Update

Been a while since I posted anything on here. There are some new photos on smugmug of baby Kate (http://kclaus.smugmug.com/).

It's been a fun-filled couple of weeks. A while back, I took Nate out on a nighttime hike up Violet hill (the "mountain" behind our house). It's been a while since I've been out at night and I had forgotten about the cool vistas available up there at night. We had some encounters with elusive Hong Kong wildlife as well. Saw some funky glow worms, a cool green tree frog, and on the way down, nearly stepped on a banded krait. From Wikipedia: "Fortunately, since kraits are nocturnal (!) they seldom encounter humans during daylight hours so bites are rare. Nonetheless, any bite from a krait is potentially life-threatening and must therefore be regarded as a medical emergency." Exciting stuff.

Karen and I ditched the kids for the holiday on October 1st to go on our first junk trip in a long while. Mike from work was having a birthday - so lots of West Island people. Played bum off on the beach. Basically akin to all of the juvenile games where there is potential to inflict pain on your friends. It involved juggling a soccer ball. When you mess up 3 times, you have to bend over and let the other guys kick the soccer ball at your ass from 10 meters. Good times!

I helped to run an AYP trip last weekend. There was yet another typhoon threatening. The typhoon did end up petering out, but dumped plenty of rain on us Friday night. I spent the night dodging the drips from the ceiling of my tent. Saturday, I came down with some kind of illness on the walk. Bad stomach cramps. Managed to make it home just in time to toss my cookies.

Another development since my last post is that I'm all set to take part in Trailwalker again. I've spent the last 3 weekends training, including a very wet 35km run on Sunday, the day after hugging the toilet bowl. Not a great weekend in all.

Hope yours was better!

jumper action

Kate's getting the hang of the jumper.

I think some of the screeching in the next video is Nate.

"Did you put her on the rug?"

Karen asks, accusingly.  Kate performed her first double roll off of her Ikea play-gym-thing.  Oh God, she's mobile.

a treat for the grandmas

Kate has been working on her skills...

A rare sight in Hong Kong

The full moon last week. We had a few nights in a row of very clear skies, where we saw moon, stars, shooting stars (!) and a satellite (!!). This may never again happen in Hong Kong. The shooting stars must have been the tail end of the annual Perseid meteor shower. These photos were taken from the balcony:



I think my dirty lens produced this perfect image of the moon in the lower right-hand corner.

On second thought...

Typhoon Nuri packed a bit of a punch. We had 4 or 5 hours of southerly 80km/hr winds that forced water through all of the tiny gaps in window sills, balcondy doors and bedroom windows. At one point, the power strip that feeds power to the TV and stereo was sitting in a puddle of water on the living room floor. That can't be good.

Down on the beach, the shark net was ripped free from some of it's mooring lines. There were some huge waves last night around midnight, as we were going to bed.

Here's where the net used to be:

Here's where it is now:

And a shot from our old apartment:

I guess that would be considered a direct hit

but Typhoon Nuri has been a little disappointing. Some places in Hong Kong were getting 100km wind, but we've been sheltered by the hills behind us and haven't seen much at all. The wind has now changed direction and we're getting some wind.

Got out of school on the first teaching day of the school year, though. So I've got that going for me.

And in case you need reminding of that last reference: