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.

EcoLog02 - The move from NZ to Hong Kong

Hi to you all

Our little valley here in Hong Kong is all that we imagined. From 6.30am all the birdies are twittering away. Jenny (whose home we are living in) has very kindly given up her room for us. We can look out of the window at the trees surrounding the house and foggy hill tops. It is all very green with splashes of red from the bougainvillea and hibiscus flowers with many colourful butterflies flittering by. Mr Magpie has already woken and is hassling pussy cat that sleeps on the balcony. They play a game where cat gets fed, magpie stalks food. Magpie seems to have the upper hand. He wouldn’t if it was Mr Bo and Humphrey (our fluffy monsters in New Zealand) were out there defending there food!

We now have our very own transport. Yes our own mountain bikes! In the first couple of days here we did a bicycle tour of Mui Wo. It is a nice little village of about 4000 people, which has its focus at the ferry/bus terminal where there is a massive bike park for all the locals whose only form of transport is pedal power, as the road across Lantau Island ends at Mui Wo. Have checked out the local supermarket, bar and café are – all the important places. Looped around the market and discovered the flower shop and a fantastic book shop. Cycling up the valley is a bit of a workout. The homeward journey is not too steep but has three distinct “ups” that you need to negotiate. No need to frequent the gym. All the cycling and walking exercise is going to keep us fit.

Jenny has 5 dogs that all spend most of their day sleeping in the yard. They are various sizes with Belle the little pug the most lovable. Charlie the pig has a wonderful new house. Since moving into the kid’s pink dolls house he has become a very lazy pig – not keen at all to say hello now that he has no need to move from his salubrious accommodation except at meal times!

Jenny has two teenage children who live at home along with Nancy and Ron, Jenny’s Filipino helpers who do all the cooking, cleaning and home maintenance. Our day generally starts with business activities that can be attended to from our “home office” then in the afternoon it may be time to go into HK Central to catch up with people at our own XL networking events or spend time at other organizations’ networking events. Today we also worked with Jenny on an environmental project where Year 2 school kids came into the valley to learn about organic farming. Yes it is a pretty idyllic life style!

Yesterday we had a good poke around our little house at the top of the valley. It is a very cool place and we are looking forward to having real fun decorating and setting it up.

EcoLog01 - Why move to Hong Kong

Why Hong Kong?

Three key reasons

1) A Business

We have been involved with XL Results Foundation, an entrepreneur's coaching network since 2004. A year ago we took on the license to run XL in Hong Kong and Macau. Now we are heading over to really get this business rocking. The business is about helping people grow their businesses so that they can then have more resources available to donate to charities.

Another core part of the organization is what is called Wealth Dynamics, a personality profiling system that shows you your path of least resistance for generating wealth. For more info on the profiling check out http://www.wealthdynamics.org/ and to learn about XL head to http://www.resultsfoundation.com/

2) A Conservation Project

For those of you who know about Karori Wildlife Sanctuary in Wellington (http://www.sanctuary.org.nz/) or the Eden Project in the UK (http://www.edenproject.com/), we are setting up a similar type of project on Lantau Island called Ark Eden on Lantau (http://www.arkedenonlantau.com/).

The basis of it is working with 2 other people who as teachers now have children come to the village of Mui Wo to plant trees and learn about nature conservation. We are going to assist this through providing eco-tourism ventures such as accommodation, bush walks and cultural tours.

3) A Change

We were thinking of going off on a big OE trip as a holiday. Then thought why not make it a working one where we are working on our own businesses rather than working just for money and not necessarily in areas that we are passionate about.

The business and conservation projects both really excite us hence why we can not wait to get to Hong Kong.

So what does that mean for us...
You will have to read the EcoLog's of our journey!

Grow well
Merrin and Louise
The Ecopreneurs

Connecting Asian Ecopreneurs

Welcome to the Asian blogspot for connecting Ecopreneurs!

I value your time and realise that as an Ecopreneur you are in a very exciting position.

For those of you who are not familiar with the goals of an Ecopreneur, they are based around the vision, and action, of connecting businesses with nature conservation. Put another way, there is no point in businesses making huge profits if their process for making those profits result in their shareholders (and fellow citizens) not having a beautiful world in which to enjoy their success.

The excitement comes from seeing the growing change in the business community to further support the health of our planet.

As an Ecopreneur in the Asian region I would love to hear how you are assisting the goals of ecopreneurship and to be connected with those people and businesses that you know who are making a real difference to the environmental health of people and nature.

Merrin Pearse
Asia's Number 1 Ecopreneur