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.

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.