I wanna fly..

I will tell you why I cannot travel in the coming months later.

Right now, I really wanna take a leisure trip to some places I haven't visited before - Hawaii, France, Italy, Norway, Africa, Brazil...

Dear all these exotic places, when can I visit you???

My company would have an incentive tour to Perth, Australia in coming September. Poor me should stay in Hong Kong. Jeff said if I insist to go, he wouldn't sleep in those 5 days.

Okay, get the message, please don't intensify your action.

I just don't wanna start to re-work on that lengthy report... Argh...

Tear me apart...

Endless work last week and every moment was racing with time, on top of all these should handle someone who walks along with me everyday literally. I am really burnt out.

Had arranged a training for Taiwan counterpart on last Thu and Fri. Apart from the sudden missing (not sudden actually, at least he gave me 5 minutes notice) of our presenter in the last session in the first day, other seemed smooth and well organized.

I myself had offered a training on Friday morning. Thanks for the support of my colleagues, most of them had joined and received quite active response from them.

I was planning to work tonight, but I am just too burnt out. Sigh.

Do all of us learn from it?

Tin Tin is sent back to its original master this morning.

Dogs have lives and dignity, please respect them.

I am speechless and frustrated.

Hope this is the best decision for Tin Tin.

Impulse decision

I do love pet and I always dream about having a puppy, but I hesitate to make my dream come true because it means a life is sent into your hands. This is such as huge responsibility.

With less than 24-hrs notice, suddenly my father-in-law decides to adopt a Chihuahua from his friends. Well, after a 'democratic and transparent' discussion, this Yoda-like Chihuahua comes to our home last night..

My family immediately name him 'Tin Tin'. All kids are exciting of his arrival, including Lucas. He wants to touch the doggy but Tin Tin is too passionate and licks his toes. I hold up my baby immediately and comfort him with gentle stroke.

My family is packed with people with polarized personalities, so you can imagine what a chaotic scene would be when this puppy is jumping everywhere - some kids are screaming, then she is over-sensitive, then he asks her to calm down impatiently, then he keeps praising how good to have a dog at home, and that well-built young man is playing with this tiny dog ...

I worry about Tin Tin during night because he misses his ex-master and his pal - another Chihuahua in his old home, then we bring a torch to visit him in midnight. When he sees me, he jumps to me and is shivering, then I embrace him like holding a little baby and try to calm him down. However, when we order him to get into the cage, he roars with grieving sound, I think he is crying, which makes me feel so sad... I am thinking, are we prepared to take this responsibility?

However we believe he will try his best to adapt this new environment.

It is funny that Lucas is jealous when I am carrying Tin Tin.

By the way, Jeff wants to give him an English name - Yoda.

Not to think too much...

One email brought a little storm in office yesterday, and it forces me to face the fact that I should tell the bosses about it.

As three of them were not in office, I send out the notice by email.

And they have no feedback in the last 24 hours.

I think they just do not know how to respond my news.

I also don't know how to respond to this response.

It is really difficult to be a career woman.

Welcome back, Giga

Hooray, my teammate Giga is back from Jakata.

Life is nice if you have a good team-mate around you.

Welcome back, I am glad you feel Hong Kong is your home!!

Agnes S in Italy

My cousin Agnes S is having a 3-week design related course in Italy.

I just got her email. She said the trip is really expensive and some classmates are irritating. Despite all these, I am sure she enjoyed the tour and the study a lot.

Last time she mentioned one of the activities of this course is to visit Prada factory. However, Prada cancelled it finally with an explanation provided 'We do not want China People to visit our factory'.

Well, Agnes didn't have a strong feeling on this, because she doesn't like Prada neither.

When I heard about this, I will think, well, whom we can blame? Who spoiled our reputation in the international world? Ourselves!! Don't forget we are really part of the Mainland China and we can hardly distinguished ourselves as HongKongneses but not Chinese.

And, sometimes HongKongeses also do somethings embarrassed ourselves in the public. For example, speak very loudly, listen to mobile phone during shows, brands obsessed, etc.

This is a controversial social/national identity issue, would talk about it more if I have time.

Hope our nation will improve and sweep away the label of 'copy-cat' in foreseeable future.

I thought I would not...

There were so many times I told myself and others that I would never do something but finally I violated my words:

1. When I was a kid, I would never get marry because I wanted to stay with my mom for a whole life.
2. When I was around 11, I said I would never date because I thought it is not necessary at all.
3. Then when I was a teenager, I told my friends that I would never get marry before 30 but I wanted to be a career woman.
4. Before I got married, I told Jeff that I would never, ever have a baby because I didn't want to bear such a huge responsibility, and I wanted to build my career.
5. Okay, once I had given birth, one of the first ten sentences came from my mouth was - I didn't want to have another baby again.

Well, I better don't babble that much.

Indepth Interviews

My schedules packed with in-depth interview these two weeks. I should do 3 interviews per day in average, with mom and expecting mom.

As I do not have great exposure to qualitative study, this is a good learning to me. Hope I can handle it.

I was very helpless last week because I got a quite demanding client who wanted me to do a phone conference with her team and also the creative to share our findings and insight of a completed study. As even Jelly had not done the presentation for this project I really had no clue about how to offer a "sharing", that was why I asked a help from TinTin, and he suggested me to develop extra piece of analysis for clients after the con call.

Poorly, seems Jelly doesn't agree with that piece of analysis, he still kept challenging my thought and asking me question through email. However, what can I do??? The client needs it urgently and he left me alone for his leisure trip during this critical moment......

Hope he will not bite my head when he comes back to Hong Kong.

I am not a plastic bag

老實說，整件事令我有點受不了。

初時，真的以為這是一件好事 - Anya Hindmarch推出一個只售HKD120的環保袋，上面印有"I am not a plastic bag"字樣，為推動環保意式出一點力。

只可惜，發售當天人們瘋狂採購，爭先恐後，有排隊黨出現，有人插隊鼓噪，警察到場維持秩序，搶購後滿地膠袋廢紙等......直教我搖頭嘆息。

有時，一個品牌本身有很好的形象及價值，但不幸地，用家的形象(user image)令很多名牌蒙羞。先有LV及Gucci，現在，就發生在Anya Hindmarch身上。

如果在街上我看見一個OL揹著一個I am not a plastic bag，高傲的眼神配以微微向上的左邊嘴角在IFC買La Mer，不屑身邊那一個路過的少女碰到她的袋，我會不期然聯想她在排隊買I am not a plastic bag時，大聲痛罵前面打尖的那個她。當I am not a plastic bag到手時，她興奮的致電男友及好友，並邊拆開包裝，邊拋在地上，邊想著今晚要"叫班Friends去老蘭"，因為要炫耀一下。

打著環保旗幟去做宣傳，其實兵行險著。弄得不好，老貓燒鬚！

1997-2007

Everyone is talking about the past 10 years.

From 1997-2007, Hong Kong experienced the huge change after its handover to the People's Republic of China. We had gone through many troughs in the first 8 years, and getting better in these two years, in terms of economic situation.

How about the degree of autonomy? How about the path to democracy?

I was a kid when Hong Kong was facing the fear towards the reunification with the mainland China before 1997. Friends from more affluent families migrated to other countries. For people who stay in Hong Kong, they used to say what they need is just prosperity and stability, it is not a big deal whether they have freedom of democracy or not. I somehow agreed with the adults at that moment (because I was young and not strong in independent thinking), What I worried at that time was whether I could still read Garfield comics or not.

However, when I grew bigger, my mind changed. I started to feel it is unfair to deprive one's freedom, no matter how much you give me and how stable the society is.

I am so happy to see the public is also changing in these few years, they do not merely care about money, but they go to the street to fight for freedom and autonomy, to fight for the geniue treasure.

I hope it can keep going.

Mega Box

We learnt a lesson.

If you stay at home and have nothing to do, enjoy your free time at home, especially during a hot and humid day.

Yesterday we felt boring then went to the brand new gigantic shopping mall - MEGA BOX around 3 something. We brought BB with us. As the queue of shuttle box is pretty long, we walked to there from Telford Garden.

Well, I could not suppress my disappointment when I reached there. Every corner was packed with people. Have you ever seen crowd control in shopping centre? I had!

The two giant home and furniture shops - B&Q and Spotlight - have humble decoration... B&Q is a IKEA wannabe, but still has a far way to go. Stuff there are quite low quality, and the price is not very attractive with such standard. The overall feeling to me is both shops look like Hypermarkets in mainland China. Of course, the biggest problem was so so so so many visitors.

We have not gone to other shops, because simply wrestling to get a space or walking forward had already spent all our energy.

The luckiest thing is, we managed to leave Mega Box before the downpour started.