Wiiiiiiiiiii

Brought the Wii and new cord and old cord back to the same shop where we bought the cord, and where Paul tried the Wii last time and it worked, and guess what.  It worked there again!  WTF.  Why won't it work in our apartment? This is mind boggling.  There's no way our plugs are any different than theirs.  We sat there in awe and then the dude finally grabbed another cord with a slightly different prongy thing (3 instead of 2) and said to try a different one.  Fine fine, we'll try.  But we're not getting our hopes up!

A 10 k walk home (tis a beautiful sunny day here in HK), Paul plugs it in, and do do dooooo, it WORKS!  Yey!!!

Paul will probably be up til 4 am playing Mario.  First it's off to dinner in Sheung Wan with Kina.  Can't wait to catch up!

Brunch

True story.  I just made the best brunch ever.  EVER.  I had all of this left over bread from America which I cut into cubes and made croutons out of.  But, we don't really eat croutons much.  Solution: Savory Bread Pudding.  Oh my god this was delicious and it was thrown together with leftover stuff in the fridge.

In a bowl whisk together 5 eggs, milk, parmesan, salt and pepper.  Pour egg mix over croutons and let sit.

Cook 1 onion and some garlic in red wine.  Add mushrooms and spinach.

Add spinach mix to bread and sprinkle with more parmesan.  Bake (or convection oven for like 400 hours) until brown (and then microwave until the eggs set).

Paul agrees.  Next time we're adding bacon and calling it dinner.  

Like my new shirt?

P.S. See my flowers in the window sill?  Paul came to pick me up from the end of work last night, asked me to grab a sweatshirt out of his backpack and there was a bouquet of flowers.  Saranhaeyo.

Back to Work

It's been no joke this week. Go Go Go.  Today I'm going to be working the Kowloon Bay Wedding Expo which I am told is very Chinese.  I went to help set up last night and place is nuts.  Sparkle, sparkle everywhere!  But yeah, it's Saturday and I'm working.  11-8.

Palawan in 2 weeks!!

Oh and the Wii saga continues.  We're going to bring it back to the electronics market one last time to see if it's working and if not, it's back to the US for Wii.  Poor Paul has no games to play....

'Like' Me!

Please 'like' our new facebook page over at House of Fine Wines. 

http://www.facebook.com/pages/House-Of-Fine-Wines/292401760801943

As of current this is our only social media.  I am taking it upon myself to change that.  Maybe we'll even get onto Twitter!  What do you think?  Any suggestions?

New Morning Routine

Since we've been back Paul and I have implemented a new morning routine.

Day 1- Learning Curve

Thursday 7:45 AM Paul and I head out on a 2 mile walk to his school.  Not only are we exercising, and saving money, but we also gain an extra half hour together in the morning.  After I left Paul at school I had a lovely two mile run back to the Latitude.  As I'm walking the last few meters I'm debating if I should hit the gym or not seeing as I have sooo much extra time before work.  I decide yes, then reach for my card.  Shit!  I had left the house with Paul not evening thinking about my keys!  So I book it back 2 miles to Paul's school to get his keys and card.  Then run the 2 miles back home just in time to shower and get to work.  My nice little 2 mile run quickly turned into a 6 mile run, and I haven't run since I started working!!  Needless to say, I'm a little sore today!

Day 2- Much More Smoother (as my co-worker JC would say)

Thursday 7:30 AM Paul and I head out for a walk.  He gets breakfast, we stop for a coffee, drop him off, run to Park N Shop n get bananas and oatmeal, home in plenty of time to shower, eat, blog and relax.  I'm digging this new schedule.

Ass Backwards Day

Ass backwards is the only way to describe our return to HK.  The airport was easy enough.  Thanks to my HK residency card we blitzed through the line to our baggage in minutes flat and quickly found a painless cab ride home.  Then things grew dark…literally.  Thanks to the benevolence of Lauren’s lovely parents we were bestowed with a brand new black (and striking awesome-looking) Nintendo Wii for Christmas (thank you Derald and Shirley).  Since I had the following day off work and little else to do I aspired to set up our new entertainment system whilst Lauren unpacked our suitcases, did laundry, and cooked dinner (thanks, babe). 

A brief run-down on electronics worldwide before I continue: American electrical outlets (and their corresponding appliances) operate at 120 volts, whilst outlets in HK run at 220 volts.  Since our American laptop, electric razor, toothbrush, etc all work well-and-good at this foreign voltage with a simple power adaptor I hypothesized that our new Wii would fare just as well.  Unfortunately my theory was invalid.  Whilst Lauren unpacked I headed downstairs to one of the four electronic shops in the mall beneath our building; I found an adaptor in the fourth shop.  Bristling with excitement I placed this new adaptor onto the Wii power cord and plugged it into the surge protector.  Thankfully I did not plug the cord into the Wii prior to this act because as soon as I plugged the cord into the surge protector I heard a pop, saw the lights in our room go out, and smelled smoke.  Luckily I was able to fix our situation by flicking the fuse box and opening the door to the balcony; however, the Wii was still an issue.

We headed back downstairs to the same electronics store where a kindly gentleman told us to buy a power converter in the Golden Computer Arcade 4 subway stops away in Sham Shui Po.  This place is amazing, it’s like a wet market for electronics where any electrical appliance need (save mine) can be met.  In one painless stroke we managed to get a Japanese power cord for the Wii at the first shop we went to. 

Then we went home. 

Once again bristling with excitement, I plugged the cord into the wall and Wii to no avail.  It didn’t work.  I tried every outlet in the apartment except for the ones in our roommate’s room and it still didn’t fucking work.  Well no big deal.  As I said before, I didn’t have to work the next day thus I could put off such problems until then.  Lauren cooked a great spaghetti dinner and we fell asleep at 8:30 P.M. due to jet lag.

            Then I woke up.

            Lauren had to go to work at 10:00 A.M so I had the whole day to solve problems.  Wii was the first priority and our bathroom lighting was the second.  Seeing as the previous day was out of order I decided to deal with the second priority first.  Only one of the three lights in our bathroom has been working since we moved in.  I can’t adequately explain how difficult it is to wake up with a morning shower by candlelight; yet I’ve shouldered this burden for four months without complaint.  Ergo after four months I went downstairs and complained to the front-desk that the lights in my bathroom have been burnt out since I moved in.  The kind woman on duty told me she would send an “engineer” (her word) to replace the bulbs.  Whilst waiting for said engineer I placed the dinner leftovers into a Tupperware container and told Lauren I made her lunch for the next day.  She thanked me via WhatsApp.  The “engineers” rang my doorbell as I was watching the new Conan the Barbarian movie (which I must say lives up to the original Arnold Schwarzenegger version that none of its sequels quite met).  The two “engineers” (yes I will keep using quotation marks and parenthesis) brought a superfluous ladder to replace the bulbs.  The two men were very nice and explained that they could only replace one bulb.  I responded that I could not possibly have burned out the bathroom lights because I only use them for a cumulative 30 minutes a day at most, thus that they never worked.  They kindly replied, “We understand, Sir, but we can only replace one [of the broken bulbs we installed].”  I let it slide since they called me “Sir” as I had bigger bulbs to ignite.

            I packed my Wii and accompanying power cord and MTR’d back to the Golden Computer Arcade where I told the shop owner that they sold me a faulty power cord and I wasn’t leaving until they provided me with a working power cord or refunded my expenses.  The storeowner looked at me in disbelief, and then plugged the cord he sold me into a socket and into my Wii and pressed its power button.  It ignited with a warm, green, heavenly glow.  Then he and his employees collectively laughed at me. 

            “I guess you have to try a different socket,” he said.

            “I guess so,” I replied.

            “Where did you come from?” he asked.

            “Kowloon.”

            “That’s not so bad,” he said. 

I guess it could have been worse.

Thinking I had been previously color blind to little red lights on a Wii entertainment system I went all the way back to home-sweet-home Wan Tai Sin station.  On my way back to the apartment I bought two light bulbs (they come in packs of two) to replace the one bulb that has been burnt out since we moved in and the management couldn’t afford to replace despite my monthly king’s ransom management fee.  Thinking that the same plug that didn’t work would somehow work in the same outlets and power the Wii to leave me on the couch of the lotus-eaters and unable to attend to any other problems of the day (hopefully anyone who has read The Odyssey will get this reference) I decided to fix the light prior to fixing the Wii.

The light bulbs in our bathroom are within recessed-lighting fixtures.  Any new bulb must be plugged into a little cord that hangs from within the ceiling and placed within the fixtures.  I unplugged the faulty bulb from the cord then plugged a new bulb into it and set it into the ceiling fixture.  I flicked the light switch and Whallah, the new bulb didn’t work.  Thinking the new bulb was faulty (like so many other things today) I plugged the other new bulb into the power cable hanging from the ceiling and it worked.  “Fantastic,” I thought.  Then pushed this new bulb into the ceiling fixture and flicked the switch again to see what a fully illuminated bathroom looks like and dammit it didn’t work.  I pulled the bulb from the ceiling and out of curiosity flicked the switch again and wouldn’t you know it, it worked!  Thinking previous events had been a fluke I pushed the bulb back into the ceiling and flicked the switch and nope, absolutely no light!  I pulled the light from the ceiling and sure enough, it worked.  Then I put it back into the ceiling and sure enough, it didn’t.  I debated taping the bulb to the cord (as I conjectured that somehow the two were disconnected when delicately pushing it into the ceiling) then decided to leave it hanging.  Two recessed lights and one tool-shed chandelier ain’t bad.

Then I moved back to the Wii.  Needless to say the same cord that didn’t work before but worded in the store didn’t work again.  I debated punching through the wall but convinced myself that since the apartment walls are comprised of re-enforced concrete such endeavors are useless.  Now it’s dark out and all I’ve completed today on top of a bright bathroom is this blog entry.  Hopefully I’ll get more done tomorrow J

McPhate Family Reunion

Paul and I had such an awesome time touring the East.  We spent the mornings making epic breakfasts at home with my mom and dad, afternoons catching up with old friends, and evening competing with Scott and Stacy on Wii.  We spent a blustery afternoon in New Hope catching up with Jen, hit NYC for drinks with Chetta, Ryan, Kati, and Kristina, lunch with John, Brady and Lara, then head down to DC for the night to drop off Stacy and Tickles.  I miss DC!  It was so fun to be back and see my old stomping ground.  Chetta and Ryan played host in their beautifully renovated town home in NE, which is where we all went out to dinner with Liz and Joe and had perhaps a bit too much to drink with Henry at Lola's.  After a quick breakfast with Sherine, and a curbside chat with Alex, Paul and I zoomed up to Baltimore for a quick drink with Justin.  Zoomed again up to NYC where we caught up with Maria, Dave and Paul's friend JD.  And alas finally made it home to see the Laganas and ring in the new year with my parents.

Being home made me understand and appreciate Paul a little more. Seeing where he comes from, his family, his friends, opened up a new part of him to me.  And I think vica versa.  There was never any awkwardness between either families and we feel so lucky for this!!

Being home also makes me realize how much I am missing here.  I love Hong Kong, but home is still home.  I'm going to implement a twice a year home policy.  Yup there it is.

So if you couldn't tell by the above, we really, really had a fantastic trip home.  It always goes too fast though!!  We had an interesting trip back to our new home.  Our flight was delayed in hour in JFK, so we hit the bar for a snack and a drink.  Some drunk guy next to us started chatting and it came out that Paul and I had lived in Korea.  The guy on our other side chimed in and said HE was a teacher in Korea.  Small world.  We chatted and discovered he had the same 13 hour layover we did in Bejing.  Weird.  Paul and I slept 90% of the 13 hour flight to Bejing, met up with new friend Jordan, and made it to the Air China counter to see if we qualified for a free hotel.  We did!!  Asa!  We get on a sketch bus and wind through sketch Bejing streets in the dark until we pull up to this hotel in the middle of nowhere.  I'm talking we crossed through train tracks, fields, industrial complexes and ended up at this joint.  But hey, it's free.   The room was surprisingly nice, although reeked of smoke, and dinner was complimentary as well.  Of course the only thing on TV was Al Jeezera and Chinese channels, so we hooked up the laptop and watched a movie until we fell asleep for another 5 hours.  That's 14 hours of sleep that day.  ha.  Quick 3 hour flight back to HK, cab, and we were back and unpacked by 2.  Then, da da duh, Paul tried to hook up the Wii we got for Christmas.  Poof!  The US cord is 200 volts, the power here is 110, so I think we fried the plug.  Luckily the Wii wasn't plugged into the power cord.  We took the subway over to Sham Shui Po and super easlily/quickly found a Chinese power cord.  Come home and no dice.  For whatever reason, no power is getting to the Wii.  Hmm busted cord perhaps?  Paul had been looking forward to playing Wii since we left.  He doesn't have to work today, so he'll go see if he can get it sorted.  Here's hoping.

We cooked dinner with our new amazingly sharp knives and settled on the couch to watch some TV.  I feel asleep 5 minutes later at 6 and didn't wake up this AM til 6 again.  Asa!  I have to go to work today at 10 and we have a wine tasting in our office (warehouse) at 7:30, so I'm guessing I won't get home til 10 or 11.  Starting off with a bang.  Wooh.

Photos from the new camera coming soon, I just need to get the software installed.  That'll happen after I catch up on 2 weeks of emails and facebook messages.  So much to do, so much to do.  Luckily we have enough chocolate, cake, cookies, bread to get through the week, for it doesn't look like grocery shopping will happen any time soon.

Happy New Year!!!