Photo Paint!

Since I don't have a sticker picture machine of my own, I decided to play on Paint and make my own little random pictures out of the photos that N and I took the day we went sticker-picturing :P They're kind of very elementary, since my command of Paint is rudimentary and I didn't want to devote hours to this :), but here ya go!

Right before we got into the water

Wading!

bffs!
i'm actually kind of proud of the last one :P

Sticker photos make life better...really!

I'm in a blogging mood today, so I'm going to write another entry :) Went out today with my best friend N from high school, who's doing a law program in Singapore this year. It's been awesome hanging out with her again, and I love that though we've barely seen each other since high school, we're as close as ever!

Anyway, today was kind of a disaster! N came over to my area, and we took a bus to one of Singapore's largest malls, VivoCity. We walked around a bit, splashed around in this wading pool on the top floor (she has the photos, but as soon as I get them, they'll be up :P), and then decided to go for lunch. Disaster 1: There were bugs in our food!!!! We had ordered a plate of roast chicken and a large hokkien mee to share, and we were barely midway through our food when we noticed a bug on our table. With some unease, we swept the bug off of the table and continued munching away, but within a minute, we saw more bugs crawling on our plate. Being the insect phobic girls we both are, we dropped our chopsticks in horror, grabbed our bags, and left. Without lunch. We were too freaked out to get more food, so we decided to leave Vivocity behind us and take a train to Bugis to do some real shopping.

At Bugis - which is an outdoor street shopping area - we felt a lot better, and wandered around picking out cute tops. I love Bugis - week to week, fashions are different, and it's hard to be bored. This week the theme seemed to be ruffled office shirts and colorful tube top sprinkled with flowers. N found a really preppy but cute pink long button-down top with a collar and grabbed it. She wanted to see how it looked on, and so we ran into the nearest indoor mall and tried on her top...which ended up being much too small in the shoulders for her. Disaster 2. We ran back to the stall, and after some hard talking, managed to get the vendor to agree to an exchange. N picked out a flowery tube top...but remained in a kind of funky mood from the whole encounter.

Walking around, we saw a sticker photo store and decided to make ourselves feel better by taking pictures :) It was a little stressful, actually, because we had to use Japanese machines (where you get to write on the photos after you're done taking them) as opposed to the Thai ones that we're used to. We messed up a lot and couldn't find the erase button, but we felt much better after the scribbling process. Took a few random shots of the pictures at the store.

Yup, there's nothing like sticker photos to make one feel better after a lousy day!

Getting that Shot

12 months ago, to start senior year in style, my dad gave me a Samsung NV10. It's a pretty amazing camera - it has fifty million megapixels, so my images are always pretty clear. It's relatively small and compact, though of course it doesn't compare to a Casio Exilim, and has really great manual features. The colors are easily adjustable for different environments, and they have great settings (macro, backlight, sunset, nighttime, to name a few). And I love the interface in the back - it takes a little while to get used to, but it's surprisingly intuitive.
Of course, it has its imperfections. The NV10 is pretty slow in terms of taking multiple pictures, which can be a little bit of a problem if you want to take action shots in succession. And it can get a little blurry if you're zooming in on something and don't have the steadiest hand. But ultimately, I've loved using this camera. I was thinking about getting a digital SLR a month or two ago, when my camera was accidentally dropped and broken. dSLRs start at about $700-800 (on the very low end) but are amazing in terms of options. But for the price and convenience - I think my little NV10 does the job almost as well :)

Hong Kong! (II)

Food
I think my favourite part of Hong Kong was all the food - the dim sum, the roast meat stores. All so good! But there were a couple of dishes that stood out.

Teochew soya sauce goose
We accidentally wandered into a dimsum-by-day/restaurant-by-night place in kowloon one day, and I am so glad we did. My dad was instantly captivated by the sight of the geese hanging in the store window, and insisted on ordering a plate for dinner. Though I'm not usually a big goose eater, I really enjoyed these; the slices were just the right size, and the seasoning was absolutely perfect. These are served on top of soft tofu, which is the perfect complement to the dish. Yum.

Rice Noodle Rolls with Shrimp
This was another fabulous dish. It usually comes with dim sum, and I've had it many times before - its a frequent order whenever I go out for dim sum. But these rolls were really different - the rice noodles were so incredibly thin and delicious, and the sauce was just the perfect amount of sweet and salty.

Congee with Salted Pork and Century Egg
So my mom told me that something I had to eat while in HK was congee. I'm usually not the hugest fan - the last few times I've had it, the congee has been too thick or too bland, with thick and unappetizing pieces of century egg. It doesn't look like much in the picture, but this bowl of congee was really delicious - the egg was sliced into bite size chunks, the porridge was not too thick or too thin, and best of all, was tasty! I think I ended up eating it every single day that I was in HK.

Shopping
Also fantastic in HK, though I didn't end up buying too much. It was really fun just to walk around and see all the different types of shopping available, from designer malls, to road side stores.

Mong Kok Ladies Market
This place really reminds me of those outdoor markets in Thailand. I really enjoyed walking through the stores and seeing all the different things they had for sale - from current fashions to bags of all kinds, to toys for toddlers and dvds. My parents actually went a little DVD crazy when we were there...
...though to be fair, they did buy that "kiss" series for my viewing pleasure. I should start that sometime. I also saw the cutest pillows for sale there:
KOALA PILLOWS! They look just like the koalas on those chinese snack food things :) haha, adorable!

H&M
Okay, I had to have a shout-out to H&M, which is probably the store that I'll miss the most in Singapore...though I have heard that they're going to open a branch there soon. YAY! Anyway, all the other stores in this area were really nice too, with names ranging from Gucci to Marks & Spencer.

Dried Seafood Store
These were everywhere in HK - dried scallops, mussles, anchovies. They also sell "delicacies" like bird's next (which is really just swallow spit. GROSS) and abalones - not my kind of thing, but popular in HK anyway :)

I definitely enjoyed my trip there, and I would love to go back again sometime - but this time I'm bringing a bigger suitcase!

Hong Kong! (I)

My dad had a business trip in Hong Kong this week, and since my mom and I haven't been to HK since I was five, we decided to tag along and see the sights. I was really excited - HK is supposed to be a fantastic city for shopping and eating, which, needless to say, are two of my favourite things. The trip was actually really enjoyable - we visited some of the popular tourist spots, did some shopping, ate...a lot. One highlight was our trip to Lantau Island...

Visit to the Tian Tan Buddha in Lantau Island
The Tian Tan Buddha is this amazing giant bronze statue that sits on top of a mountain. I've seen a lot of large Buddha statues, and this is by far and away the most gorgeous of them all.To get to the Buddha, we had to climb 268 steps. Luckily they were just going straight up, instead of winding all over the mountain :) Apparently, the entire statue was planned out very carefully. The statue was based off of two famous Buddha statues (unfortunately I don't remember them right now) - and a plaster cast was designed and built to a smaller scale beforehand. Originally, the statue was to be set in steel, but after some trial runs, they decided to go with bronze and ended up casting 23 pieces, which were later transported up the mountain and assembled.

the trek up.
resting...
at the base of the lotus.
on the way up.
view from the top!

Right next door to the Tian Tan Buddha is the Po Lin Monastery, where we got a hearty vegetarian lunch. We had worked up quite an appetite from the climb up and our tour inside the exhibition halls.

at the visitor's canteen.
for just the two of us we had all this, plus a huge tureen of soup, and a pot of rice. gluttony.
after we were satiated, we walked around Po Lin Monastery.
you can see the statue wherever you go pretty much.

I have to admit though, the way to the statue and the monastery was kind of torturous. First, we took the MTR (HK subway) 40 minutes out to Tung Chung Station on Lantau Island. Then we waited over 20 minutes for a bus, which took around an hour and a half to traverse some really windy and narrow mountain roads to get to our stop. Half the bus looked ready to be sick at the end of the journey (myself included...yikes!) despite all the gorgeous scenery we got to admire on the way up. To avoid a second wave of nausea, my mom and I decided to take the much shorter, and much more scenic, cable car route.

the village from which the cable car leaves from.

floating above the mountains :)

in the car!
view of the city as we come in - and i didn't edit the colors or anything!

second last leg back to the subway station - which is closer to the airport than i thought!!