Recent purchase

I recently bought the boxset of City Hunter (one of my fav of this year) via Amazon and I'm happy that it cost less than any True Blood boxset hehe...


I'm just waiting for Protect The Boss to get released so I'll have the complete collection of my favs of 2011.

Currently not watching anything

No K-dramas to watch currently as the ones that I really want to see are still airing. I have The Good Wife S.2 and Grey's Anatomy S.7 to catch up but for some reason, I'm unmotivated...

Meanwhile, I went to see Breaking Dawn P.1 in theatre today and I found myself cringing most of the time. It doesn't help that there were a lot of giggly teens around but I can't blame them because there were some 'unitentional hilarious' moments...Err...

Recent purchases

Before the closing of Metro Video, I managed to snatch this last available set of To Catch The Uncatchable, which is one of my favorite post-millenium TVB drama. I even love its unconventional ending for such a comedic series.

Next is the boxset of K-drama Secret Garden, the one drama that gave me serious withdrawal symptoms earlier this year. I bought this set from Amazon and it was actually affordable, at least it cost me less than any True Blood boxset…:p

The fun of misheard lyrics

I notice from work that everyone seems to be tired and easily irritated (myself included) lately so I need something to LOL. These two videos never fail to make me ROFLMAO! It's funnier if you know the group members' name...



For the following one, even with the misheard lyrics, the 'story' makes sense...haha! Kudos and credits to the uploader!



Totally unrelated, but since I'm still in City Hunter withdrawal mode, this news made me giddy and happy for about 30 minutes and then there is this and this to burst the bubble...Okay, we'll see...

Hours later, this came out! Yay, it's official that they are dating! Okay, I really have no life...haha!

Fighting, dongsaengs! Wish you the best of luck!

Happy Birthday to me!

OMG, I'm turning 29 today, one more year before hitting the big 3-0, embracing spinsterhood!!! Anyway, I can always daydream the following gentlemen offering cakes and flowers today...haha!

Jay Chou looking kinda unwilling...:p

Jo In Sung oppa!

Jang Geun Seok

Song Joong Ki

Kim Bum and flowers, how cute!

Jo Hyun Jae

Hyun Bin, see you in 2 years!

Rain

I'll be happy to get a rice cooker from Khalil Fong

All jokes aside, this above is my real birthday cake, which I devoured 3 days ago. It doesn't look appetizing from the pic but it was yummy!

* I spent half the day looking for the pics above just to prove how loser I am...Oh well, happy birthday to me and to Im Joo Hwan too, who is also turning 29 today and who just left yesterday to fulfill his military duties. Another one gone…

Well...

Well, I took a break from K-dramas since the ones that I want to watch are still running until end of April/early May. I'll watch them once it ends in Korea.

The last few weeks, I was back to American dramas. Just finished Private Practice season 3, The Good Wife season 1 and currently on Grey's Anatomy season 6. Glee season 1 will be up next.

New Year Feast

This is a random post but I just want to share the [blurry] pic of the Chinese New Year Eve's dinner we had last evening. The multi-layered pot of various meat and veggies. Mmmm...

Happy Birthday to...

Happy 32nd Birthday to Jay Chou! I deliberately chose today to watch The Green Hornet in cinema since it's Jay's birthday. Well, the movie itself was exaggerated but entertaining and fun. It's nice to see Jay kicking asses (or getting his ass kicked :p). Wish him the best!

Watching...

Well, tried watching Fugitive: Plan B but couldn't get further than 2 episodes despite liking (even loving) the three male leads and lead actress Lee Na Young is someone I usually enjoy watching in movies. Problem with this one drama? I dunno, it's a bit too pretentious and it's really hard to follow when everyone interacts in multiple languages. I even see Josie Ho and Ti Lung appearing in this drama...


Therefore, I'm currently watching How I Met Your Mother Season 5 instead...

My vacation Part 2: Guangzhou and Macau

After such chaotic trip to Shanghai, we went back to Guangzhou. Since my return to Guangzhou, I got really sick…I had gastro, gastritis and then caught the flu consecutively! So for more than a week, I was not in my best shape to visit anywhere and didn’t have a chance to taste yummy food! Luckily, once I’m well enough, I had at least a week to browse a little bit by myself.

I spent most of the time in Guangzhou and because the Asian Games (equivalent of the Olympics of Asia) are hosted in the same city so there are a lot of people everywhere as well. There was a one week free period of free public transit to all residents so imagine that!!! Plus, in order to take the metro, you have to pass security check as they have to scan your bags so it was quite hellish too! I stayed near Beijing Road and HuiFu Road during the trip and HuiFu EastRoad became a gastronomy section so as early as 9am there are line ups at the food counters (for stuff like roasted cheese yams…)

The five mascots of the Asian Games

The gastronomy section

I went to Macau for a day and luckily it was a pleasant day. It was hot but not unbearable. We visited some casinos and the most amazing one should be The Venetian. I mean how cool is that there is a big shopping mall and a mock Venice scenery within the casino!

Inside the Venetian Casino in Macau

Ruins of St-Paul in Macau

Casino Lisboa in Macau

All in all, it was a waste that I got sick during my trip and next time that I’ll go to China, I’ll choose a period when there are no special events in hope to avoid huge crowds…

My vacation Part 1: Shanghai Expo

After about 18 hours of flight + 2 hours of bus, I arrived in Guangzhou on the 20th and then headed to Hangzhou and Shanghai on the 22nd. It was a 4 days trip to Hangzhou, Shanghai Expo and Wuzhen organized by a Guangzhou local travel agency. It was a memorable [insert sarcastic tone] experience all around. First day at Hangzhou was nice as the weather was pleasant but the next two days devoted to the Shanghai Expo was…

In Hangzhou

I went to the Expo on a Saturday and it was expected to be crowded but not THAT crowded. Apparently, there were near 800,000 visitors that day. It didn’t help that it was pouring rain as the end of a typhoon approached the area. We lined up for the entrance of the Expo for about 1 ½ hour since 8:30. We experienced our first share of pushing and shoving by people and it was scary!

We were supposed to spend the whole day there and at 7 pm the bus would pick us up back to the motel. I was all happy to buy the Expo passport hoping to collect some stamps but ended up not entering any pavilions at all. It was announced regularly that if visitors want to visit pavilions such as China, Germany, England, etc. have to expect 6 hours of waiting…! Even a pavilion like Angola need an 1 ½ hour lineup. Remember it was pouring rain that day and I didn’t have an umbrella so I was soaked fast. I really didn’t want to line up for some hours so I just walked around and took some pictures of the outsides of some pavilions.

See the people and their umbrellas?

The Ukraine Pavilion, one of the better pictures I took

Everyone of the family were so fed up that we left earlier. We took the free shuttle to go to the nearest metro station. Experienced again some pushing and shoving and people cutting the line (Grrr…that’s what pissed me off the most). And then more pushing and shoving while waiting to get in the metro station. The staff just let a small number of people at a time and geez people couldn’t even let a father holding a child pass first by squishing them at a corner…I was so glad to return in one piece and didn’t die by being knocked down!

The public toilets at the Expo and they are surprisingly very clean...

We were supposed to return to the Expo the next day but after such horrific experience, we all didn’t care that we wasted the money; we didn’t go back. We were visiting Shanghai by ourselves comfortably and ding ding ding, it was raining that day too! We finished the trip with Wuzhen and it was more pleasant as the weather was better and it was the other side that we didn’t visit last year.

Wuzhen

Okay, I'm done ranting [not]...

Out of 'drought'

Wow, I didn’t update this blog more than a year! Time flies...There were times during that year that I wanted to delete this blog but as I kept looking back at my posts, it was kind of hard to let go because I had great fun writing these posts. It didn’t help that I absolutely forgot the password of my blogger account. Once I logged in recently, I was surprised (or furious) to delete 300+ spam comments.

So what happened during that year? I had a ‘drought’ period for blog writing because I spent my time…reading. I was reading anything from Stieg Larsson’s Millenium trilogy, Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse novels, J.R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood novels, just to name a few. It was during that time when I didn’t watch any series and was more or less ignorant of the HK music scene. As time goes by, I just lacked motivation to continue writing about anything.

Now, I want to [try] keep writing this blog because 1) I need to practice my writing, if not I’m afraid I will not know how to write anymore and 2) I recently picked up Korean dramas again. Aah…Korean dramas are like addictive drugs. I thought I’m immune to it now as I consider myself in ‘Korean drama rehab’ this last year but once I had contact with it, I’m a junkie again…

Khalil Fong @ Toronto

Yeah, within six months, I saw my absolute 2 favs (that is Jay Chou and Khalil Fong) in concert in Toronto. This time for Khalil, I'm fanatic (or crazy) enough to go alone to Toronto for this concert. It's the first time that I travel alone and it's an interesting experience, ah the freedom...

Back to the concert, I'm really happy to be there to support him. It really was a music based concert since most of the time, he was performing acoustic and the stage was simple, without any props. I must say that he was really good live this evening and his voice condition was great. He was really interactive with the crowd, he responded to the crowd making it an intimate concert. He even said "Bonjour" and "Je t'aime"...aw....

My only disappointments were that the concert was really short by my standards. It lasted about 1 hour and 45 minutes. Also, only pictures allowed but no video shooting allowed...Grrr...that sucks! But clips of that evening can found on Youtube...oh well...

The concert venue Roy Thompson Hall

The interior of the venue

The encore part with guest Fiona Sit

Jay Chou concert @ Toronto

I joined the Jay Chou concert tour to Toronto just to watch the show...I do consider this a chance of a lifetime to see him live since I've been a fan for 7 years. It was totally worth it despite that huge snow storm in Ontario that delayed a lot of things and that I have to work the next day...

The concert lasted about 2 1/2 hours and the crowd was pretty high. I was in fangirl mode by screaming and singing along out loud too! I managed to shoot clips of every song and as always, I complain that my camera just sucks at shooting in the dark...so the pictures were not too satisfying; they are either blurry or you see a minuscule Jay...sigh...

Concert ticket, booklet and glowstick...I was part of the 'mountain peak crowd'...

Jay playing GuZheng!!! I wish that the quality of this pic is better!

Concert rundown:

- 黄金甲

- 無雙

- 最後的戰役

- 不能說的秘密

- 安靜

- 聽媽媽的話

- 黑色幽默

- 最長的電影

- 說好的幸福呢

- 牛仔很忙

- 千里之外

- 青花瓷

- 本草綱目

- 夜的第七章

- 夜曲

- 迷迭香

- 稻香

- 雙截棍 (acoustic happy version)

- 彩虹

- 開不了口

- 陽光宅男

* Encore (the best part of the concert!!!):

- 周大侠

- 髮如雪

- 霍元甲 + 雙截棍

***Youtube has lots of clips of the concert, wow, a big thank you to the uploader so I can relive back!

Famous 08

Yesterday evening, I went to watch Famous 08: 4th Annual Montreal Chinese Contest at Club Soda with friend B. Call me outdated but I never knew that such contest exixted in Montreal and it's the fourth year now! The reason why we went is because HK singer Jason Chan was the guest...how rare to have Chinese celebrities in Montreal!

I actually enjoyed the show last night, the ambiance was pleasant. Who knows, the winner might be a future celebrity in HK :)

- Joe Cheng (an actor/singer who was in quite a few TVB series) was the MC last night.
- Jason Chan sang 4 songs: 永久保存, I Miss You, 固執 and 車匙. Even though I'm not a fan but he sounded really good live!
- The male contestants were better than the female contestants.
- I guess that Raymond Lam must be popular here as well since he was mentioned a few times during the evening.
- I finally realize that my camera sucks at taking pictures in the dark! I hope that my friend's pictures will turn out better than mine...

Before the show started

The MCs

The nine contestants

Jason Chan

Jason Chan again

Jason Chan with MCs

Jason Chan with the contestants at the end

My only vacation of the year

My short little vacation of 9 days in California ended so fast...:( I enjoyed my family visit there and I wished that I had a little more time sightseeing. Sigh, I'm back to my routine work now...

The neighborhood where I stayed in Stockton, it's a man-made pond that has fishes and ducks!

The ducks from the pond; we fed them bread every evening!

The incredible sight of 11 roasted piggies for the wedding banquet...

Only had time to visit Golden Gate and Chinatown in San Francisco

California's State Capitol Building in Sacramento

A part of the ceiling inside the building