Appalling! The vast and continuous lack of attention, but at least to end a delightful but taxing 2025 with an amendment to that slackness. November saw a flurry of travel. I must remember the shape of these post covid years as I attempt to plan a Japan cycling trip... Shikoku Island... but ideally September - avoiding the Japanese winter.
The month started with a busy week in Seoul (interestingly the Kospi is up 60+% over 2025, would have been a great rally to participate in - and driven, it will interest you, buy key regulatory reform. A total failure on photos, except for a wonderful walk in Seoul's version of central park - loved this table created by the handle of a big dim sum spoon :-)
Back from Korea and onto Viet Nam - which is always a delight and where suddenly we are much in demand. Several drivers of this, not the least being a market upgrade from Frontier to Emerging by Russell.
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| Mr Tang, who owns one of the key CFA Prep Providers in VN, included here because he is one of the nicest people you could hope to meet - which is criteria that matters to me now. |
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| With equally wonderful colleague Florence Wong - just a delight to travel with, no BS and a whole lot of grace. VN is big on flowers - so lovely. |
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| The paradox of preaching market capitalism with Ho Chi Minh watching over... |
All in all an excellent trip, met just delightful people, and marred fractionally by losing my wallet on the last night ... I will spare you the expletives. Thereafter I went to Hainan (literally zero picutures, flew in at night, flew out the next afternoon. And then on to Beijing for the year wrapper. The venue that I was speaking in was so OTT. Very unusual VIP speaker seats (enthusiasm drives me to being ever early as you can see... uncool Rich) and then this massive LED, five-sided ceiling screen which was a first for me.
And then suddenly the year was over... so badly wanted to get back on the night of Friday the 19th of Dec... and managed that with an 11.59pm touchdown - oh the delight of the rest of life awaits!
Aiden and Evan arriving back in the 852 was just wonderful. And they don't travel alone. Ev's mate Evert from Mossel Bay came for a visit. Such an excellent bloke - Ange asked him if there was anything he didn't eat - and he simply said "I want to try everything". Most welcome brother.
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| Catching the sunset over the Wan with Evert - delightful winter weather - and an old junk in the bay. |
Very quickly the house was full of hungry boys, Evan, Max (now in NZ) Luke (now in UK), Nick (working for a motor racing company in Hong Kong), Jake (UK, and I suspect at some point in consideration for the English rugby team) and Aiden - quick feed before hitting the Wednesday night ponies in Happy Valley...
Christmas came and went, a quiet morning followed by a big party in the afternoon at the Schats' house. It was excellent, but I was very slow on the camera. Backgammon set for Aiden, boxing headgear for Ev...
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| Ash the new bin-cat a great addition |
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| And late-night wait-ups for Bafana Bafana's AFCON campaign (what with the exceptional rugby internationals concluded) - with Rachel, supercool and lovely, and Aiden's not-vakansieromansie |
We've also had the delight of the NextGen family around (we are practicing, dear Josh, just saying) with Lara and Jason spending a couple of days at Simon and Tracy's house (so appreciated) with Ezra and Jessie - Ev being an absolute champion being the big cousin:
With these delightfully peopled afternoons and nights, the early morning rises continue, and it is a absolute pleasure to enjoy a no-time-pressure space for ocean swimming (how's the sunrise view on the way to the beach!) and below that, early mid morning on way back up the jungle stairs after putting in a proper session. Hong Kong is just disgustingly useable - genuinely public public space, and at temperatures that are not intrusive (once used to the summer heat at any rate).
Then of course on the intermittent days, fiendish cycling mornings on the latest iteration of Blue2. I find it laughable that I have a titanium bicycle with carbon-fiber rims and Pirelli P-Zero tires - so totally wasted on my abilities, but so definitely not on my sentiments (you can't imagine how irritating it is that I can't crop out the black piece of gate on the left below in-blog).
And then to round off with the super-current, my mini feature of the day - Monday the 29th of December... started off with a wonderful morning walk in the hills with Ange...
... followed by a trip to Sai Kung to deliver some lunch-boxes to a homeless feeding scheme that Ange is involved with (fittingly given her prior work in food and nutrition, hospitals, restaurants, catering, community programs). It's been quite an eye-opener for her, and so for the rest of us, vicariously, engaging with a part of Hong Kong which is hidden, and consequently easy to assume is not there. Of course, people are living hard in every place; it just seems casually cruel when the particular place is wealthy and resourced. No doubt the issues are more complex than I give credit for. This NGO is called May's Kitchen, the invention and running of by one of those amazingly energetic and quietly visionary people, May, who with zero resources manages somehow to feed people. The delivery was to the feeding scheme's kitchen, which is on the rural side of one of the SK villages (Ho Chung); the services are delivered in the old part of Kowloon however, Sham Shui Po; very inner city.
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| Ange and May having a giggle about something on the path to the kitchens. |
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| Aiden and Ange at the kitchen itself. |
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| The cleaning area - pretty basic, but respect to May, they feed 150 people a week, year round. I think that's a delightful reminder of what good people bring to the world. Hope 2026 is full of the kindly, and much less of the destructive. |
And to round the year off - how delightful to run into ageless simple romance? An elderly couple on one of my walks back from the beach. Wishing you and C all the very best for the new year. Love from all of us darling Josh.
