Summer Highlights part 4

Another great thing about the big house is the kitchen. My tiny apartment has a typical Hong Kong kitchen. It's a sink and a miniscule counter up against a wall. There is barely enough room for the toaster oven or rice cooker, and never both at the same time.

The big house has a western style kitchen with a real oven. It's great. I can actually bake things like cookies and brownies. Have you ever tried to make a pizza in a toaster oven? It does not work. Unless you like small, undercooked dough discs.

It's not that I'm a great cook. I'm not even close, but even mediocre homemade cookies are always better than boughten. Plus you get that fresh baked cookie smell in the house. No one ever complains about that.

There is also the issue of living with roommates. In my tiny apartment, there is barely enough space in the kitchen for more than one person at a time. If I'm in there making something, no one else can do anything at the same time. In the big house, you can fit a whole football team in that kitchen. They like cookies, too.

Summer Highlights part 3

Not only is there plenty of room for everyone at the big house, but there is also a very nice swimming pool. That's a great luxury to have in a place as hot and humid as Hong Kong. Of course, Hong Kong has public pools, but they are pretty disgusting. Once you have seen someone stand at the edge of the pool and urinate into the water, you don't feel like going back there again. You also can't swim naked in public pools. I can, and very much do, swim naked at the big house.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, once you swim naked, you don't want to go back to wearing a bathing suit. Water is natural. Skin is natural. They both feel natural against each other. Don't believe me? Take a shower in a bathing suit. That is unnatural.

The big house also has a hot tub, which is always a good thing. A long soak in a hot tub is just what the doctor ordered after a long day. If you can't have a swimming pool, a hot tub is the next best thing. Even better is having both.

Summer Highlights part 2

Another great thing about staying in the big house is that it is much bigger than my tiny apartment. I love Lily & Kevin to death, but three people in a one bedroom apartment is just too crowded. The big house has more than enough bedrooms and our very own private bathroom for every single person. It would be impossible to exaggerate how nice it is to have my own bathroom.

The living room of the big house is bigger than my entire apartment. Each of the private bathrooms is bigger than my apartment's bathroom, and one is huge. Each bedroom is larger and has more closet space than my entire apartment, which does not say much. Hong Kong apartments are not known for their spacious closets.

Summer Highlights part 1

The best part of summer for me was having Ryan back in town. We had not seen each other since the cruise and that was all the way back in June. Seeing him in Hong Kong is much easier. There is none of the stress of booking tickets and dealing with airports, and we do not spend much time seeing the sights here like we would on a trip. He has seen as much of Hong Kong as he wants to see, so that meant more time for us in that wonderful Clear Water Bay house. That meant loads and loads of steamy hot cuddle bunny time. That's something we can always agree on.

Cyber Bullies

I don't like bullies. I mostly feel sorry for them. Can you imagine how pathetic your life would have to be if you felt the only way you could express yourself was to pick on people weaker than you? Outside of politicians, who does that?

Bullies in real life are mostly cowards. The best way to defeat a bully is to stand up to them. They feed off of fear and if you are not afraid of them, they don't know what to do. When you see a cat about to knock a cup off a table and you pick up the cup, the cat will just walk away. It's the same with bullies.

Cyber bullies are a little different. Because they are anonymous, or at least think they are anonymous, standing up to them does not really work. It's a different dynamic. Schoolyard bullies want to hit people who will not fight back. Cyber bullies want people to talk to them. If no one talked to them, they would be invisible. The worst thing you can do to a cyber bully is ignore them.

What I don't understand are teenagers killing themselves over cyber bullies. I know teenagers love to be martyrs – everyone is out to get them, no one understands them, life is so hard on test days, doing homework takes away from their free time. When I was a teenager, people talked about suicide all the time, but it was just talk. Most of us knew that suicide was the stupidest way to solve a temporary problem.

Teenage bullies used to be limited to your own neighborhood. Now you can meet bullies from all over the world. The big difference to me, and where I really get lost in all this, is that bullies at school can be very difficult to avoid. They are physically in the school you have no choice but to attend every day. Sometimes they are in your class, sitting next to you. That is hard to avoid. Bullies online are exceptionally easy to avoid. If someone at school is harassing you and the adults don't care, you are pretty much on your own. If someone online is harassing you, why not just ignore them?. How do you get to a point where you think suicide is a solution, but you never considered not going to that website anymore?

People should never have to stay away from certain websites just because of troublemakers, but if going to that site is making your life that miserable, why keep going? Who is forcing these children to go to these websites? I do not pretend to understand today's teenagers, but isn't everything you do online voluntary?

Now some people want to outlaw some sites and send the owners to jail. Isn't that like arresting the producers of a TV show because someone did not like it and killed themselves? Who is responsible when they don't change the channel? Or better yet, turn off the TV and go outside once in a while.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation part 2

What made this year at the big house different from other years is how much all of our lives have changed since last year. When we first went to the big house, Ryan lived in Hong Kong and we lived together. Lily & Kevin lived together in their own tiny apartment. Now Ryan lives in Fuzhou and Lily & Kevin live in my tiny apartment. We went from two couples living in two different apartments to one couple living apart and the other couple living with me. Living with two other people in such a small space has definitely changed my relationship with them. For the better, I hope.

I did not really know Kevin all that well before he moved into my tiny apartment. I knew him mostly from how Lily talked about him and all the times I saw them together. We had never spent any time together just the two of us. Now he is one of my best friends.

Lily was already a close friend, but since we started living together, we are even closer than ever. She is not just my best friend in Hong Kong. She is the best friend I have ever had anywhere in the world.

Unfortunately, Ryan and I don't see each other nearly as much as we did when we lived together. We have been lucky enough to take a few trips together, which you can read about for the low, low price of only $19.95. Hailey's Bali Diary, Nudist Cruise Or whatever it is. I have also gone to Fuzhou and he has come to Hong Kong a couple of times.

I think if we could all live at the Clear Water Bay house all year, convincing Ryan to move back to Hong Kong would be easier.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation part 1

It was not really a vacation. I still went to work. It only felt like a vacation while we were all staying at the Clear Water Bay house. Kevin's boss goes away every summer and asks him to look after the house. Lily & I also move in since there is more than enough room. What made it even better was that Ryan was in town while his band had a short term engagement in Hong Kong.

We all stayed in the house the entire time Ryan was here. Now he's back in Fuzhou. Lily & Kevin are still in the house full time and I'm staying there part time. At first I thought it wasn't right to stay there without Ryan, but now I'm agreeing with Lily & Kevin. There is really no reason not to stay there, other than it's faster to get to work from my tiny apartment. So I'm thinking about moving back in. Summer is not over yet and there's no reason I should act like it is just because Ryan went back to Fuzhou.