More Christmas Pictures

Himalayan Trip

I met with Khem yesterday about our trip to Nepal in February. I have the itinerary, I'll post some details about it soon.

Other than that, it's been a pretty slow. After the meeting I went to up to my (abandoned) T.I. flat to find it was left in a less than ideal state by a few of my former co-workers... So I cleaned that up a bit and then returned to the good flat to hibernate....

Today I woke up and finished watching a BBC special on Nepal and the Himalayas then I returned to bed for a three hour nap.

I had to go back and fix the Internet at the other flat because someone.....messed it up... and couldn't fix it without a login that only one person at T.I. knows....and this one person was not the party that did the messing...

I took an exceptionally hot bath and felt much much better after.

Tomorrow looks like bowling and possibly a movie with Katy, Sarah, and Jonathan if I'm up to it.

Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range model air rifle....

.....with a compass in the stock, and this thing which tells time



Merry Christmas to everyone in the US just starting theirs. Mine is all but over (because of the 13 hr time difference). I had an amazing and spectacular day of feasting and resting.

We woke up pretty early to open our presents and then got dressed up in our finest clothes. For my presents I recieved a remote controlled helicopter, a bone knife, a meditation bowl, and a gingerbread tree, among others.




We went to Christmas service in Kowloon Tong.





and then went to the Intercontinental Hotel for Christmas lunch.





Where I got an unbelievable four course meal of salad bar, cheeses, and meats. Then lobster bisque x3, then the main course of three meat samples:filet mignon,sirloin steak, and lamb on the grill, with a twice baked potato, asperagus, and chopped mushrooms.





Followed by a dessert table the likes of which I've never seen, cheese cakes, mousse, fudge, brownies, pecan pie...etc...etc...

After packing myself with a million calories I sat down inside the wheelbarrow convieniently positioned next to the table and proceeded to be carted by Katy out and dumped into the nearest taxi and set course for Ma On Shan.

For the rest of the day I was a nerd on my phone and also took a nap, the past few days (weeks?) are definately catching up to me.

Tomorrow is flying our helicopters and then taking the A41P back to my Lantau lair...

More Christmas photos and helicopter pictures to come once I get back...

The day before the night before Christmas (post#2)

I'm about done using this blogpress app to publish posts. I spend 30 minutes writing and putting together a post on to have it freeze up and crash as I submit it and it doesn't save any drafts beforehand. The previous picture is a screen shot of te last remnants of a really nice post I took a long time putting together only to have the joke of a program lose it before it made it out... I guess I'll go back to the old lame slow way of making posts when I'm not at my computer.


Basically what I wrote before was:
Nutcracker ballet was awesome
"The Penn" looked cool

Bought groceries today with Katy and waited for turkey to arrive then went to Christingle service the watched "it's a wonderful life" then "muppet Christmas carol"

Then I wrote that I am missing home a lot but a feeling so welcommed by Katy and her family






A Christingle

Oh Christmas tree...

More Hong Kongness

Katy and I went to "The Flying Pan" for dinner yesterday and I ordered the 4x4x4 platter. 4 eggs, 4 toast, 4 bacon, and 4 sides...

This is what became of it:







It's the closest thing I've seen in Hong Kong to a Jingles "Big Man's Breakfast." but I didn't really have to struggle that hard in finishing this one, probably because it doesn't have a 5lb pancake with it on top of all the other stuff.

After the feast Katy and I walked around to the temple street market and the jade market to finish up Christmas shopping for her family. I bought a guava tocombat the million grams of fat ingested.

We also came across this:











I should have picked up one of those tasty lil morsels, but I was way too stuffed from the previously mentioned food.

-- Post From My iPhone

Christmas time in hong kong

Katy and I at the church in Kowloon Tong




Katy trying to grab the camera from Jonathan and me blinking disgustedly...






I took a picture of this sign a few months ago "no clambing" it said. They're still working on getting this one right I guess.




My new compy...

Very High quality pictures

A lazy morning of watching the late NFL game and drinking coffee, I love time off....
Heading into the city soon to get some more stuff for the upcoming christ-holida-bration-mas....



If you go to the picasa site you can download any of these at full spectacular quality!

Made a post and it failed to go...

From my iPhone to the internet, now I don't have time to make another one...so frustrating!

Going to church with Katy and fam
Going to see avatar
Have egg tarts ad BBQ pork bun and coffee


-- Post From My iPhone

100 posts!!!?????

I'm preparing for my upcoming 100th poststravaganza due to occur in the next couple of days. A few things on the agenda are:

-Tweet while I post about tweeting
-Post while I tweet about posting
These will be done simultaneously, syncronized by specialized collaboration software written for "cloud" computing on both my iPhone and laptop.

-Setup a web cam feed to track my movements while I am docked in to numerous social networking mediums, which will be interfaced with my SPOT tracker and digital camera continously uploading "geotagged" high resolution photographs to my picasa account.

-I will also be remotely logged in to my old computer back in the US to bring this event international!





-- Posted From My iPhone, netbook, blackberry, Linux server, commodore 64, and Apple IIe syncmultaneously

Made a post yesterday night....

...but it was lost somewhere between my iPhone and the internets. So here's a really short synoposis of yesterday:
Went to Mui Wo and got a pizza
Then met Katy after work in Tung Chung
Went to Chinese medicine practitioner
Got herbs too make me better
Went and bought a motherboard and CPU for my new computer
Came back on the 9:30 ferry

I'm feeling great today, I think i've turned the corner on this sickness. I got an English breakfast with the remaining gang today, Bryan and Onnalea left this morning. Time to continue moving stuff upstairs.

Don't call my name out your window when you're leavin'

We had our T.I Christmas party today, which was preceded by a grueling adventure race that took 3+ hours to complete.


I didn't take part in the adventure race, I just made my way down to watch everyone cross the finish line. I also worked on making my "secret santa" gifts, which were an alcohol stove made from two Nescafe cans and two olive oil candles each with their own fuel and a lighter.

I ended up falling asleep on the bean bags in the restaurant for a few minutes before waking up and grabbing some samosas and a spring roll before going home to rest some more.

We all returned to the beach at 5 for appetizers, there were easels set up for paining and a Mahjong table, I learned how to play real Mahjong, not that tile matching game on the computer, it's more like rummy but with tiles.

We exchanged presents at 6:30 or so, I ended getting a pen holder had crafted from bamboo, it was pretty nice. Then the food was brought out and I was only really in the mood for the ribs and chicken wings, so that's what I ate. And some chocolate fondue afterward. Then I got a ride home in the van. Tomorrow is payday and maybe Chinese doctor time to see if I can shake this sickness with a little bit of powdered cobra tongue and powdered rat tail...

All over but the leavin'

This last week marked our final camp at T.I. a brief overview of the week:

Monday-Half day of work, part of it was spent preparing the Hong Kong Great Race for another corporate group on Thursday then some pack down an putting a bunch of stuff away for the season

Tuesday-Half day, preparing our program for Wednesday through Friday

Wednesday-Met the school at the Mui Wo ferry pier, 23 kids with myself and fellow PSU alumni/co-leader Onnalea. I lead half of them in an hour long "Sandy Shores" lesson followed by an hour of beach cleanup. Then an hour of gardening, then finishing with an hour lesson on "Wetlands Ecology" it all went pretty well.

Thursday-We all went to Tai O in North West of Lantau to take part in Shaolin martial arts training with the kids, I thought it was really fun, but the kids didn't thinks so, they're lazy so all the stretching and strength and balance activities didn't go over too well with them.

We had a vegetarian lunch there and then we started our guided tour of Tai O, the tour was about 2.5 hours and I learned quite a bit about one of the 4 remaining Hong Kong fishing villages
After getting back to Pui O the kids had free time on the beach and then we went to the public campsite for our BBQ, then it was night time activities and then bed

Friday-Have the kids pack up then an "Adventure Challenge" on the beach which they all loved, except when the teachers jumped in and messed things up... Before I knew it the kids were on the bus back to catch the 12:50 ferry and that was the end of my Fall season at T.I.

We had lunch and finished the little bit of packdown left, then I came home and met Katy and we went back down to the beach for our usual Friday Beer and Burgers.

Saturday-Another half day spent setting up an iMac and getting 126GB of music imported into iTunes and playlists synced with the iPod, however my sickness set in the night before and I'm still trying to recover from this, It's probably a virus, I almost thought it was from the burger I had on Friday, but probably not.

Sunday-Not doing a whole lot today except drinking tea and being a couch potato, occasionally interrupted by being a toilet potato... Looks like i'll be a significant potato tomorrow recovering as well, the staff adventure race is out of the question for me right now, unfortunately.

Photo Dec 6, 2009 8 25 37 AM.jpg

Hi,

Here's a link to 'Mobile Photo Dec 6, 2009 8 25 37 AM.jpg' in my Dropbox. This link expires January 5, 2010 8:27:20 AM Hong Kong SAR China Time.

Sent from my iPhone

Movin' along

What a week this last one was, as you can see from my twitter postings it wasn't the most fun I've ever had in Hong Kong...

Basically a quick review of this week goes as follows:
Saturday- meet Katy in the city and work on making questions and checking on things for the "great race"

Sunday- day off, stayed at home, worked on questions for the upcoming corporate program in Central on Wednesday, took bus to Tung Chung, bought Subway, purchased and HDMI cable

Monday- worked on Corporate program at the office in the morning, had a meeting for the school program I was working on Tuesday, had the plans for the Corporate change on me multiple times, worked until 8 getting things ready

Tuesday- went to work at 7:30 to get ready for the 60 3rd graders coming in for "navigating, kite flying, and eco-games" then worked on an already changed Corporate program after they left and realised (again) that the work I had done up to that point was useless

Wednesday- Went in to work to finish getting "the race" ready, scrambled to make the non-existent ferry at 11:10 and caught the real one after the buzzer rang because lunch took forever to get, got in to Central and went running around to buy 3 maps to put with the rest of our packets, presented the program and started the race, ate a ridiculously expensive 4 course steak dinner with the corporate group, caught the 9:30 back to Lantau

Thursday- (re-re-re-re)updated the program to the way that I actually would have liked to have done it in the first place so it can be used again next week. Ate some brownie batter, deposited my paycheck, did laundry, put on my only collared shirt and went to the China Bear with the gang for a few hours.

Friday- went out to the abseil with Dave and Bryan and learned how to set up a simple anchoring system and how to belay people and how to help them if they get caught up in the belay system, then the three of us rigged a single rope belay system and tied up some rope protecting bamboo about 30 feet up on the side of the cliff face then abseiled (rappelled) into the ocean. Met Katy then went into the city for a few hours with Bryan and Rosanne

Saturday- slept in (kinda) and then went with Katy to Tung Chung to start phase 1 of my civilizing process aka... buying a really nice set of clothes so I can attend formal functions instead of donning my
Fisherman pants:
and my A.L.E-free box lime green crocs:


















So we decided on a really nice and comfy pair of leather shoes and some Ralph Lauren khaki pants.



Tic-tac-toe = knots and crosses (British and New Zealand)
Ketchup = tomato sauce (NZ)
tartar sauce = tahtieahh sauce (NZ)
hamburger = hambuhhgaah
iron = iahn

Two weeks to go

More pictures

Really not looking forward to camp tomorrow....here's some new pictures...

Pictures

Hong Kong Thanksgiving

Yesterday was "Hong Kong Thanksgiving" here on Lantau since next Thursday we have program (actually 3 simultaneous programs) so we had it yesterday at 2pm.

I prepared my dish the night before and let it sit overnight to let all the tastes melt together as per the directions. I went to Jacky's house in Mui Wo to use her oven. It's crazy how only one person in my circle of acquaintances actually has an oven in Hong Kong. I arrived there shortly before noon and put my two 13x9" pans in her gas oven to cook for an hour at 350.

Onnalea showed up and I helped her cut up stuff for her squash,apple,onion, and curry soup that turned out to be incredible.

After the baking was done I loaded up the pans in my fleece lined New Balance shopping bag and walked to get a taxi straight to Pui O (Saataan) Beach. We had snacks and appetisers for a few minutes while waiting for the rest of the people to show up and then dug in to the feast.

There was all the usual stuff, just cooked differently. The two turkeys were boiled, maybe brined? Gravy and cranberry sauce, stuffing that looked like jello pudding with raisins (but tasted really good), squash, green bean casserole, my cheesy potatoes, salad, and a bunch of other stuff I'm forgetting.












































We gorged ourselves with food and after emerging from a food induced coma Katy and I went for a walk on the beach. When we came back everyone was running out on the beach dressed in PFDs and holding paddles getting ready for a game of Hurley.

I jumped into the game and Katy was taking some pictures with my phone. After less than 5 minutes into the game, Craig and I went for the ball at full speed (illustrated on the left) and somehow we ended up both face first into the sand. Except my face was aided by Craig's knee in the back of my head as he flew over me. That was it for me, I'm still feeling a little of the effects and still removing the sand from my nostrils...















I met with Megan this morning to go over my schedule for next week and see what I'm doing as the co-coordinator. It's a 2.5 day/2 night camp with ~140 5th graders.... 15-17 per group, it should be.....interesting..... Is it December yet?

Anyway it's in upper 50s and lower 60s again today, this is frigid for Hong Kong, looks like it might be a cold winter.