Jennego: The Blog

The sun is an explosion.

Life is an explosion.

Apparently I blog in explosions and never touch it for months to a year.

I am terrible travel blogger. To be fair, I did have terrible WiFi in Hong Kong. And I somehow let my hosting expire along the way. Oops. I am back home now but not yet back on Vancouver Island.

From April 6-29, I went to Hong Kong as well as Guilin, China. My mom is from Hong Kong but through my dad, I am a 3rd generation Canadian. I barely know Cantonese and not a lick of Mandarin.

Hong Kong is like a super enlarged version of Richmond, BC. Okay, it’s probably meant to be the other way around but it’s like a super Chinatown. It’s Chinese, sure but there is a western undertone that pervades it’s surface – sign are English/Chinese for instance. There is a scant of familiarity in it’s eastern aura. My family is Cantonese and that is also Hong Kong’s root culture.

But with the lack of language, way out in the New Territories (Tim Shui Wai) – it seems utterly Chinese.

I am not a urban person and I HATE hot weather. The muggy air hangs like a swimming pool that you can’t get rid of.

I would definitely not to live in Hong Kong. Sure, it’s better than China – that’s a whole other kettle of fish. But I look upon the identical skyscraper apartments, the depressing blocks of walled schools, the manicured parks, the rush and rhythm of life and I feel something is missing. Everyone is stuck in a rat race. Fun and freedom is barely tolerated, let alone encouraged. There is a narrow window of normalcy. And you have to meet that. Everyone is busy in the rat race. You either follow, or get left behind entirely. And getting left behind is not an option.

Of course, I am westernized. I have western ideals. My idea of a good life is a good life – a life of leisure, a life of happiness, a life of freedom to do what you want.

The Chinese and Hong Kongers seem to view life as a quest. To acquire as much education, wealth and material gain as possible. That’s fine to a point. But to what end?

So many people. So many desires. So many dreams. So many trains. So many everything. For what? To be stuck in a shoebox?

Does anyone every wish from the space? To be free? Does anyone ever wish for an animal to hold, to hang on to when no one understands? Does anyone ever wish to have fun? To express?

I don’t know. I am not a Hong Konger.

The heat, humans and lack of horses will drive me insane.

Hang on tight for more pictures and blogs.

Oh yes I have. Since oh. Basically since 2015. For like you know, four years.

I have always been terrible with any sort of diary thing, since I was like seven. I have notebooks, intended to be dairies that start on January 1 and might go for another day or so but then abruptly end. I used to keep a riding log. That too eventually fell by the wayside.

So here we are, like four years later.

I am now on an island. A big island mind you, but now on an island. I have left Vancouver – where I was born, grew up and lived – until a year ago.

In Sept 2016, I started leasing a little standardbred named Mini in Delta/Surrey. But I never could get her to canter well and she didn’t seem that sound. In Feb 2017, I started riding a young Quarter Horse/Tennessee Walker. He was five at the time, with little English experience. At one point our gas button stopped working altogether but somehow we eventually became a half-decent pairing.

I finished a coding bootcamp with CodeCore in 2017. At the same time, I suddenly went into a no speaking relationship with my worker. Eventually, I got a scholarship for the 12 week bootcamp. 12 weeks of insanity. Wondering if I actually got it, if I had just become addicted to StackOverflow (It’s probably a bit of both things). Although I didn’t learn PHP, I did learn JavaScript, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Express, Node, Git and how to use the bash command line. Wouldn’t it be funny if you handed a kid a laptop or tablet but it just ran on command line?

In 2018, I moved to Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island. I now part lease a pony. Yes, a PONY. She makes it known too. Chocolate Pony.

My world has charged considerably. From big town Vancouver to small town Duncan/Ladysmith. Photography has taken a bit of a back seat but it occasionally reappears.

I guess this might become a travel blog soon because I am going to my first overseas trip to Hong Kong in a few weeks.