saturday morning laziness

ola!  what a week - barack obama voted president-elect of the united states of whatever george bush left behind, and i managed four lunchtime gym visits (i skipped the day of the us elections - i might have been watching coverage at my desk). we are cruising along in the runup to xmas.  xmas day we have the challis clan here for dinner - and that means ALL of them:  robin, kirstie, paddy, arabella, kate and aurora.  it'll be a busy day, but it will be fantastic - funnily enough the challis clan came for xmas lunch in 2005, and at that time it was just robin, kirstie and 'bump'!

today we've got cam, carolin and little sam coming down for some coffee and pastries - we haven't seen them for ages, and then we're heading out to discovery bay to sort out some employment papers for charise. a quiet night tonight - sweet.

tomorrow john s and i are heading out early morning to nine eagles golf course by the airport for a cheeky 9 holes.  after that, not sure what the day holds.  i have my eye on a new camera lens...  of course it's absolutely necessary to buy this lens in order to photograph brand new baby. not buying it effectively means that i don't love the child.  so i have to buy it, see?

next week is rachel's 30th birthday (thursday, in case you've forgotten), and we're heading to bangkok for 4 days on friday (it's not very far away).

time to go and clean myself up and get the coffee ready.  a few photos which i may or may not have uploaded before (click on them to enlarge...)

bloody airlines

just looking at the cost of getting home with mini-narly next march, and it annoys me greatly to see that air new zealand can get me to london for HK$2050 HK$4080 plus various taxes, but the best offer i can get to go to new zealand is HK$6500 plus (loads of) taxes.  it's amazing what a complete lack of competition can do for the price of flying. there are more than 15 airlines flying from hong kong to london direct.  and how many fly directly to new zealand? two - air new zealand and cathay pacific.

NB - Corrected the numbers. The Air NZ site had a one way deal of HK$2040, but still - $2000+ per person extra to get back to New Zealand is completely kumara-sucking.

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us elections this week.  is it possible for them to screw things up for the third time in a row? probably.

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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):

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

an expat onboard smoothes the ride

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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:

back again. again.

just back from singapore from the apaa conference (bunch of patent lawyers from around the world gathering to talk and socialise).  i'm absolutely shattered and am looking forward to a good sleep tonight.  there was a social event each night (including tonight - i'm missing it) and i even got up at 5:45am on monday to play golf - eeek.  had a great day - although in 35 degree heat it was a sweaty day.  met some cool people there and also around and about during the conference, and might even go again one day (well, actually it's in hong kong next year, so i probably will be there) met up with kirstie and robin on monday night for supper at their place and had to go at 9:45pm when i started to doze on their couch. oops. saw arabella and paddy for lunch on saturday, and am pleased to see that arabella has a cracking 'evil laugh' now..

a few little photos - charlie, penny, view from the plane today:

a few more photos of the wedding

just pulled a bunch of photos from rachel's camera from damon and lynn's wedding in edinburgh. first a few from just after the ceremony (my photos from the ceremony are on film, so they'll be up in a few weeks):

... and then some from the reception.  first is damon and second is when the damon and paul dragged me onto the stage for a few songs:

more photos from edinburgh

am just digging through our photos from the holiday and have picked a few from edinburgh which were taken both in the main castle and also when wandering around the streets on sunday.  when you open each pic, there should be a little caption in the bottom left, but it's all pretty much self explanatory. as you can see, sunday was really quite an amazing day - although it was a tad chilly...

back in hong kong

got home this afternoon after a pretty decent flight from heathrow.  we had a tough final day in london, with penny, charlie, tim, sarah and me all getting sick on the last day (rachel felt a bit icky, but didn't have the 'symptoms' that the others exhibited).  poor little charlie was in a really bad way when we left, and was about to go and see his doctor - although sarah let us know that he was on the mend this afternoon. the flight was sweet - the flight was full so we didn't get our points upgrades, but we had exit row seats reserved so despite being the gathering place for people waiting for the toilet, we had an absolute load of legroom.  we even had the seat next to us free, but someone pounced on it shortly after takeoff.

the cats have forgiven us for ditching them for so long, and poppy has even had his first couch cuddle with rachel.

i have a load of photos to download, but they can wait.  here are some that i took on my phone.  in order: rachel and penny, rachel on the london eye, charlie in wandsworth common (with sarah and penny in the background), rachel and tim consulting the london a to z while charlie takes in cbeebies, and sam and katy in edinburgh.

lazy saturday

had a lovely afternoon in hammersmith at a pub, where we caught up with kirsty, her hubby james, anna moo, nic, steve & emma, dale, ricky and fen. gorgeous day, great food and great company. perfect way to catch up. bbq at jonathan and laura's last night, j's parents were in town, and it was a nice chance to catch up with them. delicious feed of burgers, snags and chucken - I could hardly move by the end of the evening...

heading to covent garden today to meet up with john and jane pascoe, and then am going to kill a bit of time with the camera while rach has her baby shower at tim and sarah's place.