Go Giants!

It's another roller coaster year for the Giants and my mom is there to keep accurate score throughout the home stretch as they battle for the Wild Card spot!

Frank Chu

Well done Patrick, thanks for emailing me this pic. You've got a good eye for crazy. I dressed as Frank Chu for Halloween back in the late-90's when he was just another wingnut roaming the streets of San Francisco. I'd post a picture of my costume but its in a shoebox somewhere in a storage locker because I took the photo with a film camera, remember those? I've not thought of Frank in 10 years but now it seems he's become drunk on his own celebrity with a lengthy Wikipedia entry and 800+ Facebook friends!

He was the first to call for Bill Clinton's impeachment, not because the President lied straight to the nation's face but because he had collaborated with the '12 Galaxies' to direct the CIA to withhold '20 Billions' of dollars he is due for being a member of 'The Richest Families.'

It's all fun and games until he climbs the Ferry Building clocktower and starts shooting.

Sidetracked

I was sidetracked tonight in my research of our upcoming October Japanese vacation. If you ever want to wittle away several hours with childish laughter, type in 'Japanese Game Show' or 'Japanese Prank Show' into Youtube and enjoy. The premise of the shows is always based around either physical pain, hidden camera scare tactics or some other prank-based humor. Quiet Library is my favorite....Shssshhhhhh

postscript: alright, more time on youtube has shown me that 'quiet library' is now a show on mtv called 'silent library,' based upon the japanese version. the japanese are vanguards of fashion, tech and inane television gameshows and i have to say their version is far funnier than the US, German and amature versions I've seen online. The danger of posting to a blog is that I am woefully out of touch with pop culture and moreso with US pop culture so anything I share with you may be totally old news. Ingrid's first sentence will definitely be 'Dad, you're so uncool.'

Umbrella Man

Hong Kong's historic charms are dwindling as the city ages and its development ambition trades heritage for modernity. But one guy who has slipped thru the cracks is Ho Hei Kee and his little umbrella repair shop. I walk by this guy all the time with curiosity so it was neat to seem him profiled in this week's HK Magazine in a story called "HK's Last Traditional Craftsmen." Ho opened the store when he was 22 and is now his 80's and still mans his shop solo seven days a week until its daily 4pm closing! "I just happend to stop by a grocery shop that was here and the owner needed somebody to write out receipts for him," he says. "He liked my handwriting and offered me a bed, free water supply and electricity, and let me open an umbrella stall outside his shop." The grocery store is long gone but he remains. He's also in the Guinness Book of World Records for having produced the most expensive umbrella in the world and proudly displays his certificate to prove it. Very cool. I have a mind to rip a hole in my umbrella just to become a customer!

Miss America

Was just going thru old pictures and found this random photo of Katie living it up at Lizzie's baby shower in SF. I love this picture, there is something very Dr. Seuss about it.

Pals

Ingrid and her Grandpa ('Da' to her) have a special bond.

Good Times

Had a great time catching up with college friends at Chet's wedding in Portland last weekend!

Buddies

Ingrid got lots of quality time with her friends Duncan and Malcom up in Cannon Beach. Playing in the sand, hunting for bears in the forest, testing the freezing ocean waters. They even did some crabbing. You can see their glee, up until the point where they must put on their life preservers.....

Oregon Coast

We are having a blast up here in Cannon Beach. Cool breezes, laid back lifestyle and no daily agenda. My kind of vacation. Network access has been sporadic so its been tough to post. I'm on a connection in a local coffee shop so I'll throw up some pictures now and follow up with more later.

Cousins

The Mighty Redwoods

Just One of the Frogs

It is wonderful to be home, and even better to see Ingrid have so much fun playing in the yard in which I grew up. Grandma's figurines and statues of turtles, frogs, fish, bears, pigs, cats, scorpions, birds and other wildlife have Ingrid totally captivated. And to see real life birds and squirrels, bugs and salamanders is almost too much for the girl who is wildlife deprived living in our high-rise HK abode. I catch myself trying to show Ingrid ways to better her playtime based on my past experience....'Ingrid, check this out' or 'Ingrid, look at this area of the yard over here....'....but then I stop and just watch her do her thing. She smashes dirt onto herself She chucks rocks. She touches spider webs. I just let her.

Old Friends

It was so great to see my old friend Amy on her recent business trip to Hong Kong. She lives in Tokyo with her architect husband. We had a nice dinner around a round table at our local favorite Sichuan food haunt. Ingrid adored her and wouldn't stop saying "Aim-eeee" for the rest of the night.

Homeward Bound

We're going on a heat retreat, leaving the swelter of HK behind in favor of the cool marine layers of SF and the Oregon Coast. I tried to find the cooooolest images I could find. Really looking forward to seeing family and friends in the coming weeks!

Doppelgangers, Ingrid style

Ingrid loves to point out advertisements and pictures she sees as likenesses of us and say 'Mama' or 'Dada.' Inevitably it is very flattering for Lizzie and quite painful for me. I am the Dad in Peter Pan and the head waiter in Ratatouille, neither of which are inspiring. Lizzie is Snow White or the beautiful fairy from Pinnochio, both very deserving but also favorable. As you can see here, Ingrid loves this advertisement in a local mall and always points and says 'Mama.' Well, she crushed me the other day as we walked past a local modern art gallery on Wyndham Street and pointed to this sculpture in the window. 'Dada!' Apparently I resemble a fat Chinese man pronated on a block of ice undergoing a champagne cupping treatment. Ouch on all levels.

Nasty

This is what 37C/98F, 91% humidity and a Severe Air Pollution Index looks like.

Noah's Ark

"The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on earth had become" so he decided "to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has a breath of life in it." But not before commanding the righteous Noah to build an Ark to His precise specifications that would spare Noah's family and a representation of the world's animals from the Deluge and allow for re-population of Earth's newly cleaned slate.

And what better way to commemorate this classic biblical tale than with a theme park? An uber-rich Hong Kong property tycoon who also happens to be an evangelical Christian financed his own Noah's Ark that now sits beached on an outlying HK island. What took Noah over 100 years to construct was built in just 5 years in HK. It is the world's only replica Ark built to God's exact specs -- 300 cubits by 50 cubits by 30 cubits. Cubits were used in the olden days and measure the distance from tip of finger to elbow. So this Ark is absolutely massive at nearly 450 feet long. But how else are you going to fit in a full multimedia museum, IMAX theater, function rooms, wedding chapel, luxury hotel, restaurants and a full length basketball court?







Lizzie, Ing and I braved Hong Kong's most sweltering day of the year and took the ferry out to see the Ark Park and were not disappointed. The place only opened a couple months ago so the staff was cheery and helpful, the multimedia displays were technologically current and best of all the place was sparkling clean, lacking feeling of most public places in Hong Kong that are trampled over by millions of soles yearly. What never rubbed off was the surreal novelty of visiting a full-sized Noah's Ark in a city like HK which has a Christian population of less than 10%, a number that is probably far less when the domestic helper population visits home during Holy Week.

The centerpiece of the museum is a chunk of petrified wood purported to be from the original Ark dug out of the snows of Turkey's Mount Ararat, thought to be the Noah's final docking place. Also on display are declassified CIA documents and photos detailing the US governments satellite photo's of what it thought to be the Ark on the same mountain. A display of antique Ark children's toy sets from around the globe was a highlite as was the IMAX presentation giving the audience a multimedia and multi-sensory feel for life on the Ark during those 40 days and nights. Lots of cool stuff. And there was even a compelling feasibility study on display for the all the Doubting Thomases.

The animals, how could I forget!!? 67 pairs of full size fiberglass animals marching in two by two, hurrah, hurrah!! Ingrid loved it, pointing at all her favorites and code-switching between limited English and Mandarin to call them by name. Very cute. Then she melted from the heat so you can see she's a blob in most of these pictures.

A great day. We even found the day's date, Lizzie's birthday, written in out in plant life. www.noahsark.com.hk