Long overdue holiday+ blog

So I've been busy at work, not too stressed, but definitely busy. And I've had a lot do organizing my life and the holidays were their own thing.

Anyway this year there was no Bing Crosby/Danny Kaye cinematic excellence in my Christmas. But there was one of my oldest and dearest friends, another kid the from dangerous back streets of Little Silver, Mr. Jeff Dalton. And we kept ourselves busy exploring the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong. We found some bars, found some GREAT food, and definitely shared a few laughs. Thanks for coming, Jeff!

Here I am at the Po Lin Monastery in the Pakistani hat that Jeff got for me:




So we got a late start on the day and we got there and wanted to see the Buddha and the Monestary so we're not stopping for food just powering through to see everything. Now I wanted to sit down at one of the nice restaurants in the village but there's a line 90 mins long to get the gondola back to civilization and the only place still open to sell food is like a gyro fast food guy. So we go to town on gyros and fries and then wait in the cool mountain air on this line forever just to get the gondola back.









And here's Jeff with the bull who was wandering around the village on our way back. Because you know how often do you see a bull loose in the street, when you're in a major wold city...


I mentioned finding some great food, we hit up an Italian deli for Christmas Eve foods, we found a great Dim Sum place that I was sure wouldn't have an English menu but surprised with that and great Dim Sum. All in all it was a great holiday weekend.

Before I leave Christmas I want to send another shout out to the gang from New York/Boston/Long Island/Jersey who put together that great care package, it made my holiday. You guys mean the world to me.

I missed the New Years fireworks. I was feeling under the weather and took the opportunity to rest. Since it worked, and I managed to hit it strong during the week, I'm glad I did. It's funny though, because I've had some really great New Year's celebrations, with some great friends, or family. But in the end there's something about New Years... it's all build up and 12:00 always manages to fail to live up to the hype. Usually the party would have been just fine if we ignored the clock and just partied and let the calendar flip as it will. But that's not what New Year's Eve is about. Oh well.

So the holidays are over and I've got big travel plans for the end of the month. The centerpiece of my Lunar New Year travel is my awesome ski trip in Western Canada with someone I've missed terribly. Can't wait to see you! I'm so excited to hit the slopes and then settle into the condo at night. I love ski trippin'!
Then as a little bonus I'll be meeting a friend from New York in the Philippines for one day. I don't know what to expect but it'll certainly be an interesting weekend after what's sure to be a fun filled week.

At work, I'm working my tail off and we just moved offices. The whole process took the chaos up a notch but I seem to have survived with only minor bruising to my humanity.

Since I last blogged my Jets managed to flush away their season in typical grand fashion and I'm glad I didn't buy an NFL playoff package right about now. But the Devils are holding on their own and should make the playoffs and the Yankees just finally did something to improve themselves a bit. So the sports world back home isn't all bad news.

I found "Mexican food" last night with a friend of mine. This isn't Mexican food. It's Americanized Mexican-ish food. It's not to say the food was bad, it was alright food, I'd go back there, but it was really the kind of place I expect to find passing for Mexican food near the Canada-US boarder in Vermont.

Lastly I have few funny pictures:



"Ho Kung Fu"
I suppose self defense is important in that line of work...




What makes this funny is that this restaurant is at the airport. It implies that you should get on your flight and then ask "the Captain" about how to follow up on the take away roast goose. Of course I was informed that the Chinese word implies someone at the restaurant but I'm going to go with the literal English translation and see where that gets me next time I want roast goose on a flight out of Hong Kong.


I'll be back after my travels.
Cheers!!

Friday's thoughts and Saturday's excursion

It's the end of week 3. I'm already in the groove at work and that's been really good. Have I mentioned that they sanitize the phones once a week? Cause they do that, and the lady just came by cleaning my phone.

Work is work. Pipes, ducts, space proofing and the like. I'm not getting to do my own plant design just yet but we'll see what happens. But it's the little things that make working out here interesting. For instance, I've been working on an educational building at a sludge plant. This place has a pool area with three pools (perfectly clean pools, heated with excess heat). Again this is at a sludge (or sewage) treatment plant. "Kids the field trip is to the sludge treatment facility, bring your bathing suits." If that's your kid, are you signing that permission slip?

Fun fact, unlike Arup New York, here they actually have the Annual Dinner (basically a Holiday Party) in December. What a thought.

So far I haven't found middle class, modest shopping. It's either really high end, fancy-pants malls (which all the same designer stores) or it's cheap stuff on the street. I'm not saying it's not here, but I can't find it. (Sunday update: I found some. More on that later on.)

I haven't seen the giant Buddha everyone's told me about yet. But it's on my list of places to visit.

Okay it's time for a beer and I'll finish up later...

So guess what I did saturday? Saw the giant Buddha. Or the Tian Tan Buddha in Ngong Ping, a Buddhist village on Lantau Island. It was a really cool trip. So at the end of one of the MTR lines, I took a gondola to the village. The gondola trip alone was worth it; the views are stunning! Just these island mountains covered in green, and then the sea. Side note, in the gondola with me was a guy who works in the village and he told us about the emergency rations stored in each gondola car in case of any long stoppage. He told us about a 20 km bridge that's just starting to be built from Hong Kong to Macau and Southern China. I thought that was pretty cool, and I think I know a one time bridge engineer who might also.

So anyway the base of the gondola is a pretty commercial. They're catering to the tourists. But it's nice and I sat outside and had some nice dumplings and a hoegaarden (a real beer!!!!) before continuing through to the Buddha statue itself.

There's a big arch and series of statues of the 12 heavenly generals. Each represents a different 2 hour period of the day and has it's own weapon.

From here I reached the steps of the Buddha statue itself. 300 steps to be exact. I hiked up and got a closer look. There are some great views from the base of the statue!! I took some pictures of the surrounding village and the sun setting over the hills. Again, just magnificent. My favorite part had to be the statues kneeling and making offerings to the Buddha. You can see one of them below.


Inside, there are a number of artifacts that were impressive to look at but I had no idea what their significance was because I couldn't read any of them. Wish I had my sister with me to explain them to me.

I simply loved the afternoon, despite the hour long line for the gondola back. I need to go back to see the Po Lin Monastery. If I have someone to go with me, I might try to hike the trip from the MTR station instead of the gondola...

Well it's getting late and I'll check back in shortly with the news on the apartment and how I found medium range shopping.

My last sentence is about Nic Cage so I have an excuse to use that tag again.

And for more photos check out the album.

Cheers!!