We're fine. Thanks for asking.
Typhoon Nuri in fact visited us yesterday - - unlike in the US where the hurricanes are measured on their strength (category 1-5, I think cat 1 is about 75 mph winds?), they measure the storms here on impact to us. So, Thursday night we were issued Typhoon level 3, then Friday morning was level 8 (everything shuts down), and then last night was up to level 9 (don't even think about going outside!), and now we're back down to level 3. All this means the predicted impact to our local weather, but I'm still not sure how to translate this into storm strength that we're used to in the US - I think max winds were around 120 mph. (maybe cat 3?).
But yes, we're all fine! The last typhoon that came through broke the lock on our sliding glass doors that lead to the balcony, but since we’re on the 46th floor, we didn’t bother to fix it…so we got to listen to some incredible howling and whistling all night long last night as the wind was sneaking through the crack in the doors!
I haven’t heard from any of my team and I don’t get good local news that I can understand, so I’m not sure of damage at this point, but there was nothing significant here on the western edge of Hong Kong Island.
We finally got a school!!!! Gory details attached. This has taken up probably 50% of my time.
I cannot tell you how much I’m enjoying it here! HK is a really terrific city! And having everything around us being new and different is a really neat experience for our family. We have fun exploring and just trying to figure out what we will be eating. The kids are having a tough time adjusting - -culturally they are used to walking over to a neighbor’s house, banging on the door, and finding someone to play with. Here, this is not done, probably because there are often many generations of families living in small quarters. So we are having to plan play dates at the apartment play areas. We’ve found a few nice friends. Anyhow, it is nice to “regroup” as a family and concentrate on each other and the basics, and sort of get our minds off the last couple of years which have been sort of tough.
Work wise, the job is fun, and I took my first ‘country visit’ to MNL last week. So now I get it! I really understand the market and what their needs are. It’s just as fascinating and fun as you can imagine. Otherwise, I do really odd coordination items most of the day. Like, passengers are misconnecting from PR to AA in PVG, and no one here has the slightest clue of what to do about it. So I call Reid Appelby and he gets PR to fix it. And voila! I’m the hero in the PH!!! Or…AA made the newspapers in TW because an AA agent made a Taiwanese national angry because she referred to the country as “Chinese Taipei.” After doing a few minutes of digging, we found that this erroneous information was being fed to us from IATA, and so I send it to Susan Chambers. Even though it is not yet fixed, Voila! I’m a hero in TW!
Anyhow, it is all great fun, and since the school is now settled (I was really considering 3 one-ways on 176 and sending them home to Flower Mound for school)…I love Hong Kong, I’m learning TONS in my job, and I have no regrets whatsoever.
All the best!
E.J.
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