The driver of this trip is the Philippines portion where
three individuals from Australia and I will be meeting with various
organizations to learn what they do.
Brisbane School of Theology is in the process of setting up a “Center
for Asian Christianity” and it is hoped that this fact-finding trip can provide
some insight into how such a center can be set up. Over the course of five days we will be
meeting with six different organizations.
I will be staying in Hong Kong before and after a trip, some a couple of
meetings scheduled, and all this add up to more than 10 days. Anne just started her teaching duties at
Brookdale and at MCCC, so she won’t be coming along.
9/8 Thursday. We
didn’t leave until 1:40 pm or so for a 3:15 pm flight, a bit tight even if I
got TSA pre-check for this flight. It
took less than five minutes to get through security, even though my luggage had
to go through the x-ray machine twice.
UA179 is quite packed, with several children in the vicinity – one of
them crying as I type this. The pilot
promised a smooth flight, but we hit quite a bit of turbulence about two hours
into the flight, and the seat-belt sign didn’t turn off until about three hours
into the flight.
I managed to see two movies. One was “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of
Justice,” which was okay, other than Superman died at the end (I am sure he
will come back, so not too sad.) The
other is Keanu, the only redeeming value seems to be the nice cute kitten featured
in the film. Rest of time was whiled
away by dozing off, playing solitaire, and listening to my iPod.
Flight landed about 20 minutes late, which isn’t bad
considering it left about an hour late.
I still had time to grab something to eat at the HKG Tai Hing location
before finding my way to Causeway Bay.
Tim was ready to take me to Repulse Bay, as he wanted to show me the
progress of renovation for 16B, and he also needed to get a couple of odds and
ends done. We ending staying there for a
couple of hours before we headed back to Causeway Bay together.
Accommodations: Causeway Bay apartment.
9/10 Saturday.
Nathan d L met me at this LGB Café in Central and chatted for about ½
hour before our guest KO showed up. KO wanted to know about Hope International
more, from a “friend of Hope” such as myself.
We ended up talking for over 2 hours, both he and I being talkative
ones. Nathan and I ended up having a
simple dim sum lunch at Peking Garden in Alexandra House, after rejecting a
couple of restaurants with rather long lines waiting to be seated. I decided to hit Tai Po to meet up with
Whitney and Tim, get there at around 4 pm.
It was about 7:30 pm by the time I got to the Cultural Center for the
second night of Hong Kong Philharmonic’s Season Opener, featuring Yo Yo
Ma. They managed to fill the concert
hall this time, that despite jacking up their prices by a factor of two or so,
and doing away with concessionary prices for seniors. It was an interesting concert and worth
attending.
The Sheng was featured
with the cello in the double concerto “Duo.”
This is a rather versatile instrument, capable of a wide range of
sounds.
Curtain Call after the
Hong Kong Philharmonic performance.
Yo-Yo Ma being a performer definitely had a lot to do with the filled
auditorium.
It was after 11 pm when I got back to Causeway Bay; I
left at around 9 am, and there went my plan for a more restful first day. I am now quite tired (this is now past
midnight 9/11) but I had started laundry so have to stay awake for another
couple of hours, may be.
9/11 Sunday.
Indeed I stayed up past 3 am since I also wrote my blog entry for the HK
Philharmonic concert. I still woke up
before 9 am.
Most of the day was spent in organizing different
paperwork and checking them for errors.
Around noon I went to a local restaurant, it was too crowded and I am
not the share-table type, so I ordered take out and returned to the apartment.
I left for the airport quite early (2:45 pm for an 8:50
pm). I also managed a piece of
cheesecake and a cup of iced latte as other eateries at the airport had long
lines. The lady picking up the trays
said today wasn’t a particular busy day, even though most of the tables were
taken up.
The flight to Manila on CX935 was in a new plane, the
A350. It was nice enough, but not
spectacularly so. And it seemed to make
loud noises whenever things got deployed, especially with the landing gear. Perhaps I would appreciate the small
improvements on a longer flight, but the short 1:40 hour duration didn’t allow
me to finish watching Captain America: Civil War.
The brand new Airbus
A350, sitting on the tarmac at HKG. This
is a competitor to the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
A coach seat is a coach
seat. Any improvements to the old seats
were too minor to notice during the relatively short flight (1 hour 40
minutes.)
The TV screen is quite
large, and I enjoyed watching Captain America: Civil War on the. The movie was about 2 ½ hours, so I watched
the second half during my return flight.
Contrast that
screen with the one in United coach.
The lavatories get
tested on a long flight, but more a testament to how seriously flight attendants
took their jobs. I am sure Cathay does
okay on that front.
Immigration and customs were straight forward, and then I
had to make my way to Terminal 2 to meet up with the folks who came in from
Brisbane. It took a bit of navigation
and multiple asks for directions before I found the shuttle bus, and it didn’t
leave for over ½ hour, so it was over an hour when I caught up with the
group. Traffic was light on a Sunday
evening (and Monday would be a holiday) so it was less than an hour in the taxi
to get to where we would be staying: OMF Philippines Guest House. Everything was dark, there was no one on
duty, but we had Mark who used to work here with us, so we managed to get into
our rooms without much trouble. There is
no hot water (which is to be expected when one thinks about it) and no soap
(not quite I expected), but I managed.
My room at the OMF Guest
House for the next several nights. It
has an ensuite bathroom. Spartanly
decorated (desk, chair, and a rattan chair), it was clean and had
air-conditioning. I felt like I was
going to camp at times.
Accommodations: OMF Guest House, Quezon City (5 nights).
9/12 Monday. I was
awaken at around 6 am (sunrise around 5:45 am) by the crowing of roosters and
barking of dogs, an experience reminiscent of what happened during my stays in
Huizen, the Netherlands when I traveled there for business. After a couple of failed attempts to fall
back to sleep, I went for breakfast downstairs, with Mark already there. The four of us met for devotion, and then
walked about 15 minutes to a mall close by to buy various things we forgot to
pack for the trip, in my case soap. We
decided to have lunch there, and today being a (newly declared) public holiday,
the eateries were all quite crowded. We
settled on Chinese fast food from Chowking.
A short taxi ride took us to our first meeting, with ASDECS (Asian
School of Development and Cross-Cultural Studies), which lasted for over two
hours. Mark then took us to another mall
which was also very busy. We ended up
buying diet cokes and fruit juices at a noodle shop so we could debrief what we
learned at the ASDECS meeting. Dinner
was at Café Breton at UP Campus, a technology park with IBM among its
clients. I had the Galette Paysanne, a
Hungarian dish consists of a sausage and fried egg over crepes. To complete our Philippines experience we
took a Jeepney back to the OMF Guest House.
We got off the Jeepney a bit early and had a 15-minute walk back to the
guest house; I also got to see some of the poverty – people picking through
garbage, and selling shoelaces to make a living.
Chowking is a popular
chain of Chinese fast food restaurants.
My lunch here cost about US$3.
Cafe Breton is located
in a high technology park (UP Technohub) which houses call centers of multinationals such as
IBM. Enjoying our meal after our first
day. From left: Wally, Andrew, myself,
and Mark.
Close up of the dishes
we ordered. I had the Galette Paysane, a Hungarian
dish with sausage and eggs over a crepe.
9/13 Tuesday. I
slept well last night, even though the dog barks and rooster crows woke me up
every now and then. Things got moved up
a bit earlier: we had devotion at 8 am.
At 10 am we visited with the OMF Philippines office and got some
understanding of its organization, mission, and ministries. After a quick lunch the four of us looked for
a taxi. At first we were turned down
because we were on the wrong side of the road and the taxi drivers didn’t want
to make a U-turn. We managed to cross
the 16-lane (may even be 20-lane) highway, but it still took a while to find
someone willing to take us. Something
wrong with the picture here. We met with
OMF Lit, a Philippines publishing house, for about 90 minutes, enjoyed the
chicken pie they served, and then headed back to OMF Guest House for an early
dinner at 5 pm. Every Tuesday there is a
group prayer meeting from 6 pm to 8 pm; I decided to skip this one.
The OMF compound is
located on Commercial Ave in Quezon City.
I counted 11 lanes in each direction.
Photo taken from one of the overpasses that allow pedestrians to cross
the road.
9/14 Wednesday.
Today was spent visiting two seminaries.
One was the Biblical Seminary of the Philippines (BSOP) which was
started in Manila when bible schools had to leave China after the
revolution. Its student body consists
mostly of people from China. We had
lunch in their canteen afterwards. The
second was International Graduate School of Leadership, a school founded in the
Philippines 35 years ago (they had their celebration yesterday) by a US-based
organization. This school has a diverse
international study body, and is supported (nearly) entirely by donations from
local Christians. I learned quite a few
new things during the meetings.
Biblical Seminary of the
Philippines. Its main mission is to train Chinese seminary students to work in China.
We got to attend one of
the weekly chapel services at BSOP. Talk
in English with translation into Mandarin.
International Graduate
School of Leadership.
We used Uber for a couple of our trips. The first one was in Uber Black, a large, new
Chevrolet Trailblazer that took us to BSOP in style. BSOP is located in a relatively poor
neighborhood, so we had to take a Jeepney ride to a major road, and still had
to wait over 10 minutes for an Uber X.
The Mitsubishi Mirage was a bit small, but was quite new. And the two trips, including an additional
10% tip, cost about $13. So far we have
not run into one of these legendary traffic jams yet, but have seen them in the
opposite direction.
Dinner was at OMF.
I spent about 2 hours with Andrew afterwards to go over some of the
documents he has prepared.
A typical simple dinner
at the OMF Guest House. I would buy one
or two snacks when I got hungry later in the evening.
9/15 Thursday.
Hailing Uber wasn’t as easy as the last two times. The first car that stopped by somehow had the
trip cancelled. The driver asked me to
re-order, but Uber assigned another car, which never showed up. (This resulted in a “no show” charge of P100
which was easily reversed.) We ended up
taking a taxi to the Asia School of Theology where we had a meeting with
several people. They also treated us to lunch.
This time Uber worked okay: we never got the confirmation (I have a slow
internet connection) but the car did come by.
The trip to SMX (Exhibition Center) took over an hour and I had a good
chat with the driver. The afternoon was
spent in the area, first at the Manila International Book Fair where OMF Lit
had a rather large display. I have never
found book fairs particularly interesting, and this was no exception. After an hour or so I headed off to Mall of
Asia, at over 4 million square feet and 600-plus stores was the fourth largest
in the Philippines. It was quite
crowded, and not too exciting either.
The group met up and we headed out for dinner together. We picked at random Italianni (turns out to
be a chain) and had a sit down meal that was comparatively expensive at about
$90 for five people (a gentleman working for another NGO joined us.)
Asian Theological
Seminary.
We were also
served lunch at ATS. These dishes and
rice fed eight people.
When first built the SM
Mall of Asia was the largest mall in the Philippines. It has now dropped to the fourth.
I remember Manila Bay as
a nice area to have dinner when I visited in the 80s. I don’t remember it’s being so crowded.
This large serving of
ribs at Italianni cost P995 (about US$22).
I had half of it, the rest shared by four other people (they all ordered
their own dishes.)
The trip back involved a short Jeepney ride, a train ride
on the MRT, followed by taxi. It took 1
½ hours and we got to experience the more crowded side of Manila. The Jeepney taking us from MOA to the MRT terminal cost P7, about 15 cents.
9/16 Friday. After
breakfast and devotion, Andrew and I again spent some more time to go over the
planning documents. Lunch was at OMF
again. Getting Uber from that location
seemed an exercise in futility as Uber kept providing either the driver or me
with the wrong address. Since it wasn’t
rush hour, it was relatively easy to get a taxi. At about 4 pm I had to excuse myself from our
meeting with ISACC to hail Uber to get to the airport. The driver and his assistant (his sister) had
a lot of trouble finding their way to EDSA the main road, and traffic was slow
on EDSA. The 12 or so mile trip took
about 2 ½ hours, arriving at about 6:30 pm.
Immigration and security were both relatively easy, and the check-in
staff was very helpful in getting my luggage comply with weight
requirements. I do worry a bit about the
lax security though. Since I was in a
hurry I forgot about a tube of toothpaste and a bottle of water I was carrying,
they never got flagged.
The four of us setting
out for the last meeting. Photo taken in
front of the OMF Guest House.
I had time to have a simple dinner at the airport, and
spent a little of the left over pesos, before boarding the plane. The flight is delayed in its departure, but
we will only be a little late getting in.
On the positive side, the load was light, I moved to a window seat in an
empty row, and I managed to finish the movie Captain America: Civil War.
I again ate something at Tai Hing, taxis were plentiful
at the Hong Kong Station, and traffic was light.
Dinner at Manila Airport
was shrimp tempura and fish tempura.
Eating again at the HKG
airport.
Accommodations: Causeway Bay apartment (3 nights.)
9/17 Saturday. I
was tasked to buy some Chinese exercise books, so I stopped by Commercial Press
and picked up several books for Emmie, before heading out to Hong Kong Club to
have lunch with Larry. Elaine also
showed up, and we chatted for a couple of hours. My other task was to buy a Chinese outfit for
Maisie, which I did after lunch. I
stopped by Wing Lok Yuen Restaurant and had a French toast and coffee, which
were quite good (and not good for my health.)
Dinner was with Tim, Alyson, Whitney, Alfred, and Rachel. Afterwards Whitney took me to different
places to buy mooncakes to no avail.
Somehow all the excess disappeared a couple of days after the moon
festival.
French toast Hong Kong
Style was a favorite snack of mine growing up.
So every time I return I would try to eat this once. I chanced onto Wing Lok Yuen in Central after
buying a dress for Maisie.
This was the first encounter with “Iced Sweet and Sour Pork.” An interesting variation on a standard Chinese
dish. Chinese Restaurant of the South China
Sports Club.
The Cheung brothers. Rachel is only 11 and is already taller than
me.
9/18 Sunday. I had
two breakfasts today! The first was at
Café Matchbox, which has been around for a while, where I got the traditional
Hong Kong breakfast of toast, eggs, and ham.
Then it was to Fairwood where I had my quota of glutinous rice
dumpling. Tim and Whitney came by to
pick me up to go on their boat, this time walking down from Pinecrest to the
Seaside Promenade and catching the tender.
This reminded of how we used to do it when we lived in Hong Kong in the
early 90s. We took the boat to Aberdeen
Boat Club in Shum Wan, and had lunch there.
Mine was fish and chips, which was marginal at best. Instead of going back with Tim, I opted for
Bus 72A which took me to Causeway Bay where I shopped at Uniqlo and Jardine
Crescent. I was again picked up, this
time to Parkview for dinner. The evening
concluded with a walk in Victoria Park so I could meet my Apple Watch exercise
objective for the day. Meanwhile it has
been finishing paperwork, and packing for the return trip tomorrow.
Café Matchbox was
recommended to me as a place to have traditional Hong Kong breakfast. It is a short walk from where I was staying.
Toast, eggs, and
ham. A Hong Konger would complement this
with instant noodle or macaroni.
My other favorite
Chinese food is glutinous rice dumpling.
This one at Fairwood near the St. Paul Hospital.
The Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival (now often
called Moon Festival) was a couple of days ago.
A light carnival was held at Victoria Park where on display were many
artists view of lanterns popular during the Festival.
9/19 Monday. Woke
up at around 7 am to prepare for the trip back.
Left Causeway Bay a little bit before 8, and had to walk to a major
intersection before getting a taxi. Trip
to HKG airport was uneventful, security and immigration were straightforward. I noticed a whole row of seats empty, and
changed to the aisle seat in that row. I
was worried that some last minute passengers would take those seats, but they
never showed up. It has been a while
that I have such great accommodations.
Interestingly, Economy Plus is quite empty, while economy is quite full.
I got to the airport early enough to stop by the United Club and had a hearty breakfast. They certain serve minimal food portions on the plane.
Even with three seats to myself, I didn’t sleep
well. I did manage to see two more
Marvel Superheroes movies: Captain America – The First Avenger and Iron Man
3. Plane didn’t land until around 2:35
pm, making the flight close to 16 hours.
I used for the first time the Mobile Passport App which was actually
faster than Global Entry, probably because very few people use the App at this
point.
I seldom get to sit by the window especially on a long flight. View of Newark Airport as plane was about to touch down.
Anne picked me up.
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