lil fish in a big pond

NY international gift fair

2012-01-31T20:51:00.000-08:00

Went to my first New York International Gift fair today.

Pretty cool, saw lots of Jonathan Adler knocks offs (people copying his patterns and colors for other products like handbags, etc) tons of jewelery, and some awesome, awesome vintage inspired home decor like restoration hardware/pottery barn/gramma's basement/thrift store combined.

Super exhausted because I was walking in heels all day and hauling my computer! There was a showcase of sustainable products, and some awesome designery items in the lobby. I learned today that "Handmade Global design" meant ethnic crafts.

It was pretty well organized, but I would have appreciated more delineation between categories. Apparel was loosely grouped, but there were many stragglers in other areas. It might've been more efficient to have all the jewelry vendors in one hall, instead of spread out everywhere. Same as books, stationary, etc. The home decor hall was one of my favorites, though overall I felt the show was more decorative than functional.... but I guess gifts tend to be that way??

I saw little innovation, but much more of the same goods with different patterns and graphics on them.

sleeping.

painting

2012-01-30T20:40:00.000-08:00

Hi all,

a painting inspired by beautiful Oregon scenery- a family hike back in 2009.

This was for a gift to T's family, one project I actually finished on time! I'm pretty pleased with the result, though would like to have touched up the left mountain more. I also realized I need to invest into some better lighting. I had a lot of trouble doing the sky- I was working off photo scrap, but get swept up in the optical illusions but from far away I was surprised to find that it works! I'd like to integrate some more geometrical element sin my next pieces... stripes! I love stripes.

For Chinese New years Timon and I headed Stateside, first to Portland, then the Bay Area (including a mini trip to Monterey!) and now I am in NYC for work.

We had a grand time.

sightings

2012-01-12T23:18:00.000-08:00

This morning saw a teeny old lady in a puff coat, shuffling down the sidewalk. She had on a knit beanie and was resting her hands in a fuzzy pink muff complete with neck strap and plush poodle head. So cute.

We head off to America next week!!!!

4 days in portland, 4 days in the bay, and 2 days in NY (just me)

we've been training for a 5k race in salem. sore.

asian burger

2012-01-10T18:47:00.000-08:00

A new cafe just opened selling milk tea, coffee, and some asian fusion
items.

I order their basic offer: what I call the "asian burger"
-Breaded fried porkchop with horseradish sauce, lettuce, grilled
onions, all sandwiched in between two perfectly formed patties of
rice- all smushed together- like when we were kids playing with our
food- but these were molded into perfect circles, and slightly
toasted. It comes wrapped in a styrofoam like sheet then wrapped in
paper. See below cell phone pic. The porkchop was extremely hot and
still dripping oil as I was taking this pic! At 28 rmb, it was
uniquely satisfying.

cons: The rice paddies totally crumbled, so halfway through I has
holding half a porkchop over rice and rather unattractively shoving my
face into the wrapper to take bites!

cheers

Day in the life: Picking plants

2012-01-06T06:37:00.000-08:00

Today at work I picked plants. Fake plants. This was my bosses idea, I designed a few planters and then had our sourcing partner find us some plants. I had originally came up with a semi-clever idea that the plants were mounted on a base that doubled as a lid- so it could be a secret box! But upon receiving all the little guys, I realized they were actually quite a bit heavier and needed a bigger base, else be top heavy.

The sourcing staff usually finds factories that make the plants (or whatever we're looking for) sends them my drawings- which are a mix of photoshop hack jobs, napkin sketches, and technical drawings. "What kind of plant do you want?" Leafy, green and 8" wide! So then the team brings me samples from several vendors and I get to choose which one is suitable for our upcoming meeting in NY. Or sometimes I send my boss photos when the answer is less than obvious. Our team is pretty good at narrow material selections down- what's water resistant, less fragile, doesn't smell bad, or can be custom colored. And price. That is always the biggest challenge!

Since I don't know plant names in english or chinese I picked the longy one with the three flowers and spindly stems since it will be easiest to bundle and ship without damage, and is more mainstream than the bubble looking plant (which I personall think is cute, though the color looks sour)

Christmassssssss!

2011-12-29T01:24:00.000-08:00

We went to to contribute to the Yunnan themed candy village at our friend's house.

I made a pagoda, and Timon made the Kunming airport.

To achieve the curved roof the building, Timon went as far as moistening the graham cracker then drying it in a bowl in the oven!

Wishing you a merry christmas!

Culture Matters

2011-12-28T23:29:00.000-08:00

One of our friends hosts a TV show on ICS, the English channel in
China (just Shanghai?) And she was kindly invited us to come
experience a taping session and be a part of the audience! We had
never seen the show before, so we imagined it would be something like
Oprah, but more Chinese-y. She'd told us about previous shows,
interesting guests the director had chosen (A personal trainer for the
Mental health episode...) andother current event discussions, some
struggles of tough topics like twitter and social networking sites
(many which are banned in china). The show is called, "Culture Matters".

This episode we sat in was about Art and its accessibility to the
public, in light of the recent decision to move the Shanghai Art
museum (Which is HUGE) from People's square to the China Pavillion on
the expo site (which is basically a ghost town, since they've
demolished the other pavillions....!) <a href="http://www.timeoutshanghai.com/features/Blog/4758/China-Pavilion-to-be-Art-Palace.html
"> see article </a>

My friend May-yi, the host (sitting on the right side) was born
stateside, then raised in Taiwan, and went to Harvard later. She had
mentioned that they would ask the audience a question or two (more
like 10) and was encouraging us to answer, esp since we were some of
the few foreigners- helping diversify the audience of 12.

They began with a quiz- "Name that art museum!" Which I knew all the
Parisien thanks to my trip with Megan. Pompidou! Lourve! But
incidentally couldn't recall the architect for the Lourve. (IM Pei).
They talked about museum behaivor- not running or eating, no cell
phones and where those semi-subjective "acceptable behaviors" were
taught or should be taught.

visitors from above

2011-12-26T01:55:00.000-08:00

I work on the 10th floor of a building- I see 60% sky out of my window
and tops of most buildings in the area.

I'm been admiring the view since October; mornings are full of sun
(when there is sun! to be seen!) and I see a giant construction crane
peck back and forth through out the day.

I was startled by two ropes and some knock ing on my window. Two very
tanned hairy men were rappelling down washing the windows. They swung
in like spiderman and drop down in the blink of an eye! I snapped a
quick pick of them. They used a huge suction cup on one hand, and
squeegeed with their other. I tried not to stare, but I kept thinking
they might just crash right on through the window!

christmas time is here...

2011-12-19T19:05:00.000-08:00

We hosted a Christmas party/Company party for Timon's company (His
boss mandated that everyone HAD to attend)

There was a crackling fire DVD, mahjong games, and making of sugar
cookies. (Rolling and cutting the cookies was a first for our friends
Melody and Morrin- but they were pros at it! And totally enthralled
with the decorating.)
Also went to a cookie decorating party! sugar sugar sugar! Timon is
working hard- its the end of the Chinese fiscal year, so they are
trying to wrap things up before Chinese new year (when the new year
for work-wise begins) So we celebrate 2 new years here, except one is
about 10 times a bigger deal than the other one.

Merry Christmas!

language snippets

2011-12-06T20:27:00.000-08:00

I wanted to wish my sourcing partner and her staff Happy thanksgiving.

Me: Gǎn jué!
Them: [Confused looks on faces.]
Me: Gǎnjué jié! jié!
Them: [even MORE confused] What are you trying to tell us, Kristina?
Me: Jin tian shi Gǎnjué. Mei guo de holiday.
Them: You mean Thanksgiving??

So I got "Thanksgiving" (感恩节 Gǎn'ēn jié) mixed up with "Feeling"(感觉 Gǎnjué) and so When I thought I was saying "happy thanksgiving!" I was just telling everyone "Feelings!" great.

Thanksigiving

2011-11-30T23:51:00.000-08:00

Three dinners later, it went from a warm 70° to a cool 50°.

We made:
-Spinach dip w/ French bread
-Whole wheat stuffing
-Pumpkin pie from starch (sans crust which was from a mix)

Then we made another Pumpkin pie, and scalloped potatoes.

After the second pumpkin pie I caught a nasty cold, knocked out with a fever and the shivers- condemned to spend the holiday weekend in a deep slumber of strange dreams.

So Timon went to our black tie thanksgiving sans me, in his tux with glasses! Hopefully photos will soon surface of that night's festivities.

At our third dinner, a potluck, the salad people dropped out and there were about 6-8 potato dishes, I kid you not. People lovin their potatoes! One of the most amazing ones was the sweet potato dish with a crunchy sweet coffee cake topping! Candied pecans? YES! Awesome. Awesome like the brie + apricot preserves toasted in pastry appetizer...m,, rich smooth sweet.

We survived. I about coughed my back out. And inadvertently knocked over a BAG OF EGGS. Onto the Floor. And rescued them! So we have a jar of 10 eggs- with mostly intact yolks. Quiche on the menu soon!

Happy thanksgiving!

2011-11-23T17:14:00.000-08:00

We are working half days today, then taking off to prep for thanksgiving dinner! Last year we played football but Timon hurt his knee so he's laying low for now. A bright morning we look forward to spending time with our friends.

These are pumpkin puffs that we ate in Xiamen. They are huge- like the size of a grapefruit! Filled with air, paper thin, and deep fried, I turned it around and around not find any seam how they made it. What a mystery.

Timon is growing a beard in anticipation for santa try-outs.

I saw this girl on the metro yesterday. I never thought of God as pink, purple, and block letters. Of course God made varsity.

Other random bits:
Admiring christmas cards at Silver Box.

Wanting to make these fun paper stars!

Goodbye unk

2011-11-17T03:52:00.000-08:00

RIP unk, thank you for your generosity, enthusiasm, and creative sense of humor.

One of my favorite memories was when we were little and we would all want piggy back rides from Unk. I would always ask to sit on his shoulders, so I could touch the foil bits in the ceiling. Unk, like my dad would save random stuff, like plastic pieces and wire. I was enthralled especially with the colored wire; my cousins and I would get crafty and make stuff- someone bent my name for me, and I made a cat. Unk would take two colors and put them in his electric screw driver and let us push the button to twist them together perfectly. This interest later led me to me admiration of Alexander Calder (via a PBS documentary my Dad showed me).

Unk was also good at being insightful to helping everyone out. When I was in college, painting with gouache and acrylics Unk came by the house and saw that I needed a water jar that didn't leak all over my bag. So he got he some really durable jars with tight fitting lids. I hadn't even thought of that!

Unk was always willing to lend a hand, spoil us, and try his hand at daunting activities like Christmas dinner.

Thanks Unk, we'll miss you.

Hairy crabs

2011-11-01T01:30:00.000-07:00

My parents and aunt came to town last week! We when sightseeing
exploring and discovered new things- like hairy crab! October is
hairy-crab season here so we were treated to taste one of Shanghai's
favorite delicacies. They come from Yangcheng lake, (about 2 hrs away-
T and I visited there in 2008) These little guys are known for having
a clump of fur on their claws and hair on some other limbs. The first
time I saw them, the fur was all matted and wet and I thought it was a
chewed piece of swampy brown gum.

Hairy crabs are known for being sweeter and their "butter" or "brains"
as I call them is bright orange and super rich. In a trade for flavor,
they are small- about the size of your fist. I seldom eat hairy crab
since its so expensive, ranging from 25-200rmb ($4-$30 USD) depending
on the restaurant. We bought them off a little shop in the alley. We
learned that the crabs are sold as couples- one male and one female.
(I also learned how to tell genders apart- by their belly plates) The
fur on the claws is fine and soft, but the hair growing out of the arm
shells is stiff and bristley like a horsehair brush.

We steamed them and and ate them with garlic butter- YUM!

And they are also sold in vending machines, ALIVE. http://gizmodo.com/5670648/this-vending-machine-sells-live-crabs

ciao!

Xiamen again

2011-10-26T06:35:00.000-07:00

We went to xiamen for Timon to do some stuff.

new product line

2011-09-29T20:53:00.001-07:00

Like home organization stuff?

Flip through my company's New Collection: http://web.me.com/greatusefulstuff

Most of it designed by me with guidance from my boss and others. My favorite is the packing pouches that hang up in the closet.

painting party!

2011-09-27T20:17:00.000-07:00

My friend had a very awesome painting party this past weekend! We all
got together with canvas and our imaginations to create something
along the theme of "journey" for her and her husbands house. It was
very impressive.

Timon and I did a painting together : )

There were abstract paintings, scenes from Yunnan, scenes of special
events, family foot print one (two and adults and one baby hopping
around with paint on one foot to the bathroom!) and one of Honduras-
like a map aerial view.

Ours was inspired by a scenic tapestry I saw in Japan(airport) and
then I turned more into my life- Oakland hills, San Francisco bay,
Redwood forests where I ran, to apt high rises, the shanghai
waterfront, and barges in the huangpu. And a bowl of la mien. At the
end of the day, there's always la mien. (Spicy noodles in soup)

I was discouraged because I had too many ideas and not so much time-
the others were eating all the food- Timon was encouraging and we
worked together to make it come together. I keep thinking I wanted to
touch up areas, but in the end I'm pretty satisfied. Since I have a
history of not finishing projects, I am happy to practice being
content with projects that in the basically-finished-forever-can be
touched up phase. Woo!

We learned this weekend that when preparing small green chilies, to
wear gloves and not bare hands. Ouchy.

cell phone upgrade

2011-09-27T17:57:00.000-07:00

Think of the oldest cell phone you can imagine. Candy bar style with the two color pixely screen. Thats what I've been using for the past 2 years until the "yes/delete" button broke and it had a finicky connection and would only charge at a very specific angle. (Mom, this is the phone you guys can use when your here....)

I really like my candy bar phone. It was simple, to-the-point and all I needed. I could drop it 20 times, toss it in my purse with melted candy bars and not have a worry. Timon finally convinced me to get a smart phone- with the advantages of a Chinese dictionary, map capability, and wifi for checking my email when traveling. Other pluses would be ability to read eBooks, listen to mp3s, and take photos, record voice (chinese lessons).

So after much research (Thanks Timon!) We found several phone available in China that had english interfaces available, android operating systems, and in our price range. I asked a partner-staff what she had, and HTC hero. It was slim, good looking and had all the abilities I needed. But a bit out of our price range, even though an older model. We we headed to the used tech goods market off line 4. The first market was clean, like any mall. The second market was dingy and smokey- more like a flea market. Tarps and puddles of water. There were plenty of knock-off phones, plethora of Chinese brands, and several bedazzled Louis vuitton/Gucci-fied phones covered in glitters and gems like a Christmas tree ornament.

After asking around, we are introduced to a outdoor shop, under the freeway, off a small lane. Behind us there's street vendors BBQing and roasting Chestnuts. A lady is hawking fishing poles while chatting to another vendor selling mop-ringer-outers and multi screwdrivers. He's demonstrating every minute to a new person, who is also dodging the dangling fishing pole things. AND a motorcycle is trying to pass as an elderly man is being pushed by a wheelchair behind me, so I'm trying to make myself smaller and running out of space to put my feet. I'm grasping onto the cell phone table on my toes stepping around the wheels and holding my breath. (Am I holding my breath to make myself smaller or because all the BBQ smoke happens to be blowing in our direction??)

We were in local territory- Timon was the only white guy the whole time we were there, and people were starting to crowd around us to hear our conversation (both english and chinese) The cell phone salesman was really nice, and allowed us to try out different phones form inside his glass case. We deliberated between a really old chunky motorola, which I can only describe as resembling a rusty jeep and the Black HTC hero, whose interface was in english already. The Motorola had a slide out keyboard which is handy- since I mostly text with people. But the HTC hero was half as heavy. So we went with that.

So far, so good.

Goodbye summer, hello fall

2011-09-19T01:24:00.000-07:00

>
> Summer flew by, with business trips, trips to the pool, and walk/jog/
> biking around the city.
>
> I started painting again, inspired by all the art I've been seeing-
> the quaintness of Virginia, Layover in Narita, Japan(below image)
> and wonderful galleries here in Shanghai. Having creative friends
> helps too! I had been wanting to make stuff, but never had time or
> materials at hand. I went to the craft-doodad market for work stuff,
> and a friend tagged along to buy beads. Soon the creative juices
> were flowing and we were excitedly designing and planning brilliant
> jewelry pieces and crafts!
>
> Most of which are in a bag under my bed... though I did manage two
> necklaces, which blogger won't let me post?? I will check on it later.
>
> The weather has done its annual flip from dreadful hot to perfect
> October weather, or as my friend says, "Summer in Canada!" (or
> Oregon, or the Bay Area)
>
> During my chinese lesson this weekend, our house helper was working
> and heard me "speaking" Chinese. I read from the book, and translate
> some to english, and then the teacher says a bunch of stuff in
> Mandarin and "Do you understand?" in English, and I grunt/nod. Which
> I feel bad about, considering I could understand what the words
> were, but not fully clear what they meant assembled in sentences.
> The lesson ended, and she's really excited and says, "Xiaojie! I
> didn't know you could speak Chinese so well! I always though you
> didn't understand me when I talked to you in Chinese!" I look at
> her, being so happy, and am thinking "Well I don't understand
> everything..." but say, "Xie xie, Wo bu chi dao zen me shuo ne wo
> juede." (Thank you. I dont' know how to say what I am thinking.)
> Which I'm sure does even equate to my engrish intentions! I have a
> loooooong way to go.
>
>

all good

2011-08-26T06:23:00.000-07:00

Wow- I'm getting really blog obsessed. I think I subscribe to a new blog every day! There's so many corner of the world hiding out in the netherworlds of the internet- and I'm just fascinated! My laptop overheated (and doesn't have the VPN) so I'm restricted to blogging from Timon's TV/computer, so no photos or links for now. Just typing from the sofa and squinting at the TV screen- which stretches the text a bit so I can't tell commas and periods apart... anyways.

I have a 30-45 minute commute to work via metro. I used to listen to podasts or read the newspaper on my iTouch- until I missed my stop and then I re-discovered books. Books! I do read at home, but suddenly I found I could read 30-50 pages at day reading during my commute and during my lunch break. At the end of the day, it was much more fulfilling than reading the paper. It is important and interesting to know what is going on in the world around us, but I ended up with a handful of random facts instead real meaty food for thought- concepts and ideas that I would chew on and spark intriguing conversations with people. (And I hope it also helps upkeep my English)

These are the books I've finished, and have wanted to jot some notes down.

THE SHACK
BLINK by Malcolm Gladwell
WHAT THE DOG SAW
and currently reading MERE CHRISTIANITY by CS LEWIS

The Shack: Where Tragedy Confronts Eternity , by William P. Young is a novel about a father going through hard times and meets the characters assumed to be God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. This was a fascinating interpretation and illustration of what God, Jesus, Spirit's personalities, interactions, not to mention their answers to the main character's many troubled questions and disbelief. Generally people pray desiring a verbal response (whether likely or not) and this book proposes a graceful possibility of what it is/or could be like. The main focus the Main character, Mack is wrestling with is his humungous pain he's endured and questioning the highest power, "Why?" -a question we have pondered at least once in our life, if not more. And more importantly Mack asks, "How can I possibly go on with my life after all this pain?"

I enjoyed this book- it was funny, serious, not to heavy, and also heart warming. It challenged me in the way I see my own relationship with God and the trinity and silly expectations I held/hold. I wont get into the details too much. Timon hasn't read it yet.

east coastin

2011-08-07T08:04:00.000-07:00

After my Friday meeting in NY I took the Vamoose bus down to Arlington, Virginia to visit some really good friends- Denise and her sister and husband.

We ate persian kabobs, then went to Georgetown to go Kayaking in the Potomac- super fun and SO tiring!!! We went as pairs, me with Denise and then her sister with her husband. We were trying to go around this island but it was really hard and we were getting pushed side to side, zig zagging on the river. My arms are so sore!

Charming architecture in Georgetown:

There were tons of brick buildings, with painted shutters and doors in bold colors, some classic and traditional, some more modern and bold (Magenta!)

Vintage Airplane themed wall:

Lunch at Clyde's

Pinball museum:

Tired

2011-08-04T19:42:00.000-07:00

I get really excited whenever I get to trip back to the US. But I always forget how exhausting it is. The checklists. The jet lag. Lifting luggage.

Its just the end of my second day here, after all the driving google-mapping I'm starting to get a feel for long island. I mean beginning to understand life in America again. Fast, demanding focus and concentration, and so diverse. I went by the mall to buy a sim card, and was in a constant state of tug-of-war visually, with all the different stores and their window displays, attention demanding signage, and never ending maze. 6 signs later I can finally find the bathroom! The atmosphere in the mall shops is so much more tailored and defined compared to china. Each store here has its extremely branded look, for the most part. Whereas Chinese malls (like Cloud 9 ZSP) all resemble a similar layout. Neon lights, and stuff.

Even going into Target I was so overwhelmed. I'm also overwhelmed at Yu Garden's market too... but this was all new stimuli of stuff I didn't know - 100% I had never seen before. Trends change quickly and frequently. I had no idea that Snapple came in 2 liter bottles! I think suddenly being bombarded with English text and sounds- much more to process than just going to Carre four and ignoring all Chinese signs and announcements.

Best of all, shopping here is GOOD. $10 for jeans and $7 for a silk blouse! Score! I could have never swung that in China. even on taobao.

I had lunch at Thomas' egg and hamery diner across the street. It was aDORable! Counter seating, and a whole bunch of booths, with the coat hanger post inbetween each booth. It was like stepping into a previous past. Everyone had Long island accents. It was so cute I wanted to laugh but didn't want people to think I was laughing AT them. The wait staff chatted with all their 'regulars' with their Long Island accents, calling everyone "sweetheart"and repeatedly asking customers if everything was okay. She did all her calculations on a calculator, tapping furiously at the buttons. I had a bowl of chili with cheese and onions. It was so so rich.

Got a meeting tomorrow where I'm presenting 20 some odd product ideas. Then off to Virginia!

summertime

2011-08-03T18:05:00.000-07:00

Dinner at xibo. I love their hat collection! Each one is unique with its embroidered details and different shapes.

Timon's 31st! we had a rooftop pool party for an entire afternoon and evening. It was just fantastic- a beautiful view of Zhongshan park, and a refreshing escape from the heat.

Yes, I know this is totally random, but this a purple potato- a beautiful color that I would have only imagined in Dr. Seuss book. Our friend BBQ'd them. Sweet and yummy.

New york here I come.

2011-08-01T20:13:00.001-07:00

New york here I come.

From one huge city to another, then 4 days in the suburbs. Things I
look forward to:
-Fresh air
-Quiet
-Grocery shopping
-Seeing friends
-Journal time

Things I am dreading:
-Long restless plane ride with questionable food. A 15 hr flight is
the last place I want to get food-poisoning
-Forgetting something vital, like my laptop charger.
-Getting lost. because of
-Jet lag.

New York

2011-07-10T07:44:00.000-07:00

I went to NY for 3 days for a work meeting, some prep, and hanging out with old friends.

I LOVE New York. I want to move there! There's just a thrill in the air. Mischief. Excitement. I love admiring the old buildings, the character of the subways, and exploring the creative little cafes, and street vendors, and shops. Its peppier than Shanghai. And more grandiose than SF. Maybe it was the blend of brilliant summer sunshine and blue skies? Sigh.

Saw http://www.denguefevermusic.com/"> Dengue Fever . "A six-member band from Los Angeles who combine Cambodian pop music and lyrics with psychedelic rock."

Saturday brunch at M. Wells in Long Island was something delicious.

Dinnner at Katz Deli, (see photo of HALF a sandwich)!!! It was pouring and I was lost, but shared my umbrella with a nice lady who was an event planner.

Dinner at Cheese Pub- which was had basically a cheese bar!!!! Expensive but awesome. Melts in your mouth! And the decor was like barn meets cafe- with swing out milking stools under high rustic tables. SO cute! Loved it!

We also happened to stumble across Frends With You Rainbow land. Imagine me jumping up and down with glee! It was big and colorful and amazing! The characters reminded me a lot like katamari (a video game abotu rolling a sticky ball to pick up things) The cement had bright stripes on it, and Big cartoony airfilled things floating and spinning in the breeze. It was like they were alive, and bopping around like I would expect any real live cartoon thingy to act like. The tower shaped one we went into was dark with lots of glow-in-the-dark stickers inside. My legs were sore like rubber after 5 minutes of jumping. It was at the end of the Highline, an old elevated railroad track converted into an urban garden, beautifully landscaped with native flowers and plants, integrated with vestiges of the railroad tracks. There was installation art pieces as birdhouses, lawns to lounge on, and the plants glowed brilliantly in the evening moonlight. http://www.friendswithyou.com/blog/rainbow-city-the-high-line-

the kitten

2011-07-07T02:52:00.000-07:00

As we left our compound Sunday morning, the neighborhood was already
bustling with grammas, carts, and kittens. KITTENS?! Inded two very
small kittens were wandering the sidewalk, unbeknowst to them, many
humans were awkwardly and adoringly dodging them to save their lives.

These kittens were tiny- like 1-2 weeks old. You could scoop 'em up in
the palm of your hand. And put them in your pocket. Their legs were
wobbly, and would fall down every few steps. They were curious and
unafraid to weave between parked motorcycles and human feet.

I couldn't help myself! I was melting already because of the Shanghai
summer, but these little guys were just too adorable. We stopped to
watch (aka rummage for my camera) and one of them came up to Timon's
foot, smelled it, then climbed ontop, his whole body sitting on
Timon's foot (flip flops). Then he hugged Timon. awwww! The kitten
wrapped his paws around his ankle and tried to climb up Timon's climb,
unsuccessfully.

I was still "aww"ing and rummaging in my cavenrous purse at this
point, when the kitten found a new interest and my camera came to
slow. That's my story of the kitten.

What is it?

2011-05-26T01:12:00.001-07:00

What snack has to do with canons, velociraptors, pterodactyls, and hot
air balloons? and a crossing chicken?

And why do the above named items make me want to eat this product???

teaching english

2011-05-24T21:19:00.001-07:00

Today we headed 1 hr to the Jinshan area to help teach english at
Mengshan Xuezuheng migrant school*. Our buddy works with several
migrant schools helping them with resources, arranging volunteer
groups from international schools, and 1-day trips to help them keep
their studies consistent

None of us had any teaching experience - yikes! Fortunately the
curriculum had already been made for us- it was about holidays,
specifically: Easter, Halloween, and Dragon boat festival. Our group
had the less experienced english learners- so much of the lessons had
to be translated into Chinese. It was hard to talk slow and enunciate.
Since I was useless for translating, I wrote all the words on the
board. We taught them the question words- and they stared at us
blankly, until it was translated. The other to classes the kids
probably knew more english than I Mandarin...

We had two boys in our class- one was huge and one was tiny. And the
tiny one was really shy. I asked him what his name was, and he
nervously smiled as he curled up in a ball hiding his face and turning
red! It was really cute. I wonder if I was ever like that?

Repeated they asked me about the words, "recieve", "activities", and
how to say "Halloween".

Halloween. Hall-wee? Ha-low-WEEN. Ha-low-wee. Ok. Good enough.

I didn't even know how to explain the the "c" in "recieve" sounds like
"s". They kept reading it, "Ruh-KEEv"

It was a long day, but we enjoyed the kids. The two girls you see
sitting in front of me were the class clowns- They were drawing these
bucktoothed silly drawings of each other and the "It wasn't me it was
HER" gestures. The two girls you see in Timon's photo were pretty
smart and were asking how old I was and stuff.

*Migrant schools are public schools for the children of migrant
workers. They can't go to the Shanghai public schools without a hukou-
or proof of residency for Shanghai. Previously private schools had
popped up to service the children without a hukou, but they weren't
regulated and sometimes of low quality. ANyhow, the school we worked
with today was fairly decent, one room had a TV mounted in the corner,
and the rooms were packed with two person desk and small wooden
chairs. It was a k-8 school with 800 kids- but on Saturday, about 40
signed up for our session, focusing on middle schoolers. All but 5
were giggling girls. Most of them came from Sichuan and Anhui province.

fourteen inches

2011-05-20T03:25:00.000-07:00

I did it!

One busy weekend!

2011-05-10T03:26:00.000-07:00

We've been busy! Like running around town and being crazy people busy.

Saturday alone I had 4 parties not just to attend, but prepare goodies
for two of them! So spent a few weeknight prepping, cooking, and
designing.

0. headed to the printer to print out the cards, decorations,

stationary for Timon to write notes....

1. Baby party welcoming a very little Isabelle into the world! The
ladies from my small group and I all brought tea party-esque dishes,
cucumber sandwiches, curry chicken salad, cupcakes, scones, and I made
lemon curd and a cheese plate. The colors were mint green and pink-
our friend (who we were showering) already had about 50 pink "baby
congrats" cards on every surface imaginable- so it was easy to
decorate with flowers and stuff. I also designed little cards (quarter
sheet) for all the guests to write prayers and blessings for the baby.

2. Gallery opening/closing. A group of our friends joined forces to
have a small studio amoung an artist's community for about a year, but
after their first big gallery show found that the Gov't was planning
to demolish the entire studio block/area? to redevelop. This meant
everyone was forced to leave. : ( sad sad! Many of the local artists
had renovated and invest money into their studios- some even lived in
theirs! This last show: "Disappearing" was a sort of good byes and
last hurrah to the space itself- not sure if they are looking for new
studio space.

The show itself was small but well appreciated. One piece encouraged
patrons to scrape a bit of the fresco(painting on plaster while wet)
into an envelop to take with them. Another pieces translated a Chinese
story about a secret community that grew peaches. There was a
confessional tent- where they provided paper to write your confessions
then feed it thru the shredder (see photo). As the shreds fall, the
light catches them, and its fun to watch- sorry I was too slow to get
it on film!

And the one in the back had me in it. Not kidding! The
artist, a girl named Faith, had illustrated a photo from an earlier
gallery opening (which had me in it). She had illustrated it on an
entire wall and then chipped away various parts.

3. Farewell party-
Farewells are sad. Farewells are happy. We all go through various
changes through life whether by choice or force of nature, and
sometimes we have to say goodbye to our pals- at least momentarily.
After many years in SHanghai, a couple and their two twins are moving
back to Michigan. We have just moved to SH when Jen went into child
birthing with her two twins. We enjoyed pizza, m&ms, and sun chips at
our friend's office sapce which has a large outdoor deck/patio. It was
a beautiful night.
Too dark to take photos unfortunately. I made them nautical inspired
flags to hang on the wall, for guests to write their farewell wishes
to the family.

4. DD's party: then we headed to an apt party hosted by a good friend
of Timon's. They had a large black frame on their living rm wall, to
project films onto- it was pretty awesome! It was a packed house, and
yet Timon (as usual) ran into people he knew- guys he had met YEARS
ago. It was amazing. Timon was like- "hey I met you at an event 4
years ago, remember?" Another guys from 2 years ago. Timon really has
an amazing memory. Its a good thing- since I can't even remember what
day it is.
At 11pm we headed home to catch up with T's sister, who was just
waking up in sunny Portland, Oregon. She had 4 birthday parties to go
to....

It has arrived

2011-04-25T19:45:00.000-07:00

I got my first mosquito bite last night. In our 10th floor apt. Summer is officially here. I could feel the heat eminating from the balcony door before I touched it. I stuck my arm outside for my daily temperature check to see my neighbor to my right putting her beizi out the window to dry. We made eye contact while I was still "grasping" the temperature and she gave me the "your crazy look".

I have been waiting all winter for warmth, even though I know summer will be suffocating. I considered this while I headed into the subway- only to find a few hundred extra people breathing the warm underground air on the platform. The usual 5 min interval train hadn't come for some time, and longer we waited the more people came down - packing the platform to the brim.

F1

2011-04-18T02:36:00.000-07:00

We headed to the outskirts of Shanghai to go experience F1. One of T's
work friend got a small group of us in for free, and seats in the
grandstand- right above the starting area and where the garages and
tire changing takes place! It was so cool! Super loud. I was thankful
we bought ear plugs outside. I was rather clueless about the F1 and
car racing and all looked forward to was watching them change tires.
(Which only took 5 seconds!!!)

Over 100,000 people head to the F1 in Shanghai for this annual event.
A 45 minute ride on the metro line 11 brought us the Shanghai Circuit.
On exiting the metro train, was an open air platform with a large
decorative pool of water and the huge stadium in the distance. People
had flags and their F1 Tees representing their countries. On exiting
the turnstile we were immediately chased by hawkers selling hats,
tees, tickets, and ear plugs.

I couldn't believe how huge the track was. Tiny people sat on the
grass in the distance, overlooking the track. And they had to go
around the track 56 times- how dizzying would that be? With the
unbelievable volume ringing in your ears. It shook your whole body.
Small children cringed. We saw a tire fall off the Red bull sponsored
car. We saw two cars almost crash. We followed the scared on the TV
screen - I was trying to figure out which drivers went with which
country, Russia, Switzerland, Australia, Britain, Germany.

The Hilton provided the food services... which explains why they
charge 30 rmb ($5 USD) for popcorn. For popcorn! Thats 6 times the
normal street price. Mercedes-benz was there with a few cars to
showcase- two antiques and two modern ones. One was a retro race car.
I wish I could've seen one of the F1 cars up close- they looked like
awesome aerodynamic forms.

Tire changing was cool- the 20+ pit crew with their matching uniforms
and shiny helmets moved like a machine, getting into formation with
the utmost efficiency, and doing their task in a blink of an eye. The
car drops to the ground with a bounce then speeds off.

After the 56 lap race, snacks, and photos, we got in the queue for the
metro. Huge pens herded people in groups of 50 to wait then proceed to
the metro, to prevent chaos. When we arrived at the platform it was
plenty full of patrons and when the next train arrived, I felt the
crowd lift and push me inside the train.

Upon getting back into the city where we parked our electric bike, we
found the batteries had been stolen. See photo of it smashed in, and
with our new batteries inside. It was 6pm then, the sun was setting
and we were still about a mile for our apt. So we walked the bike over
a bridge to the closest bike shop and ate street food while we waited
for him to fix it. The second photo is of the mechanic cutting a
cookie tin to cover the smashed hole in our bike, to prevent another
theft. what a day! We were thankful the entire bike wasn't stolen!
(And our fancy helmet)

Xiamen

2011-04-13T03:08:00.000-07:00

T and Hud the husky

Ferry to Gulangyu island

art made of fish bones

This photo is for T's mom who plays the organ. This was a museum- of huge and tiny organs. A staff came to play one of them.

View from tram to peak from bird sanctuary. SOme roofs had plants arranged to spell things.

This is the garden where the 12 grottos are. Its twelve "caves"- one for each zodiac animal. It built into a hill, with concrete steps and narrow pasasgeways- a bit scary since the sun was setting as we ventured through. What the sign should've said was: "Big rock maze through tunnels and caves. Takes 30 minutes at least and bring a snack"

The beach and bridge thing valve that let water into the garden area.

hello!

For Qingming_Festival holiday we worked saturday and got Sun-tuesday off. (its common for the Gov't to mandate working on a weekend in order to give a weekday off) We flew to Xiamen, on the coast of the Fujian province map Saturday night and got in to our hotel after midnight. This was after we found out that our pre-booked hotel was 2 hrs away and no car would take us so we had to re-book in an instant. We spend sunday hanging out with an American friend of ours who owns a factory and has the cutest husky puppy named Hudson Rex! I got to sit in the back seat with him throughout our day of driving around the city.

After a leisurely brunch and drive, we got a personal tour of his factory- pretty awesome. They make picture frames and stuff with university logos on them.

That evening T and I walked the neighborhood - lots of stores were open late- nearly everywhere. (Usually in shanghai its just the main streets. It reminded me of Hong Kong. The next day we took the ferry to Gulangyuan island of things to explore. Touristy things. Organ museum, fish bone art museum, piano, and calligraphy carving things. There was also a TON of people- even though it was cloudy and chilly. I had imagined lounging on the beach.... but we ended up doing a fair amount of hiking and eating.

Since I'm composing this in email via "instablog" I can't caption the photos. sorry!

-The fish bone art was pretty impressive- this taiwainese guy who was balding with really long hair preserves the bones then glues them together to form really organic looking sculptures. meticulous!!
-The puppy bit Timon's toes and was chewing on my sleeve thru his cage.

We had a great time, tho we hadn't counted on there being so many people on Gulangyu. There were many quaint/modern/cute boutique hotels there we hope to stay on *next* time we go.

ciao! k

Strawberry picking

2011-03-28T20:02:00.001-07:00

Saturday we headed out to Qingpu, 1 hr outside shanghai to go
strawberry picking with our friend's company. It was a beautiful day,
and excitement built as we saw more and more greenery. After passing
many plastic bag-dome typed fields, we came upon tall green houses.
Other buses and cars were debarking families and hordes of kiddies.
This was it!

another gray day

2011-03-25T02:45:00.000-07:00

Wish I was here:

Oh, internet

2011-03-21T23:54:00.000-07:00

The internet has been unusually bad here. Normally you can't get onto facebook or blogs, with occasional blocks to linkedIn and wikipedia. Since last Google anything- docs, gmail, reader have been slowed to an unloadable pace, and I've already begun saving important contact info in my backup, very old yahoo acct that I started in middle school.

At work I've been designing some very adorable kids pretend play items. We received the first round of samples today from factory (they make them, so they can pattern then and quote us the costing) and they came back super cute, with sprinkles and all, but some mismatched color combos! Under no circumstances is Pink ever an acceptable substitute for beige. And its not that they didn't have beige-perhaps they ran out and used pink- but then ran out of pink so they used red??? Back to factory for remake.

My office is at a major intersection- 8 lanes across, 4 lanes in each direction (no parking lane) Recently they decided to close 4 lanes on one block (leaving 2 lanes in each direction) and have begun a large construction project on that part of the street. They've built pillars and shipping containers already. I'm so curious what will pop up there! That 1 block stretch is now an official funnel-neck. whew. good thing I don't drive!

ciao!

Testing email2blog

2011-03-17T20:38:00.000-07:00

During one of my obsessive taobao adventures I came across these humorous and and fascinating pieces of clothing.

1. Engrish shirt, "Love you up the classic," Echoing something of a soda-pop commercial and affectionate proclamation.
2. This was just plain confusing. I've seen project runway as well as mysterious fashion school critiques at CCA- but nothing came close to this strange shirt. It looks as if someone intended to make the most ill-fitting garment... "We'll make it sag on the entire right side." I imagined painfully getting tangled trying to twist 90 degrees to get into it. But in the photo it looks really cool, with a built-in sash and fun dramatic diagonal drapes. And one arm has a flap reminiscent of flying squirrels- no more armpit stains!

Day 3: Hiking

2011-03-05T05:00:00.000-08:00

I think I already posted this photo- but I like to keep things together. We metro'd to Choi Hung station on the Kwun Tong (green) line, then hopped the bus 1A to the Sai Kung pier, where they had a nice visitor's center, lots of seafood resturants, and a nice used english bookstore. We picked up sandwiches for lunch.

From there we took a 30 min. cab to Tai Long Wan, where the trailhead began. The sign said the entire trail would have taken 4 hours... our pal told us it would be 1.5 hrs to the beach, and 2.5 out.

It was a beautiful hike, perfect weather. The trail was well taken care of- cement steps and railings, and towards the end there were also streetlights. On the beach were some homes and meager open air resturants. We enjoyed the wide open beach, sand like powder, and completely empty. It seemed most people were hiking through. After reading and some romping in the ice-cold, glassy water, we continued on. The sun had begun to set and my legs began to wobble with every step.

"Timon, I don't think I can make it... I'm super weak sauce," I said as I promptly collapsed in the sand. 2 more hours seemed unbearable to my legs of rubber. There had to be another way- with the resturants- surely the soda and groceries were brought in by truck or boat. As we deliberated and trudged on, we saw a group of people begin to get on one of the boats tethered in the water. We looked at each other, then T took off running after the boat. Now, this was not nearby- it was clear across the shore- about the distance of a football field. Timon got there while I was still halfway, dragging myself. He threw his shoes off, and with money in his fist yelling, "How much?!" chasing the boat in the water. He was knee-deep in the water making his way on the bouncing boat, I began running and taking off my shoes and trying to fight my way onto the boat too. We were both on, when another couple with tickets showed up and we got bumped off. I was in such a confused frenzy, I kept asking, "where does the boat go?!" My leggings were soaked, and we stood out of breathe as the boat left us catching out breath. There was an old man laughing at us, and muttering something- but we couldn't understand his Cantonese.

Eventually we managed to get off the beach. We crossed a super rickety bridge over a nasty lagoon. to get to the resturants and ticket booth. The bridge would shake and sway with every step- rough 2 x 4"s and drift wood strapped and nailed together. There were two deflated animal balloons showing where the entrance to the bridge was. a

Below is the view from the boat that rescued us back to the pier. The waters were rough and we had a hard time getting the boat going. The captain(?) was pulling us away from shore (small 15 passenger boat) by the anchor. Then the anchor came out and the waves shoved us farther onshore. The captain threw the anchor ropes to the two dude behind him- two thin guys in their 20s and told them to start pulling, and he jumped out of the boat to push from the behind. Water was sloshing into the boat from the front and back, and we held onto the rails and were all bumping into each other. There was a sense of panic and excitement in the air. The two guys were sliding around (we were all barefoot in a boat with water, and they were pulling that rope in as hard as they could) Evenutally the captain got us off shore, and pulled the huge anchor on boat and we were off. It was dusk- and beautiful- the mountains and waters it was amazing!

Day 2: Dinner at Victoria peak

2011-02-28T06:20:00.000-08:00

We celebrated our 1st yr anniversary with dinner on Victoria Peak, at a surprise resturant that Timon picked. We had had a conversation earlier that day about foods we wanted to sample during our holiday: comfort western food, adventurous street food, and Dim Sum. Somehow shrimp came up, and the shrimp specialty resturants, which I was quick to endorse. I'm still bewildered how it came up in the conversation so naturally. I love surprises and continually had been trying to guess where he was taking me... we watched fireworks from the waterfront, and hopped on a double decker bus up to the peak. It was a curvy narrow road, brushing against the tree branches, and leaning over the steep side of the mountain. Buses coming the opposite direction were full of passengers, cueing Timon to say "Oh no!" and me to say "Yess!" At the same time. Timon thought full buses meant there were tons of people still up there, whereas I thought the Peak would be cleared out by the time we arrived.

We arrived, and there's a huge line to leave by bus or taxi, but the restaurant was full with no line. We went up three flights of stairs; I kept asking where we were going... and ended up at Bubba Gump!! T had kept the secret well- even after asking me if I had been to Bubba Gump and I had chattered on about it.

View from our table.

Day 1: Ocean park

2011-02-21T07:17:00.000-08:00

We grabbed a quick Mcd's breakfast and hopped on a mini bus to Ocean Park, by Aberdeen. I gazed out the window, taking in the greenery and snippets of ocean inbetween. Then I saw it- gondolas going up the side of a mountain, silhouetted against a bright blue sky, and lopping rollercoasters clinging to the side of the mountain much like homes in the Oakland hills. It was marvelous!

K: "Look Timon! That's where we're going!!!"
T: "Cool! Wait... why are we driving away from it? Did we miss our stop???"

Ocean park is a cheaper, funner, alternative to Hong Kong Disneyland. And even though we have been "studying" our Disney cartoons prior our trip- Ocean park's reviews and prices were much better. (250 HKD)

They boast an aquarium, dolphin shows (which were impossible with the crowds), rollercoasters, other scary gut wrenching rides, breath taking views, live animals, and a cool laser- waterfountains on fire- computer projection show. Because it was Chinese new year, they also had special performances around the park with visiting groups. We were fortunate to see a group from Xin jiang or Jiangsu do a really impressive music + dance performance which combined poi, drumming, and about 20 people. I was holding my breath while 10 girls swing long pom-pom on strings things around hitting drums in every direction while dancing around.

Because the park was built on a mountain, it was a bit more difficult from attraction to attraction. There would be one path hewed into the mountain, instead of open space. For the Miner coaster (our fave) you had several flights of steep stairs and escalators to get there. It flew over the water and flaunted the beauty of the ocean- blindingly so. There were mostly families attending that day- so many of the adult-thrilling rides had 5-15min waits. Awesome!

-The water ride was lame.
-Pandas: awesome
-Food: so-so. Their cheapest option was McD's super long lines. We ate corn dogs and siu mai.

There was also a replica of pier 39- with sea lions, barges, and educational tidbits about how awesome northern California and the San Francisco bay area is. No joke.

There was also an entire exhibit featuring goldfish. Like the weird looking ones- lionhead, dangling eyeballs, and borderline freakish fish. Yikes.

Although it wasn't Disney-land it was hard not to compare. Ocean park didn't have the cheery theme music being pumped in everywhere- but they did put in a fair amount of detail into the train, and rides. The train taking us from one end to the other was pretty awesome- a bit of willy wonka steampunk madness. LCD monitor with shifting colors filled the "skylight" and dim rainbow evolving lights showed everyone's uncertain faces as we slid downhill.

Hong Kong holiday (a.k.a. vacation)

2011-02-13T05:23:00.000-08:00

For Chinese New year (CNY) T and I headed to Hong Kong to thaw out and sightsee. T's been to HK roughly 30 times for business trips (He would go a few times a month for his previous job) but I thought it might be nice to really explore as a tourist instead of being so work-centric.

Our Seven day trip went like this:
1. Ocean Park Amusment park
2. Relax!
3. Hiking in New territories
4. Church, Chris, Macau
5. Zhuhai Ocean SPRINGS resort
6. Lantau island
7. Go home and clean up (the apt)

This was our first trip we planned and (sorta) executed together. There were things we both forgot : (
I bought the tickets, booked hotels, and looked up some attractions, Timon looked up transportation, maps and compiled all the details into a booklet thing. He also reserved ferry tickets and reservation stuff. I can get super obsessed with planning things- and wanting to do EVERYTHING.... even if its physically impossible. I blame my parents for this. When we went on "vacation" it was like a marathon. We'd have to wake up early to get all sorts of places. T and I needed to rest, so we only planned one thing per day, leaving plenty of time for sleeping, exploring, and getting lost.

Once the internet warms up I'll start uploading photos for everything we saw! Its too beautiful not to share! Our expectations were exceeded in ways we couldn't imagine- Hong Kong is one of the most expensive cities in the world, known for being tightly packed- yet we discovered joy and amazement in getting out to some natural beauties.

Hong Kong holiday: Sai Kung

2011-02-11T08:03:00.000-08:00

Wuxi

2011-01-23T04:57:00.000-08:00

T's company had a small up to Wuxi, about 1 hr outside Shanghai this weekend. I was fortunate enough to go with them.

We had a wonderful dinner then went for KTV, where we sung our share of english songs (Micheal Jackson, Bon Jovi, ABBA, BSB) The next day we went sightseeing at Ling Shan buddhist "Disneyland".

Map of Lingshan. See the statue of Buddha at the very top? Its not an icon. Its actually that big!

They didn't have rides, but they were sure selling a lot of stuff. As we entered the park from our car, a tour guide jumped on us and showed us around. (In Mandarin)

"..be in awe of its fathomless depth... combination of technology, architecture, culture, art, and science"

This is the outside of a buddhist building equivalent to a cathedral. (similar layout as well) There were paintings and cloisonne zodiac sculptures.

We sat in this huge circular theatre surrounded by a screen, which showed different scenary from around asia for a while. Then the circular screen lifted to reveal an elaborate setting of a palace and gardens. Statues rose up on a platform, all dressed in period attire (Something like a tropical asian looking clothes, and painted faces) and then music began and everyone began walking around. (I was really convinced they weren't real up until that point!) There was dancing and singing then the screen came down. In the center of the room, fog emerged to reveal a tree rising up and a statue sitting under it. Then people in robes came out with lanterns (below pic)

cool show we saw about history of Buddhism.

Then we hiked up to see the 100+ meter tall buddha. It was a bit weird sticking out among the mountains and trees. (Wuxi is known for its trees. They purposly planted lots and lots of them there- still young, but hoping to be an attraction I suppose)

over 100 meter tall buddha in Wuxi, China

Me and the big toe.


View from the toe.

detail of giant metal roller (people spin them as they walk by, for good luck)

I liked the corroded texture of it.

It was a fun trip getting to know T's work friends and learning more about Buddhism. Only 2 of them were practicing buddhists, burning candles and incense and praying at the various locations. One of them asked me what Christians do at church- just pray? So that was a interesting conversation to have about beliefs and what "church" is. I learned not to walk thru the center of the archways (of 5 openings, the center one is only for budda) and that they believe its good luck if you touch budda's hand and circle around it.

We also ate a vegetarian buffet there- with typical dishes with "veggie product" replacing the supposed meat things. Weirrdddd. It looked like beef... but it wasn't. Some of the pork pieces even look like they had fat on them.. squishy and gross like fat too! I didn't take any photos b/c it was just a bit weird for me... and the room was dark. I liked the taro balls the most.

I love snow!

wake up and smell the.... snow?!

2011-01-20T07:45:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning to be surprised by a white city- everything covered in snow, JUST like the flocked trees in the macy's displays! I was delighted and immediately grabbed my camera to snap some shots.

DO you see it on the thin trees? Every little bit got some snow on it. Fluffy, bright, snow. Ahhh! So magical. This is when I realized that "Walking in a winter wonderland" was not necessarily a Christmas song, so I was still allowed to sing it post-Christmas. yesss. snowman time!

Now something fun. I visit the commodities/trim market seasonally, sometimes for work, sometimes for fun. Ribbons, buttons, overstock, random logo patches, doodads- a plethora of materials to make something great out of. One of the more intriguing overstock items to me are washing labels.

Back in college I had made a stuffed animal sheep out of "100% WOOL" tags, where the tags were the tufts of fur, and had brown legs and face (of wool). So I picked up a mini roll of satin ribbon japanese washing labels as a design challenge for myself. And if you dare join me, I will ship you a few meters.

new year. two thousand eleven.

2011-01-15T01:05:00.000-08:00

After helping someone with their grad school essays, I realized how much revising can improve one's writing. So my 2010 "reflections" post is still being cleaned up so to speak.

At the end of every year, I reread all my journal/blog entries to see how I've learned (or not learned) prayers were answered, or just to make sure time HAS passed. (which it has, unfortunately quickly) Once I got to April, I decided two things (1) My blog is really boring, especially when the most interesting post I reread was about Visa issues.(yikes) So I really need to spice it up. My goal for the blog to was share with family and friends back home how life is going out here, so (2) I need a better format besides the "What is did this weekend" post. So I'm thinking of a simple three part format: What I saw/experienced, what I felt, and what I learned. The "felt" and "learned" aspects should be more interesting on how they reflect me as a person as well as how living abroad has affected me.

So now I will practice my new format-prompt.

Hanging out with meat and clothes by the Chang Shou rd mall. (there's a Starbucks immediately behind what you see) I wonder if the clothes smell like fish? I think this is a creative use of space, and have mixed feelings about the dried fish and ducks. Drying food to preserving has been done for centuries, a process I'm curious to learn- although people are still using this method because they haven't a fridge. This makes me feel sad, but also blessed to be where I am. I also had no idea that poultry could be dried like that.

Festival of Red I headed to Yu garden to search for some parts for work, and the shops are jammed with Lunar New years gear. Plush strings of chili peppers, rabbits, good luck sayings, knots, and lanterns. These cheery overflowing shops can be seen blocks away like splashes of red paint amongst the grey buildings. It makes feel rather excited, like the whole country is having a countrywide party!

Christmas wrap up

2010-12-29T16:45:00.000-08:00

The elves have been working quickly, quickly. Actually I've been really ill for the past week, so when Christmas came up on us, we rested some more. We had our usual saturday morning pancake breakfast, special with eggs AND bacon (wow). We each opened our one present.(We had other presents, but we opened the electric blanket and deodorant early out of necessity) I headed to the market for groceries (mad house) while Timon got his hair cut.

We had a few comrades over for a simple dinner; rotisserie chicken, garlic mash potatoes (土豆泥 literally "potato mud"), Jon's broccoli salad, curry made by his chef roomie, and apple pie for dessert (by the Smiths!) Jon's broccoli salad is amazing. He brings it to every potluck meal so we all look forward to it- crunchy raw broccoli, bacon, grapes, homemade mayo sauce, and sunflower seeds. We had so much we ate it for 3 days after Christmas!

Christmas isn't complete with some caroling- so Jon jumped on the guitar as we nibbled on toffee, peanut brittle, and caramels made and shipped over from his mom. Thanks Mrs. Osterman! Tastes like christmas!

Yeah, our kitchen was trashed after all the cooking. By the end of the night I hadn't even made my christmas presents yet. Happy new year!

thanks santa

2010-12-17T22:42:00.000-08:00

Santa (shown in previous post) brought me a gift early- an electric blanket!!!! It is awesome. SO awesome.

We had our first snow this week, on wednesday.

Just one day of snow. That evening all was blanketed in white, minus the slippery roads. It didn't stick for the most part, the roads were just wet.

pre-christmas preparations

2010-12-06T05:57:00.000-08:00

Can you hear those sleigh bells jingling, ring-ding dingaling....? We had a pre-christmas party last night to celebrate with our pals who are on their way to their motherlands. With busy weekends we opted to order in rotisserie chicken, sooo delicious. A friend made mulled wine and the Europeans shared the "st. Nicolas" stories they grew up.(Sinterklaas and Sint Nikolaas, who has an assistant named "Black Pete" The wikipedia pic is.. interesting)

Sometime after dinner Timon snuk into his Santa costume (leftover from his bachelor party-) and came out with a jolly HO HO HO and explained the 50rmb white elephant gift exchange. It was mass confusion. T and I didn't even KNOW about the gift exchange until that day (even though I was the one who sent the invites out) and so some gifts were rather nice (5o RMB gift certificate to marks and spencer) and nicer for others (size 5.5 gold shoes). Timon won the former, and I, the latter.

(Above stockings I made this week) One of the best gifts was the biggest. In a large cloth sack was a fancy moon cake gift box. (BTW moon cakes are sweet bean* pastries given during Oct. moon festival. *There are "pleasant" surprises also) This moon cake box was larger than a x-large pizza box, and when the lid was unhinged open, the interior is lined with faux silk and there's empty "spots" that the cakes usually fit into. In this gift, each "spot" was filled with some odd thing- angel bear night light, pack of displosable undies, bible trivia cards, Montreal steak seasoning, socks, and a framed image of an iris. On the outside of the moon cake box was taped a pg ripped form a magazine of a skiier. ("For christmas! You know, snow- christmas?" said the fellow who made it)

I had put in two gifts, we had one left over, which people answered bible trivia to get the last prize. (two christmas plates)

what a weekend! We ran out of forks and plates and had to recycle-wash mid party to continue the feast. woo!

xoxo

cooking mutations

2010-11-24T06:49:00.000-08:00

Have Leftover scrambled (raw) eggs? Whip up a rice-crusted quiche. Was delicious, although the rice was chewy (I was impatiently hungry!)

Went for a very special ladies only night to M on the Bund for my friend's birthday! She is pictured in front of the dragon truck- she knows the cool spots, makes amazing food, and is one of the people who saved our lives in Sept!

Fast forward 1 week to today. Preparing for thanksgiving. We (15 of us) will be getting our turkey from the marriot, comes with potatoes and pies....so what to make?

I begin with the idea for cocktail shrimp, simmered in tangy spicy broth. Being pre-dinner and highly delusional I failed to realized how small the shrimps in my bag were. They ranged from small to teeny... so once I removed them from their zesty broth, I realized I had hardly anything to serve as an appetizer. (though delicous, I started at them for 20 minutes telling myself to "be creative" and figure what to do with them. [I just finished reading Paul Arden's "Its not how good you are, its how good you want to be" Where they talk about different interpretations of "Creative" p104, but I'll get into that later.

So after chatting with T, we though making into a spread/dip was the best way to salvage our thanksgiving contribution. Cream cheese, mayo, plus some of the broth lent to a greatgreatgreat spread!!! (We'll see what everyone thinks tomorrow)

hooray!

Ok, now rewind to Sunday. I wanted to end the post with this image, of our friend singing a solo with this church choir. Although he's trained to sing italian and french operas, we had the honor to hear him sing in Mandarin (At least one of us could understand). It was beautiful, they had a strings section (8 violins and one cello) and did about 15 songs, some with audience participation. I managed to pick up one song, because it was actually just one line sung over and over and over again. "zai Ye su li, wo men shi yi jia" It was a big room, full of people robustly singing, and really magnificent to experience the energy and enthusiasm.

Some doodling

2010-10-27T01:52:00.000-07:00

While T's away in the States, I had a productive weekend preparing for winter, cooking, and some water coloring with carrots. (Little Lotta jansdotter inspiration!) I nearly burnt my biscotti's trying to get Glee to load while doing yoga. (Because being productive means doing lots of things at once, har har)

I also managed to call a shop and see if they sold screen printing ink, in CHINESE. This is BIG. She understood me until I said, "AWESOME!!!" They sell ink by the half kilogram- converting everything saps my brain energy.

T has been having a great time visiting people, eating donuts and other american goodies! He's now in Atlanta for a conference.

T and his boss were written up in one of China's news websites. The doll their holding is the Sina mascot. Very cool.

winter is here

2010-10-26T02:21:00.001-07:00

its freezing!!!!!!

More expo

2010-10-22T17:45:00.001-07:00

France

India: the biggest bamboo dome in the world. It had a 3D projection animation that we couldn't figure out. (how it worked and what it was about. All in chinese)

Morocco: Beautiful handcarved border lined each of the three stories of this pavillion. There were palm trees in the center courtyard reaching to the ceiling and fake sky. On the second level was the "Marketplace" where they had small rooms to peer into of their crafts: shoes, ceramics, spices, carving and a respective film in each showing how it was done.

"Welcome in the Nederlands!" is what the sign said. This was my favorite pavillion (and second time going!) brightly colored houses cantilevered along a elevated spiraling walkway. Each with a different exhibit and description (in english too!!)

This was the beginning wall in the Polish pavillion.

World Expo post!

2010-10-18T04:25:00.000-07:00

After my third time at the Expo, its about time for a post of photos! from Thursday evening. I got off work and traded two daytime passes for 4 night time passes for my three design buddies who came to visit. Evening is the best time to see the expo because the crowds get tired and go home and the pavilions are lite up beautifully.

Quick rundown of the evening:
-Poland
-Morocco
-India
-Nederlands

Germany had shut down, and Japan and UAE were both packed to the rim. Saudi Arabia's line was so long it basically wrapped around India's pavillion.

Inside Poland. Lots of intricate "paper cut" style walls, backlit, and we sat and watched a very odd film. A family was cracking walnuts around their kitchen table, when suddenly a crowd comes in with flutes of champagne and everyone began to waltz to the next room.

German pavilion side view. We didn't get to go in. long line!

Melee at Nederlands stamping station. There were two rubber stamps strapped to tables and people were frantically trying to get their expo(or real) passports stamped. Including my two buddies you see in the center (White guy and fellow in glasses to the left). At one point my glasses friend yelled "CRAZY WHITE MAN COMING THROUGH!!" in which everyone stopped for 1 second before continuing in chaos. I couldn't even see them, and took this photo on my extender arm to find out!

German and Chinese working together sample bamboo house. Really cool, but we missed it.

whew! tiresome day.

more visitors

2010-10-12T02:40:00.000-07:00

Fellow americans-living-in-China came to visit us in Shanghai, and we went to Sheshan for the afternoon to hike and explore. We visited the Basilica of Sheshan on the top of a small mountain (they building cement steps all the way to the top) and also visited a bamboo amusement park- a series of obstacle courses built on a hill between bamboo forests, plus monkeys, archery range, and giant maze. Very cool.

Design pals in shanghai!!!

weekend

2010-10-03T19:15:00.000-07:00

Saturday mornings mean pancakes.Pancakes with blueberry topping, whipped creme, on our new closed balcony! Closed balcony, is basically putting windows around a normal balcony- keeps out bugs and our laundry from flying away.

This is our new place:

It was China national day, so we naturally celebrated the way American celebrate any other holiday: playing football!

Guys played tackle and girls played powder puff (two hand touch) We both very sore.

Meanwhilist we are still organizing and setting up home- books, papers, etc. This bamboo cabinet I spotted at a antique shop, and thought it was very cool.

We rested.

2010-09-28T23:08:00.000-07:00

NY to Shanghai, packed up our apt and 4 hours later flew to HK to renew our visas.

Trip to america!

2010-08-31T19:53:00.000-07:00

Central park, on my way to Cooper Hewitt Design museum

Times square- interactive billboard. I'm the one with my arm raised, next to my friend in a red shirt.

Visiting the Liberty Bell with Denise and Grace in Philadelphia

New York

2010-08-26T22:09:00.000-07:00

walked thru central park,

went to cooper-hewitt museum,

listened to a talk by Jeff Hollander on his new book: The Responsibility Revolution: How the Next Generation of Businesses Will Win.

ate pizza and berry dessert,

happy button

2010-08-23T16:25:00.000-07:00

I found this remote at our workshop where product samples (that I design) are made. It goes to the air conditioner... I think.

Hangzhou

2010-08-15T08:32:00.000-07:00

We went for a 1.5 day weekend trip to Hangzhou, 1.5 hrs outside the city by train. Itt was wonderful!

BBQ!

2010-07-18T19:57:00.000-07:00

I won't even show the photo of the george foreman burgers compared to T's bbq'd ones. They can't even compare! A friend of ours graciously gave us his old BBQ as someone gave him theirs. We bought charcoal and scrounged for newspaper(which we don't read) to start it up. T did a great job and it was wonderful! A few of our friends helped us make the shrimp/bellpepper kabobs for the grill.

it Smells like summer!

T's birthday

2010-07-14T18:33:00.000-07:00

T turned 30 last weekend, and we had a simple dinner + dessert party with some friends. We began at BECA resturant, and then headed back to the apartment. I made a coconut banana cake with whole Blueberry and whip cream filling! It was something I had never done before but turned out wonderful- tangy juicy blueberries and sweet moist cake. The banana was hardly noticeable. I didn't want to pay $10 for food coloring at the import store, and so made letter flags to spell out T's name (which turned out a bit bigger than I imagined)

I also made little flags with T's face and birthday riddles to put in drinks, and hid all over the apt. (By the bathroom sink, in the entryway) So people got a kick out of that. SOmeone also pointed out, if you spin the flag really fast, T looks like Mr. Bean!

Below were the invites as well as beer "labels" for the 20 beer steins we ordered. We tied the "labels" on with ribbon, and guests took them home as souvenirs.

[T and I went on a wild goose chase looking for root "beer" in the city] The phone conversation went like this:
T: Hello, (grocery shop) I'm looking for root beer.
clerk: Ok, I will go look.
T: By the way, its not a beer. I has no alchohol. Its sweet like soda pop.
Clerk: Root beer?
T: A and W? Henry Weinhertz?
Clerk: Sorry, we haven't carried it since 2007. (not true!)

This conversation repeated 4 or 5 times, til we decided it best to go in person and look for ourselves.

Then there was the discussion whethere "Creamy root beer" (By Hansen's) was root beer. What do you think?

timon

2010-07-04T22:38:00.000-07:00

blessings at the bus stop

2010-06-24T21:46:00.000-07:00

Isn't it annyoing when you are 1 block from the bus stop, and suddenly see your bus take off? You begin to run but stop when you realize there's not way you'll catch it. And its 30 minutes until the next bus comes. And your already late for work.

As this happened to me, I went to another bus stop to try to figure out if another bus went to my office, by matching up the chinese characters on my business card to the characters on the 5 different bus lines (they list all 20+ stops). I was also struggling with the tiny font on my business card- my fault, of course.

The moment I realized this task was near-impossible, a chinese couple next to me said, "Zhe ge Chang de rd & Chang shou rd" (exactly where I wanted to go) and pointed to it on the Bus #13 list of stops. They walked away not even noticing me- an answer to a prayer that had not been said. I was amazed- totally a God watching over me moment. My bus came and I got to work!

100 deviled eggs!

2010-06-22T06:51:00.000-07:00

50 mini BLTs!

For the first time this weekend, we made appetizers for a farewell party. There was going to be about 50 people, so I planned for 50 of each- my first time doing a large quantity!

So I miscalculated and had Timon buy 50 eggs, which meant we had 100 egg halves = 100 deviled eggs. I put the yolk filling in a ziplock bag, and piped it into the eggs- which seems easy, but actually required a lot more handstrength! So Timon worked on that part. Oh well, They all got eaten except for a handful. Some even got leftover bacon bits from the BLTS! yum yum!

I also made peanut butter cookies/cakes, which I didn't take a photo of, since they are just lumpy things. I originally was going to half dip them in chocolate, but the Shanghai heat woulda made them a mess. I made little flags and glued them onto toothpicks, with our friend's name and theme of the party, ("THIS is your LIFE!"

We had a blast, listening to stories and memories, of their long 30 some odd year journey in China- which was amazing. Jia you, Crosbys, and have fun in North Carolina!

How to use a toilet

2010-06-11T04:43:00.000-07:00

From the bathroom at the Shanghai Symphony Hall:

Get it? I didn't.

Me: Why is the cat wrong?
Timon: What is the cat doing?
Me: It's using the toilet...?
Timon: Yes, but more specific-
Me: It's sitting on the toilet- but so is the elephant!
Timon: The difference...
Me: The cat has its FEET on the toilet??? NO WAY. People do NOT...
Timon: YES! Yes they do.
Me: People trying to squat on a western toilet...

see you at the touchsceen!

2010-06-09T08:01:00.000-07:00

After visiting the Urbanity project at a friend's studio on Maoming Rd, we saw these big touchscreens for reading the newspaper. A lot of apt complexes have big board where they post the newspaper and announcements.

In the top left hand corner is a regular sized newspaper, and you tap the article, and it pops up super big, and you can click thru it.

Pretty cool.

Home Sweet Home Inc.

2010-06-05T08:35:00.000-07:00

"I love Shanghai" bag, including, World financial building, Jinmao Tower, and Pearl tower.

Home Sweet Home is a business/social venture here in Shanghai:

Loving and caring for those with special needs by building their character in a loving home environment and developing their skills through education and training, and assisting their integration by being the bridge between the community and the needy ones.

I volunteered with them as a product designer since ending the Toy company internship, and Timon, I, and a bunch of friends rallied together to head up a fundraiser for HSH. We just went to another very fun event at a restaurant/bar/movie place where they had performances by the workers, crafts for kids, and an entire kitchen made of cardboard. The cardboard projects were part of a program with high schools, where students get hands on experience of product development all the way to marketing and selling the goods (and HSH's products) on their campus.

Street food: Yang rou tran, mushrooms, greenbeans, meatballs, octpus, fish

Tote bags are now on sale for 40 rmb.

grocery store

2010-06-03T18:19:00.000-07:00

Who is singing??

2010-05-27T23:09:00.000-07:00

The city has street sweepers on nearly every block picking up trash, planting flowers, and trimming plants. They all don light blue uniforms with plentiful reflective stripes, and matching hats. Except for one fellow I saw, who had on a sombrero, colorful embroidery and rim flipped up and was happily singing as he went his way! How admirable to have no shame.

My office is on the 17th floor not too much of a commute from street level, but enough to see what people are doing on their roofs. (Laundry and storage, mostly) My desk faces the open window, and in comes the sounds of car horns, squeaky brakes, and singing. Singing? It wasn't just one person either- it was a group, sounding like a choir, maybe on their first day. After 5 minutes, they didn't stop; my curiosity got the best of me as I peered out the window to a hair salon below with 8-10 people in uniform standing in formation, and doing exercises(?) in unison while singing! They didn't look like they were enjoying it, but was kinda a cool way to start your workday, I suppose!

photo collecting

2010-05-21T07:03:00.000-07:00

Here are some intriguing pics that I've been holding on to for a while.

From our weekly trek to the fruit store:

Pedaling hard, the recyclers on tricycles pick up cardboard and/or bottles. When we were in thailand, it was late evening and impossible to be seen/get a taxi back to our hotel. The only person who stopped for us was a recycle lady like this one. She was really sweet, (and also had a motor powered bike to pull her load) We rode for about 20 minutes on top of stacks of cardboard in open air. It was amazing.

This is my green onion plant. My friend's mom used to do this in Oakland, so I thought I'd try it, so I'd have green onions all the time. But they are soooo tiny I can hardly taste them.

Guess what these are! Candy. Chinese Candy, yes. Timon kept saying, "Ooh, these are so good! You should have one!" And I couldn't figure out how Shrimp flavored candy could ever taste "good"- I had a shrimp waffle before and it was g-r-o-s-s. And when you open the paper wrapper, the candy inside is a beige log with brown/grey stripes, like a shrimp- I guess. Well, contrary to its packaging, it IS delicious!!! It's actually a Butterfinger!!!! Score 1 for Chinese candy! We just have to figure out how to buy more.

sightings

2010-05-19T05:06:00.000-07:00

Today I saw an old man cross a busy street by yelling and threatening cars with an umbrella. There were about 10 of us on the center divide waiting for the 3 lanes of traffic to stop, but this fearless fellow was not losing any time. Some stared in disbelief and concern, and one man chuckled at the old man.

After work, a lady put her very cute puppy in the basket of her bicycle, and proceeded to walk her bike out to the street, and the puppy, with his paws on the handlebars, trying to get out. It was heart warming!

And upon getting to my apt complex, a frenchman came asking around for a certain address, but talking to me in mandarin. I was couldn't decipher his Chinese (mostly my problem, but maybe his too) and then was confounded whether I should respond to him in Mandarin, French, or English. I chose the latter. I think we were both confused.

This weekend Timon's Uncle was in town for a business trip and allowed us to drag him all over the city showing him amazing things! One of our faves was the Urban Planning museum, which has a huge scaled model of the city:

This view shows our area, Zhongshan park. The tall grey building on the left is the Renaissance hotel, and has bright blue lights making it a great navigating point at nighttime.

Flat sam

2010-05-14T08:09:00.000-07:00

Flat Sam came to visit us here in Shanghai.Flat Sam, being a flat self portrait of my adorable cousin back home. She has adorable high heeled shoes, and a matching purse!

On the Bund 外滩 seeing the famous Pearl Tower.

yougurt

2010-05-09T21:32:00.000-07:00

A little while back I got the grand idea to make my own yogurt. I love eating it everyday with my breakfast but hate hauling all the little tubs form the store and spilling it on myself because the lids are so securely melted on.

I did some research, and was delighted to find that I only needed to incubate boiled milk with the yogurt culture in it! I dreamt of fresh tart yogurt (Chinese yogurt tends to be really sweet) But it required LIVE yogurt culture- sold in packets in the states. Tad out of my reach, but figured it wouldn't hurt to just try with some yogurt from the shop.

Then I forgot about the yogurt dream until I saw this:

Cultured yogurt? Native american? Afro yogurt? is it the flavor?.....what would Native american yogurt taste like?

Flat me + super spring!

2010-05-02T05:22:00.000-07:00

This is Flat Samantha, my cousin from Cali. She came to visit me thru the mail, and I am showing her around shanghai, and sending her home with some cool souvenirs! Flat Sam's project was inspired by Flat Stanley a book about a boy who travels places, by sending a flat version of himself through the mail. You get the idea.

So here is Flat Sam sitting in on a Chinese lesson at our house. Tomorrow we will go to the Bund and see the pearl tower!

gorilla man stop light

2010-04-16T01:59:00.000-07:00

Krabi, Thailand

Visiting the elephants

2010-04-13T04:40:00.000-07:00

Today we woke up to sunshine and papaya, and a 45 minute truck ride heading south on the island to ride elephants, do some hiking, and see old town.

This was one of the elephants we rode. He was 25 yrs old and "easy to guide" according to the guide, who sat on his head. What I didn't expect was such a bumpy ride!! I was holding on to that bench(and Timon) with all my might! This little boy was feeding the elephant and really shy about touching it. Elephant skin is like cement-leather! Super rough and thick and hairy.

Riding elephants is also really bumpy and sometimes they walk under trees with low branches and you really gotta watch out! One of the guides also had a slingshot to help "encourage" the elephant. One of our pals was saying they have chains on their ankles since babyhood, so when they get real big, they won't run away, b/c they are so trained to thinking their stuck on their chain.

So the elephants dropped us off where we began 1 km hike to this cave, which had a Banyan tree growing through it- literally. It was really cool! The roots went down thru the rock looking like poles. The cave itself actually wasn't very "cavey" it wasn't very deep, but we saw some little bats. A waterfall was supposed to be part of the tour, but it was all dried up (first time in 25 years!) so we just headed back and managed to catch a glimpse of a flying lizard going tree-to-tree!

Lunched in the old town (which I don't recommend for its 40 minute ride). Its just a town, with a beautiful view..

Hello from Thailand!

2010-04-11T20:53:00.000-07:00

We arrive on Friday in Bangkok, to humid hot weather and hot pink cabs.

I think the typography/lettering of the thai language is really cool looking, with its curls and turns.

Satuday visited the Jim Thompson house, an American who helped in building up the silk industry. We toured his house, which was a bit dark, but interesting mix of Thai, western, and chinese influences.

Last night we arrived in Koh Lanta, an island about 15 hrs by car from Bangkok- scenic green and amazing. n our road trip, we saw many car dealerships, and brightly collored multi story homes as well as trucks of durian.

Heading to Thailand!

2010-04-08T07:32:00.000-07:00

This weekend we are heading to Thailand! Beaches, friends, catching up on blogs, and WARM weather!

A little clever bit I wanted to share a while back when we were setting up home were these awesome spice jar rack set we got as a wedding gift. (Props to my husband who picked them out for the registry!!)

Zevro Magnetic Spice rack! But when we arrived in Shanghai, our kitchen was all tile, and we didn't want/know how to drill into the tile, lest we wreck everything. My mom had pre-filled a majority of them with "American" spices: lemon pepper, garlic salt, other things hard to find locally in China- so I was pretty bummed. And then, voila!

The hood of our stove is metal, and a perfect accessible location for our spices! yay!

25th Birthday!!

2010-03-31T07:39:00.000-07:00

"Where's Waldo?"

Jumping!

Throwing pizza dough!

yummy dinners

2010-03-31T07:04:00.000-07:00

Seems like this blog is really turning into a cooking blog... I promise you it isn't. Timon has some great ideas for tech topics he wants to blog about.

Tonight for dinner we made sloppy joes and very delicious bread sticks (aka Salt and Pepper Grissini )

My parents own a bread machine, we only use it ever so often- the loaves often came out really yum the first day and then hard and dry quickly thereafter. The only other good use was when I was designing products out of bread for a competition, freshman year? Anyways-

I got both my recipes from Epicurious, one of my favorite iTouch apps. We cooked for 4 people, and sloppy joes was super easy, esp when I normally get home from work at 6:30. We bought some crusty french hoagie rolls from Tesco, (on promo!) for buns which were delicious! Bread alternatives here are great, but not like home. There's not really hot dog or hamburger buns- and they've got the rad sliced bread, but once you put condiments on they soak it up and get crushed to smithereens.

Our sloppy joes had ground hamburger, bell pepper green, mystery green pepper (wasn't spicy like I thought), yellow onion, garlic, tomato sauce, and garlic salt, chili powder, cinnamon, pepper, vinegar, white sugar, and a tad of starch.

Okay, cinnamon and sugar? Yes, I think everyone knows kristina and timon have HUGE sweet tooths, and kristina's favorite cereal IS Cinnamon Toast Crunch....so here's the explanation: The recipe called for ketchup, and I wondered- why can't I just make it? Isn't it just preserved tomato sauce?? So when on eHow for a recipe and added the ingredients into my sauce- including vinegar, cinnamon, and sugar! Sweet n Tangy! Maybe next time I'll try my hand at making ketchup. When I went to Germany, we would snack on currywurst on the train platforms- sausage with curry ketchup! so good :)

The grissini ("The what?": Timon) aka crunchy bread sticks were an inspiration from Ultimo restaurant in Bali. Located on the swag Oberoi street in the Seminyak area, this very affordable Italian restaurant was SO good, we ate there 3 days, two nights in a row. Upon being seated they bring you a basket of bread with long pencil thin bead sticks sticking out like the branches of a tree in the winter, and garlicy pesto butter to eat with it.

This recipe was a hit! It had fluff, crunch, spongey, bubbly texture. We substituted heavy cream for the buttermilk it called for, and accidentally added the egg white in, instead of brushing it ontop. It reminded me of buttermilk biscuits, and would prolly work pretty well. The dough was really soft and sticky when I was rolling it out. My baking pan is little, so the some the bread sticks became "J" and "c" shapes to fit. Would be fun to make cute shapes and serve in a soup! Maybe I will try that next time when I make chili...mmmmhmmm. The only disappointment with this recipe was that it was so small- only 10 or so little pencil bread sticks. Perfect for two people, but as an appetizer I'd have to double or triple the recipe, which I may do for our Easter brunch coming up this Sunday. Right now, we've signed up for salsa + chocolate dessert (left over from my birthday) so we'll see. I'm super behind on posts.

Adventures in cooking!

2010-03-23T05:37:00.000-07:00

Tonight we had a savory version of bread pudding- which ended up being more like stuffing- the thanksgiving kind.

We try not to overbuy at the grocery store, esp when its jam packed with grammas in jammies. All we had was chicken breasts, stale baguettes (again, an overestimation for dinner party) orange juice, 3 eggs, and 5 carrots.

We threw it all together in a cassarole dish, with garlic salt, lemon pepper, and onion flakes (courtesy of my mom!). I pan fried the chicken in oregano and tossed into the mix, of chopped carrots and bread (we opted for 1 carrot instead of 5)

And it came out quite pleasantly! yum yum! crunchy crust on top, with custardy juicy bread plus chicken and (rather) crunchy carrots. Next time I'll put the carrots on the bottom with the meat in the juices, so they'll steam better.

In the meantime, we'll head to the grocery store.

chicken pot pie!

2010-03-21T06:28:00.000-07:00

One of our favorite meals here is a fresh baked chicken pot pie. I made my first ones when we were still dating and made one for each of us in 6" wide 2" deep pans, which ended up being twice as much food as needed, so no we always freeze one for next week (quick dinner!)

So Timon made the SUPER EASY PIE CRUST, While I made the gravy, veggie, chicken filling. We didn't have celery, onion, or celery seeds, so Substituted frozen veggies of corn, carrots, and peas. (ironically titled "meiguo" (america) on their bag) At the last minute threw in three cloves of minced garlic, and it was just SPECTACULAR!

"One of the meal uses of the the frozen veggies," Noted Timon.

We baked our pie for 20 minutes til the crust was golden brown, crispy and delicious! SO GOOD! With the two of us listening to Newsweek on air, it only took about 30-40 minutes for prep, then we did a quick office clean up while it cooked. When the oven goes *ding* I start jumping up and down and frantically search for oven mitts because I'm so ready to eat.

This pie crust used oil and milk instead of butter- since we didn't have a lot of butter to spare and no pastry knife to slice it in (it takes hours to do with a single knife!) the oil was quick and T had no trouble rolling it out.

great meal, and then we stood on our balcony and admired the cool evening air and bright city lights.

What is love? fundraiser

2010-03-15T16:38:00.000-07:00

This year T and I helped out at the "What is love? (爱是什么？）fundraiser for Home Sweet Home, Ltd.， whom I had volunteered with previously designing products. Two teams (one married) above are competeing to scrape off shaving creme from behind their partner- it was hilarious! We had a rafffle draw and Home Sweet Home did a dance performance, and there was a wall for people to put what they thought love was. (For white Valentine's day)

Here's one of the designs I did for them, including all the famous Shanghai buildings.

Stale bread?

2010-03-05T21:02:00.000-08:00

Sometimes T goes to the store to buy groceries without me, and comes back with a LOT more than I expect. His idea is that if he buys more quantity now, it'll save him from coming back later in the week. This usually means buying 2 of everything.

What do you do with a week old baguette? Make it into pudding! Bread pudding!
Crispy top crust, and soft custerdy bread underneath. yum!

1 cup milk
1/2 c. sugar (I had put way too much in)
3 eggs
2 c. cubed stale bread
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/3 c. Raisins on the bottom

stick in the oven for 20 minutes on 350 degrees with a an of water underneath to help steam it. I made this a bunch while we were dating and had excess bread.

so good!

Wedding pics teaser

2010-03-03T05:21:00.000-08:00

We had two wonderful photographers, Cindy Fong plus Sarah Dawson for our wedding day. They came up with creative angles, poses, and locations in our favorite city of Oakland (and area) for the bridal party. Mills college was a favorite, and also by my house, and then the luscious Hayward Tea Garden where T and I took our own lovey dovey couple shots. Cindy lives in the neighborhood and even alumni of the same high school. Go Titans! Shop local!

Mills College is an all girls school, that offered a variety of settings, from the gothic steps area, to huge open arches, and even a bunch of little webber BBQs for the guys to shoot pics with- which came out awesome! While we were shooting pics at the tea garden, the rest of the bridal party was goofing off and we found them taking jump photos in front of an old school bus parked on the street- with the girl's shoes in a pile nearby. It was sooo fun!

Later, we took photos at Eden's original St. Steven's chapel, which was adorable- and then more traditional ones in the huge modern sanctuary where we were later wed.

Check out Cindy Fong's blog for a slideshow!

Beijing - Visa battle part II

2010-03-03T04:35:00.000-08:00

We flew to Beijing to take care of Visa stuff... that evening we are going over the process with our helper, and find out we can't go from my tourist status visa to a residence permit! (Which is the opposite of what SH's visa office told us last week)
So, our only other option was to apply for a 6 month visa, and then need to leave the country and buy a diff visa and re-enter SH. Another plane ticket we didn't want to have to pay for.

The next morning I met our helper at the visa office (This is when I read my first SMS in Chinese, ”我到了“）and we photocopy and fax and fill out forms for the officer until she's satisfied (lots of running between copy machine and standing in line) and then we find out that they CHANGED THE RULE THAT MORNING so I could change my tourist visa into a residence permit!!! How awesome is that?

SO awesome, that we went to Ho Hi with T's colleague for lunch.

The lake was frozen.

Abundant blessings!

Year of the Tiger

2010-02-24T06:41:00.000-08:00

Once January rolls around the city begins to gear up for Lunar new years. This means the santa faces come down and large images of sparkly gold animals go up. This year was the year of the Tiger, my mom's year. (I won't tell you how old she is) So this post is for her and everyone born in the year of the tiger! Nanjing Rd.
These are the finished fireworks boxes from our apartment complex. The fireworks are inside the tubes, and shoot straight up 6 stories - 21 stories high. The bigger one are easily 1000 rmb, over $140 usd! and familes will go light them off in succession to "scare away" evil spirit or whatnot. About twnety of us had one, all pitched in and it was great.

Giant rose on Nanjing rd. No idea... And the tigers: Which one are you?

happy valentine's new lunar new year of the tiger!

2010-02-14T23:18:00.000-08:00

Lunar new year happened to land on the very day of Valentine's day. So we headed to a Valentiger's party. People anonymously wrote love letters to be read in Russian, Country hick, and other accents- while others wrote news years resolutions in character of chocoholic, couch potatoe shopaholic. Was quite entertaining!

This is my doodle to celebrate the day.

Here we are at a rooftop on the 21st watching the fireworks. It was trés smoggy.

It snowed! Big flakes- it was SOO cold.

The aftermath.

Honeymoon reflections: Rafting in Bali

2010-02-12T21:17:00.000-08:00

One of the most beautiful fun activities in Bali. It was no white water adventure, but the scenary was amazing! Tall mountains beside us covered in greenery, rope bridges, and narrow shady water ways. Ahhh.

This was in our of our package day tours, and so T and I got grouped with a Chinese tour group, some Japanese and a Taiwainese couple. If you look at the far left side of the photo, you can kinda make out the Chinese couple with their matching outfits.

We all had to hike about 20 minutes down to the river, and our guides were inflating the boats behind us. It was a narrow steep path of rough hewn steps (some of those gals were in heels!) and half way down, I began to wonder how the boats were going to get down. Then there's this whizzing sound, and a raft comes flying through the air above our heads on a (clothing) line type thing! It lands in a manmade tiled pool, where the guide unhooks it from the line and then shoves it down this biggie slide which connects to the the loading pool, where we jump it. It was really cool.

Ropes bridges crossed over head, passed fancy resorts, and saw locals doing their thing.

Here's just a taste of the scenary! Green, green, green! We even got to ump out of the boat and just float around for a bit. We'd also pass other tour groups and have water fights and races with them, as needed. One section we near a 8 ft waterfall, where they made us all get out the boat, and let the boat go over, and then we hopped in. This was about when I felt my back really hurting. After we had to begin hiking up back to street level, my back was killing me and I was using my paddle as a walking stick to push myself with my arms up the stairs. woo! What a day!

visa

2010-02-12T20:33:00.000-08:00

Getting a visa in America to visit China is easy. Getting married to someone with a residence permit should be easy, but suddenly became really complicated.

I got registered at the local police station, with a "pink" slip proving I have a local address, and then got an official health check to prove I don't have any awful diseases, and the next step was to apply for a residence permit basically "adding on" to T's currently residence permit & working visa.

With 春节 (chun jie, lunar new years) next week, the Entry/Exit bureau would be closed, and my visa expired the next day- so we needed to extend it for just 5 days more, in order to get the rest of my paperwork through after the holiday. We headed 45 min. to the Entry/Exit Bureau in Pudong and then were told that there weren't any pages left in my passport, and I had to go to the American consulate(45 min. backwards, plus an appointment is needed) and have more pages added before they could extend my visa. Stargely, I had about 3 blank pages completely empty that said, "Amendments" on them- which in T's passport were full of visas! With one day left until the holiday, we were slightly panicked that it wouldn't happen, and didn't want to get hit with 500 rmb($73) per day fine for going over my 30 day Visa stay.

So Timon began speaking in Chinese to the officer (who's english was really good) after 5-10 minutes of rapid questioning and commentary, he agreed to give me a 10 day extension. They took my passport, and gave us a pick-up reciept with instructions to return friday afternoon.

So when I returned friday at 1pm to pick up m passport I suddenly noticed I had to pay.... 940 rmb.($137) What they didn't tell us, was that it cost 940 rmb (we hadn't noticed on the receipt) I had about 215 rmb on me, and I hadn't eaten lunch yet :( I was in shock, and didn't have any credit cards or ATM cards since I lost my wallet in Malaysia...and the fellow who found it cancelled all my cards before returning it... thats another story.

I had my Chinese ATM card, but when I tried to get the needed 900 rmb, it refused, since I had only 740rmb in my account. I had cleared out most of my money when I went home last spring, and left maybe $100 worth of rmb just for emergencies. So I took the 700rmb from my acct, (no bill denominations under 100) plus the 215 in my pocket, I had 915 rmb. I was a measely 25 rmb short!!! Infuriating! I began to dig through my bag- maybe some escapee bills? lots of change? Maybe I could sell my umbrella to someone. Nothing. I still had 40 rmb in my acct but coudln't recieve such a small amount unless I could find a bank branch- except you normally need yoru passport for that, which I couldn't get without having 940 rmb. Then it struck me that a deposit was paid for my metro card- I remember this from my first trip here and we met up with Daniel and he explained to us... and I remember asking, "Deposit? Doe sthat mean you get your money back, right?" So I trotted off to the Metro to sell my card, in between frantic phone calls with Timon who was looking online for bank branches or think of some way to get me 25 rmb- and so I got there and handed the official my cell phone, which she looked at rather confused, and I told her to talk into it, that my husband was on it, and she just stared at me, rather speechless.

Eventually they understood T's question and told me I had to go to another station to sell my card. I'm sweating in my 2 sweaters and wool coat and running to the train since I have an appt at the American consulate at 3pm, their LAST appointment of the week before the holiday. PHEW. I sold my metro card and all the money on it for cash, and ran back to the Exit/Entry Bureau to apy for my passport, then ran to the American consulate. They didn't allow any electronics inside, so I gave up my ipod touch and twiddled my thumbs for 30 minutes while they did their thing. I had so many things to play, read, and do on my ipod touch... and now I had to sit here and do what? Read posters about registering to vote? Doing taxes? Registering babies? Phew. I was soaked with sweat and began wondering if I'd freeze in my sweat because the wool coat was letting me ventilate, and it was windy and frigid outside.

I collected my passport with its extra pages and visa; then went home, exhausted. What a day.

a fresh february weekend

2010-02-08T16:38:00.000-08:00

This weekend we headed to IKEA to get some homey- goods: Rug for the living room, and these awesome bed trays for 39 rmb! ($5.70 usd) They are much bigger than laptop stands, fold up, and have cup and pen holders. This is great since it'll have space for my tablet/mouse/snack on the side.

And no, I did not eat all those meatballs by myself. Timon helped. He was surprised there were no vegetables on my plate.... The Ikea in Shanghai has an upper floor restaurant that stretches the entire length of the building, so there's a narrow seating area like a mile from the cafeteria in a nook where most of the custormers are just hanging out, playing board games, reading, or gazing out the panoramic window.

One day outside our apartment complex we saw a pink car. Correction- a pink Cadillac. "Who would EVER want their Cadillac to be pink??" Timon said. We agreed it was probably a Mary Kay or Avon car or really rich Chinese person. (The only other pink car we've seen here was a bubblegum pink mini van, for English first)

So on our way to Ikea, (Yi ja = Righteous Home) we saw a whole lot of pink cars. They were having some Mary Kay event at the indoor stadium.

Then it rained a lot, and there was 50 people in line for cab sat Ikea, so I said, "Lets muscle it on the qing wei" (Above ground metro- could you call it a superway? So we picked up either end of our rolled up rug and bags of pans, cassarole dishes, and bed trays, and trotted off into the sunset. Getting it up the stairs was a bit tricky, it was really wet out, and the rug (2 x 1.5 meters) was in a plastic bag and slippery. And it was cold. My hand was frozen! We made it home wet and full of excitement!!

How sweet of you; thanks for the duck stomach!

2010-02-08T06:14:00.000-08:00

Went on a business trip last week, which included a road trip. Stopping off at a gas station, my colleague ran to grab food while others used the restroom and I help down the fort. When we all reconvened, dinner had been purchased, the 棕子 (zong4 zi) [rice and stuff wrapped in leaves and boiled] and a plastic bag with a dark squishy thing- the duck stomach. They said it was really delicious, too bad the 棕子 filled me up too much to eat any more. So I just put it in my pocket for "later". I didn't take a photo, because I didn't think anyone would want to see it.

Here's a pic of the 棕子 I pulled off the internet instead.

Camera: image taker, memory keeper

2010-02-07T05:54:00.000-08:00

Cameras can do amazing things. (The above pic, we rented a waterproof camera)
People can also do amazing things. (Like be clumsy and break things)

Sigh. My trusty Canon SD450: You have saved me so many times, and record so many important sights and sounds. From taking video at 3am in Korea, to being my breadcrumbs in China, you have helped me get through design school, capture great memories, and help me get home.

I'd take photos of street signs, for streets I liked to shop, pictures of addresses & vegetables in Chinese from my laptop to show people to ask questions, countless maps to refer to later.

My screen got cracked between the wedding and the honeymoon, so we coudln't use the trusty x-shot my mom gave me, sadly. It still takes photos, but, can't use the back screen. Its harder to "sneak" photos now, and I have to really have to gauge myself when it will run out of batteries.

Will be shopping around for a new camera soon. Any recommendations for a convenient point-and-shoot?

Jimbaran Bay: Sunset dinner

2010-02-03T06:18:00.000-08:00

Our last dinner in Bali was spent at Jimbaran Bay, watching the sunset.

We swam in the warm waters, and T lost sunglasses,

listened to a group of Korean travelers sing "How great thou art,"

enjoyed BBQ'd red snapper and shrimp

It was beautiful.

Pics from Bali!

2010-02-01T05:50:00.000-08:00

Finally, what you have all been waiting for.... honeymoon photos!

We flew into Bali from Kuala Lumpur... from Shanghai, from SFO...

Bali, an island in Indonesia, is home to a large Hindu population- a minority in indonesia. They rely heavily on the tourism industry, about 80% of the Bali workforce is in Tourism. Beautiful beaches, Floridan climate, and cheaper doodads than China (surprisingly). Now, onto the photos:

Below, at the coffee plantation where we tried Bali coffee, ginger tea, lu wak coffee (from animal droppings)
Delicious, but a bit expensive.

And here is Mt. Batur, an active volcano, with a lake at its base, Lake Batur, with hot springs we got to swim in. What was really amazing was how people managed to farm the land around the volcano- basically volcanic rock, as far as the eye could see. Piles of huge charcoal like rocks, with patches of grass sprouting up and bright red tomatoes popping.

We also hit the zoo for a very awesome tree-walk [ropes course] $10 for about an hour in the trees doing a very challenging obstacle course plus 4 or 5 zip lines zig zagging across the river. This was not the type of river you'd want to fall in! On the first tremendously long zip line, Timon lost his shoes! He hit the net at the other end so hard, his shoes just went flying off- only a few feet from the river we'd just crossed. Close one!

Then it began to get dark. It was late afternoon now and we still hadn't gotten to see the zoo part of the zoo. It was sprinkling and misty and the animals were hiding, and then suddenly, "BOOM!" A Thunderclap! "We'd better run for it-" before Timon could finish his sentence, buckets upon buckets began to pour on us poor ill prepared tourists. The zoo was a singular direction path, so it was forwards or backwards. We ran forwards down a path through the Bird Section (they had roofs, so it seemed safer) and we got startled by a roaming turkey (I'm not sure who was more scared- him or us) and hit a chained off area. We ran backwards for about 5 minutes to the zoo cafe, totally soaking wet! Although lousy, they did bring a few critters out for us to hold and pet, like the below gator ("Are you going to put something over his mouth?" Haha! No, he won't bite people...) We managed to get off without a scratch. : )

Black sand beach.

Our roof of our villa.

View from our villa at Bali Masari, about 5 minutes from Sukawati Art market. It was a lovely place with a large swimming pool, very quiet, and our own private pool and outdoor shower. We were of the few foreigners in the rural area.

Little gifts: Customized

2010-02-01T03:34:00.000-08:00

Since we got married just a few days after Christmas, I didn't have a lot to invest into Timon's Christmas present. No handmade scrapbook or Kindle eReader. I gave him a rubber stamp book plate.

T has quite a collection of books, right now two cases full, not including the nightstand pile and all the ones he's lent out. Books about business, China, theology, self-help, and more. We'll be chatting with some friends, and someone will say, "I really pondering [insert deep thought here]," and T will jump up with: "Ooh! I have a book you might like!" And he'll grab the book and scribble his name and phone number in it and hand it to them. He's had this pattern for a quite a while, so I thought it'd be handy to just have a stamp, instead of handwriting in the cover of every book.

When I asked him if he preferred stamp or sticker for his design, he said, "Oh! Am I supposed to have a bookplate made for your too? Wait- what is a book plate?" I'm guessing he thought it was a pre-marrying tradition, or Christmas tradition, or something, but I thought the comment was cute. I did the artwork in illustrator, and then emailed to a company in Malaysia that made it, along with our wedding stamp, and a stamp for my mom.

It was about $5 for the stamp unmounted, from eBay I think they make great gifts. I know when I was little, I loved putting my name on everything!!

I thought I'd also include a snap of some of the hand delivered invites to our friends in China. The envelope looked really empty without a colorful postage stamp, so I doodled one up and added this photoshopped postmark that I found online. That's my designy post of the month.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2010-01-08T21:49:00.000-08:00

hi!

SFO > shanghai > hangzhou > Kuala lumpur > ...... Bali!!!

Here we are at the airport, downloading apps and podcasts for our next flight out.
From chilly Bay Area to cold shanghai we are finally in tropical muggy florida- malaysia.

There was a terrific breafast buffet at our hotel: complete with siu mai, corn beef hash, brie, strawberry lassi, and curries!!!

Its beautiful and green here. Can't wait to sight see here on our way back, when we et to see my friend from school, Jix.

Its been a whirlwind, packing and packing and packing from home to the apt to here. I have no memory of what I brought where, but that God is sovereign and whatever belongings we have in our bag with have to do!

The countdown is here!

2009-12-23T12:59:00.001-08:00

photo from martha stewart or real simple. I can't find where I found it.

Christmas is in two days. This means an expedited screen printing fiasco will ensue.

besides wedding hub bub.

60% grey

2009-12-18T11:48:00.000-08:00

natural office supplies

if 0% is white and 100% is black, then 50% is exactly grey, with varying shades all inbetween.

Wouldn't paper be easier to reuse (That is, the backside) if we all printed in 60% grey? Less black shows through to the otherside, AND You use less ink.

Saving money and trees.