Little Dragons on Grace

"Nooooooooo. Mr. Tommmmyyyyyyyyeeeee. But we cannot act!" 

"You won't even need to act." 

"But we cannot sinnnnggggg!" 

"Yes you can. Everyone can sing, some people just sound a little better than others. And it's just for fun, c'mon." 

"Ayyyaaahhhhh." 

"Trust me. You guys will enjoy it, when you see the finished product ... and it's all over." 

"Yes of course, we'll be happy when it's over!" 

Crossroads

Crossroads is a nonprofit linking resources and needs. It was started by accident by an expatriate couple in Hong Kong back in the 1990s. Well, it may not have been an accident, but they happened into it, and Crossroads has been growing ever since.

The location has a uniquely redemptive vibe. The foundation lives on an old army barracks –– about three acres and several buildings. On the grounds are apartments for dozens of international and local volunteers, warehouses for donated goods, a free-trade coffee shop and gift store, and a team of interactive "Global Xperiences." These experiences put the 'in' in 'innovative.' They educate people in the 'Developed World,' about struggles of the 'Developing World' by immersing them in real time scenarios (poverty, HIV/AIDs, refugee camps, and more).  For example, in the poverty scenario, students are divided into groups, camped in a rundown section of the barracks, given a certain amount of money, and a way of income – such as collecting newspapers for recycling ($2 a day).  Whichever group gets out of poverty first, wins. Before long, an actor comes along – the landlord – and he demands his monthly rent, which the students can't afford. Other crises come up as well while the students frantically work at the papers.

I wasn't actually a part of this scenario, but our school did it last year. Some of the students got frustrated and started thinking of ways they could get out faster. They're solution was simple:  'borrow money' from the other team, and 'flirt' with the landlord to get a lower rent. I think it's telling that they're immediate 'go to' plan was theft and prostitution.

Our school has four community service days each year, and this year we've been to Crossroads for three of them. We haven't done any of the 'Global Xperiences,' but the students have had multiple possibilities to help out. One of the more valuable opportunities afforded by Crossroads is the chance to mingle with the volunteer staff. Everyone working there is a volunteer, some are sponsored by churches or organizations, but none are paid by the foundation. Several of them come from countries littered with poverty and aids and refugee camps. Their diverse stories and spirit of service embody Crossroad's mission.

Doni does the snake while Crossroads' vc, Mandy, gives instructions.  

Plans for expansion are posted around the grounds. In the back are a couple of laymen's wheelchairs. 

A crate ready to be shipped to our central Asian neighbors. 

The girls can't believe it!

The crews bag ground and move it around. 

Eric makes friends with the refugee camp garuds. 

The Philippines

EDITORIAL NOTE: Over Chinese New Year break – end of January – Mr. Tom met up with a couple friends in the Palawan. Below are a few of his chronicles. 

DAY 1 (Arrival)

The Busuanga runway landed us like when my brother and I slid down stairs on cardboard sheets, except our stairs had a wall at the end and the runway didn’t. It was a fitting ending to my first time on Cebu Pacific, a Philippine budget airline. Cebu embodied a kind of Filipino amiability. Checking in at Hong Kong international, the clerk gave me a sticker, the Cebu logo. 

“Okay sir. Wear this.” 

I didn’t ask questions, I just put it on. 

The sticker is the first step in Cebu’s conscious effort to loosen serious travelers so that by the time they land in the islands, the culture shock isn’t so drastic. The next step was our inflight Cebu Pacific game and giveaway. “It’s not a Cebu flight without it,” our attendants chirped. The game was a simple, “first person to show me a ...” wins a reusable shopping bag with giant smiling cartoon airplane on the side, the Cebu logo. The heads went up, “A game? A game? What?” People started shuffling in their gray-blue seats, prepping their purses and personal items just in case they might have the lucky thing that gets called. We were stocked. 

“Okay, the first item,” the attendant began, “starts with a ‘P’ and ends in and ‘E,’” ... (shuffle, shuffle, shuffle). “I mean a ‘T.’ Starts with a ‘P’ and ends with a ‘T.’” 

“Oh,” we all said, pretending it made a difference ... (shuffle, shuffle)

“A passport. Does anyone have a passport?” Before I could think, I heard, “Oh, and here’s one on the front row, congratulations.” 

If I thought I was a contender I was only fooling myself. I couldn’t compete with Filipinos at their own game. The next two items were cigarettes and lipstick.

The sticker, the game, the runway, were ingenious planning in prepping passengers for island life. And the final step, was a audacious mix of club music and 80s rock ballads that started playing while we taxied to our gate. Cebu knew we needed to get loose if we were going to enjoy ourselves in the second largest archipelago in the world. 

Shaun and Phil, a couple buddies also teaching in Asia, had already perched a place with concrete walls painted like wood and vine. It had electricity for a few hours in the evening.

The sticker. 

The post-flight feeling. *photo by Shaun.

DAY NEXT (rented scooters)

The roads rode faster at night. The world just wide enough to see the dry-jungle growth on both sides of the road, the world confined to a weak-watt scooter headlight. I was doing 40kph on my Honda 150cc scooter, I was doing 90mph on my batmobike. I was getting pumped as my tires bumped over the road laid open like a skinned carcass of blonde clay. The tires hit and spit through the mud puddles and across the gravel ruts and clay veins pargeting our sandal covered feet in road grit. The temperature dropped with the sun, and our tank-tops and shorts let the cool air whisper to our sunburned skin. The jungle was a tunnel, unless we dared look up at Abraham’s vision stretched over us, hoping an unexpected rock didn’t send our tires looking the same direction. The sound of wind and high engine vrum was all we could here as we boogied back to Coron. 

Bridges were the biggest danger. They crept out of the desaturated jungle-dark like monitor lizards threatening our eight-wheeled entourage. Bigger bridges were concrete and metal, smaller ones were wood. Tracking our wheels on rough-weathered 3x10s laid adjacent about a foot wide was tricky in daylight, and risky in nightlight. We became more proficient at crossing as the day progressed, but some bridges were out completely with no signs or warnings, and the only cross was a side route. Our goal was  to NOT do a surprise launch across one of the missing bridges in the dark. 

We knew the road some since we’d drove the same road out, something like 60 kilometers, in the lightime. Our pace got faster as the day went on, after learning what kinds of rock puddle ruts could be taken at what speed, after becoming one with our mechanical animals. 

Frequently, the pack paused to make sure no one got left or lost. At one stop, Pierre was missing. Pierre, or Peter, was a late twenties computer-science Phd. with a skinny build and a ridge-line nose over his black-coffee beard. We met him in the Philippines; he fit right in with our group, a pioneer with a thirst for San Miguel and adventure. Already, he had dropped his bike two times; once in town just after renting, another just after a bridge. We waited in the dark while the low sound of our idling bikes were swallowed by the surrounding vines and open sky. We waited. After roughly ten minutes, a light appeared on the road, and we could hear the high vrum. Three drops for Peter that day. 

The bridges. 

Shaun is ready for the road. 

Phillip is feeling it.

Pierre/Peter strikes a foreign pose. *photo by Shaun.

DAY BEFORE & SAME DAY (Foods)

Mangos and blenders were made for one another, probably in The Garden of Eden, but Asia and cheese happened after The Fall. 

“What is that?” Phil questioned. 

“It’s a Lapu Lapu,” Peter offered. (Lapu Lapu is a local Filipino fish favorite). 

“Yeah, but what’s this on it?” Phil questioned further. 

“Cheese.” Peter answered. 

Phil doesn’t like eating chicken with eggs, and he doesn’t like eating fish with cheese. 

...

The town gets dark at night, darker then Hong Kong. There are only a couple street lights, and the power is usually out anyway. The town shadows buzz with people and the motorcycle taxis and generators buzz too. We walked through the dark to a restaurant run by teenagers. 

Our vegetarian orders arrived after a couple rounds of cards. And our vegetarian meals were full of meat, except for the fries. The fries were a strange gift to humanity, the kind of gift no one wants. The fries had cheese, powdered cheese. A white plate, with pale potato fries, and bright orange powdered cheese. Imagine Kraft powdered cheese, beaten, shamed, and brainwashed until it had lost all sense of identity. It tasted like ground cardboard, with less flavor. The fries also came with ketchup and mayo in a cup, not mixed. Two squirts of red and white in a pale porcelain tea cup.  

...

We discovered mango smoothies. Palawan mangoes are perfectly sweet and their flesh is less stringy than many mangoes around the world. Dried, they are unbeatable, the only possible contender is when they’re blended with ice and milk. They mixed with the unairconditioned humid air like a man and a woman made of the same bone and flesh. And the best part was, they didn’t have any cheese. 

Lapu Lapu on the right. 

Mingling at sunset on Coron peak. 

Steve Jobs

Every morning they fixed

their eyes on their 

glowing alters 

and gave thanks to

the creator who made

all things bright and beautiful

Pooles on the Loose

Victory Peak, overlooking Hong Kong. 

My parents manage apartments and travel the world. With an inventive spirit and a mind for family, they blazed their career path to fit their needs. Starting out as a dynamite pastor/teacher combo in Cle Elum Washington, their first international adventure together was a honeymoon in the Canadian Rockies. With unconventional vision they brilliantly leveraged their post-graduate degrees in Ministry and Education to land jobs as apartment managers in the Lewiston & Clarkston Valley, rated the number one place to live by New York's Outdoor Life.* 

After parenting their three children through infancy –– which included one child jumping three stories from stadium bleachers, another taking a knife to his scalp, and other kid stuff –– they traveled to Russia. They went to the country that haunted their childhood with missile threats and satellites to offer humanitarian aid.

Even with a spirit for international travel, they spent most of their time investing in their local community. Carrying a strong elbow and a smile to their duty of toilet scrubbing and lawn mowing, they helped make Lewiston and Clarkston a place where others could afford to live in modest style (the kind Outdoor Life appreciates).

They also worked hard to give their children a chance to experience the spirit of travel. Through vaning, flying, camping, and funding, my parents sent their kids all over the Contiguous, and to places like Europe, Mexico, Canada, Samoa, and Malaysia by the time they graduated from secondary.

Now that their kids are practically fledged, the ocean-hopping bug has once again been biting, or hopping in their bones. In January, they left their cellphones and pummel stones behind and flew to Hong Kong, Asia's World City. They took on the city with the same tenacity they repaint an apartment after a chronic smoker has turned the walls yellow.

In Hong Kong the wealthiest people –– and they get pretty rich –– are in real-estate: people who buy, sell, own, and rent land, houses, skye-scrapers, and apartments. I told some people what my parents do, and they said, "Oh, very rich-ah." I laughed a little and said, "They work in a small town... Yeah, they're rich. I mean, you could say they're doing things pretty good."


* The LC Valley is also ranked "Number One Place to be Born and Raised," by the publishers of The Year of the Dragon®. 

The Year of the Dragon (Part 2: The Mushu Invasion)

Chinese dragons and Western dragons are different. Part 1 describes these differences in detail, but the short is this: Western dragons are scaly mean loners, and Chinese dragons are fuzzy inclusive good-luck charms. Opposites really, or are they?

In the last fifty years the differences between Western and Eastern dragons have softened like rotting avocados.  Movies such as How to Tame Your Dragon, Mulan, and Puff the Magic Dragon all challenge the traditional image of the mean Western dragon archetype. These films cast dragons as friendly, helpful, and approachable. They aren't monsters, they're misunderstood.

On the surface, this doesn't seem like a major problem. In fact, it might even seem positive to recast the  people-eater dragon of the Western psyche, at least it gives kids one less thing to fear on campouts. But even though it may seem harmless, don't be fooled.  It's a real problem. Actually, I think it's a conspiracy.

It's no secret that eastern religion is spreading through conservative churches in the West faster than mold  through a box of Yakima Peaches.  Practices such as meditation, thinking, and eating rice as a 'healthy alternative' to cheddar-cheese, are becoming common place in many denominations, and Adventism is no exception. All kinds of literature from people who have travelled to different countries is being published by the Pacific Press and the Review and Herald. There is even a book being passed around Adventist circles called, "The China Study." It's a problem with no easy solution.

At the center of this systematic easternization is none other than the dragon himself. Think about it, the roots of an 'evil dragon' don't stem from some lonely German village in the dark ages. No, they stem back much further, back to "The Apocalypse of John," and even "Genesis" itself. The roots of the 'evil dragon' archetype are tangled in scripture. They are rooted in scripture.

The Western dragon is under attack, because they (the enemy) know if they can make the dragon more approachable, honest everyday people everywhere, will buy more Apple products, just like Eve did. That's right, why do you think the Macintosh symbol has a bite taken out of it? Don't buy in. And if you come across a dragon in the wild, don't, under any circumstance (baring the apocalypse), pet it.

There are no coincidences.

A Travelogue By Dad

Publisher Note: The parents of this blog, Bill and Tammy, came to visit their son Tommy over the  Chinese New Year. Bill wrote a travelogue of his experience. His wifeTammy thought it shouldn't be posted because of the rumors it might create. After review, we, the publishers of 'The Year of the Dragon,' have decided to post the original travelogue unedited.  We maintain that our educated readership can make their own decisions. 

When thou risest in the morning unwillingly, 

let these thoughts be present:

I am rising to do the work of a human being.

Why then should I be dissatisfied if I am going to do the things 

        for which I exist and for which I was brought into this world?

Or, was I made for this - to lie in the bedclothes and keep myself warm?

- Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor, 161 - 180 AD

Dear Friends of Tommy,

I asked Tommy if I could post a few words on his blog.  I thought you might be interested in a father’s perspective on “waz-up” here in Hong Kong.

First, let me speak about Tommy.  Tammy and I came here with two major objectives.  Of course we brought some home made cookies and the Ultimate Frisbee Tommy requested but there were two main objectives. 

Our number one objective was to see and be with Tommy for a few days.  At the airport, as you can imagine, Tommy literally stood out above the crowd waiting to meet arriving guests.  The cardboard sign reading “The Pooles” was a nice touch but not really needed.  Tommy doesn’t have a beard and his hair is shorter, especially around the ears, than I’ve seen it in a long time; but, we recognized him right-off and he looked good.

We arrived at night so didn’t see much of Hong Kong on the way to Tommy’s apartment in the dorm here at Hong Kong Adventist College.  As for Tommy’s place, it is clean, cool (literally) and spartan (no pictures on the walls, no plants and a minimal amount of furniture).  Tammy and I immediately recognized that what this place needed was a woman’s touch and this leads into main objective number two for our trip.

The second main reason we came to HK was to meet and check out Tommy’s fiancee.  If this is news to you imagine what a surprise it was to us when after only a month away from home, Tommy told us over the phone, “When people ask how I’m doing, just tell them I’m engaged to a local girl and everything is fine!”  Now, knowing Tommy, we figured he was kidding but there is nothing like first hand “intel” to make sure.

As already mentioned the apartment gave no indication (pictures, flowers, cards, etc.) that there was a woman in his life; so, rather quickly we were able to relax and just enjoy being here.

Tommy is a good host and we’re enjoying ourselves; however, if you are going to come for a visit there are a few things you may want to plan for.  To begin, Tommy has three bowls but only two spoons.  Next, there is only one guest towel which hasn’t been an issue until this morning when Tammy told me she was going to shower first.  Another thing is the ants, but unless you are extra squeamish about this sort of thing (like Tammy), I don’t think you’ll be too bothered.  Honestly, they are so small and there are so few of them that I hardly even notice and my sleeping mat is on the floor.  Another thing, if you, like me, think ketchup can enhance almost any and every meal, you might want to bring some with you.  Finally, let me comment on the weather here.  There may be palm trees growing around HK but this is not Hawaii.  In anticipation of our visit, Tommy borrowed a space heater that’s not quite as large as a toaster.  The heater does an okay job if you put on your clothes, and a jacket when you first get up and then hover over the heater as if it’s a small fire.  More than once, in the early morning hours I’ve repeated to myself the above quotation by Marcus Aurelius (I learned this in an Early Church History Course I took while at Andrew’s University many years ago).  Most of the time while we’re out and about the town I’m not freezing; however, more than once I’ve found myself singing to myself the words of Liza Doolittle, “All I want is a place somewhere . . .”  My point in sharing all this is help you be prepared if you should come in the winter.  Actually, I think, given a choice, I would choose being a little on the cool side as opposed to the high heat and humidity that will come in the summer.

Hopefully, my bringing up the aforementioned points doesn’t come across as whining or complaining and I hope you don’t get the impression that the situation here is only one step away from a jungle hut somewhere.  HK is a marvelous city and there is abundant evidence of wealth and luxury.  For example, Mercedes and BMWs are as common here as are Chevys and Fords at home and when you mix in the occasional Maserati, Lamborghini , Ferrari, Lotus or Rolls, you quickly realize you’re not in Kansas (or Walla Walla) anymore.  

The tour books say the major religion here is “money-theism” and that shopping is a passion.  On our first day one of our first stops was at the Pacific Place Mall.  Now, at home a mall usually has some combination of the following:  Sears on one end, J C Penneys holding down the other end, Macy’s in the middle and multiple filler stores in-between.  Such was not the case at Pacific Place.  Here, it was one designer store after another, after another, after another with their windows so brightly lit and richly displayed that I decided I really couldn’t afford to even window shop in a place like this.

Once out of this mall, we wandered the parks, streets, churches, zoo, arboretum, etc. of downtown HK.  I can’t tell you how wonderfully stress free it is to have someone who knows the area to show you around.  It was a fascinating day in an intriguing city.

One of the last places we stopped, on our first day, was an open-air flower market set up in an area larger than a football field.  Buying flowers is part of the new year’s celebration and I think about one third to one half of HK’s seven million people were at the market - it was wall-to-wall people.  We took pictures but didn’t buy any flowers and neither was I tempted to buy any of the fast foods on a stick that different vendors were selling.

For me, one of the highlights of the market and of the day was meeting one of Tommy’s students.  But before I tell you of this encounter, let me back up a minute and tell you how, as we started out in the morning, we crossed paths with the School Principal here at HK Adventist Academy.  Tommy introduced us and the principal proceeded to tell us how glad they were to have Tommy here.  But, if you think about it, what else could the man say.  Regardless of that, we believed him and thanked him and went on our way.

Now, back to the run in with one of Tommy’s students at the market.  Tommy had his camera up to his eye and was focused on something when I noticed a young girl reach up and tap on his shoulder.  Tommy didn’t respond immediately so she reached up and tapped a little harder.  Tommy lowered his camera and immediately started smiling from ear to ear and of course the girl was all smiles too.  Tommy introduced the girl to me (Tammy was off somewhere at that moment) and she introduced her mother to us.  Tommy told me the girl was in the eighth grade.  We chatted for a minute or two and then went our separate ways.  

As I thought about it, I thought, she didn’t have to do that.  When she saw Tommy she could have turned and gone another direction or just done nothing at all and we wouldn’t have seen her and would never have known she was there.  Do you see why this, more than the Principal’s kind words, said to me that Tommy is doing okay here - he’s making a positive impact.

But, as I reflect on this further, maybe this was more than just a coincidental encounter.  Both Tommy and the girl seemed quite excited to see each other.  And did I mention that she was very cute.  And as I think about it, traditionally, don’t Chinese girls marry at a young age?

This is probably just my imagination running away with me but I need to go find and have a talk with Tommy . . .