Posts filed under ‘The Hubby Speaks’
Mandarin Songs
Friday was Noah’s last day at the Woodlands Montessori School. The night before he and Cathy baked brownies for his class. Cathy stayed up late to make some extra M&M cookies. Noah was not excited or sad about his last day of school or the brownies. His real excitement was having his baby brother come to school. Cathy promised to bring him when she dropped off the food. It was all he could talk about the night before. He is such a proud big brother.
The only sad part of the entire day was when Noah kept insisting he was “going on holiday”. Since all his friend’s ‘holidays’ consisted of going to England, SIngapore, Thailand or other foreign countries. Noah would be stuck with us in Hong Kong (at least until October when we do plan on having a proper vacation). It dawned on him this morning when we had this conversation…
Noah: Daddy, where are we going on holiday?
Me: What holiday? I’m working. We’re staying in Hong Kong. You start your new school in a few weeks.
Noah: AAAAHHHH man.
His Mandarin teacher was kind enough to make a CD of the songs they sing in class. Noah really enjoys playing the CD and singing along at home. For your viewing pleasure here is a short video.
Baby Names
Here are early candidates for names. Some are just for fun. Some are in the running. I ceded control over naming rights, but I can’t help but offer my opinion and solicit your support.
Mahalo Munoz – think of a warm welcome every time you see him.
Asher Munoz – its new and old in one! This is one of Cathy’s favorites and its growing on me. The nickname is ‘Ash’. Anyone remember Army of Darkness? “This is my boom stick!” I can’t wait to teach Ash that line.
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewMovie?id=280526877&s=143441
Micah Munoz – comforting, fun to say and still rugged.
Elias Munoz – Cathy likes this name since it is close to Elijah, but Elijah is too biblical. I could go either way.
Ezra Munoz – movie star quality. The double ‘z’ is cool.
Dashiell Munoz – Another favorite of Cathy’s since the nickname is Dash. I’m not a big fan, especially of the spelling. It’s growing on me. It’s better to see it with the last name attached. After looking at this several times it appears girlish and I don’t know why.
Jonah Munoz – a perfect match for Noah. Say it three times. Good brothers with good stories behind their names. A close alternative is Jonas.
Jules Munoz – I think of Pulp Fiction and another biblical reference for all the wrong reasons.
Keats Munoz – new, unique, fun to say, but I’m not partial to the Euro feel.
Malachi Munoz – OK, this is my last movie reference but in The Royal Tenenbaums one of my favorite lines is “Go Mordichai”. This reminds me of that scene and always makes me laugh.
Manolo Munoz – Don’t think of the shoes. Think Spanish suave. Nickname – Mo (Cathy’s suggestion).
Orion Munoz – I like to think of myself as a star gazer without a telescope. This would give me incentive to go purchase one.
Om Munoz – this is why Cathy has naming rights. I plan to lobby family on this one or at least convince Noah this is his brother’s real name. You know you like it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Om
If you like any of the names just vote by leaving a comment. Suggestions welcome.
San Slip not 50%
I’m happy to fulfill Cathy’s request to blog about my travels to Vietnam.
I landed Sunday morning. I was feeling guilty leaving Cathy and Noah by themselves. Given that I travel often I have a rule never to fly on a weekend let alone a holiday. Unfortunately it couldn’t be avoided this time.
Within an hour of landing I met up with two colleagues for lunch. Of all places to go my first meal was at a fusion place called Jaspas. Uneventful to say the least (there is one in HK that I’ve avoided in the past), but the kicker came at the end. We ate. We drank. We ate some more and drank a lot more. We were there for 3 hours. Our TOTAL bill was USD $30! We then hired a car service to tour us around the city for four hours. Total cost-$15.
The bargains kept coming…Vietnam is known for its clothing and textile exports. North Face manufactures most of their clothes not far from Saigon. My brothers will soon receive winter jackets straight from the factory…or straight from a box that fell off a shipping truck. The jackets retail in the US from $175 – $300+. I was able to snag one for myself for $22.
I’m not one to shop, especially on business trips. I never have the time or prefer to see some sites, but these deals were hard to pass up. Plus, it was a Sunday and we wouldn’t have any other time to take advantages of these deals. I managed to find something for Cathy. I won’t detail what is because it will ruin the surprise. See you soon Cat!
Our contact in Vietnam is Mr. Quan. He introduced us to his coffee export buddies. One of his friends, Mr Tran, owns a large state owned export company. I would say that we all went to dinner, but it wasn’t so much a dinner as it was our own personal beer garden in the middle of a very nice resturuant. After many san slips I informed Mr. Tran that Cathy wanted me to bring back coffee. Our conversation went something like this…
Me: Where can I buy coffee?
Tran: I sell you coffee.
Me: Thank you. How much?
Tran: How much do you want?
Me: Enough to make a couple of pots?
Tran: 1 metric ton. Ok. Roasted or plain?
Me: Oh. Roasted. Is it organic?
Tran: What is organic?
Our conversation went down hill quickly. He told me he will contact me with a delivery date. Later that evening after many more san slips I asked him…
Me: How much for the coffee?
Tran: We don’t talk money. I get you coffee. Will call you with delivery date.
Sans slip.
Our host poured Heineken in small glasses accompanied by a large piece of ice. A toast was given in Vietnamese..1,2,3 Yo!. As we raised our glasses I was told “san slip not 50%”. This means down the entire beer at once. Don’t drink just a sip. Drink it all. We did this for each person in our group – 16 san slips. Now do you see how I could purchase a ton of coffee?
The next day when I was checking out of the hotel I was told to call Mr. Tran about my coffee purchase.
I like Vietnam. I hope to return soon and go to Hanoi and other places. Perhaps even going to the beaches for a holiday, but I am thankful that I’m in Tokyo enjoying a more relaxed environment.
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- Outside the new airport. The City was filled with scooters. They would line up 10 across and 10+ rows deep during rush hour.
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- Hai Ahn Restaurant – Entertainment during a nice dinner
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- Outerspace Language School – Ode to Cathy
Random Pictures
13,906. Let me reiterate. THIRTEEN thousand. Nine hundred and six.
That is the number of digital pictures we have. In boxes we probably have at least 400 more. I’m still reeling over the number. I keep thinking there MUST be duplicates (but none that I could find).
You can probably guess. Cathy is a prolific photographer. Before we met I may have had 100 photos of friends and family kept in a shoe box. Within a year after we met I had a couple hundred. By the time Noah was born we had a few thousand. After he was born the amount of picture taking was blinding. Of course the traveling we did and moving to Hong Kong has contributed to the load.
Don’t get me wrong. I love that we have so many photos. I remember when I first met Cathy I admired that she took so many photos. It was as if she was documenting either a success or failure of our relationship.
“Mark, look at this photo. This is where everything went wrong. See, good thing I took this photo of you.”
One More Time
I thought I was done with this blogging thing, but then I figured out how to upload pictures.
It was decided that we would get a turtle. Noah asked if he could hold the turtle. “As long as you wash your hands afterward,” I told him. Then Noah asked if he could kill the turtle. WHAT? I asked him to repeat himself 6x before I realized he was asking to “carry” the turtle. He has a hard time pronouncing “r’s” so “carry” sounds like “kill”. I gave him a lecture about how killing was evil anyway.
We ended up with two baby turtles.
Noah calls them both “Mr. Turtle”. We set up his fish tank, gave them some food and said a prayer that they will last longer than his fish.
After our turtle excursion we hit the pool. The entire time Noah kept saying “Daddy, look at me…I swim like Mr. Turtle.” It was fun, but exhausting and as I mentioned yesterday, I still had a bike to fix.
I didn’t get far on the bike. Turns out that I stripped the thing a ma jing that holds the pedal to some other thing a ma jing. So I need to go searching for some thing a ma jing parts tomorrow. But, here is what I did accomplish…
Yes! Noah has is very own seat on my bike. Now we can cruise around the Island together. Sounds dangerous right? Well, not if Noah is sporting this cool helmet with a samurai warrior on it (we are in China after all).
I would show you a picture of him in it, but I didn’t want him to get to excited in case I can’t get the bike parts tomorrow. I’m sure when Cathy gets home she will take 60-140 pictures.
My Blogging Time Comes to an End
I am officially turning this blog back over to Cathy. I just don’t have enough time to write or come up with interesting things to write between work, Noah, household items, taxes (US AND Hong Kong), and this and that and a lot of other silly stuff I have to do.
Actually…its not that silly. For example, today I want to fix my bike. We shipped two mountain bikes all the way from California to Hong Kong. Once we arrived the bikes sat in storage for six months. I finally got the energy to pull mine out of storage, inflate the tires, fix the handle bars, clean the chain and immediately took to the streets. Not even 10 minutes into my first ride I was cruising down a small slope. The slope turned into a steep hill. Now I’m zooming along (still in complete control) and I decide to slow down. Its at this moment the pedal flies right off the bike. My first thought was “Damn those movers. They broke my bike!” The next thought was “I wonder how bad I’ll hurt myself in this situation.” I survived with just a few minor scrapes. The bike went back into storage and I haven’t seen it since. So today I’m going to pull the bike back out and get to work fixing the pedal.
Given this chore I will have less time to write so let me sum up our coming weekend.
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Daddy Daycare
Since Cathy is in the States I’ve decided to provide a few updates. I know…I know…I can’t do this blog justice. I’m not the best writer and I’m not at all witty or funny. Cathy has a charm that I couldn’t possibly replicate. If you’re wondering why I never email or post, well now you know.
Since last Thursday me and Noah are having an all boys festival. I like to think it’s a festival. If you saw it from afar it may look like battle royal. We’ve wrestled, we’ve jumped up and down, we’ve climbed, we’ve swung from bars, we’ve chased each other around and around in circles. The chasing in circles was a problem. I got nauseous and had to sit down for 30 minutes. I would say that all of this is exhausting. It sure is and I have another week to go! Since I travel so much its great to get some one on one time with Noah. Here is a quick recap of our weekend.
Saturday: There was a Level I typhoon. The winds were howling and the rain was coming down in sheets. Like good Hong Kongers we took to shopping. Noah is now the proud owner of three new pairs of jeans and a bowling shirt. He has more jeans than me and Cathy combined. Wow. While shopping we came across a video arcade. We played so many games for just 100 HK ($12 US). Noah took to a video game where two beetles battle each other to the death.
