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.

a precarious balance

some might say that life is dictated by karma: the cosmic bank account of good actions leading to good fortunes. i'm nowhere near that sophisticated.

for me, life is about the ebb and flow of calories: how to spend calories so that i can eat more. its a cycle, but an exciting one. i like exercise b/c it allows me to eat a lot. i eat a lot so i have to exercise. i think its pretty fitting that i have two blogs, one dedicated to eating (this one), and one dedicated to workouts. mmmm yum and heeeeyah!

two by two

we've recently moved back into my apartment upon the fulfillment of two very important requirements:

• the fixing of my aircon and
• the beating of resistance in hard mode.

unfortunately, my apartment is out of gas (i buy it in cannisters b/c i'm retro like that), which means two things:

• no hot water and
• no, well, gas.

no hot water is not a big deal for two reasons:

• hk is so hot that cold water comes out lukewarm and
• we never shower anyways

but no gas means jon is rendered useless in his role as cook-y. luckily for us, i am (cue theme music) microwave chef extraordinaire! tada! dundundundundundun! (that was a fanfare in case you missed it) yesterday, i made pasta with marinara sauce AND broccoli casserole (a can of cream of asparagus soup dumped on a bunch of broccoli). it counts as cooking b/c i had to add my own spicy mustard. i'm very concerned about counting.

bushism of the day

a coworker just asked me if i like Macedonian nuts. [insert tasteless, racially inappropriate joke here]

i've eaten three sugar plums today, and only now, while gnoshing* the last one, did i make the association with the sugar plum fairies of nutcracker fame. which is a shame, b/c i danced as one during the xmas production in grade school. how my synapses fail me!

* dunno if there should be a silent g there, but it makes the word seem wiser, no?

epic battle of the day

all i wanted was 4 cokes to go with my free pizza. the vending machine on our floor had run out. travesty. i, uncompromising and undeterred (diet coke doesn't cut it today), asked the receptionist if other floors had vending machines. she told me the 22nd floor. hope glimmers on the horizon.

in the elevator, i push the button for the 22nd floor. the elevator moves. i exit when the doors open. it took me a good 5 min to figure out that i was on the wrong floor. apparently the 22nd floor requires a card swipe. sneaky bastards. i ride the next elevator all the way down and all the way up again.

i find the vending machine, but my octopus card is out of money. i only have enough change for two cokes. i ask a nice lady to change a ten, she runs to her desk and comes back. she watches as i buy all 4 cokes. i bend over to get my cokes from the machine. the machine is unyielding. the little flap door is stuck on the backup of cokes. wtf. who designed these bastards? the other cokes are stacked up behind the door, which opens inwards. the extrication is painful and, even for me, slightly embarassing. i practically have both feet against the coke machine. i finally have to dent the cans to get them out. if i were the lady standing in line behind me, waiting to get her cokes, i would've been greatly amused.

a couple of things

i am in hong kong, eating an orange grown in south africa.

i can almost do a pullup, underhanded, if i pseudo jump at the beginning (aka i can't do a pullup).

jon and i have beaten Resistance: FALL OF MAN once, and now we're in our second run thru (in hard mode, nonetheless), b/c the clever game promised us new weapons if we played again. so far, we've found the backlash grenade (that traps the enemy and his fire in a dome thru which we can shoot but he can't), the airfuel grenade (goes boom very big), and the arc charger gun (whose electric flame latches onto flesh and arcs from living thing to living thing to kill them all dead). the biggest surprise, however, has been a more fundamental one. the main character, see, is a white american army guy. he saves the world. i've always assumed that in two player mode, the second character (my character) is just the same as the main guy (Sgt Nathan Hale). the storyline between scenes only ever mentions Hale (Hale was the only survivor, Hale did this, Hale did that). Turns out, my guy is black. kinda funny that the game makers decided to make the black guy the one whose achievements are never mentioned in the annals of videogame history.

A Regional Memorandum

Number 8 Typhoon Signal in Hong Kong

The Hong Kong Observatory has announced that a number 8 typhoon signal is expected to be hoisted within the next hour. The Government advises that members of the public with long or difficult journeys, or those having to return to outlying Islands, should begin their journey now.

If the number 8 signal is actually hoisted, all other staff that wish to commute home are encouraged to do so at any time, but are strongly advised to take appropriate safety precautions until the number 8 signal is lowered. Those with critical coverage responsibilities please confirm with your manager to ensure the appropriate coverage is achieved.

We expect the office to return to normal operation if the number 8 signal is lowered during normal business hours.

(I love weird weather phenomena. super duper excited. antsies in my pantsies. i want to go home and play Resistance: FALL OF MAN!)

wind and water

the spark plug in my ac died. i've been staying at jon's. now i'm addicted to cheddar cheese sandwiches. not a day goes by that i do not miss their mustardy goodness.

in other news, i'm learning how to wakeboard. the learning curve is surprisingly mild, probably b/c falling holds no fear. altho, i did fall on my face hard enough to give myself a dull headache. i've gone three times, and i can already go goofy (sorta), go one handed, carve (sorta), and jump (sorta). by jump, i mean i can go outside of the wake on my toe edge, and come back into the wake hard on my heel edge, catching a little bit of air on the transition. i still can't land a bunnyhop. i doubt we'll do this enough to learn real tricks (prohibitive costs), but its cool to be able to pseudo wakeboard. i'm all about pseudo skillz.

signposting

look down

excavation

things here are crazy out of order, but i've had an army of exciting weekends lined up in rows and rows and rows. first there was megajunk, then jfest+boston, then birthday, then survivor beach, then popping the x cherry+wakeboarding+champagne brunch. i'm exhausted, and all i want to do this weekend is finish harry potter before more loud mouths on the escalator decide to scream out who died (ohmigod or they'll be next).


it's really too exciting for sentences, soo...first up: my birthday! of wakeboarding+outlet shopping+shanghainese food+pizza+TWO CAKES+the blowing out of all but one candle+wii boxing and bowling and tennis. and dear jon who woke up in the middle of the night to hang up decorations in the dark. boyfriends are best for birthdays. in addition to all that, he got me a jersey+disc from potlatch, and a movie, and a book! plus, of course, my nds, which was bought a week in advance to be taken on the longhaul travel trip. eventually, i will unearth the pictures from his and my cameras.

more recently, i've made a concerted effort towards chill weekends. for example, last weekend, paulie came over friday night, brian had a party saturday night, and sunday we got our ears lowered (does anyone remember that episode of doug?--that means we got haircuts. as usual, i fell asleep in mine--a habit i've developed since mom stopped cutting my hair. i'm much less vigilant since i don't have to worry about her snipping off the extra 4 inches b/c i'd look so cute with a bob. i guess it could be considered dangerous to fall asleep in a haircut, but i've slept thru more dire circumstances. plus, we were fully in blowdry mode by then. also also, i think my body uses narcolepsy as a defense mechanism. when situations get too stressful, i tend to zonk out. my subconscious is convinced that my conscious is not prepared to handle itself. when my conscious regains control, the menace has usually passed. proof? i've slept thru ringu (japanese version), not b/c i was bored but b/c i was terrified. i sleep thru lecturers given by foreign accents (peeling back the extra layer of esoteric is too stressful for my brain). one may argue that new haircuts are stressful too (who knows who will come out on the other side)).

mmm---sushi.

i think my dried fruit went bad

:-(

2007 Survivor Beach Hat Tournament

i was waiting for pictures to publish, but meh, its been too long.

i've survived my first TD experience.

• our columbia sponsored shirts got cancelled. instead of shirts printed with the tourney logo, we bought white shirts and made ppl paint them in their tribal colors (or not, depending on their mood). the columbia sponsored water bottles were awesome.


• fewer ppl showed up sat night than expected. more ppl showed up sunday than expected (==> financial fiasco). more organization from me would've helped. we managed to sneak 8 extra ppl into lunch (we'd only paid for 40. i have no morals, i know, but neither do the restaurant owners. they claimed the buffet lunch of chicken, fried rice, fruit, french bread, pasta salad cost $180 a head).


• we didn't get to do a lot of our survivor challenges, but our buried water idea turned out beautifully (we dug holes in the sand and buried trash bags with ice wrapped around 5-gallon jugs. we used electric pumps (meant for petrol, but completely new) to pump water up).


• some cable tv channel showed up to film.


• nobody got seriously injured, so our team of 6 paramedics (3 male, 3 female--who knows why they separate their teams into male and female ones) got pretty bored.

i also survived the weekend, despite some serious set backs:

• jon, alicia, and i rented bikes on saturday to venture to the nearby supermarket. little did we know that the road to the supermarket was a MOUNTAIN road. i was heaving and hoing all the way there. and my back brakes didn't work, so careening wildly down wasn't really an option (especially with all the construction trucks and buses coming the other way). and then we had to heave and ho all the way back (uphill both ways! downhill both ways!). and then my pedal fell off. luckily, we were pretty close to home by then and the road was flat for the rest. i rode it one footed using the push-pull method. i would raise the pedal with the top of my foot and then push it down again. i lost my shoe in the process.


• kevin made a pipe out of a coke can. it worked much better than the aluminum foil one we were using before.


• sat night, one of the guys started blowing fire from the tikki torches. and then he swung fire from the ends of ropes (like at that waterfire festival we went to last year). in between flaming feats, he'd walk on his hands. turns out we had a circus performer amongst us. awesome.


• no one actually got naked for the glow-in-the-dark game of disc, but i'm ok with that. there was a huge hole in the side of the field. christina ran straight into it and face planted. her wig went flying. did i mention that i love slapstick?


• when we went to find our tents, we found a cow. maybe it was a water buffalo. anyways, it was standing between two tents. what was it doing? you guessed it: pooing. it left a huge paddy right in the middle of the path, next to a lamp that wasn't working. we chose tents on the other side of the grounds.


• apparently, other ppl found the tents super hot (i thought it was quite nice). they moved to sleep on the beach, right before it started raining. whoops. and apparently, the sex noises from one tent kept the dogs howling all night. i was oblivious to it all.


• and then sunday went swimmingly. one ruffian tried to sneak past me without registering, but i tracked him down (i had to tackle him to the ground and stick my knee in his mouth). nancy, you should really teach your brother better manners.

following the crowd

ditto on the johari window:

http://kevan.org/johari?name=makazooer

gridlock

The jazzfest saga, part deaux:

in preparation for my marathon flight, jonnie charles elliot and i breakfast'd at the flying pan. (if i call him by all his names, it sounds like i have more friends).

and then i was off...to spend all eternity stuck in ORD airport. my connecting flight to boston got cancelled, and i was supposed to get on the next flight, except the customer services lady gave me another huang's ticket. as such, they kicked me off the flight, refused to hand me the ticket back (it was the only proof i had that i was supposed to get to boston eventually. they claimed it was a security risk, even tho they had already let me on the flight as the imposter huang, and the flight had already left). my only recourse, it seemed, was to stand by with a bazillion high school kids (also from boston, also coming from hk). the next seat for sale wasn't for two whole days. so daddy booked me a hotel room and talked his agent into changing my flight into a direct one for montreal the next morning. i called cchu who called keister who stole my bag from the boston airport (no security issues at all) to bring to montreal for me ("uh lilz, is your bag the one with the donkey ears inside?"). the silver lining? daddy booked me a king sized bed and a complimentary breakfast. AND, a giordano's was waiting right around the corner. i consoled myself with a whole stuffed hawaiian pizza and all the sitcoms i could watch (welcome home!).

and then the next morning, i got in the domestic line (cuz you know, i want to go to the state of canadia). and then they told me i couldn't get a ticket from boston changed into a ticket for montreal. and then they tried to tell me i had to stand in line again (for the third time). and then i cried. so they told me to speak to a supervisor. who left before i could speak to her. so i made them call me a supervisor. but they refused to pick up the phone when it rang again. and then magically, a supervisor popped out of nowhere, and i sobbed my story to him, and he clickedy clacked on his keyboard, mm-hmmm'd a couple of times, and let me on my flight (FINALLY!). apparently, it's not that you can't change a flight's destination (even if that destination is in a different country). it's that you usually can't do it for free. but they dicked me over, and my dad flies a lot, so eat my shorts, united. next time, i will try REALLY HARD to fly thru san fran. ohmigod cuz life is too short, and i have important things like this to get to:

at jazzfest, smitten lost in the finals to storm (whom we beat in the finals last year). we ran out of legs, and i gave up on a couple of deep discs. the last turn was a run thru d on me :-(--she laid out right past me. over the course of a year, i've gained a few things and lost a few things. i've traded 1) my will to cut continuously and 2) my backhand huck for 1) a better read and 2) a better flick. ah well, maybe my lack of intensity means its time to take a break.

the drive back from jfest consisted of sleeping and eating (for me). first we picked up some roadside strawberries (and then i fell asleep), then we visited the cabot cheese place, where i learned that i CAN eat cheddar and other aged cheeses cuz the lactose all gets digested by the process (proccess, you are my hero). if anyone knows of any non-cheddar aged cheeses, lemme know pls so i can start consumption post haste. and then i fell asleep. and then we were at the beer place. the bottling process is pretty phenomenal. stuff like that always makes me want to be course 2. and between naps, we went to 2 more cheese places (one of which sold yummy chocolate). the next time i woke up, we were in boston and atong had stuck some sour patch kids on my face. oh, and somewhere in there, atong managed to lose a bet about how to pronounce the double-l in peru, which meant she had to chubby bunny a 700 calorie chocolate muffin that had been sitting in the sun all day. it was mighty sweaty. moohaha.

while i was in boston, i generally hung out with smite a lot and ate a lot, which is par for the course for when i'm in boston. otherwise, i:

• had a picnic in the commons with kdob during which i made marshmallow taffy, ate foodtruck food, and beat atong+meryl at flutterguts (yang is REALLY good).
• bought matching hats with laura and yelena.
• 
yelena's so beautiful
• ate at the northend
• (both plates are mine)
• ate at soundbytes (where we learned of the soundbytes strife
• 
• slept thru the fireworks (which was quite the feat cuz it was cold and rainy and loud)
• slept thru ratatouille
• had a marathon eating day where we started at 11 with lunch at veggie planet, had mochi and boba at tea stop, test drove a prion(?) to finance our second lunch at border cafe, walked back to tea stop cuz cchu wanted some too, walked to christina's cuz ICE CREAM!, walked to tosci's cuz MORE ICE CREAM! and got home in time to get take out from red bones. phew.
  

AND i found this poster that described me perfectly (it says: I'm Lilly! I am the queen! I like EVERYTHING! (to eat)). That thar next to it is a daisy.

that was quite the mouthful. also also, i just wanted to say that i'm doing phone interviews at work. whoa the responsibility!

today, yelena is on a train to copenhagen

and there are 1.5 days until my jet plane and (!!!) jazzfest. i love it. for now, i'm dealing with the summer interns. the structuring ones are all very eager and pretty smart. well, one's very eager, and one's pretty smart. i like them b/c they help me realize how much i've learned in a year...but when i explain things to them, i still feel i'm just a pricing monkey. oh well, bonus soon! summer is a very exciting time indeed.

and i should post about the dragonboat festival. we won our first race (incidentally, the slowest winning time of all the heats, but hey, the trophy tastes just as sweet...errr...right). 6th in our second race dropped us to the bowl final, in which we got 3rd (=more hardware). the day was...tiring. not just the rowing, which lasted less than 5 min cumulatively, but the...elements were hard to withstand. it was Hot. and the beach was full of trash. i'm surprised my feet didn't rot off from all the stuff washing up onto them, which is Sad. i dislike standing around in trash. and there was lots of standing and lots of trash.

credit suisse hired a junk for the day, which involved food and alcohol, which meant i ate pretty much continuously from 10am till 6pm, at which point, jon and i got left on the junk (everyone else disembarked to party in stanley). i went downstairs at one point in search of more food and found the caterers hosing off the table tops of a very empty boat. whoops. i made off with two packs of their ritz crackers just to spite them.

last weekend, we went on another junk. well, technically, we went on another 8 junks (tied together). it was a huge party full of alcohol and floaty toys and food. jon really liked the brownies (i know what you're thinking, but no sketchiness--they were catered), until he fell asleep for 4 hours, during which i got hit on by a girl. she was literally leaning against me and trying to whisper drunk nothings into my ear. this was right after she fell flat on her face, and a little before she fell flat on her face (she did it twice--at least). paulie eventually rescued me. i was awkward.
i tried to give her a tanline
food food food

i think i'm junk'd out for a bit though...especially since the asswipe junk owners decided to empty the septic tank right where everyone was swimming, and then they confiscated our whipped cream (apparently we were making too big of a mess). mess my ass. we paid for the boat (HKD4000), we expect you to do a little bit of cleaning up after us later. seriously. it's not that much work to hose the place down. and what did you expect? that we'd be having a tea party with white gloves and crustless sandwiches? and the biggest offense: they threw away countless items of half eaten, unattended (but not unremembered nor unmissed) food (eg cans of pringles, bags of chips, cookies, bottles of water). i understand you have to keep your boat clean. but really. it would be much less work to start cleaning AFTER we're done messing. and it's no f'ing excuse to waste food. jerks.

btw, today was like the christmas of blog posts. thanks everyone :-).

**AND even more christmas: TODAY IS BEN AND JERRY'S "FREE" CONE DAY!!--you hafta donate HKD10 to some charity, but still, much cheaper than a normal cone. whoopee!

some fancy ball that my friend dragged us to...original cost was over $200 but she used her doughnut challenge money to sponsor us.