Zookeeping 101

Our trip to Taiwan was primarily to visit my family. I'm the oldest son of the oldest son, so when my folks heard that I'd gotten married, they were all anxious to meet our new "Kate Middleton", so to speak, haha.

On our second day in Taiwan, my uncle took us to visit a friend of his who owns half a small town. She lives on a gated property with a menagerie of various birds and small animals. In addition to those in the video, she also has a Japanese crested rooster and his hens, a couple of ducks that live on her koi pond, and two large parrots, a blue one and a white one. The white one can say "Hello," and "How are you?" while the blue one says, "Good morning," and "Good night,"... in Japanese. I tried to get a video of them but wound up with just 5 minutes of them eating crackers. (And of course, as soon as I put the camera away, they both started yakking up a storm. Figures.)

Final Scenes from Hong Kong

This is Lan Kwai Fong, the ex-patriot center of Hong Kong.



Most of the restaurants and bars in this area have American, British, or Australian themes and cater mainly to foreigners (or, on weekends, locals who are looking to hook up with a foreigner :P).

We unwittingly wandered into LKF during their Carnival street event. I thought this was totally random; Carnival occurs in February, not sure why they chose November for Carnival. Maybe they just wanted an excuse to throw a party and someone happened to pick Carnival out of a hat. *shrug*

Allison said that she didn't feel like Hong Kong was a different country. "It's like just one enormous Chinatown, really. Not much different from Toronto."

Well, here are a couple of things we don't have in Toronto:



Cell phone service in the subway (which I wish we had).



McDonald's delivery (which I'm glad we don't).

Anyway, that's it for Hong Kong! Next up: Taiwan!

Lamma Island

The territory of Hong Kong is split up into a few parts with Mainland China at its northern border. Coming south out of China, you would enter the New Territories (which have been "new" for decades now), then Kowloon, which ends at the harbor. South across the harbor is Hong Kong Island.

In the sea around Hong Kong Island are the Outlying Islands, of which there are several larger ones such as Lantau Island (where the international airport and Hong Kong Disneyland is), Cheung Chau, and Lamma Island where people live and commute to Hong Kong and Kowloon.

We took a 30-minute ferry ride to Lamma Island on the Sunday of our Hong Kong trip. As of Saturday, the forecast called for rain but lo and behold, the weatherman was wrong; it was blazing sunshine all day.



Lamma Island is a kind of seaside resort town, except without the resorts. There are beaches, quaint townhomes, narrow streets lined with shops, people on bikes, and restaurants by the seashore.

Oh, and there's a power plant on the far side of the island away from town, you might have noticed that in the above picture.



This is a small temple near the beginning of our hiking route across the island. I'm not sure what religion this is; I know it's not Buddhist or Taoist. The picture on the wall looks kind of like a space alien so maybe it's Scientologist.



Lamma Island is not very urbanized so lots of homes have vegetable gardens in the back, and some of these gardens have fruit trees. Mainly, we just saw bananas and papaya; trees that are mainly tall but not very wide. One house had a lime tree, but we passed it before I had the notion to take pictures of everything. :(



And this is a pink flower tree that Allison liked. Although on closer inspection, we found that the pink "petals" were really leaves and the little white puffs in the middle were the actual flowers. Deceptive!

Teppanyaki

I think it's interesting how many cultures, over the centuries of civilization, have developed some sort of heat-a-metal-surface-and-cook-food-on-it style of cuisine. The Mongolians have it, so do the Koreans. And of course, the entire state of Florida is about cooking food on a metal grill over a fire, pretty much.

Allison and I had teppanyaki with my old college friends who are now based in Hong Kong (of which there are surprisingly many), and other former colleagues from back when I used to write ads there.

Teppanyaki is the Japanese version of cooking on a hot metal surface. "Teppanyaki" literally translates to "metal plate cuisine". I think they should have called it "kasainitsuiteyaki", which, according to Google Translator, should mean "on fire cuisine" because, really, setting the food on fire is the best part!



Now my nomination of best party trick of all time (avert your eyes if you're squeamish about freaks of nature):

When we scratch ourselves, the spot we scratched often goes pale (because the body detects trauma and closes off capillaries near the skin surface to reduce bleeding), and then pink or red again (because the body realizes it hasn't suffered an injury and re-opens capillaries and gets blood flowing again).

My friend, Kent, takes this to the next level. Now, I don't know why this happens, but I suspect it has something to do with histamine hypersensitivity. In any case, when you scratch him, not only does his skin go pale and then back to pink again, it... well, it puffs up like this:



This was the first time Allison saw this and she was both horrified AND fascinated.

And that's why Kent used to get all the girls in school. Weirdo. :P

Ocean Park

It was 90% my idea to go to Ocean Park. Allison has had the Charleston Aquarium for most of her life and she thinks dolphin shows are inhumane, so another park dedicated to sealife didn't interest her.

"But Allison," I said, "Ocean Park has pandas!"

She brightened. "Really?" Scowl. "What do pandas have to do with the ocean?"

"Uh... well, they're from the mountains of China... which is a country... with shorelines... uh, on the ocean."

She blinked at me, then shrugged. "Okay, sure. I love pandas."



And as promised, here are some more pictures of An An in mid-pace, and Jia Jia in mid-sleep.


An An pacing back and forth, back and forth.


Jia Jia taking an afternoon nap.

Coming out of the panda building, Allison proclaimed, "It was worth $40 just to see the pandas!"

... but we went to check out the fish anyway. :P


I found Nemo!


Cuttlefish. I'd seen these at the market near our hotel. Cool creatures but not worth $40 at current market prices.


Japanese spider crabs. These had leg spans of 3 to 4 ft. but spider crabs can grow up to 12 ft. in leg span.



So as you can see from this blog post, we made it! :)

Victoria Peak

Our first full day in Hong Kong, Allison and I went to Victoria Peak because... well, that's what tourists do. :)

We rode the Peak Tram, which is really steep, read the posters about the history of the Peak and how the British colonists made it into what it is today, had Haagen Dazs and took a few pictures.



I took this picture through the glass barrier that surrounded the observation deck. As you can tell, I'm terrified of heights.



Here's Allison against the Hong Kong skyline. Ah, so beautiful. And the skyline ain't bad either. :P

And of course, for something like this, we need a longwinded video:

Hong Kong Day 1

Allison and I have embarked on a great adventure to Asia consisting of 16 days in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

This building near our hotel in Hong Kong is under renovation. One uniquely Hong Kong aspect to this engineering is the type of scaffolding that they use.

Look closely:



Every time Allison and I passed by construction sites, we marveled at the lattice-work of bamboo scaffolding that reached up ten or twenty storeys, lashed solidly together with thousands of plastic ties:




What freaks me out is the idea that, as the scaffolding extends upwards outside these 20-storey buildings, someone has to lash more bamboo poles at the top! Just the thought of it gives me shivers!

Closer to the ground, around the corner from our hotel is this street market. This vendor is selling live seafood.



You can see crabs, shrimp, halibut, and snails in this picture. Being raised far from any ocean, sealife has always fascinated me. Allison keeps having to drag me away from this market, haha.

California Dreamin'

One of our studio's clients is Blizzard Entertainment, which makes the Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo videogame franchises. Allison and I enjoy playing their games, so we volunteered to go to Blizzcon in Anaheim to "shmooze" the clients. :)



Of course, being a videogame convention, Blizzcon was heavy on: a) nerds, b) costumes, and c) nerds in costumes.

Here is one such mega nerd.

Standing next to her is an attendee dressed up as a moonkin, a type of druid from the World of Warcraft.


"Half price wings at Denny's! Yargh!!"

Throughout the halls were these massive statues of iconic Blizzard game characters. This is an orc warrior riding a worg mount.

And of course, we couldn't go to Anaheim without stopping by the Happiest Place on Earth!



Here is Allison at the Mickey garden just inside the gates of Disneyland.



The biggest problem of entering the world of yesterday and tomorrow: what verb tense are you supposed to speak in?



Overlooking the Finding Nemo submarine ride. In the background is Mt. Wannahockaloogie. It's much bigger than it appears in the movie.



Coffee, tea... or me? :P



Allison and her little gryphon hatchling from Blizzcon give us the all-clear for takeoff back home!

And th-th-th-th-th-... that's all, folks!

Oh wait.

If Grapes Were...

If grapes were birds, this would be an ostrich.

If grapes were cars, this would be a Suburban.

If grapes were countries, this would be Russia.

If grapes were mountains, this would be Mount Everest.

If grapes were tedious, repetitive blog posts, this grape would be this post. :P

Mont-Tremblant

Sorry for the blurry video! My iPhone has trouble focusing on distant landscape, obviously. Time for a 4S, I think. :)



Our hotel at Mont-Tremblant overlooked a lake:



This picture was taken from the shoreline next to the hotel, which we didn't realize at the time was a whole separate piece of property. And there I was, telling Allison, "Oh, don't worry, I'm sure this is just a hotel banquet area for weddings and stuff."

After this picture was taken, I saw someone walking around in a bathrobe in the "banquet hall" behind us and realized that we were in someone's yard!

Scenes from a Mall

There's a mall near our house called Fairview that we go to a lot for shopping, food, movies, etc. Today, Allison and I went by there to get sandwiches and coffee and we noticed a new Lego Store had opened up.



The Lego Store is heavily Star Wars-themed right now. This is the Death Star at the top and an imperial destroyer on the bottom. If the lighting was better (or if I was a better photographer) you'd be able to see a little lego tie-fighter in the hangar in the top part of the Death Star. (Luckily, what I lack in photography skill, I more than make up for in dorkism.)



This is the Fairview Apple Store. I've heard that the windows of the Apple Store downtown was covered with condolences written on Post-Its. Here, there were just some flowers and candles.

If superheroes were real, I think Richard Branson could be Batman and Steve Jobs would've been Iron Man. RIP real-life Tony Stark. :(

Tastes like chicken

International Talk Like a Pirate Day, Mateys! ... and Raccoons.

Avast, our hearty one 'n all! In honor o' International Talk Like a Pirate Day, I, Cap'n Can't-Grow-a-Beard, shall regale ye with my fantastical tale of... raccoons.

Allison and I are a pair o' bleary-eyed scalliwags today on account of a murderous row occurrin' outside our window before the light o' dawn this morn. I jumped awake outta our bunk, fixin' that t'were the guinea pigs fightin' in their pen, then realized that the commotion was comin' from the starboard side o' the house, just below our window. Still half a-slumber at the time, I jolted full awake with the fear that me fluffy bunnies were still outside and some a-cursed bilge animal had gotten them. But of course t'weren't the case as me bunnies were actually safe 'n sound in their cage belowdecks in the living room hold. This series of thoughts flashed by in nary a second, by which time, Allison had also leapt awake and we goggled at each other in the dark. Meanwhile, the growlin' and snarlin' and cryin' outside our window continued.

"Where's the torch," asked I, meanin' the "flashlight", which is non-pirate speak.

"Ye're not venturin' out there?" replied Allison.

"I should mark that no critters be a-dyin' in our yard. Now where be the torch?"

Allison stepped lightly to the shelf and passed it to me. "Here," said she. "Arm yerself with something, will ye? And be careful, aye?"

"Yarr," I agreed.

I made haste to the galley and retrieved me bird feeder stick (a long stick with a hook in its end fer hanging our bird feeder upon our big maple tree in the yard), and bailed out the back door with me torch lit.

The bilge creatures doin' the fightin' quickly stopped and rustlin' ensued. I scuttled to the corner o' the house and peered around like I was sackin' the fort of Jamaica and was on the look-out fer guards and such.

Yet, rather than guards, I spied a pair o' right hulkin' raccoons (fifteen stone a piece, if a one) makin' off from the scene of the crime, just walkin' as casually and ye please. One marked me o'er its shoulder as they did make their escape down the walk 'tween our house and our neighbor's, the cheeky bugger.

The rustlin' that I'd noted a few ticks earlier resumed and I gathered that it be comin' from up the tree just o'er the fence on me neighbor's side. I shined me torch up into the branches and marked a ringed tail hanging down 'n curled around the truck. The tail, of course, was attached to a third raccoon, which was huggin' a branch like a barnacle midway up the tree 'n hissin' at me.

At this point, I struck the tree with me stick just below the branch, tryin' to drive him off, but he wouldn't move. I shined me torch upon his face and his eyes glowed green 'n defiant back at me.

A fierce growlin' then occurred above me and I jumped, shinin' me torch up the house... to our window where Allison be looking down at me from her crow's nest-like perch. "Er, t'were me just now," said she. "Sorry about that."

Back to the raccoon at hand, I replayed the entire episode in me head and realized that the earlier pair o' scoundrels were likely keel-haulin' the tree-bound land lubber before me (fer whatever reason raccoons are likely to keel-haul one another; this I know not), ergo makin' him the victim. I shined him in the face again, then sheathed me stick 'n went back inside whence upon I retired to our cabin and bunk.

A few minutes later outside the window, more rustlin' as (I reckon) the scurvy raccoon made its escape from its assailants, 'n from me.

I guess I'd done shivered his timbers! YARR! <|:)

Somewhere Over the Rainbow...

We've had particularly chaotic weather this summer, with numerous sunshowers over the past couple of weeks. I saw this rainbow this evening after one such sunshower and imagined that Allison was at the end of it.

I hope you're having a good time at Aunt Linda's, my poptart! :)

Allison in Wonderland

One of the advantages to being an independent artist and having an independent art studio is, we can occasionally take the day off and do stuff like go to Canada's Wonderland!



Wonderland is like our Six Flags. It's one of the biggest theme parks in Canada. And like every good theme park, Wonderland has a big fake mountain complete with waterfall.



There are some insane rides at Wonderland, many of which I didn't manage to get photos or video of, such as:

The WindSeeker, a swing ride that rises 30 storeys (!!) above the park. (This is Wonderland's newest attraction for 2011. When we were there, it was temporarily closed due to high winds. Not that any of us would've gone on it.)

The Behemoth, the king of rollercoasters at Wonderland. This monstrosity is 230 feet high and opens with a 75 degree drop! Allison wanted to go on this one but the wait was over an hour so we spent that time going on other rides instead.





I don't like rollercoasters so I stayed on terra firma with the koi fish.



:)

Hail and Thunderstorm!

Allison has been saying lately that she misses thunderstorms like she used to have back in South Carolina. So of course what happens? We get a string of crazy thunderstorms! This particular storm was the most freakish in that it came out of nowhere, rained buckets, involved some hail, and then afterwards, cleared into blue-ish indigo evening skies.

Ah Toronto. If you don't like the weather... hey, just wait fifteen minutes. :)

Unicorn

Oh my, I have turned into a unicorn and Ben thought it would be wonderful to take a picture of me haha. I had always want to rip off a huge icicle and this is what happened afterwards. =)

Guinea Pigs!

Guinea pigs are too precious for words! Peanut is chilling halfway in and hallway out of her box and Mocha is munching on some carrots. hehe.

Herbert, the Tulip

Ben and I had to run to Home Depot to look at flowers and I remembered that they had a garden section. I ended up buying this new pink tulip plant that I have since named Herbert. Now that he is blossoming, I will post more pictures of him! Oh, I also bought him a nice pot that I will plant him in once it gets warm enough to take him outside for a bit. =)

Allison snowboarding!

Ben took a video of me snowboarding, it was getting pretty dark outside because we had been there all day. =)

Snowboarding numbah 2

Picture of Ben and myself after reaching the bottom of a slope. (And yes, falling a few times on the way down haha.) I had a pretty bad headache after going snowboarding.

Snowboarding!

Bobby, Kei, Jason, Ben and I went snowboarding over this last weekend. It was a blast =) and I can't wait to go back sometime very soon haha.