Hello World!
This is my first post. Welcome! Thank you for reading.
Who am I and what do I hope to do here? First, who am I? My name is John Chew. I live in Hong Kong. But I spent the first forty years of my life in New York. I did many things, but what I am most proud of was teaching for five years in the Bronx. I am a teacher.
However, in 2010 I started to feel wanderlust. Many of my college friends were moving abroad..London, Tokyo, Hong Kong.. The last straw was when my closest childhood friend picked up and moved to Hong Kong from New York with his three daughters and wife. I bought a one-way ticket in February and moved to Hong Kong in March 2011 with two bags, and an additional carry-on bag filled with books.
There is good reason for me to be in Hong Kong. I am ethnically Chinese. I look like I belong here. I don’t stand out from the 8 million other Hong Kongers. Some may say I walk with a little swagger..a New York gait? But, you see, my mother was born in Hong Kong. She was my connection to this unique city, and all my life I wondered what it would be like to live here. Now I live here. I am a card-carrying Hong Konger (albeit a temporary one); future blog posts will talk about the Hong Kong ID card and its importance to expats.
But, what I hope to do here is to meditate and to mull and to ponder… I teach here in Hong Kong. But I also work for a wonderfully small and intense company call Eureka; actually it is Eureka that sends me out to amazing schools all over Hong Kong.
Hong Kong is an interesting place. Foreign people like myself are fascinated by this city. Many visit hoping to stay for a few months and end up staying a few decades. There is a draw.. What is it? What will be the future of this wonderful, but also at times infuriating city? What will be my role as an educator? Manager? Future permanent resident?
So stay tune. I’d love to hear from readers. Lets have a conversation. Cheers.
Congrats on your new blog! This post is a perfect “About” page.
“Foreign people like myself…” Being an ugly American myself, and the worse type, I’m a New Yorker, it’s funny to hear the phrase.
It’s an odd thing being an ABC. On the one hand I am a foreigner, but on the other hand the city feels intensely familiar. It makes for an interesting dynamic. Thank you KC for sharing a comment!