CNY goodies

Got some really cute stuff at the CNY flower market today!

CNY updates

Chinese New Year is almost upon us! For about half a month before and after the first day of CNY, everyone speaks in terms of the lunar calendar. The whole city seems to be gearing up for this holiday. It's kind of nice to have two big holidays (Christmas and CNY) almost back to back. Since I've submitted a bunch of stuff right before Christmas, I haven't been doing very much at work lately. I've been taking it really easy at work and leaving everyday at a reasonable time. Haven't been to the office on the weekend in a while. It's really nice having both Saturday and Sunday away from the office. I really find it necessary to have two days to recharge. 

All the big malls have replaced their Christmas decorations with CNY ones. Lots of horses everywhere since this is the year of the horse. The flower markets have started and tons of people have crammed into the Victoria Park one over the weekend. So many flowers and other unnecessary junk. I'm always tempted to buy lots and lots of stuffed animals whenever I go. Now that I live right across the street from it, I can go as many times as I want! But I won't be able to go take advantage of the last minute sales at midnight of CNY though since I'll be going back to Zhongshan.

My Chinese visa has an expiration date of January 30th, which is CNY eve. This is really good timing since it basically means I don't have to take any time off and make the most of the public holiday. I'll be taking a ferry back to Zhongshan on Thursday afternoon and be back in HK on Sunday. I think this will be a nice break from the constant internet surfing, Facebook checking, and emailing that I do nowadays. I feel that my life happens at a faster pace since I got all these gadgets, especially that smartphone. My brain is always being fed some kind of activity.

Anyway, really trying to eat healthier these days and buying certain produce from the organic store. I think I only eat out about twice a week for lunch. Eating a lot of veggies and bringing salads and fruit to work. I've actually found that putting a salad together for lunch the next day is much easier than making a rice or noodle dish. It's so fast and healthy! The next thing is to replace the unhealthy snacks with healthy ones. The unfortunate thing is that I think work will pick up again and I'm going to be really busy again. Another big (new!) project has just landed at my desk. 

Library Card

I finally got a Hong Kong Library card! I've been meaning to do this since I now live really close to the Main library. One short form, ID card, and proof of address are all you need. It was fast and there's no "probation" period. The maximum limit for checkout is 8 though. I'm not sure I remember a limit for the Oakland libraries. But I think it's a matter of the number of people to the number of items available. Anyway, I have fond memories of pulling books off the shelf and borrowing them without any restrictions other than my own physical limit.

The main library here is really nice! There is a big atrium on the ground floor, along with a cafe that overlooks a green space. So it would be a pretty nice place to read your books after borrowing them. All around the perimeter of each floor is plenty of seating areas for people to read. I would have spent some time at the cafe too but I had just finished grocery shopping and was carrying a ton of veggies along with my books.

Tentative Japan and Korea trip coming up at the end of March! Stay tuned.

Reflections on 2013 and Thoughts on 2014

Another year! I just reread what I wrote about 2012 and all those events feels like a lifetime ago. I spent most of this year working on a construction site and really got to see things happen. While on site, I had more time in general and was able to get a lot of life things in order, such as getting my PE and started keeping track of my finances. After paying back all my student loans, I started putting money away in savings and finally ended 2013 with a fully maxed out Roth IRA.

Some highlights of this year:
January - Started my site assignment. I think I need to write something about how my site experience has contributed to my engineering career overall. It has definitely broaden my experience.
February - Adjusted to life on site. Finally got a smart phone.
March - Moved to a new apartment on Hong Kong Island. Parents and brother visited. Xiumin visited.
April - Went back to the US again and took the last of my PE exam. Passed everything and is officially a Professional Engineer in California!
May - Attended Yalu+Mike's wedding
June - Met up with Yi in Hangzhou!
July - Weekend trip to Singapore with roommate
August - Hot, sweltering days at site
September - Major geotech conference in Paris and then vacationed in Marseilles. There are definitely perks to working at a big office with money for "training" and a small professional society that can also support these kinds of activities. Back at the office.
October - Weekend trip to Guangzhou and nearby areas.
November - Adjusting back to life at the office. Celebrated Thanksgiving with friends.
December - Really busy at the office...

Thoughts for 2014:

• I really need to put some serious thought into how long I want to stay in Hong Kong. It's weird because there's not really a deadline or anything and I can really just leave anytime I want to. But there are a lot of things I like about living in HK and feel like I would really need to re-adjust to living in the US. More on this later. 
• I heard a podcast (either HBS or TED) about being grateful and that it really makes a difference if you list your blessings on a weekly basis. I might try that.. That would be a good motivation to write in this blog at least once a week.
• Along with this whole moving/not moving business, I would really like to do more traveling in Asia while I'm here. Definitely need to do a long trip before I leave but in the meantime, short trips would do too.
• As far as work goes, I will have been working 3 years full time in April/May. Hope to get another chartership status within this year.

That's it so far. We get New Year's Day off and since it's so cold here lately, I might stay around the house and write more. 

Thanksgiving in Hong Kong

Been really busy lately! I have been meaning to write about Thanksgiving celebrations but haven't had the chance. Anyway, here it is:

I celebrated Thanksgiving for the first time in Hong Kong this year with some friends from work. I baked a pumpkin pie, some cookies, and made mashed potatoes for our small party of five people. People kept being really amazed by the pie and I keep having to explain that the flesh of the pumpkin is attached to the skin. We ordered a turkey from one of the restaurants at the mall attached to our office. At first we thought that we can order from different restaurants because many of them were advertising it. But then we realized that it's from the same catering place. We should really piggback on them and offer a pie option for people. I bet a lot of people would be interested.

It took me a while to find canned pumpkin as it is not popular here. I went through several of the more upscale versions of the big chain supermarkets and failed to find anything. The big supermarket chains here have "regular" versions and more upscale versions, usually branded as "international" or similar that sources more international foods, catering to expats. Anyway, I was forced to look up "American" grocery stores and went to a store that sells things solely imported from the US. They were out of canned pumpkin! Good thing I made a list and a plan of attack. The second store on my list turned out to be closed. I finally found a really upscale supermarket that had a mountain of Libby's canned pumpkins. All through this process I kept thinking of the times I searched through both Cambridges (US and UK) for Chinese food and now that I'm in Hong Kong, I'm combing through the city for American food.

Anyway, some pictures of our feast:

Recent kitchen creations

Haven't written much here in a while so I thought I'd upload some pictures. I've realized that I can make pizza in the little oven we have. It's actually really easy to make your own pizza! The dough is just normal flour, water, and yeast. I did my first one without yeast and just used baking powder, which meant the bread was more flat. The sauce was just tomato paste with some olive oil, crushed garlic, and dried basil. The sauce was really good! 

This was the one last night. I ran out of veggies so this one featured Ikea meatballs. I made several in between these two but those pictures are on my iPad.

Also got a pre-made mix for pancakes that produced really fluffy pancakes. The pot in the background contains apple cinnamon sauce. 

Recent and upcoming weekends

I splurged on a mechanical keyboard yesterday after being really frustrated with my keyboard at work! The one that I had at work is kind of old and it takes a lot of pressure to get anything typed. I went for the blue switch one that makes a clicking sound. I hope it's not too loud for my neighbors. Will see if I get any complaints on Monday. But I really doubt my typing will be a distraction since there's usually a lot of noise in our open plan environment anyway. I basically tried out every keyboard at the computer place in Sham Shui Po before setting on one. Some of these keyboards can get seriously expensive!

There's a another typhoon passing by so it's been really windy this weekend. No real rain though. I wanted to go to Peng Chau last weekend, which was really nice but never made it. It didn't seem like a good idea to go on the ferry this weekend since it was so windy. I basically used the weekend to catch up on work and did some household cleaning and cooking. I've been bringing lunch to work whenever I can because I find the takeout at the food court to be extremely boring. I don't mind so much if we went out to eat because that at least involves getting away from the office for a while. This buying takeout business is also very time consuming. Anyway, cooking is lot more healthy and less expensive.

Our office managed to get a professor from one of the universities to come give some classes on advanced soil mechanics. We're doing three days of classes spread over the next couple of months. I feel like a full day is too long though because people can't really absorb so much. Anyway, we'll see how that goes. The first class is next Saturday. I kind of feel like I should review basic soil mechanics. Not sure if I ever learned it in the first place...