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.

Snow day!

With all the craziness of yesterday's snow on campus, they "closed" campus today! No lobbies open, no shuttle service, no cafeterias open, no food/drink service, all operators on auto-answer, etc. Every meeting of mine was cancelled/postponed (including, sadly, the second half of a conference I was attending that obviously took a lot of work to put together)...so I'm having myself a snow day! Of course, I'm logged in and still doing work from home...but funny to think of having a snow day...from work!

A bit of snow

It started snowing again today. But a bit more than last night--just around 4:30pm, the snow came down and it actually stuck (at least in Redmond it did). Oh boy, that meant bad traffic (and for you folks on the East Coast--this is not even an inch of snow. You'd laugh). After getting out of the meeting I was in at 5:15pm at the MS Conference Center, a coworker (Tony) and I called a shuttle to head back to our building.

5:20pm
Shuttle picks us up

5:42pm
Shuttle drops us off at the same spot after circling around and trying to get out of the driveway of the conference unsuccessfully. Shuttle is stuck and can't take us to the building.

5:44pm
I call Lukasz who works 2 buildings away from where I am. I try to see if I can maybe hitch a ride in his car back to my building since he has an A3 and should be able to make it. I find out that he's just pulled out of the parking garage.

6:01pm
I walk over to 40th St to catch a ride in Lukasz's car. In the 15 minutes it took me to walk over, he's moved about 20 feet. Tony and I get in the car. Lukasz is going to drop Tony off at our building (which is literally less than a mile away)

6:11pm
I call Matt and decide not to go to the ProClub after work and, instead, just hitch a ride with Lukasz back to Capitol Hill.

6:28pm
About 3 blocks from our building (note it took 30 min. to go less than a mile). I call Gabe to see if he wants a ride since we notice that the HOV lane on 520 is open.

6:40pm
Finally cross 40th St. and get to Building 119. Gabe jumps in.

7:28pm
Get back home at last. And that was using the HOV lane which saved us at least half an hour. Whew.

It's snowing

It's actually snowing in Seattle right now. Weird (it rarely snows in Seattle). Man, we should try to hit the slopes soon---Crystal got 69" of snow since last Tuesday. Damn.

Our Thanskgiving weekend

Overall, nice and relaxing Vegas Thanksgiving holiday. Matt and I took off Wednesday afternoon to Vegas to visit my parents. Shortly after arriving, we got some Chinese for dinner and checked out the Red Rock Casino (where Betina & Justin are getting married next year) since it's rather close to my parent's house. By evening, my brother along with my 2 uncles' families had all arrived. One of the more amusing experiences from this weekend was the new karaoke system my dad had bought, already filled with hundreds of English, Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese songs. Everyone was belting away including my 80-something year old grandparents, singing some sort of old Chinese song. My dad even convinced Mrs. Chan (Betina's mother) to sing along when she came over for Thanksgiving dinner! I got a lot of great video!




Also--Matt, Aaron and I finally learned to play craps this weekend. We got rather addicted and pretty much only played this game the whole time.

Friday night, I took Matt to check out the Beatles' LOVE show with Cirque du Soleil at the Mirage Hotel. Man, it was a fantastic show. 2 hours of Beatles music and the imagery associated with it, care of the wonderful dancers and acrobats of Cirque. Highly recommend checking this out if you're in Vegas, especially if you're a Beatles fan.




B-List Celebrity Sightings: if you ever watched Hell's Kitchen, then you'd remember that the winner, Heather West, got her own restaurant at the Red Rock Casino. Since we were there, we wanted to check out her restaurant, Terra Rossa. It was closed but as we peered inside, we saw Heather herself prepping for the Saturday night dinner crowd. She turned around and waved to us. Ha! And earlier while at Red Rock, while playing craps, we saw Garrett walking by. Fun stuff.