Nyes in Hong Kong

Saturday, October 31, 2009

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.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

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.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

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.