I left Berlin and ended up in Hong Kong. There are twice as many people here than in Berlin, on less acreage. Still, Hong Kong has wonderful green assets that Berlin doesn’t have: real, prime, jungle. No clipped parks, well two or three, but real natural assets “country parks” no lawns, but subtropical natural hills with only a few signs, trails, but still lots of natural slopes of subtropical green. On average, two or three people die in these country parks every year, not because they couldn’t pay their cocaine dealer, but because they underestimated the heat, the mountainous terrain, the critters. And that less than 50km away from a Gucci store. Incredible. It’s a wonder, thanks to one or three British governors who were hikers and did the right thing to make a lasting impression.

If you ask me, if you have the fortune to come to political power these days, the most lasting legacy you can leave is protecting nature from men. You will be remembered in a hundred to thousand years, I bet the well-being of my one and only offspring on that. Nature needs a break from us, it’s the most pressing problem of the twenty-first century.

From reading the above, I bet you can guess that I love wearing Birkenstock sandals.

And that I am mad that they are planning to build a waste incinerator near my home and the largest country park of Hong Kong. The problem with this city and in general with this age and time is that money is regarded as the most powerful god.

There are no big money interests near us, so the cowards view it as free territory. They don’t build incinerators next to 70 storey office skycrapers where the waste is generated and the money is made, they build it next to Hong Kong largest country park. Cowards and money eaters in high places plan it, and complacent, lazy donkeys in small apartments eat it. You are all the same, if you ask me, unless you speak out as loud as you can. So do it.

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/no-to-shek-kwu-chau-incinerator

Little man has been my concern lately, he always is, but special efforts are called for when the time has come to find a suitable secondary school.

My parents had it much easier. They send me to the comprehensive school five minutes away at age five, where I spent the next thirteen years and managed to attain my German high-school diploma and entry into the world of university education. It had good teachers who 95% of the time loved their professions, model architecture with classrooms flooded with daylight from two sides emptying out to big halls, big playgrounds, one small and one big sports hall, library, and all sorts of dedicated rooms for explosive chemical experiments and arts splashings.

Funnily enough, it wasn’t well regarded at the time. Left-leaning teachers, parent involvement, poor kids having an equal chance, teachers full of ideals…

In Hong Kong, I am now confronted with schools that pay very close attention where the parents work. Can they pay the tuition fees for seven years to come? Can they tell other parents how hard it was to get into our school and which academic rigor we apply? Will this kid meet all the credentials to get into Harvard, Yale, MIT, whatever? We have a reputation to loose, fuck about the well-being of kids, we have a high-brow reputation to loose.

On one hand, I am caught in the rat race here in Hong Kong that demands you to get your kid into one of the prime schools, which will get him into prime colleges… etc, etc. On the other hand, I just read a forum post of a mum about bullying at one of the above schools, and I know that everyone just cooks with water, and I know that parents, in the end, not schools educate children.

I want little man to be happy, confident, and loving life.

After a long hard search on the internet I found a secondary school that I feel is right. It’s not well known, it’s relatively cheap, it’s located in the boonies, but still I hope that little man will be accepted there.

It’s mum intuition that teachers there care about children, that they will have their happiness in mind, support them in meeting challenges, and love teaching them.

Yes of course, it’s not the only school I will send applications to, but it’s one of the few that truly deserves to teach little man. Press your thumbs please.

If you can’t buy it, make your own, I thought. I already bake my own sourdough bread, why not have a go at Quark?

I came across this old instruction:
1) milk a cow
2) let the milk sit in a covered bowl in a warm place
3) when it has turned into soured milk and set after a day or two
4) put it into muslin cloth and hang it over a bowl, separating cheese from whey
5) next day you have quark

I don’t have a cow, I only have a supermarket with milk imported from California, Australia, and other various places. So I went onto the internet, and other German expatriates told me that your average bought milk will not turn sour these days, because bacteria (good and bad) are none existent in homogenized, pasteurized, sterilized from udder to tetra-paked milk.

The only choice you have is to buy this non-bacteria milk and add lactic acid bacteria back into it. That’s what I did.

On the left, Californian milk which is relatively cheap at roughly US$2 per liter, and Australian milk on the right which costs more than US$4 per liter but actually tastes like fresh milk. Yep, milk products are expensive in Hong Kong, it’s soya territory.

I put a heaped tablespoon of high quality sour cream into each bowl (US$3.40 per tiny pot). Sour cream is cream fermented with lactic acid bacteria, exactly the bugs needed for turning sterile supermarket milk into soured milk. You can also try buttermilk.

The process for making quark is similar to making your own yoghurt, only the bacteria have a different name.

After a night and half day of sitting in a warm spot (blood temperature is ideal: oven heated to lowest setting and the cooled down a bit, place one foot away from central heating, etc.), the milk has soured and set, and the cream (from the tablespoon of sour cream) has set on top. The Australian milk set better than than the cheaper California milk, but both tasted the same.

Scrape away the cream (or leave it in for extra goodness) and put the soured milk into a double layer of muslin cloth or a squeaky clean kitchen towel, and hang it over a bowl (or measuring can, if your window hook is fairly high up like mine… yes, it took me a while to find a good spot)

After a day or two you will have quark or cream cheese or whatever you want to call it (with no E numbers nor xanthan gum). The fat content will be iffy, but wholesome.

I originally intended to bake cheesecake with it, but it didn’t last long enough. Half of it I ate straight out of the bowl with a spoon, some of it I served to my friends as a spread on my self-made sourdough bread, the rest little man ate for breakfast with jam mixed in.

It was better than any quark I have ever bought in Germany.

That’s the beauty of living thousand of kilometers away from your childhood home. You are forced to make the things you miss on your own and in this day and age of supermarket, indefinite shelf-life, E-numbers, genetically modified food stuffs, it will taste much better than what you can buy in a supermarket in your home country.

And all of that because we got half-nekkid, felt sexy and special while pressing the time-delayed shutter of our cameras, and then visited each other at our blogs, and said “woohoo!!!” and meant it.

Thank you Os.

Below is my adieu, my part of Osbasso’s “Bye bye HNT with a bang”. I am posting it early, because the holidays, travel, and general craziness is coming to a head already. Bookmark http://osbasso.blogspot.com/ for keeping up for full frontal half-nekkidness with a happy end.

P.S: Click on the HNT link. I just did and it put me in the mood. So many years of sexiness.

I have been in Hong Kong for roughly 15 years and I am ashamed to say that I discovered its true beauty only recently. Hong Kong is renowned for it’s skyline of skyscrapers. But if you really want to see it you need to tie your sneakers, put your sun hat on, pack lots of water, and head for one of its fabulous country parks.

Since we came back from Dubai, we live right at the edge of one, and I am truly thankful that destiny put us here. Right from my doorstep I can head up the mountain, and see subtropical wilderness. It bowls me over every time.

Little man is less smitten. Hiking 45 degrees up a mountain, sweating a lot, and only with your mother as company …

The first time it’s fun, because you bathe in a rock pool. The second time is fun, because you see a cobra. The third time is fun for your mummy because lots of shrubs are in bloom. The fourth time you run into half a dozen spider webs, and mosquitoes are out in force. The fifth time takes most of the day and is much too long. The sixth time you go on strike.

So I was more than happy when I discovered a web site that told of World War II tunnels the British had built to defend their Hong Kong colony from the invading Japanese. I knew right away that this would get little man to head out with me without any complaints, and that it would be fun for us both. A wonderful adventure.

We put our hats on, loaded up on water and snacks, calibrated mum’s gps system on a parking lot near Shing Mun reservoir, and took the 12 year old Volvo for a ride. You can get there with public transport too… aah, the beauty of Hong Kong.

When we arrived, we discovered that Shing Mun country park is a much more frequented area than the country park near us. Lots of people were hauling barbeque supplies along the road to get ready for a day of family fun, and there was some sort of hiking race going on. But I bet it’s deserted on a weekday.

We went along the Maclehose trail past barbecue areas, and although I had packed a map, and read all sorts of websites, I was worried that we would miss the entrance to the tunnels.

In the end it was very easy to find them, because there are warning signs on the path below, discouraging you from entering them :).

Little man and I left the hiking path and scrambled up a hill, despite a group of hikers behind us mumbling “The sign clearly says it’s dangerous”. Little man was on fire and the kid in me was too.

We scrambled up the hill and were met by a giant electricity pylon, concrete tunnels exposed by erosion, and a large group of people with a guide ready to dive into World War II adventure.

It was hard to stop little man from diving head first into the ventilation chimney, but I convinced him to follow the group of hikers before us to a more accessible entrance.

When mama finally found the two flashlights she had in her backpack, the other people were gone and the adventure was ours alone.

The tunnels at Shing Mun are part of the “Gin Drinker’s Line” (gosh, I love the Britsh even if I am German myself), a defense line across the Kowloon peninsula that was designed to hold up the Japanese from conquering Hong Kong.

In the end, it didn’t do much to hold up the Japanese, because it wasn’t manned by enough British soldiers, but if you scramble along the tunnels today, you can certainly see why they choose this line. At the outlooks, it has very good views of the lands below.

I think we walked all the tunnels that are still accessible. All of them are quite low because of silt that was washed into them, which gave me back pain but was no problem for short little man. At no point I felt that it was a dangerous adventure, although I would not do it after heavy rains.

I am very happy that something like this still exists in Hong Kong. When you are here, please check it out, I guarantee it will be a fun day out.

The Majestic Plastic Bag from Heal the Bay on Vimeo.

Unfortunately, on my side of the Pacific Ocean people behave just the same, if not worse. A few weeks ago, I discovered the most beautiful beach inside a protected country park. It looked like paradise from the trail above. Then I went down to the coast line and there was plastic trash everywhere. On the beach, in the bushes behind it, hanging from trees. Plastic bottles, styrofoam lunch boxes, toys, bags, and lots of shoes. All dumped into the sea one way or the other and then spit out again by wind and waves.

One of the commentators on youtube asked why the Pacific garbage patch can’t be seen from satellites. I read because the plastic is not necessarily swimming on the surface, but just below it. If you go swimming on one of Hong Kong beaches it’s just the same. It looks ok from the shore, but then you head out, and garbage bags touch your legs and wind themselves around your arms.

The big beaches here are cleaned everyday, but the cleaners find it hard to pick up tiny pieces of plastic and styrofoam. So there is this constant colorful line of miniscule plastic bits on the beach that marks high tide.

A year ago, I wrote an email to the biggest supermarket in Hong Kong commending them on the introduction of a HK$ 0.50 fee for plastic bags at the checkout, but also asking them to get rid of the excessive plastic trays and cling wrap they use for fruits and vegetables. Why does a single fruit need to be put on a plastic tray and wrapped in cling wrap?

I got a call back from them, and I got the feeling that the girl did not like her job, although I was very friendly. She told me that she would send my email further up the command line. Don’t think that I had ever any hopes. Writing emails has as much impact as cleaning beaches.

I have decided to buy more of my veggies and fruit in wet markets, where the produce is not disguised in cling wrap and where I can bring my own bags. I have also decided to leave excessive plastic wrappings right where I bought it, in the bins behind the checkout counters.

And I feel pretty helpless to be honest, and a bit angry, like that teacup yorkshire.

When you grow up you are confronted with limits, rules, morals, and consequences. That sounds very drastic, but most of the time you don’t realize it.

That’s just the way it is. When you live with your parents, in your country, go to the school or church you are sent to, there are values that are there and that you don’t even view as changeable.

What has always interested me is why people cross lines that they grew up with. That’s revolution, isn’t it? Revolution has that positive connotation, but in my opinion it can go either way. What’s better kept the way it is, what is better changed. We only know in retrospective, sometimes not even then.

Did you cross moral lines that your parents would have never crossed? Why? I bet you thought of yourself first. Thinking that you have to go that way just to survive.

What has always fascinated me is how people react in life-or-death situations. Do you duck and hide, give up, try to play hero, or do you have the sense to do the right thing. It’s instinctive and most of us, luckily, will never experience it.

I am fascinated with my grandpa. I don’t think he was a “good” person. He only married my pregnant grandma after three of her brothers “told” him what’s the right thing to do. My dad equals childhood with holding his head low to avoid slaps from his dad. However, when my grandpa received his draft notice from Hitler Germany he reclined and went into hiding. I ask you what’s the moral of that piece of history?

Human beings are imperfect. One side of me would like to be tested if I really knew to do the “right” thing, the other side of me thinks that the test is already on, it will just never be in history books.

But I am a lazy mummy, and if you ask me if it’s a shitty day, there is no better adjective to describe it.

Of course you have to teach your kid that swear words are to be used like most spices… sparingly. They should never be used during job interviews, oral university examinations, or other situations where you have to appear properer than you really are. And if you ask me to call someone an asshole, especially to his face, says more about you than him.

I admit that little man learned to say shit in two languages (Scheiße in German, if you must know) at the tender age of two and probably from listening to me. German swear words tend to be “anal orientated” as one Anglo-saxon author of German habits put it. If a German calls you an “Arschloch” chances are he or she doesn’t like you.

From my own observation Anglo-saxon swear words tend to be sexually orientated. “F..beep” is a prime example. To a Teutonic like me fucking is very enjoyable, shit on the other hand smells badly, but listening to beeps on TV while you mouth-read every word of it is probably strangely satisfying to all of us.

A while ago little man came home and told me that is school mate J. is “gay”. Gosh I thought, J. is only eight years old the chances that he is gay before puberty are pretty slim, so I asked little man if he actually knew what gay means. He told me that gay means acting like a girl.

Well, that’s close but not really what it means, and not wanting to play tag on a boiling hot day is rather smart not gay if you ask me. Sometimes being a parent is quite complicated, because you have to decide in a snap what to say to steer your offspring to the right direction.

I told him that J. was right to go inside.

When he is a little older I will tell him that being gay is ok, and chances are that he will know that by himself by then, because in the end parents are the most crucial influences kids have.

Beeps on TV are useless if you ask me, and not letting your kids watch youtube videos is useless as well. They will hear it on the school bus anyway. On the other hand talking about it is very useful. Youtube videos in which people say fuck in every sentence are not bandwidth-friendly. My son knows this. They could be much shorter and to the point.

Teaching your kids what is appropriate by example and what will diminish their own worth is probably the most fucking awesome sweet thing you can do for them, not gay at all, nor sick.

I now need to step onto a garden chair to pick the fruits, which makes them all the more sweeter.

Papaya trees can have one of three sexes: male, female, or hermaphrodite. It’s the last one you want if you have a tiny garden like me, because hermaprodite trees grow flowers that can pollinate themselves. Female trees need a male nearby and lots of insects to pollinate their flowers to bear fruit, male trees can’t bear fruits at all.

By sheer luck this tree is self-pollinating. There was also a male one in a shady area that I chopped down and put into the compost… sorry mate.

I pick the fruit when it turns slightly yellow with still green spots mixed in and then let it ripen in my kitchen fruit bowl. The seeds are also edible and have a sharp mustardy/ wasabi flavor. I just pop them into my mouth as I peel and slice the papaya, but I have also seen recipes that use them for salad dressing.

Papaya has protein digestive enzymes, especially prevalent in unripe fruit. So that Thai special, the papaya salad, which uses green papaya is especially good as an appetizer to a big steak. I have also seen a chef on TV, who wrapped beef in papaya leaves for a few days to make it especially tender. I have yet to try that. I can’t bear to tear down the big leaves of our tree. They look so beautiful and sculptural at the end of their upturned stalks.

The birds love the tree as well. They land on the long leaf stalks and chirp loudly, probably to warn their friends of the white lion lounging below.