Hong Kong's cold weather warning

As you have seen in the past, the HK weather symbols are varied and often beautiful.
This one, warning of cold weather, I love. I suspect those in the UK would laugh a lot if they realise the temps being warned about are 10 - 14^oC.
Not exactly freezing, but in a country without heating (because "it is never cold for long in HK") 10 degrees feel soooo cold. Playground duty today was a trial, even with my layers.
I break out the winter coat tomorrow.

Cold Weather Warning

The Cold Weather Warning is now in force.
The Hong Kong Observatory is forecasting cold weather
in Hong Kong during
the overnight period.

As Hong Kong is being continuously affected by a cold winter monsoon,
people are advised to put on warm clothes and to
avoid adverse health effects due to the cold weather.
 You must also ensure adequate indoor ventilation.

If you must go out, please avoid prolonged exposure to wintry winds.

If you know of elderly persons or persons with chronic medical
 conditions staying alone, please call or visit them
occasionally to check if they need any assistance.

Make sure heaters are safe before use, and place them away from any combustibles.
Do not light fires indoors as a means to keep warm.

Whatever the temperature, please ensure that there is plenty
of fresh air in your room when you are using an old-type gas
water heater.

A better class of graffiti

Carved into one of the class desks today I found the following:

"Mrs Nye is hot".
I have decided not to have it cleaned off.

I was right!!

Remember this symbol? I thought it might mean that things were about to get chillier?
Well blimey. The wind has turned and is blowing straight off the Mongolian Steppes, through south China and into Hong Kong.
Though the sun is shining now at 3pm and it is a lot warmer, this morning it was boots and jumper weather.

Check mum's bag...

Uh oh!!

Challenge week

Challenge Week is when all the kids in KGV school go to different activities for a week.
They can opt for a safari in Kenya, working with orphans in China or Cambodia, other overseas trips or they can opt for trips in Hong Kong.

I looked after the HK based Drama Week.
Starting from nothing at all the kids built up characters for a play which was presented to the Junior School children at the end of the week.


Amazingly talented - the pics above are just a small part of the week.

hmmm - strangely appropriate

Wedding

During mum's recent visit we were honoured to be invited to a good friend's wedding.

Mum and I were there for the evening reception.
The evening was kicked off by a Chinese Lion Dance and we got to have our pics taken with this rather handsome lion.

New weather symbol

How cool is this?


Well I guess this symbol is very cool. I think it is warning about a drop in temperature as the website is telling us that the temps are now dropping from 24-29 to 21-25. So I suspect it is a warning that we may feel more chilly.

I've only just turned the aircon off. Looks like it's time to break out the room heaters.

Typing tournament

Year 8 students all have laptops. They got them at the start of term and one thing we decided was that they should be encouraged to learn to type. Therefore, an inter-class typing tournament was put in place to give the kids something to aim towards.

It is hard to describe the sheer hysteria that was the typing tournament.
Here are two images from the day...

This one shows the very excited Year 8's getting ready for the final.


















This one shows the very excited Mrs Nye running the competition.

HK Geography

This is the Google Earth view of Hong Kong.
Most people think of Hong Kong as the busy, bustling financial centre and parts of it are.
HK is both the island seen at the bottom of the map, and the Special Administrative Region (SAR) , which includes Kowloon and the New Territories.
The straight between HK and Kowloon is a short ferry ride, or you can take the MTR (metro).
We live on the east side of the map where the blue pin says "Country House here".
The border with China is on the north of the map near Futian.

I work in Kowloon - a 40 minute drive fro my house.
The kittens were at Wan Chai (near North Point on the map) and on the main island.

As you can see there are many islands. The biggest in habited two are Lantau and Lamma Island.

Our 1st foster kittens

During the summer in Hong Kong, much of the expat and local community leave to get respite from the heat. The summer also coincides with a rise in kitten numbers.
There's a feral cat population, but it is not huge - feral dogs and snakes keep it low.
When people see cute kittens on the street they tend to take them in to the animal welfare centres.

This summer I had seen one too many stories of kittens needing help and got in touch with the SPCA (which was the RSPCA prior to hand back of HK). They need fosterers to take care of kittens when they are too young for the first injection and cannot be homed.

What a great job - play with the kittens, feed and medicate them, play with them some more. Then give them back before they turn into cats. SPCA provides all food, litter and vet care.

I gave my number to my local SPCA branch, and as soon as I got home the phone was ringing. Could I go to Wan Chai to get 3 x 4 week old kits please?

Wan Chai is quite a journey from where I live - it is on HK Island (see next post on geography). Still, 4 hours later I am home with 3 very, very small, very hungry, very vocal kittens.
















We named them Tonker, Tinker and Tabster.
Tinker was just too small and didn't make it, but here are Tonker and Tabster on their second day with us. They are already lap cats, it must be instinctive in new kittens to sit on laps.
Tonker was very tiny at only 0.2kg, Tabster was bigger at 0.4kg.


























And here they are 4 weeks (and a lot of love) later. We nursed them through ringworm, intestinal worms and a couple of viruses. Both gained weight to 1.0kg, Tonker got positively fat.
They were homed within 4 days of their return from us.

New symbol

There's a new symbol on the Weather Observatory site today.




Yellow Fire Danger Warning
The Fire Danger Warning is Yellow and the fire risk is High.

So I return to my blog - and the subject is...

The weather.
There was the hugest storm last night. It sat over our village house and flished and flashed.
I looked up the hits this morning:

Time 18:00-18:59			Cloud to ground strikes 3720				Cloud to cloud strikes 1419
19:00-19:59			6285				1705

lolcats cheers me up too

I love these, but will post a few more as and when I have the urge.

Here are some graphs. to cheer you

c/o graphjam.com

Why is there a penguin on the helipad?

A few sillies to lighten the day...

Going to the docs

When you go to the doctor here, you also get the drugs included in the cost of the consultations (about 4 pounds). The docs tend to self dispense and you get all the little baggies. Wonderful stuff.


This is the pic after you've taken your drugs.

What a lovely day...

I went to a presentation during the Easter holidays to see a Year 8 student celebrated for his excellent work at the Center (sic) for Talented Youth. It was a fabulous occasion and I’m very glad to have been there. It is run by Johns Hopkins University.

There were about 500 children from the Pacific Rim being awarded and my student was the top achiever for maths.

His SAT score of 770/800 is near perfect, (to put this in context only 4 of the 500 scored over 700). SATs are the US uni entry exam. An 18 year old achieving this score would be admitted to just about any college he chose. My student is 12 years old.

It is very difficult to explain the measure of this giftedness, it goes beyond the profoundly gifted.

I'm glad I went to represent the school. It was so lovely to be so respected for an afternoon. Here is my name tag...


Isn't it fabulous? It is silk too, so I can keep it forever.

Everyone was saying, "Oh your a teacher? How wonderful." I was placed front and centre in the audience and asked to stand at one point for a big round of applause for my fine work!!
What a change from the usual "You teach maths? Why would you want to do that?"

It is too easy sometimes...

This actually takes all the pain out of mozzie bites.
It is too easy to giggle at naming of things here. There are so many.

fulgora candelaria linnaeus

Look what was wondering about last week. It is the "elephant leaf" insect.
Hard to see just how big it is from the image - about 2 inches long.

Very cool caterpillars

I went to check the damage to my tomato plants this morning. I knew they would be battered by the typhoon. What surprised me most was this:
And this:


And this:


This last one is about to pupate. And when it finishes up will look like this...

A Death's Head Hawkmoth - just like the Hannibal Lecter one.

Here is the lifecycle online: Death's Head Hawkmoth The 5 instars are further down the page.

Typhoon Molave

Last night Typhon Molave made land fall directly over Hong Kong.

We've got tree confetti everywhere. Looks like someone emptied a 40 footer of salad over the house. Anyone have a drum of olive oil and vinegar?


Whilst some of us were shaking in our beds, some silly buggers decided to video it:

Video of Typhon Molave

My own room

I have my own teaching room from August. It's very exciting. I have space allocated for pupils' work, but also have a lot of places for little bits and pieces. Though I might add these.

Silly intermission

Every now and again I see a silly pic online.
Sorry that I don't remember where I found this one.