A Merry Christmas

 

Stewie the lazy Santa Dog

 

Our Nativity Set and Christmas Tree

Time to open our Gifts!

 

Christmas Eve Dinner

 

Christmas buffet lunch in the Excelsior Hotel

It was our first Christmas as a family. We put up our small Christmas tree, the Nativity Set Mom and Dad sent to us, the tasty ginerbread house, a pretty Christmas light curtain in our room, and of course our very own little santa puppy in our home.  It is pitty that it hasn't snowed in Hong Kong since 1975, otherwise, it would be the greatest Christmas ever. We spent our Christmas Eve with a candle lit meal while listening to Bob Dylan's Christmas CD and some other beautiful Christmas music, sharing the best Christmas chocolate cake with friends, and unwrapping presents (we couldnt wait till Christmas day)!!  Angie got a very pretty necklace and a massage seat from her wonderful husband, Tyler got a very nice cotton shirt and his favourite Japanese comic book from his beautiful wife, and Stewie got a doggie tag, a sweater from grandma and grandpa, a Christmas card from his favorite security guard downstairs in our apartment building, and a soccer ball from his friends living upstairs. On Christmas day, we woke up late, then we opened our Christmas stockings from mom and dad and found our favorite hot chocolate along with some other goodies, then we watched a Christmas movie while having a cup of hot chocolate. Later, we joined our friends for an enjoyable Christmas lunch and a fun time in the arcade where we played Mario Kart. It was a simple but nice Christmas! I hope you all had a great time too! Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year!

The Times They Are A Changin'

 

Stewie got a new jacket!

 

Stewie is taking a nap

 

Play time

 

Stewie with daddy

 

Stewie doesnt like the cage

So it's been a while and we've got some exciting things happening. I guess we'll start with the bigger news first....we've got a new addition to the family. No, not a baby, well, not a human baby at least. We just bought a 3 1/2 month old French Bulldog and named him Stewie (after the baby on family guy).

It is hard to describe Stewie in one word. The first day he came to our home he was quiet and shy, but the next day he started jumping around like a rabbit and running around like a deer in the house. Sometimes, he would just bark at a fan and fight with it. His favourite game is crawling under the sofa, he just keeps coming out and going in nonstop. He also loves to lay on his back for us to scratch his belly.

It was a difficult first week with him because the potty training was out of control with a lot of pee and poo welcoming us every morning. Suffering from coughing, sneezing and runny nose, stewie got sick on the fourth day, something called the Kennel Cough, which was carried home from the Pet Shop. Luckily after a few days of antibiotics, Stewie is full of energy again. He is learning bit by bit every day, Stewie is a playful, friendly and a curious little baby dog.

The second and third changes in our family are that both Angie and Tyler are changing jobs. I guess we are the lucky ones in such a difficult time. Tyler is becoming a writer for an expat website, he is going to introduce everything about Hong Kong to people coming to live or work here. Angie will be working in another insurance company as senior unit manager starting from this coming December (although it won't be very exciting going back to work after a long vacation, but it is good to have another challenge in career). She is also joining the trailwalker organised by the charity oxfam and aiming to finish a 100km, 45 hr. hike in the New Territories from Sai Kung to Yuen Long.

Poem

GODSEND

by Tyler Whitlock 

Oh ne’er I thought could find the love

So white as heaven’s perfect dove

So high as space extends above

So thick as nature’s untouched grove

So elegant as Roman style

So free as horses in the wild

So innocent as eyes of child

So pure as angels in the clouds

So breathtaking as sunrise morns

So miraculous as children born

So promising as love forlorn

That’s found again and never torn

Yet, I have found a sweet angel

That brings me life and joy in full

Who is this perfect, God sent girl?

My Angie.  Stunning!  Beautiful!

Taiwan trip, Day 1: Landslides, Typhoons and Earthquakes

Have you ever been 10 seconds late for that train, which made you 10 minutes late for that bus, which made you 30 minutes late to that appointment at work that could have generated a sizable amount of business?  Well that's about how our Taiwan trip played out.  We would arrive at Location A just in time for plans to fall through, thus sending us to Location B only to find ourselves facing the same situation.  All of this along with the landslides, earthquake and sister typhoons heading straight for Taiwan, one would assume it was a trip from hell.  Actually...not at all.  Luckily my travel partner is beautiful, fun-loving and can roll with the punches better than Muhammad Ali...

October 3:

1:53 A.M. - Our plane touched down in Taipei.  Since this would be one of my only "lengthy" breaks (4 days) over the next year we opted for an early arrival where we could spend the night exploring this "24-hour city" instead of sleeping in a comfortable bed.  Taipei is the Asia location for book publishing, so they have massive 24-hour book stores.  We spent a while looking through books before heading for some late night 7-11 bagels and finally finding ourselves engulfed in some intense games of darts at the Double Bull dart bar.

At 7:30 A.M. we boarded the high-speed train heading 1 1/2 hours south to Chiayi, Taiwan.  Our original plan was to take a 3 1/2 hour train from the small city to the beautiful, breath-taking A Li Mountain, but since the recent typhoon put a 2-year halt on the railways we had heard that there should be a number of buses that made the trek on a daily basis.  The sunsets at A Li Mountain are supposed to be amazing...supposedly, we never found out for sure, for this was the first of our many obstacles on the trips.  Upon arrival we stopped in a travel agent to find out where the buses were only to find out that the buses, too, were out of commission.  Our only option: an expensive cab ride.  Seeing as we had traveled all this way and there was nothing else in the area we decided to bite the bullet and get in the cab...WOW, what a ride!  Our cab driver, like many in Taiwan, was addicted to what the locals call binlang, or beetle seed.  This is basically Taiwanese skoal, and like the tobacco fields of the south, the beetle seed tree seems to be growing by the thousands on every hillside.  The only difference in beetle seed and tobacco is that the beetle seed produces a thick red liquid that looks like someone is spitting up blood.  Back to the roads...the windy mountain roads were destroyed by massive landslides, some moving boulders weighing a few tons each.  This made for some sketchy make-shift detours.  On one such detour a few small rocks fell on the roof of our car.  I was waiting for a large boulder to knock our car over the edge, but luckily that never happened.

After a long journey, we finally arrived at A Li Mountain.  The place was like a ghost town, no tourists in site and no shops open to the public.  We checked into our hotel and then set out to explore the mountains.  It was beautiful, full with peaceful Buddhist temples, enormous trees, peaceful ponds with mirror-like reflections and thousand year old trees in the shape of elephants, hearts and dragons.  The most amazing view was the "sea of clouds."  With the elevation being over 2000 km high, the clouds settled below us making it look like an open sea with neighboring mountain ranges jutting out like desolate islands.  There was an overwhelming peace about the place.  We were looking forward to rising early the next morning and hiking out to "sunrise point" but upon our return to the hotel we found that there was a message from the travel agency saying a typhoon is on the way and it would be best for us to leave the mountains or we could get trapped over night.  We heeded to the request.

After a scary decent, we again boarded the high-speed train and returned to Taipei.  We finally arrived back in the capitol city at 9:00 P.M. and found a place to stay for the night.  It had been two days since we had had a good nights rest so we were excited to get into a bed.  An early nap made me unable to sleep later in the night.  I finally went to bed around 1:30 A.M. and while I was laying there almost asleep my bed started shaking.  I thought it was a dream, but then I opened my eyes and the room seemed to be moving.  I was still convinced that I was in a 1/2 sleep, 1/2 awake delirious state of mind so I stood up...still shaking.  I stood there listening to the building's structure creeking as it swayed back and forth.  After about 10 seconds it finally stopped.  "What was it?" I thought.  "An earthquake? No, don't try to sound so cool Tyler," I told myself, "must have just been the wind."  Come to find out there had been a 6.3 earthquake in the south of Taiwan (near A Li Mountain) and Taipei experienced a 2.0 tremor around the same time.  What a day!!!

More about the rest of our trip will be on here soon.  Enjoy a few pics of our Taiwan pics below:

Hiking to Pokfulam Reservoir

This weekend, we decided to hike the nearby mountain. The place where we live is called pokfulam, it is the location of Hong Kong University and Hong Kong's first reservoir. It was a short hike of 3/4 hours to Victoria Peak from the entrance of the park. The welcoming ceremony was feeding the mosquitos, giving us countless mosquito bites as souveniors. Ignoring the body torture, we continued our trip bravely and started looking at the nature. It was mostly trees and leaves without many scenic views on the path. After a 30 minute walk uphill and 3 stops, a small but colourful reptile suddenly appeared in front of our eyes, it was a small lizard. This little creature reminded us to observe nature in more detail. The trip was becoming more enjoyable. There were dozens of beautiful butterflies of different types flying around, while a big cool spider was taking its afternoon nap in its magnificent web. The turtles were swimming with their friends and families in the reservoir peacefully, enjoying life in a quiet way. Just 5 minutes by bus from where we live, there is a totally different world.

Snorkeling in HK

We've been jonesing for some time in the water, so last weekend we grabbed our fins and snorkels and headed to the northeast part of Hong Kong to a place called Sai Kung. One of the areas in Sai Kung has a preserved sanctuary type area with hundreds of types of coral. There wasn't great visibility because of all the people swimming around and kicking up dirt, but we could see down about 2 meters and there was some beautiful and really interesting looking coral (a few pictured below). When we first started diving we were usually preocuppied with checking our air and learning how to be bouyant and looking for big fish. Now that we've adapted to the underwater environment we find ourselves looking for the little things; tiny fish feeding on the coral; fish that are camoflauged against the ocean floor; crabs or sea cucumbers creeping around. I'm starting to understand what my dad meant when he said, "I always liked the fact that my job took me outside hiking around and being in nature, but it wasn't until I started being more observant and learning about my surroundings, why things are the way they are and how they interact with each other that I really came to love it." I feel the same about the ocean. It's a completely different world and we're excited about learning and observing it more fully.


A scary sea monster!

Some stud! (you can guess who did this post)

An amazing weekend at home

It's our weekend, one of the best:

Waking up at 10am t0 Rolling Stones music

Having a wonderful breakfast of two pieces of hot toast and a sunny side up egg with a glass of great fruit juice

Watching 5 hours of the Best American Band in our bed

Ordering Mcdonald's delivery for a late lunch

Taking an afternoon nap,

and finishing with 3 scoops of ice cream with magic shell for our dinner.

It was a luxury day of laziness.

Chinese Wedding Banquet

No coconuts, no chicken running around, no fireworks, we had a simple but wonderful seafood chinese wedding banquet. For us, it was rather like a photo taking session, most of the time we just stood there taking photos with everyone coming in; for the guests, it was a mahjong party. We had roasted pig with a pair of red lights sticking in its eyes for the starter, then delicious abalone, bird nest, shark fin, sea cucumber... (Sorry for the wildlife). Unlike other couples in their weddings, instead of playing games or playing powerpoint of their childhood memory, we only focused on our foods. It was simple but funny and joyful.

We Are Sailors

Have you ever seen pictures of a sailboat parked in a cove at a paradise location, mast down, hovering over clear blue waters, so clear that you can see its shadow laying on the ocean floor a few meters below? Those pictures have always been intriguing, so we decided to sign up for a class and last weekend became officially certified by the Hong Kong Sailing Federation. The first day was spent learning techniques and theories and we never even got to touch a boat before lunch. Finally we learned how to assemble the boat, all 57 steps (a little exaggerated but seemed to be that way). When we got on the boat it was rather confusing and didn't seem all it was cracked up to be. By the end of the second day however we got it down pretty well - the tracking, the gybing, the zig-zagging tracks upwind, taking it back to shore...it turned out to be pretty fun. So now we have our 1st level certificate but all we can do from here is move up to 2nd level, so we're planning on doing that soon and then we'll be qualified to rent our own boat and go on outings. Maybe we'll reach that cove one day after all.

The Honeymooners

Maldives. Both of us have always dreamed of visiting such a place -- a place where you sleep in bungalows atop clear blue waters; where in the morning you wake with the sun rising over an open undisturbed ocean; where breakfast is served on your own private deck and you enjoy the morning meal while watching the fish below hunt for their own; where you can walk off the deck into the water for some of the world's best snorkeling and scuba diving; where the nights are spent having five-course meals complete with fresh seafood and desserts from around the globe. It was heaven.


Some quick facts about Maldives:

- located in the Indian Ocean southwest of Sri Lanka
- highest point is 2.3 meters (7 1/2 ft.)
- water level is expected to rise another 59 cm by 2100 so the countries leaders are looking to purchase land from surrounding countries so people can relocate
- predominantly muslim (only muslims can vote)
- locals can't serve alcohol b/c of religion so only foreigners (mainly sri lankans) can work as servers and bartenders


While diving and snorkeling we saw hundreds of different kinds of fish and coral plus squid, eel, sting ray, two separate kinds of reef sharks, and other things that we didn't know how to identify.


Enjoy the pictures...