The Year in Review

Yes, I know it sounds a bit old fashioned, but it is meaningful to have a review of what we had done, or what had happened in the globe in 2005.

Referring my previous blog, I have quite a busy year, and I have made a lot of new moves.

In end January, I had my first trip to United States with Jeff. We had been New York and Washington, we visited a lot of places where I saw in movies: MoMa Museum, Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, Broadway, White House, Trump tower, the fifth avenue, etc, etc. Surely this was an amazing journey especially for me.

Jeff and I have started our 'independent' live since March. We moved out from the family and built our lovely net. I learnt to cook and did housework; however, it was too hard to do the cooking because my workload was heavy. Luckily Jeff is a great husband and he is willing to be the 'chef' of many dinners.

Annual dinner of our company in March was also an unforgettable moment for me. The dressing competition brought us lots of fun. Even though my Little Miss Bee costume could not win the award, it was already very great to be a participant.

A horrible 'Internal Presentation' session was around May-June, which was a nightmare to most of the young executives. I still remembered the hidden confrontation between us and the management. Many of us were so depressed and had planning to quit the job.

By end June, I took an initiative to take a project, poorly it was not stick with the schedule. I could only manage to finish it by mid September, and worked alone. This study had time clash with my core project, but great thanks to my teammates that they backed me up a lot. I called this 'took-an-initiative-to-take-a-project act' as 'the stupidest I had done in 2005'. However, to be frank, I could learn a lot through this working alone self learning process.

The company trip to Thailand and Cambodia was in end September, right after I discovered that I am pregnant. I am pretty sure this is my last trip before the due date of my baby.

Then, needless to say, this miraculous pregnancy thing in late 2005 is the highlight news of this year.

Alright, let's talk about the international and local affairs in the next diary. May I take this opportunity to wish you all have a joyful and adventurous 2006!!

Another working day with productivity drops below 10%

Today the office is still very quite, I am alone in my 1m x 1m cubicle, all my neighbors are on leave, and so do my bosses and clients.

I have done most of the tiny jobs I left before the Christmas holiday, and I picked up the internal presentation and worked on it again, now I have finished the first draft in word format. Tomorrow I will start to construct the power point format.

And then I spend most of my remaining time on web surfing. I feel a bit guilty, but at least I search for information on web for my presentation, this is part of my job, a self-learning approach to equip my professional knowledge, isn't it?

The below website is quite helpful for young researchers, all key terms we face everyday are having a precise definition here.

http://www.quirks.com/resources/glossary.asp

I do not have the guilty feeling anymore, instead, I am quite hard-working, I explore a new way to learn, =D.

One day to go, then we will have another long weekend, to celebrate the coming of 2006!!

P.S. Daddy, happy birthday!

Christmas Salad Recipe

I had mentioned about the Christmas Salad in my previous diary, which interests a lot of readers. Now I would like to share the recipe here, you could try it anytime you like and add any ingredients you prefer.

Ingredients:
Cherry
Cherry tomato
Blueberry
Kiwi fruit
Mixed leaves salad

Dressing:
Extra Virgin Olive oil
Black Vinegar
Lemon juice
Lemon skin (the yellow part peeled out from the skin)

Method:
1. Cut the fruits in cubes, mix with mixed leaves salad.
2. Mixed dressing ingredient.
3. Serve the salad with dressing, don't pre-mix them before serving.

Why calling Christmas Salad?
I give the salad this festive name because it is made by red and green fruits and vegetables, the two theme colors in this season. This salad looks sexy and beautiful, and the most important is, extremely easy to prepare.

Post Season's Greeting Period

What a blessing that I had a wonderful Christmas holiday this year.

Now I am in office, not many staff goes for work today. Needless to say the holiday mood is still heavy!

That is why I decided to write an entry, as I hadn't visited blog for quite a long time.

Let me tell you what I had done in these few days:

Watching 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire' on Dec 23 evening was the brilliant start of our series of celebration. Interestingly, the sound effect was inefficient in the first few minutes and the theatre should re-run the movie again when Harry Potter woke up from the nightmare. All audience had waited for another 30 minutes before the movie could be re-started again, but everyone still remained very calm and polite, and even felt amazing!

On Dec 24 evening, Jeff and I went for the Christmas concert by Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. Miraculously, my unborn baby reacted to the music; it 'danced' in my tummy. During the performance, musicians from different corners of the world shared how they celebrated Christmas in their own countries, which was so impressive. After all, everyone hoped music could act as a connection of all nations and world peace and no war could come true one day.

A 'lunar' birthday celebration for Jeff was held in my parent-in-law's home on Dec 25. That night Ho Ho B was sick and vomited.

Then Dec 26, we did not have any plan, we woke up late and went to the Peak in the afternoon. For a pregnant woman in her 19 weeks, I had walked too much and my leg was trembling at night.

A no-theme party with my swimming friends was held on Dec 27 evening. I had not experienced such a cozy feeling with them for a long time. I had prepared an 'Oreo cream cake' and a bowl of 'Christmas salad', which was made by red and green ingredients. These two dishes were very popular and everyone cleaned up the dishes rapidly. Then we had a great gift exchange and photographing time. Hope that all of them all also felt the joy as what I did!

The celebration will not stop in this week as we would celebrate the coming of 2006, I just cannot wait for the coming weekend!!

親愛的家長

我家有親愛的家長。

我媽媽的偶像是阿RAIN。

我爸爸有很多偶像，他有一個偶像榜，只有當紅或正上位的「明星」才能成為他的偶像。曾經有幸上榜的包括梁詠琪陳慧琳容祖兒佘詩曼YUMIKO薛凱琪等。

昨天他update我最新的偶像是JANICE衛蘭。

......

他們真的很IN。唔該晒。

Will I witness Universal Suffrage in Hong Kong one day?

The debate of Universal Suffrage had dominated both daily and political life in this Special Adminstrative Region recently. Yesterday it even reached the climax, around 100 thousands HongKongers in black stepped out and joined the demonstration on Hong Kong Island. I'm glad that I was one of the participants in this historical moment.

Despite of that I am pregnant, I am willing to take risk to join this peaceful match. Most demonstrators shared the same aspiration - to fight for the Universal Suffrage in 2007-2008. Actually I supposed there would only be a 10 -20 thousands of Hong Kong citizen joining the match, but it turned out 10 times of what I expected. (From the research by organizer, the number of participants even reached 250 thousands, but I trust the survey which is done by SCMP more). Two years ago, I joined the July 1st demonstration, my goal at that time was to fight against the Article 23, but I felt that all demonstrators had various aspirations. After number of troughs in and before 2003, including the Financial crisis, bird flu, Article 23 and SAR, some of the participants hoped to drag Mr. Tung from his position, others were fighting for a more fair society, parts of them simply wished to express their anger about the economic downturn since the handover in 1997. However, yesterday, I felt that most of the demonstrators were fighting for democracy and freedom, which was quite different that the marches in last 2 years, you know, we seldom do one thing which does not relate to money and economic development together.

Many parents brought their kids to join the protest, they expressed that they did this for the next generation's sake.

The former Chief Secretary Ms. Anson Chan also joined the demonstration yesterday and which was her first time. I think she is really smart as her appearence drew lot of attention from International Media.

And I also met a group called 'Internation Action' which was formed by a group of 'gwai-los', oversea Chinese, local 'gingers' and Asians in Hong Kong who believed they are part of Hong Kong and would like to contribute the the society. You could visit their website at www.thebiggerpicture.hk.

Through the way, I found people from differnt age groups, from infants to eldery. Many senior citizen over 80 joined the match, I met an old lady who is 92. Isn't it impressive?

Frankly speaking, I have no expectation that we can achieve the Universal Suffrage within this 10 years, but at least I tried. In these few years, I learnt one important thing - Freedom is not free. At least I had tried and I had no regret.

Meanwhile I am listening 'All you need is love' by beatles...

春風化雨

這幾天工作得有點倦。

有看4400嗎？昨晚看了第一集，頗喜歡該故事。它是講述4400位在不同時間被外星生物擄走的人，回到地球後的故事。

今天回家途中，不知怎樣地由4400的思潮中聯想起中學的老師，還記很多老師都被冠以花名，而那些花名更經得起時間考驗，一屆又一屆的學生傳頌下去，以下是比較有代表性的例子:

男子組代表
鹹蛋「黄」-鹹是指該黄姓老師對學生比較「熱情」。我們讀女校的都是比較敏感。但其實黃老夫是一個絕好的老師，所有學生都愛戴他。

咸「楊」 -楊老師跟「熱情」扯不上關係，他幸得這名是因為每堂中史課，不論教授唐宋元明或清，他一踏進課室，也二話不說，先在黑板上勾畫出中國外形，再點上咸陽城的位置。

細龜 -我想二十歲以上的讀者，應對九十年代初無線電視紅極一時的細龜黄一山有深刻印象。沒錯，這位老師跟黄一山有幾分相似，雖然只是幾分...女校就是如此殘酷。

女子組代表
雞Li/雞仔Lam -跟她們的聲線有關

啤機/啤精 -該「揻匙」只教了一年，到我校執教應是她第一份工，她很好人很用心，但眼神卻異常凌厲。由於初來的三個月不太能駕馭classroom management，我們課堂談話時她常常瞪大那雙鏡片背後的眼睛而得名。

Centre Wong/Headphone Wong -是一位geography老師。每當她講起"Equator(赤道) is the central line of Earth"，我們就不其然看著她那中間分界頭。而Headphone是出於她再將兩旁及耳的曲髮用頂夾貼近耳上位置夾好，形成至臻完美的Headphone形髮型而得名。

雖然我們為以上老師起了花名，但我們是由衷的尊敬他們，並十分欣賞他們對教育的熱誠。