going to america

This is the first in a series of posts detailing my trip to the USA.
I left HK on August 5th and was fortunate to have Joanna's company on the long flight to California. We had plenty of time (i.e. 12 hours) to peruse the in-flight magazine, Hemispheres, as well as the SkyMall catalogue. Here are some choice advertisements that we came across. Oh, and in case you're wondering, I did take all the pictures while on the plane, and since I was flying with a friend, I didn't experience any of the photo-taking self-consciousness that I would have experienced had I been flying alone...


No, this is not an ad for an escort service -- United does have some standards! It's for a completely legitimate dating service -- Model Quality Introductions -- "where upscale single men meet the most beautiful, fit, and intelligent women in the country."
And here's a slightly closer view. Some of my favorite lines: "You wouldn't compromise in business. We won't let you compromise in love. We understand men's needs."

If that doesn't make you want to vomit, maybe this will. It's an ad for "Bodies: The Exhibition." I hadn't heard of it before, but I came to find out that "Bodies" has been well-publicized in the States and not surprisingly, has met with some controversy. One point being that the majority of the "respectfully presented" bodies are Chinese. That's something I should probably check on, but if true, makes me wonder where they are getting their bodies from...

And I found some great items in the Skymall magazine.

This struck me as strange, but maybe that's because I'm used to animals that can jump effortlessly onto and off of couches.
And another similar product.

This was interesting. But then again, who wouldn't want a "Basho, the Sumo Wrestler" sculpture in their home or garden?

I wish we'd found this before our Fiesta! party, Athania. This little plastic thing "turns any party into a Mexican fiesta."

No matter how useful this device is, I can't imagine purchasing anything called a "bra baby."

I was pleased to find a whole double-page spread of "Successories."


The first two sentences say it all: "Now this is a real robot. So real that it's unreal!"

i heart hk

After more than 3 weeks away, I'm back in Hong Kong. I got back yesterday, in the late afternoon. I always love having a good window seat for the flight into HK, and yesterday was especially clear. The view was breathtaking! It was a really nice end to a wonderful vacation. I couldn't resist taking out my camera and getting a few shots.

Not sure where this is...
A perfect view of Cheung Chau.

This one is of Lantau, but I' m not sure which part...

And then I came home to find that the cute little kitten I left behind has grown into a large fluffy tomcat. And "Templeton" hasn't really worked out very well as a name. While I was gone, my family took to calling him "Fuzzbollah"... I'm still not sure if I'm down with a cat name reminiscent of an extremist Islamic group, but somehow it does suit him.
I have lots of photos from my trip to the States that I hope to post soon... I think it will take several updates, but I will persevere!

bon voyage, mrpard

Not sure if I can wish myself a good journey, but I needed a title for this post about my upcoming travels! In just a few hours I'll be on a plane to LA, and will be spending a total of 3 weeks in the States. It's been a couple years since I was there, and I'm getting excited! Anyway, I write this to let the handful of people that read my semi-frequent postings know that I probaby won't be updating very much these next few weeks, so prepare yourself by finding some other mundane internet reading material. :)
I'm looking forward to seeing some of you soon!

more fun in shenzhen

Salome, her parents, and I went to Shenzhen again to check on the dresses. They were much better (less mushroom-poof), but it seems that the tailor has decided that the fabric is all wrong, and wants to completely remake them.

Anyway, here are some interesting Shenzhen sights:

Mustache shopping.

The "carefully made in usa" tag in a Shenzhen LeSportsac. Hmm...

A free "bilingual" magazine that Sal's parents picked up in the Shenzhen mall. We took a look on the train ride down from Lowu, and found some very informative stuff.

A very interesting article about manicures. The type is pretty small, so I'll try to transcribe it one of these days... it's definitely worth a read!

And an ad for some clock purses (?) with my favorite Beijing 2008 Olympic mascots!

nieces and nephew

Fun with mirrors at Pizza Express.
More fun with mirrors.


On Tuesday we decided to take advantage of the good weather and took a boat from Saikung to a nearby island. Here's the beach... crowded, but pretty nice.

We're waiting for the boat to take us back here, and I think Gabe and Olivia are arguing about something. I couldn't help but find their arguments very amusing...

Salome was able to come along (check out her blog for some more beach photos). Thanks for being the only one actually looking at the camera and smiling in this one, Sal!

We celebrated Olivia's birthday on Wednesday, the night before they were scheduled to leave HK (though they didn't end up leaving until Friday because of Taiphoon Prapiroon). We made some beach-themed cupcakes for our little party. Unfortunately, Olivia didn't get to eat any because she refused to eat dinner. Despite all of our pleading and tempting, she said that she just wanted to open presents, and was very willing to give her cupcake to her mom. She did enjoy blowing out the candle though. Oh, the joys of being almost 5!


Gabe was a good eater that night, and was rewarded with a cupcake complete with blue-frosting mustache.
A close-up of one cupcake and some of the "jungle gummies" that I bought to decorate them (oops, forgot to rotate).
Here's a closer view of one of them. I guess it's supposed to be a jungle native...? I hope that Gabe and Olivia weren't traumatized by this non-pc, gender non-specific, sugary treat.

More mustache. This time it's peanut butter and jelly.


Anna up close.

Grandpa and granddaughter.

summer school & the return of the sonnichsens

Here are a couple photos sent to me by my lovely TA and friend, Rany. Thanks!

Here I am singing a song with the green class before they left on our final day (see the big Zs on the board? They went through 20 letters of the alphabet in the 4 weeks of class. Q, X, and Y were among the letters not chosen, but I'm sure they're used to being overlooked by now...).

And with the purple class.Cute little kids -- I'm going to miss them! However, I won't miss waking up at 6:30 to go to school. My summer holiday has officially begun!

In other news, Amy and her clan arrived on Friday, so I'm having fun chillin' with the nieces and nephew. They all have pretty bad jet-lag though, and right now Gabe is the only one still up. So we're presently enjoying some Thomas the Tank Engine video fun. He's really into Thomas stuff, and is pretty much an expert on anything and everything Thomas. Not only does he know all of the characters' names (even the pretty obscure engines like "Murdoch", for example), but he's also been explaining some of the more refined points of locomotion to us, like buffering and what a tender is.
Yesterday, I let Gabe go into my room (which is off limits to the kids without accompaniment and permission), and he asked if he could climb up the ladder to my loft-bed (a favorite past-time for both him and Olivia). On his way up, he started asking me questions. Here's a transcript of our conversation:

Is this your ladder?
Yes.
Is this your bed?
Yes.
Is that your pillow?
Yes.
Is that your blanket?
Yes.
Is that your light?
Yes.

The questions continued like this for a little while -- a question about my ownership, followed by an affirmative from me. Funny stuff.

Anyway, I will post some photos of the nieces and nephew soon.

japanese influences

I thought that my last post would be it for a while, but then yesterday I came across a couple of things that I determined to be blog-worthy. And both of them are of Japanese origin too, which makes for a nice, neat post.

Kitty Bricks

I woke up earlier than usual yesterday morning, and ended up being ready to leave for the ICS Kindergarten a whole 30 minutes early (which is pretty much unheard of for me)! I decided to use this extra time to get breakfast out. And where, you might ask, did I choose to go? McDonalds, of course! Here's the thing: I love McDonalds breakfasts, especially their egg mcmuffin meals!

So I was sitting there, enjoying my hash brown and fanta (it's larger than the miniscule orange juice, and must contain some vitamin C, right?) when on my table, I noticed this large promotional sticker. It just left me wondering how these little figurines resemble bricks?

And then I noticed a nice little message from Kitty herself on the cup that I was drinking out of.

And in the bottom corner of the large table-sticker, I noticed some promotional material for the "Secret House" thing that Sal mentioned in one of her recent posts. It seems like Secret House stuff is popping up everywhere... on the MTR, McDonalds, huge streetside billboards, etc. Whatever it is, the admission is $60 for adults, which seems ridiculous to me for anything related to Hello Kitty. But then I guess there is a whole theme park in Japan devoted to Kitty and her other Sanrio friends.

Sticky Pictures

Athania and Chris are leaving HK in less than a week, heading to Hawaii, and then LA (you guys will be missed!). And seeing as Athania is the undisputed queen of sticky pictures (and even coined the term herself, I believe), the two of us decided to get some taken yesterday. I've never considered myself a fan of sticky pictures, and hadn't taken any in about 4 years, but I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Here's a photographic run-down of what happened.

It took us a while to find a sticky-picture booth. And I should mention that the sticky-picture booth is a social creature -- a lone booth is virtually unheard of. They are always found in large herds... or packs (I sense another collective-noun crisis coming on!). We wandered around Mongkok for a while, and then found a little mall of the caliber that are known to have large groups of sticky-picture machines. And fortunately (but not surprisingly), Athania actually knew the Cantonese for "sticky picture," so was able to locate the large area devoted to the things. Here is the sticky picture queen herself at the entrance of the sticky picture village.

It seems that the majority of machines have Japanese instructions only, and since neither Athania nor I can read any Hiragana or Katakana, we were forced to take wild guesses when given options on the booth's computer screen. This resulted in some interesting pictures, as you will see later. Here both of us are considering how best to decorate the photos that we took.

Here's a sample of one of the photo packages you could get at the booth. I like the crowns. I wish we could have figured out how to have crowns...

As I said, our lack of Japanese ability led to some interesting sticky pictures. We took quite a few photos in our first booth, and then somehow got stuck with the really bad, but funny shots (i.e. the one in which I have no head).

After we took these shots and divided them between the two of us, we decided to get more at a new booth! It was so much fun! I definitely sense a new obsession coming on...

fun in shenzhen, ode to sal and kai, and small portions

Sal and I have made a couple trips up to Shenzhen in the past 2 weeks, mainly for the purpose of getting clothes made. Here are some shots from our wanderings:

This is a sign for the Shenzhen metro. I'm surprised that the MTR hasn't sued them for blatantly copying their logo.

Here's a discovery Sal made while we were in the fabric market. Look! It's everybody's favorite Olympic mascots -- Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying, and Nini -- immortalized in silk! I think I need to dedicate an entire blog to them, or at least a whole post, because I seem to run into those little guys everywhere!

And here's Salome being measured for her dress. The main reason we went to Shenzhen was to get the bridesmaids' dresses for her wedding made, and though it's obvious that she can't be a bridesmaid in her own wedding, she's getting one of her bridesmaid dresses made for herself to be worn at another wedding. Did I get that right, Sal? :) Unfortunately (or rather, fortunately), I forgot to get any photos of us at our first fitting. The word that comes to mind in reference to how we looked in the dresses is something Sal herself aptly coined... "mushrooms," wasn't it? I'll just say that there was a lot of poofing going on, especially in areas that we didn't want poofed. Thankfully there's plenty of time for the dresses to be perfected before the big day in December.

And speaking of their upcoming wedding, here's a photo of the lovely couple at church in matching pink. And they claim that this wasn't planned?! Anyway, just wanted to do a little shout-out to two of my most faithful readers. You guys are cool. Thanks for never making me feel like a third-wheel even when I am one. :)

On a completely different note, here's a photo from today that I just had to post. Salome, Jo and I had lunch together in Shatin at a restaurant that will remain nameless. We all got set lunches that were surprisingly inexpensive, considering that in addition to a main course, they came with an appetizer (lettuce with mayonaise-covered penne -- yumm!!), soup, coffee/tea, and dessert. But check out the size of the desserts they brought us!

OK, seeing as this is my second post today, I think I'm all posted out for a while...

students

Here is some student-related stuff I've been wanting to post for a while.

On the 14th I went to my school's "Thanksgiving Ceremony," an end-of-the-school-year event that included speeches, student performances, presentations of awards, and some really long speeches. And about 98% of the 3-hour ceremony was in Cantonese, so I had to amuse myself by imagining what was being said. Well, I guess I didn't have to imagine everything that was said, since I like to flatter myself that I know some Cantonese. A translation track of everything I heard was running in my head during the ceremony, with me filling in the blanks. It sounded something like this: "Thankyou_____. _______ students ________ good ______ school _______ ________ ________ _______ ________."

One of the highlights of the evening, for me at least, was seeing and hearing our school's marching band. Yes, we have a marching band. And they have the coolest uniforms! Check out those feathers!

They marched into the hall followed by the ceremony VIPs, and then stood around the perimeter playing The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

When they had finished performing, I went outside to try and get some more shots of them in their uniforms. However, I found that most of them did not want to be photographed in marching band attire. Thankfully my faithful student Jessica was more than willing to strike a pose with her clarinet.And here's Dennis, who I taught this year. It might be difficult to understand why, but I refered to him as Dennis the Menace on more than one occasion (affectionately, of course). On an interesting note, he is one of two Dennis Ngs at the school. Part way through the year I noticed the two of them walking around together sometimes during lunch and recess. I guess they met because of their identical names, but ended up becoming good friends.

And now I come to a younger student. Last week I started teaching the language class at the ICS kindergarten summer school. "Language" is a pretty serious name for what I do with the kids, which is basically reading stories, singing songs, etc. Every day the kindergarten has a letter theme, and last Monday was "K," so I had to find a story about something starting with "K". Well, I looked hard for a book about koalas or kites, but in the end the only appropriate book that I could find was called Kitten's First Full Moon, which incidentally is a very cute book with beautiful illustrations (actually won the Caldecott (sp?) award, the yearly award for best-illustrated children's book). Anyway, after we read the story, I had the children color a picture from the book. I thought Jasper (see his name in the corner?) did an especially good job, so found a round-about way of getting his picture. Love his color choice and technique. And in case you're wondering, the reason the kitten is half red is that some of the kids decided he needed a blanket... he is sleeping afterall. Besides appreciating the kitten coloring-job, I love this photo! I think I like the way the picture is covering half of his face, and that his eyes look so serious.