Chinese restaurants

In the U.S., "authentic" Chinese restaurants often serve Szechuan food, Chop Suey and Pizza, and of course, the one and only "fortune cookies."

In Scotland, we see "Chinese" restaurants serving Chinese Take Away and "Fish and Chips". (In the photo above, I guess they permanently run out of fish.)

Now, with the hints above, guess where the following "Chinese" restaurants are located:

Chinese food + tortilla

Chinese food + sushi

Chinese food + paella

Chinese food + creme brulee

So how is your world cuisine knowledge? See answer below.

Answer: (mexico, japan, spain, france)

香港揮春 與眾不同

How many weeks?

676 weeks. That's how many weekends we have with Kioni before she turns 18 and heads off to college. Well, in fact, less than that, I have to minus the weekends when she will be out with her friends, going to camps, etc. So what are we going to do with the 676 weekends? I would like to have lots of memory-making activities. Just like what my parents did with us, beaches, hiking, dinner at grandma's, playing with cousins, special restaurant treats. Wrecking my brain how to do so in the rainy Aberdeen weather, limited budget and absence of families.

Beware of the Doghouse

This is seriously funny. Click on the title to view the video. Don't miss it!

Gloomy

Aberdeen winter is gloomy. The above picture was taken at 9:20am on December 30, 2008. That was not a rainy day even, at noon, the sky was actually bright! So you can imagine when it is a rainy day, the whole day will be like the picture above, and worse, because it will be raining. This certainly does not help when you are mourning the loss of a friend, (see the entry below).

We cannot hang laundry outside, the laundry will just stay wet and cold after hanging out for a whole day. We don't use the dryer, though there is one in the garage because cost of electricity is high. So we use the radiators that we have turned on in the house. Don't worry, these are the kinds that have hot water running through them to heat the house, no worries of fire. So on laundry day, we will have clothes all over, back of chairs, over shelves, on the arms of the sofas, anywhere that would provide hanging ability. The real challenge comes when I have to wash bedsheets, ah..... The bed we sleep in is queen size, there really is not much room anywhere in the house that would allow us to hang a queen size sheet. So I fold the sheets up then hang them, they take a whole lot longer to dry, but they do eventually. God made us to be creative.

I always have things to complain about, don't I? It was the heat in Cebu, now it is the gloominess.
Honestly, I would much rather be cold then hot. I can wear 5 layers here in Aberdeen, but I couldn't take off my skin even if I wanted to in Cebu!

Back home

Many of us said goodbye to our friend from seminary today, the first day of 2009. He has gone into glory with the Lord whom he had served faithfully. The aggressive leukemia has turned his body into ruins, within just a few days of being hospitalized, he is gone.

No words can describe the shock a lot of us experienced. Though we know he is now in heaven and would not want to come back, I grieve for his wife (she was his classmate in seminary), and his children who are now without a father. I grieve because death is an ugly thing, it is not suppose to be there. We are made to live on, that was the intention when God created Adam and Eve.

In a mysterious way, God has decided that our friend's struggle on earth is over, time for him to go back to Him. Though for a lot of us on earth, the time seems short. However, I believe if we know what kind of glory he is in right now, we will feel comforted. It doesn't take away the pain we feel for not having him on earth, in fact, when we stare at death, it is so unnatural, so ridiculous that we can't even explain it.

Goodbye, Kwok Wah, next time we see you, we will all rejoice the fact that we are with the Lord. We cannot imagine just yet how life is like without you being here.

國華，下次再見的時候，我們會在天家，你會跟我說：「你來了，真好！」
我們在神學院的時候叫你做「譚大牧」，因為你一早已經顯出了牧者的心腸。你經常都是笑容滿面的，你對同學、師弟、師妹們的真誠關心，是我們很容易感受到的。
還記得我們修希伯來文的時候，我們幾個人因為希望互相鼓勵，決定「比賽」誰在測驗中得最低分的就要請吃飯嗎？我經常都是最低分的那個，但是因為你的牧者心腸，你代替我請吃飯，真係唔話得。
離開香港十年後我回去香港，竟然在尖沙咀碰見你和寶珍手拖手行街。你微笑說：「同老婆拍拖。」恩愛之情表露無遺。
我們不知道為甚麼神決定這是你返天家的時候了。在我們的角度，似是還有許多沒做完的事，沒說完的話。許多問題不知道會不會有答案。
你打了一場美好的仗，我們懷念你。國華，天家見。

Freecycle to the rescue

Freecycle saves my day again. Since I am very afraid that my clumsy hands will soon break the second French Press that I am using, and therefore means no coffee in the morning, I put a wanted ad on Freecycle. Two people responded, one with a small French Press, another with a small coffee machine.
We went to pick them up today, both are personal sizes, which is great for me, since Dan doesn't use any contraptions to make his drinks, he uses freeze dry crystal stuff or just scope the chocolate powder into hot water.
I am very thankful for this blessing, they put me in such a good mood that I even comply to Kioni's request to bake a cake, with chocolate frosting and sparkly sprinkles.

Lamenting

I am lamenting over my beloved French Press. While I was just writing about it last month, one of my two French Presses broke yesterday. It was sitting on a plastic bag after a morning breakfast rush, while I was cleaning up, I lifted the plastic bag, and glass part of the French Press fell into the stainless steel sink, it just went into pieces, so was my heart.

Now I have one left, if this one breaks, I will have no recourse in making a nice cup of coffee. I will still go through life, but a bit tougher without coffee.

First Christmas in Aberdeen. While we don't have much money to buy gifts, the good Lord has provided everything we need. We were able to find Kioni gifts from Freecycle, plus the multiple gifts from the U.S., we have a wonderful gift-opening time. And of course, we have good food too.

While Dan and I didn't exchange gifts, we each got food we like, for me it's ham, for Dan, a big chunk of cranberry cheese from Costco, and for Kioni, she really wanted smoked salmon. So we had a feast!

God is good, and the best of all, we get to remember while we receive so many blessings, the biggest blessing of all is Jesus, who came to bless us till eternity.

Why we actually come to Aberdeen...

Well, with a disappointed heart, let me tell you the true reason why we come to Aberdeen - a hope of inheritance! OK, you know this is just a joke.
Well, not totally pulling this out of my head. Dan's father, who is deceased, told Dan that Dan's great-grandfather (on Dan's father's mother's side) was an immigrant from Northern Ireland. Before he went to Northern Ireland, though, he was from Aberdeenshire, Scotland. His last name was Simpson. When Dan did some research, he found out that in Aberdeenshire, only one clan in which the name Simpson is related to, that is the Fraser clan of Aberdeenshire.
Interestingly, Castel Fraser in Aberdeenshire is only about 10 miles from where we live, we went there last Saturday to see the 'family root'. It is a huge piece of property, hen we were talking about Dan's family heritage with the lady in the gift shop, she pulled out a book that is written by one of the 20th lady of the Fraser clan. In the book, sure enough, they found the last name Simpson. But new information was added to the already known fact - the Simpson side of the family actually stems from an illegitimate relationship. Oh, well, that's it, no hope for inheritance.

Go Freecycle!

Since we don't have anything nice for inviting friends home for a cup of tea, I decided that it would be a good idea to pay attention to Freecycle and see if anyone offers tea sets. Well, a lady did that one night, I wrote back and she immediately replied, she told me we actually have met in a Christian conference that we attended when we first arrived here! She is also a homeschool mom and we exchanged names and contact numbers. She remembers my name and since I am the first one to respond, she gave the set to me.

She told me the set was given to them for their wedding, but they never got around using it. They were still in their original wrapping material when we received it. We also joined the family for an afternoon of tea and scones, and some very nice chats.

Out of curiosity, I googled the name of the pattern (Gloria L553) and the company (Noritake), and guess what I found. The company was started by two Japanese brothers in New York over a hundred years ago, and the pattern was discontinued.

But when I look up those china replacement websites, I found out the set that we received actually costs a little fortune, well, as far as our current standard is concerned:

Sugar Bowl with Lid $34.99 (x2)
Creamer $29.99 (x2)
Plate $17.99 (x2)
Bread and Butter plate $8.99 (x12)
Cup and Saucer set $23.99 (x12)

Well, that comes to about $560 USD!!! (That's $4,340 HKD)

I told Kioni all she can do is touch them a bit, but definitely not drink with them until she can show me she doesn't drop things on the floor anymore. Well, maybe under tight supervision, I can give her a drink of Ribena from the nice cups. This is the nicest thing we have owned so far, other than our Mac computers. We better not break anything, or else, don't know if we could afford to replace them.

Thanks Fiona, for your generosity.

Roundabouts

There are a zillion roundabouts everywhere you go in Aberdeen, unless you are going down your street to two houses down, then you won't be dealing with roundabouts. While others find it fun to go around roundabouts, I find it extremely challenging, even though I am not the one driving.

Roundabouts are not for those whose ear water easily get imbalanced. Every time we go around them, I feel like someone is squeezing my stomach, pretty soon, something is up my throat ready to come out. Due to genetic makeup, Kioni has my problem with going around roundabouts. One time, she actually threw up in the car.

Yet, you cannot do without roundabouts living in Scotland, or in the UK for that matter. Cest' la vie.