Buddy and the Pit Vipers
"Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the lamb make thee?" William Blake
Hello there,
It’s been a while since I did one of these! Last time I wrote was the start of the summer holidays and things were looking pretty good: although we couldn’t leave Hong Kong, we had lots of fun summer activities planned…which came to nothing with a surge in Covid cases putting us back in semi-lockdown.
HK lockdown is not the most draconian, at least for adults: the shops and restaurants never closed entirely, though almost everything kid friendly was closed down, even beaches and swimming holes in the rivers! With no car and the intense summer heat in Hong Kong we were quite restricted in what we could do but a few purchases helped the summer go by very quickly.
Candle Blowin’ All Over the World
We had to go virtual for Ashley’s seventh birthday in August by arranging two Zoom Parties. This was my first time to organise a real worldwide birthday party with friends joining in from Australia, Abu Dhabi and Scotland. The ease which which you can do this now still blows my mind a bit but the kids took it all in their stride, getting everyone to sing Happy Birthday and having a virtual nibble of the cake.
Buddy Up To Buddy
Ashley has been clamouring after a pet for some time now and summer lockdown seemed the perfect time to make a new addition to the family. Meet Buddy the Hamster (briefly known as Electra). Buddy is a Djungarian or Winter White Dwarf Hamster originally from the wheat fields Djungaria (apparently this is Kazakhstan and Xinjiang Province in China) but now found in the pet shops of Hong Kong. We’ve learnt a lot about hamster care from Hamster Youtube star Victoria Rachel especially about the size of hamster cages and we did a quick upgrade from the pet shop cage to a big IKEA plastic box based on here advice.
Time to Make the Switch
Being stuck in the house also led to us getting our first games console - a Nintendo Switch. We chose the switch as we’d heard it was kid friendly and there are lots of physical games which go with it. Jane was heavily invested in lockdown favourite Ring Fit Adventure for a while. The kids really enjoyed the Nintendo Labo games which come with huge cardboard sets to construct which then interact with the games. They are really well explained and sturdy enough to have lasted several months. We managed to find them very cheaply in a local games shop.
Pit Viper Poetry
I’ve been trying my hand at poetry over the summer, but not hand the success that Ollie has achieved in the Royal Society of Biology Poetry Competition:
Here’s his poem which is about Hong Kong’s most common venomous snake the Pit Viper:
There’s been some suspicions about whether Ollie actually wrote the poem himself (from my wife and my sister!). Just to explain, after reading the books by Kate Clanchy that I keep going on about, I’ve started practicing this technique of introducing kids to a poem, reading it them stripping it to the bone and then letting them turn it into another poem. This is how ‘The Pit Viper” came about: early in the summer I read The Tyger by William Blake with Ollie and Ashley:
and we all had a go at rewriting it. Here’s my version about pangolins:
So Ollie did the same thing, used an online rhyming dictionary and thesaurus and then a few revisions to come up with the poem. It’s a really good technique to practice if you want to write your own poems or encourage your kids. See more here.
TES International
Over the summer I also responded to a request from work looking for articles for the TES International. I’ve been hammering these out with one about podcasts, another about nature lead learning, another about teaching the World’s Largest Lesson and most recently one about the role of poetry in schools. They’re not incredible pieces of writing but are quite fun to write and it’s the first time I’ve been paid for writing anything!
I did a Masters in International Education a few years ago which was a great experience, but the writing is really frustrating. You spend hours slaving over difficult, fully references academic prose which then no-one but your tutor ever seems to read. In comparison, these take an hour or two at most and at least a few people actually read them so its a much better experience all round. They also get properly edited before publication which I’ve never had before. It’s been a really interesting process seeing your writing tightened up an improved. If you have international school experience, they are looking for other contributors.
In the Forest for the Day
Since things have opened up and cooled down a little in the past few weeks, we’ve been out and about exploring some of Hong Kong’s many green spaces. Despite its reputation as a concrete jungle, there’s a lot more greenery and wildlife here than you would think. In fact:
“Despite only spanning 423 square miles (1,095 sq km), Hong Kong houses more types of bird, mammal, insect and plant than the whole of the British Isles.”
From this interesting BBC article on the reclaiming of Hong Kong’s forests.
So here’s a few of the places we’ve been:
We had a great day out at the WWF centre in Island House near Tai Po in the New Territories. This colonial government building was previously on a small island which is now linked to the mainland and was donated to the WWF back in 1983. They had a special open day where the kids got to do a treasure hunt in the big garden, make Japanese style Kokedama potless plants and try out some yoga in pairs (while swatting off the mosquitoes).
The Shing Mun Reservoir was built in the nineteen thirties to provide water supplies to Kowloon. Several Hakka Chinese villages were flooded in the process with villagers relocated into Kowloon. It was also a major site of conflict with the Japanese in the early 40s leading to almost complete deforestation. After major reforestation, it was opened as a country park in the seventies and today is a lush forest with paperbark trees from Australia, cows grazing on the remains of the old village and some fairly territorial and aggressive monkeys.
We also took a short evening walk along the coast on the south side of Hong Kong Island from Ocean Park to Repulse Bay past some of the world’s most expensive real estate. Some lovely views of the South China Sea with the rides at the theme park silhouetted against the sunset.
Recommended: E- Newsletters
I started writing these newsletter things out of general disgust at social media and Facebook in particular but also because I had signed up to a few e-newsletters and found them much more pleasant experience to receive. Rather than the addictive doom scrolling, I think it feels a bit like the excitement of receiving a letter or parcel in the post from a friend (even when you don’t know the person themselves). Unlike social media where you’ve no idea if who is actually seeing all your posts, you know your e-mails will get though (even if they get stuck in Junk Mail for a whole). So here’s a couple of e-newsletter I recommend:
Austin Kleon: An American author and artist who shares various ideas about creativity
Alastair Humphries: An English outdoory, adventury guy who’s written some really good kids books.
Helen Lewis: English Journalist who is really good on internet-ish things, politics, feminism and things like that. She’s popped up on Have I Got News For You a lot recently.
Nick Cave: The great Aussie singer answers a question from a fan every week, often touching on the death of his young son a few years ago. Try this one for starters which is linked to this video: