morons having children

no, not us! if antenatal classes have taught me anything, it's that some hong kong expats are so mind numbingly self centred and clueless that it makes me want to throw furniture at them.

last night was the return of annoying bint (henceforth referred to as "bint"). some of the gems that she came out with last night:

midwife: "there are shared rooms, private rooms and there are vip rooms as well" bint: "is there a price list for each of them?" midwife: "yes. the private rooms and vip rooms are very expensive though" bint: [without a trace of self awareness or humour] "i'm worth it"

she then proceeded to head over to the wall mirror and pick her zits. seriously.

then during the maternity ward tour, we were shown a shared recuperation room (4 beds with separating curtains). As bint walked in, she uttered a very loud "not interested."

And as she walked out: "i'm not sharing with anyone."

question time with the doctor was equally fun: "i don't want any pain. on a pain scale of 1 to 10, i'm a minus 1". closely followed by: "if i can only get an epidural when i'm 5cm dilated, how am i going to get from 1cm to 5cm without pain?"

i was tempted to ask her if she had considered adoption - although lack of pain aside, i really don't think it's fair to introduce more of her moronic gene pool to the world.

***

on a cheerier note - it's rachel's birthday today! 30 years old!

for this auspicious occasion, she's getting an eternity ring (named as such because that's how long it takes to pay the thing off). I'll admit it's shiny and sparkly  but from what i can tell it can't check email or surf the net, so i'm not really sure what it actually does.  also, we are heading to bangkok tomorrow for a nice long weekend "final solo holiday" and 30th celebration.

she also got an album of photos from our time in hong kong (from me) and some lovely pyjamas (from patrick and barbara). there are other presents which are reportedly somewhere between here and various nz post offices.

i must get off the computer now, as rachel wants to conduct her morning "sky showbiz" check and see what the celebrities are wearing, who is shagging who, and which of them has adopted an african child this week.

the furry boys

with all of the baby and birthday talk, it's easy to forget about our two little (well, one little and one large) housemates, ben and poppy. for your viewing pleasure here are the rascals.  first is poppy looking out the window on sunday, and the second is the bigger version of yesterday's ben photo - where he's looking at us on the balcony from inside, wondering how on earth we managed to get on the other side of the window.  the look of confusion on his face is classic:

sunday night

aaah, almost the end of the weekend.  damn.  had a busy day today - i played golf with john in the morning:

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then we headed to kennedy town to sort out some cushions for a chair in cracker's room (cracker = all rachel ate in the first trimester = baby's nickname), shot over to kowloon to investigate rachel's 30th birthday present (i'm not telling - rachel picked it out, but you'll have to ask her if you want to know...), then i headed to fuel espresso for a coffee with sanjay, chantel and co while rach got her toenails painted (or whatever they do to toes and feet at a pedicure).  had a quiet night at home and watched the movie "run fat boy run" - which was quite hilarious.

took a few photos of el rats this weekend as well - rachel and poppy, ben looking at me on the balcony wondering how i got out there, and ben reclining on the floor:

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not much else - oh, there was this effort in the gym last week after my run on friday.  too sexy for my shirt:

busy week this week - we have an appointment with the unbornbabydoctor on tuesday, then i have work website profile photos on wednesday, then thursday is rachel's 30th birthday - and then on friday we take off to bangkok for a long weekend (partly for rachel's birthday and partly for the "last holiday" for a long, long, long time...

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.

***

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...