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...

the return of li'l brudder

[that was a reference to a classic Strongbad email for those readers unfamiliar with www.homestarrunner.com]

So my little brother, Steve, is back from college. His plane was scheduled to arrive a little after 11 last night, but he surprised us by walking through the door at 8:00. For some reason, he was moved from an Asiana flight complete with Seoul layover, to a Cathay direct flight. How often does that happen?!

The first thing he did upon arriving home was to head straight back out the door to our local Taiwai bbq restaurant, where he successfully satisfied a 3+ month chasiu fan craving.

After being rejuvenated by barbequed pork sustenance, he entertained my mom and I with a few videos that some of his college friends produced over the last semester. I thought they were funny, so I'll put the links here. They're four episodes of a short program called "The Misadventures of Stephen P******," and not surprisingly, Steve is the main character. Just for some background, the first episode opens with a guy in an elevator. The guy is the host of a college variety show called "Late" that Steve has appeared in before. In an early episode of "Late," the host promised Steve that he'd help to make him famous...

Episode One: The Great 'Dini'ty
Episode Two: Shorty in the Hood
Episode Three: Rollover DJ
Episode Four: Behind the Music

If you don't have time to watch all four (they're about 5 mins each), I think Episode 1 is my favorite... but Episode 3 gives you the opportunity to see Steve in a wife-beater and rapping an entire music video.

templeton gets tutored

Not sure if this news is really blog-worthy, but I'll go ahead with it anyway. My little Templeton is growing up, and yesterday went to the vet for a certain operation. I won't go into details, or into the ethics of neutering such a beautiful animal (something my parents and I discussed at great length...), but feel that I should apologize to any female cats out there who were hoping for a chance to bear his kittens.

Templeton was almost too agreeable when I put him in the cat carrier for his vet visit, and the whole thing reminded me of this Far Side cartoon:
When he came home, instead of running out of the cat carrier and treating it with fear and disdain (as our other cats do after returning from a visit to the vet), we were surprised to see him back inside the carrier in no time.

And he seems to have changed the other cats' feelings about the carrier too. I think he's made it the trendy new sleeping spot. Yesterday, after he finally exited, two of our other cats took turns sleeping inside, which is really a very bizarre occurence. And after I took the picture below, the black and white cat, Handsome, actually swatted at Templeton with his claws, in what I can only imagine was an attempt to get a turn in the carrier.

One more shot of Templeton in his new favorite hang-out. He seems to be doing well, by the way.

hope is...

I just came across a short section in my journal titled "Artwork enjoyed at the National Gallery" (I'm not usually quite that nerdy, but was feeling especially inspired that day...), and realized that I never posted this photograph.
This painting covered a whole wall in the modern art wing, and I was quite impressed with it.

Sigmar Polke (1992) "Hope is: Wanting to Pull Clouds"

robots II

I just watched a news story about robots replacing camel jockeys in the Middle East. So I guess robots can be counted on for more than serving food at the Robot Kitchen and future world domination! Besides bringing a high-tech look to the ancient art of camel racing, the robots are also liberating the young child jockeys (many of whom were kidnapped or sold into the sport) from a very dangerous occupation.
Here's a link to a BBC article about this. The robots that I saw on TV weren't quite as sleek as the one pictured above... they were just boxes with walkie talkies (so that the owner could yell at the camel during the race) and remote-controlled whips sticking out the back. Still, they seemed to do their jobs effectively.

think think about it...

This is one of my favorite Flight of the Concords videos. It's a song about "the issues."

science with four-year-olds

In a previous post I mentioned that I teach a science class to 14 four-year-olds. Well, here they are in all their glory! This was right before they went home yesterday, and as you can probably tell from the photos, most of them were pretty wound-up. I should also point out something that I noticed just now -- check out the sign prominently displayed on the bulletin board behind the students. Is that a camera very obviously x-ed out? Oops!

The class with our wonderful TA, Miss Kit.

Making funny faces. I like the scary eye thing that quite a few of them are attempting... excellent choice, kids!

And a very distracted class with Miss Michelle.
Next week is my last lesson with them and, although they're a real handful, I'm going to miss the little cuties!

everyone's little darling...

It's been a while since my last Templeton-themed post, so I thought it was about time that I devoted some space on my blog to him.


My parents love him. Even my dad feels the need to cuddle with him at least once a day, which is unusual for a man who is normally immune to feline charms.

And here he is posing with one of his biggest fans. Not surprisingly, my mother adores Templeton. We've even had some somewhat serious conversations about who would have custody of him if I was to move out. I love the expression on his face in this picture... or maybe it's his lack of expression.
He hasn't shown himself to be a very affectionate cat, but there's just something about him that fills all who see him with an overwhelming urge to pick him up. My parents and I are hoping that as the weather gets cooler, he might start sitting with us for warmth... but since he has such a thick coat, I'm not sure if that kind of mutualistic relationship would really be beneficial for him.

"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.

goodbye star ferry pier

Today I took the Star Ferry from the new pier in Central, and felt compelled to document the experience. Thankfully I just happened to have my camera with me.

Before I go into detail about my feelings on the new pier, here's a picture of the old one. You can see from the picture that it's almost completely land-locked now, and soon the water in the foreground will be newly reclaimed land. I saw a CNN article recently that discussed the upcoming demolition of the old pier along with it's 50-something-year-old clocktower... except they included a photo of the wrong clocktower! If you click on the link, you'll notice that they have a picture of the old railway clocktower that's near the TST pier, and thankfully, this clocktower will not be demolished. I thought this was a pretty major mistake for CNN to make, and actually sent them a comment about it... but it looks like they have yet to correct the error.

The new Star Ferry pier. I think it's pretty garish.
It reminds me of a few buildings that I've seen in China... a brand-new "colonial style" building that just doesn't look quite right.

Another view of the new pier, taken as I was getting on the boat.

The Tsim Sha Tsui pier, with a view of the clocktower that, contrary to CNN, will not be torn down.
I'm getting tired of all the reclamation. I think it's about time I joined Friends of the Harbour.

thought for the day...

I'm in a Pacific Coffee Company taking a minute for a latte before I go teach 14 four-year-olds about the life-cycle of a frog. That sounds really bizarre when written out... might need some explanation later. ANyway, PCC always has "thoughts for the day" up, and usually I think they're pretty cheesy. Maybe I'm just overly sentimental today, but this one struck a chord with me.

"The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart."
- Elizabeth Foley

Reminds me of many of you true friends out there who may or may not be reading this... :) Take care!

something for your senses...

I noticed this huge sign outside of a mall in Kwai Fong the other day. You can have a sense of humor, a sense of style, and now a sense of... shopping. I guess it makes some sense (oops... hehe) in HK, which is probably the only city in the world with its very own shopping festival.