I'm Leaving the Wonderful Hong Kong!

My brothers, parents, and I are leaving to Shanghai today! We're staying in Shanghai for two days, then we're heading to a bunch of different cities in Tibet for a very interesting, maybe even once in a lifetime experience! We might even visit the Himalayas Mountains! Wow, something very exciting to look forward to, eh?

Right now, it's 11:35 A.M. (sharp!) so I probably woke up at around 10:00 A.M. I really want to go swim! I haven't swum for at least a week because during the first few days I came to Hong Kong, there was bad weather, and I was sick just recently. Now that good weather and good health has come back, I leave! This happens ever year though, so I'm not surprised. I actually can go swim right now, but my mom won't let me. It's not even 12 yet, and our flight is at 5:00 P.M. But as people say, "It's better safe than sorry!"

Byron is here right now playing with my brother. I think I told you that Mark made a Facebook (DEFINITELY) not to add people as friends and those kinds of Facebook stuff, but for the sake of playing the games. He and Byron loves playing Restaurant City, and they just started playing a new game called Pet Society where you create a pet and play games and stuff with it. I'm not totally familiar with what it's about yet since this game is new to me too, although I'm not playing it.

I'm going to eat lunch later then I'm leaving to Shanghai! So this is going to be my last post for a long time because this website is blocked in China as I had said before. :( Ok, bye now!!!

Church + Visit to Grandpa

I didn't write a blog for yesterday because I came back at 11 something from my grandparent's house. But now you know that I went to my grandparent's house yesterday!

Today we went to my parents' old church and saw a bunch of old church friends. I don't remember any of them, but most of them usually say, "You've grown so much!" or "The last time I saw you, you were still so young!" Well, I guess I'm still very young, but.....you know what I mean! We went to the church service then went to lunch with some of the church friends. My aunt also came to the lunch so I was just talking to her for the whole time. :P It wasn't very interesting because I really don't remember anyone, so there's not much to say about the lunch for today.

Then we met up with my grandma and great/grand uncle in the MTR (Subway) Station to go visit my grandpa's grave in the cemetery. It wasn't very hot but I was wearing the tight, black "Bathing Ape" t-shirt so I was sweating a lot. My brother was wearing a long-sleeved shirt!

Well that's actually about it for today! I'm going to try to wake up tomorrow morning to swim because I'm leaving to Shanghai tomorrow! If I don't post something tomorrow, I might not be able to tell you any more about Shanghai and Tibet, because this website is blocked in China! :( I'll still be able to email you guys though, unless the government has decided to block Yahoo and Gmail also! I highly doubt that, but you know, anything could happen! And again, I'll try to post something tomorrow, but I have to leave at 3:00 P.M. because our flight is at 5:00 P.M. Bye!!!! And please check your emails often! Bye!!!

Day of Boredom

Sigh........soooooo bored!!!! Well, not really. I just went over to Byron's house with my brothers to practice piano while my brothers played Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I'm watching a commercial right now, and it shows these two people eating this tea flavored jelly rolled in sugar or coconut shreds or something. Then they're like, mmmm!!!! Don't almost all food commercials go like that? Like they show someone eating the food, then they say it's "sooooo good!" or they pretend to be enjoying the food or something like that.

I was going to go see the doctor today, but I didn't want to. :P And I had a feeling that my dad didn't really want me to either. My dad cut up a clove of garlic and mixed some congee with it, and told me to swallow it. In case you didn't already know, I'm not very good at swallowing things! When I eat stuff, I have to chew it until it's like, really chewed up. When I was little (maybe 1st grade-3rd or 4th grade), I couldn't swallow steak or meat that was hard because I was afraid it would only go halfway down my throat and it would get stuck. Oh! And I also couldn't swallow vegetables when I was small. So sad. On the other hand, my brother Mark is the best in the family at swallowing stuff. Well, maybe not better than my parents though.

Now, let me tell you a little story I remember that happened when I was in 1st grade. My parents, brothers, and I went to Martinez to visit my great/grand aunt and uncle. When we were leaving, my dad wanted my brothers and I to each eat one of those fish oil pills, and he wanted us to eat a full pill! Do you know what a fish oil pill is? That time, I was in 1st grade (as you should already know), Mark in 2nd grade, and Matthew in 3rd grade. Unsurprisingly, Mark just swallowed it in a split second, almost as soon as we got the pills. For me, I really couldn't swallow it and I'm the youngest, so I guess my dad didn't really expect me to be able to swallow it anyway. So my pill went to Matthew to swallow. He tried to swallow it, but he either threw up or he spit it out. We got milk instead of water, so he either had white throw up or he spit it out. I don't really remember that part very well.

So that's the story! Not very interesting, but it's just kind of related to what I was talking about.

Anyway, back to the topic! So I said that I wasn't really good at swallowing stuff and I have to chew it a lot...blah...blah.....my dad wanted me to swallow garlic.....blah....blah... Ok! I really, REALLY couldn't swallow the UNCOOKED, FRESH garlic (Even with congee! Well, I never really liked garlic, whether or not it's cooked) so I didn't have to! Yay! After that is when we went over to Byron's house. I came back earlier because my brothers are going to take a tennis class with Byron. They're still not done yet! Actually, they're done, but they're just walking over now.

Ok! That's it for today! See you next time! (Haha, I made it sound like it's a T.V. show or something. :P)

Back from Macau

I came back from my 2 days 1 night trip in Macau last night! My second day really wasn't that fun because I got sick and now I'm still sick. :( I hope it's not the........SWINE FLU!!!!!! Haha, just kidding. Byron, my mom, my brothers, and my grandma just left to eat lunch while I am staying in the house with my dad. Anyway, let me tell you about Macau!

First day:

We rode on the 1 hour ferry (boat) to Macau. When I walked into the ferry terminal, there was Chinese (of course), English, and some really weird language! I was like, "what the heck?" There was this thing where it said "visitors" and it also said "visitantes" or something. Then my mom told me that people speak Cantonese and Portugese in Macau. Then I was like, "what the heck?" again. :P Ok. So we went to the hotel we were staying in so we could put down our luggage. Since we could only check in to our hotel room at 1:30, we went to eat lunch at the food court. Anyway.....after 1:30, we went to our hotel room. Our hotel room is sooooo cool! We stayed in the Venetian Hotel in the Bella Suites. There are over 3,000 suites there, I think. :O

After checking in, we went to the Ruins of St.Paul's Church. It is one of the most famous landmarks of Macau, and was a Portugese cathedral (church building) dedicated to St.Paul. I have many pictures! My dad is really interested in photography so whenever we go to trips, he takes like a gazillion pictures! At the Ruins of St.Paul's, there was also a mini museum of some ancient artifacts.

Night:

For dinner, we ate at a restaurant where they specialize in real Shark's Fin Soup! It was ok I guess, nothing really special. The vegetables was really good, but only because they probably added a bunch of salt. :P After dinner, we went back to the hotel and my brothers and I went to the "Qube" to play. It was so fun! In the "Qube," there are really big and fun slides, places to climb around (kind of like the Jungle except much bigger and more fun), a pool table, computers to go online, and a gaming place with a Wii, Play Station, etc. I have videos of the slides. There is a blue slide, rainbow colored slide (not scary), and a red HUGE slide. The red slide goes literally vertical almost the whole way down. It's soooooooo scary! It doesn't look scary at all in the video, but it really is! The blue one was scary the first few times, but then it gets really fun. It's the most fun slide for me. For the rainbow colored slide, you need a sack to slide down but I don't know why. My oldest brother just played pool the whole time except when he helped video tape stuff. It was also really hot because we had to wear long pants, long sleeved shirts, and socks so we don't get burns from climbing around. In the video, I look so weird in the clothes they gave me. Now, the video!

Second Day:

We ate breakfast at "Cafe Deco" (in the hotel). It was a breakfast buffet, so we didn't need to eat lunch. During our second day in Macau, we first went to this lighthouse place up in the hill. We had to walk up a bunch of stairs and it was so hot! Next to the lighthouse (which we were not allowed to go inside of) was an old church. Now it's kind of like a mini museum, but people just go in there to cool down because they put air conditioning inside. :P

Then we went to the Museum of Macau which talks about the history of Macau. There are three floors in the museum. On the first floor, they talked about the overall history of Macau and religion. The second floor talked about the customs and the living environment of people who lived in Macau a long time ago. There were some examples of houses of the poor and the wealthy.The third floor talked about photography and the arts of old Macau. There were a bunch of old and faded pictures and examples of some of the oldest cameras ever invented. There was a display of the oldest camera, and I have absolutely no idea how it's supposed to work! They didn't explain it either! It's just a wooden box like thing with a hole in it. Well, it had some wierd cutting inside, but I couldn't really see inside it very well. I thought the first floor was the most interesting, but sadly I didn't get to learn much because we went through the museum too quickly. :(

We were thinking of going to the Wine Tasting/Factory place, but that's when I started getting sick. Well, I didn't throw up or anything. I was just feeling kind of dizzy, so we decided not to go. We went to eat dinner at "Fernando," a Portugese restaurant. We ordered salad, red bean pork, grilled fish, veal that tasted a lot like pork, and roasted suckling pig. That pork's skin was so hard, I couldn't even bite it! It was supposed to be crunchy though. The red bean pork was like those Mexican beans. The restaurant is also next to a beach so we were going to play there, but we decided not to for some weird reason. We went back to the hotel to get our luggage back and we rode on the same ferry back to Hong Kong.

So that was my trip to Macau! I didn't really like it. All I liked was the hotel and the "Qube." I'm still at home and my brothers, mom, grandma, and Byron still hasn't come back from lunch yet. I think barely any time passed by yet, but it just feels like it has been a long time already because I'm so bored. :( I'm going to put the pictures and videos in later because I've waited for a long time and they still aren't loading!

"A Bathing Ape"

Does anyone know a store/brand called, "A Bathing Ape," or "Bape" that's made in Japan? Well, my aunt (Faith and Will's mom) gave my brothers, cousin (Byron), and I "Bathing Ape"/"Bape" t-shirts. When I tried out my t-shirt yesterday, it was a little small for me so we got the reciept and tried to exchange it for a bigger size at the store today. It's so expensive! Each shirt was $600 Hong Kong, which is about $77 U.S.!!!! Mine is just a plain t-shirt that says "A Bathing Ape" in a weird font and rainbow colors on the front!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What does the name mean? Like a monkey/gorilla is taking a shower or something! I don't get how people thought of that name. And the weirdest thing is that on the label or the logo, it says "Ape shall not kill Ape." o__o (I'm not sure how to make a correct face. My mom's the one who told me how to make this one.) Try going to www.bape.com. That's the website. You can probably find the logo there. It looks really detailed.

I rode on the tram there, and it's really cool! I have a video. It's kind of bad though, and it doesn't tell you much because I took it right when we were exiting.

We got to the store, and there is nothing special about it! I was disappointed, actually. And here's the most ridiculous thing about the store. When I tried to exchange it, they said all of my kind of t-shirts are sold out! And my aunt bought it 1 or 2 days ago when it was a new product! In fact, all t-shirts are sold out! That was hard to believe. They only have shirts with a collar now until they get more stock. I really don't get why people would buy such an expensive but plain and not worth t-shirt! Well, it's made in Japan, and Japanese stuff are usually really expensive. I don't feel too bad though because if you buy something in Hong Kong, you can't refund it. I just forgot about that when I went to return the t-shirt. And since my grandma brought me there, she didn't really mention it either.

After we came back, we went swimming again. It's fun! Byron was with us the whole day again, and he's still here. I have to eat dinner now, so bye!

Swimming Fun Again!

I know I didn't post anything about July 4, but I didn't do much. I just went to my grandparent's house again to visit. The visits are really fun though!

Today we went to church with my cousin Byron, then went to eat lunch. After lunch, we went to a Hong Kong club where there's golf, swimming pool, changing rooms, and lots of other stuff.

So my brothers, Byron, Byron's parents, and I went to that place. While Byron's dad went golfing, Byron, my brothers, and I went swimming. (Byron's mom watched over us.) At swimming, there was a mini pool about 2 feet deep for little toddlers. Then, there's a big pool for everyone else. It goes so deep! If my oldest brother stands on the deepest part and he raises his arms, his hands don't even reach the surface! So maybe Yao Ming would be able to reach it with his head still above the water because my oldest brother is not much shorter than my dad. In the most shallow part of the pool, if I go on flat feet, my head is barely above the water. We played this game where we have two rings, and somebody throws it to somewhere in the pool and the rest of us have to go and race to get it. I only got it once in the shallow part because I didn't want to dive so deep in the already deep part. I'm not a very good swimmer, to let you know. :( Then, we used the floaty noodles and played this thing where two people hold each end of the noodle and some other person tries to jump over it into the pool. That way, we won't get hurt! And if you land on the noodle, it wouldn't hurt and it wouldn't break either.

After playing around for about an hour, the sky got REALLY black, and we saw the black cloud go slowly over us. It was scary! Actually, not really because we got into the changing rooms before it started to rain. It only rained really hard at first, and I was taking a shower anyway so I couldn't hear it. :P The changing/shower room is really cool by the way! In the counter place, there's a huge mirror and some chairs where people can sit and slowly put on make-up, or do their hair, or whatever they want to do. On it, there are a box of clean combs, and a box to put used combs. There are also blow dry things, sunscreen, baby powder (in the kids place), lotion, hand sanitizer, showers (obviously), clean towels, bathrooms, and lockers. And don't worry, there's a children's side and an adult's side! I went to the children's side of course.

We went to dinner with everyone, like Faith, Will, Byron, etc.

I couldn't sleep yesterday! That's why I woke up at like, 10:45 A.M. :P

Dinner with Grandparents and Aunt and Uncle

Remember how I talked about my uncle's jewelry shop and stuff? Well, I guess that uncle is my great uncle or my grand uncle or something. My uncle (not great/grand) publishes books with my aunt. My aunt also does acupuncture and knows stuff about Chinese medicine.

Today, we went to eat dinner with my grandparents and my aunt and uncle. But before that, my cousin (Byron) followed us around during lunch (AGAIN!!!). I don't mind though, because he just plays with my brothers. We went to a huge mall in Sha Tin, and we ate at Spaghetti House for lunch. It's just the usual spaghetti, like the stuff people eat a lot in the United States. They give us garlic bread to go with the soup that goes with the meal though! Then, we walked around, and I got a pair of Converse shoes! I already had a red one when I was in 2nd grade, but it got small really fast. It probably got small though because it was the high-top kinds, like the ones that go up to your ankles. And it was really hard to put on. So this time, I got a regular one that's blue. The blue is hard to explain. Not very dark, but not bright. Kind of dirty blue, I guess. And Vasudha, if you're reading this, mine is exactly like the ones that you have! :)

We had to rush to leave because my brothers and I were supposed to go to a tennis lesson at Byron's house, but then it was canceled after we started to leave. It was canceled because the teacher said it was "raining," but the weather was perfectly fine!!!! Well, I think that was the case. But oh well! We went swimming instead! Haha!!

At the dinner, the food was all food with Chinese herbs in it. At least some of the stuff. That's why everything tasted kind of earthy, I guess. Tasted healthy and earthy, basically. The soup was kind of like medicine.

After dinner, since the mall is in the same area where my grandparents live, we walked up to their house. We stayed there and watched some T.V., and my aunt massaged us. She can tell how healthy people are by massaging them and feeling they're back, etc. She can read people's palms, but my palm is messed up because of all of my calluses. :P When it was like, 11 something, we went home.

I brushed my teeth and took a shower, so I have to go sleep now! And by the way, tomorrow is our 4th of July! But nobody celebrates it other than the Americans. Actually.....it is the 4th of July right now! Because it's 12:35 A.M.!

It's too late and my dad's taking a shower, so he can't help me put the pictures on today. Ooops! I mean, he can't help me put the pictures right now. :P Many hours later today, we'll wake up from our "nap," and he will help me! So today, I will right more.

P.S. The last paragraph sounds so weird!! Also, I hate this font. Don't you?

Visit to my Uncle's Shop

Today was my first time this summer visiting my uncle's shop. The shop sells jewelry like necklaces, bracelets, earrings, watches, etc., and also helps people make tailor-made tuxedos and other types of formal clothing.

My cousin Byron came along too. There's a store really close to my uncle's shop that sells beef ball and fish ball noodle soup, so we got some of that to eat. We didn't really do anything else though. Since there are really long glass boxes to display the jewelry, I wiped them and cleaned them up. The shop is really clean though, so I didn't have much to do. It's really fun to wipe and clean the shop though! Then once as I was walking from the back of the shop after going to the bathroom, a huge cockroach appeared from somewhere, and I was sooo scared! Luckily, my dad was next to me and he's used to cockroaches, so he just stepped on it and it kind of got squished. Don't worry, my dad was wearing tennis shoes! People who live in Hong Kong for a while get used to seeing cockroaches and other really scary insects, so they just step on them. I wonder if when people step on them, do they feel it getting squished, and do they feel it going, "crunch," "crunch" or something? To me, cockroaches look really crunchy, like snails. Anyway, after my dad stepped on it, it tried to move around and escape, but it fell over onto it's back so that it's stomach was facing upwards. One of the workers there got a toothpick and stuck it into the cockroach so he doesn't have to touch it to throw it away. It was sooo gross! My dad even has pictures! And for my gymnastics friends, doesn't a dead cockroach remind you of Shipwreck? What was the cockroach one called again? I don't remember.

We rode on the Taxi home, and I'm about to eat dinner. Right now, I'm also watching the Hong Kong news. It's talking about Micheal Jackson (AGAIN!!!!) and about his interview taken place recently before he died. The interview is kind of weird, because they asked him about what he usually likes to buy, and talks kind of about his hobbies other than singing and dancing. Apparently, he likes to buy paintings and pictures and stuff. I'm not sure though, because I'm not really paying attention too much. My brothers and my cousin Byron is playing some games on Facebook. It's weird how Mark and Byron like to play this game called "Restaurant City" (in Facebook). In Restaurant City, you have to make a restaurant and you earn money by making food. The faster you make the food, the more money you make. Also, you can only make food faster if you buy a better stove, I think.

Ok! I have to go eat dinner now! I'll add some pictures of the cockroach later!