5 am update
I just got back from a 2 week vacation in Hong Kong earlier this week and wow, what an unbelievably great trip! Unfortunately, one of the side effects of traveling halfway around the world is being up at 5 in morning right now. So what better way to pass the time until the rest of the family wakes than to blog!
I’ve got so much to share: the food, the sights, the food, the friends, the food, the outings, did I mention the food? Instead of trying to cram everything into one humongous post, I’ll share bits and pieces over multiple posts over the next week or so. Today, I’ll just share some highlights and give you a preview of posts to come.
I’ll start off with exactly why I decided to take my trip in the first place. I got offered a job at Toronto Hydro about a month ago (more on that in a future post) and the “plan” in the back my mind ever since graduating was to find a job, hope that there would be enough time between getting the job and starting the job to travel, and travel, ideally to the motherland: Hong Kong. And praise God, that’s exactly what I was able to do! So I booked a ticket and a week later, off I went!
The actual flights there and back were quite good. Long flights have the potential to be a pretty bad experience, but I was lucky enough to immensely enjoy both trips. On the way to HK, I sat beside the cutest five year old from Chicago. Her older cousin was taking her and her sister to HK for the first time. She was absolutely crazy! Just completely off the wall, driving her cousin a little mad I think. She just wouldn’t sit still and kept squirming and doing crazy things like ripping of the head rest or throwing her sweater over the seat behind her. So much fun to share the journey with her and play with her a little. Children are great! The flight back was also great cause I decided to treat myself a little and upgrade to business class. Wow, so cool for such a long flight over. A seat that reclines completely into bed, really really good food (filet mignon, wines, hot roasted peanuts, the list goes on), great service, and a first class lounge to wait in. Totally worth it.
One of the highlights of the trip is definitely the food. So much food and such good food at that! It was one of the things I was most looking forward to before the trip and HK did not disappoint! One side note though. With so many people telling me how great the food there is, I was under the impression that HK’s food would be far superior than Toronto’s. And while the food there is quite amazing, I’ve come to realize how amazing Toronto’s food is as well. With the dishes I tried in HK that I could also get in Toronto, Toronto’s quality was mostly just as good. Toronto is definitely a dining mecca. Anyway, back to HK’s food.
So many different styles of food to try: from cheap to pricey, from Chinese to Thai to western to Japanese to countless others, from fancy dine-in places to dirty little local places, it was food heaven! One highlight I need to mention is my first encounter with foie gras. Oh my goodness, that stuff is so heavenly. If you’ve never tried it and get a chance to try it, make sure you savour that first bite as much as you can, you’ll never get a feeling like that in your mouth ever again! Other highlights include the best “po-tarts” ever, fresh seafood, amazing fruit desserts, Portuguese-Macanese food, and the best hot-pot I’ve ever had. Stay tuned on posts specifically for food.
The other major highlight of the trip was visiting friends and family and HK. This was my first vacation that I’ve taken on my own, but it didn’t really feel that way at all. With so many people to meet up and catch up with, it felt like I was taking a vacation with all of them. I am so blessed to know so many people there. It made the trip so much more enjoyable. Thanks to everyone who came out and hung with me, showed me around, and let me crash at the places, you’re the reason my trip was so epic. Seeing all these people would have been great in itself, but getting to experience HK with them was even better. Outings like the “junk” (boat) trip for May’s birthday, the trip to Ocean Park with new friends Benita & Felix, hiking up to Lion’s Rock with Dan, many meals shared with friends & family, all made 100 times better because of the great company I shared them with. Again, stay tuned for more details on these outings in future posts.
I’ll leave you with my thought of the day, mastercard style: Having time off, good. Taking a vacation in your time off: great. Sharing your vacation with friends and family, priceless.
PS For a less detailed event by event hits of my trip, check out my twitter page.
wisdom from a nine year old
I attend this small group every other Saturday that is basically made up of university students mainly from SCBC (one other person & I are the exceptions). We meet at our leaders’ beautiful condo down at the lakefront. The leaders are actually really good family friends and it’s kind of cool how I got connected to this small group. But that’s another story for another day. Our leaders have two young children, a daughter in grade 7 and a nine (I think) year old son. This past Saturday night, the other uni students and I had the pleasure of being their son’s audience as he practiced his speech for his compitition today. Hmmm…I wonder how it went? Anyways, I was blown away by the depth and wisdom he showed through his speech. Here’s a couple (as direct as possible) quotes:
“Good friends can motivate you to do good like when you should be working on a project but would rather play, he can remind you to work.”
“Friends can inspire you to show the fruits of the spirit such as love, kindness, patience…”
“Pray for the bully as well because he may not have any friends…as it says in Matthew 5:44, ‘But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’”
Wow. I don’t think I even knew what the fruits of the spirit were when I was nine.
Though it was only about 2 minutes in length, it was so inspiring and a great reminder of how important friends are.
Children will never cease to amaze me.
ramblings from a hotel lobby
So I’ve already been up for 7 hours (minus the hour and a half I was asleep on the plane) now and it’s only 11 in the morning. Good ol’ 7 am flights forcing you to leave the house at 4 am.
So I’m in St. Louis now for the tri-annual Urbana conference. Except I’m not quite there yet. As told in the title, I’m in the lobby of my hotel, leeching off the free wireless right now. My hotel room isn’t quite ready yet, so I’ve got some time to kill. So what am I going to do? Boast.
I’ve got the best friends world. I don’t know if I say this enough, but I am so blessed to have the friends that I do. For example, take 12 days ago. Just another average middle of exam period day. Trying to study during the day, had a meal together with the housemates, and had a great worship team practice at church that evening. But unbeknown to me, there was going to be more in store that night. Even though they were apparently so loud, I didn’t notice 15 or so friends congregating on the floor below me while I studied. Sometime that night (not really sure, I think it was around 10, but who knows), Tianne comes up and lures me away from studying with a cheese break. Who can say no to cheese? So I go downstairs and I’m greeted with a “cheesecake”, wine, fruit, chocolate fondue, and some of the greatest people in the world for a surprise birthday party. Absolutely floored. I wasn’t expecting it but it was awesome. Really made my day. Like I said, I’ve got the best friends in the world. Thanks guys, you have no idea how much you all mean to me!
warm fuzzies
- when you have your first drink of the day and the way you can feel it just travel through and coat your insides
- getting a phone call from a good friend
- a good piece of stinky cheese
- putting on a warm pair of worn-in jeans fresh from the dryer
- hot chocolate with some good friends
- getting mail, real mail, not credit card bills or junk mail, like a letter or postcard from a friend, or like a signed John Mayer photo (that I got yesterday)
- a good piece of meat
- seeing people you care about experience happyness (yes, I know that’s spelled wrong, see if you can figure out why)
What gives you the warm fuzzies?
weekends are too short
So many distractions: youtube, late night ice cream, world series, melted cheesey goodness on toast, nhl, chillin’, the list goes on. If only these things weren’t so enjoyable, maybe, just maybe I’d get more work done. But I wouldn’t trade the chill times for anything (save for the big JC). More than the owning/barely-passing/failing of tests, doing a job well done, or getting through the challenges that life brings, it’s the chill time with the wonderful people in my life that I remember. The times when I simply am satisfied in the presence of such great company, company that I wonder why I’m so lucky to have everyday. Don’t get me wrong, all the other experiences have helped shaped me and I’ll remember them, but I just don’t hold them as important as these fantabulous relationships I have. Here’s to more great memories with great people.
Killers this past Friday at Kool Haus. Simply amazing. The sure know how to put on a show. Both musically and visually amazing! Loved how they ended the show too, couldn’t be more perfect:
We hope you enjoy your stay
It’s good to have you with us, even if it’s just for the day
We hope you enjoy your stay
Outside the sun is shining, it seems like heaven ain’t far away
It’s good to have you with us, even if it’s just for the day
Good times with Andrea, Han-Min & Gizelle. Too bad the camera ran out of batteries before the show started! Ah well, at least it ended off well with midnight breakfast at Fran’s. Who’d have thunk that feta cheese would taste so good in an omlette?
135 days till Phantom, the countdown begins…
long weekends and patio nights
It’s been a while since I’ve written anything, so here’s a little update. Went home last weekend for the long weekend. Lots of fun and rest. Good home cooking. Saw Talladega nights with Jeff & Peters. Good times. “Watch your mouth, you little pot-licker, or I’ll throw you in a microwave!” Ran into Phil at the train station and rode back with him and Steve to T dot. We actually got into a serious conversation about the Harry Potter books and whether or not Snape is evil and if Dumbledore is dead or not. Kind of funny now that I think about it, never thought I’d have such a serious conversation about a kids book.
Back at work on Tuesday. Almost done, couple more weeks. Pretty uneventful since Tuesday except for last night. Went out to eat with Niki, Gizelle, Jon Shui & Andrea after worship practice at Thai Paradise. Perfect weather for eating on the patio. Great idea Jon! I even got a free meal out of it. All I had to do was eat the remaining hot sauce. mmmm….paid for that today in the washroom…ah well, it was worth it.
Testing out this new browser, Flock. An all in one browser where I’m suppose to be able to blog and post photos right from the browser directly. So far so good.
Gonna sign off with a hilarious article found today: Optimus Prime
EDIT: Forgot to post this, if any of you are interested in seeing more Brazil pics, check out some of the other team members’ pictures here:
Chris: Chris’s Brazil Photos
Kathy: Kathy’s Brazil Photos
Ling: Ling’s Brazil Photos
Luisa: Luisa’s Brazil Photos, Luisa’s Pre-Brazil Photos
These are probably more interesting than mine too since some have captions. I’m always too lazy to put captions in.
so ends an era…
Toronto’s population has gone down by one. Seems kind of insignificant considering the GTA has a population of over 5 million. But the one that has left is no other than Derek Cheng. He left yesterday. He has gone back to his homeland in HK and left an unfillable hole here in TO.
To many, he was a great friend and the one who spoke with a slight British accent and used British terms like “lift”. For me, he was like a brother. Living with him, cooking and sharing meals with him, having fun with him, having deep conversations with him, just spending a lot of time with him. It was awesome. I wish I could have spent more time with him this past year: cramming as much time as I could with him in the last 2 days before he left was awesome, but left wishing I had spent even more time. I guess it’s true what they say, “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” I wished I had valued the time we had more.
Friday and Saturday were great. Having a few last good, meaningful, face-to-face conversations with him, surprising him with water-balloons and BBQ, seeing him ride a bike for the first time, chilling at the beach, spending another meal with him, praying for him, just plain good times with him and other friends, like we’ve done so many times in the past 4 years. It was an awesome way to send him off and I had so much fun (and I’m sure he did too)! But like many (not all) good things, this one had to come to an end. Saying good-bye on Saturday night was rough. Many cried and it was the toughest good-bye ever.
These past 48 hours have sucked since saying good-bye. I have never felt so sad over somebody leaving before. I guess it’s the fact that I don’t know when the next time will be when I see him again. Hopefully it’s sooner than later. Derek, this one’s for you. I know God has mighty things in store for you in HK and I know that you are going to be such a blessing in HK like you were here in TO. We all miss you a lot!
i’m singing in the rain (well, not really, but that’s how I feel!)
These past 2 days have been awesome. It all started with Future Blue Day yesterday at IBM. Good times with all the other interns, taking a day off, playing games together, eating BBQ, going on a scavenger, just good times, even if it was raining intermitently. Then came the adventure worship practice downtown. Got picked up by Gizelle in the middle of one of the craziest storms ever. Clears up before we get to the DVP, but then we get soaked by some corvette while we were inside our own car! I mean, who does that happen to?!?! Apparently us. Practice was great, but realizing how we need to recruit some people to fill in the missing spots. Joined CCF for dinner at where else? Kowloon. Topped off the night with super sweet (literally & figuratively) desserts from Future's and then retired in the super hot 3rd floor of 218.
Woke up this morning to a much much cooler day and went to work downtown. Met up with Karen from Ottawa for lunch at Salad King…mmmmm…sooo good. I can't quite handle 5 chillis as well anymore though, seems that I'm losing my spicy tolerance. 
Figured out how to get Karen to her interview (at which she got a job offer right after the interview, congrats Karen! don't know if you'll see this, but congrats!) and then checked out the new MacBooks at the Apple store in Eaton Centre before heading back to work. Wowsa! They are nice! Oh man, I so want one now…hopefully I'll have enough saved up at the end of summer for it. After work, went back uptown in the mad rush hour subway traffic. Ugh, never carry a full backpack and duffle bag with you while trying to get onto the subway during rush hour, not fun. Kind of re-affirmed my preference not to settle down in a large city. I don't know how people make that trip on the subway twice a day, 5 days a week. Anways, got back uptown, tutored then came back to my aunt's to reply to some overdue e-mails and to type this up.
Phew! It's been busy, but as I said, an awesome 2 days!
missions, markers, & menus
Saw MI3 with Gizelle last night. Awesome movie, definitely recommend it to everyone, especially Alias fans. It was like watching a 2 hour long Alias episode. Go Marshal MI3 equivalent! Sooo good, even if Tom Cruise is a little crazy outside his movies.
Had another Brazil missions trip meeting this afternoon. Lots of fun! We put the camp schedule on 4 large pieces of paper with colourful magic markers! It was like we were in primary school again doing art class! Turned out really well and it was awesome smelling those smelly markers again, brings back memories of younger days, mmmm…mango marker (turquoise = mango??? go figure).
Ginormous lunch crew after church today, there was like 16 of us crowded around a table at House of Gourmet. But it was awesome, hadn't been out for lunch with these guys forever. Carny was there too! First time seeing her since she came back to the GTA. It was also the last time I'll see Nicole till next school year, she's going back to Singapore tomorrow morning. Have a good flight & sweet summer Nicole, I'll miss ya!
