happy valentine's day!

I celebrated the day by going on a very long hike with a few friends. It was a 24k trail that I've done before (Maclehose stages 4 and 5 in reverse -- Beacon Hill to Ma On Shan), but it seemed longer thanks to some very strange weather. Mist and fog covered the mountains for most of the day, giving us very low visibility (sometimes down to 20 ft!). Thankfully, the Maclehose is very well marked, otherwise I think we might have gotten lost. But the fog did obscure the normal landmarks, which made it hard to gauge how far we'd gone... which gave it that general is-this-ever-going-to-be-over sort of feeling. Anyway, it was still a good hike and a fun day. I needed to do a longer hike to help me prepare for the Green Power 50k, which I'll be doing again this year. It's coming up in just 2 weeks -- February 28th.

Another V-day highlight involved some very romantic text messages that I received... from my cell phone company! I should explain. Sometimes my service provider will send out cute little animated SMSes on various holidays, with the thought that I'll want to forward them to all my friends... which I never do. Anyway, for Valentine's day, not only did I receive one of those, I also got a couple text message poems that are very... umm... interesting. Take a look for yourself:

I lie awake in the dark... feeling your nearness,

your soft lips and the warmth of your touch.

I wish you're here with me.

Happy Valentine's Day.

You are hard to forget coz you were hard to get.

I never regret that I made your heart my target.

Happy Valentine's Day!

<3

Grammatical errors aside, I can't imagine sending these to anyone. And frankly, the thought of a person forwarding a poem from their phone company to their significant other on Valentine's Day makes me want to cry. But the poems did provide a good chuckle after a long, tiring walk. Thank you Smartone-Vodafone!

holiday home

I realized recently that I never posted photos of my apartment. Here are a few of the living/dining room/kitchen area decorated for the holidays. It took my roommate and I a while to acquire furniture and get things up on the walls, but I'm happy to say that it now feels quite homey.

Notice the thoughtfully-placed television. We bought the TV second-hand before we got the second-hand Ikea wall unit, and quickly found that the nice old television was too deep to fit in the unit. So it's placed off to the side, which I must admit has started to grow on me.

The couch and radiator, which I have found myself using occasionally.

Here's the dining area and a peek of the kitchen.

I'll post some photos of my room soon, including my precious sewing table. Right now there is fabric strewn all over the floor, so it cannot be photographed.

handmade christmas: gifts

Gifts for my nieces and nephews. Monogrammed coloring cases for the older kids, and a bib for the smallest.

And here's my labor of love for my brother. I got the pattern from The Domestic Scientist.

And here's everything wrapped and ready to take over to my parents' place. I bought the ribbon in Sham Shui Po at the last minute, and am very happy I did.

sophie and other thankfulnesses

My sister and her family came down for Thanksgiving. I finally got to meet my newest niece, Sophie. She's a cutie. Here are a couple photos from today.

I had a lot of fun playing with the big kids, too. They've grown up so much since I saw them last Christmas. Anna especially. She's a very small two-year-old (so small that I wondered briefly about the possibility of her being a primordial dwarf... but no, she's not), but listening to her talk, she could probably pass for four or five. She's very precocious and talkative -- a delightful conversationalist. Here's a conversation we had tonight, before she went to bed. I think we were talking about how she's a big sister now...

Anna: Sophie has a big sister just like you had a big sister.

Me: Do you know who my big sister is?

Anna: I don't know.

Me: Your mommy is my big sister.

Anna: I don't know. I don't think so.

Me: No really, she is.

Anna: I don't think so.

Of course, I then showed her photographic evidence that Amy and I grew up together, and finally she believed me. Makes me wonder who she thought I was, and why her family was making the effort to see me. But I guess she does have a lot of unrelated "aunties" and "uncles," so maybe she thought I was just another one of those.

The Sonnichsen six are all heading back to Tianjin tomorrow morning, but will be back for Christmas. I'm really looking forward to more hang out time with the kids. I attended a conference that my school was hosting this weekend, so that sucked up a lot of my time. Aaron attended as well, which was one of the reasons they all came down in the first place. I wasn't originally planning to attend many of the workshops -- figured I'd go to a couple things and then leave early each day. But the sessions far exceeded my expectations, I found the workshops helpful and enjoyable, so I ended up going to most everything. It was a strange experience, though. I actually found myself feeling disappointed that the conference was so good, because it meant that I wasn't skipping out more to be with family. Well, just a few more weeks until Christmas!

happy mother's day... to me

I was wished a happy mother's day at church today.

The older man who did the wishing then asked me if I was a mother. I said no (I didn't feel like explaining my adopted cat-child, Templeton...), and then he proceeded with, "Well, a soon-to-be mother, then?" I smiled and gave another, more vehement "no."

I know, I know. He might not have meant that I looked pregnant. He might have meant that one day eventually I would be a mother, which I do hope is true.

But this conversation came at a bad time. Just this week at school, I had a student ask me if I was "having a baby," and she wasn't the first who's asked me that. It's usually a cheeky kid trying to get a laugh out of his friends, or a child too young to understand either the biological requirements or the social implications of Miss Pardini being pregnant. And it usually happens on days when I'm wearing especially loose-fitting clothes. I'm a big fan of the empire waist, so quite a few of my shirts could easily double as maternity clothes.

Anyway, to celebrate looking pregnant, I decided to take some photos with two truly-expecting friends. This is me looking more pregnant than the two who are with child(ren). (I promise that I did not buy this shirt in the maternity section... though it does look like I could have!)
Ok, they probably would beat me out for the "looking pregnant" prize in the end. Congrats again Christy & Tom and Helen & Mike!

happy independence day

Well, I wished everyone a happy SAR Establishment Day, as well as a happy Canada day, so it only seems fitting to wish everyone a happy 4th of July as well. Especially fitting, as I myself am American...

(just couldn't resist this sweet bald-eagle-stars-and-stripes-piece-of-photoshopping-genius (or is it actually painted?!)...)

To be honest, I was proud of myself for not forgetting the holiday all-together, which I'm ashamed to admit has happened to me on more than one Independence Day past. Though I remembered this year -- and quite early in the day as well! -- I didn't do anything particularly patriotic today... in fact, I had about as un-American a day as I've ever had. The highlights of my day (after teaching, of course) were eating Indian food for lunch (at Branto, with April and Athania!) and taking a detour to Ikea ("looking for fabric," but walked out with no fabric and a few non-fabric items... but the key word there is "walked" out. The 3 things I bought were small enough to be easily carried home... but I digress!). In fact, I think the most patriotic thing I did today was use a McDonald's bathroom, and that was only because other facilities were out of order...

happy special administrative region establishment day!

This picture was taken during my excursion to Sham Shui Po yesterday. Notice the HKSAR flags in the foreground, and the PRC flags across the street. I haven't seen flag displays like this anywhere else (though I'm sure there are more out there somewhere), so I'm assuming that each district decides how they want to decorate/celebrate the holiday. Anyway, can't believe it's been 10 years since the handover.

Oh, and happy Canada Day to any Canucks out there as well. :)

happy mother's day

Happy Mother's Day to my own dear mother, and any other mothers out there who might be reading this.

xin nian kuai le!

Happy year of the pig!... or technically, year of the golden pig, which apparently only comes around every 60 years (that's 5 cycles of the Chinese zodiac). It's supposed to be especially auspicious, so according to the BBC, there's been a rush of Chinese couples getting married and attempting to conceive so that they can have golden pig babies (piglets?).

If you're curious about the picture above, you can get more information here.

Continuing in the Chinese new year vein, today was the warmest new year's day in HK history... or at least the warmest on record. I wasn't surprised by the news... I knew it was the warmest new year day I'd experienced (turns out that today broke the record set in 1982 -- the year my family moved to HK) ... and the warmth was a big contrast to my memories of Chinese new year being the coldest part of the HK year.

****CORRECTION****

According to my mom, it's not the year of the golden pig after all... it's actually the year of the fire pig. I don't know what the significance of that is -- guess I have some research to do.

happy groundhog day!

I just found a site where you can check Punxsutawney Phil's prediction. It's part of a the Punxstawney Groundhog Club's official site -- www.groundhog.org! I didn't realize that the movie Groundhog Day was so accurate in its depiction of the ceremony. The site is definitely worth a look.
Unfortunately, due to time zone differences, I'll have to wait until tomorrow to find out how much more winter to expect...

a new year

It might seem strange to be wishing anyone a happy new year when the year is already 1/12 over(!), but I guess I have no choice since I've waited so long to post. Anyway, here's my long-overdue first update of 2007! I realized this morning that if I was to put off posting just one more day, I'd have missed the month of January completely. So in an effort to record for posterity all of the recent blog-worthy happenings in my life, I choose to update!

Some hight lights in the month since I last wrote: the visit of my nieces and nephew (and sister and brother-in-law too... hehe :)), Salome and Kaiser's beautiful wedding, a new year's trip to Oklahoma (which lasted a whole four days longer than planned because of a very well-timed ice storm), and the start of my student teaching at ICS.

Here are the highlights in pictures:

Family pics:
Nice teeth, Anna! She was so much bigger than when I saw her over the summer!
Gabe and Anna playing with their dad before bedtime.
At my mom's birthday party. Olivia is all about peace these days... or victory?
Happy birthday, Mom!
Chocolate tall-cake -- yum!
Anna wants a bite too, but will settle for a spoon.
Tam-Lee wedding:
Strange that my first picture under this sub-heading is of food and not of the bride and groom, but trust me, this picture is wedding related! And following the laws of chronology, it must come first. This was my meal at Sal and Kai's rehearsal dinner. It was the first time I'd had ostrich, and it was delicious. Yay for Star Cafe!
Shopping for flowers the day before the wedding.
Getting ready the morning of the wedding.
The bride and groom. Nice socks (and shoes)!
Right after the ceremony -- this picture is of "Kaiser and Salome's HK friends"
Outside the chapel with ma famille.
At the banquet -- Sal posing with the lovely fake wedding cake.
Sal and the bridesmaids.
It was a beautiful wedding, and I felt honored to be a part of it. Congratulations Sal and Kai!

Oklahoma trip:
This is Ryan and Sam posing in their sweaters. Even though this was officially my first Sweater Party, I really think the yellow sweater took the party to whole new heights (check out the real rabbit fur and criss-crossing chain complete with crucifix). It was something that I found on Lion Rock Road and Ryan's friend Sam was kind enough to wear it (heaven knows that I didn't want to). I had a pretty sweet sweater myself, but forgot to take pictures of it (or of me wearing it). And in case you're wondering, yes, that is a real mustache.
I'm such a sucker for anything remotely resembling a dare... here are some specialty sodas that I sampled at the sweater party. In case you can't read the labels, the flavors are (from L-R) turkey and gravy, antacid, dinner roll, sweet potato, and pea. Antacid and sweet potato were OK, but the other three were pretty vile. I'm glad I just had a sip of each...
The life of a super dog is not an easy one. Here's Joey, Lisa and Patrick's dog, after a long day of fighting crime and rescuing small children.
We went out to eastern OK to where Ryan's grandmother lives. Here she is teaching him how to make a Moravian star.
"Ice Storm 2007" officially kicked off on Friday, the day before I was supposed to fly out, which resulted in the cancellation of my flight, my rescheduled flight, and then my re-rescheduled flight. So that meant that I had no choice but to miss some classes at HKU and stay four extra days... life is tough. After a wonderful weekend of sleeping, eating, napping, eating, and watching movies, it was quite an adventure to drive through the slush to Pizza Hut with Lisa and Ryan to pick up a couple pizzas for dinner. Here are Lisa and I after successfully completing the mission.
Here's Ryan scraping the ice off of his car. This might seem like quite a mundane activity to capture in a photo, especially to anyone from a colder climate, but to me it seems incredibly exotic (and therefore very photo-worthy).
A view of icy OKC from the air.

I slept pretty much the whole way to Chicago, but then suddenly woke up, looked out the window, and saw this. What a view!
And after a few hours in O'Hare, followed by a *slightly* longer flight, I made it safely back to HK.

I'll try to update again soon. Thanks for getting to the end of this lengthy post!

o christmas tree II

Happy Boxing Day everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas yesterday!

I passed by the New Town Plaza Christmas display today, and as it probably won't be standing for too much longer, decided that I had to document the existence of the tackiest Christmas tree imagineable. Apparently they were going for a camera theme this year (note the cameras around the top of tree, and the large camera at the base of the tree), with a few Lego-style bear accents.
I went to New Town Plaza to meet up with Myun Hwa, and our highschool science teacher, Mrs. Kraus. She and her family are living in the UAE right now, and are visiting HK for a little over a week. It was really fun to see her, and at the end we got to meet the whole family. Her daughters are so cute!


My sister and her family are arriving in a few hours, so stay tuned for more cute!

o christmas tree, o christmas tree...

I found this picture from my KBCK days and thought it was worth posting. I guess this was taken after some sort of kindergarten Christmas pageant... or at least I assume there's a good explanation for the Christmas tree costume. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that the good ol' Christmas tree costume has declined in popularity recently... can't understand why. Does anyone else have fond memories of being a Christmas tree, or any other inanimate object associated with Christmas?

meowy christmas

I found this little outfit today at Fa Yuen Street and just couldn't resist...

"What's the American man's favorite dessert?"

Happy [American] Thanksgiving! I'll be eating Thanksgiving dinner with my parents and some of their colleagues later today. It's a little disappointing that I couldn't invite friends over like last year -- what fun we had spending most of the day in the kitchen, preparing the whole Thanksgiving spread! But I guess this year won't be quite as much work.

But I will get to contribute something to tonight's meal. My mom was given the responsibility of bringing pies, and I offered to help her with a regular pumpkin pie, and my favorite experiment from last year: a pumpkin cheesecake.

So I set to work this morning, soon after I got up. For the pumpkin pie, I used my mom's trusty circa 1969 Betty Crocker cookbook.


I decided to make the crust first, and soon found crust recipes at the beginning of the pie section, right underneath this very nice introductory paragraph. Definitely worth a read. I think my favorite part is: "If you care about pleasing a man -- bake a pie. But make sure it's a perfect pie. "


So as Betty suggested, I spent some time with the chapter, and tried one of her family-tested recipes. I've done my best to "make sure it's a perfect pie," and now it'll be up to those eating it.