When I arrived in May 2004 to commence my duties as Head of Li Po Chun United World College  in Hong Kong, the skies displayed an unusually clear, bright blue color.  The pollution level was low and the sun was shining, and I was told by many people that this was indeed a very auspicious omen for my time as Principal.

I was therefore quite worried a few years later when I attended the opening ceremony of a medical clinic in a poor rural village in China’s Guizhou province.  The clinic was the first of three that my students and I had financed and built for the local people, and the opening ceremony in the main street seemed to have brought out the entire population of people, pigs and poultry to watch.  In torrential rain, I wondered if the terrible weather would be seen by the local people as an ill omen.  Quite the contrary – I was told by the delighted local people that heavy rain is a symbol of heaven’s blessings pouring downwards, and this was indeed a wonderfully auspicious omen for the clinic’s future.

I left Hong Kong last Friday afternoon on a one-way flight to Houston to commence my duties on Monday morning – 1st August – as Head of The Awty International School.  Friday morning’s weather in Hong Kong was windy and wet to say the least – there was a Force 3 typhoon that had just blown in from the Philippines.  I’m not sure where force 3 typhoons fit into the scale of auspiciousness of Chinese omens, but in a practical sense, they do tend to cause unnervingly bumpy take-offs.

My final day in Hong Kong had been spent working right up until I left the campus at a little after lunch time.  To be more precise, the work actually continued after that, as an ex-student flagged down our car the street by waving a document for me to sign.  The arrival of several e-mails needing to be answered urgently just as I was about to turn off my mobile phone in the plane before departure was an exquisite reminder of Hong Kong’s “never stops” lifestyle.  Hong Kong’s work ethic can be relentless – but I confess that I will probably miss it very much!

As the plane took off, with my mobile phone still warm from sending e-mail replies but safely turned off (just), I thought about the Chinese omens once again.  Perhaps a Force 3 typhoon was a symbol of China trying to blow me away – but that could not have been so.  My plane had been delayed by about an hour, which is hardly a sign that Hong Kong was trying to get rid of me quickly, and by the time we took off, the skies had just turned blue and the late afternoon sun was shining clearly on the sparkling blue waters below.

The one hour delay from Hong Kong turned out to be a minor irritation compared with the 17 hour delay I experienced in Honolulu.  The aircraft which was supposed to take me on the final leg of my journey (from Honolulu to Houston) had a technical problem and had to land in Los Angeles for repairs on its way out to Hawaii.  Therefore, when I landed in Honolulu for my connection there was no plane there to take me on the final leg.  The result – an enforced one night stopover in Honolulu, which was long enough to be disruptive but too short for a tropical swim.

Having left the typhoon behind in Hong Kong, I arrived in Houston on Tuesday morning at half past midnight – quite different from from the 8 am arrival on Monday morning that I had anticipated.

I was told the cause of the technical problem was that the toilets were not working, and major repairs were needed.  I can only begin to speculate how Chinese people would interpret that particular omen!

Whereas Hong Kong had battended down for the typhoon on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, Houston welcomed me with hot, bright, clear, fine sunny weather – no doubt a good omen, of course  On the other hand, Houston has been suffering from a prolonged drought, and perhaps it would have been more appreciated if I had brought some much needed rainfall with me from Hong Kong.   For my part, I was simply glad to be in a plane with toilets that were working.