis fills up our hollow-legged boys but doesn't do much for my anything-but-hollow waistline.

2. You mean you didn't even taste the chicken feet? But that's my favorite Chinese dish! (This came from THREE different people!)

You have to believe that we are adventurers at heart. I mean you can see each week that we live for experiencing new things. But somehow eating something that looks so much like what it is, and having been around live chickens that my parents raise my whole life and seeing the muck those chickens walk around in... it just didn't happen. And more than likely it won't. However, I did learn two things this week. Most all the chicken feet in China come from the U.S., since there it's just a discarded part of the animal, and that even if you don't eat the chicken feet, they make excellent broth. Having heard that, it's highly plausible that we've had broth made that way, as we have been treated to a couple of different types of Chinese soup.

3. What do you miss most about the U.S.? (The most common question)

I think the most obvious answer is our friends and family. We got used to seeing Mike's parents at least once a week for the year we lived in Southern California, and it's been really hard to leave them behind, especially while Mike's mom is battling breast cancer and we most want to be there to support her. We are grateful for the internet and email, and feel extremely blessed by all of you who are going out of your way to make sure we know you haven't forgotten us. When asked, Nathan says: I miss my bike and my grandmas and grandpas. Benjamin says: A train! (but don't hold it against him, he's a little obsessed with trains and it won't do any good to tell him that the trains are actually here in Hong Kong, not in the U.S.). Michael says: being able to get a really good steak, or being able to grill one myself. There are BBQ sites in the Country Park behind our home, but purchasing all the goods and dragging them down the hill to fight the heat and mosquitoes isn't appealing. Heather says: I really miss the flexibility of having a car, I especially miss my mommy-mobile mini-van with it's huge cargo space to load up the bounty from Costco, another sorely missed thing about the U.S.

4. Your experience at the hair salon sounds heavenly, but how much did it cost?

I had six Asian men fussing over me for three hours for the bargain rate of $40 US for the haircut, and about $40 US for the conditioning treatment. But the break from taking care of the kids, the experience of being on my own, and the amazing relaxation achieved during those three hours was worth about three times that. I did get a slight discount because I already pre-paid for the next hair cut and conditioning treatment, ensuring I'll go back at least one more time before we leave Hong Kong.

5. What is an expat?

This is such a great question, since I use the term all the time, don't I? Several years ago when the film "The Talented Mr. Ripley" starring Matt Damon, Jude Law, and Gwyneth Paltrow came out, I read a review of the film that said Gwyneth's character was a "glamorous American Expat". I had no idea what an expat was, but after seeing the film and seeing this wonderful lifestyle of parties and yachts and handsome men, I thought whatever it was, it sure looked cool! Then when we moved to Japan, I remember meeting a woman in our first week who said she was surprised we lived in the area we lived in, since there were not a lot of other expats there like us. Us? Me? An expat? A glamorous American expat? How did this happen, and where were the parties and the yachts and the handsome men? I finally looked up the word, expat being short for "expatriate", which according to Webster's means: NOUN, One who has taken up residence in a foreign country or one who has renounced one's native land. Obviously it's the first part of the definition with applies to us, as we haven't renounced our native land. It isn't really a glamorous life, since we aren't bazillionaires who can play on a yacht all day, but maybe one day...

6. What is T.V. like there?

Well, first of all, we aren't big TV watchers. A couple of years ago we read this report about how television is contributing to the downfall of the American family since no one sits at the table and discusses their day any more, they all sit around the T.V. and eat. In looking through our finances, we needed to trim some of the "fat", so cable got cut, reducing us from about 50 channels to zero. To be perfectly honest, it wasn't painful at all, although I'm sure some of you are going into convulsions right now at the thought of no T.V., right? When I was pregnant with Benjamin and stuck on bedrest, we let Nathan watch a lot of videos to make up for the fact that we couldn't really DO anything. We own a lot of movies and rent a lot of movies, but don't really watch television programs. Right before we moved here, my friend Amy was watching the kids a couple of nights a week so I could clean our house and pack without their "help". When I'd go pick them up, Amy was always watching the show American Idol. I totally got hooked. Our apartment here comes with about 50 or so channels, about 15-20 of them in English, like CNN, HBO, FOX News, and MTV. And they have this one channel called the Star Channel that broadcasts American Idol twice a day on Wednesdays and Thursdays, once in the afternoon direct off the satellite feed where you all were watching it in the States, and then once again during Primetime later in the evening. So quite terribly, I indulged my guilty pleasure of watching American Idol weekly for my fix of these nobodies trying to make it big. Ryan Seacrest is my twin, you know. We were born on the same day, the same year, and in the same hour. But on different sides of the continent. He was born in Georgia, and I have been to Georgia, but made my debut on the planet in the San Fernando Valley burg of Canoga Park, CA. Michael didn't share my enthusiasm for the show, but he tolerated it, so that counts! Now that the show is over, I haven't been watching anything. Although, some days when housekeeping gets here, I turn on the T.V. to keep the kids away from the maids and Benjamin and I watch this crazy show with a blonde man from Canada (with a Canadian accent) trying to teach us Mandarin. Ben laughs and laughs at it, and I giggle at Ben's laughter over only he knows what. The Parkview does have a video lending service (like our own personal Blockbuster!) with a small selection of DVD's you can borrow for free. We are working our way through them. In Hong Kong they have this lovely thing called a VCD, a Video Compact Disk, which you can buy for about 1/8th the cost of a DVD. This most likely means they are illegal copies of the movies, but hard to pass up a copy of "Ocean's Twelve" for $4 US, which is cheaper than a rental at Blockbuster back home. We have gone out to see one movie in the cinema here, which was the opening of Star Wars Episode Three during my recent illness. We are planning to see The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which opened here this week, despite the bad reviews. I love everything by Douglas Adams and his Hitchhiker's Trilogy (a collection of four books) is on my top three favorite books of all time (the other two being F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and A Painted House by John Grisham). I hope the movie is palatable and at least makes us laugh! The cool thing about cinemas here is that you book your actual seat when you buy your ticket. So you can come in after the previews and be guaranteed your eighth row, center seat.

7. So are the toilets really weird there and have you used them? (The second most popular question).

Are toilets really that intriguing? I guess since our various stomach ailments have been a common theme each week, maybe they are! We have never had a problem locating what we would call a normal toilet that you are expected to sit on to do your business. However, we have seen many of the famous "squat" toilets. In Japan I remember being amazed that only the wheelchair accessible stall had a "western" toilet. I always used one of the accessible toilets since I had a stroller, and they were the only stalls large enough to accommodate one. Even at Tokyo Disneyland each restroom generally had a single western toilet and a row of squat toilets. I was always able to bypass the line of waiting women and just walk into the western toilet stall, leaving the Japanese ladies to wait for a turn with a squat one. To be honest, I have never tried to use one, yet. We're planning on visiting some of the outlying, non-touristy areas and I may have to change that statement before we come home. But I do find it interesting that the most common brand of squat toilets here is "American Standard", which makes me giggle since I've never once seen one in America to be able to claim they are the "standard"! I did find an interesting letter to the editor in the South China Morning Post this week that you may find interesting:

Regarding the letter "Toilet-survey lesson" on May 28, I beg to differ with Nalini Daswani on her assumption that more people will be induced to wash their hands if western toilet seats are provided in public latrines. The government could take measures to create more awareness among the young and old. It is important to squat rather than use the western toilet seat. Squatting on an oriental-style toilet to relieve oneself is much more effective and conducive to health than sitting and straining on a western toilet seat. Squatting creates the right amount of pressure on the intestines for fast bowel movement. In the last century, the western toilet seat has turned out to be an urban misadventure. It is only recommended for the physically handicapped and the ailing. Signed, Dayal N. Harjani, Tsim Sha Tsui.

Call me ailing then, since I don't mind using a western toilet, and have noticed no obvious negative results!

Final thoughts for this week...

We are just about caught up with all we have to do. Thank you for the outpouring of concern over our recent illnesses. I think part of it is that Nathan is in school here, and all little kids have germs no matter how much you scrub their little hands and faces. We all were sick when Nathan started school in the U.S. and we were exposed to all those germies that we hadn't been around since we were in Kindergarten ourselves. I think we've been incredibly blessed that Benjamin, the single one of us who we most have to worry about if he gets sick, has been completely healthy since we arrived here in Hong Kong. So Someone is watching out for us, don't you think?

This month is going to be an incredible one and you guys are so lucky to be a part of it! Today we are hosting some Marines and Sailors for dinner (hopefully they won't object to my cooking) who are in town on the USS Nimitz (the largest aircraft carrier in the world!). Next week, Nathan goes on his very first field trip (to the science museum) and he gets to bring a special guest with him... his dad! Next weekend we get a sneak peak at Hong Kong Disneyland. In two weeks Mike and I celebrate our ninth wedding anniversary, and in three weeks we get to celebrate a huge milestone: having a TWO YEAR OLD in the family as Benjamin has his birthday! No, we aren't planning a huge birthday bash like last year's literal "Circus", but we will do something special as a family. A great friend of ours Robbi Rustuen will be arriving this month for a couple of months to work on Disneyland and get dragged around with us on some adventures if she ever gets a day off, and we are planning on making our first trip into China to celebrate the Fourth of July in a county that is anything but "the land of the free". And especially for those of you who can't get enough of our kids smiling faces, we are in the middle of creating a brand-spanking-new website, since our little freebie one from Earthlink is getting overloaded. The new one is going to be really exciting, let's just say it will be out of this world! In the meantime, you can take a last glance at this one.

Happy traveling!

Heather, Michael, Nathan, and Benjamin Chase

Ben is a model of stillness, sleeping on the playground at the Peak...	While Nathan won't sit still for anything, not while there are places to run and friends to make!
The View from Victoria Peak (where we FINALLY went after two months here in Hong Kong).
A "Squat" toilet	A "unique" western style toilet