Acronym Overload

                                                        

One of the most confounding things for me when I first moved to Hong Kong was the endless array of acronyms in use on a daily basis.  I keenly remember sitting in a Youth Directors meeting shortly after I arrived listening to a conversation that I swore was English, though I understood very little of it.  As it turns out, I was being baptized by fire with the endless litany of International School abbreviations of which there are far too many to list here.  The truth is that Hong Kong loves acronyms.  For real.  Since I’ve lived here, they have become a regular if not still comical part of my daily life.  

My boss shared this article with us the other day in staff meeting and it occurred to me just how insane it is.  Our church used to be acronym-ized, but we actually ditched that because we found that surprise, surprise, acronyms tell you basically nothing about the place and just in general confuse people.  If only the rest of HK was so awesome.  (Like that acronym usage?!)

For example, for my job, I have to know these acronyms related to schools: WIS, HKIS, CDNIS, CIS, SIS, ICA, KGV, DBS, and ISF, just to name a few (for reference, West Island School, Hong Kong International School, Canadian International School, Chinese International School, Singapore International school, Island Christian Academy, King George the Fifth, Diocesan Boys School, and Island Schools Foundation.)

I have to know these acronyms to communicate with people from other churches: ECC(Evangelical Covenant Church), Island ECC (Island Evangelical Covenant Church), HKMBC, (Hong Kong Mandarin Bible Church), and ICA (International Christian Assembly).  And for the trickiest one of all, I have to know our mission partners, ICM (International Care Ministries) and ICM (Inner City Ministries).  

I take the MTR (Mass Transit Railway), or occasionally a KMB (Kowloon Motor Bus), or maybe even a GMB (Green Mini Bus), occasionally I visit TST (Tim Sha Tsui) or the NT (New Territories).  Each month, I pay my PCCW (Pacific Century Cyberworks) bill at HSBC (Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) where I choose between HKD (Hong Kong Dollars) and RMB (Ren Min Bi), which I would never get unless I was going to the PRC (People’s Republic of China) and once a month, I pay my rent at BEA (Bank of East Asia). 
                                                     

Since I moved to the HKSAR (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region), I have made many good friends, some of which live in CWB (Causeway Bay).  Some people I know here go out partying in LKF (Lan Kwai Fong) every weekend, though I’m way too tired for that by the end of the week.  Every morning, I like to read the SCMP (South China Morning Post).  I still haven’t made it out to DB (Discovery Bay), but I have been to HKDL (Hong Kong Disney Land).  

And last but not least, let’s not forget about H1N1 (dreaded bird flu to be avoided at all costs).

That’s 31 acronyms that I use on a regular basis, people.  And when I moved here I thought Cantonese would be my biggest challenge. Ha.  

And here was the worst I've ever seen.  Some poor kid was burdened with this heavily acronym-ized shirt.  HKSKHTCIS…!?!? I looked it up and it's a social program of some kind... I think...

I rest my case.



Til next time,

-The Adventurer!