Made in Japan, Outsourced Globally

Asian financial capital. Land of Jackie Chan. The most dazzling skyline. Savory Cantonese cuisines. East meets West. Hong Kong : a lively place that's like a Disney Land for adults.


A view from the top - Victoria Peak is one of the touristy spots you go to for the aerial view of Hong Kong. You can also take a nice walk, so it's not all about tourism. You just have to be really rich to be able to live near the Peak though.


Hong Kong Park - a little oasis in the concrete jungle.


Hong Kong has a modern side and a very Chinese market side. Either way, they are filled with lots and lots and lots of people.


Hong Kong takes pride in its skyline - best seen as a panoramic view from Tsim Satsui prominade or with a cocktail in hand at snazzy bars like Felix or Aqua.

"There's something about Hong Kong," many have said. Reading Erica's final words about Hong Kong, I was sold on that very idea. I have lived there for the last 1.5 years with a goal to immerse myself in a different culture. Being a suburbia girl most of my life, running amock in a big city was truly an out-of-this-world experience.


Lan Kwai Fong - where all the magic happens. Clubs, bars, and people congregate - spilling out on the entire street on Fridays and special occasions.


Lady's Street Market in Mong Kok - you can find all the knock-off bags, clothes, and wallets here. Who needs to go to China when China comes to you?


This has to be one of my favorite photos, because it has the 'ding-ding' (the tram) on it. For HK$2, the tram takes you the full length of Hong Kong Island, regardless of where you hop on and get off. Sure, it's slower than the bus, taxi, or the metro, but sitting on the second-story open window seat gives you this "I'm in Hong Kong!" sensation. It's quite a nice ride, especially when you go past the Central district in the evening and you can see the lasers and fireworks above you. This photo was taken just in front of my apartment at the North Point depot.

I entered this ex-British colony just as the wave of SARS was receding. It's almost embarrassing how little I knew of the outbreak, but I also learned that my attitude closely adhered to the 7 million other people living in Hong Kong. Unemployment was a bigger headache for HK at the time.


Hui Family - my host family.

I was extremely lucky to begin with. I lived with a host family for the first 3 weeks, which allowed me to peer into the family life in Hong Kong. A real treat.
One of the biggest culture shocks I first had was dining - the Mom would make the meal and the Dad would set the table. The Dad would take heed of when our plates were empty and offer us a second serving. He even offered to do my laundry, which was hard for me to understand at first, coming from a very patriarchical family where the father did almost none of the domestic chores.
But the real kicker is this - we would spit out all the bones and whatever we didn't want onto the table, directly. You don't use napkins - just spit out on the table, and then wipe it all at the end.

The best Cantonese lesson I had was actually when I was house arrest during a typhoon. Hong Kong actually has a coding system for the different degrees of typhoons.
1 (amber) = warning for a typhoon in near area. Go to school/work.
3 (red) = go home or a safe location within 2 hours.
8, 9, 10 (black) = do not leave the building you are in until warning signal has been lowered.
Some expats actually have "typhoon parties," where they leave work and go to a bar, hoping that the black signal goes up while they are there.
In any case, my host mother taught me Cantonese phrases such as, "ngo dapche basi" (I ride the bus), "aujaifu" (jeans, literally translated "cowboy trousers"), and "momentai" (no problem).

Cantonese Cuisine

'Dim Sum' ('Small dish') is one of the Cantonese must have tea time snacks. Also called 'Yam cha,' which means 'To drink tea'.


Chicken's feet - mmm.... er... not exactly my favorite. Duck's feet is also another delicacy in HK (think 'webbed feet').

I've been told that Cantonese have the best food in Asia and are the most inventive. Inventive, I give them credit for. In reality, food is a hit or a miss depending on how much you are willing to spend. My all time favorite was this authentic Cantonese restaurant in Causeway Bay - when I was there with my friends one evening, the waiter excitedly told us that Jackie Chan was having a family dinner in the VIP room.


Mmm... hot pot. Step 1 - get raw food. Step 2 - dunk them in boiling broth. Step 3 - fight for the food with 10 other people at the table. Best garnished with loads of garlic and chili.


I take the fifth on the taste critique, but there were lots of hawker stand foods on the streets. You can especially recognize stinky tofu a mile away.

all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
... so of course, we had plenty of fun. My favorite past time in Hong Kong was junk boats. Half a day of the beach, music, sunbathing, water sports, bbq, drinking, chilling - with 30 other people. It's a recipe for a nice little get-away.



Sai Kung - most of the time, we ended up asking the drivers to take us here.




And as fun-loving people, we also put on some classy party of our own.

Fire & Ice Party @ the P&P Rooftop - we especially had Lars fly in from Singapore to bartend. This rooftop hosted many more amazing parties, including the 'Soddy Farewell to New York' and 'DEVOTION' party.

And you can read about the infamous Passout Passport Party here.

I had the pleasure of living with Duncan for an amazing 6 months. We both had the same lust for life and the right amount of lunacy to keep things fun. We also threw some really good parties.


This one is for you, Dunc. We somehow always ended up here for the free vodka and dancing on top of the bars.

Hong Kong was a fun place to be while young, with strange names, karaoke time, and some friends visiting. I even got to experience Chinese New Year twice (you get days off, bonuses, and a whole load of Chinese culture!). It was also a great way to get into China (that was a whole new set of adventures in of itself).

There's so much more I would like to write about this amazing place, but I would never finish. Ahh... Hong Kong, lived it. Loved it!

It's the edge of the world
And all of Western civilization
The sun may rise in the East
At least it settles in the final location
It's understood that Hollywood
Sells Californication

Pay your surgeon very well
To break the spell of aging
Celebrity skin is this your chin
Or is that war your waging

Firstborn unicorn
Hard core soft porn
Dream of Californication
Dream of Californication


A while back, we celebrated Mother's Day a day early in Monterey and Santa Cruz, California. What a beautiful day! We strolled around at Cannery Row and paid respect to the Steinbeck statue (author of Grapes of Wrath, amongst other great American novels).


Monterey is a beautiful, cozy place that embodies peace on earth. You can spot the seals swimming around freely here.


Hanging out with Drake at the LBC - it was sublime. Picture this - as one of the major ports facing the Pacific, all your products from China come in from Long Beach. (well, there's Oakland too)


El Toro (Lake Forest) - My brother and I decided to take a little trip down memory lane, where we lived for a year. Sad to say, there weren't any live koalas at this school.


Torrey Pines Beach in San Diego with good 'ol Manuel.


Pacific Beach was a great highlight of the trip. Beautiful beach, beautiful waves, beautiful people. I couldn't tell you what those two girls were doing in the middle. But they were definitely attracting attention.

I definitely need to make a trip down to San Diego again.

Sicker than the rest
There is no test
But this is what you're craving

Dream of Californication
Dream of Californication

being in between jobs is a bless-ed curse in disguise. time off is wonderful, as long as it is well spent. Define 'well spent' : 1. making use of the luxury of time that is proportionate to what your bank acct can tolerate. 2. allocate and justify who you meet, before you become bound to the forces of employment. 3. make sure you enjoy the process of 'time well spent.'

of course, all this includes the act of finding your 'next thing,' and may suck up all your energy and peace of mind in the rabbit chase. i just got lucky. 'timing is everything' - the mantra of my life says.

what was i getting at...? oh, yes. You know it's been a good week when you have excellent conversations with brilliant people, and their brilliance rubs off and inspires you to do something absolutely crazy and wonderful.

AmandaD and I sat on the floor in discourse about what we gained from our experiences abroad (Kenya, Hong Kong), the impact exuted, and mapping out our lifetime career. By the way, this all went down with red wine swivelling in one hand, shamelessly devouring Chris' wine country collection - almost a dozen empty bottles in the kitchen (we're talking $45-50/bottle wine here). The mood was mellow, but we were vibrant and swayed in the euphoria of "I am so happy. I am so damn lucky in so many ways." We agreed that we would die happy should we get hit by a bus (possibly the craaaazy MUNI?) the next day. Anyway, back to the career conversation: kids these days are so impatient and cannot hold a job down for more than 1-2 years. 3 years at best. --- we are those kids. The only constant is change, and you have this incessant itch on your behind that drives you to uproot and go looking for your next adventure. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 21st century: we are the spoiled children of wanderlust and nomadic blood. There is a spirit of "I can do ANYTHING if I set my mind on it" omnipotence (a.k.a. - hubris, ego) in the air. The hoops we've jumped and the unavoidable opening of minds and horizons we encountered in our international experience give us towering confidence that we can DO IT - whatever it is. Ever since I met Amanda in 1999, who immediately struck a heated conversation sitting on the hotel carpet for an hour in Milwaukee, I knew that she was a very special person with an ambition and knack for common sense logic. And it's always charming that she speaks to me in Japanese.

Drake is one person I got to know through nomadlife first, and then met in actual flesh and blood only within the last month. There was something absolutely wonderful in a scatter-brained-curiosity-of-a-cat way in his writing that made me think "wow, I want to talk to this guy." There are rare breeds of Americans who feel humbled to the ignorance of the USA and actively pursues the knowledge. The modesty is conveyed in his humorous demeanor, and he knows far more than he gives himself credit for. I would gladly nominate people like him to be our country's ambassador - in a non-political way though, of course. We jam-packed a series of conversations about politics, economics, saving the world, dreams, careers, travel, yaddi-yaddi-yadda for the last couple of days while I was in SoCal. I am sure that this is only the beginning of our friendship. You know San Francisco will be waiting for you.

Anthony Kiedis - well, I didn't meet him in person, per se, but reading his autobiography has been a trip for the last couple of days (esp. being in L.A. now). Ingenious creativity, both hindered and inspired by drug addiction which left him in precarious, chaotic, and some of the best story-telling situations. It made me think, "wow, this guy has been in the 'low of the lows' - but somehow still eked out a living." It's also interesting to read what situation inspired the lyrics to the RHCP songs, and their rebellious desire to stand out from the status quo is making me fantasize about what eccentric hobby I should take up next. Something artful, perhaps.

2 months will zoom by, if i want it to. The deciding factor is whether the time is 'well-spent' or not.

oddly familiar. nostalgic at best. It has been a while since my sleep has been disrupted by something other than alarm clocks. Someone is sweeping the street outside drake's apartment and mumbling in Spanish - you can also hear some sirens and pigeons hooting in the distance. It immediately conjures, in my head, the clattering of a hundred metal spoons, wheeling of carts, and the cry of the rooster in Hanoi. The screeching of trolleys and the bustling commuters in Hong Kong. Street noises. The mind is a wonderful thing - you can travel anywhere you want, if you have been there at least once.

Of course, I lay my lazy self back to sleep. 10 more minutes. 20... Now there are two men outside murmuring.

Flags from around the world and other cultural pieces decorate drake's apartment - leaving me humbled and seething with envy. He dreams of Asia. I have too many destinations to pick out a region. Had an excellent conversation with Amanda on Sunday that left me bright-eyed, wide-eyed, and on top of the world.

I stopped writing travelogs, but I need to start again before my memory fails me. There is much to be written about the trip to the Malaysian jungle and the nature spots in Japan.

p.s. - since I start working in August, now is your chance to fly over to San Francisco :) Su casa, mi casa.

Starting August, I will be working here. DestinationTBA.

(i wonder what it is with the Aerosmith references recently...)

I'm reading a rather depressing series of books lately about murders, torture, teen suicides, child-abuse, elderly-abuse, clinical depression... all in the family. There's something dark about human nature that draws you to something so terrible. Gruesome. Raw.

Although the book is fiction, it digs deeply into the dark side of the human psyche. The accumulation of abuse (physically or verbally) can push someone so far to the edge that destructs themselves and others. The stabbing incident in Zion, IL - that's real. Every time I turn on the Japanese news or read the papers, there is some story of abuse, abandonment, and family killing each other.

You would think that wealthy First World countries are on its way to building better lifestyles. But we are confronted with a set of new social ills. Sometimes there is a tendency to reprimandl ourselves, "we are not dying of hunger, civil wars, and Third World diseases. I have a roof over my head, a civil society, and means to earn my daily bread. I shouldn't be complaining about the way we live." In my opinion, it is exactly that mentality that misses the point and permisses the suffering to fall through the crack. There is no hierarchy in suffering.

A year ago, I had a discussion with my uncle, who is an elementary school principal in Japan. I asked him why there is an increase in these child abandonment and abuse issues in Japan today. He answered, "the mothers are losing the natural instincts. The instincts that every living creature has in reproducing, caring, and nurturing their offspring has thinned out in todays' society. We are losing that raw and rough instinct to survive." Of course, it's not that simple, but I believe that he speaks from experience. Some of the cases are so horrible that you cannot believe that a human is capable of such crimes (e.g. - mother scalding babies (numerous times) because they cried too much; 15-year old smashing his father's skull with a metal baseball bat; middle-school kid stabbing his teacher with a butterfly knife because he was scolded and humiliated publicly).

It all seems distant, but it's not. Sometimes I sigh in relief, knowing that I survived from that environment and found my haven. But events in the past week have indicated that creating and maintaining a family, civil society, and a good world lies in tremendous effort we put into our daily lives. Simple yet important.

I finished reading Choke today. Chuck Palahniuk (author of Fight Club) has made me disoriented and shifting uncomfortably in my seat. Or as my brother put it, he feared for his virginity while reading it on the plane. The ride was fun while it lasted, but the last page leaves you with a strange taste that you cannot put your finger on.

A fly is buzzing chaotically in the computer room. It's been stuck in the room the whole day, unable to find a vent or an open window. The idiotic frustration it exutes fuses with mine.

Martin asked me if I was happy today. The question struck me bluntly in the gut that it left me breathless for 2.3 seconds. "Of course I'm happy... nobody has asked me that in a while." I get a dose of the European touch.

I almost broke our rice cooker today. It started fusing inside and making explosive noises.

Once upon a time in the city of Glen Cove, there were two girls who became friends. One girl spoke no English, brought strange rice balls for lunch, and didn't quite fit in. The other girl lived with her grandmother and a poodle named Scarlet, and had fun toys like Nintendo and Barbies at her house but had no one particular playmate.

Cortney has a much better recollection of how we met and what we did as kids (i.e. - finding Indian arrow heads in forest preserves, putting bras on Barbies) - but she forgives me for my forgetfulness. Afterall, we stayed connected for 14 years without physically seeing each other.


Mom, Scarlet, Grandma, Cortney, and me - 1989

It's incredible that we were able to stay connected all these years. But what is more incredible is learning about each other's lives - we have led such contrasting lives. She remained in Glen Cove all these years. I relocated 12 times in my life, an average of 2 years per new location. She lives in a quiet town with the claim to fame being Ashanti. I'm a suburbia girl who likes the citylife and occasional travel.


Cortney and me - 2005

To tell you the absolute truth, Cortney is my personal hero. A person who is as strong and kind-hearted as her is rare in this world. She may not realize how much of an impact she has made on me - not only from my youth but in the way she has lived, survived, and continues to pursue happiness.

Cortney was raised by her grandmother because her mother was very ill. Emotional maturity is something that was instilled in her while very young. She was 2 blocks away from the WTC on 9/11. To this day, she has difficulty going into New York City. She used to ride horses competitively, but suffered a neck and spinal cord injury from falling off. She is slowly back to riding horses but will never ride competitively again. She also made a decision to live separately from her family members, who have not always been kind to her.

However, it is not her suffering that makes her great. She survived each of the hardships and has now grasped a life that she can be happy with. And she keeps on going. When we met, we shared each other's dreams. She said she wanted to create a happy family. By all means, it is no simple dream, but she will make it happen. I also know that it is what she wanted the most.


Our home in Glen Cove - still looks the same.

Cortney and Grandma embraced my family from the start. We drove countless times between our houses to play until dark. It did not matter that we were culturally quirky or that I didn't really understand the language. All we cared about is that those days would never end.

Each time my family moved, I could sense our bond thinning. I guess I was wrong. When we met, it was as if we knew each other all along.

We can't go back because time changes things. But we can go forward together.

Witty. Rough. Glamorous. Not for the weak-hearted. Goudy. Fashion conscious. Street smarts. Greed (Michael Douglass style). Artsy-fartsy. Inventive. Bad-mouthing-cab-driving-insanity. Picturesque. Sexual. Hub-bub.

... the list goes on.

New York is exciting. But it's not for everybody. I have yet to determine which side I stand on.


From Mel's rooftop. View to die for.


Happy Cinco de Mayo - this photo tells most of what went on that night.


And I met Bruce Willis! (okay, maybe not. But the similarity between him and Dave is uncanny).


The SES crew - not only do we suffer from Small Eye Syndrome, but we also have uncontrollable urges to make V-shapes and disgustingly cute poses when a camera appears.

I don't think I want to be back in a New York minute, but it's still a pretty exciting place. And as always, "living" there and "visiting" is a whole new game.

Stepping foot into New York, for me, is like coming back to see an old boy friend... from 2nd grade. He is posh. More refined. Even smells different.

Although, yours truly is actually from LongIsland (pronounced in one breath with a NewYawker accent). Most of the City slickers would reject me as a New Yorker.

But my fond memories lie in the driving past the trumpetting ice angels at Rockefeller Center on Christmas Eve; playing "Hearts & Soul" on the foot-tapping piano at F.A.O. Schwartz; getting yelled at the guards at the Metropolitan Museum for climbing on the Egyptian mummy exhibits; being mesmerized by the swirling architecture of the Guggenheim; and taking a huge mouthful of soft pretzels on Park Avenue.

I receive a culture shock when the radio ad said (in a serious man's voice) : "If your child is misbehaving, talks back to you, or you just cannot control him, call this number 212-xxx-xxxx. Come in today, and if it doesn't work, you will get you money back. Guaranteed. I have experience in this field for 30 years. Bring in your troubled child today."

* * *
Mel laughs sporadically and some people look up to see what the little Chinese girl is riled up about. Moi is moving out, but claims that it was more crowded yesterday with the line of SUVs. Jim makes excellent hamburgers and fills our glasses with $3 Chuck. Amanda... is Amanda (need I say more?). Paul is ticklish, as usual. Rickesh has the same wardrobe since the 90s began.

I am slowly starting to like New York again.