Just had a major Chinese feast for dinner at the T’ang Court in the Langham Hotel. I’m so incredibly full right now and feel like I’ve gained five pounds. Dinner items include: vegetable dumplings, roasted suckling pig with jellyfish, shark’s fin soup, braised abalone with sea cucumber and chicken feet, mushroom with fish, duck meat, drunken chicken and bird’s nest soup. There was more food but I can’t remember all the dishes. Whew! Just wanted to add how excited I am to see the donations to the American Red Cross via Amazon. When I blogged about this just yesterday morning, the number of donations was around 9,000 with a total…

After a fabulous dinner at the Verandah Cafe at the Peninsula tonight, I finally made it out to the harbour to get a good shot of all the Xmas lights on the skyscrapers across the water. You can see how the Chinese go all out with full-scale holiday decorations on their buildings (see bldngs in lower left corner)…quite spectacular in person. In this picture is the new 2IFC (Two International Finance Centre) building, now the tallest building in Hong Kong at 88 stories–surpassing the Central Plaza Building (78 stories) and I.M. Pei’s Bank of China Tower (72 stories), seen in the photo next to my head. The building in a…

Met 3 more distant cousins last night at dinner: Steve, Kenneth & Raymond..who all go to university in Canada currently. I don’t have that many first cousins since my parents don’t have that many siblings; however, when I start going up and over the family tree, it gets complicated. My grandparents each have so many siblings, up in the teens somewhere, due to my great grandparents being of the generation where it was common for a man to have multiple wives and concubines. For example, the cousins I met last night are related to me in this manner: their mother is the daughter of a man who is the older…

Nice. When 9/11 happened and I was managing the team of web developers that supported the Amazon Gateway (aka HP), we had to scramble that day to take down all the content on the gateway and replace it with a big red cross message asking for amazon customers to donate to the red cross for efforts to support the families. I was really proud of that effort as we had raised a ridiculous amount of money in a short period (and considering we had capped the donation to $100 per user), it was incredible to see the number of donors. I was even more proud when I saw a mention…

i died my hair a deep purple yesterday. eeks. getting used to it. under normal, indoor lighting, you can’t even tell–it just looks very jet black. however, outside, under sunlight, it looks pretty darn purple. i like to think that it looks very anime like. the weather got suddenly cold today in hong kong…wasn’t quite prepared for it as the weather forecast predicted mid-70’s weather the whole time I’d be here. It’s 50-degrees now. if all works out, i’m going to spend new year’s eve in shenzhen, china with my friend Ben. have to make sure i get the visa details worked out–supposedly, i can just apply at the border…

I must say, coffee is really starting to take over here in Hong Kong. When I was here two years ago, there were a tiny handful of Starbucks here. Now, there seem to be Starbucks everywhere I go–the airport, the shopping mall, the streets, etc. As a result, I’ve noticed many more coffee shops around here…specifically, the main competitor with Starbucks here is the Pacific Coffee Co., whose shops tend to be much larger in scale and typically equipped with online computers. There’s also more food offered at Pacific compared to the typical small pastries offered at Starbucks.

Yesterday, my family paid respect to past relatives at the cemetery. It was a really nice, sunny day fortunately since we’d be outside the whole time. It always still spooks me out a bit when I go to the cemetery here in HK. For those of you who’ve visited Bruce Lee’s grave in Seattle, you will have noticed his picture on his tombstone–that’s pretty normal for Chinese tombstones. So–when visiting the cemetery in HK, where there are literally thousands and thousands of tombstones, you’ll walk by pictures of each dead person. Creepy. We remember where our relatives’ graves are by the markers of various people’s pictures. Even the section of…

Merry Christmas y’all! While saying “Merry Christmas” seems to be a faux paus nowadays in the U.S., the Chinese have absolutely no problem blasting those 2 words everywhere. You see it on windows, signs, on people’s shirts, hats, on big buildings, etc. It’s just a big party. After spending the day shopping on Hong Kong Island, we had a delicious Christmas meal at the Phillip Starck-designed Felix Restaurant at the top of the Peninsula Hotel..yum yum. Of all dishes for me to pick, having traveled all the way to Hong Kong, I choose Boston lobster on top of mushroom risotto.

Just finished dinner and walked through the madness that is Christmas Eve in Hong Kong. Think Times Square New Year’s Eve–that’s what Nathan Road looks like in Hong Kong Christmas Eve. The streets are closed off to pedestrian traffic only and flooded with more people than you can imagine. People walk about with silly santa hats donned with blinking lights and shouting Merry Christmas to everyone. I even walked by a big Hare Krishna mini-parade. It’s funny how different it is from this time of year in the U.S., where everyone tends to be inside with their families, snuggled by the fireplace or opening up presents. Here, it’s time to…

I just had a scrumptious Japanese lunch with family and grandma at the Imasa Restaurant in the Peninsula Hotel. I had this set lobster-sake set lunch with tempura mushrooms, steamed egg custard, etc. Yum yum. Such fresh, non-greasy ingredients. I forgot to mention—the day before leaving, Eric and I stopped by Swedish Hospital to visit Nadine, who just gave birth to Alexa Sophia. She was only a day old when I saw her–the first time I’ve ever seen such a newbie newborn in person. She was soo tiny and soft! Oh so cute! Congrats Nadine! Hmm…what gadgets to buy while in HK…