The First 3 Weeks

Schools, Friends, Apartments

We just closed out on Week 3 of our time in Hong Kong. The astute among you will note that 2 posts in 3 weeks does not constitute “weekly posting”. You might say I’m a few prawns short of a galaxy.

The headline is: things are going really well here. I think we’ve made as much progress as any family relocating here could make in just 3 weeks. We’re really enjoying ourselves, proud of how far we’ve come, and thankful for what we’ve been given. Even when the kids are driving us up the wall.

School FOMO is real

The school scene in HK is pretty intense. The system is far more complex than it is in Canada, and there’s far more competition / keeping up with the Joneses. Parents map out their kids’ academic career from pre-school through university, schools interview kids to see who gets in (even pre-school), and kids are expected to build a portfolio that improves their competitive position (yes, even 3 year olds). There’s an entire industry of consultants who help with all that planning, prepping, and coaching kids how to get into their targeted schools. There’s a real anxiety that “if my kids don’t get into A pre-school, they won’t get into B primary school, so they won’t get into C high school” etc.

On the flip side, there’s a category of schools called “happy schools” - you know, the ones where the kids are happy. I’m being a bit glib, but it’s essentially schools that adopt a philosophy of prioritizing a child’s happiness and overall well-being as opposed to being primarily focused on academic results. We’ve learned that having your kids in “happy school” can be seen as ‘settling’ by locals, but is actually sought-after by expats like us. As much as we conceptually prioritize happiness for our kids, it’s easy to get sucked into a sense of FOMO that we’re not doing enough, maybe we should be trying to get them into better schools. We have to pretty intentionally resist that.

New School Routines

Our kids started school in Hong Kong just a week after we arrived. This was very much by design. We love our kids, but there’s only so many days in a row we could handle having them home full-time.

Our mornings are pretty action-packed here. Everyone is up at 6:30am, and I’m out the door with both kids by 6:55am, as Demi starts seeing her first client by 7am. I’ll bring Tessa with me to drop Malcolm off at his morning kindergarten (across town in Tin Hau) by 8am, and then it’s back west to Kennedy Town to drop off Tessa by 9am. We’ll pick up Malcolm at about 11am, have a lunch date with him, and then he joins Tessa at her Montessori by 1pm, and then pick up both kids by 4pm. It’s definitely not as simple as it is in Canada (drop both kids off at 8am, pick them both up before 6pm).

Favourite part of the day: picking up the kids.

The kids are adapting really well. They seem to really enjoy their new schools, the teachers are really dedicated and engaged, they’re already making friends, planning play dates, and we have some birthday parties lined up.

Making friends already!

God Set Aside An Apartment For Us

I’d been scouting out the HK rental market online months before the move, but we only started apartment hunting in earnest this past Saturday, and by Tuesday evening we were signing a provisional lease. It was pretty incredible.

Even in the current economy, and even compared to Toronto prices, real estate in Hong Kong is really expensive. A 3 bed, 2 bath, 700sqft apartment here could run between $6,000CAD/mo to $10,000CAD/mo (or more), depending on location, age, facilities, renovations, etc.,. We were definitely hunting on the lower end of the spectrum.

We were referred to a fantastic agent, Gordon, through friends we met here. We really like him; he’s honest, hardworking, never takes a day off, and never tries to oversell you on an unit. Reminds us a bit of our agent back home (shout out to Albert!). Gordon spent most of Saturday afternoon taking us to see various units, and then the remainder of Saturday trying to negotiate with prospective landlords on our behalf.

We came up against a couple of tough realities. The biggest issue is our lack to rental history, and our lack of full-time permanent employment (Demi is self-employed, and I’m unemployed). On top of that, we were potentially competing against other renters (often from mainland China) who commonly offered 12-months’ rent in advance. While it’s very much expected that renters would try to negotiate the price down, Gordon warned us we may not have a lot of leverage, and may need to offer 12 months’ rent in advance as well.

But God provided for us here too. Monday afternoon, with both kids in school, Gordon took Demi and I to see a couple more units in a neighbourhood we both really liked, North Point. One in particular stood out - good location, really well-managed building, and the apartment itself was beautifully renovated just a couple of years ago for the landlord’s own use (not some quick flip job). As we toured the unit, I overheard the other agent telling Gordon how the landlord refused to rent to any family with young kids (fearing they would damage the unit). We didn’t have many questions, so we signalled to Gordon we’d seen enough and practically had one foot out the door when I offhandedly asked, “So how old is this fridge?”

This launched the selling agent into a 10 minute conversation about how new everything was, just how much effort was put into renovations, and how much the owner cared. I nodded and smiled, went along with the conversation, and did my best to inject (in Cantonese) that we were landlords ourselves, we know how hard it is to find conscientious tenants, and just how much work it is to take care of a property.

That evening, we decided to ask Gordon to put in a bid for us. We figured we’d start with offering a lower price with no advance payment (beyond the usual deposits) and see where it goes. Again, we knew we didn’t have the strongest bargaining position, and the landlord didn’t even want to rent to young kids, but what was the harm in trying?

We were pretty surprised the next morning to learn the landlord, knowing we have young kids, had accepted our offer, at a lower price, with no additional payment in advance. It turns out my off-hand question swung the whole deal. The unit had sat on the market for a couple months (an eternity over here), and the selling agent had liked us so much that she had a “come to Jesus” talk with the landlord.

We’re still kind of floored that we got this place. For us to get such a nice unit, at these terms, with our disadvantages, with the landlord turning away all those families except for ours, it almost felt like God reserved this place for us. I went in yesterday to take measurements so we’d know what size mattresses to order (we thought it so unlike we’d get it, we hadn’t bothered with those details the first visit), and I uncovered an entire shopping mall underneath the building that has everything we needed without even going outside. We even get to have a king-size bed in our room, something we’d written off as highly improbably in HK.

We’re so excited to move into this place, and we can’t wait to have guests (ie: you) over!

Two Different Hong Kong Experiences (we got the good one)

We’ve heard that most expats who come to Hong Kong have one of two experiences:

1. Hong Kong is a highly connected place, so you get plugged in really quickly; or

2. Hong Kong is a bustling, but very isolating place, where you end up feeling alone in crowds all the time.

We have, in spades, been experiencing the former. In fact, the Toronto connections are so strong, sometimes it feels like we’ve barely left home.

There are so many friends we’ve met here on the introduction/recommendation of friends back home. Often, we’d barely know much about them, other than “so and so are good friends of mine, you should connect!”. We’ve always met awesome people who have hosted us, fed us, whose kids got along with our kids. One family happened to be deeply involved at the church we’re planning on attending. Another family will practically be neighbours at our new apartment. Old friends have had us over for dinner, given us tips on getting set up, recommendations on schools, where to shop for groceries, where to buy office attire.

One day, at school pick-up, I ended up chatting with another dad, and found out he’d moved with his wife and kids to HK just a few days before us. We were on the same newly-landed expats journey together.

Another time, I was standing on the subway platform at Causeway Bay (one of the busiest stations), and heard my name called out. It was a friend from Toronto who happened to be in HK for a week. Halfway around the world, in one of the busiest subway stations that moves millions of passengers each day with trains every 30 seconds during peak hours, it was pretty incredible we managed run into each other. And believe it or not, it actually happened to me again with a different friend another day.

You could say it’s just a honeymoon period, but we’ve been warmly welcomed to Hong Kong, and we feel like we’re starting to find ‘our people’ here already. It’s been one of the best parts of being here.

Prayer requests aka what’s keeping me up at night

• Mike job search - with school, banking, phones, and now apartment all coming together, my job is one of the last big dominos left to fall. Networking is starting to pick up, but applying to roles has been a mixed bag. I’ve got a couple of pokers in a couple of pretty promising fires. More updates on this next time.

• Demi’s practice is back at full-swing - this is really more praise than prayer, but Demi’s work stuff is going really well. Her clients are really enjoying the new schedule, our routine is really coming together, and she’s getting back a lot more time for herself than she did in Toronto.

• Finding our new church home - we’d set aside our Sundays for the first few weeks to visit many different churches and see just how varied the different expressions of faith are here, but we really do feel drawn towards one particular church. Please continue to pray it’s the right place for us.

• Settling into our new place - finalizing the formal lease, getting the keys, getting the place set up, getting all the stuff we shipped by boat from Toronto, buying new furniture…all stuff we’ll need to do over the next 2-3 weeks. Pray everything goes smoothly.

Thanks, and love y’all.