i heart new york

I've moved!

2008-04-24T16:14:00.006+08:00

As you can tell, I don't blog much here anymore.
I'm officially moving my blog to...

www.alivenotdead.com/ivylam

I'm now blogging on Alive Not Dead (www.alivenotdead.com), which is an online community that actively brings artists together with each other and fans and other members of the public through sharing blogs, photos, etc. Artists including actors/actresses, filmmakers, singers/bands, producers, DJ's, fashion designers, models, photographers, writers, and more... basically most professions related to the Arts. Although the artists are mostly based in Hong Kong (and thus predominantly Asian), it's not limited to here, and there are a number people in the U.S., China, Taiwan, and other parts of the world. Some official artists that you may recognize include Jet Li, Daniel Wu, Van Ness Wu, Terence Yin, and Kelly Hu.

I had the honor to become one of the official artists on the site (as photographer), so feel free to check out my page, where I post photos and blogs regularly. I've been blogging there since last year, and I really enjoy it as I've met a lot of people on or through the site (many of who I eventually get to meet in person).

You're welcome to join the site for free and check out some of the other artists' blogs on the site and even leave comments on their pages if you'd like. They'll read it.

See you guys over there...

Jay Chou concert

2008-01-08T11:04:00.001+08:00

Last month, I went to the Jay Chou concert!
I first discovered his music two years ago after moving to HK. I really love his music (especially his more R&B/rap-inspired tunes from his earlier albums, but I like his ballads too!) so I was super excited to go to his concert for the first time. I have to say that the concert was good, but our seats weren't so great... they were located right behind the stage, so during most of the concert, we saw mostly his back. Anyways, it was still good to get to see him in concert, he's definitely musically talented, and he sang one of my favorite songs, "Ye Qu" (Nocturne).

Here are two heavily zoomed-in photos while he graced us with his presence on our side of the stage and where he actually turned towards our direction.

"RESPECT" Diesel & Alive Not Dead party event

2007-10-21T16:39:00.000+08:00

Two weeks ago, Diesel and AliveNotDead.com hosted an exhibit opening/live performance party event in HK, and it was awesome!

Wing Shya is one of Hong Kong's top photographers, and he was exhibiting some cool work at this exhibit. The star-studded evening began at Wing Shya's photo exhibit that also featured some photos of some local HK bands (including my friend Jan's band, So What), as well as a display where you can watch music videos and short videos of local artists.

The party following featured performances by 24 Herbs, and then NY-based DJ, Dan The Automator spinning. Great show, was really diggin' the hip hop beats (my favorite kind of music)! Also had a lot of fun hanging out with the AliveNotDead.com friends as well as meeting some new folks, including some artists from the site who's work I admire (Daniel Wu, Audiotraffic's Don and Adrian of local band Audiotraffic, Dax, Ghoststyle of 24 Herbs, etc...). Everyone was really friendly and nice! :) Overall, an awesome evening!

Here's a photo of me with Daniel Wu (HK actor originally from the U.S.), who I got to meet briefly. :)

There's a forum of articles and blogs of the event:
http://www.alivenotdead.com/bbs/thread-12783-1-1.html

Here are a few photos that I took of the live performances.

So What CD Launch Party

2007-10-20T02:05:00.000+08:00

Last month, I went to the album launch party of my friend Jan's band, So What. It's a local girl band, consisting of three girls, Jan, Shirley, and Rani. Jan is the vocals (Mandarin), Shirley plays bass guitar, and Rani plays the drums.

It was the party celebrating the release of their first album. It was a pretty good turnout, the lounge was packed. Of course our group of friends all went out to support Jan and the girls.

By the way, our friend Ed (an amazing photographer) took all the cd cover photos and nearly all the photos inside their cd booklet. I was also happy to find out that they used two photos that I took of Jan inside the cd booklet too (the first and last photos of Jan)!! =D

Their songs can be downloaded for free from their website, and the cd booklet can be viewed as well. http://www.sowhat-music.com

My journey on the Silk Road

2007-10-16T22:53:00.000+08:00

Came back earlier this month from a 9-day trip in China along the Silk Road, the ancient trade route used through various regions of the Asian continent. There were 10 of us on the trip, and we had our own private guides and drivers. Here are the highlights from the trip:

DAY 1: XIAN

-Army of terracotta warriors. It was a pretty amazing sight to see 6000 life-size warrior statues standing in battle position in the first pit of the tomb, each face different from others. Did you know that the soldier statues, 2000-years old and now mostly faded to gray, used to be painted with color?
(The photo on the right was taken of terracotta statues at a factory. Don't they look pretty much like the real thing?)

-Xian City Wall. Xian is one of the few cities in China where old city walls are still visible and open to the public.

DAY 2: JIAYUGUAN
-Wei Jin Tombs. We drove through the Gobi Desert, and along the way, visited one of the thousands of ancient tombs sprinkled throughout the desert. The inside of the tomb was covered in brick tiles with interesting paintings on them. No photos allowed.

DAY 3: JIAYUGUAN & DUNHUANG
Our anniversary day! As I wrote in my previous entry, we spent the day visiting the Jiayuguan Fort, then drove to Dunhuang, where we got to go camel-riding and sand-sledding in the sand dunes of Mingsha Shan. It was so much fun! Camels were surprisingly easy to ride, they were slow and steady. You just sit back between their humps, and bob up and down along with them. They're pretty gentle creatures with goofy smiles. Sledding down the sand hills was a little crazy cuz I have a fear of heights and the hills seemed really steep from the top... I kept thinking I was gonna flip my sled over and tumble down!

That night, we all stayed in a Chinese-style courtyard villa. There were 6 rooms surrounding one common courtyard in each villa, just like what you see in the old days Chinese TV shows.

DAY 4: DUNHUANG & TURPAN
-Mogao Grottoes - Hundreds of caves filled with mostly Buddhism-related artwork and statues dating from way back to the ancient Chinese dynasties, including the Wei, Zhou, Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties. We were guided into 8 of the few open caves, where the artwork and Buddha statues were very impressive. No photos allowed.

-More camel-riding and sand-tubing. We loved the camel-riding so much that we went back for more! This time, we took a longer camel-ride farther into the sand dunes where we trekked to the top of a sand hill for an amazing view. Then we went tubing down the sand hill, where once again I screamed all the way down. haha!

-That evening, we took an 8-hour overnight soft-sleeper train ride into Turpan, Xinjiang.

DAY 5: TURPAN
-Turpan, a desert oasis, is the lowest and hottest spot in China. Luckily the weather was nice while we were there, but supposedly the highest recorded temperature was 49.6 degrees C (121.3 degrees F)!!

-Jiaohe Ruins - During the Han dynasty, Jiaohe was established as a town to defend the borderlands, but the town was decimated by Genghis Khan. All that's left to see are old crumbling ruins of buildings, but it was still pretty cool to see what's left.

-Visited a local Uyhgur family home. Uyhgur (pronounced "we-gar") people are one of the native Turkic ethnic groups in Xinjiang. Uyghurs aren't ethnically Chinese and look primarily European/Middle Eastern, so it was difficult to imagine that we were in a city considered to be part of China. Many even spoke Mandarin. Most of the Uyhgur people we met in Turpan were very friendly. We visited this one Uyhgur family's home where they served us delicious home-grown fresh and dried fruits, and we toured their grape vines.

-Sugong Mosque. Designed in a simple Afghani style and built in 1777. Uyhgurs are mostly Muslim, and this mosque was one of the few places of worship in the city.

DAY 6: TURPAN & URUMQI
-The Flaming Mountains - Along our 4 hours drive to Urumqi, we passed the famed Flaming Mountains, which are red sandstone hills that look like burning flames when the sun shines down on it.

The mountains were made famous in the 16th century Chinese classic novel ‘Journey to the West’ about Buddhist monk Xuan Zang’s pilgrimage to India. In the story, the monk encounters a wall of flames (the Flaming Mountains), and is able to extinguish them with help from his companion, the Monkey King.

-Heaven Pool - A beautiful clear blue lake surrounded by snow-capped mountains halfway up a mountain in the middle of a desert.
Our group hamming it up in Uyghur traditional costumes in front of the lake.

DAY 7: KASHGAR
Kashgar is a fabled oasis of the ancient Silk Road that still retains much of its exotic Eastern feel in parts of the city.

-Old Town - One of the best parts of the trip was strolling through the Old Town, where narrow roads are lined with Uyghur shops and homes. We saw many craftsmen still working their crafts, such as coal-oven bakers, horseshoe makers, cotton weavers, vendors selling fruits and vegetables from wooden donkey carts, knife and weapons makers. And the children! We saw so many Uyghur children and most of them are so cute, friendly, and curious. Many loved having their photos taken, and would giggle when we showed them their picture from our viewfinder.

(This man was very nice. He saw us taking photos of him, so he buttoned up his jacket to look more "presentable" for our photos. So cute of him!)

DAY 8 & 9: URUMQI & XIAN
Mostly free day before heading back to HK.

Overall, we saw some amazing sights, encountered many friendly faces, ate lots of delicious food, rode on some goofy-looking camels, and it was ALL a lot of fun and an amazing experience on the Silk Road! :)

Do you hug?

2007-10-13T20:21:00.000+08:00

The other day while walking around Mongkok, I spotted several girls standing in the middle of the busy pedestrians-only street carrying signs that said "FREE HUGS". I stopped for a bit to watch them hug random strangers as though they were old friends. One girl walked up to a guy with outstretched arms and of course the guy hugged her back, although it would've been funny to see him run away instead! But I'm not surprised, what guy in their right mind would turn down a hug from a girl, even if she is a stranger?

I found it amusing because local Hong Kong-ers aren't known to hug with friends. They'll wave to you instead. Are they just not into showing affection? I have a few local friends who hug but probably picked up the habit while studying abroad.

I've become a "hugger" because my college and post-college friends were all huggers. Now it's just natural for me to greet all my friends with a warm hug. :) I guess I like giving & receiving hugs from friends because it's nice and comforting, and for me it's a way to show that I'm truly happy to see him/her (and hopefully they feel the same way).

So unless you have something against it, if you're my friend, you're gonna get a hug from me! Got it? :D haha.. J/K

Actually, one of my close friends isn't into hugs... but my other friends and I hug her anyways. I think we're slowly breaking her down... *chipping away ice* haha!

Do you hug? If not, why not?

three years

2007-10-03T10:12:00.000+08:00

Larry and I celebrated our three year wedding anniversary last tuesday during our trip on the Silk Road. (wow, three yrs already?)

on our anniversary day, we got to visit the ancient Jiayuguan Fort (that's where the above pic was taken of us), we went camel-riding and sand-sledding in the sand dunes of Mingsa Shan in Dunhuang, and then had a delicious anniversary dinner with 8 of our friends at our hotel, where we got to stay in this beautiful Chinese-styled courtyard villa.

definitely a memorable anniversary!

Crash and burn... so scary!

2007-09-18T18:00:00.000+08:00

Just flew back Sunday from five days in Phuket, Thailand. Before I even begin to write about the trip, I have to say how shocked I am right now to have just heard about a plane crash in Phuket that very afternoon!!!

Basically, a plane crashed at Phuket Airport Sunday shortly after landing around 3:30pm after skidding off the runway during a landing attempt, and 88 out of 130 people aboard died. Was it because of the bad weather or did it have anything to do with the local budget airline? (Ever heard of One-Two-GO Airline? I sure haven't!) I'm sure the terrible weather condition played a big part.

Either way... that's SCARY and sad!!

Our flight left Phuket Airport at 12:20pm. If we had taken a later flight home we would've arrived to a chaotic airport and canceled flight. It's even scarier thinking how close we were to it... especially if it was caused by the bad weather, it could've happened to any plane... *gulp*

The weather was really bad when we left Phuket. It was blowing strong gusty winds and raining very hard at times... it's monsoon season in Southeast Asia this time of year and they have tropical storms nearly every day. But dude, it makes me even more nervous to fly now! And definitely will be wary of flying budget airlines!

Art-Jamming Party

2007-08-28T23:13:00.000+08:00

A few weeks ago, my friend organized an art-jamming party at a studio in Causeway Bay.

It's basically a party where we get a bunch of friends together in a studio all for ourselves for half a day and we get to paint our own paintings and drink and eat at the same time. The studio supplied the canvas, paints, and tools. We ordered our own pizza and drinks.

I thought it was a unique idea, definitely different from your usual hanging out at dinner or at a bar. It was fun, and everyone got to release their inner artistic sides.

I shared a canvas with my husband. I was never much of a painter, while my husband actually enjoys painting, so I was happy to take turns with him. (He did most of the work.)

Here are a few photos of the "artists" at work.

Transformers

2007-08-27T15:07:00.000+08:00

I watched "Transformers" a few weeks ago, and I must say that I liked it.

As a kid, I wasn't into them (it was more of a boys' thing), so I didn't really know much about them other than the fact that they transform from cars into robots, and they have that catch-phrase, "Transformers - more than meets the eye"! *shrug*

I went in expecting to be bored, so I was pretty surprised to find myself enjoying the movie. I found some of the Autobots to be pretty funny. I especially liked Bumblebee, the friendly Autobot disguised as a yellow Camaro. My husband said that most women also like Bumblebee the most. I can see why... he's got the looks (pretty hot as a smooth '77 Chevy Camaro), he's got the moves (check out how he helps Sam woo Mikaela), he's got good taste in music (I like the grooves that he plays on his radio), he's got strength and good fighting skills, he's caring, and he's sentimental and loyal (he chose to stay with Sam after they developed a bond and they saved either other). What more can a woman ask for? ;)

Oh yeah, the other reason I enjoyed the movie, in two words: Josh Duhamel. He's hot! 'Nuff said. Too bad he wasn't in that many of the scenes, but I'll take what I can get. ;)

One thing though, I wasn't entirely convinced of the love story, but oh well... The rest of it was entertaining to watch anyways.

Concerts

2007-08-26T01:51:00.001+08:00

Ahh, Gwen Stefani's concert last week was AWESOME!!! Or, to use the title of a song from her former band, No Doubt, it was "HELLA GOOD"! =D haha. She had so much energy on-stage, she's a great performer. My favorite songs were "4 in the Morning", "Cool", "Luxurious", and "The Real Thing". But she performed all her songs so well it made me love them all.

The best part? My friends and I got some of the best seats in the house... 3rd row seats, front center, baby!! I've never sat so close up before. And being in the front center section was fun because everybody was really into it, everyone was standing up and dancing during the whole concert. Gwen was just a mere 20 or so feet away, and her energy was contagious!

Meanwhile, I also got to go to another concert on sunday... to see Jacky Cheung! If you don't know him, he's a Cantopop singer and he's been singing for the last 23 years. He was one of the original "4 Heavenly Kings" back in the 90's, along with Andy Lau, Leon Lai, and Aaron Kwok. I admit that I don't know his newer songs, but I know most of his older classics. Luckily, he dedicated most of the evening to singing his famous, classic songs. I always thought he had such a good, strong voice, and I was not disappointed hearing him sing live last night. At the end of the 3 hour 10 minute show, his voice was still as strong as ever.

my mom's 'hood

2007-08-14T10:45:00.000+08:00

On Sunday night, I had dinner with friends in the neighborhood called Happy Valley (HK). It was actually my first time hanging out in HV and I was amazed to see so many restaurants there. I guess I always thought it was inconvenient to get to because the subway line doesn't extend out there, but it's actually not too bad.

The cool thing about Happy Valley is that that's the very neighborhood my mom used to live in about 40 years ago, before she met and married my dad and moved to the States! I'm pretty sure a lot has changed since then and most of the shops and restaurants weren't around back then. But just being in the neighborhood that my mom grew up in, walking around the very streets that she used to walk through decades ago before I was even born, I realized...

wow, I was hangin' out in my mom's old 'hood! :)

Having lived in the U.S. my whole life, that's something I never expected!

my first signal 8 typhoon

2007-08-13T21:30:00.000+08:00

On Friday, we were hit by a signal 8 tyhoon warning, which is officially described as "gale or storm force wind blowing in Hong Kong near sea level, with a sustained wind speed of 63-117 km/h and gusts which may exceed 180 km/h." The highest signal is 10, when it becomes hurricane force winds. It didn't seem so bad though last night, cuz I've heard the winds howl louder last year during a signal 3.

Larry and I were supposed to join some friends on a boat trip, but after waking up to heavy rain and gusty winds and a signal 1 typhoon warning, we got really worried about getting seasick being out on a boat for 7 hrs. So unfortunately, we had to cancel even though the rest of the guys braved it out there. It's a good thing I didn't go though because over the next few hrs, the winds got much stronger, signals 3 and then 8 was issued, and for sure I would've been puking off the side of the boat. =(

In the evening we stayed in and watched a dvd of "World Trade Center". Brought back lots of sad memories from Sept. 11th. Thought it was interesting to see the movie from the point-of-view of the first-response rescuers, in this case the Port Authority police officers. You could really get a sense of the lack of information/communication that the officers were experiencing that day. Even as the officers were in Tower One's concourse level ready to go upstairs to rescue people, they had no idea that Tower Two had been hit already. Amazingly, it was the true story of two of only a handful of people who were rescued alive after the collapse.

goodbye Norma Jean

2007-08-07T09:21:00.000+08:00

45 years ago yesterday (Aug 5th), Marilyn Monroe died in her home in LA.

Born Norma Jean Baker, she's one of the biggest sex symbols and legends in Hollywood history. She would've been 81 if she were alive today.

To be honest, I haven't seen any of her movies. I've only seen clips of several of her movies during an exhibit on her life at one of the museums in NYC two years ago. But who *doesn't* know Marilyn Monroe? I'll definitely have to check out her movies some day... Any recommendations?

I really like these two b&w photos of her. The first one is a clear portrait of of her glamour and beauty. The second one shows her looking refreshingly beautiful and totally carefree against a great city background. She's such a timeless beauty!

"yo momma" jokes

2007-07-28T08:48:00.000+08:00

A few friends and I were joking around the other day. After a playful round of teasing, one of my friends used the famous, one-liner retort, "Yo momma!" as a comeback, which made me laugh really hard.

That's something that I haven't heard or used myself in a long time. It brings back memories of junior high and high school, when the kids used it a lot.

But what was cool about it was when the kids started coming up with witty and funny "Yo momma..." comebacks and they'd take turns "insulting" each other. It'd turn into a verbal sparring match, and whoever ran out of things to comeback with was the loser. They were usually pretty funny and clever. Apparently, there's an official term for this, it's called "the dozens".

Examples:

-Yo momma so old, her social security number is one!
-Yo momma so ugly, they filmed Gorillas in the Mist in her shower!
-Yo momma so stupid, she tries to alphabetize M&M's.
-Yo momma so fat, when she tripped on 3rd Avenue, she landed on 12th Avenue!
-Yo momma so poor, when I visited her trailer, 2 cockroaches tripped me and a Rat tried to steal my wallet!
-Yo momma so poor, I visited yo momma's house, tore down the cob webs, and she screamed "Who's tearing down the drapes!!!!"
-Yo momma so fat, when she goes to the zoo, the elephants throw yo momma peanuts!

I remember during one of my junior high school classes, the teacher let two guys go at it in a "Yo mamma..." round for about 10 minutes. They were hilarious, and it gave the class and the teacher some good laughs.

Anyone know of any other clever ones? =)

it's a sign

2007-07-26T10:12:00.000+08:00

i went to my friend's birthday dinner over the weekend, and she had put together a Lucky Draw gift giveaway for all her friends there. these were all fun, inexpensive stuff that were more like gag gifts, but it was definitely sweet of her to give *us* gifts even though it was her birthday, and it was fun unwrapping the surprises.

so it was just my luck that my randomly-drawn gift turned out to be a double-pack box of Marlboro Lights.

that's great... except that i don't smoke.

so my friend tries unsuccessfully to help me exchange the cigarettes with another gift. finally she found an extra gift and gave that to me.

when i unwrapped it, it was a cigarette lighter.

i think someone's trying to tell me something! haha

picture a typical HK summer day

2007-07-21T00:13:00.000+08:00

let me paint you a picture of what's it's like on a typical summer day here in Hong Kong, in case you haven't been lucky enough to experience it for yourselves... ;)

you're walking along the streets of Hong Kong on a typical hot, humid summer day. the sidewalk is packed with people, you can't even pass the slowpokes dragging their butts in front of you because the sidewalk is too narrow. the temperature is 95 degrees farenheit, but with humidity it actually feels more like 107 degrees. you walk past the open doors of a store and you're blasted by what feels like heaven... the cool, refreshing blast of air-conditioning!

ahhh... relief!

but not for long, since you're being pushed along by the people walking 2 inches behind you, practically stepping on your heels. you continue walking in the smoldering heat when all of a sudden you feel a few drops of cool water hit your face from above.

is it starting to rain?! dammit... not another flash thunderstorm! you've been caught in so many of these heavy downpours without being prepared for it.

you're just about to start cursing yourself for not having an umbrella with you when you realize... oh wait, that was air-conditioning drip water. nasty, dirty 'ole air-conditioner drippage from the offices or apartments right above you.

eeeeeww...

Explosion

2007-07-20T12:19:00.000+08:00

Holy crap! Yesterday morning, after turning on the computer, and the first news article that caught my attention was about the steam pipe explosion in Manhattan several hours earlier, killing one person.

Apparently a steam pipe exploded when a burst of cold water got into the pipe, tore a huge crater into the street, and sent a geyser of steam and mud shooting into the air and raining debris on people on the streets. According to an article, "the initial burst of steam rose higher than the nearby 77-story Chrysler Building, one of Manhattan's tallest buildings." At one point in history, the Chrysler Building was the tallest building in the world, so you can imagine how high that shot up!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070719/ap_on_re_us/manhattan_explosion

Also what caught my attention was the location of this explosion. It happened a mere 7 blocks from where we used to live in New York, and 13 short blocks from where I used to work. So if we hadn't moved to Hong Kong and were still be living in NYC, it would've been right around our neighborhood... that would've hit pretty close to home, literally.

I can't imagine how messy and chaotic it must've been over there. I'm sure some people fleeing the explosion initially had 9/11 on their minds. So freaky how it happened without warning...

going on sale with a bang!

2007-07-20T11:10:00.000+08:00

one thing about Hong Kong, they sure know how to have a sale!

when stores here go on sale, they really go all out! during the end of a season, it's easy to find signs exclaiming "75% off!", like what i saw yesterday at Mango or some other store. i think once i even saw a "90% off" after the Chinese New Year holiday. and the best part? NO SALES TAX! what you see on the price tag is what you pay... love it!

dude, in the States, it's typically more like 10-15% off. I'd be happy to see sales of 25-30% off. and if you're really lucky, you can find something for 50%... and then you have to factor in the sales tax (8+% in some states).

gotta love shopping in HK! the problem is more about being to find styles that i like enough to buy... =P

the name game

2007-07-15T12:31:00.000+08:00

so i hear the new Harry Potter movie's out...
i admit i've only watched one of the movies ("Prisoner of Akzaban"), and have never read any of the books. i actually enjoyed the one movie that i saw, and i swear i'll get around to reading all her books and watching all the movies one of these days...

anyways, i was just thinking about the author, J.K. Rowling, who's now the best-paid author in history, and among the top-ten best-paid celebrities. just thinking about the fact that (according to Wikipedia), J.K. Rowling is actually a woman named Joanne Rowling, and how before her first book was released, her publishing company feared that her target audience of young boys would be reluctant to read books written by a female author, so they asked her to use two initials instead of revealing her actual,first name. since she doesn't have a middle name, she chose K for her grandmother's name, Kathleen. and there you have it... J.K. Rowling!

that's awesome that she's gotten so far and is doing so well. but what if she had chosen to use her real name from the beginning? would those teenage boys have found it to be just as cool to be reading books written by a lady named Joanne Rowling? would she have been taken as seriously as a fantasy-adventure writer? would her books have become as popular, and would she have had the same opportunities to have her books made into such blockbuster movies? maybe... but the sad truth is, probably not... and that, i think, is unfair and sad.

my first photo shoot

2007-07-09T15:27:00.000+08:00

ok, before you get too excited for me, let me clarify that i wasn't the one having my photos taken, nor was i the one taking the photos... but it was just the first photo shoot that i attended. :) hehe

yesterday my friend Ed, who's a photographer, was doing a full-day photo shoot at an exclusive lounge/club in Hong Kong called M1NT, and i was there to assist him. i very excited to see all the behind-the-scenes of it, and even though it was a long day, i thought it was a good experience.

i've never been inside the club before, so i was quite impressed by some of the interiors and furniture designs. it was bold and colorful, and there were some really awesome pieces of furniture there. the coolest thing was probably the wall-length SHARK TANK, with 8 baby sharks swimming around. and i thought i had to go to Sea World to see sharks! A shark tank set against red sofas in a dark lounge... damn, is that dangerously sexy or what? or sexily dangerous? is there even a difference?

anyways, i didn't get to do any shooting myself since i was there to assist him with the equipment and gear, but i was still excited to there to help out and see what it's like at one of these shoots and learn about the lighting equipments. different lights can create different moods. and the models were pretty amazing... they needed very little direction and were able to instantly strike endless poses on the spot, like "bam, bam, bam" one right after another with no hesitation, with each pose always looking very sexy. if it were me, after 3 poses, i'd be like "shit, what else can i do that won't make me look retarded?!" i guess that's why i'm not a model. hahah!

i only got 2 hours of sleep before the photo shoot (late night partying... i know, so crazy of me, but i knew that i didn't need to do any shooting, so i figured a little lack of sleep wouldn't do me much harm. haha). after some coffee, i was good to go. but then it ended up lasting nearly eleven hours, so after it ended i was ready to go home. but that's nothing cuz i can't even imagine how tired the photographer was. i'm sure Ed was physically and mentally exhausted. he was on his feet and behind the camera all day long. not to mention constantly thinking of how to pose the models and how to best utilize the backgrounds available. there's a lot of creativity and mental visualization required for photography, at least with good photography in my opinion. to have the ability to able to look at an ordinary object or scene and be able to visualize it at an angle and perspective that's creative, unique, and artistic. with shooting people, it's not just about capturing them while they're looking good (although that's definitely a big part of it!), but also having good composition, and being able to incorporate any patterns and colors of the background to make it all an interesting shot.

anyways... even though i didn't have my digital SLR camera with me, i had my little Canon point-and-shoot, so i played around and caught a few behind-the-scenes/decor shots for fun. here's a few of them.

that's Ed in action during one of the poses with two models.

the shark tank!

dangling beads with a round wall fish tank

"Ghetto Superstar"

2007-07-09T14:19:00.000+08:00

ok, i LOVE Hip Hop music. i grew up listening to Hip Hop and R&B since back in the 'ole high school days. in fact, everyone in my high school listed to Hip Hop, R& B, and Rap. if you listened to anything else, especially Metal, Rock or god-forbid Country, then the other kids would give you shit about it. (and if you knew where i went to for high school, then you'll know why.. hehe)

anyways, last night we joined some friends at some launch party for an evening of hip hop. we didnt' stay too long, but we caught some raps by 2 local rappers, one of whom was called Ghoststyle. the most exciting part was the performance by Pras Michel (formerly of the Fugees) because i still remember when the Fugees first came out with their hit album, "The Score", during my college days.

we almost missed Pras by leaving early, but luckily we stay just a bit longer and caught him. too bad it was so short... but it was still cool to see him live. he came out with a medley of 2 of my favorite Fugees songs, "Ready or Not" and "Fu-Gee-La" (i loved this song!!), then "Ghetto Superstar" (minus Mya), and then one of his own singles. too bad we were standing way off to the side, so i didn't get to catch any good photos or videos.

s'ok though, i was still excited to get a dose of both local and U.S. hip hop at the same time here in Hong Kong! who would've thought that was possible?!

celebrating the 4th... in HK style!

2007-07-08T23:10:00.000+08:00

i was happy to hear that Stephen W., a friend from Cal, moved to HK some months ago. after a few months of trying to coordinate schedules to meet up, we finally got to meet earlier this week with our mutual friend, Angela, who's here visiting from the Bay Area. Larry and i got to meet up with them on July 4th for an Asian-style 4th of July bbq... Korean bbq, that is! we ended up having dinner with a bunch of folks that Angela knew and who Stephen worked with, and everyone we met was really nice...

after stuffing ourselves at dinner, we tagged along to a party for Stephen's friend... and somehow ended up lounging and karaoke-ing until 2:30am... on a Wednesday night! it was a lot of fun though! Angela's adorable 2-yr old son Kevan was the life of the party, and it was hilarious watching him dance, sing, and eventually beat up on Angela's friend Terence with tissues for half an hour! =D thanks Kevan for being so cute and entertaining!

no biggie that we didn't get to see fireworks, instead we celebrated in typical HK style... Asian dinner and karaoke! haha
it was definitely a nice 4th of July!

ooh, that's my song!

2007-06-29T23:16:00.000+08:00

i admit, living in Hong Kong for the past year and a half has made me pretty out-of-the-loop in terms of what's popular and hot in the music scene back in the States. instead, i've been getting into various Asian pop singers, mostly Taiwanese singer Jay Chou, and various Hong Kong pop singers including Justin Lo, Janice Vidal, and Jill Vidal.

here's a list of my current favorite U.S. songs (and their YouTube videos) that i discovered within the past months. i know, i'm probably months behind, but i don't care, they're new to me and i LOVE 'em!

-"Give It To Me" by Timbaland feat. Nelly Furtado & Justin Timberlake
-"Irreplaceable" by Beyonce
-"Unfaithful" by Rihanna
-"So Sick" by Ne-Yo
-"Glamourous" by Fergie feat. Ludacris
-"4 in the Morning" - by Gwen Stefani
-"Check On It" - Beyonce feat. Slim Thug
-"Oh" by Ciara feat. Ludacris

what else sounds good right now??

a whirlwind week of babies, Berkeley, and Zachary's Pizza (mmm)

2007-06-29T20:29:00.001+08:00

last month we went back to California to attend Larry's sister's graduation from Cal. it was held at the Hearst Greek Theater, the same place where mine was held... exactly 10 years ago. TEN YEARS! gosh, i'm really feeling old now. walking around the Berkeley campus was a bit nostalgic for me, seeing as i had spent 10 years of my life on that campus... 4 years of college, and 6 years of working. whew!

the week was jam-packed with seeing family and as many friends as possible. it was a whirlwind week (that's usually the case every time we go back to the Bay Area), but i enjoyed seeing everyone.

i got to see my cutie-pie niece Celine, (who's nearly 5 yrs old. she quite a bossy, Little Miss Smarty Pants, but i love her to death!) and my adorable 1.5 yr old nephew, Christopher. i got to spend half a day playing with them at my sister's house... and as much as they tired me out, i loved every minute of it. (it's been a year since i've seen my niece, and i saw my nephew last when when he was only 1 month old! needless to say, among other reasons, it meant the world to me to have had the chance to see them.)

one of my best friends, Jenn, just had a baby the week before, so it was wonderful to get to see her and Joel and their daughter, and also meet their newborn son. He was so tiny! awww...

i did a little portrait session with my friend Sabrina, and her almost-1-yr-old daughter Nola. i must say that photographing an infant/toddler is very difficult because they don't understand instructions yet, and they lose patience and get tired and fussy after a while. i only caught a few shots where she was actually looking at the camera and smiling. she was easily distracted, and by the end of it she was more than ready to be back in her mom's arms and away from the lady pointing the big camera at her! ;) she was such a good sport though, i had fun shooting them. here's one of my favorite shots.

i also got to see my friend Monica's daughter, Abigail, who's almost one. i gave Monica a couple of pictures i took of them last year, and she commented how different she looks now. seriously, babies grow at lightning speed... one of the unfortunate things about living so far from home is that i only get to see my niece, nephew, and friends' kids once or twice a year, and i totally miss out on seeing them grow up. it's like every time i see them, i'm shocked because i almost don't recognize them. and sadly, they probably don't recognize me... <=( although i have to say that i was very happy when Jenn's daughter Naomi "seemed" to recognize me when Beryl and I visited their home and she actually came over to me when Joel told her to give Auntie Ivy a kiss. did she really know Auntie Ivy from Auntie Beryl? or was Joel giving her hand signals behind my back? haha.. i'd like to think that she actually knows me... :)

we also had a big lunch on our last day in efforts to see as many friends as possible. despite it being a long weekend, a good number of friends made it out to the Irish Bank in SF to lunch with us... Ying, Suzanna, John, Gil, Marisa, Jenny, Angela, Evance, baby Kevan, Virginia, Jonmichael, Thomas, and Albert. it was good catching up, glad we got to see them all!

aside from seeing a lot of friends, i was getting my fill of foods that's been hard to find in HK. here's what i got to check off from my Must-Eat-While-in-the-Bay-Area list:

1) Zachary's Pizza (delicious deep-dish semi-Chicago-style pizza) - i made my high school friends go there with me :)
2) Jamba Juice smoothies (they don't make smoothies the same way in HK. some places there use milk instead of juice. gross!)
3) crepes at Ti Couz in San Francisco (both savory AND sweet!)
4) authentic Vietnamese food (pho, bun rieu, bun cuon... did i get it right?)
5) Cheesecake Factory cheesecakes - i love the sinfully sweet and chocolate-y "Godiva Chocolate Truffle Cheesecake", but since i had to share with Larry (who didn't like his desserts too sweet), we had the Original Cheesecake with Strawberry. it was still good!
6) fresh salad at California Pizza Kitchen - you have NO IDEA how hard it is to find a place in HK to serve good, fresh salad!
7) good 'ole fried chicken - we had a fried chicken grub-fest at Sabrina and Jansen's house with Frances, Justin, and friends. catching up with friends while eating greasy, crispy fried chicken... now that's good stuff!

ahhh, can't wait until we get to go back and see everyone again (and eat all these again)... till next time!

"Into Thin Air"

2007-05-11T16:15:00.000+08:00

just finished reading a book that i consider one of my most captivating reads...

"Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer is a true, personal account of the 1996 Mt. Everest tragedy, in which 5 people died during a sudden snowstorm in May 1996. among the dead were two highly experienced and accomplished head-guides and owners of two high-altitude guiding companies. the author himself is an experienced mountain climber and journalist, who was commissioned by a magazine to join the Everest expedition and write about the guided ascent.

i appreciated how he included quite a bit of background information on mountain climbing and the history of Mt. Everest, since i didn't know much about either subjects. he wrote vividly about the exhausting experience of spending a few months traveling and acclimatizing before even beginning the summit ascent. when he began his detailed account of the Everest summit climb on May 10th, i was so enthralled that i couldn't put the book down.

it was an intense story of survival, and at times i couldn't believe some of the amazingly challenging obstacles they had to conquer in order to survive. i wanted badly for all the climbers to be safe, even though i knew that it was going to end tragically for some of them. i held my breath through much of the last portion of the book, and was saddened by each of the deaths.

however, as much as i enjoyed reading the book, i found some of the people's actions to be morally disturbing at times, such as intentionally leaving behind two severely incapacitated and barely-conscious climbers on the snowy summit simply because they were "as close to death as they could be while still breathing" and decided that they weren't worth saving and to instead "let nature run its course on them"... i mean, it's one thing if they didn't have enough manpower to help everyone down at once and had to choose to carry only one person with the best chance of survival... but the rescuers made this decision to leave the site empty-handed without carrying either of the two dying climbers. essentially, they were left for dead. quite disturbing, i thought. made worse by the fact that one of the two left-for-dead climbers actually woke up and miraculously made his way down to the camp on his own, and survived the entire ordeal! knowing he had suffered even more than necessary because the rescuers gave up on him earlier made it even more painful to read about.

after finishing the book in the evening, i couldn't stop thinking about it all night. it wasn't until the next day before the intensity of the story began to slowly wear off. i guess what haunted me the most was that this tragic nightmare was real, that it had actually happened, and that those people had truly suffered and died the way they did.

reading this book has given me a better understanding about the world of high-altitude climbing and the Sherpa community, a greater appreciation for high-altitude climbers and what they must endure and risk in order to reach their goals... and it has reinforced my decision to never, EVER attempt to climb Mt. Everest!

bits of wisdom

2007-04-19T12:44:00.000+08:00

my friend just forwarded me this email with the following sarcastically humorous words of wisdom.

i like #1, 8, 13, 16, 18 the best.
#22 just made me go "eeeeeeww!".

*************************************************************************

1. Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me either. Just pretty much leave me alone.

2. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a broken fan belt and leaky tire.

3. It's always darkest before dawn. So if you're going to steal your neighbor's newspaper, that's the time to do it.

4. Don't be irreplaceable. If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.

5. Always remember that you're unique. Just like everyone else.

6. Never test the depth of the water with both feet.

7. If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments.

8. Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.
That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

9. If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.

10. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.

11. If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.

12. If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

13. Some days you're the bug; some days you're the windshield.

14. Everyone seems normal until you get to know them.

15. The quickest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it back in your pocket.

16. A closed mouth gathers no foot.

17. Duct tape is like 'The Force'. It has a light side and a dark side, and it holds the universe together.

18. There are two theories to arguing with women. Neither one works.

19. Generally speaking, you aren't learning much when your lips are moving.

20. Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

21. Never miss a good chance to shut up.

22. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

duck on the peak

2007-04-18T11:25:00.000+08:00

yesterday, i had the most delicious birthday dinner!
Larry took me to a nice Asian-Australian restaurant on the top of the peak, called Pearl on the Peak. i order an entree of braised duck legs cooked in lemongrass and red curry, served with coconut-flavored rice. wow, was i impressed at how incredible it all tasted. perhaps it's my newfound love and appreciation of Asian curry and coconut flavors, or maybe it reminded me of being back in Southeast Asia. what i know is that despite feeling full halfway through the meal, i forced myself to finish the whole dish and essentially surrendered the last of my stomach space normally reserved for dessert to it... because i loved it THAT much! we even had the chance to give our compliments to the chef in person. the restaurant itself was very nice and classy with a perfect view of Victoria Harbour, and dinner included complimentary pre-meal appetizers and petite fours desserts. i believe i'll be dreaming of this braised duck dish until we return there for another nice dinner!

i definitely recommend this restaurant! (reservations necessary)
Pearl on the Peak
Level 1, the Peak Tower
128 Peak Road, Hong Kong
Tel: +852 2849 5123

turning back time

2007-04-18T10:37:00.000+08:00

yes, a HIGH SCHOOL PROM!
a few of my friends and i thought it would be super cool to throw ourselves a formal, black-tie dinner and dance party with the theme of a high school prom.

so last month, we invited 60 of our friends and rented out a nice ballroom with a delicious dinner and open bar, hired a dj to play 80's & 90's songs, set up a photo booth complete with a cheezy backdrop, hired a photographer to man the photo booth, and even had an announcement of prom king and queen and presented them with a tiara and crown! we named each table after classic 80's-90's movies, such as "Top Gun", "Pretty Woman", and "The Breakfast Club". we danced to Wham!, Erasure, Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Depeche Mode, and more. personally, i would've enjoyed hearing more old skool Hip Hop and R&B like Bobby Brown, Salt N'Pepa, Bell Biv Divoe, LL Cool J, and Mary J Blige. i requested them earlier, but for some reason the dj never played them. didn't hear any New Kids on the Block songs either. (yeah, i admit i was a fanatic NKOTB fan back then! i ain't ashamed... well, not really! haha) anyways, we had fun! here's the cheezy couple picture of me and larry. funny, right?

it was cool because many of our friends here in Hong Kong didn't attend high school in the U.S. or Canada and never had the chance to experience prom, so this was their very first prom! for the rest of us who went to our proms but didn't have fond memories, it was our second chance at a better prom experience... and might i add, looking much nicer now than we did in our hideous 80's-90's prom dresses and permed hairs. =D

reporting back

2007-04-18T09:25:00.000+08:00

hiya! anyone still around?!
i know i've been missing from the blog world for the last two months. it was just such a busy past few months that included throwing a big high-school-prom theme party with friends, beginning my new venture into freelance photography, turning another year older, and taking vacations to Beijing, Cambodia, and Laos. all very exciting! i'll talk about them more later...

Chinese New Year... an excuse to eat!

2007-02-22T13:45:00.000+08:00

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

2007-02-22T13:17:00.000+08:00

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

2007-02-14T00:56:00.000+08:00

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.

doing the catwalk

2007-01-24T18:07:00.000+08:00

i got to attend my first fashion show last week. my friend knew the designer of the fashion label Anniewho, and invited me along to her fashion show at the Convention Centre during HK's Fashion Week. to our surprise, we had second row seats smack-dab in the front center of the runway. very cool to get such a close view of the models showcasing the newest fashion collections. it was fun! incredible how much planning, preparation, and money is involved to organize an event like this, only to have it last a short half hour though.

too bad i didn't have my big camera with me. at least i had my little digital cam, which got me these shots.

independence

2007-01-15T11:43:00.000+08:00

one of the cutest sights i've ever seen... a dog walking himself.
twice, i've seen a dog walk down the street carrying the end of his own leash in his mouth, while the owner casually walked behind the dog, both hands in pockets.
that's a pretty well-trained dog right there if you can let him walk himself without worrying about him running off! impressive, and incredibly cute to see! :D

H&M... waiting for it to open, open, open...

2007-01-07T22:32:00.000+08:00

recently found out that they'll be opening up the first H&M clothing store in Hong Kong! i'm super excited because i love shopping at H&M. it's one of my favorite stores. i love how the clothes are trendy and very affordable. kinda like Gap or Old Navy prices, but much trendier styles. it's practically guiltless shopping because it won't break your bank account and you end up with a bag of cool clothes! ;)

i first discovered H&M stores in New York. now i can't wait until they open up their first store here in Hong Kong, just three blocks away from my yoga studio in Central. March 10th... i'm marking it down on my calendar!!

happy new year!

2007-01-01T21:56:00.000+08:00

happy 2007! can't believe how quickly 2006 passed by.

last week, we managed to squeeze in one more vacation before the year was over. we spend a fun-filled week in Phuket, Thailand with two of our new friends from HK, Ed and Sooly. we celebrated Christmas by chillin' by the pool and enjoying a nice dinner at Silk restaurant in Laguna. but not only did we spend time lounging at the pool and beach, we stayed fairly active throughout the week too. we biked for 4 hours (and got lost along the way), went snorkeling around Phi Phi Island, worked out at the gym, took a yoga class, and the guys played tennis.

the most strenuous (as well as exciting and memorable) activity of the week has got to be sea kayaking around Phang Nga Bay. my only experience with kayaking was half an hour of paddling in circles around the Hudson River pier in NYC over the summer. apparently, that didn't do much to prepare me for actual kayaking in the open sea, where you have to paddle continuously through long stretches of water, rippling waves, and strong currents! not only was it tiring from kayaking nonstop for 3 hours, but we then got caught in a storm while paddling! we had to take cover in a cove for an hour from the strong winds and heavy rain, and cling to trees for safety. luckily, after an hour of being stuck in the rain, we were finally rescued by our longtail boat, although we still had to paddle through the 3 ft.-high crashing waves in order to reach it, all the while with heavy rain beating down on us. talk about a dramatic rescue! scary, but exciting and fun. wouldn't have traded it for anything...

what a perfect trip to end the year with... looking forward to more adventures in 2007!

seeing stars

2006-12-15T12:47:00.000+08:00

last week i spotted a Hong Kong celebrity... Nick Cheung (Cheung Ka Fai), who was in a number of recent HK films including Election, On the Edge, and Breaking News.

i was strolling inside G.O.D., a designer home store, in Causeway Bay when he walked right past me. i'm normally oblivious and don't really pay attention to other people walking around me. but that day, i turned the corner and passed a guy holding a tripod and professional camera and i knew well enough to think that there might be a model or celebrity nearby. seconds later i looked up to see Nick Cheung walking past me. having just watched the HK drama series, "The Last Breakthrough" which he starred in, over the summer, i knew exactly who he was.

i guess HK is small enough where it's fairly common to spot celebrities around town. i wonder who i'll get to see next... ;)

back to the roots

2006-12-13T12:10:00.000+08:00

several weeks ago, while my parents and sister were visiting, we took a short trip up to China to my dad's old village in Guangzhou.

it was a pretty amazing experience being in the rural village and in the actual tiny little house where my dad was born and lived as a young boy with my grandparents and all my aunts and uncle as young kids. my ancestral home! the village was a farming village, a total countryside village, where living standards, amazingly even in this day and age, were still at its absolute basics. where brick coal-burning stoves were used. where you step into houses that are tiny 35'x35' square boxes. where the idea of garbage disposal was simply to toss your garbage on the grass in front of you. where rice fields and sugar cane fields were part of the "front lawn" scenery. where life was poor and simple, but the people were still friendly and welcoming.

incredibly enough, we met several people in the village who were actually related to us. my sister and i met two distant cousins in their early 20's who share the same great-great-great-great grandfather as us! talk about distant relatives! but we are related, nonetheless. we share the same blood, no matter how tiny that drop of blood is. how cool is that?!

not only was it me and my sister's first times to dad's village, but it was also the first time my dad brought my mom there as well. my dad even joked to the villagers, "i've brought back my new bride to see you all!". heehee!

just like the paintings

2006-12-02T21:29:00.000+08:00

a month ago, we joined a tour on a weekend trip up to Guilin, one of the most scenic areas in all of China.

first we took a 4-hour river boat ride up the Li River from Guilin to a little town called Yangshuo. you know those traditional Chinese paintings that you see hanging in many Chinese people's homes, the ones of mountains shrouded in fog along a river with little bamboo rafts floating by? the scenery along the Li River is supposedly where all those artists got their inspiration from. we just sat back and enjoyed the scenery of foggy limestone mountains to our left and right.

during our brief stop in Yangshuo, we walked along West Street, their busiest (and tourist-filled) street filled with restaurants and souvenier shops. we then rode on a small, narrow bamboo raft (about 6 people per raft) where one man was manually propelling our raft along the river using a long bamboo reed. talk about manpower!

we went to a village called Longsheng to see their famous terraced rice fields... incredible terraces of rice paddies created along the mountains to resemble a staircase. goes to show how resourceful the people there are, not letting steep mountains get in the way of farming and being productive. what an amazing sight!

on our last day, we visited Elephant Trunk Hill to see a hole in a mountain shaped like an elephant drink water from the river. let me tell you that the Chinese just love to use their imagination and visualize animals or objects out of mountains and caves and other areas of nature, and then proceed to name them just that. another example is Crescent Moon Hill, where a hole in a different mountain is shaped like... you guessed it, a crescent moon. in a cave, we saw natural formations with names such as "Praying Buddha", "Key", "Empress Taking a Bath", and "The Great Wall". it can be a stretch, but at times if you look hard enough, you'll see what they're talking about. use your imagination! ;P

Guilin and its neighboring villages are certainly scenic and quaint, worth checking out in your lifetime (even the Clintons visited here years ago!). hopefully i can take my parents there someday, as i'm sure they'll appreciate the scenery.

hong kong fashion faux-pas du jour

2006-11-28T22:43:00.000+08:00

the other day, i spotted a fashion faux-pas while riding on the subway.

i saw a lady wearing a pair of blue denim jeans with lace trimming on both hems of the pant legs. the lace was ivory white, and 1 inch in thickness. to my horror, i looked up from the lace-trimmed jeans only to find the woman sporting a denim jacket with matching lace-trimmed collar and sleeve cuffs.

the jeans was also about an inch or 2 too short above her ankles, which made her outfit look even more awkward.

the things that make you go "huh?!"...

"an hour of yoga a day, keeps the doctors away"

2006-11-27T20:28:00.000+08:00

i love my yoga classes!
in the last 2 months since i first began taking yoga classes, i've taken a variety of yoga classes, including Shivananda, Ashtanga, Chikitsa, Hatha, Iyengar, and Satyananda. some were more relaxing, some were more intensive and strenuous. but they're all a good workout for my body and a great way of maintaining my health. i noticed that i've been sleeping better too (just as the doctor suggested). hopefully my muscles will become more toned, while i'm at it. ;)

i'm lovin' my yoga classes so much that i just upgraded my yoga membership so that i can take an unlimited number of classes each month (1 class per day), so i am determined to make the most of it and take as many yoga classes as possible.

my plan: to take a yoga class every single day! (or at least 5 times a week)

i'm pretty sure i can accomplish this starting this week. i've practically planned out my entire yoga schedule for the week already. i even work it around my social calendar so that i can squeeze in a class between my errands or various lunches and dinners with friends or other obligations. the yoga studio offers nearly 20 classes each day, all day long, so it's easy and convenient to find a class to fit into my daily schedule. and unless something unexpected comes up or my muscles become painfully sore from being over-stretched, i should be on track to adhering to my new personal motto of "an hour of yoga a day, keeps the doctors away"!

the darkest day

2006-11-03T22:39:00.000+08:00

two years ago today, i lost my my beloved grandma. she had lived with us all of my life, and helped raise my sisters and i. we had a very close relationship with her, which made losing her extremely difficult. it was especially painful for me because i had flown back to see her 3 hours too late... which left me inconsolable for weeks.

it's true though what they say, that time can help to heal some of the pain from losing someone you love. but it doesn't keep you from missing them deeply.

miss you lots, po po...
rest well...

there's always time for food in HK

2006-10-23T11:26:00.000+08:00

last week, i got to hang out with one of my best buds, Shawn, when she and her dad stopped by HK for a brief visit. i wanted to take them all around and show them the best that HK can offer, but the weather was muggy and overcast, and they didn't have time. so we took the harbour ferry to see the night skyline, and then did what everyone who visits HK always ends up doing, which is EAT all day long! from dim sum lunch with dessert, to pre-dinner desserts, to a tasty Chiu Chow chinese dinner with desserts... see a pattern here?

it was so wonderful (and surreal) to see them in HK. i last saw Shawn a few months ago when i visited her in LA. the last time i saw her dad was 10 years ago when Shawn and i were college roommates at Berkeley!

come visit again! we'll go back for more Hainan chicken with flavored rice!

ackkkkk!!!

2006-10-06T10:46:00.000+08:00

i woke up to a very unpleasant surprise this morning.
there was cockroach in our apartment!

LUCKILY, Larry hadn't left for work yet when he spotted it in our living room and killed it. *whew* i don't know what i would've done if i was by myself!

i'd actually just woken up right after he'd killed it. the first thing he said to me was "umm, i have to tell you something. you're not gonna like it" (never good to hear first thing in the morning). when i walked out, i saw it, and screamed. good thing it was dead already!

it must've crawled in through the living room window which we'd left open throughout the night, even though we only left a crack of 1 cm wide. jeez, those monsters can squeeze through any narrow crack, huh?

the freaky thing is that we've been leaving a few windows open during the night to let in some fresh air (our apartment gets unbearably hot and stuffy), and we've been leaving the bedroom window open as well. but this window is literally 3 inches away from my face. if a cockroach crawls in through that window while i'm sleeping inches away, i'll have a heart attack!

i'll admit that i have a severe case of insect-phobia. especially spiders. basically i'm terrified of all insects (except ants and flies, they're just annoying). cockroaches are pretty damn freaky, we just never came across any in California, but Hong Kong is infested with them. they skitter across the sidewalks in HK, and i'd sprint away from them. but we've never had one in our own home before, and it's not like i can just run away and expect it to disappear.

that's it... i'm never leaving the windows open at night anymore! and i'm reluctant to open them during the day now. the choice is between letting cockroaches in or not having fresh air, so clearly i'll have to sacrifice the fresh air.... which really sucks because i just found out that i have asthma, and blasting the air-conditioning all day and night makes it worse for me... =( dude, this suuucks...

(shaking fists) damn you, roaches!!!!!

one fish, two fish...

2006-10-05T13:14:00.000+08:00

we went fishing over the weekend with friends. we went to a man-made fishing pond in the New Territories where a supply of fresh fish is manually added to the pond three times a week so that people can fish there. it felt a bit odd fishing at a small body of water where the supply of fish is "planted". it just seemed a bit "unnatural". but i guess there's a better chance of catching a fish if you know there are fishes in there and they're all confined to a pond.

in the 3 hours that we were there, our friend caught 2 fishes... she was the only person in our group of five to catch any. larry had 3 misses- by the time he reeled in his line, the fishes had escaped each time. meanwhile, a couple to our right kept catching a fish every 20 minutes. they probably caught about 8-10 fishes total. some people just have all the luck.

when we checked out, they weighed our catch. i guess they felt bad that we had caught only 2 fishes between the five of us, so they actually gave us 2 extra fishes for free! how cool is that?! that would never happen back in the States. in the States, if you end up not catching a single fish that day, they'll say "too bad, better luck next time!", and that's it buddy! there's no way they'd throw you some free fishes just because you didn't "catch enough"!

last night, Larry cooked up one from the catch, and it was yummy... :)

stretchin' it

2006-10-03T10:12:00.000+08:00

i finally did it... i'm finally taking yoga classes!
i just made the commitment in joining a 1-year membership at a yoga studio.

in the last few years i've heard about how wonderful and healthy yoga is, and how good it's supposed to be for the body and mind, and improve flexiblility, balance, and relaxation. even my doctor recommended that i take up yoga to help ease my sleeping problem. for years, i've had the intention to give yoga a try... but i guess i just never got around to doing it. but since many friends here in HK are really into yoga and there are tons of yoga studios conveniently located around the city, i became motivated to try it. last week i took my first two trial yoga classes at a yoga studio with two other friends, one of whom was already a member. my other friend and i went ahead and signed up for a membership, and we vowed to take the classes together to serve as motivation for each other.

so far i'm really enjoying the yoga classes... although the last class was pretty intensive and now, 4 days later, my muscles are still sore and aching! but i'm really looking forward to the health and toning benefits of yoga. hey, doesn't Madonna practice yoga? and look what great shape she's in at her age!

a man's treat could be his dog's poison

2006-09-28T13:37:00.001+08:00

did you know that some basic food items are poisonous to dogs? i don't own dogs (although Larry keeps bugging me about getting one someday), but i think they're the cutest animals and like playing with them, so this is something i'll have to remember when i'm around my sister's dog and friends' dogs.

the following foods contain chemicals which can be deadly for dogs, so keep them far, far away from:
-chocolate (especially cocoa powder and cooking chocolate)
-macadamia nuts
-onions
-garlic

other potential danger items for dogs include:
-alcohol
-coffee grounds, beans & tea (caffeine)
-tomato leaves & stems (green parts)
-broccoli
-raisins and grapes
-cigarettes, tobacco, cigars

more info:
http://www.petalia.com.au/Templates/StoryTemplate_Process.cfm?specie=Dogs&story_no=257#Top

keep your dogs safe!!

it's rude to stare

2006-09-27T13:47:00.000+08:00

i have something to gripe about.
i notice that many people in HK like to stare. at other people. and no, i'm not talking about "guys checking out girls"-type of staring. it's the "gee, you look different, so i'm going to stare at you"-kind.

i've caught so many people staring at me in HK, mostly other women, both around my age and older. i'm sure they don't mean to be rude, but i find it rude, especially if i catch them staring at me and defiantly look them back in the eye, and they keep staring back at me intently. AND they'll look me up and down and continue staring! sometimes after i look away several times, each time when i look back i'd find their eyes still locked on me. i'm sorry, but that's rude!

it's happened many times on the subway. one time, a woman across from me was talking to her friend next to her, but kept looking me up and down. i tried staring back at her, but she kept looking back at me and talking. at one point, she whispered to her friend and laughed while looking at me. call me paranoid, but it made me feel like she was making fun of me in some way. how rude.

last weekend, i was jogging in a park on a track where a lady stood nearby, and she was watching me as i was approaching. she looked me up and down, then proceeded to stare point-blank at me. i stared back in a "what are you staring at?"-way (i'm still jogging, mind you), but she just kept staring straight at me. finally i looked away and jogged past her. dude, i'm all tired and sweaty while trying to jog, i don't need to be engaging in a staring contest!

some people here probably stare because they're just curious or bored, or don't even realize that they're doing it. i'm sure they aren't trying to be rude, but i hate it and it makes me feel self-conscious and uncomfortable, especially when they're looking me up and down and whispering and all that sh*t. normally if you're harmlessly staring at someone and they catch you and your eyes meet, you'd look away rather than stare them down, right? i don't get it...

in NYC, it's an unspoken rule that staring at other people is a no-no. people who catch you staring at them on the subway or bus might make a face or even yell at you. i must've gotten used to their mentality of "it's rude to stare". apparently some people here in HK have never heard of it, or don't care.

two years

2006-09-25T13:34:00.000+08:00

today's a special day for Larry and i... it's our 2-year wedding anniversary! :)
we're planning to go out to a nice 7-course-meal dinner tonight at La Bouteille, a French private kitchen to celebrate. (yes, there are actually French restaurants in Hong Kong!)

sometimes i think "wow, has it been 2 years already?" and feel that it's flown by so quickly. other times, i feel that like "it's only been 2 years?"... but not in a bad way, don't get me wrong! it just feels like we've been together so much longer because we've done so much together. technically, we have been together for a long time... we started dating nearly 7 years ago! we've done plenty of traveling together all around the country and the world, and we've also moved around and lived in different places together (the Bay Area, New York, and now Hong Kong). we've definitely shared a lot of memorable experiences together!

here's one of my favorite photos of us on our wedding day. it was taken by our awesome wedding photographer, Ann Hamilton, during our first dance ... :)

today's menu: Hainan chicken and rice

2006-09-21T16:34:00.000+08:00

i just took a Chinese cooking class this morning at the Towngas Cooking Center in Causeway Bay. the main dish: Hainan chicken and flavored rice.

if you've ever tried a dish of Hainan chicken and flavored rice, you'll know that the rice is as important a part of the dish as the chicken, if not MORE important! that's because the rice is flavored and tasty, a welcome change from the normal, plain-jane white rice that many of us from Chinese families grew up eating all our lives. i personally LOVE flavored rice-- whether it's sticky rice mixed with meats and Chinese sausage, or fried rice, or some kind of sauce over rice! i much prefer *something* in the rice, rather than plain ole' white steamed rice on it's own.

so i cooked the chicken and rice during this morning's cooking class, and i'm waiting for Larry to come home from work so that we can have it for dinner together. i'm crossing my fingers that it turns out decent... those of you who know me knows that i'm not much of a cook... but i definitely want to learn and improve! surprisingly, the chicken wasn't that difficult to cook. it was just my first time cooking a WHOLE chicken, complete with head and all... and FRESH, not frozen! i had to clench the poor bird's tiny head in one hand, meanwhile its long neck was all elongated, while blanching it in the pot... and it was such a weird experience! i almost freaked out when i looked at its face with the eyes closed, but i told myself to get over it and tried to keep my focus off the head while i held its neck to maneuver it around the pot... ick!
anyways, i did it! and here's the recipe!

**HAINAN CHICKEN AND RICE**
ingredients:
1 fresh chicken (plucked, cleaned, and gutted)
3 tbsp ginger wine
3 litres water
1 tbsp salt
300 grams rice (about 2 plastic cups)
4-6 cloves garlic, chopped

ginger dip ingredients:
1 tbsp chopped ginger
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp oil

chili dip ingredients:
1 tspn red chili, chopped
1/2 tspn garlic, chopped
1/4 tspn salt
1 tbsp oil

cooking the chicken:
1. wash chicken, pat to dry. rub well with ginger wine to marinade, making sure to get both sides. pour remaining ginger wine into the cavity.
2. in a stock pot, bring water to a boil, season with salt. before cooking, blanche chicken a few times in the boiling water and rinse the boiling water through the cavity 2-3 times.
3. lower chicken into pot and cook for 20-30 minutes on low heat with the pot lid off until done. (after 15 minutes, flip chicken upside down to cook both sides evenly, then cook for the remainder of time.)
4. when chicken is done, let it sit in in a large bowl of ice water to cool down.
5. when fully cooled down, chop into bite-sized pieces.

cooking the rice:
1. rinse and drain rice.
2. in a wok or stir-fry pan, heat 3-4 tbsp oil and add a few pieces of fatty chicken fat pieces to the oil for a few minutes, then take out and throw away the fat pieces (this is to add color and flavor to the rice. can also add tumeric instead for color.) then saute chopped garlic until fragrant. add rice and stir-fry for a few minutes on medium heat until the rice dries up a bit.
3. transfer rice to a saucepan (or earthenware/clay pot), add enough chicken stock to cook (approx. 400-450 mL chicken stock straight from the pot where we just finished cooking the chicken), and add 1 tsp salt to flavor. may also add a stalk each of lemongrass and pandan (pandanus) leaf on top.
4. bring water to a boil, then simmer on low, covered, until done (20 minutes).

final step: mix the dip ingredients. serve with the chicken and flavored rice. voila!

in remembrance

2006-09-11T22:37:00.000+08:00

tower of lights, taken on Sept. 11, 2005

wow, has it's been 5 years already??!
i know there are two 9/11 movies currently released ("World Trade Center" starring Nicholas Cage, and "United 93"). some wonder whether Americans are ready for them? there are probably people who thinks it's too soon, most likely someone who has lost a loved one from the tragedy, or someone who actually escaped and survived the collapse of the towers, or who knows such a person. or someone who was working nearby and witnessed the building collapse. or anybody in America, for that matter, who feels that it was too painful of an event to get over and is simply not ready to re-live it all over again on a large, wide screen and in surround sound. and i don't blame them.

a friend of mine, a co-worker who i got to know pretty well while working at the NY Community Trust in NY, has several 9/11-related stories hitting too close-to-home. her cousin worked in the twin towers and was lucky to have escaped. my friend had gotten married earlier this year, and her husband is also a survivor who worked in one of the ill-fated towers (he was her cousin's co-worker). after the the first tower was hit, despite announcements to remain at their desks, he and some co-workers (including my friend's cousin) wisely decided to get the heck out of there and made their way down to safety. sadly, the rest of their co-workers who stayed at their desks perished. my friend didn't meet her husband until AFTER Sept. 11th. imagine if he hadn't made it out, my friend would've never had the chance to meet him, fall in love, and marry him. luckily, this was a happy story.

the sad story involves my friend's aunt, who'd been visiting from the Dominican Republic. the cousin who escaped from the twin towers was actually this aunt's daughter. after that close call, her aunt became terrified of staying in a city and country under terrorist attacks. she was so worried that she decided to fly home two months later. on Nov. 12th, she flew on American Airlines flight 587, a New York flight bound for the Dominican Republic. tragically, the plane crashed shortly after takeoff from JFK airport, killing all 260 people aboard... including my friend's aunt. incredibly eerie and sad, right? to this day, my friend is terrified of flying.

here's in remembrance of it all... the survivals and the losses...

mourners on Sept. 11, 2004 at the World Trade Center site during the morning memorial

ten days in Tibet

2006-09-01T12:57:00.000+08:00

our Tibet trip was an incredible experience! it's an amazing place filled with culture and history. it's definitely one of the best trips i've ever been on! there were ten of us (me, Larry, Jackie, Al, Candace, Suzanna, Oliver, Crystal, Kelvin, and Vivian), and we had our own private tour guide and drivers, and all of our meals and hotel arrangements included.

Day 1: flew into Chengdu, China (成都)
we went to the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. basically, it's a panda zoo. two little baby pandas were born only a few weeks ago, and we got to see how much they resembled little pink rats in an incubator.

Day 2: flew into Lhasa, Tibet (拉薩)
we were warned about AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) and how most people will experience some degree of high altitude sickness. Lhasa was more than 3000 meters above sea level, so we'd began popping AMS pills before our arrival, but we were all feeling fatigue, headache, and had trouble breathing that afternoon, so we napped all afternoon. we also had our first encounter with being served yak meat. we all thought it was just some hairy pieces of beef, and only days later did we discover that we'd been served yak meat all along. blah...

Day 3 & 4: sightseeing around Lhasa, Tibet
complete with our own Mandarin-speaking tour guide, Xiao Li, and three of our own personal drivers and their three Land Cruisers, we embarked on our exciting journey through Tibet. these first few days, we visited a number of beautiful temples and monasteries.

-Drepung Monastery（哲蚌寺）- established in 1416, it was once the world's largest monastery with more than 10,000 monks, and now still Tibet's largest monastery. it's served as residence to the second, third, fourth, and the fifth Dalai Lamas (Buddhism's highest ranking priest). as a collection of white monastic buildings on a steep hillside with a view of the valley below, it was very charming and picturesque. photos were permitted inside the temples for a nominal fee.

-Norbulingka, the Dalai Lama's summer palace, was established by the 7th Dalai Lama in 1755. more than just a beautiful summer retreat surrounded by gardens and ponds, this was the headquarters from which the Dalai Lamas ruled Tibet during the summer months. it was also from here that the Dalai Lama diguised himself as a soldier and escaped to India, just three days before the huge massacre of Tibetans during the 1959 revolt against the Chinese invasion. certain rooms inside the palace contained intricate wall murals depicting tales of Tibetan history.

-Potala Palace （布達拉） - it was the official residence of the Dalai Lama, and houses the tombs of several past Dalai Lamas. since it was rebuilt by the Fifth Dalai Lama in 1645, Potala Palace became the seat of Dalai Lamas and also the political center of Tibet. there's the White Palace (administerial building) and the Red Palace (religious building). this enormous, architecturally-impressive palace perched atop of Red Hill makes it one of the most stunning sights in Tibet. hiking up to the main entrance took 20-minutes alone, and left some of us gasping for air. later that evening, we went back to Potala Palace at sunset to take pictures and caught a cool water show set against Tibetan and Chinese music (one of the highlights of the trip). on the bicycle cart ride back to the hotel, a guy threw open his taxi door in front of oncoming traffic-- us! we rammed into the curb, causing Kelvin and Vivian's cart directly behind us to rear-end us, and Kelvin was thrown from his seat. luckily he wasn't hurt, merely startled. the rest of the ride home, me, Suzanna, and Vivian clung onto each other and the bike for dear life!

-Jokhang Temple（大昭寺）- the most sacred temple in Tibet, it was one of the sites of a huge massacre during the 1959 uprising against the Chinese invasion. it remains as the spiritual center of Tibet today, the destination of millions of Tibetan pilgrims who walk long distances to get there. the temple was bustling with worshippers spinning prayer wheels, kindling butter lamps with yak butter, murmuring prayers, and engaging in full-body praying. we definitely felt the energy at this temple, which was also located next to a busy street market.

Day 5: drove to Gyangtse (江孜) (3990M)
Kubum stupa & Pelkor Chode Monastery（白居寺）-consists of a beautiful cylindrical pagoda housing many impressive buddha statues and mural paintings.

Day 6: drove to Shigatse (日喀則) (3860 M above sea level)
we stopped at Shalu Monastery（夏魯寺）, a smaller, colorful and picturesque monastery, where we encountered some friendly monks who allowed us to take pictures of and with them. we lit prayer candles and made three wishes. we passed a shrine of hairclips, bracelets, pens, and other random items. apparently, people could leave behind a personal item in exchange for a wish. i hung up one of my ponytail holders and made a wish.

we then visited Tashilhunpo Monastery（紮寺）, the seat of Panchen Lama who is the 2nd in the Buddhist religious hierachy. it holds the giant Future Buddha statue, the biggest Buddha statue in Tibet, standing 86 ft high and decorated with gold, pearl, amber, diamond, and other precious stones. this monastery also houses the elaborate tombs of several Panchen Lamas. it was an eerie but incredible feeling to be standing within inches of the mausoleums of such important figures in Tibetan society.

along the way, one of our cars got into an accident while trying to pass a truck. luckily it was a little fender-bender and no one was hurt, but will cost quite a bit of money for the Tibetan drivers to get it fixed. for dinner, we had delicious dumplings at a local restaurant next to our hotel in Shigatse. one of my favorite meals of the whole trip!

Day 7: drove to Dingri (定日) (4350 M)
we visited Sakya Monastery while they were preparing for an important visit of the CEO of a company that made a significant donation to the monastery. a hundred monks in burgundy red robes where lined up along the courtyard to greet the honored guest. at the monastery, we encountered a group of elderly Tibetan ladies who, after seeing photos of themselves on our digital cameras, started to primp themselves for further photos. it was cute, i'm sure they don't get to see photos of themselves everyday.

that night, we stayed at a guesthouse in Dingri. talk about "roughing it"! the rooms were tiny boxes with dirty beds against cracked-walls, but the bathroom situation was the worse part. it was an outdoor, communal bathroom unit, one each for men and women. simply put, it was a sh*t-hole. basically, there was a rectangular hole in the ground that had a nasty pile of crap in it. imagine the stench! we girls refused to use the bathroom that evening , and had to resort to other creative methods. (ie: Vivian's portable potty, looking for bushes outside,...) that night, we all said "screw it!" to showers, slept in our daytime clothes on top of the bed covers, brushed our teeth on the curb, and woke up a zillion times over the course of the night... a few experienced some pretty bad AMS symptoms as well, but luckily they were okay by morning.

Day 8: upward to Mount Everest Base Camp (珠峰大本營) (over 5000M)

bright and early, we began a 4-hour drive up to Mount Everest Base Camp (the Tibetan name for Mount Everest is Mount Qomolangma). it was breathtaking to see the rolling mountains that stretched on for miles while driving through the Himalayas. 6 miles before reaching Base Camp, we took a 1-hour long horse-drawn cart ride up the rest of the way, where we felt the cool, brisk air against our faces, gazed up at snow-capped peaks along the way, and heard Tibetan songs being softly sung by our horse-cart driver. at Base Camp, we made the final, oxygen-lacking trek up a tiny hill at the end of the Base Camp which looks out towards the Mount Everest peak in the distance. unfortunately, there were a lot of clouds that day so we couldn't get a clear view of the peak. oh well, at least it wasn't raining. the sky was a beautifully vivid blue, and we were all thrilled to have made it all the way to the Mt. Everest Base Camp!

Day 9: drove back to Shigatse
after spending the night in Dingri, we drove back to Shigatse. along the way, we passed out candy and snacks to hungry children along the roadside, and took pictures of yaks and sheep.

Day 10: drove back to Lhasa
our last full day in Tibet. we made a 6-hour drive back to Lhasa, with a brief stop at Yamdrok (羊湖), the Turquoise Lake. where we stopped, we overlooked the lake and saw the brilliant turquoise blue color of the water. so beautiful and peaceful... except for the people bugging you to buy souveniers.

we took our tour guide and drivers out for an evening of drinking at a bar. there, we had loads of fun watching some of them play goofy Tibetan drinking games (rolling-on-the-floor-laughing funny!) and drinking Lhasa beer.

the next morning, we all flew back to Hong Kong. most of us had such a great time and enjoyed each other's company, as well as the company of the tour guide and drivers, that i think we were a tad bit sad to leave. it's definitely a trip of a lifetime, and i'm glad we all got to share the experience together. i think this trip, as rough and tough as it was, was super cool because we all survived it together, and we all bonded as a result of the hardships that we encountered. :)

*a few other notes:
-Tibet is so colorful! the clothes, jewelry, prayer flags, temples, the sky, doors, buildings... they're all beautifully vivid colors. we couldn't stop taking pictures!

-the Tibetan culture of death and burial is very interesting, but creepy. Tibet commonly uses the ritual of sky burial, which involves cutting the human corpse into pieces, grinding the bones up, and having vultures consume it all. while this sounds pretty gruesome to me (and most people, i imagine), Tibetans simply consider this a method of disposing the body. most Tibetans believe in Buddhism, which teaches rebirth after death. since the soul leaves the body at death and becomes an "empty vessel", there's no need to preserve the body. vultures eating the body is merely an alternative to letting nature decompose it. other reasons why the body isn't buried is supposedly because the rugged Tibetan terrain makes the ground hard to dig, and with fuel and timber scarce, the sky burial is simply more practical. interesting... but not something i'd ever want to witness.

-our tour guide (Xiao Li) was hilarious. he was our age and had a goofy sense of humor. he also loved to sing (luckily, he sang pretty well), so he was always entertaining us by singing Mandarin and Tibetan songs during the long car rides. he'd even try to fulfill our requests of Jacky Chung, Andy Lau, and other HK songs. we also liked our drivers a lot and we shared our snacks with them. there was one driver who was super friendly and jolly and liked to joke and laugh along with our jokes. the other two were quiet and shy, but nice.

-Larry brought along walkie-talkies, which were useful in keeping all three cars in contact during the long drives and in providing entertainment by broadcasting people's singing and jokes. we were all assigned funny call-names. mine was Poison Ivy. Larry's was Larr-Bear. Al's was Phat Al. Crystal's was CrystalBall at first, then later changed to CrystalMeth. Oliver was OliveOil. I liked Jackie's original call-name, "I am Jackie Chan, bitch!", but we later changed it to"CrackerJack". we even had a call name for our tour guide, "Hong Kong Rockstar", because he had a HK hairstyle and he liked to sing!

-toilets are super dodgy in Tibet. public toilets are guaranteed to be squat toilets. sometimes they're straight-up nasty (Crystal and Candace saw worms once). after a certain point, peeing in nature is the best way to go. for guys, it's easier, but girls have to look for a good place to hide. luckily we had 6 girls, and we'd help each other form a human wall (complete with umbrella shields). works great, and makes an excellent girl-bonding experience!

-chocolate works wonders! chocolate snacks proved to be a great treat after a long drive or bland meal or feeling sick, and it's also good to pass out to the starving children that we encounter along the road.

overall, Tibet was amazing, it's definitely an incredible experience! if you ever have the chance, you should go see for yourselves!

it's a good feeling...

2006-08-30T09:51:00.000+08:00

i started selling some of my photos on a stock photo website called iStockPhoto (www.iStockPhoto.com) a few months ago. their customers include graphic designers looking for the right photo for their project, companies looking for photos to use on their websites or advertisements, and magazines looking for photos to accompany their articles. granted, it doesn't pay much at all (depending on the file size purchased, i could be making only pennies), but over time and with enough sales, it'd all add up. besides, i thought it'd be pretty cool to one day see my pictures actually being used in public in a magazine, poster, or a website.

well, guess what?! i just found out that one of my photos sold is currently being used in a lifestyle magazine called Vivir Bien! my photo of an Aruba chapel is featured in their current issue in their article on tourism and visiting Aruba. i'm super excited to see one of my photos being used, so i just thought i'd share this with you all! :) here's the website, but it'll only show the current month's edition, and i'm in the August 2006 one: www.vivirbien.com/tourism.php

i don't know whether they actually sell this magazine in the States. i'm pretty certain they don't sell this in HK. could anyone back home look for this magazine edition and buy a copy for me?? i'll pay ya back! let me know... i'd love to save the magazine... and one day show my kids and say "look, one of mommy's pictures appeared in a magazine article!" :) haha!

in case you're curious as to what other pictures i've got selling in my small, but slowly growing portfolio, take a look at: http://www.istockphoto.com/file_search.php?action=file&userID=954676

what's wrong with this picture?

2006-08-11T14:12:00.000+08:00

ok, can anyone tell me what wrong with the photo below??

does this picture look like it was taken by someone who knows what he's doing?
i don't think so.

correct me if i'm wrong, but if you visit the Statue of Liberty and someone asks you to take a picture for them, wouldn't you assume that they'd want the statue to be in the picture too, and NOT just the lower torso of the statue?? why in the world would anyone take a headless picture of the Statue of Liberty?!? and us girls are so far back in the background that you can barely see our faces. so what exactly is this picture focused on? what horrible composition! what was the dude thinking? he even took a second shot that looked exactly like the first one!

the funny thing was that i'd purposely seeked out this guy to take our picture for us because he was carrying a professional SLR camera... so i ASSUMED he'd know how to take a good photo! boy, was i wrong!

anyways, we asked someone else to take another picture for us.
much better! wouldn't you agree?

my new toy

2006-08-07T16:19:00.000+08:00

i have a new camera to play with!
my wonderful husband just bought me a Nikon D200 (a digital SLR camera) for my belated birthday present. i have to say that it's undoubtedly the most expensive present i've ever received... thanks, dear!! he's so sweet because he told me that he likes my photography style and wants me to be able to take better quality photos with a more professional-quality camera.

i'm so excited to be taking pictures with it, especially on our upcoming Tibet trip. let's see how differently the photos turn out... meanwhile, i need to read the instruction manual and learn to use all of the options and features on the camera before we go. i've been spoiled by using point-and-shoot 35mm cameras and easy-to-use digital cameras all these years, where settings were pretty automatic or basic. it's been over 10 years (when i took photography in high school) since i've learned about aperture, ISO, white balance, and other technical photography terms, and now i'll have to re-learn everything so that i can shoot manually!

i can't wait!! :)

mystery man

2006-08-03T18:56:00.000+08:00

ok, does anybody know who this guy is???!!

i took this picture of this guy back in early July when he was a special guest featured on the Good Morning America's Morning Show. i went to watch the live Mary J. Blige performance on the show that morning in Bryant Park in NYC. afterwards, girls were screaming for this guy's and taking pictures of him.

is he an actor? a model? a reality show star??
i admit, i don't know who he is, but i went ahead and took pictures of him and got his autograph anyway. (hey, he could be super famous someday! and he's cute!) i thought he reminded me of Jason Lewis (Smith from "Sex and the City"), who i think is really hot! but i know it's not him, because his voice sounded different. i couldn't decipher his autograph either, but i heard girls scream out "Nash" or something that sounded a lot like that. plus he seemed pretty nice in taking the time to take pictures and sign autographs with the girls who asked.

does ANYONE know who he is???

just one of those days

2006-08-03T16:14:00.000+08:00

once in a while, you get one of those crappy days where everything seems to go wrong, and you think to yourself "ok, what next?!". you know what i'm talking about... like a really bad Monday, where you're probably better off staying at home and crawling back into bed.

today was one of those days.

i just flew back into Hong Kong last night. since HK is 15 hours ahead of California and i didn't sleep a wink on the 14-hour flight yesterday, my internal clock was all screwed up. i woke up several times in the middle of the night, eventually got up at 6:30am this morning because, for the life of me, i couldn't fall back to sleep.

there's a typhoon here, so it's been gusty and rainy all day. at times, it was pointless to carry an umbrella because the rain will come at you sideways and your umbrella will be blown inside out. broken umbrellas everywhere. as i'm typing this, the rain is so heavy now that everything's white outside my window!

naturally, today would've been the perfect day to stay indoors. but since we're taking a trip to Tibet in 2 weeks, it's essential to apply for my China visa TODAY.

first, i needed money from the ATM to pay for the visa. but when i got to the bank, not only did we NOT have any money left in the account, we were overdrawn! luckily, i called Larry and he quickly transferred some money in.

i then went to the travel agency to apply for a China visa. since i need the visa by Monday in order to process the Tibet visa, i have to pay an extra $50 US dollars for the next-day express service to get it processed by tomorrow! fine, i didn't have a choice. but THEN the travel agent told me that i didn't have any blank passport pages left to attach the China visa to. what?!

now i had to run over to the U.S. Consulate and request additional passport pages... except that the travel agent mentioned that it was closed this afternoon. WHAT?! i frantically called Larry. he looked up the hours , and assured me that they were closed for lunch and would re-open at 1:30pm. whew!

i rushed over to the U.S. Consulate, but i'm stopped by a guard. "Do you have an appointment?". WHAT?!?!? with heightened security, you now need to make an online appointment before you're allowed inside the building. couldn't i just call? i couldn't believe it, it was one obstacle after the next. luckily, it was Larry to the rescue (again), and he was able to make an online reservation for me for half an hour later. (thanks, dear!)

well, i guess it could've been worse. the Consulate could've been closed for the rest of the day, or i could've slipped in the rain and fallen into a muddy puddle... now THAT would've been bad.
alright, i feel much better already.

drive on

2006-07-25T15:27:00.000+08:00

you know how everyone drives in LA? well they do... nobody takes public transportation there. only one person i know of has admitted to taking the bus before! i understand that Los Angeles County is enormous and you need a car to get around the different cities, but people will drive EVERYWHERE, even if it's to the grocery store 5 blocks away... i guess i shouldn't be too shocked by what they actually have drive-thru's for here in LA, but i am! can you believe that they have drive-thru ATM's and drive-thru dry-cleaners?!

i guess i'm used to living in cities where public transportation is incredibly accessible and cheap, and i'm used to walking around. but do people in LA really hate walking so much that they can't be bothered to park, get out of their car, and walk a few steps to withdraw cash or pick up their dry cleaning? or do they just love their cars and love driving that much that they don't wanna get out? and my biggest question is if people in LA never have to walk anywhere, how do so many of them stay so skinny?!?

and what will they think of next? a drive-thru Starbucks?? (oh wait, do they have that already too?!)

fish n' chips

2006-07-23T02:47:00.000+08:00

we went to Ye Old Fish Head in Santa Monica for lunch yesterday, where we shared their famous fish n' chips. shawn brought up a very good question, that if "chips" is actually french fries, then what do the British call potato chips, since Americans call it chips? apparently, it's "crisps".
want some crisps with that dip? ;)

star-gazing

2006-07-21T15:59:00.000+08:00

Los Angeles... Hollywood... the land of stars...

i'm in LA for the week, hanging out with Shawn. after dinner tonight with Frances and Justin and friends, Shawn and i headed to Westwood to Diddy Reises for the famous $1.25 ice cream cookie sandwiches (a scoop of Dreyer's ice cream sandwiched between 2 freshly baked cookies). the movie theater across the street just happened to have the official movie premiere of "Miami Vice", starring Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx. the red carpet was rolled out, and the street was blocked off.

while we were enjoying our ice cream cookie sandwiches on the sidewalk, the movie ended and everyone filed out of the theater and onto the red carpet in front of us before heading to the post-movie party a block away. we saw a handful of familiar faces but couldn't pinpoint who they were. we DID recognize Shaq walking by (after some guys near us commented on his height). i was excited to see Colin Farrell stop near us to wave to fans!! i know he has a bad rep for being a jerk, but i've gotta say, he's definitely good-looking in person, very hot! ;) too bad my camera was too slow, i couldn't snap a picture of him in time... =P

A-list Hollywood star-sightings on my second night in LA... hey, not a bad start! ;)

golden

2006-07-19T16:07:00.000+08:00

i'm back in the Bay Area and i decided to go get some color in my hair today.
i went to my favorite hairdresser, Tia, (she's awesome!) in Emeryville for some highlights. i asked for dark blonde highlights against my dark brown/black hair, so she had to give me the two-step process of bleaching and toning. the whole appointment took over 3 hours, half the time was spent waiting for the bleach and toner to set in. i'm happy with how it turned out-- my highlights are a light brown color right now, but they'll get lighter and more "golden", or dark blonde, as time goes by. i've never had such light highlights before, so i'm looking forward to this! yay for experimenting with fun hair colors in the summertime!

the only thing i wasn't prepared for was the cost when it came time to pay for my lovely highlights. my last highlights costed $90, so i was expecting today's to be the same or about $5-10 more for inflation... it came out to $145! (good thing she accepted credit cards!) it turns out the extra $50 is for the double-step process of bleaching and toning, which is like getting my hair colored twice in one day (first to lighten, then to darken to the perfect color).

it's alright though, i'm cool with it... it'll be fun to have blonde highlights for once! and it's not like i go and get expensive haircuts and hair colorings that often (it's more like once every 1-2 years for each!), so this is a little treat for myself. thanks, me! ;)

Getting to Know NYC 101

2006-07-14T22:48:00.000+08:00

here are some basics to getting around New York City:

-directions refer to Uptown (north), Downtown (south), Eastside, and Westside.
-streets run east to west, and are short blocks.
-avenues run uptown and downtown, and can be equivalent to 4 street blocks!
-Houston St. is pronounces "HOW-stin", not "hew-stin".

*the many different neighborhoods:
-NoLiTa (North of Little Italy) - up-and-coming with boutiques and restaurants.
-Tribeca (Triangle Below Canal Street) - some big name restaurants and a few bars, but mostly residential lofts and commercial buildings.
-SoHo (South of Houston Street) - a hip and trendy neighborhood known for its shopping, food, and celebrity/model hangout spots
-NoHo (North of Houston Street) - some restaurants
-Lower East Side - slightly grungy, it's up-and-coming with many restaurants, and bars known for hosting local band performances.
-East Village - tons of quaint little restaurants and boutiques
-Alphabet City - Avenues A through D. it used to be a dangerous neighborhood, but it's cleaned up and become much safer. lots of restaurants and bars.
-West Village - a quaint, hip neighborhood filled with cute restaurants, cafes, dessert shops, boutiques. some blocks are very picturesque with their tree-lined brick-building streets.
-Greenwich Village - NYU college-town. tons of affordable restaurants, bars
-Murray Hill - lots of restaurants, some bars/pubs
-Curry Hill - near Murray Hill with lots of Indian restaurants and Indian markets
-Chelsea - known for being a gay-friendly neighborhood, and for hip clubs/bars
-Meatpacking District - meat-packing warehouses by day... by night, it's known for its hip restaurants and lounges
-Hell's Kitchen/Clinton - a bit grungy, but has lots of restaurants
-Grammercy/Flatiron - centrally located, has some good restaurants
-Union Square - centrally located, home of the semi-weekly outdoor greenmarket and many good restaurants
-Upper East Side - upscale, expensive neighborhood
-Upper West Side - upscale, super-expensive neighborhood. great brunch places.
-Harlem - you've all heard of it. good soul food
-Spanish Harlem - lively neighborhood. predominantly Spanish-speaking community.
-Downtown/Battery City Park - Wall Street, financial district, World Trade Center site. busy during weekdays, quiet and abandoned at night.

each neighborhood has its own unique character... and you can find good restaurants in each one! my favorite neighborhoods to stroll around are the West Village, SoHo, East Village, Union Square, and my old 'hood Murray Hill!
which ones are your favorite?

4 random facts about me...

2006-07-14T13:08:00.000+08:00

i just received one of those emails where the sender lists random facts about themselves and then i'm supposed to fill in my own random facts and email my lists to people i know. i'm posting my answers here so that you all can get to know me a little better (if you don't know me well already).

Things you may not have known about me.....

A) Four jobs I have had in my life:
1. cashier girl at Mrs. Field's Cookies
2. bank teller at Bank of the West
3. accounts administrator (funds manager) / accounting
4. wife (my favorite one!)

B) Four movies I would watch over and over:
1. Lord of the Rings (the whole trilogy!)
2. Moulin Rouge
3. Charlie's Angels
4. Love Actually

C) Four places I have lived:
1. Hong Kong
2. New York, NY
3. Oakland, California
4. Brooklyn, NY

D) Four TV shows I love to watch:
1. Sex and the City
2. Friends
3. What Not to Wear (on TLC)
4. Entourage

E) Four places I have been on vacation:
1. Thailand
2. Paris
3. Hawaii
4. Prague

Websites I visit daily (or semi-weekly):
1. Blogger.com (to update or check on my blog)
2. iStockPhoto.com (to check on my photo sales)
3. Tchaofun.com (Joel's blog)
4. StephanieKlein.blogs.com (i'm a fan of her blog)

G) Four of my favorite foods:
1. chocolate
2. cooked fish (sea bass, salmon,...)
3. Thai noodles
4. crab, scallops (i love them both!)

H) Four places I would rather be right now:
1. with Larry (it's been 2 months since i left him to go on my trip) :(
2. playing with my niece, Celine
3. lying on a beach in Aruba or Hawaii or somewhere tropical
4. in NYC (oh wait, I'm here right now! never mind!) ;)

RETURN DIRECTIONS: Please do not spoil the fun. Hit forward, delete my answers and type in your answers. Then send this to a whole bunch of people you know INCLUDING the person who sent it to you. The theory is that you will learn a lot of little known facts about those who know you. Remember to send it back to the person who sent it to you.

oven or sauna?

2006-07-13T23:14:00.000+08:00

i think i've been spoiled by the perfectly mild weather in Northern California, where the concept of "humid summer" does not exist. NY summers can get hot and muggy with high humidity, but it'll usually last a few days to a few weeks during the summer. the worst humidity i've ever experienced was probably in Florida, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia. in places like those, you start dripping sweat and feeling sticky as soon as you step outside. you sweat through your clothes and you end up taking several showers a day. you could be standing perfectly still on the sidewalk and you'll still sweat like a maniac.

what did i get myself into by moving to Hong Kong, where humidity pushes temperatures up to 105 degrees daily?! where hot and humid summers last 5-6 months out of the year?

"dry" heat is liking walking around in an oven... you feel hot and toasty.
"wet" humid heat is like walking around in a sauna... you feel hot and you can't stop sweating.

which one's worse?
i say the sauna!

i couldn't resist...

2006-07-06T22:32:00.000+08:00

i was originally supposed to leave NYC today and fly back to California.
i was having such a blast here in NY that i couldn't resist... i extended my trip...

i decided to stay in NY an extra 10 days, fly back to SF for a few days, and fly down to Los Angeles for a week. then i'll be back in SF for the last week of July before i *finally* head back to Hong Kong on 8/1.

i figured that since i'm not working yet, i should take advantage of my free time. i'm enjoying it so much being out in NY again, so it was really tempting to stay a little longer. i feel like i want to make the most of my trip out here since it's a long flight out and it may be a while before i come back! it'll also give me the chance to hang out with friends and relatives here a bit more. and since HK is scorching hot and humid (feels like over 100 degrees with humidity) during July and August (the two hottest months of summer in HK), i don't mind staying away from the miserable heat as long as possible! i know that NY can get hot and humid too, but it's nowhere nearly as bad as HK!

i was talking to Grace about how i was considering extending my stay, and how hard it had been for me to leave NY last year because i loved being here so much.
me: i was so sad when we had to move. i just wasn't ready to leave yet...
Grace: i know... and you're STILL not ready to leave!

yup, so true...

now that's what i call... a food marathon!

2006-07-05T09:57:00.000+08:00

two of my best friends, Shawn and Ying, were out in NY too this past week, so we had a blast hanging out together. the theme of the week: some sightseeing, and eating, eating, and more EATING!

day 1: the top of Rockefeller Center. on a clear day, the view would've been spectacular from the obsevation deck. unfortunately, the skies were hazy, so the $17 ($19 regular price!) fee we each paid to go up was NOT worth it. lunch at 'ino (21 Bedford St, in the West Village) was fantastic with warm, perfectly grilled panini sandwiches. i couldn't decide between two, so i got half of both... chicken with asiago cheese, and tomato with mozzarella. yum! we strolled through West Village, passed the "Friends" apartment on the corner of Bedford and Grove, and had dinner at L'Ecole, the French Culinary Institute (462 Broadway, in SoHo). $35 for a 5-course gourmet dinner was a steal! i had a scallop dish that was delicious!

day 2: at Shawn's request, we went to see the Statue of Liberty. also we stopped off at Ellis Island, where we learned about the American immigration experience back in the late-1800s to mid-1900s. we lunched at Perry Street (176 Perry St, in the West Village), a cool, modern restaurant owned by Jean-Georges Vongerichten. be forewarned, it ain't cheap! luckily, they offered a 3-course prix-fixe lunch for $24. they had an amazing rice cracker-crusted seared tuna appetizer and a chocolate pudding with crystalized rose petals dessert. =9 after lunch, we walked around Central Park, where we saw the filming of the movie "Enchanted" around Bethesda Fountain. we went rowboating on the lake behind the fountain. (it was so much fun!) the three of us girls took turns rowing. i had a shaky start and rowed us into some bushes on the side of the lake, but i eventuallly got the hang of it. we even parked our boat behind the fountain for a bit (as did many other rowboats) in hopes of making it into the movie scene. look for us on the big screen! ;) for dinner, i took them to my favorite Thai restaurant, SEA (114 N. 6th St, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn). it's a very cool, hip, trendy place with a buddha statue in a pond in the middle of the restaurant. (apparently, "Sex and the City" had filmed an episode there -- it was turned into "Raw", the sushi restaurant where Samantha first met Smith when he was working there as a waiter.) the food was great and price was reasonable! we all agreed that our favorite dish that night was a deep-fried snapper seasoned with lemongrass, coconut, basil, and lots of garlic. =9

day 3: brunch at Clinton Street Baking Co. (4 Clinton St, in Lower East Side). French toast with an "it's-so-bad-for-you, but tastes-oh-so-good" buttery-maple syrup. mmm... we proceeded to walk off some of the meal by walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. it's a great experience, you get this incredible view of lower Manhattan and Brooklyn and close-up views of the bridge. after we crossed the bridge, we rewarded ourselves with ice cream at the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory at Fulton Landing. then we took the subway over to the World Trade Center site, and then walked through nearby St. Paul's Chapel to view their moving display of missing-persons signs collected from the days following 9/11, and banners of hope from other cities and countries. one especially sad story described was that on 9/11, rescue workers changed out of their civilian gear and hung up their boots along the fences of nearby Trinity Church before rushing over to the burning towers. at the end of the day, the unclaimed boots left hanging on the fence belonged to those who had perished in the collapse of the towers, leaving behind an eerie memorial... so sad...
Shawn joined me at dinner that night with my relatives at Ping's in Queen's (83-02 Queens Blvd). it was my aunt's birthday, and we had a huge 8-course Chinese dinner. it was really wonderful seeing my relatives, who are all super nice!

day 4: brunch at Cookshop (156 10th Ave, in Chelsea) was good stuff. we walked around Chelsea Market on 9th Ave and W. 16th St, where we enjoyed tasty brownies at Fat Witch Bakery. then we watched "The 40-year Old Virgin" at Ying's sister's apartment. (hilarious!) dinner was at Alias (76 Clinton St, in Lower East Side). dessert there was yum -- mint ice cream sandwiched between fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies! by then, we'd been eating nonstop all week and were stuffed silly. but no, the eating spree was NOT over yet!

day 5: we headed back to Chelsea Market for some delicious, fresh lobster roll sandwiches at The Lobster Place. but they were small and not that filling, so the solution was to keep eating... we crossed the street to Pop Burger (58-60 9th Ave), where the others filled up on mini slider burgers, shakes, and fries, while i ordered a rich, creamy chocolate milkshake myself (soooo good). =9 you'd think that now being completely stuffed, we'd stop eating, right? nope! we walked over to Billy's Bakery (184 9th Ave) and just had to try their cupcakes. granted, 5 of us shared 2 cupcakes. we went over to Yingping's apartment, where she had been wonderful enough to cook us a delicious dinner of pulled pork and chicken wraps, and an amazing balsamic strawberry and mozzarella flatbread appetizer. that girl can cook! in fact, the Su sisters are great cooks! it must run in the family... why can't it run in my family? ;P anyways, that brings us to the end of our eating marathon, since both Ying and Shawn had to leave for their flight.

i can't believe we ate so much this week! we basically ate continuously all day long! granted, we walked a lot, but it wasn't enough to offset all the food that we inhaled. i guess this is what happens when you're on vacation, in one of the food capitals of the world, and you're surrounded by friends who love good food. ;)

now i've gotta go workout!

"something wicked this way comes"

2006-06-29T12:42:00.000+08:00

isn't that a cool phrase? it evokes a feeling of something sinister and foreboding, yet it's so poetic. what a great line...

i finally figured out where the phrase originated from... it's from Shakespeare's "Macbeth" play, where the wicked figure is none other than Macbeth himself, who is a traitor and murderer. the full line is "By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes," spoken by one of the three witches/weird sisters. i watched "Macbeth" two weekends ago in NYC for Shakespeare in the Park, an annual free summertime performance of a selected Shakespeare play in Central Park. Liev Schreiber played the role of Macbeth and did an incredible job.

i remember reading "Macbeth" during high school, but for the life of me, i just couldn't understand any Shakespeare at the time. i simply didn't get it. it wasn't until i got to college where i finally understood a few Shakespeare plays that we read. it was as though an "Understanding Shakespeare" switch had finally been turned on inside my head. ding! oh, i GET it!

even now, i don't find Shakespeare plays to be easy reading, it requires focused concentration to understand and get through. thank god, i'm out of school and don't have to worry about reading lists that include Shakespeare. ;)

gotta love free Broadway

2006-06-27T13:34:00.000+08:00

tonight, Grace and I went to Central Park to catch "Broadway in the Park", an annual outdoor free summertime performance of different Broadway performers singing showtunes on the Great Lawn. it's one of the cool yearly performances held in Central Park that allows tens of thousands of people to just lay out on blankets on the lawn with food and groups of friends just enjoying a relaxing, musical evening of Broadway (an awesome summertime experience).

we didn't recognize many of the Broadway songs performed, so i was excited when i finally knew one song, and it happened to be from one of my favorite musical movies, "West Side Story". the song was the duet "Tonight", during the part when Maria and Tony first falls in love. i love that movie! i watched it when i was a young girl and totally loved it. :) but i digress...

so anyways, Grace and I both realized that we actually recognized the song, so we looked at each other with excitement.
both of us: ooooh!
me: West Side Story!
Grace (laughs): i was gonna say West Side Highway!
me: hahaha! West Side Highway!!!
Grace: i'm being too Manhattan!

for those who don't know, the West Side Highway is a local highway that runs along the Hudson River on the West Side of Manhattan. so yeah, i can see how that could be an easy slip-up by accidentally confusing the name of a famous musical with a Manhattan highway... but only if you're a New Yorker! hehe!

you know what i mean?

2006-06-27T12:00:00.000+08:00

you know how you can tell that someone knows you very well?
when you say something to them that makes absolutely no sense or is completely wrong, but yet they understand exactly what you're trying to say, even when no one else can understand it!

i admit, i have a terrible short-term memory. when people tell me things, i forget half of the details. so when i have to relay information to people, i sometimes forget certain words or descriptions or details, especially if it's about something that i'm not too familiar with.

a few nights ago, i went out with friends to a Brazilian restaurant in the East Village for drinks. here's how i described that portion of the evening to Larry over the phone the next day.
me: we went to Churrascaria for some drinks last night.
Larry: oh yeah?
me: yeah, it was strong. we had a famous Brazilian drink. something called... (racking my brain for the drink name) uh, Syriana? (i pronounced it "seer-ee-ana")
Larry: uh, you mean Caipirinha? (correctly pronounced "cap-preen-ya")
me: YEAH! THAT'S IT! Caipirinha! oops, I called it Syriana, like the George Clooney movie. heehee! (laughing at myself)
Larry: aiyah, silly girl.
me: how'd you know what i was talking about?
Larry: of course, i'm your husband... i know you!

another perfect example of how well my husband knows me: a few years ago, we were packing up for our big move from California to New York. Larry's dad had called and told me to ask Larry whether we'd need to borrow his handtruck for our move. here's how i relayed the message to Larry later that day.
me: your dad called. he asked if we needed to borrow... some, uh, machine thing.
Larry: um, you mean a handtruck?
me: YEAH!!! that's it! a HANDTRUCK!!
Larry: machine thing? aiyah!
me: machine thing, handtruck... close enough!

go figure, Larry knew exactly what i was trying to say with my "machine thing" babble. haha! i don't think even I would've known myself what the hell that was about! he's definitely pretty good at understanding "Ivy language". if my husband can actually make sense out of all my nonsensical descriptions (and pretty quickly too), then he knows me pretty well, don't you think? ;)

take me out to the ballgame... and a "YMCA" sing-along

2006-06-17T11:17:00.000+08:00

Sangita, Tabitha and i went to watch a NY Yankees game at Yankee Stadium last Sunday. i'm not a sports fan, but i enjoy going to watch basketball and baseball games. i don't follow any particular teams, so normally i'd cheer for the home team (it's more fun to cheer along with everyone else)... although i'm partial to Oakland (being my hometown and all).

it was a Yankees vs. Oakland A's game. the three of us, being from Oakland/the Bay Area, were rooting for the A's. however, we were sitting in the bleachers in the midst of rowdy NY Yankees fans, so we decided to keep a low-profile and only allow ourselves to silently cheer on the A's, since A's fans were definitely in the minority that day. i'm sure girls normally wouldn't be given a hard time like guys get for rooting for the opposing or rival team, but we didn't feel like testing it out.

around the 2nd inning of the game, one guy strolled in late to his seat in our bleacher section wearing a bright red t-shirt and a red Boston Red Sox cap.

uh-oh... a Boston Red Sox fan flaunting his devotion to the team while he was in NY Yankees territory?! and during a non-Boston game?

immediately, rowdy Yankees fans in our section started yelling "asshole!" at him. throughout the game, he was relentlessly being heckled with yells of "Boston sucks!", "Boston still sucks!", and "Take off the cap". one guy walked past him and yelled out "How you like them apples? Boston's losing!" and pointed to a screen showing the scores of teams playing elsewhere. it was pretty funny, and everyone laughed at its reference to the famous Matt Damon line from "Good Will Hunting".

the most hilarious moment was during half-time while the Village People song "YMCA" was blaring. some Yankees fans started heckling the poor guy again. then during the chorus of the song, "It's fun to stay at the Y-M-C-A", instead of singing "Y-M-C-A", half of the people in the bleachers all pointed at him and in unison sang "Y-do-you-suck?" in perfect melody to the song! and then they repeated the chorus! it was the funniest thing i'd seen all day!

it was all pretty amusing, but i felt bad for the poor guy. the Red Sox fan basically did his best to ignore all the hecklers. he took all the tauntings in stride, stayed in his seat, and never took off his cap. gotta give him props for toughing it out.

i realize there's a bitter rivalry between the NY Yankees and Boston Red Sox (you know, the whole Curse of the Bambino), which explains all that hostility. i've heard stories of fans causing worse public humiliation and even mild violence to fans of rival teams or people who simply wore the wrong colored clothes to the game. obviously, sports fans take their teams and their rivalries very seriously!

at the end of the day, the Oakland A's beat the Yankees 6 to 5.
from our bleacher seats, we quietly cheered their victory.

the good and the bad of NYC

2006-06-15T00:10:00.000+08:00

if you haven't already figured it out from the title of my blog, i absolutely love New York City! i loved living here, and i miss it a lot.

i admit, there are both good and bad things about NYC.

the bad: the freezing winters with temperatures dropping to the single digits (farenheit). the winter windchill that hits you and chills you to the bone. walking through dirty gray slush after the sidewalk snow has been trampled on. the hot and humid summers. the disgustingly dirty and stuffy, non-ventilated subway stations complete with rodents scurrying around on the tracks. the abrupt and sometimes rude attitude of some people that i've encountered. rising safety and crime issues. the ridiculously expensive pricetag on everything from food to taxi to rent (NYC is one of the most expensive cities in the U.S. to live in).

the good: the beautiful skyline and architecture of the buildings and bridges throughout the city (my favorites are the Chrysler Building and the Brooklyn Bridge). the uniquely different character of each neighborhood (some of my favorite neighborhoods to stroll around are the West Village, East Village, SoHo, and Meatpacking District). the convenience of public transportation and being able to get around on my own anywhere in the 5 boroughs (gotta love the subway and bus system). the abundance and diversity of restaurants. the happening nightlife. the overall energy of the city even at 2am. Central Park (one of my favorite places in the city to hang out in). the trendiness and fashion-consciousness of people here (i like it because i can see what's stylish and it discourages me from dressing like a slob. haha). the many museums, art galleries, Broadway shows, dance and musical performances, live bands, and plays available throughout the year, especially the free outdoor summer events like Shakespeare in the Park. my relatives and friends who live here. NY is where i was born, and for me, that gives it a special place in my heart (sounds cheesy, but it's true).

some people have said to me that they would hate to live in NYC because it's too fast-paced or for other reasons similar to those that i have listed under "bad".
i guess for me, the "good" outweighs the "bad".

back in NYC!

2006-06-14T22:44:00.000+08:00

i'm back in New York for a month... and i'm ecstatic!

i'm staying with my college buddy Sangita for a little while, and since she's also currently not working, we've been able to hang out around the city all week. we went to check out a DC-based local band called Monopoli perform in the Lower East Side (they were good). we went used-book shopping at a book fair and i bought 25 books for only $2 each (whatta deal!). we went out to some bar/lounges with friends. we went to watch a Yankees game at Yankee Stadium against the Oakland A's (Oakland won, go A's!). we had a picnic lunch yesterday afternoon in Central Park with a few other friends, where we spent the afternoon lazing on the lawn under the sun just chatting, snacking, reading, and playing frisbee (which i'm no good at. i accidentally threw it at some guy lying nearby us. oops!) it was a perfect afternoon in the park with friends, and is definitely one of the many things that i miss about NY.

this is my first time being back since we moved to Hong Kong 7 months ago. everything looks the same, everything's so familiar, it's very comforting, and it's great to be back! i feel as though i've only been away on a long vacation and now i'm finally back. but then i think about how i don't live here anymore, how i can no longer call this my home, then it makes me feel a little bit sad...

like Biggie says ,"i'm going going, back back, to Cali, Cali"

2006-05-26T01:39:00.000+08:00

y'all remember that song, right? ;) hehe

so i'm back in California for the first time since we moved out to HK six months ago... and it's great to be back!

i'm constantly reminded of how perfect the weather is in the Bay Area. this past week here has been pleasant and sunny nearly every day. Hong Kong had begun steaming up with temps in the 80's and high humidity for the past several weeks, so why not escape from the hot weather for a while?

in fact, the night before i flew back to CA, the first typhoon of the year had hit Hong Kong (even though typhoon season doesn't officially begin until June)! that night, the winds were howling wildly and loudly outside, strong enough to spray our 27th floor apartment windows with water from the nearby harbour! originally, Typhoon Chanchu had been projected to hit HK head on and was warned to be a pretty powerful hit. luckily, a few days before, it veered its course to east of HK, and the impact was much weaker than originally feared. the next day (day of my flight), a Signal No. 3 was issued. (the next signal up would've been Signal No. 8, meaning that people would've had to stay home from work and school, and the city would've basically had to shut down.) of course, it was just my luck to schedule my flight on the one day that a typhoon strikes HK, right? what are the chances of that? check out the picture (left) showing the online weather forecast for that day when i looked it up just before leaving for the airport. see the forecast for rainshower? OH WAIT, and then a typhoon! it's not a forecast that you see very often, at least not in the U.S.! despite a typhoon, my plane flew out of HK on time! ironically, my layover flight in Chicago was delayed by 1.5 hours due to a bit of rain. go figure!

the past few days has been great because i got to meet up with some of my old friends. i had dinner with Ying and Julia on Friday, and then crashed at Ying's place after staying up chatting with her and watching one of my favorite fashion-makeover shows, "What Not To Wear". (i love it, it's fun to watch!) :)
my close friends Jenn and Joel's daughter's 1-year birthday party was on Saturday, which i was glad i could make it to. it was really nice to see so many friends from college and some from elementary school there, most of whom i haven't seen in a while. apparently it's baby season because there were SO many babies at the party! :) as usual, the birthday girl, Naomi, was super cute! (see picture on the right of her asleep in her dad's arms.) then i took Ying to dinner for her birthday at Bistro Liasons in Berkeley, where the salmon was quite good, and our shared molten chocolate cake dessert was delicious. =9 i also got to meet up with two of my high school buddies, Julie and Liz, in SF for a relaxing day of photo-taking near the Embarcadero and dinner at MarketBar in the Ferry Building. it was one of those perfect, warm spring days in San Francisco where the skies are clear, bright blue and it makes you want to just sit by the water and enjoy the view of the expansive Bay Bridge, the calm water, and people passing by... and that's exactly what we did. then yesterday, i met up with Dave L. for dinner at the Cheesecake Factory in SF. Dave was my very first friend that i met at Cal during our freshman orientation over 10 years ago, and it was really great to catch up with him.

tonight i'm meeting up with Ying (one of my closest friends, who was also my roommate of 6 years during and after college) for a chill night of burritos, tv, chatting, and a sleepover! just like the good ole' days of living together! yay!

sigh... being back here and hanging out with my old friends again definitely makes me realize how much i've missed them all while i've been living so far away from home for the past 2 and a half years...

housewarmed

2006-05-15T10:13:00.000+08:00

we did it. we're all settled into our new apartment in Hong Kong!

the lights and curtains are up, furniture all in place, boxes all unpacked, kitchen appliances plugged in, printer hooked up, clothes hung up in the closets... and dvd collection in alphabetical order (haha, kidding.. wait, no i'm not)!

we had our housewarming party this past weekend to make it all official.
we invited friends over (a few old friends, but almost all new friends), and surprisingly, we were able to fit over 25 people into our tiny little place (granted some people came late or left earlier, but at one point we had close to 20 people here). who knew that many people could squeeze into a 550 sq. ft shoebox!

here are a few group pictures from the party.

(Left-right): Larry, me, Jackie, and Candace (visiting from CA!)

Lanny, Vikkie, me, Garrick, Robert, Larry

Jennifer, Larry, me, Wendy, Gordon, Jennifer's friend PJ?

Wilson, Sooly, Edmon, Vicky, Larry, me, Amanda, Alan

my Flickr photo album is up and running

2006-05-03T10:43:00.000+08:00

my friends who know me know that i like to carry my camera around and take pictures at every chance i get. i finally managed to set up a Flickr account yesterday and have posted up my favorite photos that i've taken over the past three years or so. most are photos that i've taken during my two years in New York. a few are from previous vacations. some are shots of or with friends and family. i'm working on getting more good shots of Hong Kong.

many photos were taken in black & white because i love how it gives it a feeling of timelessness.

simply click on any picture on column on the right side... hope you enjoy them!

lean jeans

2006-04-27T13:33:00.000+08:00

i was telling Larry yesterday how i only own one pair of fitted jeans that's flattering on me no matter what i wear with it. every single one of my other jeans are 1-2 sizes too big and thus too loose, which i had bought that way because they were more comfortable, but i admit are quite unflattering. Larry hates it when i wear my loose jeans, he cringes at the sight of their bagginess. yet i continue to wear them everyday because, well, they're all sitting in my closet and they're comfortable, and i don't want to wear out my one favorite pair by wearing it everyday! instead, i save it for going out with friends, nice dinners, or partying... not for a trip to the grocery store or a daily walk around the city.

yes, the obvious solution is to buy new jeans, and in multiple pairs. but i HATE shopping for jeans! it's difficult to find a pair that fits well because the standard length is too damn long for me (i'm barely 5'1") and nowadays they're all low-rise, hip-huggers (which I don't like to wear). maybe i'm just lazy about it. i hate the thought of trying on 50 different pairs before finding one that's a decent fit.

Larry: go buy more of the flattering jeans. i like you in those.
me: they don't sell it here. i bought it in New York.
Larry: well, go find another pair here.
me: do you know how hard it is for me to find jeans that fit? they're always too long for me! i'm too short!
Larry: we're in Hong Kong! the land of short people!

i didn't know we were living in Munchkin Land! that's great, dear, way to go on perpetuating the stereotype that all Chinese people are short... =P

fine... i'll get off my lazy, oversized-jeans-butt and start looking for some nicer, better-fitted jeans. can anyone recommend a good brand?

little devils with wings

2006-04-26T11:14:00.000+08:00

we went hiking with friends on Sunday, and i wore shorts. i knew that i may have made a mistake in choice of outfit when i saw that in our group of 34 people, i was the only girl wearing shorts while all 25 of the other girls were wearing pants.

within the first 15 minutes, i got 3 mosquito bites on my left leg. i had already applied lotion containing citronella oil (a natural oil that's supposed to repel mosquitos), but apparently that wasn't enough to deter the little blood-sucking devils from helping themselves to a juicy bite of my leg. evil little s%#@&s!

i know, everyone falls victim to mosquitoes every so often, but i swear i'm allergic to mosquito bites because i have the worst reactions nearly every time. after the initial bite, the area surrounding the bite would usually swell up to the size of a giant avocado and the entire area would become painfully itchy. it gets so swollen that when i press down on it, it feels hard. and it hurts. when i stand or walk, the blood rushes down to my legs and the swollen area surrounding the bites actually starts throbbing. did i mention that it hurts like hell? it gets so incredibly itchy that when i try to scratch it, i only succeed in making it even more itchy and all the more painful. (sorry if i grossed anyone out! just thought i'd share my pain.)

so over the last three days, i've been in perpetual pain with two large avocado sized swells on the back of my left thigh. it's been so itchy and painful that it woke me up in the middle of the night and has prevented me from leaving the apartment on the 2nd day. i've tried everything-- i've put an ice pack against it, taken a Benadryl allergy pill, used 2 different kinds of itch creams and 1 hydrocortisone cream with an unnerving "Poison" warning sticker on the box-- all to little effect.

two very painful lessons learned:
1. Hong Kong is infested with mosquitoes, especially along hiking trails.
2. wear long pants to go hiking, no matter how freakin' hot it might be outside!

take my breath away

2006-04-24T13:37:00.000+08:00

i LOVE the Hong Kong skyline, with all the skyscrapers of the financial district, Central. the view of the skyline is one of my favorite things about HK.

in the daytime, the view is impressive.
but at night, it's simply stunning!

there are two locations to best view this.
1) from the top of Victoria Peak on HK Island overlooking Central and Tsim Tsa Tsui (TST) waterfront.
2) from the TST waterfront looking across the Victoria Harbor for a 180 degree panoramic view of the HK Island.

this second view is my absolute favorite, particularly at night when the buildings across the water are all lit up in colorful lights and stretches on and on along the island, and ferry boats cruise by (see the last picture, and imagine a panoramic shot of 10 pictures side by side). i love it! during my first visit to HK in 2002, Larry took me to the TST waterfront on our first night in town. i remember the moment i first looked across the harbor, i had thought the view was purely breathtaking. four years later, the same nightview still takes my breath away. every time.

From Victoria Peak - Day (taken Oct. 2002), Night (Apr. 2006)

From TST Waterfront - Day (Apr. 2002), Night (Dec. 2005)

good afternoon, Vietnam!

2006-04-21T01:05:00.000+08:00

I didn't quite know what to expect on my first trip to Vietnam. The few friends and relatives who've visited or lived there mainly warned about rampant purse-snatchings (and "street cowboys" on motorbikes speeding off with your bags), dishonest people, dirty streets and toilets, and the irritating persistence of people hitting you up for money or your business. "Keep your guard up, don't bring a purse, be really careful!", they warned me. Oh great, I thought.

Luckily, we had a very safe trip, and didn't encounter too many unpleasant experiences other than some dishonest hotel staff and taxi drivers who tried to rip us off by giving us back the wrong change. It was also annoying when street vendors and drivers kept bugging us ("Where are you from?") and tried to solicit their businesses by stalking us down the street for blocks. And apparently in Vietnam, I look Vietnamese. That was sometimes an advantage because I had fewer solicitors approaching me than some of the other girls. Or maybe it was because I wore a "don't bug me" look on my face, so I may have scared them off. :P

Aside from all that and the crazy 100 degrees heat and humidity, my experience has been fairly good. For me, it was all about the delicious food, the amazingly sweet fresh fruit drinks, and of course, the beautiful scenery. I tried my best to capture the unique sights and people on my camera. Local women wearing the signature conical hats balancing baskets of goods. Motorbikes speeding by with as many as 4 people (some babies) aboard. Young local women riding around covered up from head to toe to avoid getting a tan (porcelain white skin is apparently the Vietnamese definition of beauty). Throughout Vietnam, the old French-colonial feeling was evident in many hotel's architecture and decor, exuding an air of grandness and historic charm.

Jackie, Grace, Sangita, and I began our journey in the South (Saigon), then headed up to Central Vietnam (Hue, Hoi An) and the North (Hanoi, Halong Bay).

* HUE (1 day)
Home to the old Citadel (UNESCO World Heritage Site), site of some of the bloodiest action of the Vietnam War. A small community still exists within the moated Citadel city, which we got to see on a 1-hour ride on cyclos (bicycle taxis).
-We briefly visited the Thien Mu Pagoda with a great view of the Perfume River.
-We rode a boat along the scenic Perfume River in the rain and got concerned when they began scooping out buckets of water flooding the lower deck. Apparently this was routine, nothing that a few minutes of bailing out water couldn't fix.
-Lunch: Y Thao Garden (3 Thach Han Street, within the Citadel) - A tasty 7-course set lunch in a charming private house. The mini fried spring rolls were delicious.
-Dinner: Pho 24 (on Le Loi Street) - While their beef pho was alright, what I loved most there was their fresh, sweet pineapple and guava juices. It was as though they had stuck a straw into a fresh, ripe pineapple and guava.

-During our 3-hour bus ride to Hoi An the next morning, we stopped at Marble Mountain near Danang. There we explored the Huyen Khong Cave, a cathedral-like cave with water dripping from the cave top. In a moment of hysteria, I mistook a wet drop of cave water on my arm as bat crap.
Me (screaming): Aaaaaa!!! Napkin! Can I have a napkin! Something fell on my arm!!!
Jackie (cautiously looking at my arm): It's just water.
Me: Are you SURE??!!!
Jackie: It's water!

* HOI AN (1 day)

Undoubtedly my favorite Vietnam city so far, Hoi An is a small, quaint riverside town. It's a very picturesque town where the narrow streets are lined with charming, faded-yellow houses converted into tailor shops and local shops selling a colorful array of artwork, handbags, and souveniers. More pedestrian-friendly, it felt easier and safer to stroll along the streets.
-Lunch: Cafe Can (74 Bach Dang St.) - A casual lunch on the sundeck.
-Dinner: Hong Phuc (86 Bach Dang St.) - Famous for its fish wrapped in banana leaf seasoned with garlic, lemongrass, and pepper. Though a bit too bony, it was tasty!

* HANOI (2 days)
The largest city in Northern Vietnam, Hanoi has an interesting juxtaposition of farmland and rice paddies alongside apartment buildings, which I saw just outside of the city's central area. Unfortunately, Monday was our only free day in Hanoi , which was the one day when all the city's museums are closed, including Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum. There goes our chance to see his body. Or maybe that's not such a bad thing.
-Took a one-hour cyclo ride around Hanoi's Old Quarter. Seated at the front of a bicycle, we whizzed through busy traffic while hundreds of motorbikes and bicycles flew past us. Definitely an exciting experience!
-Watched a water puppet show that told the story of an old Vietnamese folktale.
-Took a boat ride to Halong Bay to see the breathtaking sight of thousands of limestone islands dotting the water. The sight of the islands from the top deck was majestic and calming. We also explored a few caves which were covered with stalactites (icicle-shaped mineral deposits hanging from the roof of a cavern, formed from the dripping of mineral-rich water) and stalagmites (on the floor) everywhere. Creepy, yet impressive.
-We made two new local friends in Hanoi. We met a nice guy who worked at the travel agency where we booked our flights and tour. Grace invited him to join us for dinner the next night, and he brought along his friend's sister. Both were super friendly and nice, and we all enjoyed dinner and coffee together.
-Dinner: Quan An Ngon (18 Phan Boi Chau) - delicious bun rieu (vermicelli noodle soup with crabmeat and tomatoes).

* SAIGON (HO CHI MINH CITY) (2 days)
Two words: Bikes everywhere!
That includes bicycles, motorbikes, and cyclos of all sizes. It was scary crossing the bike-filled streets of Saigon. Hanoi was intimidating as well, but the Saigon streets seemed wider, which meant having a longer distance to cross. Some sidewalks (especially in the backpacker's district) were incredibly dirty and littered with garbage. Without a public garbage collection/disposal system, people burn trash or find their own way to dispose of them.
-Walked through the Ben Thanh indoor market. We bought coffee, fresh fruit juice, and the best baguette I've eaten since in Paris. For only 1,000 dong (7 cents USD), we got a freshly baked 9-inch long baguette that was warm and soft on the inside, and crispy on the outside. Pure heaven!
-On our last night in Vietnam, the girls took me out to celebrate my birthday, which was so sweet of them! Dinner at the restaurant, Lemon Grass (4 Nguyen Thiep St.), was delicious! I loved the fried catfish with lemongrass and garlic, and the fried spring rolls. Afterwards, they took me out for French-Vietnamese ice cream at Fanny (29 Ton That Thiep St.).
Good food and ice cream... what a perfect way to end our trip!

first bday in HK

2006-04-18T00:52:00.000+08:00

i just returned from my Vietnam trip (more on that later), unpacked my bags, and spent my first birthday in Hong Kong... it was especially nice having my close high school friend, Julie, visiting us for several days.

on Friday, i went out to dinner and clubbing with some friends for an early celebration. we went clubbing near Lan Kwai Fong at Hei Hei Club, which is currently one of HK's hottest clubs. i love that they play some pretty hot hip hop music, but i hate how it always gets too crowded to dance or stand without being bumped into. after defending our dance space as long as we could, it got to be too much, and we all called it an early night.

total drink count for the night: two Malibu Pineapples (my favorite mixed drink), resulting in only a slight buzz. this was one of the few birthdays where I partied but didn't get wasted. this must be a sign that i'm really getting old. hmm.

but i wasn't about to accept that so easily... so i joined my friend Wendy and her friends on a hike on the Dragon Back trail leading to Shek O beach on Monday. it was a 2.5 hour hike up and down a series of small hills (like the spikes on a dragon's back, hence the name) overlooking a scenic ocean view. not too difficult of a hike, but it had its share of steep, rocky paths to cross. i made it through with relative ease, so i feel good. we rewarded ourselves with food and drinks at a nearby beach bar... our little jackpot at the end of the rainbow. or something like that.

what better way to feel young and alive than to conquer the great outdoors? Dragon Back was no Mt. Everest, but it was good enough for me. :)

a birthday shout out

2006-04-15T13:56:00.000+08:00

...to one of my best friends who i've known since forever.
happy birthday, jenn! :)
(sorry it's 1 or 2 days belated. not sure which one with the time difference here.)
hope you had a wonderful day! miss ya lots!

aww crap!!!

2006-04-06T23:39:00.000+08:00

i just looked up the weather for Vietnam on AccuWeather.com. the day that we'll be in Hanoi, the high temperature will be 95 degrees. but get this... the RealFeel temp (what it'll REALLY feel like with humidity) is supposed to be 119 degrees!

one hundred freakin' nineteen degrees farenheit!!!

can you fry an egg on the sidewalk at 119 degrees? will my rubber Old Navy flip flops melt when i walk in them? i've been through some steamy, humid New York summer days at RealFeel temps of 103 degrees, and i thought THAT was bad!

i'm scared. i'm very, very scared.

Vietnam, here we come!

2006-04-06T17:06:00.000+08:00

tomorrow, I'm heading out to Vietnam with three of my girl friends, Jackie, Grace, and Sangita. we're going to hit Saigon, Hue, Hoi An, Hanoi, and Halong Bay - that's five cities in one week. what can I say? we're ambitious!

the only things on my to-do list so far: explore caves in Halong Bay, eat, take pictures, and eat some more!
anyone with recommendations for cool things to see or do there? let me know!

hiking and biking

2006-04-04T00:11:00.000+08:00

Karen (Larry's sister) visited us for the past week. it was really nice to have family visiting us, even if just for a short week. we'll take what we can get.

her first day here, we took her on an attempted-hike in Sai Kung with with some friends. our friend Garrick organizes group hiking trips practically every Sunday, so we try to go if we're available because the hiking trails are usually nice and scenic, the exercise is good for us, and we've met many really nice people on these hikes. Sai Kung is known for it's beautiful scenery, so we were looking forward to the hike. as luck would have it, it started pouring rain while our group was riding the bus up to the trail. instead, we all ended up taking a brief tour around the campus of UST and having afternoon tea in the campus canteen.

then Larry took a day off from work and we brought Karen to Shatin in the New Territories to go bike-riding. we rented bikes and biked for about 2 hours all the way up to Tai Po and back. we've gone hiking quite a bit in the last few months, but we should really go biking more often too. the biking trail is only a 30-minute train ride away, the bike rental costs under $4 USD, the scenery is pleasant, the ride itself is leisurely, it's good exercise... and it's good fun!

ok, we'll go biking more. no more excuses...
except when it's hot and humid.

one good show

2006-04-02T11:47:00.000+08:00

i went to see my first concert in Hong Kong last weekend. we bought a new tv, and they gave us 2 free concert tickets to see Justin, a new HK singer. Larry's sister, Karen, was in town for the week, so i took her to see it. even with nosebleed seats, it was a good show. tickets were free, so no complaints here... except there were light fixtures obstructing the jumbotron so we couldn't see his face on the overhead screens during the entire show... but who's complaining? ;)

this guy, Justin, can really sing! in a land where the talent of many young, new, "pretty" singers and actors is highly questionable, it's a breath of fresh air to discover a new HK singer who can actually sing well! so i gotta give him props...

Justin (full name Justin Lo) is currently one of the fastest rising HK singers. he released his first album last November, and in just half a year, he held this concert at the famous HK Coliseum. born in New York, he grew up in HK until his early teens. he worked for Yahoo! in Santa Clara, CA (anybody in the Bay Area recognize him?) until a few years ago, and moved back to HK to persue songwriting. he went on to write songs for some popular HK singers, including Leon Lai, Andy Hui, Kelly Chen, and Miriam Yeung. then he was discovered for his own voice, and his singing career began. not bad, huh?

anyway, his concert had songs from his first album (pictured) and his newly released, second album. luckily i had bought his first cd a week before so i was familiar with half of the songs that he performed. his musical style is mostly ballads. i normally prefer music with more groove, more R&B-ish (like a lot of Korean pop music, and Jay Chou, a cutie Taiwanese singer who's widely popular in HK), but i can appreciate a good ballad if it's sung well and has a nice melody. Justin has a great voice that sounds natural and soothing, so i enjoyed his songs. during the night, he even brought out three famous HK singers for some duets-- Miriam Yeung, Leo Koo, and "ah Lam", so it was cool to see them perform.

okay, now when is Jay Chou having a concert in Hong Kong? =)

guessing game

2006-03-26T01:12:00.000+08:00

believe it or not, i get questioned about my ethnicity even here in Hong Kong, in my own ancestors' country! i've encountered locals who'd start to talk to me in English as though they don't think i'm Chinese or can understand Chinese. just the other day, i hopped into a taxi and had the following conversation (in Cantonese, mind you) with the driver, who's also Chinese:

me (getting into taxi): to Wan Chai Road, please.
driver: sure... (5 seconds later) are you Thai?
me: who me? no.
driver: Filipina?
me: noooo...
driver: you're not? has anyone ever told you that you look Thai or Filipina?
me: oh yeah, i've heard that many times before... (pause) i'm Chinese.
driver: YOU ARE?! REALLY?!
me: yeah. my parents used to live in Hong Kong too.
driver: no kidding!

do i really NOT look Chinese? ever since high school, many people have told me that i look like other ethnicities. i got mostly Filipina and recently Thai, a bit of Vietnamese or Hawaiian, and Cambodian once. some kind of Southeast Asian, basically. a few people have guessed Eurasian before, and even Mexican once (huh?)! i really don't mind people guessing at my ethnicity. i think it's pretty cool to look multi-ethnic (and, as someone just told me last week, "exotic"), and i'm always amused at what ethnicity people will guess.
but you'd think that my own people would be able to tell that i'm Chinese, right?

home sweet home

2006-03-23T10:37:00.000+08:00

we FINALLY moved into our new apartment in HK last week! we'd been living in a temporary apartment in Central for the past 4 months. living in Central was great- we were surrounded by restaurants and shops and within walking distance to Lan Kwai Fong, where tons of international restaurants and bars/clubs are crammed into a few blocks (very popular with the expat community). too bad we couldn't stay in Central because housing is just ridiculously expensive there.

instead we found a nice, new apartment on the east side of HK island in a district called Sai Wan Ho. the place is currently bare and unfurnished-- no bed, closets or desk (to be delivered next week), no dining table or microwave (tomorrow), nor do we have our phone line set up yet. but we DO have a sofabed and broadband! something to sleep on and internet connection... we sure know where our priorities are! the best thing about our new place is that it sits right next to the water, so we have a beautiful view of the harbour... and fresh air!

sure, our place may be empty right now and we're still living out of our suitcases, but it's a place we can actually call home... exciting!

yay, visitors!

2006-03-20T21:06:00.000+08:00

I love it when friends and family from back home come to visit. (I guess I'm a bit homesick... really missing my friends and family in CA and NY.) My college and clubbing buddy, Sangita, came to HK to visit a few weeks ago. We went partying (of course, that's a given), ate lots, celebrated her birthday, went to the Repulse Bay beach, and spent an interesting day in Macau (see picture on the left).

Larry's aunt's family from Connecticut was in town that same week. It was their first time in HK, so we gave them a whirlwind tour-- we shopped along Ladies Market in Mongkok, visited Wong Tai Sin Temple, walked along Avenue of the Stars on the Tsim Tsa Tsui waterfront, went to the Big Buddha and Po Lin Monestary, visited the old fishing village of Tai O, went up to Victoria Peak at night, and even went to Shenzhen in southern China for the *ultimate* shopping experience!
*whew!* So much to see and do here in HK! :)

i miss my niece...

2006-03-19T21:48:00.000+08:00

my niece, Celine, is 3 and a half years old. she's the most adorable little girl (i'm biased, of course). she's always smiling and laughing, and she loves to sing and be silly. she's a bundle of energy and will always bring a smile to your face.

yesterday, i talked to her on the phone. it was the first time i had talked to her in 5 months (since i moved to HK). when my sister put her on the phone, the first thing she said was, "Hello... I miss you! When are you coming over?" :)

as much as i loved living in NY (and currently HK), i don't like being so far away from my young niece and nephew and not getting to see them often. i also worry that since i'm never around, someday they might not remember me, their Auntie. at one point last year, after not having seen Celine for a year, i got the feeling that she was starting to forget me, which made me really sad.

last November before flying to HK, i was in CA for 2 weeks. i stayed at my sister's house for a week, where i got to spend lots of quality time with Celine everyday and helped to take care of my newborn nephew, Christopher. one evening while we were putting together a jigsaw puzzle, out of the blue, Celine looked up at me and said to me, "Celine didn't forget Auntie." I was speechless with joy.

here's one of my favorite pictures of Celine and I, taken on the last day of my stay at their house. this picture makes me super happy, so I'm going to put it here. :)

photos from the Sydney trip

2006-03-09T09:02:00.000+08:00

unfortunately, we lost about 200 of our pictures taken in Sydney (due to some technical problems when we were transferring the pictures from our memory card) and not sure if we'll be able to restore them... dammit!
here are some of my favorite pictures out of those remaining...

Sydney Harbour Bridge at night / Sydney Opera House (taken by Larry)

Waterfall and rainbow (taken by Larry)/Kangaroos at Blue Mountain National Park

Drayton's Winery, Hunter Valley /Three Sisters, Blue Mountain

Sa-wat-dee ka! ("Hello!" in Thai)

2006-02-28T11:40:00.000+08:00

I had an amazing time in Thailand! Delicious and cheap Thai food, inexpensive shopping, and the most incredible historical ruins I've ever seen! We mostly walked or rode tuk-tuks (3-wheeled motorized open-air taxis). Motorcycles seemed to be the normal mode of transportation for locals of all ages, both male and female. Surprisingly, we made it around Thailand even though we didn't know the Thai language. Most of drivers knew enough English to understand us and bargain prices with us.
I learned two very useful Thai phrases:
"Sa-wat-dee ka" = Hello!
"Khop khun ka" = Thank you!

Here are flashbacks and highlights from the trip...

* CHIANG MAI (4 days)

Chiang Mai was my favorite city. I liked how it was a big city with a small-town feel, and people were friendly. There were charming cafes, restaurants, bars, used bookstores, and wats (temples) throughout the streets. The weather was hot during the day, but it cooled down in the evenings. The first 3 days we stayed at a mid-range hotel, Montri Hotel, just inside the Old City gates. The 4th day, we splurged and stayed at D2, a very trendy and modern hotel that had just opened.
~ Highlights:
-Half-day cooking class at Kao Hom Cooking School (www.kaohom.com) - An awesome cooking class (I highly recommend it!) in a tranquil garden-home setting. We learned to make Fishcake, Glass Noodle Salad, and Beef Penang Curry, all for 1200 Bahts ($30 USD). We took a another class where we learned to make Pad Thai noodles.
-A 2-hour Thai massage at Oasis Spa - so nice...
-Sunday Street Market in Old City - We bought some nice decorations for our new home.
-Discovering a noodle dish called khao soi (chicken with soup noodles and noodle crisps in curry soup) at Si Phen Restaurant. A Chiang Mai specialty! Yum!
-Thai Boxing (Muay Thai) - I usually hate watching boxing (can't bear to watch people punch each other in the face until bloody to a pulp), so I was reluctant to watch it live in Thailand. Having watched Million Dollar Baby made me want to watch the live sport even less. But Julie really wanted to see it, so I said ok. I gotta say that I was surprised with Muay Thai (Thai Boxing), which is vastly different from U.S. boxing. Instead of turning it into a big punching-fest, Muay Thai boxers focus on using their legs, knees, and elbows to deliver swift kicks and jabs at their opponents, with only minimal punching with arms. Muay Thai is actually considered a form of martial arts. I also liked how the boxers seem more respectful of each other (winning boxers gave their opponents a hug at the end of their match, and during a K.O. the winning boxer immediately got down on his knees to kow-tow his fallen opponent who was knocked out on the ground). Overall, I really enjoyed watching Muay Thai. And to top off the evening, Julie and I took a picture with the winner of the final match! :)

* SUKHOTHAI (1 day, via a comfortable 3-hour bus ride from Chiang Mai)
The earliest capital of Thailand, Sukhothai is home to the Sukhothai Historical Park (a UNESCO World Heritage site) with a majestic spread of ruined temples and Buddha statues. We stayed in a guesthouse, which was a trying experience-- cold-water-only showers, flush-it-yourself toilets using water buckets, geckos unexpectedly visiting our room, and mosquitos biting us from underneath our blankets all night. Yikes! Hey, at only $5 USD a night, it was the cheapest place I've ever stayed at!
~ Highlights:
-Biking around Sukhothai Historical Park was one of my favorite experiences. So fun!! We rented bikes and spent 5 hours leisurely biking around the park from one historical site to the next. The sites were simply amazing to see upclose. Even though the wats (temples) and Buddha statues were in ruins, they were breathtaking, and it was easy to see how beautiful and grand they once were. I highly recommend going to see this if you have the chance. Pictures don't do it justice, but here are a few anyway...

* PHITSANULOK (1 day, via a 1-hour bus ride from Sukhothai)
Basically a stopover. We ate dinner on a floating restaurant and strolled through a street food market. The next morning, we flew to Bangkok, where Larry would stay the rest of the week to work, and Julie and I would continue onto Ayuthaya.

* AYUTHAYA (1 day, via a 1-hour train ride from Bangkok)
The former capital of Thailand (1350-1767) after Sukhothai, Ayuthaya was destroyed during a seige by the Burmese. Some restored, the crumbling remains of temples can be seen throughout the city. Thailand was much more HOT AND HUMID than in Northern Thailand, and it got unbearably hot and sticky while walking outside. We went for a 1-hour Thai massage for only 100 Bahts ($2.50 USD)! Though dirt-cheap in price, the massage parlor itself was very clean and professional. Although Julie loved her massage, I couldn't say the same. It was just my luck that my masseuse was a big, strong lady... I winced in pain each time she applied pressure with her thumbs, which was every 2 seconds. I swear, the lady had thumbs of steel! I couldn't even tell her to be more gentle because she didn't understand English! I had just experienced the most painful massage of my life!
~ Highlights:
-Ayuthaya Historical Park, another World Heritage site, where the wats were scattered throughout the city. Wat Chai Watthanaram, whose architecture was said to be similar to that of Angkor Wat, was breathtaking! Another impressing ruin was Chedi of Wat Phra Si Sanphet, with its three identical chedis (spires).

-Chillin' at a local bar restaurant while listening to a live band perform Thai songs and covers of American songs by Coldplay and Maroon 5.

* BANGKOK (3 days, via 1 hour train from Ayuthaya)
It was a bit surreal to see what a huge, metropolitan city Bangkok was, since we had just spent the previous week in smaller, less developed cities and towns. At first glance, Bangkok could've easily passed for some big city in the U.S., especially with all the traffic and modern buildings.

~ Highlights:
-The Grand Palace - Very grande and beautiful, with many ornate decorations and statues adorning the exterior walls of the wats and buildings.

-Suan Lum Night Market - Located near from our hotel. I bought a peasant skirt, capri cargo pants, and a pair of sandals there for a nice, low price.
-Chatuchuk Weekend Market - The largest outdoor street market ever, it'll take a few days to browse through it all! We got lost for an hour looking for one store, NOT fun with the humidity and heat. There were many beautiful decorative home accessories and clothing at incredible prices. A must-go! They also had "street food" vendors -- I bought a bag of spicy fishcake and a sweet pineapple shake for a total of $1.50 USD. Unlike Julie and Larry, I wasn't adventurous enough to try the "mystery meat" skewers (pictured left) though.
-Bars/Clubs - RCA (Royal City Avenue) is a stretch of bar/clubs with tables and seats spilling out onto the street. Many of the clubs played great hip hop music (which I love), but the problem was there were NO dancefloors, and we wanted to dance! Instead, there were tables (without chairs) everywhere and people stood around drinking and only a few people danced in the space between tables. After several club-hops (all overcrowded, none with dancefloors), we ended up at a club with a local Thai band doing an awesome rendition of Linkin Park.

*SIDE STORY: During our trip, many locals mistook me for being Thai. Many locals spoke to me in Thai and were surprised when I told them I wasn't Thai. The real kicker was when I was mistaken for being a Thai prostitute... two nights in a row in Bangkok!! The first night, a hotel staff stopped me, Julie, and her friend Thomas (who's Caucasian) as we were walking back into our hotel, and spoke to me in Thai. Apparently they took down the ID's of "working girls" who are brought into the hotel, so he probably just asked for my ID. Thinking he wanted proof of being hotel guests, I showed him my room card key. When he saw the card key, he apologized that he didn't know I was a guest. Um, if not a guest, what did he think I was!? The next night when we strolled into the hotel, I was next to Larry. A hotel staff stopped us and spoke to Larry in English, something about ID's. He then turned and spoke to me in Thai. I didn't say anything, expecting him to translate in English... but he didn't. When Larry said, "She doesn't speak Thai", the guy gave me a confused look. Larry then said to him, "She's my wife!". At that point, the guy started apologizing profusely to me and later told me that he thought I looked Thai. What, all Thai girls are hookers??! I didn't think I was dressed like I could be mistaken for one... hell, I was wearing a long skirt and flip-flops! I was definitely NOT hoochied up or anything! Maybe because we stayed in a business hotel and they saw working girls being brought in a lot. I'm not taking it personal, but just shocked at being mistaken as a working girl twice ,and found it disturbing that in Bangkok, when someone sees a young Asian woman (who they think looks vaguely Thai) walking with a guy, they automatically assume that she's a hooker. And the sad thing is that in many cases, that's probably true.

Anyways, I still had a blast in Thailand, and I can't wait to go back again! :)

off to Thailand...

2006-02-15T18:09:00.000+08:00

Tomorrow we're heading out to Thailand!
Larry and I are going to meet up with Julie (my good friend from high school) in Chiang Mai (Northern Thailand) and we'll slowly work our way down to Bangkok together over 1.5 weeks. This is my first Thailand trip, so I'm really excited!

We're flying out early tomorrow morning, so I need to stop procrastinating and get packing. Supposedly it's HOT there, well over 90 degrees temps. (yikes!)

Chinese New Year in Sydney

2006-02-14T20:51:00.000+08:00

Chinese New Year has got to be THE biggest, most celebrated holiday in Hong Kong (although Christmas gets pretty festive too). Many shops/businesses shut down for the first few days of the new lunar year so that everyone can spend time with family. Some even stay closed for the first two weeks or longer. This was our first new year spent without having any family or relatives around to celebrate with, so we decided to get out of town.... we headed to Sydney, Australia.

Sydney was fun! It was summer there, so the weather was beautiful. Aside from the mandatory visit to the Opera House, we walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge (twice), relaxed at Manly Beach, and went wine-tasting in Hunter Valley.

The highlight of our trip was the full-day tour around Blue Mountain National Park, also a World Heritage site. There, we saw kangaroos upclose and personal, hiked to waterfalls and through a rainforest, took in some amazing views of the park and canyons from the top, and rode up on the world's steepest railway. Took lots of pictures, so I'll post some after I get a chance to upload them.

Seafood dishes were fresh and delicious, namely the scallops and calamari. I personally don't like to eat squid (they're too rubbery for my liking), but I actually LOVED the calamari that Larry ordered. It was even more tender than the scallops on my own plate, which tasted great already.

Here are some Sydney restaurants that we enjoyed:
-Zaaffran (modern Indian) - 2nd floor, 345 Harbourside Shopping Center in Darling Harbour (excellent scallops and calamari!)
-Fish Face (seafood) - 132 Darlinghurst Rd in Darlinghurst (fresh sushi and fish)
-Micky's Cafe - 268 Oxford St in Paddington (tasty chicken/mushroom sandwich)
-Waterfront (seafood)- 27 Circular Quay West in The Rocks (good seafood, great view of the Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge)

Okay, I'll admit, it wasn't much of a celebration being in Sydney the first week of Chinese New Year. But you know, it's not a big deal for me to go out and watch Chinese New Year parades or such. (If I catch it, cool. If I miss it, no biggie.) The celebration was always more about getting together with family and having dinner together. Given the circumstances of not having family around, Larry and I simply spent the first day of the new lunar year together and enjoyed it in our own non-traditional way... we headed for the beach and ate Indian food for dinner. :)

my big moves

2006-02-10T19:20:00.000+08:00

Just a bit of background info...
After living in New York for the first few years of my life, my family and I moved to sunny California (SF Bay Area) where I spent all of my school years and my early working years. After that, I moved twice.

Move #1: New York City
I moved back there 2 years ago with Larry (my husband). I had such an amazing time that I fell in love with the city (hence the title of this blog)! So what fascinates me so much about NY? I'll have to save that for another post...

Move #2: Hong Kong
We just moved here 3 months ago. Larry had found an incredible job opportunity in HK. The idea of living in an exciting new country was just too tempting to pass up, and if we ever wanted to make this move, now was the time to do it. We decided to go for it.... and here we are!

We plan to live in HK for a few years, between 2 to 5 years, depending on how Larry's job pans out and how much we both enjoy it here. A few of my girl friends doubt we'll ever move back to CA. I don't blame them, seeing that before moving to NY I had told them we'd return in 2 years... but then we went and moved all the way to HK after that! But I assure you, we WILL be back!!! (I can hear them saying "Yeah right, uh-huh... sure...") I PROMISE! :)

Right now we're slowly trying to settle into Hong Kong. We've been living out of our suitcases in a temporary apartment for the past three months, and we're planning to move into our permanent apartment in March. Exciting, yet scary, because the new place is merely a 550 sq. ft. shoebox disguised as a 2-bedroom apartment... without closets! To illustrate how small this is, our STUDIO in New York was 525 sq. ft! Unfortunately, tiny apartments are simply a fact of life here in Hong Kong. Claustrophobics, beware!

We shipped 60 boxes here. I'm not sure that the boxes themselves, much less their contents, will fit in the apartment! If this were an episode of "Bewitched", I'd be Samantha the housewife-witch --I'd just twitch my nose and magically have everything perfectly unpacked. Voila! If only life were that easy, right?

happy year of the dog

2006-02-09T10:20:00.000+08:00

Happy Chinese New Year!!!

"Xīn nián kuài lè" (in Mandarin with official pinyin tones)
"Sun leen fy lok" (in Cantonese with made-up pronunciation translations..)

words and photographs

2006-02-09T01:18:00.000+08:00

Bethesda Fountain in Central Park, NYC, taken in November 2003

This is going to be...

-my new written and photographic journal.
-an attempt to keep track of all my experiences of living in a new city/country (which is Hong Kong at the moment) and traveling to different places.
-a place to share some of my favorite photographs that I've taken over the past several years. (There will be many of New York, of course!)
-a way for my friends and family who are back home in the U.S. to see what's going on with me all the way on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

I hope to update this regularly, so keep checking back!