Weekend Stuff

One Week

In just five days, Mark, Noah and I are hopping on a plane and flying to Washington DC/Pennsylvania for the week followed by two weeks in CA while Noah is on Spring Break at school.  I’ve been looking forward to this trip for months now and the time has just d-r-a-g-g-e-d by, but now that it’s coming up I suddenly feel completely unprepared for it — especially for the long flights — so it looks like I have another errand-filled week ahead of me.  Luckily I got all of Noah’s doctors appointments taken care of last week — dentist, optometrist and pediatrician — so most of what I have left to do is the fun stuff, like shopping for gifts and food to bring back home, toy shopping for my nephew, and a little bit of clothes shopping for me.  By the way, if anyone has anything they want me to bring back from HK just let me know.

A Mark Update

Back in the day when I still used to work, one of the downsides of taking a vacation was that I usually needed to put in at least a week of overtime before and after taking time off to make sure all of my responsibilities were taken care.  Mark’s equivalent of that is having to take a buttload of business trips before and after.  He’s been traveling for the past three weeks — Shanghai, Tokyo and Singapore — is spending the last week of our “vacation” in TX and Southern CA for work, and then traveling heavily some more in May through mid-June.  Of course a lot of his late-Spring travel is because the baby’s due in July so he’s not planning on leaving HK again until August or September.  Hopefully, we won’t end up driving each other insane because we’re around one another for so long.

In other Mark-related news, he finally got around to going to the dentist a couple of days ago.  This is an appointment that he’d been putting off for months because he was just too busy to go so he was due.  He thought that one of his fillings had gotten loose and it was starting to get painful for him to eat so he wanted to see Dr. Lee before we left for the States.  So imagine my surprise when I got a text from him while I was waiting for his to get out of his appointment announcing “don’t wait for me.  go home.  may need a root canal.”  Ouch!  And sure enough, after some more x-rays Dr. Lee started on the initial work for a root canal.  It turns out that he rarely completes a root canal in one sitting — something about most people finding it too painful to sit through all at once — so he drilled the tooth, started cleaning, put a temporary cap on it and sent Mark home with a bunch of painkillers.  He has another appointment this Wednesday so hopefully he can finish it up before we leave.

A Photo Challenge

Last week Jae issued a photo challenge to us girls with the subject of Still Life. Usually when I think of still lifes I think of fruit baskets and because I live in Asia, this is what my fruit basket looks like these days:

Earth Hour
As you may have been aware, Earth Hour was on Saturday — when people were encouraged to switch off their lights for an hour beginning at 8:30 pm as a gesture against global warming. Mark happened to be away at a “work” thing that night (the “work” consisting of hanging out at HK Stadium, drinking beer and champagne and watching the HK Sevens — HK’s huge annual rugby/social event) and Noah is usually asleep by around 8 pmish, so really it was just me turning off the lights for an hour. I’m not a proponent of global warming or anything, but I am a big chicken who is still afraid of the dark (or rather, all the horrible things that can happen to you in the dark…like getting eaten by monsters) but Noah had turned major environmentalist all of a sudden coming home from school spouting hippie statements like, “My teacher says it’s important to save the Earth” and “Smoke is bad” so at the very least, for his sake, I thought it was important to participate in it this year.  Here are before and after pictures of my building participating in Earth Hour:

Before

After

Yeahhh…gotta love HK and our wonderful environmental sensibilities. I’m also guessing a lot of those lights were off only because most of those people were at Rugby Sevens that night.  Well, on a positive note at least I didn’t get eaten by monsters — quite possibly because the one candle in the house kept them at bay (note to self: Buy more candles!):

Pimpin’ My Other Blog

At one point last year I stumbled upon Photojojo, an awesome online newsletter that compiles photography tips and DIY projects, and was instantly obsessed with their Project 365 tutorial. The idea behind Project 365 is simple enough — you take (at least) one photo a day for an entire year. Sounds easy enough, right? I lasted maybe five months before I lost interest and dropped it. But with my recently renewed interest in photography, I’ve decided to undertake it once again. And this time around, I managed to dupe persuade a couple other friends to do it with me as well. For extra motivation, I created another blog where I post my pictures up so other people can call me out if I start to slip.

So check out my photoblog, Happy Accidents, if you get a chance. And be sure to stop by my friends’ Project 365 photoblogs as well. There’s Kristin at Point, Click, Shoot! and Amanda at 365…Or 1 a day. Better yet, join us and set up your own 365 project too.

Update: A couple more of my friends have jumped on the bandwagon. You can find Jess at Shutterbug 365, Jae at runs with cameras and Alicia at 365.

Photo Challenge: Child’s Play

For our latest photo challenge, Kristin wanted photos of us “engaged in a children’s activity that you derive as much pleasure from (or more so) than your own child(ren).”  Ok, well I might be a bit fuzzy on the rules…or else my idea of a children’s activity is seriously warped, but here it goes:

This is me and Noah, engaged in that most favorite of children’s activities — campaigning.  Or…being heavily Democratic.  Or if you’re Noah, trying to flash a peace sign.

At this point, I also want to give a huge shout out to Cristina — my lovely, hilarious, wonderful friend and proprietor of Sassy Onesies.  Whenever Mark goes back to the US, I like to order clothes online to be shipped to wherever he’s at so he can bring them back to me.  Being the spaz that I am, I ordered some shirts — including Noah’s Obama Rocks! shirt — from her on Monday (yep…Labor Day) and then asked her if she could possibly get them to Mark in Texas by that Friday.  Not only did she get my entire order there on time (and with only minimal begging on my part), she did it without charging me extra for the rush shipping and she tossed in a matching Obama tee for me!  Oh, if only everyone operated the same way — being extra sweet to your most annoying customers.  Thanks again Cristina!!!  Me love you long time!

Photo Challenge: Look What I Made

For this week’s photo challenge, Manda asked for pictures of things we made. Perfect timing Manda. I made this for the Ravelympics:

and then realized that I signed myself up for the wrong event so now I have to make another completely new thing in the event that I actually signed up for (new sign ups are closed so no entering this in a new category. Stupid me). Oh well.

And just for kicks, I’m throwing this in as well for this photo challenge. It’s an Italian pine nut torte:

Although pine nuts are ridiculously expensive this is my favorite cake — it’s so awesome with a hot cup of coffee in the afternoon…or for breakfast (which is the way I usually eat it). Unfortunately this will be my last torte for a while since grinding all the pine nuts destroyed my little wannabe food processor. Sadness. I’m posting the recipe in case anyone else wants to take up my pine nut torte making slack.

Photo Challenge: Haiku

It was Jae’s turn to choose the photo challenge topic for the week and she choose haikus. Specifically, we were supposed to take a photo of something not family related and write a haiku about it. Here’s mine:

Oh hot, humid day
When the mercury rises
I become so slick.

Photo Challenge: A Moment To Myself

For this week’s photo challenge, Alicia asked us to show what we do when we finally get a moment to ourselves. I actually get quite a bit of time to myself. On top of Clarita helping me with Noah throughout the week, I also get about 9 hours a week to myself hanging out at a coffee shop waiting for the boy to get of out school. Toss in a workaholic hubby who, when he’s actually in town, tends to spend several nights a week working into the wee hours of the morning, then I’ve got an enviable amount of alone time.

My favorite moments nowadays tend to be when I’m actually with people (but people I like) or having an adult conversation. Better yet, having an adult conversation over an awesome dinner. Here’s Mark at Spoon with Hong Kong’s skyline behind him:

Otherwise, my preferred methods of passing the time are knitting:

And having coffee and reading a good book:

Photo Challenge: A Day in the Life

It was my turn to choose the photo challenge topic for the week so I told everyone to take pictures throughout the day and post them. And judging from the few people that have put up their posts, man do we all need to get out more (well, except for Amanda who ended up with a police escort on her way to her boyfriend who had gotten stung by a stingray). I, of course, am no exception. And here are the pictures to prove it…

[Disclaimer: Super photo heavy. Starting...now.]

Photo Challenge: Fireworks

It was my friend Jess‘ turn to choose the photo challenge topic for the week, and while Jess has many wonderful qualities about her, apparently being expat-friendly is not one of them. This week’s topic is Fireworks. And perhaps if I still lived in the States I would’ve had this challenge in the bag, but alas, no. I dug deep into my photo archives — back to July 2003 to be exact — and I came up with this one:

This was the sign at the fireworks stand in Houston, TX that Mark and his best friend, Jed, ended up buying two big grocery bags full of fireworks from. I’m still undecided whether it was really funny that this sign was even necessary to begin with, or scary that this was actually made into state law. One would hope that not smoking around flammable and/or explosive objects would be kind of obvious. Then again, later that night I also witnessed Mark and Jed shooting Roman candles at each other (as in standing back to back, taking ten paces, then turning around quickly and aiming fireworks at one another) so perhaps fireworks safety is not so intuitive after all.

Photo Challenge: What I Like Best About Summer

This week’s photo challenge topic, thought up by my lovely friend Cristina, is “What I like best about summer.” Here’s my dilemma though…I don’t, in fact, like summer all that much. It’s hot and uncomfortable, slightly boring, there are way too many out of school kids running around and messing with your vibe, and for some reason there’s always some ridiculous expectation about summer, like going somewhere far and exotic for vacation when all you really want to do is go back home and visit family. Plus, summer is usually tourist season and having a sudden influx of clueless yet cheery tourists holding up the coffee line at Starbucks is not something that makes me look forward to this season. I prefer cool, laidback autumns, cold, snuggly winters, and optimistic springs.

But now that I’ve gotten that little diatribe out of the way, here are a few of my favorite things about summer:

Photo Challenge: The Indian Edition

I managed to miss every single photo challenge journal this week — partly because I was traveling and partly because I’m a spaz. So now here’s one week’s worth of challenges in one convenient journal entry.

Photo Challenge: Sky

Mumbai’s skyline as seen along Chowpatty Beach.

Photo Challenge: Hearts

Not a heart, per se, but where you need lots of it. The building is the Haji Ali Dargah, Mumbai’s most important Muslim shrine and the stone causeway leading up to it is lined with beggars. It is truly a heartbreaking sight to pass the dozens of desperately poor families — made up of women, children, babies, the old and the lame — sitting on this causeway and to know that there is very little that you can do about it.

Photo Challenge: My Moment Wednesday

A quote by Mahatma Gandhi hanging at the Mani Bhavan — a small museum dedicated to Gandhi, housed in the building where he stayed whenever he visited Mumbai. In case you can’t read it, it says,

“To call women the weaker sex is a libel; it is man’s injustice to woman… If by strength is meant moral power then woman is immeasurably man’s superior… If non-violence is the law of our being the future is with women.”

Photo Challenge: Love Thursday — Valentine

Me and Mark at dinner. Some things of note…my arm is red because I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes. And the photo was taken by Mark’s colleague, Catherine, who joined us on our romantic Valentine’s dinner. Mark felt bad that she was spending Valentine’s Day on a business trip in India so he asked her to join us.

Photo Challenge: Weekend Fun

I couldn’t decide so I’m using two pictures. This first picture is of Mark and Noah at the SpiceKing — a stall at Crawford Market devoted solely to spices. Mark is smelling the different curry blends while Noah looks on. We ended up buying 3 different curry blends, 3 masalas spice blends and a buttload of masala chai.

This next one is Noah playing on some very expensive persian rugs. I don’t like persian rugs — they remind me of my parent’s fussy decorating and they’re just not my thing. So naturally we ended up buying two because we couldn’t decide which one we loved more. Noah was our quality control guy. Thank goodness they love kiddos in India.