Our Christmas 2011

We are in Hong Kong and decided to have Christmas in Macau because Sollai is there and the only one of our family without family. It has been the strangest Christmas we have ever had. Normally we are encased in family warmth and love and noisiness and too much eating and drinking and preparing and

Shanghai Foundries

Shanghai is such a crazy place.  It is a huge city, the biggest in China.  Its population is close to 20 million people.  Taking a taxi across town is not easy and can take hours just negotiating all the road systems and sitting in endless traffic. We like it here though, as all the little

Fast train to Shanghai

We are choofing away on the train again.  Really fast. 304 k’s an hour at the moment, Beijing to Shanghai.  A five hour trip.  I remember doing this trip with our boys in a four berth apartment, traveling overnight.  I think you can still do this, but the fast train is so convenient.  And its

First class, Hong Kong to Beijing

Crickety crack,crickety crack.  The window is black and shiny, reflecting cups and kettle and nuts and dried fruit and our beds and our recumbent bodies, resting in this cocoon that is shooting over the earth, relentlessly, rocking and jagging towards Beijing.  We are 24 hours in this train, from Hung Hom station in Hong Kong

Sojourn on Tuscany’s Wild Capraia

I have so much to catch up.  I want to write and say that we are here in Hong Kong but the sensory flavours of Italy are still filling my palette and I can’t yet settle down to the low down on Hong Kong. Sorry. My heart is still in Capraia. It’s Mike’s birthday and

A visit to Melbourne

Melbourne has become such a hip city.  It makes one of the best coffees in the world.  It has great social areas, tons of cool cafes, fantastic restaurants with really on the edge cuisine, music everywhere, lots of city squares and nature throughout, in the grand old parklands.  It has its share of violence on

A visit to Castlemaine, Australia

We are back in Australia to see our families.  Arrival this time was spectacular, water in the dams and the grass green, an enormous blessing after so many years of drought and devastation.  The wonderful thing about arriving back here is the sky.  An enormous luminous sky that spans your vision two thirds, the earth

Finding our way in a material world

It has been quite a challenge finding all our art materials while we have been here at the Yew Chung School.  The first two weeks of the residency were spent tromping the streets of Mongkok and Wanchai in diabolical human traffic, feeling flayed alive at the end of every day, too tired to cook and

‘Happy’ in Sai Kung, Hong Kong

It’s Sunday.  Michael and I have endeavored to do nothing all day, just lunch in Sai Kung.  The weather is warmer, 23 degrees, the birds are effusive, chattering and tweeting endlessly, flitting here and there, busy with nest making.  Its hard to do nothing in Hong Kong. There are so many options to do things,

Hong Kong

We’ve been in Hong Kong a month already.  Everyday walking with thousands of people, stepping into the continuous stream of people walking the subways, onto trains, up escalators, down escalators, onto minibuses, endless endless people, keeping rhythmic pace, shoulder to shoulder.  We have never done that before, been part of the workforce, everyday.  We resisted