My Dots for Thursday, March 01, 2007

i'm making a difference

This is neat--beginning today, there's a new charitable initiative from Windows Live Messenger. Join the inititative by going to this site, select the organization you wish to support (i.e. Red Cross, Boys & Girls Club, Aids Fund, etc...) and download v8.1 of Windows Live Messenger. Then, everytime you have an IM conversation, Microsoft will share a portion of the advertising revenue with the organization you've indicated.

If you already have 8.1, just add the following codes next to your display name to select the organization of your choice:
Text Code Cause
*red+u American Red Cross
*bgca Boys & Girls Club
*naf National AIDS Fund
*mssoc National Multiple Sclerosis Society
*9mil ninemillion.org
*sierra Sierra Club
*help StopGlobalWarming.org
*komen Susan G. Komen for the Cure
*unicef The US fund for UNICEF

[tags: windows, Windows Live, charity, microsoft, moohaha]

View my Dots on Blue Dot

Wiiiiii!

Jigna and Asayo came over tonight for a catch-up dinner at Rosebud and to pick up their bridesmaid dresses, which arrived super early from Netbride (my favorite company in the world at this moment). Jigna also happened to bring over the Wii that she had bought a week ago so we could play some games. Man, it's sooooo addictive! We played every one of the Wii Sports games: tennis, boxing, baseball, golf and bowling. The energy these games require range from leisurely (bowling) to extremely tiring (boxing). So incredibly fun, particulary with a group of people. I do have to admit the graphics are pretty 1990's but the interaction of the controller with the games are pretty spectacular...and at $249, it's not a bad game system (considering the main competitors are $500+) So tempting to get one...

Matt's birthday was this past Wednesday and I surprised him by booking the Caché at Canlis---yum, that was a delicious meal! We completely indulged with things like: fois gras, seared scallops with white truffle oil, fresh oysters, muscovy duck breast, australian lobster tail, cranberry bread pudding and grand marnier soufflé. The food was all prepared beautiful and came out rather quickly. The room itself was romantic and intimate with a chaise lounge in the corner and a telescope to check out the incredible view that we had of Lake Union. What a great private dining experience!

Hong Kong

Our 2 week trip to Hong Kong was really awesome. It can be summarized with: lots of food, tons of shopping, seeing relatives and visiting tourist sites. This was Matt's first time ever to Hong Kong---Asia even---so we knew we wanted to squeeze in some touristy visits in addition to showing him all the food and shopping that there is. Here are some of the highlights from the trip:

Food
We had a lot of food--mostly Chinese with the exception of 2 Japanese dinners and a random Italian lunch. Matt was exposed to eating things he'd never eaten---and, as he would say now "if you're ever thinking twice about becoming a vegetarian, come to Hong Kong and it'll almost make you be one!". Some samples of things we ate: pig lung, beef tongue, duck feet, chicken feet, congee every morning with chinese doughnuts, suckling pig (i love the skin), steamed fish, fresh shrimp, dim sum, shark's fin, turtle soup (tho' Matt refused to eat the actual turtle), pigeon...

One of the more memorable dinners in terms of a great view was when Matt and I ate at the Peak at a Japanese restaurant called Kyo Hachi. Not only was the food great but we had one of the best views in the city---here's a picture where the restaurant is reflected in the glass with the vista we had while dining:

Shopping
Hong Kong is a shopper's paradise, whether you want some Chanel or a $10 knockoff Manchester United soccer jersey. We went there with 2 suitcases that were each only barely packed. We came back with 4 suitcases fully packed full of knockoff shoes (i.e. Prada, Gucci, Louis Vuitton) and sample clothing (i.e. Burberry). We also got Matt's wedding tux, a suit and two cheongsams for me to wear for the wedding. Knockoff DVDs were everywhere and we snatched up titles like Babel, Pursuit of Happyness, Blood Diamond, Good Shepherd and Curse of the Golden Flower. We visited practically every street market: Ladies Market, Temple Street Market and Bowring St. Market which stay open til 11pm or midnight. There, we bargained for cheap clothing and tchotskys. Some of the knockoffs there were obvious (i.e. Matt got some Calvin Klein knockoff boxers that said "GK - Galvin Kravinthy").

Touristy sites

Although I go back every two years, I still enjoy going to a lot of the touristy sites because of how beautiful it is. Of course, no trip to Hong Kong should be without visiting the harbor:

And the views from the Peak are breathtaking:

We also took a visit to see the Big Buddha (official name: Tian Tan Buddha), which I personally hadn't seen in many years. The last time I went, the only way to get there was via a torturous ferry ride so I was pleased to see that we could hop onto the subway and then take the newly opened Ngong Ping cable cars over the mountains to get there:

The area around the Big Buddha has been really built up to cater to tourists. It used to be that the only food you could eat was the vegetarian meal provided at the Po Lin Monastery---now there's a Starbucks, ice cream store and a bunch of restaurants.

After we ate our vegetarian meal at the Monastery, we saw an interesting ceremony being performed by all the monks.

Macau
Since Matt is part Portuguese, we had to visit Macau, a former Portuguese colony. It's a really interesting mix of Portuguese and Chinese culture---you can see reflections of Portugal in the religion (huge population of Catholics), the architecture, the food and the street signs (which are all in Portuguese, Chinese and English). We took a day trip there via ferry and toured the small island in 4 hours (it's small enough to really get around and see everything that amount of time).

A lot of the Vegas casinos are starting to move in and change the overall casino landscape there---when my family last visited, the main casino was the Casino Lisboa, which is this smokey, tiny, sketchy casino full of prostitutes and smells of the Triad (and it's still like this today). Now, the Wynn just opened (and looks like a miniature version of the Vegas one with all the same restaurants and clubs) with MGM Grand and the Venetian coming soon. Casino Lisboa is in fact building a new location to compete with all the new ones coming into town.

 

New Year's
Lastly, for New Year's, Matt and I went out and decided to check out the infamous Lan Kwai Fong. We'd already been there for a drink the week before but I heard it was a crazy scene on New Year's. Indeed, there were just thousands and thousands of people out on the street. A total mob scene. There was even directed traffic to get into Lan Kwai Fong for crowd control purposes (which is good since this area was made famous in 1993 when 21 people died from the rush of huge crowds celebrating New Years). All in all, very fun New Year's.

Jetlagged all night

Matt and I got back from Hong Kong this morning after a 4 hour flight to Korea and another 9.5 hour flight back to Seattle. As much as we wanted to adapt back to Pacific time, we unfortunately were pretty wide awake for the entire flight...so by 1pm, the bed was looking too comfortable and we found ourselves taking a 5 hour nap for the afternoon. We woke up, ate some pizza and attempted to sleep again at 11pm. I woke up at 2am and haven't been able to fall back asleep since. Argh. It's now 5:16am and I might as well leave in an hour to hit the gym and go to work early, praying that I can last until at least 4pm.

I've got TONS to write about for the trip--it was totally fantastic. Coincidentally, shortly after my last post, there was an earthquake that hit Taiwan which damaged a bunch of oceanfloor telecommunications cables that connect Hong Kong and a lot of South Asia to the rest of the world. As a result, phone lines and Internet were unable to reach out to US and Europe-based destinations for over a week--pretty much the rest of the time I was there. That meant, no Internet at all in Hong Kong to any site that didn't end in a ".hk". Craziness! I didn't think it was possible to cut off telecommunications in such a major city. More so, what's Hong Kong doing still using cables on the oceanfloor? What about satellites? That whole event prompted a ot of news stories about the need to move to satellite since the ocean floor cables were so primitive. So there went my trip blogging...but I'll follow up with a huge long post about all the things we did soon.

First 24 Hours in Hong Kong...

We've been in Hong Kong for less than 24 hours and I already feel like we've done a ton....or perhaps I'm just really tired from traveling. Matt and I left for SeaTac airport at 10:15am on the 24th and finally landed in Hong Kong around 11:30pm on the 25th. Whew. Our flight over was actually incredibly stress-free and quite enjoyable: we took Korean Airlinesand got one of the newer planes which is equipped with an In-Flight Entertainment screen for every seat---we all had access to over 20 movies to watch in our own time (and recent ones, like Click, Little Miss Sunshine and Scoop), lots of music, games, etc. It also helped that the food was great and the seats were roomy. There was even wireless Internet available! It honestly made the flight pass by like that...and I only slept for maybe an hour out of the whole 12 hour flight to Seattle. Matt and I ate udon noodles in the Incheon Airport in Korea for our Christmas dinner--just hit the spot! We finally arrived in Hong Kong and took the Airport Express to Kowloon and met up with my parents at the hotel for a quick chat and catch up before hitting bed....although we didn't really fall asleep until nearly 3am.

We woke up around 9am and were on the road within the hour to get some breakfast beef congee..then wandered around shopping for a bit before meeting up with my mama, auntie and uncle for dim sum at Luk Yu Teahouse in Central--yum! After that, we whisked off to the shopping center and fitted Matt for a tux and suit. Yup, he now officially has his wedding day tux all selected and picked out! That was some quick shopping! We then headed over to the IFC Mall to get some wedding jewelry for me and then browsed around a bit more shopping. I'm back to feeling super fat as I go into stores and have to ask for the largest size possible. Matt tried on a jacket in G2000--the largest size they had--and it was still too small for him! I'm debating whether or not to get a tailored cheongsam or to attempt to find one that I can fit in pre-made in a store. I'll have to shop around a bit. In the evening, we ate dinner at the Verandah at the Peninsula Hotel...again, delicious. We called it an early evening with jet lag setting in...and here I am in my parents room blogging. Long day!

Puget Sound is shut down....

About a million homes are without power (not me! yay!), the 520 bridge is still closed, traveling on I-90 is total madness, fallen debris everywhere, hundreds of flooded homes and the entire Microsoft campus is without power right now----so I guess I'm not going to work since I can't do anything except sit in the dark in my office!

The biggest storm since Inaugural Day....

Sheesh. Seattle's been getting some crazy extreme weather lately. This week has seen some unusually strong winds and precipitation...but I didn't realize until today that we were getting one of the biggest wind storms since "Inaugural Day" (apparently, some crazy storm hit the Puget Sound on Clinton's Inauguration back in '93). Sure enough, by around 3pm, a ton of my co-workers had left for the day to deal with traffic and avoid any bad weather. I held out until 6pm when the office lights started flickering and news of the 520 bridge potentially closing as early as 9pm. I immediately hit the back roads, which was actually a stupid idea because everyone and their mother was taking the back roads. After 30 min. and only 20 blocks, I decided to just jump on the highway. Sure enough, the highway wasn't as bad as I expected (since everyone was taking the back roads)--within another 30 min., I was back safely at home. I know others didn't fare as well...and I definitely ran across a few larger-than-I-would-have-liked puddles of water on the roads on my way back.

But check out this Incident Report on the local news. (and another) It sounds like pure chaos over here:
- the 520 bridge is now totally closed (what I take everyday to work)
- some dive team had to rescue a woman was found underwater in her house (who later died)
- firefighters had to rescue some folks on Mercer St., below Aurora Ave., because their cars were completely submerged in water
- five landslides have been reported in various parts of Seattle
- 2 people have died from falling trees

It's kinda hard to sleep with the wind just banging against the building. It's 12:49am right now and the heavy/bulk of the storm is supposed to hit after 1am. Let's see if I wake up with any electricity!


Cars submerged on Mercer Ave.