A quiet week
So it's been a pretty quiet week. Things are getting ramped up for Chinese New Year in Hong Kong and decorations are all over the place. It's like Chinese New Year puked blood all over Hong Kong since everything is red and vibrant. For those of you that don't know, it's the year of the Tiger so Sammy and I have seen everything from Hello Kitty in a Tiger costume to Disney's Stitch in a tiger costume.
Monday February 1st:
We went to New Territories on Monday to get mandarin plants as well as water lillies for the apartments and the office. These are all in preparation for Chinese New Year which is a HUGE event in Hong Kong. As you can see from the pictures, there are a lot of plants in New Territories since it's still very agriculturally vibrant. There are lots of farms and nurseries out there still and as Hong Kong grows, I hope they keep some agricultural production inside the borders because relying on mainland china or other countries for produce would be a mistake. After shopping for plants, we all dropped by Kowloon to have some Thai food. We had some chicken foot salad, tom yung gong, thai iced tea, fried shrimp balls and meat patties, shrimp in coconut curry, and some thai pomelo salad. Unfortunately, I didn't take many pictures since I was so famished.
Tuesday February 2nd:
We had lunch at Tai Ping Koon which is a chinese/western restaurant that has been in existence since the 1800s. Again, I didn't take many pictures but at least I took a picture of the souffle which is huge there. My father went to this restaurant when he was little and now I'm here yet again. It's a great place to get corned ox tongue, swiss style beef chow fun, sliced pork chops done spanish style, and their signature souffle which was as big as a basketball. In the afternoon we went to get Sammy's glasses prescription filled and get her some new sneakers. As you can see from the pictures, a LOT of Chinese New Year decorations are already up and the buzz is just awesome. Sammy ended up with brand new Stormtrooper Adidas Sneakers which just pwn.
Wednesday February 3rd:
Not much happened during the day on Wednesday. At night though, the Victoria Jazz Band played up a storm at Grappa's Cellar. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the band and they played danceable hits all through the night. Once a month at Grappa's Cellar, we have live music to dance to. I'm hoping we can find more bands and have more live music throughout the month. Creating relationships with the jazz bands in Hong Kong will making swing dancing viral. Both Sammy and I danced the night away to some great music. I ended up teaching the free beginner class with Karen since we are kinda short on instructors in Hong Kong. Hopefully more dancers can come here and teach sometime soon.
Thursday February 4th:
Not much to talk about yet today except for lunch at Hunan Garden restaurant in Central. It was delicious and I actually remembered to take pictures. We had a very nice minced chicken soup, fried dumplings, chive pizza, vegetable tofu rolls, crunchy soy bean encrusted sea bass, duck tongue with horseradish mustard, 4 treasures green beans, coffee milk pudding, and a taro coconut tapioca desert soup. Everything was delicious and well prepared. Tonight we have Sinclair Ang from Singapore teaching advanced class so it should be quite exciting. I'm looking forward to seeing how he teaches and hope to incorporate all the good stuff into my own teaching.