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This could change how we remember Hong Kong

This could change how we remember Hong Kong

From the time we decided to leave Hong Kong in June to live in Berlin, I relaxed my routines a bit and began to take time looking at Hong Kong with fresh, yet familiar eyes. Maybe it’s comparable to waking up from a coma. One area strikes me as underserved: the exit. Here is ONE thing that would make Hong Kong the perfect place to live and leave: a professional Exit Service. The process of tying…

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Buy Caroline a Coffee

Buy Caroline a Coffee

As a writer & publisher, Caroline Roy created this platform for stories and initiatives that affect our lives. She has lived in London, Switzerland, Germany and for the past 12 years in Hong Kong. hongkonqueror’s readers made it possible to found Plan B, a dynamic team of volunteers that helps rebuilding Hong Kong lives for single expats after personal trauma, breakup or divorce…

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Five Things I learned in Hong Kong

Five Things I learned in Hong Kong

  Taking an inventory of life to get ready for a major move brought about the question how living in Hong Kong has affected my outlook on life. This is what I can share: One: Pragmatism Over the 12 years I’ve spent here, I learned to be pragmatic. For example, when I arrived in Hong Kong, the fear of what pollution would do to my small children was at times almost paralyzing. Understandably, but…

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Saying Good-Bye to a Great Voice

Saying Good-Bye to a Great Voice

There is hardly anything more grounding than arranging a funeral for someone we love. It is a keen reminder of how personal, historic and universal facts of life work together in creating our story.

Last week I had to bury my beloved 95 year old aunt, Marlis, a person so close to me that I hesitate calling her an ‘aunt’. Technically, she was my mother’s aunt. She was the one who saw my mother…

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Self Help

Finally unpacked. Everything is fresh and clean. I’ve decided to part with a few power items from my self-help library. I am offering to give the top ten titles away to my privileged readers before they end up as donations to the Y.

As usual at the Roy house, it’s first come, first served. The following selection of self-help literature is an excellent starter package for people who mistakenly…

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A Moving Experience

by Caroline Roy

After publishing f**k, I was convinced that having written things down would have sealed my perspective on the conscious use of language. Little did I know. Last Monday I moved house again, and I discovered that in the right circumstances I could easily revert to what’s called ‘bad choices’ in PC-land.

I thought this would be the easiest move ever. Our block is slated for…

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The Power of shutting up

The Power of shutting up

by Caroline Roy

A few days ago I witnessed the following dialogue between a pre-teen and her mother who were waiting next to me at a traffic light: Daughter: “… and they did not invite me to sit with them at lunch.” Mother: “I told you to do your hair up in the morning, you would look so much better. You’ll see, that can make a big difference.”

I can feel for both, mother and daughter. Now that…

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Hong Kong Hair

I am grateful that one of Hong Kong’s top colorists and stylists has agreed to write about Hong Kong hair. Hair can be a great accessory or a daily nightmare. On thing I know for sure: it takes more time to look after it in Hong Kong than back home. Humidity is not the only problem.

by Koren Marsden:

Hong Kong Hair

I am one of those fortunate people who enjoy what they do.

I have been working as…

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Infertility grief, baby grief

Time to talk disenfranchised grief: infertility creates a hole in our life that we have no language for...

Rebecca Hopkins

What I wish I had known when it had me in its claws

By Rebecca Hopkins

So this one’s a biggie. Grab a cup of coffee and settle in. It’s a bit of a ride.

Did you know that infertility grief, or the place I call “the hell of not being able to conceive naturally like 83% of the population” actually has a name? Yes, there is a real medical term for the hole that sucked me into it,…

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What's your Plan B?

What’s your Plan B?

When we moved to Hong Kong in January 2004 from London, it looked like happy couples surrounded us. Admittedly, I chose to see it that way, as we were on our honeymoon with Hong Kong, with our first baby, good friends and a promising career path for my husband. We felt we won the lottery with our helper and were happy to have time as a couple.

Then, on December 26th, 2004, a devastating tsunami…

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F**K

Two sixth graders in the back of my car.

Sixth Grader One:

“That teenage boy on my bus uses the f-word all the time. F**king this, f**king that, like: shut the f**k up, I want to f**king read!”

Sixth Grader Two:

“How stupid. Why would he want to read?”

A recent conversation with friends in Berkeley confirmed that parenting High Schoolers in California is not without parental challenges either.…

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20 things I know for sure

20 things I know for sure

  Back on the Blog!

I’m back in Hong Kong after two months of family travel. The four of us went to California, Alaska, Corsica and Berlin together, learned a lot and returned as a better team. I missed my blog, which has become my personal digital real estate, my laboratory, the space I come to when I try to make sense of things.

Here are 20 things I know are true after a summer of non-stop…

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Ten great all-generation dinner topics for your family holidays

Ten great all-generation dinner topics for your family holidays

  Holidays and family gatherings: Awesome when you’re planning them. However, during a long summer it can be challenging to get everyone at the table engaged. We added the questions below to our rainy-day-8th-meal-in-a-row repertoire whilst traveling Alaska with husband, kids and in-laws, and tested some of those topics, one at a time.

Here are some questions you can ask parents, kids, siblings…

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The Happy-at-Home Habit

Kids and family, dog, aprons, yoga,  travel, family, friends and admin that comes with an expat home keep me as busy as anyone else, however much I want to believe that ‘I don’t do busy’. But multi-tasking, I find, is the new smoking: unhealthy, unfocused and scientifically proven to be unproductive. Every time I allow it to take over, my overall happiness goes downhill.

That’s why there is one…

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The wise expat's summer checklist

The wise expat’s summer checklist

Getting organized for the summer seems to be on everyone’s mind. I did some research with wise expatriates, banks and lawyers who shared logistics and priorities for their Hong Kong holidays.

To save everybody’s time in those hot and heated days of summer anticipation, here’s my list. First of all, the weather is getting better soon. June is the tough month where humidity meets heat, but in a few…

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How to pack

This year we’ve been planning a special family summer, because my husband has a 4-month sabbatical: A real one, that his firm offers after 10 years of partnership, and that he’s been forward to taking. And then the day arrives. Easy, you just grab the family, go somewhere, rest, discover, learn, bond with family & friends and have coffee at a cobble stoned place you’ve never been before.

Our Hong…

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10 posts!