EcoLog03 - 55 Days since leaving NZ

Hello To One & All

Well on Fri 1st June it was 55 days since we left NZ to start our new life adventure here in Hong Kong. I know that because Louise and I have both been keeping a diary – yep it is the first time in my life that I have regularly recorded daily happenings.

Life in our valley in Mui Wo, Hong Kong is certainly quite different to our life style in NZ. We are still staying at Jenny’s. The main reason for this is that Henry only moved out of our Little House at the top of the valley on Sunday 27 May and then the following Wednesday we headed to Singapore to attend the National Achievers Congress (with over 5000 other people). It was great to experience a conference with such a large number of people attending. XL Results Foundation was the main sponsor so we had complimentary tickets which we were then able to upgrade to Gold status (almost front row seats) via Les, our Hong Kong XL Country Manager who has become a bit of a National Achievers Congress groupie having attended every year for the past 7 years!

There were 11 awesome speakers at the congress the most notable for me being Mark Victor Hansen who recently joined XL as a USA Life Member and is best selling author of the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” series and “One Minute Millionaire” (which I have read and greatly enjoyed). T. Harv Eker who wrote “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind” whom I found a great speaker but was put off by his 45 minute hard sell at the end of his 1.5hr speaking slot! Andrew Matthews who wrote “Being Happy” and “Follow Your Heart” - which I also recommend as a good read, Roger Hamilton who as the founder of XL Results Foundation and who as always gave an inspirational presentation, and perhaps the surprise of the event for me was James Skinner who had a very similar philosophy to what XL stands for….i.e. You are the author of what you want out of your life so to quote the XL mantra - Show up, Step up, Give back!

We were fortunate to have been able to stay with Irene and Rahim in Singapore. They are fellow XL Life Members and have a very cool condo complete with balcony and roof top gardens that they have landscaped with wooden pavers, rocks and tropical plants. The jacuzzi and a Balinese bale complete the look on the roof top garden. What a great place this was to chill out when we were not at the conference.

Singapore was very hot and muggy. You would think that I would have been acclimatized after 35°+ temps and 80 – 90+% humidity here in Hong Kong, but I have to say that Singapore topped HK. Having said that I am far more comfortable in hotter climes than the NZ winter that I believe is just starting to set in now!

I am happy to report that Louise has not fallen off her bike for several weeks! She did have spate of tumbles in the first couple of weeks but appears to have mastered the chicanes down the bottom of the path (where she managed to gracefully roll off her bike and into the bog on one occasion). Louise admitted that even though this may not have looked too good to any bystanders (Jenny was the only witness) it had to be the softest landing I have had so far!

We are moving into Little House at the Top of The Valley sooooon. While we were in Singapore we employed Nancy and Ron, (Jenny’s Pilipino helpers) to clean the house for us. Louise had spent 3 hours removing the first layer of dirt and they then spent a full day giving the place a really good spruce up. We are now investigating where we can buy paint from to give it a good lick and polish before we move in. Seems to be one down side living on the outlying islands! Most of the good deals for paint etc are either in Wanchai on Hong Kong Island or in Mongkok on Kowloon Peninsula so you always have a bit of drama in ferrying stuff home!

The place is really shaping up well though. It is going to be very cool when we have revamped the house and garden. It really is beautiful looking down the valley, especially at the moment with the flame trees flowering. We have had some really clear days here lately too. The smog has blown away so the almost permanent haze disappeared over the last couple of days. You can even see Aberdeen from Mui Wo, which believe me is saying something!

Living at the top of the valley does have some small challenges. It is of course a bit of a trek to Mui Wo to bring the groceries up to the house. Roll on the day we can employ our own Filipino helpers to do the domestic chores! There are also a lot of bugs sharing our house and garden with us too. We don’t mind the geckoes residing in the house but Louise was a bit perturbed when she managed to encourage a rather large spider out of the main door only to have it shoot back in through the side door! There are super sized cockroaches and other bugs too…not to mention the mozzies that we have a daily battle with! But these are really small challenges when I weight up the pluses of not having to drive to an office each day and being able to work from our home eco-environment doing what we love to do!

As always it is good to hear how everyone is getting on so keep in touch.