day 3: merry christmas!!! :)

days in hk: 3

# of dimsum meals: 3

# of times someone has automatically spoken english to me: 2

# of holiday movies watched: 2 (deck the halls, the holiday)

yet another morning of dimsum with the family. then, as per tradition, went to the matinee performance of the nutcracker at the hong kong cultural centre.

had a super tasty dinner for grandma's birthday. mmm...many photos were taken, dishes were had, comas were induced.

happy 82nd birthday, grandma! :)

[sidenote: blogger, i really hate your blog formatting sometimes. it's messed up.]

day 2: recap.

days in hk: 2

# of dimsum meals: 2

# of times someone has automatically spoken english to me: 1

# of holiday movies watched: 2 (deck the halls, the holiday)

as a sidenote, i finally have a camera charger, so photos should be coming along with the next posts. :)

day 1: xmas break in hong kong.

# of dimsum meals: 1

# of times i've almost accidentally gotten into the wrong side of the car: 1

# of times someone has automatically spoken english to me: 1

# of weirdass christmas trees: 2 (1 toy story themed, 1 ferrero rocher themed)

this place is weird.

And The Preservation Award Goes To...

so i was going to do a recurring post off of last week's www idea. but then i realized two out of the three would be the same as last time. :P so that probably won't happen until i at least finish the distance between us.

news update.

we'll be moving back across (half of) the country, back to boston, in january/february. aaron will be leaving his job before then, and it just makes more sense for us to go back to boston since, at least for me, the job hunt here isn't working out too well. i'm nervous, excited and dreading the move all at the same time; pretty much for various, entirely separate parts of the move.

part of this move now means, that i have restarted my job search in the boston area. ugh. but i'm hoping that, this time around, things will work out for the better. part of this plan is that being a bigger city, with more architecture, more jobs and more historic architecture opportunities that i know the city actually cares about, i'll be able to find a position to take up and put an end to this unemployment streak.

as result of this step, i've recently taken up the new position of news contributor for urbdezine, an online architect, design, urban planning and historic preservation magazine. while not a paid position, it sounded super fun and exciting, and a way for me to get my voice out there in the architecture world, as well as educate myself more about the city that i hope to be working in and contributing to very soon. it's a relatively new web-zine, started by bill adams, a lawyer involved with land use and urban renewal in san diego, and it has slowly been growing and spreading to other cities in the country. most recently, this list of cities has expanded to include boston (check out the right-hand side of the page!) and new york. since i'll be moving back pretty soon, i have committed to contributing to the boston chapter, and have just had my first article put out there.

i've been super excited to get started, even while trying to work through all the glitches that the user website seems determined to throw in my way. (i have a couple of posts pending because the one button that allows me to add a photo to my article has somehow disappeared on me...) and while i have a strong interest in historic preservation, i'm making a solid attempt to post about news and events that are outside of that realm and touch on other parts of the architecture and design industry.

if there's anything you feel like spreading the word about, i'm still trying to get my feet off the ground and looking for new material to write about every day. :) and feel free to browse the articles from the rss feed on the right of this page (you may need to scroll down a bit).

Lowell's Boat Shop, 459 Main Street, Amesbury, MA

to read or not to read.

today's post is yet another one inspired by anna hong, who in turn took a page from MizB's book, because like anna, i went on a serious book shopping spree this summer and flew through each and every one of them, and now i'm only restraining myself due to unemployment and, therefore, lack of funding for books.
so here goes:

www wednesday #1 - to do this, all you have to do is answer the following three questions.

+ what are you currently reading?
the art of racing in the rain / garth stein
i actually started this book awhile back towards the tail end of the summer. then once summer ended, strangely so did my energy for leisurely reading all the time. but i've recently restarted it again and it's super enjoyable. it's definitely a good read if you're looking for a feel-good, story-telling, nicely-humbling novel. also along similar lines, if you've already read this one, is a dog's purpose / w. bruce cameron. a little cuter, a little less of a humbling tone, but similar idea and super cute.

+ what did you recently finish reading?
little bee / chris cleave
this was actually a little while back, near the end of summer/beginning of fall. (yea, that long ago.) but a good read. serious and, at times, a little dark. but still a good read. i will admit the ending could be considered a little unfulfilling, but it's definitely still a book i would recommend to anyone who asked.






+ what do you think you'll read next?
the distance between us / maggie o'farrell
i don't actually know much about this book. it's a recommendation from jess, and i'm trying to re-kickstart my book reading so i figured i'll give it a go. also, we've started doing this book trading thing where one of us will send the other a book as a recommendation to read, and when that person's done, they send it back with a book recommendation of their own. it seems like a good system, except that i have, unfortunately, been dropping the ball on my end and have had this book for awhile without having gotten to it because i've just really slowed down in my downtime reading. but i'm fixing it! :) my goal is to finish this by christmas.


if you have any book recommendations for me to add to my nicely-filling-up bookshelf, comment here!

it's a bird. it's a plane. no, it's just me.

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+ not too shabby. still need to hit two more continents (+ the middle east and central america/the caribbean).

i love travelling. i really do. though i must admit the flying part has very gradually lost its appeal. i'm pretty sure it's because of all the fifteen hour flights to and from hong kong every year for the past seven years (sometimes twice a year). i calculated at some point. with those trips alone, i clocked about 34,000 miles of flight every year. gross. so the whole joy of flying thing? kinda worn off by now.

but i still love travelling. 

everyone always says you should travel while you're young. which sounds fantastic. except for one tiny problem. when you're young, more than likely, you're also poor. right now, as a recent college graduate, this would be a perfect time to just travel before i find a job and settle down somewhere for a bit. unfortunately, it's not like four years of campus jobs is really going to pay for a trip, well, anywhere. boo. and when i finally do find a job that could possibly pay for my travel plans, it'll probably be a while before i can actually work up enough vacation days to make any trip worthwhile.

boo. life.

note: props to anna hong for this post. i took the map idea from her site. :) 

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+ not including drive-throughs.

p.s. i really hate coding sometimes...

another whirlwind adventure.

thursday, nov. 17^th, 2011.

my trip started at 7:45am when i was out and ready to catch the badgerbus to the milwaukee airport where i was to catch my flight to new york via cincinnati. this may have been one of the worst travel experiences of my life. okay. not really. but it wasn't good. everything was fine until i got to cincinnati. then, after sitting at the gate for over an hour, the gate agents announce that the plane is here, but there were a few minor issues that needed to be taken care of before we departed. okay. no problem. a half hour later, a few minor issues turned into, "um...we found an oil leak. it's something to do with the hydraulics, so...it's not good". okay...still not terrible. turns out, it didn't take them long to reroute all of the passengers with connecting flights from jfk and then find the remaining passengers another aircraft. at the other end of the terminal. so we haul ass over there, board, taxi out from the gate. only to then taxi back in five minutes later. cue, "sorry folks, we just found a small technical issue with our communications system". excuse me? so then began yet another hour-long wait while that got fixed. then finally, onward to new york. onward to whirlwind weekend adventure #2 with the j-twin.

i don't think i ended up getting into brooklyn until 10pm-ish (i was supposed to get in around 7-ish), which, considering my travels began at 7:45am that morning, wasn't fun. it really shouldn't take fourteen hours to get from madison, wi to brooklyn, ny. just saying.

anyhoo. met up with jess, and had a nice, late dinner at a japanese place, where we each got delicious dinner boxes with sushi. mmm...have i mentioned i love japanese food? Then, we turned in for the night and hung out at the apartment since j had an early morning the next day.

friday, nov. 18^th, 2011.

café regular.

my delicious (and pretty) latté. :)

jess worked the am, and left instructions to check out some really good coffee at cafe regular down the street. so i went and got myself a really good latte and hopped on the subway and wandered my way through ny to meet her at rockefeller center. since i figured i had time to kill, i got off the r a stop early and just decided to walk over. stopped in at bryant park along the way. they had their holiday stalls up so i meandered my way through. unfortunately, being unemployed and on a very tight budget, i had to refrain from getting anything. fortunately, being human, i had to eat at some point. om nom nom…enter my nutella + banana crêpe. mmm…i had actually wanted something savory, but it turns out i’m bad at turning down banana and chocolate wrapped in a delicious pancake.

mmm...crêpes...

setting up the rockefeller christmas tree!!

eventually, arrived at the rock and wandered some more through the nbc experience store, where i again mentally listed the things i wanted but probably shouldn’t get and/or don’t actually need without actually buying anything. found j-twin, and then made our way upstairs to check in and get our tickets to see late night with jimmy fallon LIVE. okay, so not going to lie, i’m not actually a huge fan of jimmy fallon, but these were free tickets to a live recorded show. in itself, pretty damn cool. and the show itself turned out to be pretty funny.

woohoo!!!

quick side note for anyone who watches 30 rock: remember that episode where kenneth has gotten fired, is working for another network and is in the process of sorting audience members for the live show in terms of attractiveness? yea, we were pretty sure that wasn’t too far from the truth. after getting seated (in the front of our section, btw!), we look around to realize that there seemed to be a strange coincidence where any audience member over the age of thirty seemed to be seated in the back half of the room. dude, what??

so, it turns out, “late night” with jimmy fallon meant that this show was actually being shot at 5:30pm in the afternoon. nice. long story short, michelle williams was there to promote her movie, my week with marilyn, which could be interesting; i’m not sure what i think about the casting, but we’ll see. alton brown came on to show everyone the correct technique to opening a bottle of champagne with a 15^th century french rapier, a replica of which he then gifted to jf. comedian iliza shlesinger (yep, had to look up how to spell her name) came on with a little stand up; she is hilarious. she brought her adorable puppy and did her own rendition of sarah mclachlan’s aspca commercial. musical guest, the roots (+ animal from the muppets), played an amazing show. jf himself? actually pretty funny in person. watched two random guys get covered in goops of all sorts (mostly perishable), and watched one of them win $200. the show ended on a high note, where i got to high five + shake hands with jimmy fallon. y’know, nbd.

the stage of the show isn’t all that big. and yet they find the space to maneuver five massive cameras around to get all the right shots. it was seriously an impressively well-oiled machine. having my only stage management experience being back in high school and being impressed with how that went, this was incredible to watch. i can only imagine the stress levels of the stage manager we watched work her way through the scenes, and when she turned to give instructions to the audience only to hope we’d respond in the way they needed. sick.

by the time we came out of the show, it was dinner time. i quickly bought a late show pint glass, which i would later leave at dinner by accident :P, and we headed back into brooklyn for dinner at the stone park café, a nice, schnazzy restaurant not too far from jess’ apartment. it was delicious. we shared a mussel appetizer to start (really fresh) and i had a fantastic salmon dish, while jess got squid ink tagliatelle. so good. no, really. so good, i forgot all about my souvenir pint glass i had set down on the floor by the window.

so ended another great day in nyc.

saturday, nov. 19^th, 2011.

slept in a little. woke up to meet anna to go to the smorgasburg market. breakfast pretty much consisted of any delicious eats we decided to taste while wandering around the market. meatballs, chicken wings, lamb burger, anchovies, asia dogs, oysters…so much goodness. retrospectively, i’m not sure my stomach agreed with my decisions. but, i regret nothing! we, then, made our way to union square where the holiday market had been set up. this led to more wandering and more “window-shopping”. we managed to lose anna at least twice, with each time resulting in her appearing with somehow more food. sliders the first time, and then belgian waffles the next; the latter of which was, again, delicious. i finally caved and bought my one big purchase of the trip, an orange, enviro-friendly tote by engage green, a global-warming-awareness company who makes a bunch of products out of recycled plastic bottles. it seemed pretty cool, and it was a good cause/idea. again, good decisions all around. it was either going to be the bag or a long-sleeved, hooded shirt that had a cute dog/cat face on the front and ears of said animal on the hood. adorable. or maybe it was a graphic t, which i decided i had too many of anyway. hmm…yea…it was that. now i actually do want that hoodie-shirt. damn.

omnomnom!

after the third market of my trip, we all headed to korea way for an early dinner before anna had to peace out back home. we went back to wonjo, though this time going with the nakji (octopus) bibimbop. mmm…so full. post-dinner, we wandered the gap down the street to work off the fullness. anna went home, and jess and i made our way to the movie theater. we had originally planned to watch the descendants, but being a new movie, it was completely sold out for that night. so we bought tickets ahead of time for sunday and then headed back to brooklyn to another movie theater to watch happy feet two in 3d. i had originally invited anna to see this with us, but afterwards realized it had probably been good that she couldn’t stay in the city too late since, being ocean-themed, it involved at least one giant whale scene. it would’ve ended poorly. it was entertaining, with significantly more adorable than the last one, more ridiculousness and more crazily unbelievable song choices. if you’re just looking for a funny, feel-good film, that would be the one to check out.

oh! can’t forget. we had some time to kill before the movie started, so we made our way to the brooklyn farmacy + soda fountain. it’s an old-school pharmacy that got turned into an ice cream place, but retained the old-schoolness of it. very vintage. very hipster. very brooklyn. again, more super delicious food. again, got way too full. again, i regret nothing! we had a peanut butter sundae of sorts. damn…

the before...

...and the after.

and so ended a very successful (and a little out of order) day three to my whirlwind weekend in nyc with j-twin.

sunday, nov. 20^th, 2011.

post yummy congee breakfast. :)

okay. so this day was kept light to counter the incredible foodfest we had had the day before. (my stomach was not agreeing with the sundae from the night before very well. though, it got over it.) we started it off with a very chinese-y breakfast of congee in chinatown. so simple, but so good. afterwards, we walked off breakfast by visiting the new (and old) phase(s) of the highline. there were definitely aspects of it i really enjoyed. and it’s most probably going to stay near the top of my list of places to keep going back to whenever i’m in ny. later on, we finally took advantage of starbucks’ buy-one-get-one offer for the weekend. had a light lunch before heading to our afternoon showing of the descendants. we were easily the youngest people in the audience. but despite that realization, the movie ended up being quite good. i had my doubts about certain members of the cast, but they ended up being quite unnecessary. the movie was enjoyable, and quite the contrast to happy feet two the day before. in comparison, if you’re looking for a mellow, serious drama with some surprising casting choices and appearances, this would be the movie for you. it’s got my thumbs-up.

me + j-twin on the highline.

new seating arrangement on the highline.

dinner was had at bareburger near nyu. omg. so good. this place offered all sorts of burgers, from beef to ostrich to bison to elk. ridonculous. again, so full. of delicious burger and a dessert of a peanut butter chocolate milkshake. mmm…

monday, nov. 21^st, 2011.

jess had work again, so i slept in a little before packing up, showering and then heading out to meet her for one more lunch before i headed to the airport and back to madison. i met her near her office, and we had a super easy lunch at an italian place. after lunch, it was time for me to make my way back to the airport via subway (an experience in itself), and get on my plane back to milwaukee to get picked up by B. the trip back was a lot calmer and less stressful than my trip there. thank god. only one minor hitch where i had to power-walk my way through the entire minneapolis airport, which by the way is a lot bigger than you’d think, because i had booked my connections unfortunately close together due to what was available to me at the time. but at least i knew it would happen ahead of time. it didn’t make the power-walking any easier, nor make my calves any less sore right after, but at least i had been expecting it.

sad, lonely, little dude on the runway...

overall, it was a seriously fantastic weekend and visit #2 to see jess in ny. got to go see some new sites, as well as revisit some old. i’m still very impressed with my own tackling of the new york subway system, with little to no instruction from j-twin. made it there and back in one piece, though probably back with significantly more poundage. :P

now, only twenty more days before i embark on the ridiculously-ever-so-long trip back to hong kong for christmas. i was hoping to bring B with me on this trip, but it looks like a separate, not-so-family-oriented trip may be the better option. it’ll happen. and it’ll be awesome when it does. i can’t wait.