post-bledisloe

great night last night - the all blacks won 19-14 (although in fairness that pass that led to mccaw's try was painfully forward, so 14-14 would have been a fair ending).  we had a fun time in the stands, with great seats - other than the plonker australian a few seats behind us who simply could not shut up the whole night with his painfully ignorant take on the ref's multitudes of crap decisions. met up with mark pearce (margot's husband) and his work colleague andrew and heading to TOTT (the humbly named restaurant "talk of the town") in causeway bay to meet one of their clients. turns out that TOTT was in the hotel where the all blacks were staying, so on the way out, mark managed to shake Keven Mealamu's hand and congratulate him on a great result!  had a great meal and then called it a night fairly early, as mark and andrew were pretty jetlagged.

lazy day today, we read the paper and mucked around this morning and then mark popped over for an afternoon bbq (and to drop off our basinet that he had kindly dragged over from new zealand). had a nice relaxing afternoon with sausages, steak and beers.

and now i have to go back to work tomorrow.  bah.

here is a shot of our sunset, taken about an hour ago from our little balcony:

hedge fund fight night

although i was feeling a tad stomachey, i headed along to the 2nd annual hedge fund fight night in causeway bay last night.  alex was one of the 12 fighters and was second to last fight - the business end of the evening. ended up having a great time - we had a good bunch of people on our table and although i'm not really into boxing or fighting or anything like martial arts, i did enjoy myself. the food was crackingly good and i took much pleasure in destroying a plate of lamb shank and garlic mash in record time.

alex's fight went the full three rounds and in the end he lost on points.  it was a great fight - i thought he took the second and lost the first and third, but the other guy did land a few more blows on alex and the result seemed to be fair.

the evening ended up finishing around midnight, and after dropping alex off at a pub, i scuttled home to see rach and the cats.  ben kindly woke me at 6:30am demanding a pat and fresh bowl of food.  brat.

some photos from the evening (click for bigger size):

..

.

weirdly, a handful of visitors crashed our function - recognise any of them?

an expat onboard smoothes the ride

. .

a real conversation with a coworker about an hour ago:

her: "are you catching the bus again tonight?" me: "no, i only caught it last week as i had to pick some tickets up from kowloon" her: "oh. it is good when an expat gets on the work bus. the driver drives more slowly and carefully if there is an expat on the bus."

crikey.

killing time in a café

sitting in a café having a hot chocolate waiting for our excellent yet rather unreliable obstetrician to arrive at his surgery. my work office location sucks for many reasons, but this is a big one. 20 min taxi to central and if the appointment is delayed (which it usually is), i have to kill time in town and end up losing half a day's work. plus, there is a boneheaded chinese businessman at the table next to mine who is yelling down his phone oblivious to the rest of the café patrons who are quietly enjoying a peaceful afternoon in what was (until 5 mins ago) a nice quiet café.

here's a stealth photo of bonehead:

hong kong "super"markets

honestly, the sheer incompetence and crappiness of hong kong supermarkets is sometimes astonishing. today i went to get a salad that had chicken slices, lettuce, some dressing and - a little weirdly - some ravioli on it.  the salad was simply called "chicken salad with ravioli", and i just wanted to know what sort of ravioli it was. "excuse me, what sort of ravioli is that?"

*blank look*

"um, can you please tell me what's in the ravioli?" [i pointed to the pieces of ravioli]

*blank look* *reads the sticker on the back*

[handing me the box] "yes."

good grief.

busy week this week - appointment with the ob dude this afternoon for a scan and checkup (rachel not me), antenatal classes on wednesday, hedge fund fight night to watch alex box on thursday, and then the bledisloe cup rugby match on saturday. our seats appear to be pretty much on the halfway - sweet!

a few more edinburgh photos

am back from singapore - it was an exhausting weekend (not helped by a 5:45am pickup for golf on monday) and i finally got back on tuesday. a few things to do this weekend; i think we are buying a cot or something like that this saturday, then on sunday it's little sam binnington's 2nd birthday party.  before that we have vic landells in town for a few hours, and we'll take her out to lunch somewhere before she wines and dines at some cocktail party somewhere  :-)

i got some of the b&w photos back from mr photo man yesterday. i still have another roll to come (the iso 3200 one - sweet), but here are some of the iso400 photos (as always, click to open bigger slideshow):

...and then a few non-wedding ones.  the first is from just before the wedding in our bathroom, and the second was taken on the plane en route to london: