THE FREE HAT

One part of the HKBU Orientation Program was a day-long city tour. A couple of the stops were at shopping markets, and since I am not much of a shopper, I wandered the surrounding areas a bit. On a quiet walkway along the bay, I noted a fellow wearing a BHP Billiton hat. I asked him if he worked for BHP, and yes, he was part of the home base office in Australia. This was my lead-in to ask him about BHP in Malibu - and for those of you not familiar with the saga, BHP has proposed an off-shore twenty story-high Liquified Natural Gas terminal that would loom on the ocean horizon off the coast of Malibu/Port Hueneme. He laughed and said that BHP was making enough money around the world that they did not have to bother fighting with the locals in Malibu about the LNG terminal. He gave me the hat, and advised me to invest in BHP!

HK EXCHANGE RATE

7.745

That was the exchange rate at the time of my first conversion of US$ to HK$. It takes some getting used to, seeing such big numbers on things like the Sunday South China Morning Post newspaper for $7.00, but then you remember, "Oh, that's less than a buck." So, I thought I would give a few examples of the cost of things in Hong Kong, in HK$ and approximate US$, starting with some items from the grocery stores Wellcome and Taste

Coca Cola 8-Pack HK$ 20.90 [$2.70]
Large Tub of Margerine - Ditto
Cola in Vending Machine HK$ 5.00 [$0.65]
Banana Bunch of 4-5 HK$ 4.30 [$0.55]
Five Plums HK$ 10.00 [$1.30]
Mickey D's Double Cheeseburger - Ditto
Loaf of Bread - Ditto
Four Oranges HK$ 11.80 [$1.50]
Mickey D's Soft Ice Cream Cone HK$ 2.50 [$0.33]
Big Box of Frosted Flakes HK$ 28.90 [$3.75]
Half Gallon of Soy Milk HK$ 19.90 [$2.55]
Note - Dairy Milk is Very Expensive
Medium Jar of Blackcurrant Jam HK$ 12.90 [$1.65]
Medium Peanut Butter HK$ 13.90 [$1.80]
Can of Potato Chips - Ditto
Large Crab & Crayfish on Rye HK$ 32.00 [$4.15]
Tsingtao 640ml Bottle HK$ 9.80 [$1.25]
Coffee & Tea - Free in the Hotel Room!

I will try to add some restaurant prices, but for now, suffice it to say - the places that serve traditional Chinese and Asian foods are quite reasonable and the Western restaurants are quite expensive. And if you are in the market for a nice car or home:

New Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder HK$ 3,430,000 [$439,000]
1999 Ferrari 360 Modena Coupe HK$ 1,240,000 [$160,000]
2006 Carrera HK$ 1,388,000 [$179,000]
1999 Subaru Legacy $78,000 [$10,000]
New Three Bedroom Apartment Home HK$ 16,000,000 [$2,000,000]
Seaview Lowrise HK$ 24,000,000 [$3,100,000]
Repulse Bay Highrise $31,800,000 [$4,100,000]
Victoria Peak Highrise HK$ 55,000,000 [$7,100,000]
Large Home High on Plantation Road $120,000,000 [$15,500,000]

Thus, most folks rent apartments and do not own cars.

A BIT OF THE CITY

I suggest that you begin by flying around the city on Google Maps. Hopefully, it will be zoomed in on the NTT Guest House, on the south end of the HKBU campus, just south and a bit west of the track. You can zoom out and look around the neighborhood and anywhere in the city you choose. If you zoom out a bit and move to the southeast, past the large park with sports fields, you will see a smaller park-like area. This is the area that was once the infamous Kowloon Walled City. And further to the southeast is the old Hong Kong Airport Kai Tak, which supposedly used to be one of the worst airports for landing commercial jetliners. At a recent international air trade fair, the Airbus A380 made two low passes over Victoria Harbour, and folks were saying that it was reminiscent of the Kai Tak days.

The View of Hong Kong Central from Atop Victoria Peak

Kowloon is Across the Bay

Amazing 360 View

The Beach at Repulse Bay

Some of the Residences at Repulse Bay

East Meets West

On the Boat Ride to the Floating Restaurant

One of the Two Student Residental Towers at HKBU

HONG KONG - FALL - 2007

To slighty change a John Denver lyric - It's a Long Way from LA to Hong Kong!! Thankfully, some favorable winds made our flight closer to 13 hours rather than the scheduled 15. And surprisingly, I did not feel any jet lag even though we are 15 hours "ahead" of Pacific Coast Time, 14 hours with Mountain time, and 12 hours with Indiana and Eastern Time. As some of you know, with the arrival of second grandbaby Noelle Paige, the kids close by in Denver, and a major remodel of our condo getting underway, Rhonda decided to stay in Boulder, but hopefully will make it some time during the semester. Folks are welcome to visit, but be forewarned that unlike Buenos Aires, we do not have any guest rooms to offer you - a discount at the NTT International Guest House on the campus of Hong Kong Baptist University is about all that I can offer. There are 23 Pepperdine students in the program, and they join 164 other international students representing 20 countries in the HKBU International Program. All 187 live in the campus highrise dorms with students from Hong Kong and Mainland China. I teach two classes that are open only to Pepperdine students, and the rest of their courses are regular HKBU classes. You may have recently heard about the 9 year old prodigy who is beginning his mathematics studies at HKBU this fall - haven't seen him around campus yet!

A few first impressions:

An important rule for survival - when you are ready to cross the steet, stop, look the direction you would normally look for traffic, and while still stopped, look the other direction. Otherwise you might get run over by the vehicles driving on the "wrong" side of the road. If you look at the driver to determine what they might be doing, and it looks like he/she might be sleeping - well it's because that person is the passenger! One bit of good news is that many crosswalks have signs painted on the street reminding you which way to look.

The streets and sidewalks are quite clean, and there is no 'dog dew dodging' as in Buenos Aires. I have seen a few stray dogs in the park, and very few being walked on the streets. There are fairly stiff fines for littering, and for jaywalking I believe.

The public transportation is great, with small buses making shorter runs on looping routes, and larger buses and the subway to get all over town. Also "subway" is not the subway, but rather is a pedestrian underpass. The underground train is the MTR, and it is very impressive.

All business and classes at HKBU are in English, and many in Hong Kong speak English, with the 'native' language being Cantonese. Many locals also speak Mandarin/Putonghua, and I have been told that you really only need to know about 2000-3000 characters to be able to read :-)

We were warned that it would be hot and humid, and we were not let down. However, it seems to have already begun to cool down a bit, and by October it is supposed to be pretty nice.

There are numerous basketball courts close by, and all of them have nice nets!

HK is truly one of the places where East meets West - Porsche drivers stopping by the temple to burn incense, high-rise construction cranes surrounded by high-rise bamboo scaffolding, elevators without a 4 button because of the negative connotations of the number four, McDonald's next to hot pot and dim sum, 7-11 and Circle K next to the wet market, vintage Glen Campbell hits playing in the hallways of the Dr. Ng Tor Tai Guesthouse Hotel, and on and on......

Home Away From Home - the NTT Guesthouse Hotel

The Living Room - Nice TV!

The Bedroom and Office

The View from the Hotel

This is looking almost straight south on a nice clear day. The University is on the Kowloon Peninsula, and the high rise buildings in the foreground are on Kowloon, and the buildings and mountains in the distance are on Hong Kong Island. The tallest building in Hong Kong is on the island, and is close to the middle of this picture. Here is a map for "orientation" - the University campus is just south of Beacon Hill.

A WHIRLWIND FINISH

With a great flurry of activity, the semester and academic year is over!! We are back in Colorado, and it is time for the final post for Swartzendrubers in Buenos Aires. There will be some additions of pictures to the estudiantes pages, so be sure to look them over a few days from now. In addition to all of the usual end-of-semester academic activities of tests and papers, I was also priviledged to say a few words at the last convocation of the year and at the final banquet which was held at the Madero Tango facility. Thus, the closing entry will be a replay, or a close facsimile, of my comments to the students. First - my comments at convo, which preceded the last group dinner and a student-organized after dinner celebration for themselves, with a color theme of Black and White:

Although I have a white shirt on, rest assured that I am not coming to your party - from some of the rumored activities, it is probably best that 'adults' stay away! :-) However, the theme of black and white fits well with what I want to talk with you about this evening - decisions. Oh, it would be so nice if all of the decisions that we faced were indeed black and white; it would make things so much easier. Unfortunately, most decisions that we make are not so clear cut, and there are often many shades of gray to consider. When Rafa says, "Don't be stupid, or I will kill you!!!" what is he really saying?? Yes, he is saying "make good decisions," because who we are and how others see us is based on virtually all of the decisions and choices that we have made in our lives. The choices you make about language, humor, behaviors, alcohol, drugs, sex, and on and on, tell others who you are. Trust me - we, me included, have all made poor choices!! And both our good choices and our bad choices are quite transparent and readily observed by others - even if you believe they aren't - again, trust me, they are. In the Hebrew Bible, the Preacher writes "I put before you good and evil - life and death - choose life!! In the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indy and his nemesis find the room of the Holy Grail, only to be confronted with hundreds of grails from which they must choose only one from which to drink. When Indy's adversary proclaims "Truly the cup of a King," makes the wrong choice and is destroyed, the elderly guardian knight simply says "He chose poorly." When Indy chooses the Holy Grail, "the cup of a Gallilean carpenter," the knight says "You chose wisely." But what does it mean to choose life and to choose wisely? For me, the key is to try to make all decisions based on building up rather than tearing down, affirming, not degrading, and filled with justice, kindness, love and mercy. Considering these things will help us make good choices, and will also help us overcome some of the bad choices we have make in the past. May your choices be wise and life-giving, and as we begin to say our farewells, my wish for each of you is that you fare well.

And my final comments to the group at the Banquet {with the opening and closing in Spanish}

My dear students, faculty, Pepperdine employees, families and friends. You are a very special group, and you will always live in my heart. Thank you for the gift, and what I would like to give to you are a few words of wisdom from a couple of old songs. In 1973, Jim Seals and Dash Crofts recorded a great song "We May Never Pass This Way Again." At first, it could be taken as a bit melancholy for indeed, in this life, we will never pass this way again. However, the song is about looking forward, not back. Because we may never pass this way again, we should live today and each day as best as we possibly can. And how can we do that? Another great songwriter gives us some advice. In one of Bob Dylan's songs, he writes "May you always do for others, and let others do for you." What great, gospel-like advice for living. Dylan continues with what is one of my great hopes for each of you - "May you build a ladder to the stars, and climb on every rung. And may you stay forever young." So dear students, I now say chau, blessings, and go with God.

POTPOURRI

This section will contain a salmagundi of pictures and commentary. The first picture is of a very common site in Buenos Aires - a dog walker. We have seen as many as 20 dogs walking in an orderly pack. There was one dog walker that simply had all of the dogs tethered together and was leading them only by voice command - no leash. Virtually all of the dogs here are well-behaved and seem to take the crowds and the traffic in stride. Most of the doggie groups are heterogeneous like this one, but occasionally there are single-breed packs.

The next picture is of a street vendor located about two blocks from the Casa. Even though there is a Coto grocery store in the same block, steet vendors of fresh vegetables and fruits are very common.

Not too far from the Casa is a large park that is great for walking and running, and there is also a lake for paddle boating. On the weekends, there are often special events such as races, concerts and as shown below, car shows.

Before Rhonda headed back to Colorado to be available to help Nick, Jaime and Silas as they prepare for their second child, we were able to spend a long weekend in Mendoza, the center of wine country. We toured two very nice bodegas and also took a tour along the old route from Argentina to Chile through Villavicencio, which is a nature preserve, historic villa, and the site of one of the largest natural water bottling plants in Argentina.

We visited the bodega y cavas de Weinert and the cavas de Don Arturo. Both were very interesting, and very different from one another. Interestingly Don Arturo does not market its wine in Argentina other than at the bodega. They ship to the USA and Europe, and their five dollar wine [a great Malbec] sells for $85 in NYC restaurants.

Vieja Ruta 7

The Chapel at Villavicencio

While walking through our neighborhood looking for a church with a Christmas music program, I happened upon an LDS church and two young missionary boys. The music program had just concluded, piped in via satellite from the Tabernacle. What I did learn is that the church has a basketball court that is open for our use!! So, often on Saturday evenings a group would play for a couple of hours, and the picture is at the end of one of our outings, courtesy of Randy Kunkel.

In addition to basketball, another regular outing was to the bowling alley on Cabildo - Monday nights, after home-stay dinners, which means that it usually got started around 11:00 and often went until closing at one.

Nick picking up the spare