Unfortunately, on February 18th, my husband and I left Hong Kong, and returned to Sydney.

Our last few days were spent packing our belongings, and giving away food items that we couldn't bring back with us. We ended up sending nearly 40kgs of goods, in two boxes, via post; we checked in six pieces of luggage and carried on another four bags. This is all seems a lot of "stuff", especially as we have 31 boxes of personal and household items coming from Singapore, and a garage-sized storage unit here in Sydney.

One of our first priorities, after both getting jobs and finding somewhere to live, will be to unpack and then start heavily weeding everything we have. I am sure we do not need all of it; most of it we have lived without for over two years.

Today, Glynn got a role, with the company he originally moved to Singapore with. I have several leads that I am following up, so hopefully I will have something soon. One thing we are enjoying is the warm and sunny weather. Our last week in Hong Kong was very cold, with bitter winds that felt as if they were blowing straight from Siberia.

I will have to think about whether I keep this blog going, maybe rename it, or change the focus of it. 

One thing we want to do now we are back is explore all the places we loved here, and see others we didn't get to before, so I may turn this into a Sydney sights and surrounds blog. I still love taking photos, and this can be another place where I share them.

As it looks more and more likely that we will be leaving Hong Kong within the next few weeks, we have been getting out and seeing places we haven't visited yet.

A couple of weekends ago we went to Aberdeen, on the western side of HK island. It was a lovely day and we did a sampan cruise around the fishing boats and luxury cruisers that are moored there. I added some photos of this area last week.

On the Chinese New Year long weekend, we decided to go to Lamma Island, which is a thirty minute ferry ride. When we got to the ferry piers at Central we couldn't believe the length of the queues for Lamma, so we quickly changed our minds, and made a snap decision to visit Peng Chau instead.

I googled this island on the way there, so we had some idea what to expect. And it was lovely. Peng Chau is a small, unspoilt island, with no cars, but great walking trails and we did a great coastal walk before stopping for lunch. When I say walk, there were a lot of uphill sections where we passed peaceful beaches, with views across to Discovery Bay. After a reasonably steep climb, we headed back towards town, and found ourselves wandering through a pretty farming valley; as it was a glorious sunny day, we really enjoyed it. I took masses of photos, though once again I only had my phone, I will add photos to the gallery page.

Back in town we stopped for a Thai lunch, and the food was very tasty. Lots of places were closed as it was the holiday weekend, but we were not disappointed by Tino Thai. And after our long walk, a couple of Tsingtao beers went down really well too.

We did get to Lamma Island, on the day after Glynn finished work. I will write about that soon.

Despite being back in Hong Kong since early January, it has taken me this long to add another blog post. There have been a couple of reasons for this, and both are related to work and job-hunting.  

I have been spending large parts of each day searching for appropriate jobs. Once I find one advertised, I have to navigate a company-specific online form to apply,  and hope that the page doesn't crash, which has happened and means starting the process again. Then there is another cover letter to write and often selection criteria etc etc. A couple of applications have taken several hours, but that doesn't guarantee that I will even get a response from the company or the agency handling the role. It can be frustrating, but I am sure everyone who has ever looked for work knows what I am going through.

I did expect to be doing this once I got settled here and had a relaxing break, which I was having. But now, my husband is also doing the same thing, as the job we moved here for, has finished, due to a highly secret company resale. My life as "an ex-pat in Hong Kong" may be over much sooner than I anticipated. If neither of us finds work in the next few weeks, we have decided to return to Australia, and will go back to Sydney. Both Sydney and Brisbane seem to have quite a lot of work in the areas we want to work in, so we could end up in either place. 

Anyway, with all this going on, I found it hard to sit down and blog about my new life here, knowing that it may be cut short. I am keeping my fingers crossed that we get to stay here, not only because we don't fancy another move so soon, but also because we like living here and want the time to get to know Hong Kong better.

But life goes on, so, in between job applications, I have been doing a lot of walking to clear my head and get much-needed fresh air and exercise . While walking, I have been taking lots of photos, mainly with my phone, and I have uploaded many of these to Flickr and Instagram. I have also added some to the photogallery here. I enjoy taking pictures, and now I think that if we do leave in the next month or so, I have will have these as memories of the area we lived in for a few months. 

And on another positive note, the weather has been really lovely over the last week or so. The very cold winds and rain we had before Christmas seemed to have passed once we got back from Australia, and it has been fairly mild through January. But temperatures are in the twenties now, and it is wonderful! 

Like many other ex-pats, Glynn and I are spending Christmas and New Year with family and friends. We are in Adelaide enjoying the sun and socialising that is a big part of an Australian Christmas. We will be returning to Hong Kong on January 3rd. 

So until then, I will not be blogging, but there will be photos on Flickr, Instagram and Facebook.

I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! May 2014 bring you all health and happiness.

Today it was sunny and bright, though you wouldn't want to sit in the shade for too long. I in the sun sat by the harbour, and the water was turquoise, the sky blue and the air was so clear it was easy to pick out the bridge and the builidings going up the hill on the Kowloon side of the harbour.

Once again it is cold and wet and grey. I resorted to using the gym in the building this morning, knowing that if I don't do any exercise soon I will never get into the dresses that I want to wear at Christmas. That is the kind of motivation it takes to make me exercise. It is easy to become a couch potato in this weather - I had forgotten how lazy the cold weather makes me. I am such a summer person.

Later in the day I braved the conditions to get some shopping, and some fresh air, which did turn out to be quite invigorating. The dangerous part was avoiding all the umbrellas crowding along the footpaths. Much better to be viewing the pedestrian traffic from the balcony, up high, than walking down there amongst them. 

Below is the view of the clouds hanging over the hills behind my building. I think they make it look colder than it really is, but then again it is pretty cold; a friend described the weather as a "bit nipppy" - that is one way to put it ☺☂

Today was a stark reminder that I am not within a few degrees of the equator any more! It was cold and wet and grey, and once again I stayed inside most of the day. Luckily I can amuse myself easily, but this weather is a bit of a shock, and I have to be honest and say that I am missing "endless summer".

For two years my husband and I lived and worked in Singapore, plenty of time to get used to the heat and humidity, which I absolutely love. Glynn had the opportunity to relocate there for a specific project with the company we had moved to Sydney for him to join. I was able to stay with my company, when we moved from Melbourne to Sydney, then when we relocated five months later to Singapore. No sooner than we had unpacked and got our home set up in Sydney, than we were repacking and putting most of our wordly possessions in storage, ready for our stint in Singapore.

In Singapore I worked in the local office of my company, which was an opportunity to get to know my Singaporean colleagues better. When my husband's project finished he also joined my company. When the big project that we had been working also finished, it was time to move on, and that meant leaving Singapore. It is getting more and more difficult for ex-pats to get work there and we decided to look elsewhere. Not really being ready to return to Australia, and still wanting to stay in Asia, we investigated the job market in Hong Kong.

Having a good friend who has lived here a long time, and loves it, was also an incentive to look at opportunities here. Glynn had a few contacts from Singapore, and he was able to get the job he wanted, working with someone he really wanted to work with. So we were ready to move; I resigned from my company, ready for a change as well, but stayed behind for another month to finish up everything in Singapore.

And that is how I find myself as a housewife, even though the "house" is very small and fully serviced several times a week. I will be seriously job-hunting in the new year, but for now, I am "between jobs" and giving myself some down time. And attempting to write a blog!

Today I launch my Hong Kong blog. I have been thinking about this since I moved here just over a week ago and today seemed the perfect day to start.

Drizzly rain and heavy skies have made it a good day to sit inside and search for free blogging sites. I chose this one, and have spent most of the day getting my head around the workings of the individual pages, mainly removing sections that are not relevant to what I want to do. 

Apart from this, I have only made a few forays out onto the balcony to take some shots of the rooftop "gardens" on buildings that surround this one. I even got out the camera, with a fairly powerful lense, instead of lazily using my phone as I usually do. These photos will appear in the photogallery and/or on another one of my other photo repositories once I have uploaded them.

So tomorrow, some background to my arriving in Hong Kong.