The immersion blender

I have finally bought myself an immersion blender (well, to be exact, Kelvin paid for it). It is the Gadget Of The Year next to the ereader, which I have been raving about for the past few months. But honestly, eInk technology is awesome. I have been devouring through books like juicy chicken drumsticks. Let's see, good books I've read recently: Hardboiled wonderland and the end of the world (Murakami - none of his books make real sense, but still an excellent read), The Help (Stockett), The Painted Veil, The Curious Incident of the Dog at Night Time. Currently reading "the orphan master's son".

With the immersion blender, I've made mushroom soup, carrot soup, asparagus soup, blueberry yogurt smoothies, banana smoothies, apple kiwi juice and the like. I should author a book on pureed foods. In fact, I can do a whole series. Puree the Rainbow. Puree for Good Health. Pureed Meals. Puree for the Lazy Eater. I get all excited over the prospect of homemade hummus.

I am definitely what you'd call a lazy eater. Fish head, tail, parts with bones go to Kelvin. I eat only fillet. I don't care what they say about how the meat on the bones are better. It's not worth the trouble. I have a penchant for soft, smooth, squishy foods. Like pudding, oatmeal, congee, tofu, and stews.

So I went right ahead and registered myself for CRE just to test the waters (a governmental chinese exam that you can take for free and as many times as you like without it affecting your latest best score). I think this is the first time I've ever went into an exam knowing that I will fail. About halfway through, the invigilator announced that there is only 5 minutes left. I took this time to black out about 20 circles with "A".

People keep asking me 'how are wedding preparations?' There's actually nothing to do right now. Wedding planning is doing a bunch of stuff right after engagement, and then scrambling 4 months before actual date. So all I'm doing is waiting... and maybe try out a few make up artists in the meanwhile...

NO FART IN CAR

Disneyland for mother's day

Manly Court. Only those with enough testosterone may enter.

The sign reads 'Sad Hot and Sour Noodles - so sour your mouth will water, so hot you will cry'

Pureed mushrooms. Tastes better than it looks in this picture.

Bad english...

Circle is a name!!

Comparison chart I used to make the decision.

Cleaning up my computer. "1 day left"...

Enough sugar for a month

My dear friend will be returning to Canada after enduring 2 yrs in HK. I bid her farewell over high tea one fine afternoon. We ended up being really really really full on the below set. The clotted cream was clotting my stomach. I am now on a sugar-ban after having ingested a month's worth of sugar for the month. 

As with any normal boy, my boyfriend has cravings for a slab of meat on a metal plate. Do not underestimate the pile of meat in this picture. It's as big as the plate (think a decent sized plate), and there's ANOTHER layer of meat about the same size below the first slab. The portions are so gigantuan that neither of us could finish the meal.

Hiking along the smoggy hills of HK.

 Look, a monkey!

 Look, a cow!

Look, a whole family of them, in fact!

Look, a boyfriend peering over the railing.

Japanese android on display.

 Flaxseed from Canada that costs less than buying it in Canada. It was $68 HK, no tax, AND came with a free bag of thai rice.

I want a blender...

How would one litter into the toilet bowl?

letter to the photographer from hell

Spicy noodle from hell that some people can just slurp up in just 7 minutes

15 minutes and only about 20% into my lunch of wagon noodles, a man with the same thing plunked his bowl in front of me. I, in the meanwhile, was sweating from the spiciness, blowing my nose a few times, and trying at least to finish the veggies. He was done, drank all the soup in the bowl, and got up with his tray in 7 minutes flat. I gave up eventually, leaving most of the noodles untouched and doused my mouth with a cold beverage.

My mom stole my feet-warming socks. Now I can't wear them anymore knowing she's been wearing them daily like slippers.

The one in the bottom right hand corner I just want to put up as a sign on my desk

Watoto, a children's choir from Africa. Most of these kids are orphaned by AIDs and grew up hungry for food, shelter and for love (until of course they were saved by the Watoto organization). When I plan my wedding, I think of all the lavish things that I'm supposed to do, and somehow it angers me. (Not a popular one with some people, but I got shark fin soup out of the menu. Getting rid of the banquet entirely seemed out of the question though.) I told my mom, 'do i really need to give people favours that nobody ever keeps anyway? The package will probably end up in the sea and choke a sea turtle or something'.

Is it right for me to increase my carbon footprint even more by buying cute little trinkets en mass while the poor and vulnerable don't even have food? The purchase of things are so easy for us, because they cost so little, but the environmental repercussions hit the poor the hardest.

I've discovered that the mascaras out nowadays don't 'run' like they used to. They sort of cleanly flake off when you dab with a tissue. In the middle of my photo shoot, I had a nervous breakdown and started uncontrollably crying for 20 minutes. I was still pretty miserable after the team of make-up artists managed to fix me up again. My fiance seemed dumbfounded. He explained that people who steamroll over others in their hurry to get things done are somehow just a normal HK phenomenon, which did nothing to cheer me up, because when you're sad, you don't want an explanation; you want acknowledgement for the validity of your emotions, and give time for it to pass. However, I felt so much better after writing the below letter. I think I'll feel even better if I share it.

dear photographer-from-hell:

if you can take a moment to take out the stick up your ass and listen to what i have to say, it might do you some good. cuz there's a reason why we only chose only 20% of the photos you deemed to be the masterpieces.

1, nobody was telling you what to do. it didn't even occur to me that i had other ideas about how we should pose. i was already busy dealing with the freezing weather and painful shoes and girdle, the fake eyelashes poking into my eye, the rain, the hunger.... do you really think i was trying to be uncooperative on purpose? can you just put your stupid 'professional pride' on hold and think about your customers, whom you're supposed to be serving... and not the other way around? to stage that little 'punishment' was just low. i didn't even know it was punishment until after 10 shots and after you saying, "oh, so you're ready to listen to me again", that i realized that you made us make up our own poses out of spite. what. the. hell.

2, why don't you try communicating with your customers? and by communicating, i don't mean cryptic and confusing lines like "i need an artistic stylistic flair from you. do you understand?" or sarcastically criticize how we are not following his instructions. "it's hard for me because you're not being responsive." you insensitive SOB, i was being as responsive as i could. do you know that not every citizen does photoshoots for a living? oh, and i love this one: "can you stop looking around so that we can go on?" (gosh, even I'm not aware that i was looking around).

You know, there's a report card like thingy we have to submit back to your company? I can sort of put whatever comment I want in there, like the fact that we got the worse customer service ever? You know that, right? Now, can we go on, without you being a douchebag?"

3, stop inflicting physical pain on your subject. stop making me pose from the back, twisting my neck at some unnatural angle. making me bend at 90 degree angles isn't such a great idea either. I mean, I do yoga and pilates, but when you're wearing a girdle and a some mean shoes, some poses are impossible. in any case, it was a waste of effort. we didn't like any of those weird 90 degree angle shots. you probably thought you were being creative.

4, stop telling me to make that super wide smile. i don't look good with it and it's not even natural. i can't smile any wider. that's how my mouth is.

5. it'd be nice to ask that nice stranger's permission before you used his artwork as a backdrop for your photoshoot, while hijacking his booth and shooing him out of the way like you owned the place.

the weather is secondary to you barking at us for the entire day. Thanks for making an otherwise happy day a miserable one. your subjects are humans. if they are unhappy, they will look fake-happy while smiling, which will effectively ruin the whole picture.

from you-know-who

Life Updates and Recent Reads

hand made wedding cake/bouquet topper : D I'm thinking of throwing this instead of flowers to the next bride-to-be

I peeled myself from playing Triple Town to write an entry in this blog. Actually, it didn't take willpower at all; I ran out of moves (for the unpaid version, moves have to 'charge' up). It's even more effective in eating up my productivity than Facebook.

New addictive game I've discovered:

My mom may be turning into momzilla (definition from urban dictionary: Similar to a Bridezilla, a Momzilla is highly controlling of the many elements to a wedding. ) She is becoming obsessed with my wedding and was more giddy than I was when I was trying on dresses for the photo shoot. Okay, I wasn't giddy. I was in fact rather annoyed that day at how the wedding industry tried to pry HK$900 off of me for a ball of fresh flowers just for the photo shoot. It's environmentally unfriendly, and really, $900 for a ball of flowers in my photos??? REALLY??! And plus, I don't like flowers.

The saleslady said, "hmm, you're less smiley than your husband-to-be. Hope your photos will turn out okay." Actually, unbeknownst to her, I had a set of good photos already. This is the "rehearsal engagement photos" that mom gave me for my birthday. According to my mom, both my fiance and myself have little experience in photo-taking and as such do not know how to pose properly and will need a 'rehearsal' before the real thing. Well, this first batch turned out better than I expected. Kelvin didn't look as filopino as he could have. I didn't look either angry or dazed, which I often turn out looking like in pictures.

We got kicked out of the church we chose to get married in because we weren't their members. As always, somebody else was more concerned about it than I was (this time, I think it's Kelvin's parents). We are now looking for Plan B.

Then, there is the secret, oh-so-subtle tug of war between my mom and my mother-in-law (although both would deny this; they are only thinking for our mutual best interests) in terms of where we are going to stay after we get married. Obviously, my mom wants me to stay closer to her, and the mother-in-law wants him to stay closer to her. As for me, I just want to stay somewhere affordable.

Work is slowly killing me. I've been getting headaches at 3 in the afternoon every day, my eyes have gotten worse again, and I'm just so tired and listless every morning. I actually tell people to stay away from me in the morning. I'm not sure what I can do except use annual leaves to make monthly holidays for myself. I don't have enough justification to switch jobs at the moment, especially after I sort of assured everyone at my workplace that I intended to stay until the end of our project.

What's been more exciting lately are all the great books I've been discovering (of course, through the convenience of my e-reader). There's no way I would have otherwise been able to read at such a rapid rate. While I do work closely to a library, I'm much too lazy to check books out and cart a chunk of paper around in my bag.

I read the Hunger Games with great expectations, since it was apparently all the craze, and has even made its way into the theatre (coming soon). I wasn't disappointed. Not bad. I may start reading the second book in the trilogy. "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" was also a great one, and complemented "The Psychopath Test" quite nicely. Told from a journalist's point of view, it is funny, fascinating and frightening, all at the same time. Sheds some light on a perhaps little well known fact about some members of the human population. Sophie's world is a philosophy textbook hidden in the context of a novel. As such, there's not much of a plot. Interesting if you like philosophy.

visit of the superVIPs

After the relaxing week of sickness (as mentioned in the last post), I got down to work on making some visitors to our company as luxurious as possible down to the last detail (that is a huge story on its own, including fulfilling shopping lists and elaborate VIP rooms in which apparently I went overbudget on), but really I don't want to delve into that hugely stressful affair.

Fortunately, Chinese New Year is just around the corner, which will elevate everyone's moods and the number in my bank account. I'm feeling particularly broke at the moment, having splurged on a kindle for my fiance, and on a bag (oh wait, he paid for the bag), a new ipad cover (the ipad itself I got from my company through my boss as a christmas present--he was in a super generous mood at the time), wedding photos (to be done in march 2012), and on a few family-friend dinners that I was obligated to pay for.

I made a few resolutions:

1. take the CRE (a government-standardized chinese examination) in June of this year.

- I'm going to study during every lunch period in the library.

2. be more humble - not a very popular concept, but I realize that the greatest people in the world who commend respect are those who are humble, willing to learn and become wise. It's also easier to accept instruction, advice and even rebuke if you have a humble attitude.

³³ 敬 畏 耶 和 華 是 智 慧 的 訓 誨 ； 尊 榮 以 前 ， 必 有 謙 卑 。 - 箴 言 15:33

3. be more kind - this goes with number 2. if you are humble, you are more willing to serve other people, and you will do beyond what you normally would do for someone.

4. take my work seriously and do everything to my best of ability, and be less half-assed.

- if I'm going to be working for the rest of my life, I might as well do it well, and do it with joy. And my action plan is to...intake more coffee. (haha kidding) I'm going to pray for the above and post relevant Bible proverbs around the house.

5. Make more plush

6. Become more flexible - joined a pilates class

7. Arrange some music - make piano arrangements for songs from Exaltios

New cute plushy (the sheep, which plays a lullaby when wound up)

shot from HK history museum...a crane badge signifying civil official of the 1st rank, obtained through taking imperial examinations
another shot from museum... hand written exam paper... so incredibly mind-boggling neat
ocean park trip from this month.
panda sticks face in a water canister.

A trip to Lantau Island with a super nice professor from harvard (where the airport and HK disneyland is, which is bigger but nowhere closely as populated as Hong Kong Island):

incense


old houses on stilts in Tai O, Lantau Island


the making of preserved salted egg yolks for putting in mooncakes and stuff...

Gundam expo:

Cute printed tissue and tissue box
random but pretty carousel
Bad english...

Sneakers under the wedding dress...sneaky!

big long overdue update...

~SICKNESS~

I had the best bout of sickness ever. The stomach flu worked for me in such positive ways I'm glad for it.

1. I got a day of sick leave, in which I did nothing but lie in bed and watch anime. There was the option of taking a second day off (which I didn't). I looked deathly (but didn't feel the part, haha!) for a day which elicited sympathy from people around me.

2. Because my body was focused on healing itself that I didn't give a flying crap about things that would normally be annoying, worrying or stressful. It was a therapeutic and enlightening experience.

3. I didn't eat solid food for 4 days (plus diarrhea to boot)...which means instant weight lost! When I could start eating food again, my stomach was still pretty queasy, which means I can eat whatever fattening foods I want without fear of it absorbing properly. It also gave me freedom to be picky about my food (I can tell my parents I don't want to eat something and they can't force me. haha!)

4. Restful 9 straight hours of sleep 3 days straight! The best part is... it wasn't like I felt sleepy when awake and doing stuff.

The buffet dinner my bf took me out for for my birthday (this was before the illness, and no it wasn't the cause)

These lobsters were actually consumed, but in such a skillful clean way that we were able to put them together again.

Went with friends to clean a beach in HK
Look what we found!

~WEDDING STUFF~
Okay, so wedding preparations update. So far, we've booked two photography places; one is an indoor shooting that my mom said was our practice run and her birthday present to me; and the other was the real thing, that will take the whole day (with Mona Lisa bridal). The real thing will be in March 2012 because apparently, it takes them 4 months to have ready our photos, and apparently, there are only two good seasons for photo taking outside in HK. I also went for some gown fitting, bought a girdle, and got the greatest wedding shoes ever....

These cost HK139. That's like 18 bucks Canadian. My mom will stick some blingish stickers on the front. Of course, nobody will be able to see clearly exactly what I'm wearing under my frothy dress. HohoHOho! Comfort and function is clearly very important.

Now we are starting to think of where we're going to live, which is contingent on a lot of factors, one of which is overall housing prices and government housing related schemes (these are probably unique aspects that couples have to think about, as the real estate market is very volatile here). Our mutual parents believe it's in our best interest if we were close to either of them.

~GRADUATION~

Finally, I've graduated from my Msc, the top student of my class. Alas, I don't get a scholarship... just a metal block to put at home. Unfortunately, I'm not particularly enthusiastic about graduating; only glad that I've gone through it and not have to go to class anymore. My only issue is that it feels more bought than earned. But it was a choice I made then to enroll, and I don't blame myself too much I suppose. That's why I would advise anyone thinking of going into a master's program (especially full time; mine was just part time), they should really think carefully and maybe gain more work experience first before taking the plunge.

~DEBUT!~

The christian music band I was involved in just made its debut! Check out the songs (most are cantonese): www.exaltios.com