Hong Kong Brother

ARCHIVE: Home | News | Ramblings | --------------------- | Back to MAIN SITE

Each month I will keep a running list of news items, including info on my schedule, etc. It's in order from LATEST entry at the top on down to the OLDEST entry at the bottom. I can't promise how often I'll add things, but I'll try as often as I can.

Here are the "News" archives, feel free to browse them for some interesting tidbits:

April/May 2002 Archive	October 2002 Archive
June 2002 Archive	November 2002 Archive
July 2002 Archive	December 2002 Archive
August/September 2002 Archive
=============================================
January 2003 Archive	June 2003 Archive
February 2003 Archive	July/August 2003 Archive
March 2003 Archive	Sept/October/Nov 2003 Archive
April 2003 Archive	December 2003 Archive
May 2003 Archive
=============================================
January 2004 Archive	June/July 2004 Archive
February/March 2004 Archive	August 2004 Archive
April 2004 Archive	September 2004 Archive
May 2004 Archive

It's morning here, but I'm up early today trying to get moving and out into the world that awaits...

Sara Frey
My young cousin Sara (daughter of my Aunt Judy and Uncle Mike) is in the hospital with more health problems. When the e-mail had been sent to me they had already given her 3 pints of blood, and weren't sure what was happening except that it is life-threatening -- we're very concerned. It is possibly a bleeding ulcer or maybe complications from the stomach surgery she had a while back. Anyway, I'm pretty worried -- her health has been up-and-down for a long time but nothing this serious.

Benjamin Hayes
The news about Ben just gets more and more disheartening. His mom Michele e-mailed me to say that the results of his MRI (brain scan) show that he suffers from cerebral atrophy, which means that his brain is not developing, and maybe never will.

Ben will be 1-year-old next week, December 28. But his first year has been full of surgery and horrible discomfort for this little guy. He was actually not supposed to arrive until March 8th, so you can see that he decided to come along a little too soon, and it's just made things so rough for him and his parents, Chris and Michele.

But I don't think any of us expected to hear such sad news as this. I am waiting to hear more details from them, and hope to share that later, but right now they are just trying to come to grips with this and to figure out what it means for Ben's future. I don't mind asking you again and again to please PRAY for Ben and his parents, and his older brother Peter (who is my godson).

Madelyne
Okay, I can't resist it, here's another photo of my niece, Madelyne, and one of my parents:

This one is titled: "I'm not slobbering,
my giraffe is sweating"...

Dad and Mom

Alright, so I'm off today to Shatin to help out at the Christmas Carnival that is being put on by the Shatin CP Church along with about, oh, I think it's 7 or 8 other churches. Not sure.

THEN I'm off down to the Gold Coast to help some folks with a computer problem they have -- or hopefully to help them, we'll see if it's as easy to fix as I think.

My friend Corinna e-mailed again today to say that the doctor had said her mother's cornea "was thick enough to resist the germs -- her chances of going blind are low." So, I'm still not totally sure what's going on, but it sounds like it's not as bad as it could be. She also asks us to pray that her mother (who is not a Christian, I believe) can recover and come to our Xi Lin CP Church Christmas worship.

I also had a chance to see some photos from my brother-in-law, Bob, of my niece, Madelyne:

I told you she was cute but you
didn't believe me, did you?
(can you say "jowls"?!?)

Here's Madelyne with her mom
(my younger sister, Lisa)

And here she is with old St. Nick
(I'm not sure how they got her to the
North Pole, but whatever)...

Little Madie (as she is sometimes called) hasn't had the immense pleasure of meeting her Uncle Glenn yet (yours truly), but hopefully that won't ruin her ability to relax and have fun this First Christmas...

I don't have that many clothes. I really don't. And as of today, I have even LESS.

I wore my favorite pants today, but they are no more. Needless to say the first thing that ran through my mind was, "Okay, did I do the splits at any time today -- which would have revealed to the world my unmentionables?!?" I hope not. I mean, I don't remember winning the lottery or finding a $100 bill or anything like that today (i.e.--things that would normally make me do the splits in a spontaneous expression of unbridled joy). So I figure I'm probably cool.

But still, that's the end of these pants. And that means I have one less pair of pants to deal with. And that means, well, it doesn't mean too much, in that I'll get by with what I've got, actually. But I hate it, I really do. My favorites, you know?

I heard today from Pastor William Yeung of Xi Lin CP Church (that I attend on Sundays). I told you that we had a special singing group this past Sunday, and we also had a guest speaker -- it was the so-called "Gospel Sunday Service." William says there were about 90 in attendance, and that two of the new-comers became believers -- that's really pretty incredible. Then, in the afternoon, they had a huge Christmas party/dinner/meeting for the elderly of the church at a restaurant across the street, with about 100 in attendance (mostly guests from the local housing estates) -- and three of those folks raised their hands to indicate a desire to become Christians. Now, I know there are some who come to this website who are totally NOT into Jesus, if that's you then just skip to the next paragraph. But for those of you who are followers of Christ, PLEASE pray for these new believers, and just as much pray for the continued work of Xi Lin Church. Good things are happening here!

I also heard from my friend Corinna (from Xi Lin Church) today, and she said her mother's eye "has been attacked by germs and she's in the hospital." That's all she said, just one sentence in her message, but Corinna wouldn't ask for prayer if it wasn't something rather serious, so please pray for Corinna's mom, if you're the praying type.

I went with some other teachers to a textbook distributor today so we could pick out some books to buy. It was mostly an "English book" buying sortie, and I'm glad to say it was "Mission Accomplished"... Yam Tan (i.e.--"Gill" -- the head English teacher of the school) chose over 150 books in about 2 hours' time, maybe a world record considering she actually CHOSE the books (as opposed to just taking a big box on the floor and raking her arm across the shelf like I would have done). It was B-O-R-I-N-G! But I did get to find some good books that I will definitely use at school this spring.

Before we went to the book place (in Fo Tan), we went to Tsuen Wan for lunch, and tried a little restaurant near the MTR station. It ROCKED, and I told Flora (who had never been there but picked it because she catches a bus in front of there every day) that it was the PERFECT lunch. We'd been debating the "lunch" issue all week, because since we were going out for lunch (and not eating at school) I wanted to splurge and get something great, while the others just wanted "fast"... In the end we were all satisfied, the food was amazing, and the atmosphere, while austere, was very urbane and cozy. The waitress even had a Santa hat with stars that lit up --she was very cosmopolitan and hip, I thought. Not what I normally expect in local shops, for whatever reason.

After the meal I was sort of whining about how I can never go to places like that, and Flora and I almost got into a little argument, because she was trying to convince me, "Oh, there are LOTS of great places like that all over here! You should just go!" She thought I was saying, "There aren't many places like that one!" when I was REALLY saying, "Even if I had a map to every cool place in HK, it wouldn't do me any good." I was trying to remind her that I don't SPEAK Chinese, I don't READ Chinese -- and today's restaurant excepted, usually the staff at these local restaurants don't speak so much English, and even if they DO, they don't have English menus. So what...? Am I gonna say, "Hello, I know you have a restaurant full of customers, but I'm new here so would you mind taking 5 minutes and tell me what food you have? Not only the appetizers but every item on the menu... And also I need to know what drinks you have, and if you have a set meal, and if so then please tell me all the options on that...."?!?

So, in FACT, because I'm "alone" here in HK, many of the coolest "local" restaurants are not options for me, at least that's what I feel. Eventually she caught the idea, and I could almost see the light go on over her head as she realized my situation, and that -- despite everyone thinking, "Glenn, you should just go out to restaurants more!" -- it's not as easy as it sounds in real life. She said, "OOOoooooh, yeah! I see what you mean!" And she tried for several moments, while thinking out loud, to come up with a solution.

Finally, she proudly announced she had the ultimate idea -- the ultimate solution: "Glenn, you need to find someone to go with you all the time"...

I have almost no "news" to share tonight, but I'm sitting here working on the website and thought I'd just squirt a few notes your way.

The weather -- God bless it -- has turned warm and wet again, I only wore a t-shirt to school today. So I hope you don't get bored of hearing me say it, because I will say it over and over and over and over -- I HATE HONG KONG WEATHER.

On Saturday I went with a friend to a big "careers and education" show in Kowloon Bay -- he imports English books from Australia for sale here in HK and I went along to help out at his booth since he expected about 20,000 people at this expo. In fact, this year's expo was in a new venue -- the last few years (when my friend has gone before) the expo was in the big center in Wanchai, and packed wall-to-wall with people. This year, in Kowloon Bay, in a hard-to-get-to center, it was a ghost town. I'm not joking, when I left at 2:30pm I feel fairly certain that the exhibitors outnumbered the visitors about 2 to 1. Total disaster for him, I'm sorry to say.

BUT, a good thing is that I signed up for a Cantonese course there. It is probably a waste, so I'm trying to not get my hopes up that it will really help me. But the class starts in January, only 1.5 hours a week. So I'll let you know if it's worth it or if I just blew my hardly-earned money.

Yesterday at church we had a special music group come, they are a vocal group called Frontline. I thought they were pretty cool, it was right up my alley, as we say. Of course it just made me think the whole time of how I miss playing so terribly... I did try to talk to them some after church, and they will hopefully turn me on to some ways I can connect with other professional musicians -- they said they have some friends, etc., etc. So we'll see how it all works out with that. Whatever God has in mind is fine with me.

Frontline is a member of the organization called "ACM" -- which is the "Hong Kong Association of Christian Music Ministries" that I talked about in my news entry from the 13th of December (below). You'd think they'd be called "HKACMM" but whatever, they only took the three letters -- maybe they had a "three-letter discount" at the t-shirt shop when they first went to get their t-shirts, so they said, "Heck, let's just be 'ACM' and save $50"...? Anyway, so I was anxious to ask them (Frontline) about ACM (since I had just been to the big CD sale) and also to ask about the big concerts ACM is putting on at the end of December. They are doing two big shows at Ko Shan ("Tall Hill Theater") near Hung Hom (downtown) on the 30th and 31st -- lots of groups playing, it should be fantastic. I guess Frontline is playing the second night which looks to be the main event of this "double header" of concerts. Today at school I had the teachers help me learn how to say the name of the place in Chinese so if I decide to go I can tell the cab driver where I'm going.

Surprise, Surprise
Have you ever gotten a surprise package? I mean one that you totally had NO IDEA was coming but then ((*POOF*)) it was there at your door?

My "family" back at Hillview CP Church in Louisville sent me a HUGE box of goodies that just arrived a few minutes ago. Man, I'm telling you, this thing is full of fudge (2 kinds!), cookies, candy, peanut brittle -- and to be honest I was so excited to get in here and tell everyone about it that I didn't even look at everything yet!

I will be eating on this stuff for WEEKS, and that's a GOOD thing, folks. They even sent some Oreo cookies! And chocolate covered cherries! And -- I have to sit down to even type this next one -- they even included a box of LITTLE DEBBIE SNACK CAKES!!!

You may think it's overboard to get so excited about a gift like this, but if so then it's because you've never gotten anything so filled with love, you dig?!? I mean it. I didn't CRY or anything when I opened it, but I can tell you I sure got a knot in my stomach (no, NOT from sugar overload!! -- from the EMOTION, dummy).

One hysterical thing is that my friend Elaine (who works at one of the department stores) wrote in the card, "I'd rather be in China than to be working in retail at Christmas time!" -- that REALLY cracked me up... And everyone wrote a little note and said "hey" -- and I mean it's such a simple thing, but it means more than any of you guys know.

I just do NOT deserve to have so many people looking out for me, holding my lifelines to home. Thank you, God -- and thank you, Dear Hearts and Loved Ones of Hillview!!!

Patricia Butler
Speaking of Hillview.... Patricia (Pastor Jim's wife) e-mailed me today! She has not been able to get down to their basement to get on the computer since her bypass surgery a few weeks ago, so I was SO relieved to finally hear from her. She even typed like her old self! (ha ha)

We had a few anxious days there, but I know we're all super-glad that she's getting back her health and able to get around more already.

Super Niece: Madelyne
My mom e-mailed me to say my niece is 25 inches long and weighs 14 lbs 12 oz. -- which puts her in the 75th percentile. Unfortunately, they don't have any kind of "cuteness" percentile, otherwise she'd knock the meter over, being so far up in the 99th percentile as she is in that category. On the good side, they don't have a "Gaseous Emissions" percentile, either, so we can still keep that part of her personality a secret for a few more years.

Actually, I just thought about how someday she might read that I wrote those words (since all of you are printing out my "news" for future generations, right?)... Sorry, Madelyne, old Uncle Glenn is just trying to make a joke at your infantile expense.

My mom said they will start feeding Madelyne cereal soon, and "if that goes okay she can start with green and yellow things." I'm wondering why they can't be more specific than that in naming the exact green and yellow things she should eat? But I'm sure that will all come out later... (and I don't mean that to be a "diaper" joke, either)...

I'll Gladly Pay You Tuesday For Those CD's Today...
Last night my friend Sam Lau and I went to a big Christian CD sale down in Kowloon. It was at the Hong Kong Association of Christian Music Ministries, and we heard about it from some posters that they had stuck up at our school.

Okay, so MY reason for wanting to go was twofold:
1) The poster said they had a CD by Fung Ling, who is a GREAT Cantonese singing duo from San Francisco, one of whom attends the Chinese CP church there -- I have their first full-length CD but had never found their second EP here in HK, and seeing it on the poster made me think I needed to go get it. These girls are GREAT, I've sometimes joked that they are like the "Christian Twins" (Twins is a famous female pop duo in HK) -- except they are actually better singers than Twins...
2) The second reason was that the name of the organization intrigued me, meaning I had never heard of them but suddenly I thought, "Gee, I ought to go check this out to see what's up."

Well, first of all, it took FOREVER to get there. The place is in this totally tore up industrial section, and we had to walk for like 15 minutes or more just to GET there. Secondly, once we found the building (an old industrial site), we got on the elevator to go to the 8th floor (where their offices were) -- but the elevator only goes to the 7th floor. Hmmm....

So we went to the 7th floor and took the stairs up to the 8th, like the fat man told us to (really, there WAS a fat man)... But when we got up there, they acted like we were CRAZY, "Oh, no! The CD sale is downstairs, second floor!"

Alright, sorry, so down we go, but THEN we are like, "Okay, do they mean the second floor as in 'the second floor up' or do they mean the second floor as in 'floor number 2' which is actually the THIRD floor up?!?" We debated that for a few minutes, then took our chances and went to floor number 2 -- JACKPOT!

Well, it wasn't much of an affair. The sale was being held in one of their rehearsal rooms, with amps and keyboards and drums and tore up stuff all over the place (it was VERY junky and trash-filled). But still, they had a few CDs and books of sheet music and it was cool to look through and get a one-stop sense of what people in HK are doing. I ended up buying 5 or 6 CDs and two books, all of which I knew I wanted from the web.

Here's what I wanted to tell, though: When we went to pay, it took like half an hour!! Seriously. There were only 7 customers in this place, and all 7 of us were in line trying to pay for 30 minutes. The problem was that the guy in front was buying 40 CDs or something crazy like that, and then he wanted to pay for "these 4 CDs with this credit card, and the next 7 with this other credit card, and these 5 with this check, and then I want to pay cash and get two receipts for this CD" and on and on and on and on, and he seemed to be changing his mind every 2 minutes about which card he wanted to use to pay for these 3 CDs, and which book goes with which disc, ad infinitum. And I don't even speak Chinese but I knew the deal, right?

It's because I used to work for a book publisher, and we'd have these big sales JUST LIKE THIS ONE I went to last night, where it was all junky and stuff, but we'd set up and sell our stuff, and there's ALWAYS the guy who buys $1000 worth of stuff, and in a business sense you're like, "Great! What a big purchase!" -- but as the person working there, you're like, "For goodness sakes, get this guy out of here!" because they ALWAYS have one problem for every dollar they are spending... "Can you put this CD in a small-sized bag, and put these 2 CDs in a larger bag, and, oh, let's see, that small bag has writing on it, so never mind that, in that case put them in a bigger bag with no writing, and put this one in a medium-sized box, okay, and I want to take this CD with me but I need these 6 CDs to be shipped to my school, but don't charge the school, because half of that shipment I'll pay for in cash now and then for the other 3 I'll give you my credit card since they're not for me, but don't put me on your mailing list!, and then I want you to open the shrink wrap for me on the two stacks that I'm paying cash for, so I can listen to them now, but leave the ones costing more than $12 each because those are for my wife and she likes the shrink wrap..." AAAAAaaaarrrrrgh!!!!

So I had a MAJOR flashback to my old job last night, that's all I'm trying to say. And I miss that place, I really, really, REALLY do -- but I'm also glad to be HERE, if you catch my drift...

It's Christmas time in the Glenn Watts Household. Yes, that's right folks, I have now officially decorated for Christmas for the first time.

Last year I just never got around to it, other than posting all the cool Christmas cards I got from back home (hint, hint). But other than THAT, I just never had the heart, somehow, to actually "decorate" or anything.

But this year's different -- different, I say! -- and basically I had this string of lights from a song thing I did with my P1 (first grade) students at school (see entry of 9th of December for "Oh, Christmas Tree" explanation) -- so I brought those lights home yesterday and added a few bread tie thingies to make them hang around the window, and voila!! I've got 40 blinking ways to celebrate the holidays this year. Ain't that special?

Actually, it looks pretty sad, but if I turn out the lights it still has that "Christmas feel" to it, you know? Stick on an old Perry Como Christmas CD and you'd never know the difference... Maybe...

Ben Hayes
I got word from Michele Hayes about my little buddy, Ben, who will be going on 1-year-old real soon here. It seems he has a problem with the nerves in his eyes, and now they are afraid that if they can't get the pressure off those nerves, he could lose his sight. Now, he already wears glasses -- remember, we're talking an 11-month-old kid with glasses -- but I don't think any of us thought he would actually be in danger of losing his sight all together.

If you are a praying-type person, I sure with you'd pray for Ben some. I swear, this little guy just goes from problem to problem, his whole life has been a struggle.

And I also want to remind you to pray for Michele, his mom. I just think she, of all people, has been on a total roller-coaster this past year -- I just pray that things would settle down, that Ben would have some time where the doctors don't have any more bad news, where he can just get bigger and stronger -- and that Michele could have a little peace. She's a strong girl -- she probably didn't even KNOW she was this strong! -- but it'd be so cool for her to have some REST... So please pray for that.

By the power vested in me: Bo and Alicia Fawbush
My friends Bo and Alicia got married a while back, I guess it was the 30th of November (I've been told), I haven't written about that yet, but it's so cool to know they didn't get stage fright and choke or anything. Not that they would, but you know what I mean... The kids today, with their long hair and their crazy "rock-n-roll" music and "boogie woogie" dances -- you never know WHAT's gonna happen...

Bo sent me an e-mail and told me how he has been needing a new guitar (he's an AWESOME guitarist), and so he'd saved up about $800 for a new one, but gosh-diggity-dooley, he just had this inner voice telling him, "Get out.... GET..... OOOOUUUUTTT!!!" (oh, no, wait, wrong inner voice)... Uh, the inner voice HE heard was saying, "Bo, wait on the guitar" -- and then, lo and behold, the gift that Alicia got him for their wedding was --- you guessed it --- a new guitar!!!

(Actually, I guess I shouldn't have told you the amount of money he had saved up, since now all his long-lost relatives -- who I'm SURE read this website -- will go asking him for money for their "operations" and stuff... Sorry, Bo).

Okay, okay. I know it's been like two weeks or something stupid like that since I even updated the news. Sorry to those of you who actually check this once in a while. I've just been crazy busy. Well, and then the five minutes it takes to convert things over for a new month of news (basically moving "November" to the "archive" folder) just seemed so HARD for some reason -- the doctors tell me the medical term is "Lazibus Buttibus." So now I've got THAT going for me, too!

Anyway, prepare yourself for the "news-catchin'-up" spewage of verbiage which is about to hit your CRT...

The Weather
There are two subjects that almost everyone talks about and/or asks about in their e-mails to me. One is "girls" -- as in, "So, Glenn, haven't you met yourself a cutie over there yet?"

The other subject is the weather, and in fact it wins out over the "girl" question, statistically speaking. So what about the weather? Well, while many of you guys in the U.S. have been blanketed by snow and ice this past week, I was sweating like a pig. Take my last class on Friday, for instance. It's a P1 (first grade) class, just as cute as they can be, TRUST ME, and I started by giving them a quiz on phonics where I say the word and then they have to circle the correct choice of two letters, like if I say, "hat" then they have to choose between an "h" and a "k" and circle the right one. So I give the quiz, right? And then there's still like 15 minutes left, maybe 20 minutes, so I do this thing with the song "Oh, Christmas Tree" -- except I had to rewrite the words so they could at least TRY to figure it out. Okay, so we get into it, and I had made a CD of the music, a couple of versions getting faster and faster so that as they learned it we could speed it up. I also made up these actions to go with it. Good enough, right? So THEN I had the idea that it would be really funny to have one kid come out and stand on a chair and we dress him up like a Christmas tree -- hang lights and tinsel on him and he holds up a star over his head and all that jazz -- you can picture that, right? Well, I'm telling you all this because it's pretty funny, I wish you could've seen some of these guys in some of the classes -- but also I'm telling it because I want you to understand that in this class on Friday, my last class, I WAS SWEATING LIKE SOMEONE WHO WAS DOING AN AEROBIC WORKOUT. Water was LITERALLY dripping off me like I'd just jumped out of the swimming pool -- it was NUTS.

The point is, it's been HOT the last few weeks, hot and WET. Oh, yes, it's December here, too! But HK weather is respecter of no seasons. The humidity has been, it seems, somewhere around 150%, if that is scientifically possible. I had washed some clothes Thursday a week ago and on Sunday (approx. 10 days later) they were still WET! And starting to get mildewy (however you spell that).

Yeah, so on Friday night, I run the air conditioner ALL NIGHT, and I was still sweating when I woke up on Saturday morning. It's been that warm here.

BUT (and everyone I know has a big "but"), on Sunday, it suddenly turned FREEZING. Well, not really "freezing" but the HK version of freezing. So I went from Saturday running the a/c all day, to tonight (Monday) -- and I've actually broken out the heater for the first time this season.

Teaching
So one cool thing is that now my teaching has "finished" for this term. Really, can you believe it? In terms of terms, I'm halfway through my term (3 years' contract = total of 6 school terms, and I've just finished my third). Suddenly three years doesn't seem all that long, you know?

But anyway, so the fact is that my teaching will pretty much come to a stop from now until late January or early February. That's not quite so cool as it sounds, I still have MUCH to do, and all this time -- since everyone knows I'm "free" from normal duties -- they will all be coming to me for help with everything from drawing pictures for their lessons to taking photos to making appearances in front of parents when appropriate (I'm the token white guy, for sure). Sometimes in these breaks from teaching I end up busier than ever. So it's not all fun and games but it's still pretty cool and it's VERY nice to have a break from the hectic pace I've kept up the last few weeks.

Music
I've basically finished the music for our Christmas kids -- it's about 15 kids who will perform 5 Christmas songs in English at the Xi Lin CP Church (the church I attend on Sundays) on the 22nd of December. That is a HUGE relief, I spent so much time on those tunes, like always -- though I will admit I'm really happy with the way it turned out. The performance should be a good one, too, the teacher who has been training them has worked them really hard, rehearsing basically every single day. The songs are a medley of Joy To The World and Jingle Bells, then O Come, O Come Emmanuel (try teaching kids that one when they don't speak English!), then Away In A Manger, then We Wish You A Merry Christmas. I'm sure the older folks at Xi Lin are really going to get a kick out of these kids.

What else? Oh, and I will be working on the theme song for some local book publishers soon. They are producing a series of books with CD, and they need a theme song to open up the CD every time. If you have any lyric ideas in this department, please e-mail me, I'm looking for something like, "Oh, yeah, me not want be bad speaky Engrish! Me study velly velly hard!" -- something like that, fun and catchy, you know the drill. Something in "C" -- "a bouncy C"...

I'll ALSO be spending my next couple of months, God willing, working on two new CD projects that I have in mind -- one of Cantonese Christian songs (all instrumental), and then another one is a project I've been trying to get off the ground with my friend Rob Edwards for about 3 years, and it may be instrumental or we may have a vocalist, not sure yet. The Cantonese CD is my FIRST priority, I've set a February 1st "deadline" for myself, and that may be WAY too ambitious, but then again, if I don't "finish" then I may just stop where I am then and say, "Oh, yeah, that's all I meant to do!" and hopefully no one will notice that it's only, like, 4 songs. The one with Rob is still in the embryonic stage, despite the years of us talking about it. We had some jam sessions back in 2000 and 2001, and I've got the recordings of those jams here with me in HK, and then of course I have several new ideas -- as of tonight there are about 6 rough ideas of songs in the "Rob songs" folder on my computer. So when my friends Chris and Dana come to visit in February I hope I can give them a CD to take back to Rob so he can begin listening and developing his parts on drums and percussion.

Also, we are looking for a name for this project (the one with me and Rob), if you have any cool ideas, PLEASE send them to me at

. I'm looking for something cool, something that sounds tough but at the same time introspective, if that makes sense. So, for instance, a name like "The Band of Hugely Muscular Guys" would be truthfully DESCRIPTIVE, yes -- but still it would be an example of NOT the direction I'm looking for... Another bad example would be, for instance, "The Christ Punchers" or something... That's NOT what I'm looking for. It sounds tough, but not "good" tough, see? But if you've got some cool/funny/interesting ideas which we end up using, I'd be happy to mention you forever in the liner notes of all our CDs, and you'd get a free copy of the discs, and even a t-shirt, if we ever have them... We'll be sure to mention you BY NAME in the VH-1 "Behind the Music" special ten years from now, and you can even be the president of our fan club if you promise not to stalk us.

(I'm being DEAD SERIOUS about this, by the way -- if you have band name ideas I want to hear them)...

Website Stuff
I think I should also say that despite not having updated the news until now, I have been working on the site in the "background" -- I've got several new "articles" that I hope I can finish soon and post, they're not quite ready yet, but almost. And there are several parts of this site that have not been finished since I started the whole thing 9 or 10 months ago -- that's stupid! So I'm going to spend the next few months and the Christmas holiday in particular trying to finally sort some of that stuff out, to add a few features and to actually get the school part of the site finished and "stable." Just wanted you to know I haven't been totally lazy in this department.

Some examples of "coming attractions": I have a page about our kids who entered the HK Speech Festival (with several funny photos), I have a little thing about my visit to the doctor last spring, I have something about "HK culture vs American culture" (kind of a "big picture" of what I've learned so far), and another thing about our students and the English names they choose. I also still want to add an "Ask Mistah Grenn!" section, so get your questions ready -- and then there's even MORE that I am working on that I won't mention for now.

Sunday Morning Musings
Now I don't want you to get the wrong idea from this, but I daydream quite a lot. I mean, I always have, I suppose, but especially here in HK, I go into a trance-like state when I'm sitting somewhere and don't know what's being said. I call it the "Cantonese Coma" -- and it is induced by too much Cantonese with no English translation. It's like, I can give a heroic effort of 3 or 4 minutes of trying to listen and discern what's being said by facial expressions and trying to catch the Chinese words I know, but after at least 5 minutes of no translation, I'm sorry, I'm gone. No offence, but I just can't hang for that long. So I go into this "coma" where my mind starts wandering all over the place. This especially happens at school, where I might go to lunch with other teachers, and can sometimes go for 30 minutes without anyone speaking to me. It's not "bad" -- (meaning I don't get mad about it or anything) -- it's just that it is "catatonic-state-of-daydreams" inducing... that's all I'm saying... And it is the story of my life here in HK...

Last Sunday (not yesterday, but last Sunday), I was thinking about a few things during church, and here's where I don't want you to misunderstand -- I was daydreaming in church, yes, but it's OKAY, it was a "non-translation" time so I feel perfectly justified in my wandering thoughts.

Okay, so I thought of a couple of things, and I'm arrogant enough to think you might like to think about them, too.

One is about Mary, as in "Mary, the mother of Jesus." Part of the Bible reading for that morning was about how the angel visited Mary, and told her about what was about to happen to her, and then how Joseph was going to drop her quietly "because he was a good man" and then on to the story of how Mary went to visit Elizabeth, and the exchange they had when they met and Elizabeth's child literally "leapt" in the womb. So I was just thinking about all that, and for some reason it occurred to me in a way that it never had before that Mary's reputation probably NEVER got over that experience.

It's like, do you think "virgin birth" was any more believable 2000 years ago? Well, okay, maybe -- I mean, we always imagine those rubes from the ancient world would fall for any smoke-and-mirrors tricks, right? And they were so darn superstitious, weren't they?!?... (cough)... So maybe, just MAYBE, the idea of a "virgin birth" wasn't so crazy back then, maybe they were more "open" to it possibly being true than most people are today -- but frankly, I think almost no one believed her. I sometimes wonder if even Joseph really believed her, or if he was just trying to comply with what the angel had told him, you know?

Mary, as an unmarried pregnant girl, definitely was the focus of gossip, don't you think? I mean, we even "talk" today about girls who get into "trouble" -- but can you imagine how it was back then? In that conservative, Jewish culture?!? "Oh, yeah, an angel visited you, Mary -- an ANGEL?!?! You're a nice girl, everyone says so. Just come clean and tell us who the guy was!"

So as I was thinking about that, like I say, I just realized that Mary probably spent the REST OF HER LIFE with those rumors. Not from those who really knew her -- Elizabeth didn't need to be convinced about Mary and the child she bore! But those on the outside, the nosey neighbors who never "got it" -- what would have ever shut them up about that? Don't you imagine that every time Mary and that kid of hers came up in the conversation someone would eventually mention "and you know Joseph wasn't his father" -- and then the "tsk, tsk, tsk" and the knowing glances as everyone pitied the poor, scandalous family and their amazing kid... And I thought about Mary at the cross, watching Jesus being mocked and killed -- her eldest son -- and I wondered if even then there were some who said to each other, "and you know Joseph wasn't his father"... ?

The other thing I was thinking about came from the sermon that morning. Something the pastor said made me think about the "What Would Jesus Do?" franchise -- and I hope you don't mind my calling it a "franchise" but that's what it seems to have become to me, much of the initial impact of the idea (or "movement," whatever) has been lost. Have you heard that there is a group in California that has started a "What Would Jesus Drive?" campaign? They are Christian environmentalists and they are trying to highlight the moral dimension of being a responsible steward by encouraging people to choose cars that are environmentally friendly -- which, by the news story I read, seems to basically mean "not an SUV."

Well, the pastor was talking about fasting, and something he said about how "fasting is also good for your body" made me think that I can't believe no one has started a "What Would Jesus Weigh?" campaign... sort of a Christian Weight Watchers thing, you know? Talk about trying to GUILT someone into not eating too much...

Really -- someone has definitely gone to great lengths to provide WWJD products to Christian consumers, why not branch out?!? Then I started thinking of other options they could explore:

WWJCW? -- What Would Jesus Clean With? -- ("no harmful chemicals in this bathroom cleanser")
WWJWOTV? -- What Would Jesus Watch On TV? -- (actually, I'm surprised they haven't used this one to promote "Touched By An Angel" or something)
WWJUAAM? -- Who Would Jesus Use As A Mechanic? -- ("Christian car repair!")

And there's more, I'm sure you can think of some yourself -- those are just the ones I thought of in that moment. I mean, it's totally stupid and in fact borders on flat-out blasphemy if you ask me, some of this commercialization. But then again, I come from a culture that has spawned "Testa-Mints" -- "the breath mint with a saving message!" -- so pretty much anything is possible these days.

Link
My friend Eric has sent me a GREAT link you ought to check out, it's for a site called Engrish.com and it is one of the funniest sites I've seen in a while. It has photos of bad English ("Engrish") from Japan and elsewhere. Be warned!! Some of the content's humor comes from the double entendre, so be sensitive to that -- maybe it's not for kids, I suppose, though they probably wouldn't get it anyway. But man, I'm telling you I just went back to look again for a few seconds and my stomach is still hurting just from GLANCING at a few of the examples.

It makes me think of the little blurb you can find on Rose Life Tea, a brand which is sold everywhere in Japan and I think I've seen it here in HK (though I don't think I've ever bought it here). It's not exactly "Engrish" technically speaking -- meaning it's not really bad or incorrect English... it's just kind of FUNNY English.

A rose is fragrant, alluring, and beautiful.
Just like a rose, this tea will bring color and beauty to your life.