Gung Hay Fat Choy! & Favorite Topic

Happy Chinese New Year this coming Sunday, January 29th! This year is the year of the DOG. Wow time sure flies!

I celebrated last night with the family, my roomie and my sister brought along her boyfriend Chris. We ate a big meal and we were all stuffed after wards. We had alot of food from the seafood soup, two types of chicken, lobster, flounder, garlic peapod stems, beef with peppers sauce we ate well.

This coming weekend is the busiest Chinese New Year's ever for me in terms of activities. Tomorrow night, I am heading to drinks with some friends then a NEW YEAR's dinner at a friends newly renovated house (kitchen I heard is the bomb now). Saturday night, celebrating with another friend and her buddies having Japanese at OGA. YUMMY! Sunday planning for Taiwanese dim sum and chilling with some friends. A weekend filled with friends and good cheer, seems like a great plan for me!

Lately, I have been blessed with much great news from friends from new job, getting engaged, getting married and getting pregnant. I think these changes are blessings and great for my friends. I am sad that my honey is moving to NYC and I am going to miss him terribly.
Last Sunday, I got to catch up with two great friends. One who is married and we had brunch at NEIGHBORHOOD in Union Square in Somerville. Truth be told, I adore Zaftigs more. But with Neighborhood, I can see why people go. The food is OK, tight quarters, but a great value for the buck. For only $10.99 we had toast, choice of cream of wheat or fruit, eggs, toast, OJ, coffee, either bacon or sausage, potatoes and I had pumpkin pancakes. The pancakes were a bit on the dry side, the fruit was a slushy weird mess (should have opted for the yummier cream of wheat), but glad we got a side of corned beef hash. Not bad I must admit, I adore corned beef hash but ZAFTIGS still rocks on that dish.

At night, I caught up with my college little sis Wen Wen. I love her alot. She just glowed and looked so beautiful. I was so proud to see her and tell her that she has changed and prospered so much since I first met her back at Smith. I will always remember seeing her dad in the sea of parents when I was chatting them up at a parents /student panel for prospective students. I was one of two students on that panel. I remember telling a story about my mom not knowing what college I was attending. Here mom and whole family are very sweet and good people and she is the only friend where I met up with her family and she was not there!

Here goes, when I got accepted to Smith my mom did not think much of it. Plus I did not know the Cantonese pronunciation of Smith. She was not impressed at all as it is not a "hah vard". After my first month at Smith, I returned home during my first break (over Columbus Day Weekend) and wore an ASA (Asian Students Association Tshirt). On that Tshirt, Smith was translated into many languages--Hindi, Korean, Japanese, Chinese etc. Suffice to say the shock on my mom's face when she read my tshirt. She exclaimed, where did you get it? Turns out, when she was 19 years old, she read a novel with her friend. In the novel, the main character attended Smith. At the time, my mom asked her friend, what is Smith? Her friend Rosemary said, Smith is a great woman's college in western Massachusetts. Then my mom proceeds to say, my future daughter will be going there. Of course her friend said, who says you will have a daughter, and if you do it is a good school. Doesn't mean she will be able get accepted into this school as it is part of seven sisters. Truth be told, I did not know I achieved my mom's dreams (I never knew this story). Weird and funny at the same time I must admit.

While in college I wanted to escape my family. I had University of Toronto on the brain or alot of out of state colleges. It is ironic how I came to choose Smith.

My oldest friend, Mateo whom I met in middle school when he transferred from Indiana recently got engaged. I am excited for him. Funny how life is and how many shared school memories we have of it. He is the only person in my high school graduating class I keep in touch with now. The other two people I keep in touch with from high school are not even in my year. One is Jen (we got to meet up this YEAR!) and Mags (lots of speech tournament memories).
I am loving life and happy for all my friends. I am making plans to visit some and I am excited. There is so much to see and do while I have this time to think.

Still making time for walks/jogs during the day this week has been nice save for the nasty weather on Monday. I heard from a friend it took him three HOURS to get home from NH. EEKS and blech!

Tonight is a time to meet up with another good friend who is also a foodie and great all around person. We are checking out ZITA a new recent addition to Downtown Crossing.
-------------------------------------------------------
January 26, 2006 A favorite topic

*Sigh Travel is such a fave topic of mine along with food and meeting people. In this short life of mine, I have visited almost 25 countries thus far. I caught my first plane ride back a few years after college. Much to the surprise of friends and even teachers as they assumed I had much more travel experience before then. Yes it was via cars to Orlando at the tender age of 5 or Canada to see my dad's side of his family in Toronto.

Since my first fateful plane ride non stop to LA, I have made many more trips to LA. I thank Karen K. for saying to me, why not travel? What is stopping you? It was just me and my head thinking I could not travel. I ADORE my passport and I love the stamps, I find my VISA to China (two years ago) to be a cool addition. Lots of the Western European countries do not stamp if you are traveling via train. (sigh I felt sad at that as I wanted more stamps).
Travel has been an eye opening experience to food, people, culture, art and architecture. I love watching the commercials, eating the snack foods , food stalls, checking out the local farmer markets or supermarkets (if time allows) and catching up with friend who happens to be a local. Taking the public transport or just meandering around on my own two feet are the transportation of choice for me. I try to avoid the big TOUR BUS that take you around in comfort around the city. I would rather do a walking tour (I recommend them alot). I admit in the past with a time crunch, I have taken the bus/trolley rides around a city (mainly in the USA-San Diego, Montreal , Nashville etc) to save time. If I can avoid it, I will.

I find whenever I am talking to friends travel is something that is exciting that binds me with others. Whether we can swap stories of talking the pros and cons of the Boston "T" compared to European and Asian public transport (cannot compare) . Even discussions on local cuisines that you cannot get in the USA, I still crave the lovely crispy wings in Central area in Hong Kong at a hole in a wall, the wonderful pork and beef jerky in Singapore, flavorful gelato at Vivoli in Florence, excellent Indian cuisine in London, delicious Chocolates in Belgium (Marys in Brussels) to the superb pastries I had in Vienna, to the dreamy marbled Kobe Beef... always linger in my mind making me want to visit those places again. But the world is so huge I want to visit other places.

I am going to Italy again in the SPRING to attend a good friend's wedding in the Amalfi Coast. This time I will be able to do Cinque Terra, Sienna, Pisa and Rome as well as try to see Sorrento, Capri, Pompeii and possibly Napoli. Another friend mentioned getting married in Vietnam at the year end. I have a friend getting married in Israel next month, I would love to attend but I cannot.

Definitely on the radar is Korea (the Korean dramas and watching Dae Jang Geum) as well as having a good friend live in Seoul is tempting to go NOW to visit her! I want to try to the street food and other great goodies not obtainable here! My Korean is atrocious --I only can say a few terms (culled from the dramas and from my Oh-nee Audrey).

Japan--is also on the list due to some great roomies and I wanted to visit an ONSEN when there, see Kako's super cutie daughter, see Ai chan in Nagoya and see her mom who is also a foodie aficionado as myself.

Malaysia would be a pit stop to see friends there and also Singapore but a big trip is Thailand. My good friend Lek is there and I would love to see her lovely country.
Then South America would be great to go and practice my Spanish. I always wanted to see Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil.

Just too many places in the world I want to see and visit and we have wonderful variety that I do not know if I can see all I want to being stuck in the USA.

But traveling keeps up the excitement for me.....til my next travels.