La Belle Vie

Okay, so I've basically booked my trip back to the States for Christmas and New Year's. I'll be in Denver for Christmas week, and New York for New Year's week. I'll send around some details to those of you that need to know. I'm hoping to see the guys (and girls) in Colorado while I'm out there. And I'm planning to gather with all my east coast friends for some laughs while in the City.

What else is going on? I don't know. I've been enjoying the Olympics. Go USA! I was just talking today about how it's been interesting to enjoy the Olympics around a group of friends who, for the most part, aren't Americans. It's like I take a little pride in watching the US do so well, but it's fun to have the conversations with guys who talk about how great it was that Andy Murray won or whatever. It's cool.

Moving on...
Hangzhou with Richelle. Too short. I wish I had more time. We really had some fun though.  One of the biggest attractions of this city is the lake. There's this whole city, but the most tourist friendly, fun part area is around the lake. Like this:


Or, here's Richelle in front of it with a tower in the background:

So we march around the lake in 100 degree weather, constantly trying to follow the maps that we have while Richelle gets bad directions from a cop who clearly couldn't be bothered, stopping constantly for water like two crazy white people who didn't think to bring our own.  We finally get to this temple where, as my friend J told me in her recommendation, there's a tea house in the back where monks will serve you tea. Here's a shot from the garden at the tea house:

It was so peaceful and quiet back there. We snacked on grapes and tomatoes (sure why not) and enjoyed the tea while just bs-ing and relaxing after walking for hours. It was nice.
This was followed by nearly getting lost on the way back only to be picked up by the coolest taxi driver I've had in mainland China. First off, I'm getting all the info second hand. Richelle's the one who speaks Chinese, fluently. So she's doing all the communicating while I'm in the back blissfully ignorant. So he says he has to pick someone else up but as he gets there he decides not to and tells us he'll take us where we're going because he doesn't want to take drunk people home and he likes us. So he and Richelle are chatting away and she tells me about the stories he's telling her about a time he got fined for something stupid someone else did and whatever. He's teaching her a new character she didn't recognize from the map. When we get there he gives us a discount on the fare because he liked talking with her. I guess a white person who speaks Chinese like she does is pretty rare. It was awesome. All in all it was a fun trip. And I got this telling shot that I hope finds its way back to her friends at school in Texas:



The rest of my shots are here, for the curious.

All in all, I'm in the middle of what should be a pretty wild and fun month. I've been having more great times with M. My sister comes into town tomorrow, and we're gonna tear up Hong Kong. I'll get to see another friend from NYC who's coming in and out of HK on either end of a tour in China. We've got another junk trip on the 25th. And I'm plowing ahead at work. My friends and I are talking about where to go for a long weekend in the beginning of October. I'll talk more about that when we've settled on a place and have more concrete plans. I'd say life is good right now.


As always I miss everyone back home a ton.

Cheers. 

More to say again...

Okay. This is the first I've written in months. There are multiple overlapping reasons for that. At first it was simply that I was busy but I wasn't doing anything worth blogging about (I mean I know it's exciting to read about someone getting a few drinks with friends regularly on Friday nights, but people will have to use their imagination). So then I got mired in work and was kind of dragging myself though, not particularly interested in writing and sharing anything.

But recently things have been pretty darn good. So what's really brought me back to writing and sharing...
A few weeks ago I was out with a bunch of coworkers having a good bye beer or two with a colleague who was in HK on a short term assignment from the UK. At the pub we ordered some snacks, a bunch of typical bar fare (mozzarella stick, chicken wings, etc). Oh and nachos. Nachos made with Doritos. I don't know, some people might say they've seen it (I'm sure it's popular in a couple of corners of the US.) But it was a first for me. They were... OK. I suppose I'd eat them again in the same situation, but I'm not going to seek them out any time soon.

So what else has been going on? I visited Singapore for a long weekend. Absolutely beautiful city. I loved the area full of restaurants along the water. The city as a whole was clean, lots of space and just a comfortable place to be. I recommend it. Sorry no pics. I know... I know... but my camera didn't make the cut of things to bring with, and my cell phone was off the whole time since I don't have service in Singapore.
On a personal note, I'm really glad I went and saw a great friend of mine and really made some sense of a few things.

What else.. myself and a good friend who's also an American (if you call people from Long Island Americans...) put together a bit of an Independence Day party on the work boat. There were only the two of us and one other American, but the Brits, South Africans, Chinese, Canadians, and everyone else were willing to listen to music about America, eat hot dogs, lunch meat sandwiches, and apple pie, and raise an American flag with us. It's funny how I've been gaining an appreciation for what it means to be an American. Culturally, you know, not in a post-9/11 "These colors don't bleed" kind of way, but more of an "it's all part of our culture, the south, the west, the northeast, and it's all part of our story" kind of way.

I've been taking a Cantonese class that was offered through work. It's free and we meet once a week. It's a slow paced easy going course but I'm finding that I'm starting to pick up a few things, a few phrases. Hey any bit's useful, and if you were wondering, yes I can swear in Cantonese. So that's English, French, Spanish, Italian, and now Cantonese. Anyone want to hook me up with a few more, I'll be back in NYC at some point and you never know when you're going to need to put a cabbie in his place...

So a little over a week after the Independence Day party, we end up back on the boat on a fantastic Saturday trip. We went to a beach, had a few beers, good laughs, it was a complete blast. Couldn't have planned it better. M and I signed up for some more yoga classes together so we'll have that coming up. :-)

Oh yeah I'm all set to hang out with my sister in China this coming weekend. My visa from my Easter trip has one more visit left and since she's in Shanghai, we'll meet up and check out Hangzhou for the weekend. Should be awesome. And I promise to bring my camera so we can take some pictures. Promise.

So while I'm writing this Tropical Storm/Typhoon Vincente is passing quite close to Hong Kong. There was a T8 warning raised late this afternoon, meaning everyone was told to leave work early (well actually leave work on time since it was about 5 or so... ). This means gale force winds and let me tell you, they're not kidding. And this storm isn't even actually hitting the city. It's passing almost 100 miles off shore. I imagine if the storm actually hit the city it would be hell. No worries on my end. I have food and the water and power are still good. Just a really violent storm so far. But it's a first for me. I saw one or two funnel clouds in Colorado (and maybe missed a few that were even closer...) and I lived through Noreasters in NY/NJ but tropical storms are new to me.

Okay. So I don't know what the storm will be like in the morning and if it's sufficiently passed or died down, I will need to go to work so I'll wrap this up here.

I hope everyone's well back in the States, the Netherlands, the UK, Ireland, Israel, Australia, China, Hong Kong, Canada and anywhere else I've got friends.

Cheers!

Update: As it turned out, the storm was upgraded to a full blown T10 Typhoon with hurricane force winds over night while I was snoozing away. When I finally left to go to work this morning, the trees were all torn up all over the street, there were sign posts knocked over. First T10 since 1999. That's all.

That's more like it.

Work's been quite busy and a little too stressful and a few of you have heard me vent a bit about it. But a real weekend followed by Monday, followed by a holiday on Tuesday and I'm right back where I need to be.
First, I didn't work 12 hours on Monday. Couldn't and wouldn't. More like the normal 9. I've got a new project with a ton of strict technical requirements so I spent half the day reading through all the material and I barely made a dent. More reading tomorrow morning. But it looks interesting and I'm looking forward to getting into it. I have a meeting with some of the other team members tomorrow.

Second, Saturday was  my second trip on the Arup junk boat. It was a friend's birthday so she reserved the boat and brought a bunch of friends. The weather wasn't nearly as idyllic as my first trip back in November, but despite the rough seas, I had just as good a time. We played cards and drank a few brews and some of the group still went swimming. And afterward we went back to the Birthday Girl's place to help finish off the food because there was way too much of it, but we were sorely disappointed to find that the one food item that disappeared between the boat and the apt was the cheese. The one thing a bunch of white people in HK can't afford to lose...

And third, but perhaps most important, I had a great yoga class today that just left me with such a body high. This class was good for relaxing all that built up tension. This work/life balance is a little better. Obviously I won't get holidays all the time, but... well this was much needed.

What else, what else, it was good to see W again and have some dinner with her and some friends of hers. Tasty hot pot.

I had a long conversation with the Kiddo today. Really hoping to see her in China before she comes here to Hong Kong. I'm a little curious as to how a bat (like a live bat) managed to kill our conversation. But it's cool.

Anyway, it's late and I don't have much important to say here. Just checking in.

Cheers!

The Junk Boat!!

Sorry it's been a bit of time, but I was waiting for some pics from my friend from last Sunday. I still haven't gotten them so if I do, I'll post my update about the Hong Kong Wine and Dine festival. But for now I'm going to post today's boat trip. It was worth it.

So Arup Hong Kong has a boat that employees can get access too sometimes. One of the expats at the office had it and invited me and some of the guys I was hanging out with last Friday to come along. Best decision I've made in a long time. I'm tired and a little sun baked, and I loved it.

So I grabbed some food and beer to add to the picnic and met the guys at the pier in Central at 10:30. To be honest I don't remember where we went but we went away from the city. I think it was Sham Wan. It was a nice warm day and I sat around with some folks from work on the roof of the boat just relaxing and sipping beer and enjoying it. Let me tell you, when you're on the roof deck of the boat with friends, lounging on the cushions enjoying the breeze as the boat cruises along, life's good. So after we stopped, the swimming started. The jumping in off the top of the boat, and goofing off in the water started. We swam to the little beach and hung out there for a bit. This was really nice, the water was calm and there are all these green hills coming right up out of the water. So beautiful.

We swam back for lunch on the boat. So much food. Mostly just typical stuff, we were pretty much all westerners so not a lot of local food. After lunch the boat heads across the little bay closer to a slightly larger beach. This time some of us stayed in the water around the boat rather than swim all the way in and back but it was more good fun. We played the very appropriate lonely island song "I'm on a boath" from an iphone at this point.

The weather started to turn just as we were heading in. So the wind was picking up and the sea was choppier and we could see a storm coming. We took the calmer route close to the city and then finally as the weather was clearly looking to turn sour we reached the pier again and everyone headed home.

Here are some pictures:













































































































































































































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Thanks for reading!!