June 20th: Cher’s Birthday Rest-day Celebration
Day 250
Rest day = feeding day. We get as much fresh fruit vegetables and meat in as possible on these days. For breakfast, yogurt with muesli and a couple of fried eggs satisfied our protein crave. By the lake there a couple of free electric barbecues and made bean, corn, zucchini, and spam burritos for lunch. Finally for dinner, pasta with spinach ricotta sauce, and a healthy portion of zucchini, cucumber and tomato salad.
Cher the birthday girl was freed from all her duties. She chose to spend the morning doing laundry and read the gargantuan book she’s been toting around for the rest of the day. I wrote up the blog. Finally for the first time we are caught up. Cher will have her work cut out for her next time we get to a wi-fi spot, as she is our website master.
Utilizing our phone, I called up the US bank and Hong Kong bank to figure out why my international transfers aren’t going through. Hong Kong banking is not like the US where credit cards are given out to teenagers like sticks of gum, and many of the HK atm cards only work in Asia. Foreseeing a problem I opened an US account, and transferred money to it several times. My US card with a Master Card logo works everywhere and even refunds atm fees. Of course now that we really need it, the transfers are no longer going through. Luckily we have about a month before we really have to worry.
Hong Kong banking is quite ridiculous with its security measures. They require a numerical code generated by a little key fob to do transfers and they mailed a new one after we left. Thankfully if you call you can still use the old one. When I tried to use my card here in Australia the atms didn’t recognize it and reported that my key code was incorrect and locked my card, which I can’t unlock unless I go back to Hong Kong. However, I can close my account by writing a letter to the bank with instructions on where to send my money, as long as I sign it. All hail the power of the old-fashioned pen and paper!