Dear All,
We were dismayed when we found out recently that our surname, if pronounced with
the right nuance, means something rude in Cantonese! Don’t ask, you don’t want
to know. Merely know that this revelation does explain a few sheepish snickers
from Cantonese-speaking friends and we are going to make sure that we get the
tonal pronunciation of our own name completely correct from now on. The sound
‘Gow’ can have a few different meanings if said in a variety of ways, including
the number six and ‘tall’. However, this was the first we had heard of the lewd
connotation. Hmph.

GREG (sniff!)
(This is something we meant to put in the last update, so it’s a bit out of date
by now.)
A few weeks ago we bid farewell to Greg Slade, who has returned to Canada for a
well-earned break, before embarking on whatever his next adventure will be. Greg
was Matt’s roommate for his first year at Crossroads (and as such was the only
Crossroader to know about our secret engagement before we went public!), and is
now a very great friend of us both. While team-mates come and go all the time
over here, Greg will be immortalised in our wedding photos as a loyal friend,
who came all the way to Oz to be Matt’s groomsman at our wedding. We all already
miss you Greg – the Crossroads Express is not the same without you!

ROVING REPORTER
Adelaide is having an incredible time in her new capacity as journalist
extraordinaire. A few weeks ago the Communications department decided it really
was vital to have someone responsible for meeting with and ‘interviewing’ the
people who are on the receiving end of Crossroads’ work. Sometimes this simply
means a call from the administration office saying ‘someone get up here with a
dictaphone!’ when a worker from one of our recipient groups drops in, other
times it may involve visiting a local group in Hong Kong and interviewing the
workers there. Whatever the context, the last month or so has involved Adelaide
meeting some fascinating and inspiring people who do life-changing work. It is
an immense privilege to be able to do so. While we do receive brochures and
websites from a lot of the groups for our files, it’s when you just sit down
with someone and chat that the really powerful first-hand stories start to come
out. There are so many stories we could tell already from these meetings – just
yesterday Ad met with an East Timorese man who is now doing humanitarian work to
rebuild his newly independent country (Crossroads is sending a container to his
group soon). Last week she visited a shelter for foreign domestic helpers, of
which there are hundreds of thousands in Hong Kong, who need refuge from abusive
employers or legal tangles. Ad was able to sit down and talk with three lovely
Sri Lankan women and listen to their very different stories, all nearly beyond
belief. If there’s time, we’ll post an account of the visit, telling the stories
of some of these women.
That's it for this week, thanks for the emails, we always LOVE getting them,
even if we aren’t able to reply straight away.