Out of the Doldrums

"Finished products"

"Getting started"

"Found the soap!"

"The felting wool"

"In the "shed""

"Entering the shed"

"A Christmas ball of soap"

Christmas came and went …

… and I am still in a state of writer’s cramp. Or is it artistic doldrums? Or perhaps I am just plain tired. Whatever it is I am desperate to get my Hong Kong blogs written and some more photographs up to illustrate my and other blog postings.

I have recently written about a few of my experiences over on the comments on Andrew Sutton’s third and latest “Take-away” posting:

http://www.conductive-world.info/2010/12/response-to-chinese-take-away-3.html

I hope to expand on these on my own blog soon.

Christmas celebrations took place at the weekend and so will the New Year firework and essentially money-burning fiesta. This means that work goes on just about as normal during the week.

The Kindergarten closed for a week but the Petö children are as always welcome in the school holidays and some have taken up the offer. I am not working most days and today is a very welcome day off.

I spent the first sunny half of a sunny morning off reading a Christmas book! A rare event unless the book is about work. Recently I have been too busy writing one! The second is already in production. Today I decided to read. The next part of the day I spent doing house-worky things and then a bit of crafty creation.

Some pressies

I get few, but most very special, presents at Christmas and this year was no exception.

My Sister and her family sent me a lovely dress that I have almost worn out since I opened it. A perfect fit. Thank you.

My German relatives always find me an English-language book, which I value very much, the thought in searching it out and the always perfect choice. This year’s tome, in hardback, is the eight-hundred-and-fifty-pages-long Ken Follett novel, Fall of the Giants. I just read two-hundred and twenty-three of them before my arms started aching.

I always get some tea and this year I received an amazing teapot to brew it in. This will be in use at work where we all think we should drink tea rather than coffee but rarely do. Maybe with a beautiful teapot we now will.

Some other special friends always find things to buy me that they know I will be tempted to make later myself. I had some gorgeous warm, felted, elbow-length mitts given to me by a conductor colleague and something else rather special that I have created replicas of this afternoon for my clients.

I was given a felt ball that has a bar of soap inside it.

A present for my practice

It was not until I got home and tried it out that I realised that it was just the job for work. Those slippery bars that are always skating across the bathroom floor would now be a thing of the past.

This morning I went into my shed-come-bathroom and searched first the bathroom cupboards for tiny soap samples and then the “shed” for the felting wool, then I got to work. I now have six brightly coloured non-slip soaps, one already in the hands of Little Princess the child with athetoid cerebral palsy for whom holding the soap is always a battle. Now a battle won!

Back to the fray

I still have not got all my cards and presents made and posted but I will get them finished soon. New Year can also be celebrated!

No more playing with presents until the weekend as I am off to work again tomorrow.

This time it is the adults who have requested my time as their physiotherapists do not work between the holidays. That means from the 23^rd December until the 10^th January there is no physio- or occupational therapy on offer for them.

They can have as much “Petö” as they wish! The littlies too.

Notes

Ken Follett - Fall of the Giants, Macmillan ISBN 978-0-230-71007-8

Turkey, mince pies, sausage rolls, goose, Gluhwein, Lebkuchen and lots of snow

A soap bubble "White Christmas" complete with Bing singing
Lantau Island at Ngong Ping

Taken on top of the Peak, learning to pose like the Chinese

My German Christmas is over, my English one has just begun

There are now two Holy days to visit friends and play with presents, drink Gluhwein, eat Lebkuchen and roast goose.

I spent Heilige Abend, Christmas Eve with my lovely German "family".

I travelled home by the second-but-last tram of the day, arriving on my doorstep just as the church bells of the city peeled. They were announcing midnight mass. It was a wonderful sound reminding me of the many times that I have stood on the doorstep at home with my Mum listening to the bells in Norwich that were always accompanied by the horns of the ships anchored just down the road. The high pitch of the bells with the low horns joining in created a sound that made the hairs stand up on our arms and send a shiver down our spines.

That was the time when the river was still navigatable as far as Norwich and I can remember how much I enjoyed watching the huge ships turning in an unbelievably small space and then unloading their cargoes of coal. That was second best only to hanging over the bridge beside my Grandmother's pub watching the steam trains pass underneath straining to see if Dad was driving.

Talking about trains

I walked into my yard last night through deep crisp snow where only the neighbour's cat had trodden before me. I walked up to my flat and the first thing that I did was to switch on the lights of the Christmas tree then jump into a warm bed.

This year, despite the rush after arriving back from Hong Kong two days too late, I still managed to acquire a Christmas tree. It is the tree that stood in the group at work all last week and was brought to my flat by the cleaning lady under strict orders from her husband.

We conductors love our more-than-a-cleaning-lady, but we have never met her husband. Never-the-less it seems that he knows all about us and our work and had insisted that his wife drive me and the tree home. The tree that she had provided for us from their nieghbouring farm.

On Wednesday after a very Chinese Christmas party with the "Petö" children and their families I was chauffeured home!

Precious memories come out once more

This year's tree is much smaller than I normally buy. I usually have a huge one to accomodate all my precious decorations that are full of memories of the friends who send them to me or of the countries where I have bought them. The tree will be jammed packed when I eventually get round to hanging the decorations with the addition of a Hong Kong memory!

All my life, or for as long as I can remember, I have dreamed of having a train running around the base of Christmas tree, just like you see in picture books.

This year my dream has come true.

I have placed my tiny tree on the coffee table in the middle of the village that is part of my N-Gauge layout. The factory and industrial estate has been moved up to the one end of the table with the terrace houses for the workers beside it, while the pretty village with its church, bakery and tearooms are now assembled around the tree.

Photographs later when the tree is complete with its memories all hanging on it.

Tree decorating and sweet making are the jobs for today after breakfast and a Skype call with my Dad with my great-niece, Aimee, on his knee!

Time to start the day, I may even open a present or two from under the tree beside the train!

Merry Christmas to everyone and thank you for reading my blog.

PS

Over on Conductive World I have just seen that Andrew Sutton has mentioned a Youtube video that he has received from Rowena Somogyvary. I received another one from the same mutual friend:

http://www.youtube.com/v/GkHNNPM7pJA

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Re:Mickey Mice...

Mickey Mouse in Hong Kong

... in the office and on the fridge

Here you are Andrew, another photograph to illustrate your blog:

http://www.conductive-world.info/2010/12/chinese-takeaway-2.html

More pictures to come later, after my German Christmas celebrations are over tonight.

Another picture to illustrate Andrew Sutton's posting

Andrew Sutton's VIP junk

Fish swimming against the stream!

Landscape

Flower

The Great Wall

Workshops and art work

I went on a post-Congress morning visit to a workshop where many pictures and other works of art where produced and sold and I saw therethe work by the artist Wing Wong whose story has recently been told on Andrew Sutton's blog:

http://www.conductive-world.info/2010/12/formal-presentations.html

I include here photographs of the pictures that I bought, all prints of the originals that are also printed onto textiles, notebooks, etc., The first picture also a postcard version of Andrew's junk and Hong Kong by Wing Wong.

At the same workshop there were also facilities for making pottery, book-binding, machine embroidery and computer graphic design.

At another workshop I saw teenagers working on computer designed cartoon characters that are reproduced on pencil cases, notebook, folders and pen holders that are all sold on the open market. The workshops are all busy trying to find new outlets and ideas for production that is competitive on today's market.

I saw a group of people standing, at walking bars and without help, discussing the production of their products and future plans. They could not all communicate verbally so had different coloured cards to reach for from a string above their heads, the different colours indicating their agreement or disagreement with proposals.

In the same workshop at eleven o'clock a piece of music was obviously recognised coming over the loudspeakers because those who could stood up, others remained seated, to exercise for the lengt of the song. Some people had assistance from the therapists and other workers in the room to join in, while some just carried on with their work, not taking the opportunity for a break.

In both the adult workshops that I visited it was a joy to see most of the wheelchairs lined up against one wall, with only a few for whom the wheelchair was the optimum position for working and freedom of movement remaining in theirs.

There were all kinds of seating arrangements for the others, adaptions to chairs and boxes and stools all done by the workshop carpenter and metalworker. There were small notices on the work tables and the dining tables to indicate the equipment and facilitations that each person needed.

There were a lot of tips for me on those two visits.

It was not a subject touched upon in depth at the Congress...

Lantau Island Country Park

Hong Kong International Airport

I went in the Crystal Car with a glass floor, brilliant.

Yes, it is steep!

Ngong Ping Cable Car
An exciting 5.7 km ride above Tung Chung Bay to Ngong Ping and the Tian Tan Buddha Statue

...but something that hits as all: funding

I arrived back at work to discover that the Conductive Cooking course for young adults that began while I was away, very successfully and with great enthusiasm, is already in danger of closing because of the funding.

Here is a radio report from New Zealand discussing funding cuts there. Cuts that were announced last year and are now being felt:

http://static.radionz.net.nz/assets/audio_item/0006/2448852/ntn-20101221-0908-Government_cuts_to_therapy_for_disabled_children-m048.asx

I am certainly back in the West

The East, that is Hong Kong, appeared to have the funding well and truely sorted.
Perhaps we could have learnt something from a presentation or two about how they do it, or did I miss that while in a different session?

The Hong Kong Congress was good,

"Arty chop sticks"

"An arty chop stick shop!"

but could it be that this one will be even better:

http://www.nzdsn.org.nz/uploads/news/NZDSN_Conference_Workshop_Details_in_PDF.pdf

Some of the people I met, some of the sights I saw

Happy travellers enjoying the winter sunshine
Sorry folks I just had to use this one, we all look so jolly!

Sunday shoppers at Causeway Bay

How the world looks from the Botanical Gardens

Playing Go in Stanley

Not the Great Wall, but still a spectactular view

The hustle and bustle of buses and signs

Forty-winks on Saturday

Hong Kong from above

Peace and quiet with a heron
I spotted him while looking upwards to the glass towers of Hong Kong

Lamp cleaners in the Botanical Gardens

Pond dipping in the Botanical Gardens

Stanley Bay

Sunday-shoppers and warm drizzle, Causeway bay

Night-life from a tram

Fishing boats

Stanley Market

A surprise meeting, after eighteen years, with fellow Foundation for Conductive Education Conductor, Shona.
Now in Western Australia

A street cleaner

A view towards the South China Sea

One of the highlights
A much looked forward to reunion with my "Best Budapest Buddy"
Norwich 1989 and 1990, Budapest 1989-1991, Hong Kong 2010!

Some of the things that I enjoyed most

With the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong long left behind me I have returned to a different hustle and bustle. Slower but just as busy. I am back at work and sadly have no time to write, but I have time enough to post a few photosgraphs of my travels.

Just a few pictures that I hope will illustrate the diversitiy of Hong Kong Island and its people.

On Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day I hope that I will have all the time in the world to post a few words to go with the pictures.

Re: VIPs and formal presentations

"For the purpose of the Congress, I was a 'VIP' "

One of the photographs to accompany Andrew Sutton's latest posting, others will follow.

http://www.conductive-world.info/2010/12/formal-presentations.html

Re: Chinese takeaway

The Hay Hay noodle bar

I think the glass in the centre has the Tsing Tao beer in it

The Pacific Café in the Centre, Wan Chai Empire Hotel on the left

It is a pity that I can not put these photgraphs in the comments on Andrew Suttons blog:

http://www.conductive-world.info/2010/12/chinese-takeaway-i.html

Printing them here is the best that I can do.

I have no picture of the beer bottle that Andrew mentions but I will sort out one of the bag full of goodies from SAHK when I get back from the Christmas market where I am working this evening.

Andrew takes the words right out of my mouth in his postings on Hong Kong but I can provide the pictures!