It’s hard to believe another month has passed already! As you may recall from our last update, we took a trip to Singapore over Chinese New Year. This gave us a much needed break and a chance to have some time as a family away from phone calls and emails about work. We were able to take Peter to the zoo and introduce him to the animals as well as a trip to Sentosa Island, a beautiful beach with clean, clear water; toddler heaven! It was nice to be able to explore various parts of the city, walk through beautiful parks and even watch some of the Winter Olympics. So many of the things that we wouldn’t been able to do if we had stayed home!

As we had a little boy desperate to run on the travelators (the flat moving walkways in airports), we were reminded that as we returned to Hong Kong we too would be returning to a place where we are all essentially running on these travelators: So busy running but going even faster than is normal on our own speed. The theme of the month would be “Big Things” with our need to move out of our biggest storage facility as well as prepare for our biggest fundraiser.

As we write this, today is the “Big Day” to hand the keys back of a now empty building only hours before the fundraiser begins!

Big Day - Big Move

So where do you move 500 pallets of goods in a city lacking in space and charging a premium for what is available? Then again, before answering the where you may be asking "what is a pallet?". Wooden pallets are used as a way to stack like goods together on a platform that can then be easily picked up by a forklift and moved around. Much easier than carrying individual boxes! You can fit about 4 medium sized boxes on each level and stack about 3-4 boxes high. So, 500 pallets equates to hundreds of boxes of books, household goods, toys, electrical equipment and much, much more needing a new home.

This was a predicament that could not be solved on our own. Thankfully, with a last minute extension on the handover time, and some wonderful grace, as well as partial financial sponsorship, we have found some warehouse space in a nearby area. We are thankful for this answer in the short term, but recognise that it is not ideal. Is both a costly solution and will cause more time to be taken between preparing goods and shipping them out. Please be thinking of us as we seek alternatives for the future.

Big Fundraiser

We were recently reading a commentary saying “now is the time.” If you are told to do something “now” and you delay it is not postponing it is disregarding a commitment that should be made. This can apply to so many situations in life. Well, the “now” is that time for a group of business men and women used to more of the luxury side of life than the poverty faced by many today. Today is the day they spend one day the way a million spend a lifetime as they attend “Global Survivor.” This group will be formed into families, given identities and taken through a simulation giving a glimpse of what life is like as a refugee.

Once this is complete, they will be taken into a nearby camp where they must build a home out of scrap metal and wood found in the area. By midnight they should be finished and will spend the night sleeping on the ground with only a mat and a blanket. Morning comes early after an uncomfortable night filled with bugs and traffic noise from the nearby roads.

What may be even more surprising is that other employees and friends are paying for this group to participate. Each individual has a financial goal to reach. Now is that time for all their fundraising effort on the organisation’s behalf to be put to the test and for them to leave this place with a better knowledge and compassion for those in need.

Big Needs

We could spend pages listing current needs but wanted to highlight one in particular. Our wonderful fair trade café has become a staple and regular visiting place not only for our team but for our local community. Christy spends some of her time managing the café, placing orders for new stock and training new staff. We want to ensure that it remains open at the times we have committed to. Our main (and only fulltime) barista is going to be on holiday in mid April – mid May. We are desperately searching for a replacement to keep things running. Do you know of anyone who might be seriously interested in coming for at least a month to help out? We can provide the training although previous experience is always a help.

Thank You

Thanks again to you our faithful friends & blog readers. We appreciate and look forward to any emails or letters that come our way. It means a lot to us to hear from you!

What can be done?

We have watched and listened to the news of the devastation in Haiti. It is heartbreaking to hear the news and to recognise that life has changed so drastically for a whole society of people.

Haiti's earthquake has been a tragic echo, for us, of the Asian tsunami of 2004. Just like then, hundreds of people in Hong Kong have been desperate to help by donating money and goods to us, hoping to reach out to those in Haiti who have lost everything.

We are now working on shipments of emergency aid to Haiti, sending goods that have been requested by an organisation working there, who knows what is most needed and what will be of most help to the people they serve.

One thing we love about working here is that we are able to help when disasters strike and when help is needed to rebuild in such difficult circumstances. We are encouraged to hear feedback from places we have sent to and hear of the impact shipments make in people's lives.

There is Hope

We have received recent feedback from the Philippines. You may recall that in October last year they were hit with devastating typhoons resulting in severe flooding. This forced thousands to leave their homes and possessions and move to relief centres for safety. One of these centres (which used to be a basketball court) became home for 70 families. A contact we had working in the area was in great need of clothing to distribute to these families. Amazingly, only one week before the flooding, we were offered over 15,000 pieces of new clothing from a well known brand which in turn we were able to ship to this area.

"No one has ever brought us brand new clothing before!" were the words were repeated over and over again as these boxes were opened and the goods distributed.

Where do you & I fit in?

We have recently heard some good discussions on being an "outsider." How we all know in some way or another what it is like to be on the outside of some group or event. As we look at these disasters, at poverty and tragic situations most of us may feel far removed and on the "outside," and in honesty, thankful to be there. Do we just stop there and be relieved that we are on the outside? Perhaps we just don't want to know or perhaps we just don't know what to do.

Then again, being on the outside of these circumstances gives us huge opportunity to help in a range of ways. In our situation we look around and see the lack of people to help get things processed and shipped as quickly as we would like. We see gaps that would be filled by greatly skilled people in a variety of fields: accounts, admin, IT, shipping to name a few. We see gaps in our support and needs in the organisation for funding.

Would you consider coming yourself to help volunteer? Would you consider helping to sponsor a shipment of goods to Haiti or to a number of other countries in need of supplies? Would you consider supporting us so we can continue to focus on work over fundraising? If you want to just discuss ideas of other ways and places you could help, please get in contact with us.

Tom in Switzerland

Tom is now back from Switzerland where he was helping to run a simulation activity at a recent big meeting there. (We are leaving the specifics out to prevent extra hits to the blog. =)) It was a powerful event and a good chance for some to experience the challenges many face as they have to flee from their homes and live in a temporary camp either within their own country or over a border. Tom was there to help with the electrical and IT set up as well as being a soldier for the event. Many were moved and challenged. It is definitely an unforgettable activity which is what we want - the plight of these people to be remembered.

Chinese New Year

Another New year is fast approaching as we finish up the year of the Ox and head into the year of the Tiger. This by far is the biggest celebration in this part of the world. Tiger decoration are everywhere much to Peter's excitement. Three public holidays are given for families to take time to celebrate. You can tell this is important as shops that are open even on Christmas are shut for this entire time.

If you are young and/or single this is also a very profitable time for you as other give you little red packets (envelopes) filled with brand new notes. We are sometimes shocked to hear stories of how rewarding these packets are! =)

The shops are decorated with a lot of red and gold and you can buy a large range of snacks to give as gifts.

A Little Travel

We are really looking forward to this new year as we have decided to take a short break and travel to Singapore for a few days. It has been 15 months since we have had a holiday and are really feeling the need to have a change in scenery for a short time.

Thank you for being our faithful blog reader and reading through to the end. =)

Tom has been away for work for over a week now. More on that later.  Peter and I have been keeping ourselves busy going on walks and to the beach everyday.

As you can see from his outfits, the weather has been a variety of temperatures.

Peter loves this blocks that can be linked together. He sometimes sticks it in his mouth like a dummy/pacifier. He looks so funny! (his shirt says "will work for cookies" in small print.)

We haven't added some cakes for a while and thought it was time.

I recently made a cake to look like this Mongolian Guur that we wonderfully have on site.

We have also become Stargate fans and for Tom's birthday I made him a Stargate cake. (for any real fans out there I realise it is not an exact replica but it is as much as I could do/have patience for. =)

Been trying to remember to take photos of things that have become common sightings to us but may not be so for our friends.  One of these is the variety of meals Mcdonalds serves here. Every few months they have a new promotional item.  At this moment you can buy one of these:

Yes! That is 2 fried fish burgers with shrimp as pictured throughout topped with Thousand Island Dressing.  We have only witnessed one person eating this and have not braved it ourselves.

Hope everyone had a good Christmas this year.  We had a good time with Peter this year. Unlike last year when he loved the wrapping paper, he wanted nothing to do with it! Once the gifts were unwrapped, he was happy to find lots of Thomas the tank engine toys, books, dvds & clothes.  His love of wheels continues and he was very excited for little cars to push along the floor. Some new donkeys (his favourite) were welcomed into the Pike family as well.

We had a group of new friends over for a turkey dinner which was also fun.

We hope to get photos up soon. Have been having trouble uploading so you will just have to wait. =)

This post was supposed to go up a while ago but somehow I deleted it before saving! Here are a few photos of Peter admiring his favourite - donkeys!

Hope that all of you in the US had a great Thanksgiving this year. To our Australian friends, I am sorry we weren't there to have you over for this event. Please rest assured that we were kept plenty busy here helping to make a meal for 70 people! This resulted in Christy making 6 pies, 2 turkeys & 5 kgs of sweet potatoes!  Here is a photo of the pies:

Christy has been a tad jealous of friend's photos this time of year as they take their kids to pumpkin patches and have some amazing photos of the event. Tom kindly bought 1 pumpkin from the shops in an attempt to introduce Peter to pumpkins.  I (Christy) attempted to take some photos but he wanted nothing to do with the pumpkin. The only one I got is the one shown and this is him removing the pumpkin from his Thomas car with a bit of grumpiness over the whole bit.

And for a little hint of what is to come in December....

Peter is now walking everywhere! He loves to walk, to climb, to crawl through things. He is an unstoppable force! It has made things easier when we go out as people tend to freak out seeing a baby crawling touching the ground. (A thing they rarely even let their dogs do)  Peter is loving his new ability to toddle around and get to places while carrying objects as well. One of his favourite passtimes is taking magnets off the fridge and carrying them across the room to stick on our front door (which is metal). He has also tested out this magnetic power with other items (mobile phones) and other walls (non metal). sadly things do not stick but just fall to the ground.

He has also been gaining teeth at a made pace. He has had 6 come in within the past month or so and has 2 more molars coming in. The great thing is that he is able to eat most foods including his first cheeseburger today. Not that that is a proud milestone but it was the only thing available to give him for dinner.

Peter can also now drink with a straw, say "yes, this, hello, dad, mum/mom & donkey" (we think). We know he understands more and does motions for no, waves bye bye, blows kisses and points at what he wants.

I did upload photos but for some reason they didn't work. Will try to get them up soon.

We just celebrated the Lantern Festival at the end of last week. This is a time where families get together, go to the beach with lanterns (some with real candles & some light bulbs) and spend time together.  We got Peter an airplane lantern & I got a Hello Kitty one which he seemed to like more than his own!  The pictures didn't really turn out well of his lanterns but we did manage to get some with his glow ears on. He was so tired at this point, he didn't even try to take them off.

We also watched people bring lanterns that they had painted messages & pictures on to be lit and allowed to go a short distance in the sky.

These girls are waiting for it to heat up and then sending it into the sky.

When it goes very wrong....

You have a lantern in flames over the heads of onlookers.

It comes crashing down in a ball of flames to be put out by a nervous security guard with a fire extinguisher.

We took Peter on a drive up a mountain last week. He was grumpy the whole way. We think it may have something to do with the 5+ teeth that he has coming in at the same time! So, when we finally parked, we wanted to buy him a Popsicle to suck on. Sadly they only had ice cream drumsticks.

Oh the pure joy he had eating the drumstick....

The only problem is when you eat a cone tip first it gets a bit unstable.

The ice cream starts to fall out and it gets taken off you before it is dropped on the ground.

Oh the sad despair of a baby losing his ice cream!

We have been offline for a while with some blog issues but are back and trying to play catch up. In the past month, Peter has become very steady on his feet although not yet walking without holding on to something. Sometimes the things he does hold don’t actually provide any stability for him so we know he can do it!

Mr Serious...

We upgraded Peter to a forward facing big boy car seat as he was no longer fitting in the other one and desperately wanted to be in the sitting position. Here is a cute one of a recent car outing.

Peter with his many local girlfriends =)

We celebrated my birthday at the end of September. Tom made a great chocolate cake for me and we had a great breakfast at the beach with our friends. This is a tube of glue - he said I am the glue that holds things together. =)

Peter started to stand on his own today. That is stand without holding on to anyone or anything! He is VERY pleased with himself. We'll try to get a photo of him doing it soon.

Our wonderful little guy turned 13 months today! He continues to gain more skills and abilities that he is happily showing them each day. Some of his favourites are climbing over a triangle cushion repeatedly, waving "bye bye" and then tearing around a corner and waving his head back and forth crazily to say "no."

He is becoming more independent and has learned how to push things out of his way if he doesn't want them. He has also decided he doesn't want to be spoon fed and will only eat things he can pick up on his own.

Not quite walking yet but a speedy crawler and he can walk when holding on to something.

Here is a wonderful picture our friend Georgie took of Peter a few days ago.

As we have mentioned several times, Peter gets a lot of attention from the locals. They often are offering him food to which we have to say "no" too. We are often surprised at this in a place where people often wear masks being afraid of germs but seem to have no issue feeding a random foreign boy!  Must be different people.

In the past week we have stopped a woman feeding him ice cream and then yesterday a man gave him the coke he had just bought from a machine and said he wanted Peter to have it! Tom politely explained that Peter does not yet drink coke but thanked him for his gift.  It's got to be something to do with those blue eyes! =)

Parents & families often surround us when we go to the supermarket and want their children to shake his hand. Again another thing in a germ phobia world we don't understand! In the end, we carry they wipes to clean his hand after the wellwishers, hand shakers and head patters have moved on.

Peter has a great personality. He makes friends everywhere we go and has realised how to get attention by waving and chatting to people.  Here he is posing for the camera.

He loves playing and pulling things off of shelves. You can see the Petey tornado has hit here....

Working from home has become increasingly difficult as Peter is very interested in lap tops, remote controls, mobile phones and cables.  He will casually come up next to you and try to look at the screen. A few moments later, a tiny finger will slowly creep towards the computer as shown below.  He knows he shouldn't touch it but it is so tempting to him!

Peter now has 2 donkeys that he has in his cot. He loves them both and we often find him holding one in each arm or using one as a pillow and holding the other one. It is so cute! Here are a couple photos we captured last week of him.

I write this as Peter holds my phone to his ear and babbles away into it.

Peter has started to say a few words in the past few weeks. His first recognizable, consistent one is "Hello."  He generally only says it while holding something up to his ear like he is talking on the phone. We hear it pretty frequently coming from him.  This is probably due to the crowds of people that daily say hello to him both those he knows and those he doesn't. When we go out to the shops, we constantly hear "Hellooooo bebe" followed by the Cantonese phrase pronounced "Ho Dakeeee" which means "very cute."

Peter's second favourite thing to say is "hi dad." Again this is usually done while holding a phone or some object up to the ear. He loves his daddy very much and is sad when he has to go to work or even just leave the room.

He understands both hello and goodbye but chooses to wave goodbye rather than say anything.

In the past couple days he has started to say "yes."  This is pretty exciting that I guess he has heard "yes" more than "no" in his year of life.  Such a perfect child!

He is very good at pointing at an object of interest and making a darth vader breathing noise to indicate his interest. It is  funny to hear.

These are a bit late in putting up but we wanted to post some photos of Peter's birthday cake and his enjoyment in eating it. Tom & I spent about 6 hours making this cake for him. Why Eeyore? Somehow Peter has become a big fan of Eeyore/donkeys and sleeps with one in his cot and is generally happier with one around. We thought it fitting to make him a cake of the same.  We really enjoyed making it for him although we know he will only know it from looking at these photos one day. =0)

Petey Update

It has been a while since we've done a full update on the family. Over the last couple of weeks Petey has crawled, been to hospital, fallen in love with bananas and started to take his first semi-assisted steps.

Crawling

Petey has developed his own crawling style. It's a bit of a two limbed commando crawl. He reserves one arm and leg for pushing himself along on his tummy, one hand for carrying and the remaining leg is stuck straight up in the air!

Hospital

A couple of weeks ago Petey got very sick with a viral infection and eventually ended up in hospital. Sadly it turned into quite a traumatic experience for both Peter and parents, but he has since recovered and developed a...

Banana Obsession!

A couple of weeks ago we introduced Petey to a variety of fruit, including bananas. He is now up to eating three to five a day! We were even able to find special bananas called "Little Petey's"! (Read the bag carefully)

Walking

We gave Petey a walker for his first birthday, he has been busily doing laps of the lounge room. It is truly amazing how fast he had developed!

Busy Lives

Thought we'd give a few pictures of what we are up to most days of the week.

Christy manages the fair trade cafe on site. The Fair Trade movement has been set up throughout the world to ensure that every person along the supply chain is paid a fair wage for their products and work. Companies that meet the criteria for this have a little symbol on their products that say "fair trade certified." Our cafe aims to support this process through fair trade coffee, chocolate, sugars, juices & other items. Christy's main jobs are ordering all the supplies, training new staff and helping with any issues that arise. It is a great place for young mothers to meet and the babies love coming to play.

Here are a few photos of the cafe:

She also helps out in the accounts department doing a variety of behind the scenes paperwork & reconciliation. Most of this work can be done from home while Peter sleeps.

Tom spends his week looking after everything IT related on the site; the computers, phones and most importantly Facebook! Below is a photo of his lair, amazingly almost everything in here has been donated or bought as the result of a specific donation:

Our Server Room

One of the nice things that Tom gets to do is to make the old new. Most of our site was built in the 1960's and so it starting to show its' age. Recently we had a fire in one of our buildings which was caused by, of all things, a rat jumping into one of our main switchboards. Whilst tragic, it was a fantastic opportunity to take what was on the edge of collapse and make it suitable for many years of use to come.

Before	After (the walls are still a bit scorched)

Tom is also the manager of the computer department which is truly a fantastic job. He has two great interns working for him who run the day to day of the department.

The view down the computer department.	A shipment ready to go to Angola

So that is a quick overview of our lives in a few pictures; computers, children, rats and coffee!