Chinese New Year... an excuse to eat!

we celebrated our first Chinese New Year in Hong Kong. it was a 4-day weekend of non-stop eating!

on Friday, we had a pre-Chinese New Year dinner with a group of friends at Chung's Kitchen, a Chinese restaurant in Causeway Bay. the eggplant was very tasty!

CNY Eve was a homecooked dinner at our friends' Wendy and Gordon's place, where Gordon's mom (visiting from Shanghai) cooked up a delicious 10-course meal for us! we all then joined the midnight madness at Wong Tai Sin Temple, where hundreds of people mad-rushed to light incense sticks and make their wishes for the new year. let's hope Wong Tai Sin was able to hear all of our wishes!

on CNY, we celebrated with a few friends by having a fancy-shmancy dinner at Nobu, the popular Japanese restaurant of internationally acclaimed Japanese chef Nobuyuki Matsuhisa. the meal was expensive, but boy, was it mouthwatering delicious! my usual favorite dishes (which I've had before at the Nobu in NYC) did not disappoint -- the Miso Chilean Sea Bass, and the Yellowtail Salad with Jalapenos. also tried an excellent Spicy Creamy Crab dish, which i'll be adding on my list of Nobu favorites. i normally don't eat raw fish... but i will eat raw fish at Nobu because it's damn good! =9

the next day, we joined friends on a cruise to watch fireworks on Victoria Harbour. unfortunately it was overcast, hazy, drizzling rain, and slightly breezy... which made our 5 hour cruise a bit too rocky for our liking. but we still had a good time catching up with friends and watching the spectacular 23-minute long fireworks from our boat. (they even had figure-8 fireworks for Lucky Number 8!)

golden pig

happy Chinese new year!

according to an article in the Telegraph-India, this year is supposed to be super lucky for those born this year because the gold element is passing through the zodiac for the first time in 60 years.

"The following 12 months will be known as the Year of the Pig, during which anyone born is supposed to be easy-going and lucky. But, for the first time in six decades, it will also coincide with the year in which the element of gold passes through the Chinese zodiac and babies born in the Year of the Golden Pig are twice blessed.

The promising celestial combination has led hundreds of thousands of couples to 2007 as the year to have the sole baby they are permitted under China's rigid one-child policy, in the hope that their offspring will have double the normal entitlement to riches and a long life. In Beijing alone, 150,000 babies are expected this year, up from the 129,000 born in 2006."

a baby boom is predicted in Asia this year in efforts to reap this double-blessing. i'm expecting to see a lot of pregnant women walking around this year here in Hong Kong! although the practical, "Economics-major"-side of me believes that if everyone is planning on having a baby at the same time this year, this little Asian baby boom will result in even heavier competition for schools and jobs once all those Year of the Pig babies grow up. as though getting into good schools and jobs isn't competitive enough as is! i hear that even trying to get five-year-olds accepted into good elementary schools here in Hong Kong is highly competitive and tough. how will everyone's "luckiness" help them then if they're all in the same situation?

daydreaming

ahhh, it's nice to imagine being back on the warm, relaxing beaches of Phuket... it gives an immediate calming effect despite not actually being there.