the rest of china

well, i should finish writing about the china trip before i go to hawaii...oh the burdens of my life.

after lijiang, we met our guide for shangrila--shiro. he's a tibetan with an indian accent, which makes him sound very rolly and jolly. there's a certain joy and kindness that emanates from shiro...he said at 1 point that he would've been a monk, except he likes women too much. maybe in the next life, shiro. anyways, we had a fantastic time with him hiking in tiger leaping gorge. there's a higher trail that you can take if you have 3-4 days (and horses and packs), but the views are basically the same and we were under time pressure. plus, 12km of walking in 3000-4000m altitude is enough for me.

lots of rocks to climb along the way...you just have to make sure they're stable. we saw beware of avalanche signs all along the road. at one point, there was a red+white chalk outline along the edge..turns out the dirt beneath the road had collapsed=>not good for weight bearing. yikes!

twin goats!

and cows too. we also met some villagers and their donkeys, dogs, and chickens. they're subsistence farmers, going into town very rarely, and only to buy clothes. they lost 1 out of 3 terraced fields to the road construction last year but didn't get any compensation b/c the road was built for their own good. from their hut, we could hear dynamite blasting above.

the yangtze river

we made it to tina's guest house by evening and had a delicious dinner of stir fried things. my favorite part of the dinner, for once, was not the food. it was the big coal stove grumbling under the table. and then the snickers bar afterwards--the lack of sugar was hitting me hard.

shiro told us about some of the various tour groups he's led. some ppl are really nasty and treat him like a servant. guess which nationality those groups are? wrong! not american. americans are the best ones, actually, and tour guides fight over who gets to take them (gloat) (and he wasn't just saying that for my benefit either. he thought we were both british). anyways, israelis are the worst about complaining and demanding things (as a generalization of course, i'm sure some israelis are perfectly angelic).

the next day, we woke up to a wonderful breakfast of flatbread and eggs and corn porridge before driving out of the gorge into shangrila. first stop: songzanglin. a beautiful tibetan monastery.

there are no age restrictions to becoming a monk, but you have to be sponsored by your family. it's a terrific honor for a family to have a monk (but it costs a lot to sponsor one). it doesn't sound like a bad life--you spend your time studying how to be joyful. we heard a monk listening to madonna on the radio (she's a fellow buddhist after all). the monks all seem rather upbeat and cheery.

shiro told us that tibetans believe everything is formed by natural forces (like physics), and everything has a soul. we occupy our forms temporarily, like hotel rooms. all things have the potential to achieve godliness by eschewing ignorance. true happiness is attained thru detachment from all desires.

monks have 3 ranks. the first follows 9 rules, lasting for 5 years. the second follows 30 rules, and takes another 5 years. once you've mastered that, you're in the last stage of monkhood, with 336 rules. the dalai lama has already achieved enlightenment, but he chooses to continue in his earthly form to help others. apparently, the higher lamas can choose their next form, and they'll leave hints about where to find them in the next life. boys of age 3-4 get tested extensively before they're recognized as a lama.

the monks open the doors to the protector room at prayer time to let in spirits who want to meditate too.

we got fleeced by a small boy for change (to take pics)--he promised us long life and "snow white happiness". 2 yuan bought his loyalty for the day. he would praise us loudly whenever he happened upon us in the monastery.

and liver, i know you liked that little floppy dog, which i agree is cute, but i'm getting a tibetan dog when i grow up. the one i'm holding is 30 days old, and that big one is its 11month old papa. they're so big and docile...gentle dopey monsters.

the little white lamb had a black face. jon refused to pucker up for the (disease-ridden) lamb in the photo, but he didn't think twice about oinking at the pigs (more to his tastes).

we gave a monk a ride into town, where i bought some oranges--sugar-deprivation!

in the afternoon, we went to shika snow mtn. we had to rent huge army surplus jackets to shield ourselves from the wind (even tho i was already wearing a northface). the cable car ride took 40 min to 4500m. the elevation made me sleepy, but shiro forbade napping (threatening to fine me 5000 yuan).

look! jon's throwing an iceball at me! and instead of ducking, i decided to take a picture of it! just kidding. i'm holding that iceball above the camera.

on the way down, shiro managed to wangle some digits off a girl who shared our cable car. i had a terrific headache for the rest of the day.

tibetan hot pot. the table is metal and coal heated. my sprite kept boiling. a beggar wandered to our table, and shiro gave him some money so we did too. he said that old beggars need the help, but young beggars should go out and work.

that night we watched a traditional tibetan dancing show. if you have altitude sickness, DO NOT drink the homemade barley wine (even tho the locals claim it has vitamins A-G). it was all i could do not to puke when the other tourists dismembered and tucked into the roast piglet. the yak cheese wasn't very good either--it tastes like old sour alcohol mash. no wonder no restaurants in the area offer "traditional tibetan food"...it's gross. on the other hand, the dancing style is very cool in a whirling dervish way. the copious amount of audience participation dancing tuckered me out.

here you see jon winning a tug of war contest.

the prize? a traditional smock, a thick black mustache, and a demure tibetan bride...

and here he's parading around his newborn tibetan baby...

and here he's in a pile of shit (napa lake--unimpressive in the winter. the boys had fun stomping on the frozen puddles).

hot spring in the Natural Stone Bridge Environmental Park. very relaxing.

last lunch in shangri la: yake meat broiled in soy sauce, minced and fried yak meat, cold pickled turnips, tomato+fried eggs, stir-fried wild mushrooms, cabbage soup. everything except the yak is imported.

An unremarkable last supper (we had gorged ourselves on oreos and toffee biscuits on the 5 hour drive back to lijiang)...j refused to eat until they brought the tater tots...classy.

and back to the old town. we sat in the 3rd floor balcony of a coffee shop, sipping yogurts and watching the bonfire dance below. the end.

gong hei fat choy?

i just had a very chill chinese new years, lounging at home, doing nothing much (and by nothing much, i mean playing rockband). i got off work early wednesday b/c i pulled the short chopstick. do you know how exciting it is to leave at 2pm when you normally leave at 8pm? i do. that night, we bullied hubert into cooking some babouti for us. it's a baked south african/malaysian dish involving goat+apricots-- like a moussaka, but much sweeter and spicier (the dutch used malaysian slaves in south africa...they didn't trust the natives enough b/c the natives kept stealing their cows--that's spunk for ya).

thursday, we spent a lot of time selling jon's furniture. some guy bought his bed for HKD500 (we posted at HKD1000), then took his screwdriver to reassemble the bed, then called him 3 hours later b/c he couldn't figure out the reassembly, so jon ended up having to go to the guy's place. british boys are too polite, and ppl are ridiculous. at least we got the screwdriver back.

we finally tried karaoke here. the song selection is a bit stinted but otherwise it's good times. they had 2 pages of spice girls songs, and only 2 eminem ones...which means i actually had to try and sing instead of just hollering white boy rap lyrics at the top of my lungs.

i've had a massive burger craving for the last 2 days. where is my red meat?! where are my red packets?

day 3: lijiang

on the third day of christmas, an angel gave to me...

a trip to the hairy yak meadow via cable car (3700m high). the jade dragon snow mtn, a virgin peak, looms over. At the foot of the mountain is the Baisha Land (means white sand in chinese), named for the bodies of the slaughtered Puni warriors (history loves a pun). The Naxi won the land at great cost, but the land itself was too infertile to grow anything but grass for the cows to munch.

ah mah ni bo mi hon--6 holy words that spin the world around. the monks at the top of hairy yak meadow make circles, with tins, rosaries, with their daily walk. big circles and small circles, around the words that called into being. did things exist before they had names? do words create consciousness, or does consciousness create words? a shedding of the beast.

we wandered off the path next to a "lawn no trample" sign. we laid in the grass, under the mountain, and listened to the ringing in our heads. the sky was big above us.

zhang yimou (director of crouching tiger, hidden dragon) produced the impression lijiang show we watched in the afternoon. it's basically a bunch of villagers leading horses around and line dancing. they kept yelling things like "i dance for you! i sing for you! i'm just a villager!" the open-sky theater that gazes upon the mountain was supposed to lend majesty, but the show was too obvious for me. i fell asleep with my head on my hands and my butt on a tree stump. i think jon liked it well enough, maybe b/c he couldn't understand what they were saying.

that evening we spent in the village of the dogs, aka shuhe village, which is 600 years old. i ate my favorite of the local foods: chicken eye pea rice cakes--it's a glutinous fried mass that's mixed with bean sprouts, vinegar, spices...mmmm glutinous, mmmm fried (i actually like yak yogurt better, but only b/c you can drink it out of a glass bottle. i'm a sucker for drunken yogurts. plus, since you drink it, it's not technically a food right? which obviously means it doesn't contain any calories and won't do you any harm if you have 4 in 1 go). anyways, back to the dogs. we saw everything from st bernards to huskies to pitbulls to collies to cocker spaniels (not to mention the countless roaming mutts). i fed a demanding little thing all the ham from our soup under the table. the heartless bastard lost interest in me as soon as we left the table. i mean, is it too much to expect a bit of following around?

day 1: shenzhen to lijiang

Flying out of shenzhen was...amusing. first off, there was a riot in the airport. no beer bottles thrown or anything, but definitely a crowd doing organized chanting and maybe a placard or two. they were concentrated around a specific check-in line, so i assume they were protesting an airline. it looked impromptu--a bunch of irate passengers with high senses of civic responsibility. democracy is alive and well in china, where ppl believe that they really can make a difference. imagine what would've happened if they'd done it in the US...blup blup blup blup (thought bubbles)...big men in black suits and dogs and cops and backrooms and shoot first, ask questions later (don't scoff, airport police really did shoot some poor guy who didn't speak english and was reaching for his cell phone--conveniently, i've forgotten any specific details that would allow a googler to check my facts). the shenzhen airport's response to the rioters? one bewildered cop, waving his arms around ineffectively. la di da.

a man hawked a loogie (sp?) onto the floor of the bus taking us from the terminal to the plane. about a minute later, the guy next to the spitter drops his cup of coffee, splattering only the spitter. jon says it's the world spitting back at him (gravity: "take that!"). i like it when karma is swift...i felt quite righteous.

en route to our hotel in lijiang, we passed a man squatting on the back of a tricycle, carrying a hawk on his arm. apparently, hunting is a popular pasttime amongst the native naxi ppl (by the way, that x is soft to make a shhhh sound...so the word doesn't sound like nazi at all). our guide says 1 hawk eats the equivalent of 2 cows in a year. i wonder how many quails it's got to catch to make up for that.

and now some color on the local culture: Dongba (as practiced by the naxi's). Dongba tribal culture is matriarchal and hellish from a girl's perspective. the women do all the work and inherit all the property. the men...cultivate their entertainment skills. a dongba woman prides herself on not letting the man lift a finger in manual labor. she wants her husband to be a very good conversationalist, so she makes him go and read while she slaves in the fields. in the old days, no one got married. the women slept in a big house, and the men would slip in at night and entertain them. if that's matriarchy, give me patriarchy any day.

the creation myth: in the beginning, there were 9 brothers and 7 sisters. the 9 brothers broke open the sky, and the 7 sisters broke open the earth. i guess then they got bored, so they got it on. the gods got mad and sent a flood. only 1 man survived. he procreated with a god's daughter, leaving 3 offspring: the progenitors of the tibetans, the bai tribe, and the naxi ppl. my favorite part of this myth is when they call on "the wise men and the able men"--which category do you fit in?

on our way thru the cultural museum, we saw a HUGE crossbow. it was taller than me, must've taken 2-3 ppl to shoot. i asked our guide what it's for--hunting. what did they hunt?--rabbits. WHAT?! upon further prodding--bears.

the curator also showed us some ancient barks with ancient writing. she said the barks will last forever b/c they're made from special trees. when asked how old these barks were--100 yrs (but apparently they have ones that're 600 yrs old in special storage, and some stored at harvard if you guys want to go take a look).

then we learned about the love suicides. marriages are arranged, since its a land based society, but love suicides are practically heralded as good life choices. the way the thing usually goes is this: the boy and the girl run for the hills, frolick in a cave for 2 days or so, and then they either 1)eat poison or 2)throw themselves off the cliffs (always make sure the boy goes first, giving him a gentle shove if necessary--this from our male guide who says it's b/c boys are more wishywashy about love vs life choices). according to the lore, those who die by love suicide achieve great peace in paradise; they ride deer for horses and use tigers to till their fields (apparently they still have to till fields, but i guess that says something about the work ethic of the society). weird. i mean, you don't like your arranged mate? come commit love suicide instead! no downside, we promise.

that afternoon, we climbed elephant mtn, which isn't a tall mountain, but is a very high mtn considering we started at around 2000m. li (our guide) thought we were crazy (i don't think he enjoyed the exercise). halfway up, i spied a couple making out in the bushes. i guess not many ppl pass this way. and no wonder. we could really feel the elevation--let it be noted that in the time of need, jon refused to share his water (altho he did just huff his way up, and i had been sitting in the pavilion waiting for a while--that's right, i beat him up (the hill that is, remember no domestic violence here, move along, move along)).

then we went to the old town, which only got older after the earthquake knocked down all the modern concrete buildings to allow for the erection of more "old" wooden buildings. its a nice, quaint place where backpackers spend months at a time. no cars allowed, only horses and i guess bikes (if you're suicidal and fancy hitting your face on the slippery cobblestones repeatedly). plenty of hostels and coffee shops and wifi. at night, a hopping club scene.

J really liked the rice cakes with brown sugar (above). I preferred the yak's milk yogurt. neither of us really liked the dongba baba (but it's hard not to buy b/c, well, who doesn't like saying the words "baba please").

we bought some native teas (pu'er is made here!) for our parents after an extensive tasting procedure. the tea lady discarded the first cups and used tweezers to handle everything. very professional. apparently, teas can cure all sorts of ailments, including obesity. tune in for next post's installment of lily's china vacation--transition free, we promise (and holy shit i'm long winded).

on a horse in old town square

spicy wontons, a post-dinner snack.

for $10, you can hire one of these to take your wish down the river.

the good fight

wow, so many things have happened. we bought a spinning bike from the gym for $1000 (around USD125). they're switching the old bikes out for new-fangled electric ones. maybe now that i have this way of letting off steam, i won't beat jon so much (kidding! domestic violence is never funny). jon wants to name the bike "whizz", so he can add ambiguation to the words "i'm going for a whizz"--he's a wit, that one.

and, we are proud owners of rockband, the most awesome ps3 game EVER. let's just say what with the drumset and the bike, my apartment is (even more) crowded. we may have spent the entire weekend playing it...i can't wait to get home tonight and design tattoos for my rockers. we have two bands called aural mayhem (in which i'm the guitar and jon's the drums) and frog face fish (roles switched). ok, enough about my pretend life.

the ankle is slowly getting better. today i hopped gently on it (while supporting with hands on bed). i'm off the ibuprofen, which means i can feel the full benefits of doug's "massage" (ouch!). and he says i have a golfer's elbow, so we're working on that too.

WHAT'S THIS ABOUT TOSCI'S?!!! Save the flavors!

day 0.5 in china: shenzhen

<-jade dragon snow mtn in lijiang

this is gonna get very long, so its pseudo linear with bumps along the way that have nothing to do with anything...i guess that's how i write anyways. and it'll be in installments. and the photos will be random (can you tell i'm adding to this intro as i go?) the first thing i did in china was lose $100 to a conniving cabbie. i was gonna pay him $140 to drive me 40km (from the hk-shenzhen border to our hotel near the airport). when we were getting out, i handed him $200 and asked for change. he said he didn't have change, so i paid him $40 more (in HKD), and he fumbled around his pockets a bit before handing me back my benjamin (err i guess its actually a mao, but mao's not very descriptive since every bill in china is a mao)--or so i thought (DUN DUN DUN)! he handed me a fake hundred! of course, i didn't find out until i tried to spend it (which i did several times in many ways: after crumpling it up, after soaking it in water, to a street vendor wearing gloves. apparently its a very very bad fake. jon thinks its printed on A4 paper, but it wasn't my fault! it was dark! and um, yeah, it was dark!). i'm a bit peeved, b/c i already think that $140 for 40km is pretty steep. come on, 25miles?! i used to drive 25 miles to pick up my groceries!

funny things seen on tv while in china:

1. a jolly, bearded caucasian man turned himself blue. the interview was in canto, so i didn't catch a lot of it, but i think he did it with a glass of water and an electric current.
2. a program about ppl breaking guiness world records--1 guy hung horizontally from a helicopter for a significant number of minutes using a bowl and his abs (the bowl created a vacuum).
3. a live variety show of police/army propaganda. lots of soldier/dancers doing choreographed kicks, choreographed marching in place, and choreographed...police barracades (?), all to music, very weird. i guess china is very proud of its large standing army.

that first night in shenzhen, we ate at the dongbei equivalent of a yakitori place (which means it had that extra splash of msg to make it authentically chinese, but i'm not sure what makes it dongbei specifically except that the owner/chef is from dongbei. i guess in china, restaurants are labeled by the loyalty of the workers, not by the type of food--which was HOT). everything came skewered, well, except for the BIG POT of spicy soup filled with yummy veggies. we daredn't (is that an ok contraction for "dared not"?) try the fuzzy egg or the various organs, but jon was very brave and crunched the cartilage like any old pro. of course, i ordered the corn, eggplant, and bokchoy (on a stick! all on a stick!), and they were delicious. we ate as much of the hot sauce soup as possible, fishing out the solids and dabbing them on plates to relieve them of their fiery bathwater. nevertheless, i was jonesing for a popsicle afterwards (in keeping with the sticked theme). instead, i got a "strawberry" ice cream cone--half the cone was missing, the ice cream tasted very artificial, and the "real fruit" turned out to be raisins. on the upside, 1 big bottle of beer only costs $4! 1 handle of rice liquor only costs $5! (not that we bought any, but it's refreshing to see that we could've gotten drunk cheaply--that's the equivalent of 50 cents, btw). and that's how we spent our first night in china.

again

i sprained my ankle last night at pickup. i didn't even step in a hole or on a foot/umbrella handle. all i did was step. i guess my legs were pretty tired from the 3 hours of beach disc sat night and the 8km run sunday morning...but today my muscles aren't sore at all. as sprains go, its pretty mild--definite tearing of stuff, but no discoloration. i had to hop up my 5 flights of stairs last night, but today, i can put pressure on it. i'm seeing the physio 3 times this week for ultrasound. i love health insurance.

other than that, the weekend was terrific. saturday, we played beach from 3-6. towards the end, we were playing games to 5, make it take it, which is an AWFUL idea on sand. turnovers cost so much more, and you're basically running nonstop. i tried to cover jon on two of his deep cuts, but he blew right by me. pshhh, boys. great fun tho. the next morning, we caught the 8:30am pats vs jags game in stanley at MAIN STREET USA, an ostensibly american bar with a swiss chef (they even had swiss fondue on the menu). very nice eggs. go pats!

afterwards, we jogged the catchwater back to parkview. the catchwater is the flatest jog in hk, except at the end where you're going uphill for 10 min straight. phew. i love jogging back to parkview, b/c linda and hubert always feed us well. last week, hubert made true german goulash (it stewed for over 24 hours). this week, we had smoothies. we just had time to ride the bus back to central and pick up our cleats before heading to pickup.

today, jon is home sick with a cold, and i'm gimping around the streets of the city. go us!

cat got my tongue

it's not that i have nothing to say, it's that last wednesday or so, i lost my coherency. all of a sudden it became incredibly hard to make sentences, english or otherwise. this is not good. it's especially not good for the people i'm interviewing. i can't hold up my end of a conversation to save a life (hopefully not mine). unfortunately, this doesn't seem to limit my penchant for talking. i mean, i was never eloquent, but usually, when i opened my mouth, something pseudo-ok would come out...i'm still opening my mouth, but i think i'm just confusing a lot of ppl, including myself. non sequiturs galore. sigh. i've gotta stop talking. it's making me look pretty dumb.

on the bright side, i had a dream last night that involved a smite reunion and a lot of hugging.

a dancing monk

its beginning to smell a lot like christmas

the promotions just came out, and philipp (my boss) is now an MD! yay! he insists that deep down, he's still the same old philipp, but just in case, i've taken to sir'ing him. "would sir like a coffee?" and so on. one never knows how careful one should be. jk. i only do it b/c it makes me feel very charlie brown and somewhat southern. yesterday he tried to make us stop sir'ing, to which we began sire'ing, and now we can sir to our big bald heads' content (who says hearts are the only organs seeking content? p.p.s. it's weird that content means happy but contention means strife).

hold that thought. i just lost a food challenge, and my face is covered in chocolate donut (not to mention egg). a bit of background: brian bought me a rice box from the congee place. as soon as he gets back to the office, a broker turkey arrives. keep in mind that i already have a box of half eaten lobster penne in the fridge and that i'm leaving for a 5 day vacation tonight. now. what would you do? hmmm? of course, you'd do your darndest to give both meals the respect they deserve. so. i eat all the beef and veg and egg from my lunch box. spurning the rest of the rice, i go whole hog for the turkey (mom would be proud--all those years of buffet meals has prepared me for just this moment in my professional life--its all about priorities). i can only describe free turkey meals at work so many times, but i guess once more can't hurt: cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, two types of gravy, sweet potatoes, nutty, mushroom stuffing, and of course a ham+turkey. i'm digging in with both hands, turkey bones hanging from my mouth, crunching on the cartilege, chewing the fat, wiping my brow, and carrying right on. finallly, i'm sated. full. i even say no to the proffered wing (what's the difference between proffering and offering? probably the same as between a raven and a writing desk). and then, as i'm taking a stroll around the floor (another tip taught by years of all-you-can-eating--when the pain sets in, a stroll around the floor always helps), drew (another new promotion) shows me the donuts.

the chocolate cake donuts are the only ones left, but those are my favorites anyways. he bets me i can't eat 3 in a minute. we line up a few more people on his side of the bet, so the stakes are: if i can swallow 3 in 1 min, i get HKD 800. if i can get 3 in my mouth inside of 1 min, we're flat. if i can't, i owe them all coffee. well, i couldn't. i got thru 2, and the last one sat soaking in my cups of hot water. i thought that would be an ingenious idea--presoaking them. turns out, i should've brought a spoon if i was gonna turn em into sludge. the coffee cost me HKD 160.

people kept asking me afterwards if i felt alright. they were concerned i would puke. but in all seriousness, folks, its only 2 donuts. i can eat 2 donuts in my sleep with both hands tied behind my back while yodeling. the only real after effect is the jitteriness. maybe its the sugar rush, more likely, its the adrenaline rush. i think i did alright for my first speed eating contest. normally, i'm a volume girl. aw fuck it. there's no graceful way to sign off from an entry like this. see yall later.

a memo to my adult self re disciplining future children:

1. make the suckers jump rope for punishment (thanks minwah)

2. have family bouncing circles to recount daily news (did you enjoy school today? (bounce bounce)). it'll be our version of family prayer or whatever it was that families normally did together (before tv, video games, and slim shady ruined the american youth).

3. serve up chocolate cereal as dessert (always plan for dessert).

as outraged as always

did you know (not that you care) that i can only see my credit card history for the past 60 days? anything beyond that, i have to pay HKD30 per month (!!). isn't that bordering on criminal? don't i have a right to my credit history? this is almost as bad as when i found out we have to pay for water. man, was i outraged. doesn't water seem like something one should get for free? just for being and breathing and living? the pre-germ theory me sure thought so (i mean, it doesn't grow from trees, but it sure does fall from the sky). anyways.

2 weeks till christmas! jon and i are going to lijiang, china. we're gonna ride horses, pick tea, and eat yak milk, all at the base of snow mountains. maybe we'll even see some tibetan monks (altho i'm told they're an endangered species). we're also spending a day in shangri la. (speaking of lovely things: i'm eating falafel and it is de-li-cious. my breath will no doubt smell of onions for the rest of the day, but i'm willing to make the sacrifice. how devoted are you to your falafel?).

what else...we got the wii mod'd so now we can play downloaded games. jon surreptitiously bought me ddr (dance! dance! revolution!!!) and pads, but i found him out. downside: no xmas surprise. upside: DDR!! hurrah for immediate gratification. (i can see the end of the falafel, and i'm sad about the upcoming dearth).

oh, and last weekend, i saw pink dolphins. they're actually called chinese white dolphins, but their blood circulation makes them pink. the wwf guide defended the name by saying they turn white after death. as in, they've found carcasses and the carcasses are white. oh my, how macabre. i wonder if the same naming mechanism applies to (white) people. ahem. we actually saw quite a few dolphins, and they swam right up to the boat--mommas with their babies (which are gray), friends swimming side by side, lone dolphins chasing fishing boats. i was very pleasantly surprised, since at the beginning of the journey, there's all this hedging talk about "we don't guarantee that we'll see any dolphins, pls keep all your eyes peeled, etc etc" (there goes the last falafel...sigh. remember that scene in ice age where the last female taekwondodo fell off the edge? that was awesome. TAE KWON DO DO!).

enough randomness for one day. now back to your regular scheduled programming.

he's on my list

every time i touch my forehead, i think of mike ying. mike ying is the bastard who winged a disc into my forehead on sunday. we had just finished talking about how we should throw to the wide open people, regardless of their field position. i was cutting in, and i was wide open. i guess subconsciously, at least, he remembered our talk. he wound up for a HUGE backhand, released in some crazy ass bladey way, and the disc ended up embedded in my forehead. actually, i managed to raise my left hand in time, so the disc hit my thumb really hard and only glanced off my head pseudo-hard. but still, hard enough to bruise. i got up and tackled him. but still. fucking mike ying.

(incidentally i touch my forehead a lot more than i realized)
(what is it with me and backhand injuries? my elbow is still crappy in a way that won't let me straighten completely. dr laura, pls help).

(jon and i (think we) saw the bat signal the other day. they're filming the new batman in hk, and there was this huge crane with a huge skylight right outside my apartment. so we didn't see the actual bat signal in the sky, but we could've seen the thing making the bat signal! wouldn't it be cool to be a movie set engineer? you've got 3 days to make something that makes the bat signal: ready, steady, go!)

spreading the love

ultimate in asia (rocks)

ugh...

the day after thanksgiving sucks. i'm suffering a massive food hangover. and i've still got tonight's dinner with which to contend. maybe by then, i'll have learned some restraint (ha!). i'm faltering on this marathon eating trip. ho boy.

happy black friday everyone. go buy a wii.

REJOICE!

my favorite day of the year is here! olive ordered a turkey (and a ham) and gravy and mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce and roasted pumpkin from the mandarin oriental (a very fancy hotel). bless her soul. its delicious and delicious. can we say, rapture? and elaine cut off all the skin bits b/c she never eats it, so i've saved it all from the discard pile. i love skin. let us bow our heads and eat. amen.

and don't let's forget dinner (tonight)! and dinner (tomorrow night)! may the serial tday meal tradition live on. prepare the moo moos, i'ma gonna eat me some boids!

booyah!

someone called me professional today! as in, my behavior is professional. HA! and, she said i'm a good communicator. we were on a panel for a recruiting event together, and she sent an email to my boss afterwards. wow, never in a long time did i expect to grow into professional AND good communicator. yes, i am gloating, thanks very much; i've fooled them all.

chinalisation and randomization

seriously, the made-up word game has gone too far. a famous financial analyst here has a chinalisation report. first of all, that isn't a word. second of all, that ISN'T a word. third of all, if it were a word, it'd be spelled chinaliZation. fool.

i'm back from manila, and it was a blast. our paltry team of 8 picked up 4 more guys and 1 more girl. the girl, pong, played coed in college for colby (in maine), and she had spent last summer in boston (speaking of first world connections, i met jenny yang (?) who plays/played for emory and had nancy as her camp counselor at nutc! led to an instantaneous rave about the awesomeness of nancy. yay nancy!).

the tourney organizers knew how small our team was, so they seeded us in the b division. we played only local teams, one of which beat us, preventing us from playing up into elim rounds. its amazing how much the sport has grown in the phillippines. they have a year round 20 team league. the style of play is very distinctive. lots of squirrelly handler cuts, io's+high release backhands, every once in a while, jack it deep. all of their teams are super quick, and some of their guys have amazing ups. i'm particularly impressed with how much they use their girls. my goal this tourney was to practice poaching/baiting. i got punished for it twice with deep throws to the girls for scores. (i think one of them was a hammer). lesson learned, only let your girl go deep if there's a guy deeper than her. otherwise, i felt pretty good for my poaching. i definitely stopped a couple of throws to guys, even getting a d on a deep throw. baiting-wise, i got 2 run thru catches in 1 game, but in the other games, they wouldn't throw to their girls if i was anywhere near, even tho i was running flat footed and breathing heavily (pretending to be tired).

i also think i'm getting better at the leadership thing--ironic, given this is the first tourney in a while where i wasn't actually a captain. maybe i just don't like the responsibility. or maybe i just enjoy butting in.

anyways, the game we lost, we lost b/c we couldn't stop their deep threat, which astounded me b/c we have really good deep men. a couple were misreads, and maybe the ground is softer than our guys are used to, so they can't jump as high and end up jumping too early (oh yeah! the ground was amazingly soft and muddy--my favorite field conditions, so the turf shoes were unneeded after all). in retrospect, maybe we should've just had one of our guys backing their deep the entire game (like c-mo did to beau in 2004 finals). i dunno, as a girl, there's very little you can do when we lose like that. as a pseudo-captain...i dunno. maybe we should've used more of a zone, but their guy was beating us in 1 on 1 matchups all over the place. maybe the cup could've stopped the huck. ah well.

oh, and the first game, i was the rabbit for a 1-3-3, which was working well, until their main handler winds up for a huge backhand, and i manage to get my right hand in the way. i think the impact twisted something in my elbow (of course he called the foul, and i couldn't contest). i sat out for the rest of that game, and i could neither straighten all the way nor bend all the way without pain for the rest of the tourney. made my forehand very suspect. 1 game, i completely lost my io flick. foo. and sat night, i couldn't reach my face with my right hand, which means: left handed washing of hair, left handed brushing of teeth, left handed eating of food. you have no idea how much my face misses my right hand. my hamstring, on the other hand (har har), held up very well.

and now for something completely different. FOOD! last night, i ate three dinners: a sandwich and a bun at the manila airport, my in-flight meal (which tasted great), and a plate of spaghetti at the hk airport. we spent so much time eating that we caught the rest of our teammates at the airport express for the ride back into town (they had taken a later flight). AND. are you ready for this? thursday is thanksgiving! it totally snuck up on me this year. but i do have a tday dinner thursday, a tday dinner friday, and a recovery hike saturday. i'm pumped. this is gonna be a great week.

oh, and michelle wu from smite 2002 and smitten 2007 is in town! i'm "doing" dinner with her tonight (what is up with the doing of the meals? is dinner your mom? no? then we won't be doing it, will we? actually, michelle said "having dinner" or something equally innocuous, but i'm sick of the doing...everyone past a certain age/importance seems to want to do their meals). anyways, i'm excited for korean food tonight with wu-tang.

crazy

its officially been a year (and longer). this time last year, i was in perth, hoping my scabby knee would heal faster, scolding late-bidding men who invariably laid out into my lower back, gawking at flaming palm trees, carrying naked manoah on my shoulders (did i mention i participated in a cogender landshark?). man. good times, durians.

this weekend, i'm going to manila again. last year, it was my first real asian tournament (hk doesn't count b/c i missed the first day, and perth doesn't count b/c it was in australia). i played basically savage the entire tourney, and left with a severe limp and what felt like a broken foot (i never got it xrayed, so i still don't know for sure--the attempt to get it xrayed was a complete fiasco. i was so frustrated i punched a wall. here's how xrays in hk work: you pay the gp, the gp gives you a prescription for an xray, you walk to the xray facility, which is a couple of blocks away, you hand them the paper, they take the xrays, they send the xrays back to your doctor, who diagnoses you or whatever. here's what they did to me: they gave me the paper, sent me hobbling in heels to the facility (my foot was hurt, remember?), i get there, the lady looks at my paper, and tells me they don't take xrays of feet. what?! if i want feet xrays, they have a facility in causeway bay or mongkok or somewhere else equally far and not workday accessible. so. i ask for my money back. except they don't have my money, the gp has my money. so i had to hobble back to the gp to get my money back from the incompetant receptionists, who said, "whoops, oh right, i forgot they don't do feet." and to add to the frustration factor, i had lost my voice so all i could do was rasp angrily and of course, punch a wall). holy aside batman!

anyways, here i am, about to go back to manila. last weekend, i bought a pair of turfshoes in preparation for the baked clay fields. and in spite of the tournament name (manila spirits), i'm a tad worried. last year, a player on taiwan dove on top of a disc that had kicked up clouds of dust and called it up. in full view of his entire sideline, who became conveniently mute at the moment (they had been yelling calls from the line all game). they also played a cup that perpetually triple teamed. they knew they were doing it too. their coach encouraged it. blah. hopefully, this year it'll be better. we have a really fun group going.

otherwise, just lots of histrionics around the wfdf asian tournament. who's eligible, who's not, who has the right to rep hk, who's not local enough, etc. there's no drama like disc drama. there's no drama like disc drama. there's no drama like disc drama (now take me back to smite 2004!).

snacks and nunchucks

imagine my joy when i opened my desk drawer and found an unfinished box of wheat thins! yay! this never happens to me b/c i am a wheat thin addict. i have no reason nor have i restraint, so very rarely do i leave any wheat thins once i start. i do this with cheezels too (cheezels are my new favorite cheesy snack. they're a tad sweeter than cheetohs, and come in a crunchy O shape. somehow perfect).

whoops, there goes my last wheat thin. these pleasures are always short lived.

i am caught up in wii zelda, which makes me an antisocial and very controlling wii'er. when jon is playing, i am always looking over his shoulder yelling "ROLL DAMNIT ROLL!" or "NO, THE OTHER LEFT!" or very simply, "AAARRRRRGHHH!" one day, i will stamp my feet and pull my hair and fall thru the floor into oblivion like rumpelstiltskin. till then, little men.

phuket!

random stuff rack related:
on the clearance rack at wellcome (grocery store): strawberry flavored correctional fluid (i wonder why its on sale?).
i saw a man wheeling a raw rack of meat on his bike, uncovered, in the rain. good morning hong kong!

jon and i went to phuket (thailand) for a week on the beach with both sets of parents. i was a little nervous going into the event. luckily, my dad set the mood of graciousness early. as a frequent traveller, he gets access to all the first class lounges. he returned with a canvas bag full of hardboiled eggs and ice cream cups. it was quite magical watching him produce item after item from his mary poppins sack (and people wonder why i never blush anymore).

we stayed at the evason six senses suite. VERY nice. most ppl who go don't leave the resort at all. they have everything from spas to libraries to game rooms (including foosball and ps2) to gyms to pools and pools and pools (and waterslide). they even have a private island, replete with snorkelling (coral!), parasailing, sea kayaking, and windsurfing. our parents spent a lot of time lounging on that island (almost as much time as they spent at the breakfast buffet: 3hrs every day, ppl, who the heck eats breakfast for 3 hours a day?! oh right, the ppl who spawned me).

jon and i spent the first four days getting our padi scuba licenses. i totally kicked his butt on the written tests (even tho i slept thru all the videos and he's taken the course before). booyah! ahem. the water was pretty choppy for our sea dives--i've never seen so much puke in my life (from the passengers, not the fish). luckily, underwater visibility was still good. our first dive was a reef dive. who knew fish came in so many colors? how is it advantageous to be neon pink with bright yellow checks? i almost put my hand right thru a scorpion fish (which is crazy poisonous)...it was the only thing we saw (or didn't see, in my case) that blended perfectly into the sandy bottom (bastard was tan colored). our instructor, born, showed us all sorts of sea slugs and baby moray eels, etc. no idea how she found them...she'd tease them out of their holes with her little bell. they were never larger than my little pinky. my favorite fish were big and white with reddish bellies. they had bright yellow, forked tongues that they'd jab into the sand over and over, like snakes (why doesn't satan have a forked tongue?). oh, and of course, the fluke, who is the duke of soul. jk. what is a fluke anyways?

our next couple of dives were all wall dives, which means you dive near these rock islands that rise vertically out of the water. underwater, tons of creatures are anchored to the nooks and crannies in the rock. you get all of the anemones and corals and shrimp and slugs that you'd get in shallower reefs, but you also get the schooling fish and rays and sharks of the deeper waters (altho we didn't see any sharks). floating in a school of fish is amazing, especially when they all zig at the same time (how do they know?). on the second day, the current was pretty strong, and i sat on a sea anemone. i was trying to kneel on the bottom while jon did a skills test, but the water kept pushing me backwards, and before i knew it something was tickling my leg. the pain comes on slowly, like eating spicy food. you can't feel the burn until its way too late. and then...i was in the shower trying to pee on myself. i have no dignity in these types of situations (b/c i'm normally so composed). then born tells me that vinegar works equally well. oh good. btw, there is woefully little info about anemone stings on the internet. they hurt for a couple of days, then they play like they're getting better (swelling goes down), then they come back for a double whammy--of itchiness! they started feeling like poison ivy! i had to scald them under hot water to keep from scratching. stupid anemones. still, i can't wait till my next dive. floating underwater for hours at a time is a very relaxing way to be. diving also increased my bathing tolerance. no longer am i limited by wrinkly digits (convenient cuz our room had a very large tub, something i've definitely been missing in hk).

the rest of our time was spent atop elephants and in cabarets (mom insisted on going--she knows thailands' trannies are second to none).

Dad took about 50 pictures of this one, and about 1 of everyone else. maybe he wanted to make a flipbook of her dance.

costumes and sets were pretttttty darn elaborate.

soft porn notwithstanding, dad is getting better with his large zoom lens.

infinity pool

my parents, kayaking off. don't be fooled, before long, my mom had stretched out with her book and her parasol, while my dad was charged with ferrying her around the island.

airplane!

elephant

crow

a study in sweet meats

i'm very particular about my fruits and juices. i don't like them too sweet. every morning, i'd eat a plateful of papaya, plus the odd bits of pomelo. the jackfruit, the longan, the guava, even the watermelon and pineapple proved less pleasureable. the first morning, the plethora of fruit juices excited me. i tried a peach. it was intrusive. since then, i stuck to the citrus.

breakfast was fantastic: the pianist, the soft rain and soft eggs. the view overlooked the beach, where an empty long boat floated in melancholy solitude. i ate in an anime setting.

the japanese girls nibbled their salads. the germans had their cold cuts and dark breads. the americans loomed over their mountains of rolls, peaks of butter. the british returned for course after course, each wet fruit eaten just as primly as each fresh fruit as each dried fruit. the chinese stored their nuts in their napkins. i swallowed the world to beat them all.

back in the fold

i played disc for the first time in 2 months on sunday. conclusions: i have lost a gear, which is ok, b/c i'll get it back. the time off was just what i needed--it totally up'd the joy factor.

we had a league game yesterday. there was a new guy on our team (paul). people were so ridiculous to him. its like no one thinks about how their words can affect him. AND, its not like the ppl saying these things are not liabilities themselves. some samples (paraphrased):

• upon his first attempt at joining the field, after sitting for about 8 points: "oh paul, are you sure you should play this point? i mean, we're on offense, which means its important that we catch and throw. maybe you should come on for a d point instead?" translation: you can't catch, you can't throw! it's HARD, this frisbee game that you're trying to pick up.
• i dragged him on the field anyways. and then "ok, paul, just remember to do this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this. oh, and if you could just stand to the very left side of the field, that'd be great." translation: don't get in our way! this game is hard!
• "ohhhh, i see you don't have cleats on. it's pretty slippery out there, you want to be careful." wtf! why don't you just castrate the guy and be done with it?

anyways. i can't wait till next i disc. woot!

happy mooncake day!

(technically, it's midautumn festival, but i think all holidays should follow in t-day's footsteps and answer to their signature foods)

i just scored two mooncakes (that's 4 egg yolks), 1 chocolate bar, and 1 asian pear, plus a boatload of sympathy. hurrah!

from about mid september to post new years, a trading floor is a food lovers paradise. brokers from all over send baskets of chocolate, mooncakes, fruit, fruitcakes, toffees, cookies, teas, hams, you get the idea. unfortunately, as a structurer (i.e. not a client of a broker), none of these baskets are directed at me. so, i scrounge what i can.

holy who cares batman! i actually just wanted to gloat about my food getting prowess. queenie had these two leftover mooncakes, and she couldn't get rid of them (they're really sweet, and everyone but EVERYONE here is on a diet). to get me to take them, she had to throw in the chocolate bar and the asian pear (moohaha). check out my poker face, i played that situation like your mother. plus, according to her, its bad luck to have them past today (b/c if you don't eat the mooncake on time, you don't find out about the invading hordes in time, duh!*) .

*we (as in my people, the chinese) celebrate this holiday b/c a long time ago, some other people were going to attack them. our spies found out about this attack, but couldn't communicate it except by means of mooncake (and memory and muchness), so they (the spies) baked a msg into the mooncakes and distributed it to the people.** it's like, if paul revere were a baker and not given to riding so many horses.

**good thing the spies didn't give the mooncakes to my grandmother (not that she's actually THAT old), b/c she's the type that would save the cakes and give them to someone as a regift when they were properly aged (read: hard as a moonrock, har har).

KRON NO LONGER!

1. YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current car)

pepper maxima

2.YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (fave ice cream flavor, favorite cookie)

bananas foster (isn't this more like a porn name?)

3. YOUR “FLY Guy/Girl” NAME: (first initial of first name, first three letters of your last name)

lhua (if by fly you meant fob, you'd be spot on)

4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal)

chocolate cheetah (another pornish name)

5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born)

jie beijing (now this one is detective)

6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first)

huali (aaaaaannnnd fob)

7. SUPERHERO NAME: (”The” + 2nd favorite color, favorite drink)

The Yellow Water (ha! beware you catholic schoolboys)

8. NASCAR NAME: (the first names of your grandfathers)

deben yuting (FOB!)

9. STRIPPER NAME: ( the name of your favorite perfume/cologne/scent, favorite candy)

old spice snickers (WHAT?! this one should've been easy!)

10.WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother’s & father’s middle names )

jenny james (my mom doesn't have a middle name, so i'm using both of their US pseudonyms. never trust ppl with first name last names--they're snitches).

11. TV WEATHER ANCHOR NAME: (Your 5th grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with the same letter)

Smith Schenectedy (i've always wanted that last name. "and now, to smith schenectedy for your weather forecast.")

12. SPY NAME: (your favorite season/holiday, flower)

Thanksgiving Daisy (i bet they were angling for christmas, or maybe pussy counts as a season(ing) now?)

13. CARTOON NAME: (favorite fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now + "ie" or "y")

peach pantsy (i'd have curly orange hair and a large diaper)

14. HIPPY NAME: (What you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree)

pizza joshua (now i'm a detective in the witness protection program)

15. YOUR ROCKSTAR TOUR NAME: (”The” + Your fave hobby/craft, fave weather element + “Tour”)

The Ultimate Wind Tour (sounds like there'll be lots of oboes in MY band. who doesn't like ducks?)

Thanks to Death Wore a Feathered Mullet for the workday entertainment.

rubbernecking

we went to a NIN concert last night, and this morning i couldn't do a headstand for the life of me. the venue was standing room only, with only say 200 ppl, so we got really close to the stage. in a normal NIN concert, i'd probably be more timid, but in this land, fear is inversely scaled by the size of its people-->into the mosh pit i go! i got punched in the throat by a 12 year old boy-->out of the mosh pit i go! i realized i'm a square when someone threw the drumsticks into the crowd...all i could think was, "but someone could lose an eye". Doesn't anyone remember the sole casulaty of the sox riots? shot in the eye with a rubber bullet.

a weekend in review

last weekend was just about perfect. saturday consisted of lots of napping, interrupted only by the switching of locations between couch and bed.

we watched bourne ultimatum in the afternoon. it has got to be one of the best feel-good, stick it to the man movies, but it incorporates no smiling (julia stiles cracks the only smile of the entire film in the last scene). i've decided that jason bourne is the american james bond. very fitting, considering he's taken bond's rebellious streak that much further.

dinner followed at crystal jade. we're trying to branch out from our normal xiaolongbao, ma po tofu, kungpao chicken choices, so we got kungpao chicken, kongxin cai, fried rice, and xiaolong bao. hey, the classics are classics for a reason. AND for once in my life, i ordered just the right volume of food! very proud (i did feel a bit restricted in choices).

sunday, we woke up early to wakeboard with albert. new trick of the session: switching from normal to goofy. i'm not so good at it--maybe 1/3 success rate, but jon is a pro. i tried to jump goofy too, but i kept twisting in mid air to try to put my left foot forward. my hands very naturally go towards my left hip, and then half way, i'd remember to keep my hands at my right hip, but it'd be too late and i'd land kinda horizontal halfwayinbetween->fall fall fall.

since wakeboarding is at deep water bay, we usually go to stanley for breakfast afterwards. i finally found a stanley restaurant i like. it's the italian looking one with checkered tableclothes. i had banana pancakes with cheddar cheese scrambled eggs, and then i ate jon's hash browns and toast. mmmm...thusly fed, we felt adequately prepared for the hike from stanley to happy valley (our preferred mode of transport). we managed to do it in 1.5 hours, which is pretty frickin fast for me (average time is around 2hrs). my calves are still sore. on the other side (of the mountains), we taxi's home, showered, and half heartedly watched prime (on hbo)--what's with uma thurman making these random chick flicks? isn't she like 40? why is she suddenly expanding her repertoire to include the crappy genres? maybe its some kind of midlife crisis that allows her to kiss cute 20 somethings. inevitably, we fell asleep, waking up at around 9pm to venture towards dinner (unremarkable, crappy canto food). lovely lovely.