Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Happy B to someone special!!

Continuing the "Mike's tradition" of NOT working on his B day, we took a full day break and did a lot of stuff that had long been pending on our TODO (leisure & play) list ;)

Let's count the long list of "birthday entertainment" that day: we went to dim sum at a pretty decent dim sum restaurant, watched the Pirates of the Caribbean (still not sure if that was worth 3 hours of my life...) , burned through many episodes of the first season of the HBO serires, The Wire

And more importantly, just lying around relaxing ...
Hehe... have to admit, holidays always feel good and refreshing ^_^





One relatively busy errand that we ran that day was --> to buy Mike's his main B-day present, a new pair of glasses.
After many rounds of elimination, this frame is the winner!! Very close to what Mike has in mind: very light, bendable frame, rimless lens, bright color (though he originally wanted green but the blue one turned out to be cooler~)


Next step is busy rounds of eye examination to find out the prescription.





What?!?! Mike can read Chinese?!!!! (Well... at least, he can "pretend" to read the characters!)

On the other hand, I, the one who was NOT buying any glasses nor having any eye exams, was waiting quietly and patiently for Mike to finish his eye exam. Well... at least I was "patient" for the first few minutes, but after that .....

Hmm... let me try on Mike's chosen pair of glasses and see how it will look on me! Hmm... not bad not bad!!

As you can see from the above pictures, I was "obviously" pretty bored waiting ;) Taking pictures of myself in the mirror and all.... (Well... more yet to come, you'll see... haha....) Yea, I am never a very "patient" girl for anything at all~ ^_^


Let me try on some "frog-eye" sunglasses!! Never bought any of this kind but had been wondering why all movie stars like wearing them! In my opinion, looks a bit intimidating...

Okay, this blue pair is a lot more "tolerable" then the previous white one. But still.... looks kinda weird. I guess I am just not a big friend of sunglasses with gigantic lens.

Thank god, finally Mike was done with his eye exam and back!! Otherwise I'd probably turn the whole glasses shop into my own playground!! haha...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And lastly, something special to the special one ;)
Took me pretty long to design these two images. Guess I am just not an artist!! ;)

And this is how my design turned out in real life ;) Not bad, huh?!
^_________^

Happy BBBBBBB, my 小っちゃい おじいさん !!!! ^________^

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Badminton Night and . . . Memory

Andrei complained that he NEEDED some exercises but hates going to the gym, so I suggested to play badminton and volunteered to book the court, buy the rackets, etc. (Yeah, you can tell how much I like playing badminton!!)

Our "Badminton Fighter" Look ^_^

I used to have a really good racket when I was playing for my school team (well... primary school, haha...)

But I think I either threw it away or gave it to other people when my family moved to the US...

I missed my racket.......
We ended up just buying 4 really cheap rackets, just enough to play for the night ;)

And you know what - some stationary stores still sell cheap badminton rackets (exactly like what I remembered when I was young!) - Isn't that crazy??!!! Mike and Andrei didn't believe that I could buy rackets at just some random stationary stores on the street, but I FOUND THEM !!! YAY!!!

I booked a court at the Sports Center on Harbor Road, the same location where I used to play 14 years ago....
Same place, same court, same sports, same moves, same passion .... So nostalgic!!!

I still remember how Ida and I and other people from the school team used to come here to practice every Tuesday after school. Then we would walk home together and sometimes her mom would treat us to yummy buns at a nearby bakery after practice~ =D

Those days, those footsteps, those memory... Never would have imagined that I'd play badminton at the same court 14 years later...

Andrei and his friend Tony played badminton with Mike and I an hour, including a double match (which my team won, hahaha!!!) I used my phone camera to "document" our sweaty looks afterwards. Poor Andrei (or lucky?) had to shower within 10 min and "flew" back over to a karaoke party in Kowloon with a bunch of girls ;)

And someone is happily drinking his delicious strawberry juice after some good exercises ;)

Monday, May 21, 2007

Mike and his water army

Mike has decided that the water in Hong Kong in general is full of metals that are bad for human health and that water running through (old and rusty, he claimed) pipes in old building is especially "undrinkable", so.... here is his "water army"...


We have been buying bottle water at Wellcome (a supermarket chain in Hong Kong), which is getting more and more unbearable while the temperature is rapidly rising and the storms and rains are becoming more frequent.

So we decided to get A LOT of the water through delivery all at once, so we don't have to carry them one by one ourselves each time.

Here you go, presented to you, Mike's strong, impressive WATER ARMY!!!!!

Projected time of consumption: 1 week --> I am not kidding you!! We DO drink that MUCH water that FAST!!!

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Camera Fun at Office

This is a "catch-up" entry from last week. We have been extremely busy working the entire last week. I didn't have time to blog anything until now (which is already Saturday night).

Despite the busy work pace, we stole some moments to relax from time to time together ;) For example, we had some camera fun this day~

Taking a break from coding, Andrei took out one of his DSLRs from his bag full of heavy duty camera gears...





















You are witnessing a girl who simply could not resist the temptation of a DSLR . . .

Obviously, I never owned (or even held) a DSLR in my whole life up until now~ (You can totally tell from my exciting smile!!)









Oh my gosh, I can change the focus manually by turning here here!!~











Let me take some test pictures~ (hehe... don't I look professional?!)
















Hmm.... what is this button? Let me press it and see what it will do... (don't worry, Andrei, an expensive DSLR like this won't be broken so easily...) haha~ =D









WoohhH... I have a gigantic "camera face"!!!

(Oh, did I mention that all these cool pictures of me playing with the camera were courtesy of Andrei?!!)








Here he is! The real camera man!!





















And here is the fake camera gal !~ ;)












More fun with the camera~

Andrei, self-taking portrait, in front of his desk~











This is an awesome perspective of Mike and his "tower of books" (aka the laptop base).

So.... TALL (the tower of books) and so .... small (the man behind of the tower) Hehe...










A slight angle change created a totally different perspective (this one closer to reality)

So much to learn for taking good pictures!!








Switching to the other side of the room - My desk, getting "busy" (I said "busy" not "messy", right?!!) =D












This is how I look like when I was coding~ (wow.. you can actually see the code on the laptop screen!!)










And this is how I look like when I was clicking with my mouse (hmm... probably browsing something... of coz it's "work-related" !!! You think I am surfing randomly while at work???!!) ;D heh....








Random shot of Andrei and Mike. (Working or pretending to work?!)

"To work or not to work, that's the question!!"









Mike and I, working! (for real this time, ha!!)













Who has the cleanest desk competition
Well... guess who the winner is?


My desk











Andrei's desk













And, Mike's desk!!!!
























The conclusion of the day is that -- I think I like a DSLR!!! ;) Only wish they are smaller and thus easier to carry around! >_<

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Papa Blender

You might be wondering.... "What?! Papa Blender????"

haha... it's a recent nickname that we gave Andrei. The origin of the name came from his laptop. For some reason, its hard drive is VERY "talkative" and loud! (And I can tell you it's not a good sign for sure!)

The noise manifested itself even more when we skyped him from HK while he was in the US. It was horrible. Every time when we called him, he would sound like he was talking in a big juice blender!! ;) Therefore, we would know immediately that he got disconnected whenever his loud blender noise disappeared on the other end... ^_^

So we decided that we HAVE TO make him a shirt that says "Papa Blender".

Thanks to Mr. Mike for his find on the retro blender image and artistic design ;)



















And here it comes - Andrei's Papa Blender look!!!

(Hee hehe... I think somebody likes the shirt =D
And look~ the shirt matches perfectly with the shorts !!!)


















Then to celebrate "Papa Blender" getting a new T-shirt, we went to dim sum at a fancy-pants dim sum restaurant that Mike found out from a food blog. (Just kidding, we just went because we were craving dim sum, which has nothing to do with the t-shirt)

Though the fancy-pants dim sum restaurant was really NOT good and definitely not worth the price that we paid. (Definition of "fancy-pants" - fancy, expensive, sometimes could be good and yummy, but most of the times, not.)

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Shake 'em Buns

Continuing with Mike's favorite weekly food exploring tour - our stop this week is a rare burger specialty at Admiralty.
The burger place is called "Shake 'em Buns". Apparently, they have milk shakes and buns ;)

Burger places like this are everywhere in San Francisco, but they are a lot harder than expected to find in Hong Kong. (yes, I don't count McDonald and Burger King as a proper burger place, sorry...)






This burger place is a small ground floor restaurant consists of a small open kitchen area and a even smaller area for a couple wall-mounted bench-tables for may be 5, 6 customers to sit.









We were lucky that we could get 2 seats after a 10 minute wait. Lots of other customers came in while we were waiting. I was told that this place has a gigantic queue during weekday lunch.

Well... seats are sorted. Let me see what to order for my tummy, hehe~ =D







They put really creative names for their burgers: Hot Chick (chicken burger), Sissy Boy (veggie burger), Red on the Neck (rare steak), Missionary (normal burger), etc...










Both Mike and I ended up choosing the Veggie burger. (Yea, neither of us is a big meat-lover.) Believe it or not, most of the time, I eat more meat than he does.... He has (more than once) accused me of turning into a meat-eater since we came to Hong Kong, and that I had been secretly hiding my true nature as a meat-lover all this time in the US...

Well... who cares ;) I love yummy food, meat or not-meat~



And of coz, won't miss to order my beloved onion rings ;) YumYumYum.....












Seriously, isn't the burger as big as my head???!!! (okok, "almost" as big as my head~)

I could feel my tummy expanding as I finished my burger. . .









How does it taste? Hahaha...
You should get a clear clue just by looking at how fast (and EAGER) Mike was inhaling his burger at full speed!!!~





















And the onion rings as well !!!!!

And the verdict is - it was VERY VERY VERY YUMMY!~!!!!!!!! I'll give it 5 thumbs up~

^____________________^

My mouth started watering again thinking of it just now...