A new year calls for a fresh new font for my blogs. There ain't much good font choice on blogger.com!
Let's see... Stephen and I had a restful and full non working week in Toronto for Christmas. As usual, all about babies and kids adds more joy than adult only dinners. No big news except it was unseasonally warm at first then snowed and very cold! Watched "The Artist" with mom for her birthday. It was black and white. And a SILENT movie. Makes you pay attention. Apparently it won Directors Guild awards and may even win Grammy's! It was good but not that good in my view.
Happy 10 years and Happy 2012
On Jan 1st, we headed out to Vancouver, had brunch in my old 'hood Yaletown with old friends, then drove up to Whistler. I must say the sea-to-sky highway is far broader and faster now due to the 2010 Olympics (our last trip being in 2009). Less than 1.5 hours in a shitty low end rental car! The conditions were shitty on average; very rainy in the village and lots of avalanche blasts at the summit. Day 1 was clear and we trekked all the way up 5+ lifts and t-bars to Blackcomb Summit. Usually this back country area has the absolute best powder but it was hard packed. And PAINFUL. Good thing I didn't fall off the T-bar 4x like our last trip (you may laugh, but this is a very very long and steep set of T-bars. not for amateurs :( ) At the end of the day, unfortunately with so many runs closed due to bad conditions, we mistakenly ended up on a double black diamond (very difficult) run. Stephen tumbled and luckily his board released. I was slowly going down - then a crazy skiier kid rammed into my leg. I got a serious charley horse and couldn't walk well for the rest of the week! luckily days 2 and 4 were much better; day 3 was rainy as shit. Base is ~200cm / 80" by now...that said Tahoe and Salt Lake City got no snow at all (they're golfing in Tahoe) so lots of the other visitors changed last minute to Whistler! All in all a fun vacation as Denise and Rob also joined us.
We also celebrated our ten year (dating) anniversary. Since one of our first 'dates' was at Whistler, I suppose we went back for nostalgic reasons. The Village is fun but not that fun. Time for somewhere new next time on the slopes! Korea? Europe? All the working folk in Whistler are AUSSIE as well ... they don't recommend OZ for boarding though!
2012 brings about other news besides charley horses and wet snowboarding conditions. Stephen started his new job! He's head of institutional research at a very famous company in Hong Kong. So now he has to take MTR subway all the way to Causeway Bay (not walk 12 mins to Central anymore... god forbid, 25 mins door to door!) :) Wish him luck in his new role! We also played in a tennis tourney at a friends' club recently to celebrate the Australian Open. And caught up with friends after their travels or holidays. Also made it to Shenzhen for a visit with their government and vice mayor to discuss education, R&D and industry opportunities in South China. Very formal - so glad i wore a suit that day! There were also monumental elections in Taiwan whereby President Ma (Beijing favorite) won by a narrow margin, something like 51% vs. 46%. I heard its more the business/economic focused campaign win rather than idealists....
Enter the Dragon
The most important holiday season in Greater China is upon us - Spring Holiday (Chinese New Year, Chun Jie). Besides China and Taiwan have massive travel to hometowns and a full week off, there is red decorations abound, jammed airport lounges and more-than-usual number of pregnant ladies hoping for a Dragon baby (my colleague she had her baby two weeks early, doh ! )... also I have to give out red pockets to my team at work, and also received some as well. This is serious money and so are "lucky draw" at company annual dinners. For instance, I heard a client's dinner had A-mei performing (she is super famous Taiwanese singer). And another one had grand prize of a BMW car. Ours included mobile phones, ipads, and again - some serious cash prizes!
We're off to Bali Indonesia tonight for the holidays since HK only gets 3 days (not a full week. We get Xmas but Taiwan/China do not!). Its 25-30C daily but rain in the forecast. Yikes! Also we plan some scuba diving. I've dived more than a dozen times and in reading my dive history, saw decent views but always seemed disappointed. Fingers crossed!
Gong Xi Fa Cai! Xin Nian Kuai Le!
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