thanks, k!

i always know i am quite easy to please... see, just this pic is good enough to keep me happy for the entire evening... =)

okay, the story is, my friend k passed me a vip ticket for a movie premiere, and it so happened that gigi was in the movie and attended the premiere. hence the picture i took.

k, thanks for the ticket! the movie sucks... gigi's still the best though.

burning the midnight oil

three in the morning. sitting in the office. sipping instant coffee in my cubicle. fighting off sleepiness and keeping the fingers crossed.

my uneventful weekend ended with a trip back to office on sunday night/monday morning to make sure some i.t. maintenance work goes smoothly. hopefully by dawn i can go home and get some sleep after verifying everything's fine.

but on my way to work, i heard this song on the radio:

"the splendor of a king, clothed in majesty,
let all the earth rejoice,
all the earth rejoice...
he wraps himself in light, and darkness tries to hide,
and trembles at his voice,
trembles at his voice...
how great is our god, sing with me
how great is our god, and all will see
how great, how great is our god..."

then i suddenly reliase how little did i acknowledge his greatness in everything that i came across. when i look at wonderful things, and when life's been treating me favorably, it's easy to give thanks to god for them. but how about just driving safely on the road, or the fact that i can spend the weekend quietly and enjoy the time with friends? did i just take those for granted?

the midnight stay in office turns out to be a perfect time for reflection, to think of those small things that i am blessed with and should be thankful for. maybe i should keep on singing and praising how great is our god...

first it may not be, second it will not be...

michelle's it is. (paraphrasing a famous, old motto)

if there's such a thing as the most consistent restaurant in hong kong, i would say it has to be m at the fringe in central. in this city where new restaurants come and go before you even notice their existance, and counting on food quality in some places can be like playing russian roulette, michelle's little dining oasis atop the hustle and bustle lan kwai fong stood out against the rest since its opening in 1989.

my love affair with this place started in the summer break after my sophomore year, and since then it's become a place with a lot of fond and interesting memories for me personally. whenever i return, i always feel like i am home. our last visit came this past wednesday, when we celebrated mrs m's birthday (aka daibun). nonetheless, it feels like we were simply finding an excuse to have a good night out rather than to celebrate a special occasion. this evening, i ordered oxtail and ox-tongue terrine, cutely named "head to tail", to start and braised mustard rabbit as my main course. of course, as it's always been, the food never dissappoints. despite the variety of dishes that we collectively ordered, the verdict was unanimous.

and it's almost a crime for anyone to skip dessert here... mr and mrs m tried the grand dessert platter which has a "tiny" bit of everything - more than enough for two - and i ordered the "it takes two to mango" - a hot mango souffle and a cold mango sorbet. what a way to wrap up the evening.

when it comes to naming the best restaurant in town, surely and certainly m will be among those i have in mind. already look forward to next time we visit by the time we walked down the stairs and hailed the taxi home.

details:
when? august 1 2007
where? m at the fringe, 2 lower albert road
occasion? mrs m's birthday
menu highlights? everything!
drinks? chateau laydet-figeac 2000

my first year back to school

well, not exactly back to school per se as i am still keeping my day job. but i finally finished my first year with the last exam this past weekend. being a lazy bum as i am, i totally can't remember why one day i suddenly decided to do this, and i am even more surprised that i still keep the energy to move forward one year after (i have a terrible attention span on basically everything)

studying in hongkong is so different than my previous experience in many ways, and going back to school does give you a whole new perspective on how you see things and how you interact with other people. despite giving up my weekends which could have been spent in golf or bangkok, and the hefty tuition which is equivalent to 50 dinners at gaddi's chef's table, i am sure it's all worth it - at least that's what i have been trying to convince myself.

anyway, it's been a fun year with the stuff i picked up on, new friends i made, and time i day-dreamed in the classroom, and the best part is, only 6 months to go. yea!

a quick look back

i stumbled across this little piece of article that i wrote some 12 years ago on some student newspaper (while in college). funny to realise the world has evolved so much since then.

to give you a better perspective, 1995 was the time when windows 95 was just released, and ie is still in version 2, which barely allowed sounds to be embedded onto websites. that was the time when netscape's still alive, just had its historic ipo (the event for which thomas friedman named as one of the world's flatteners in his book later) and for the first time, has acrobat/pdf plug-in available in its latest version. that was the time when people were still exploring how this new programming language called java's going to do to this world, and there were dreams of web-based, "disposable" softwares. that was the time when amazon just started its online book store business and e-commerce was considered an innovative concept.

today, windows is in its fourth consumer version after 95 (and still as buggy as ever) - 98, me, xp and vista; ie became the lone survivor in the browser war (unless you still count firefox in). netscape is nowhere to be found - so is aol who bought netscape for $4.2b in 1998; java has become an enterprise programming language of choice, contrary to what people first thought; online shopping has become a norm for business and consumer worldwide - it has passed mail order in overall sales last year already; and finally the concept of "disposable" software has gone mainstream with google, salesforce.com, saas (software as a service) concept and alike.

oh wow. only when we slowly looked back do we realise we have gone so far, and how stupid my writing was. ha ha.