three beautiful things

1.To be able to have dinner comfortably (without cooking) at home with mom watching our favorite TV show-The Project Runway-something so ordinary and so simpleb(had never felt so special) has been missing in my life. The dinner was gathered by different stuff we found in a local supermarket and it was fun to pick whatever is available off the shelves. I missed shopping with mom when i was a kid. Nothing has changed except I get to make a lot of purchasing decision this time because I'm paying. We got assorted sashimi, kimchi, scallops, tempura sushi, honey plum wine, a slice of raspberry cheese cake and a slice of mixed berries tart for dessert. It was perfect and things just can't get better than this.

2.Found a pair of black sandal heels that were buried among one of my shoe boxes for two years. Stepped on the heels and off shopping with mom in supermarket like a little girl. The heels have only been worn once. The last time was with my ex going to the sydney opera house and remembered how badly the heels were killing me. But this time, I walked around okay for two hours even carrying grocery bags.

3.Audrey Hepburn singing "the plain in spain is mainly in the rain'' on tv. It was roughly the same time last year when her movie was aired. her glamour is timeless and another year has gone by. Hopefully by the same time next year I would be still hearing her singing and knwoing I would have realized a lots of personal goals.


p.s. this beautiful idea came from Clare from the U.K. She's determined to record three beautiful things every day that have giver her pleasure. It teaches me how to appreciate life in a special way. Less complaints and start living!This is my first 3bt entry and there should be many more to come, enjoy!

Legislative Council Joke of the Day

Yesterday I sat for a welfare services panel meeting discussing review of Hong Kong's last safety net for the territory's underprivileged--the Comprehensive Social Security Assistance Scheme(CSSA). Hong Kong's economy suffered a turmoil since SARs in 2003. CSSA was therefore drastically slashed by 11%. To a family receiving about HK$4000 a month, taking an 11% cut is a lot of money to them. Many items like children's school uniforms, glasses or internet access fees are not always included. The scheme is insanely complicated and I'm still trying to understand who gets how much under what situation after being a social welfare reporter full time for one year. Don't feel too bad if you are kinda lost here. Anyway, the CSSA level were not restored to a normal level until now even the economy is getting back on track. Last year the government has proposed a 0.4% increase and a 1.2% increase next year. Dole receipients could get something from HK$13.8 to HK$50 a month,depending on how poor and disabled you are.

The Legislative Council Building in Central

During the meeting, radical lawmaker Leung Kwok-hung, a.k.a. Long Hair,frustrated by official b.s., urged another lawmaker Fernando Cheung Chiu-hung who is representing the welfare sector that,
"Chairman, please, (sigh), can we please ban this official from coming to our next meeting?" and told the officials that"You guys,please don't come to Legco again,you are useless!" Leung said.

Fernando Cheung (photo from www.legco.gov.hk)

Lawmakers, or Legislative Councillors blasted on government's cold blooded attitude after it refused to launch a study reviewing levels of CSSA payment.
Principal Assistant Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food Bureau Cheung Doi-ching gave the following reply:
In fact Hong Kong government really values whether children living in poverty are getting enough assistance. That's why Hong Kong provides 9 years of free education and we also have community centres for them. The Jocky Club also.......

Having heard the most outrageously ridiculous official reply, that's why Long hair came in making the emotional statement.
Of course it's not up to Long Hair to decide which officials are to attend Legco meeting, but don't you think our Hong Kong government's officials are just adorable?

Long Hair(photo from his website)

a present to Mr. Wig--歌詞唱出我心聲

Dear Mr. Wig,
那晚你走出我的家門，留下了玫瑰。
說出最後一聲的再見，就是這樣的走了。
很想回頭，但是再次回頭只能令再見變得更加痛苦。
就是這樣，在一盞盞黃黃的街燈中，你的身影變得越來越小。
淚光也模糊了我的視線，就是這樣的，你走了。
我就是知道你看不懂，但我還想問你，
你還要我把你的介子刻字嗎？我該刻什麼字？
我害怕，連你給我的電郵都不敢回。
但是我現在到底在幹什麼？這麼多的話要跟你說，
但又偏偏的這樣折磨自己，可能我已經想你想得變態了。
請你離開我，尤其是在睡夢中，不要趁我沒有意識下偷襲我。


謝謝你，我送你兩段歌詞，請欣賞。

You took my hand，You showed me how。You promised me you'd be around
I took your words，And I believed，In everything，You said to me
Remember when we were such fools, And so convinced and just too cool
I wish I could touch you again，I wish I could still call you friend
I'd give anything，I'll keep you locked in my head
Until we meet again，Until we meet again
And I won't forget you my friend，What happened

That last kiss，I'll cherish
Until we meet again，And time makes，It harder
I wish I could remember，But I keep，Your memory
You visit me in my sleep
My darling，Who knew，My darling，My darling，Who knew，My darling，I miss you，My darling，Who knew，Who knew

若這一刻我竟嚴重痴呆 跟本不需要被愛
永遠在床上發夢 餘生都不會再悲哀
人總需要勇敢生存 我還是重新許願
明年今日 別要再失眠 床褥都改變 如果有幸會面
明年今日 未見你一年 誰捨得改變 離開你六十年
但願能認得出你的子女 臨別亦聽得到你講再見
在有生的瞬間能遇到你 竟花光所有運氣 到這日才發現 曾呼吸過空氣

celebrating adulthood

After celebrating my adulthood, there are whole heaps of plans waiting to be realized.
So many visions and so many dreams, when are they going to be carried out with determination and wisdom?
A good friend left me some notes and I'm translating them into English for my other friends to share:

「大個女」是，多點做事，少點藉口。

"Celebrating your adulthood" means , more to the works and less to looking for excuses.

「大個女」是，多點聆聽，少點發表偉論。

More listening and being less of an opinated bitch.

「大個女」是，多做爽快的決定，少猶豫不決。

More decision making and less indecisive.

「大個女」是，多微笑，少給人看面色。

More smiles and less long faces.

「大個女」是，多向人給予，少向人索取。

More giving and less asking for favours.

「大個女」是，under-promise and over-deliver。

「大個女」是，不會跟母親吵架，或對著緊的人發脾氣。

Won't unleash your anger to people that are close to you or quarrel with mom.

「大個女」是，毋須媽媽提點，也知道要注意健康。

Will look after your own health without mom's reminding words.

「大個女」是，你找到自己的風格，不會隨波逐流。

Locate your own unique style instead of following the mainstream.

「大個女」是，你知道現實的規則，不慨嘆懷才不遇。

It's also about understand the rules of reality instead of complaining your underminded talents.

「大個女」的精粹，其實就是多一點同理心與自律精神。共勉之。

In essence, it's about "common sense"(here i wasn't sure what she's referring) and sense of self-discipline.

cruelty free living festival

•The Cruelty Free Living Festival is the first of its kind in Sydney promoting veganism and education of inhumane treatment to animals in food production.

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The event was about animal protection, it’s in fact a human initiative. So I choose different human characters to tell the story of how ordinary people stand up against unnecessary inhumane treatment during food production and the virtue of respecting lives of other living things.

People from all walks of life gathered in Petersham’s Town Hall during a rainy Sunday morning, not for church, but to learn about veganism and support animals protection during human’s meat and dairy food consumption.

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Miss Lettuce, as known as Lana Benson, works in the Commonwealth Bank as a Project Manager at day time and a vegetarian twenty four seven for the last four months. “I’m thinking of going vegan. After you have made an effort trying to understand how our food came from, you just don’t have the heart to eat meats anymore,’’ Miss Lettuce selling raffle tickets in the venue said.
The 8-year-old-Celloist Shui-yi(left) and her classmate Robbie Baileys were putting money from the music they played to help protecting animals from inhumane treatment.They have earned $10.5 in the first hour of playing. Shui-yi said she would be aiming at the $30 target.The boy in the middle is Shui-yi’s 5-year-old brother.

With the rapidly disappearing rainforest, extinction in the wild is likely to be 2010 for Sumatran Orangutans and 2015 for Bornean Orangutans. Do you know intelligence of Orangutans is comparable to a five or six year old child?

One of the rare hippy found in the event, may be veganism is not longer a rare new age trend.
The two toddlers found themselves dancing along the music performance on stage while their parents were busy looking at the many stalls introducing festival visitors about vegan food, meditation and information regarding animals rights protection.

Background:
According to Animals Liberation NSW, modern food production often carries out in a massive scale and treatment to animals are often unnecessarily cruel and inhumane in order to obtain food from animals at the lowest costs. Farm animals like chicken, cows, pigs produce eggs, poultry, milk and meat to human beings consumption but are also the main targets subjected to tortures.•

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Example: The Battery Hen spends all her laying life in a cage crammed in with three and up to seven other birds. She stands for life on a space smaller than this leaflet. Her only exit is to the slaughterhouse.Cages are kept in huge artificially lit sheds. The hen stands on thin sloping wire - her feet and legs crippled. She cannot perch, preen, scratch in the dirt, dust-bathe, spread her wings, or escape to a quiet place to lay an egg - all activities known to be extremely important to the behavioral needs of a hen.

•Battery Hens are prone to bone breakages. Their bones are brittle through over-production of eggs and lack of exercise. A high percentage have Osteoporosis. By the time they are finally slaughtered up to 56 per cent of caged hens have suffered painful fractures.
Stressed and crowded hens peck at each other. Therefore farmers cut off a third of the chicken's beak with a hot wire guillotine. This causes severe pain at the time and the chicken may die of shock. Also the nerves in the beak stump are still active and the hen suffers pain for months, perhaps years afterwards. Many have great difficulty eating for the rest of their lives.

covering star ferry protest

Three pm last Wednesday when I was relaxingly researching about dementia in Hong Kong, I was suddenly sent down to the old Star Ferry Pier covering some radical protest.
I was on my heels, my velvet jacket, my scarf and dangling earings...but I was like, what the hell, finally some actions to cover in a long time for me. So I grabbed my notebook, my recorder, my press card, pen and cash and hooped on to a taxi.
About 2o to 30 people were protesting against the government when it tries to demolish the old Star Ferry and it's clock tower with about 50 years history. Protestors demanded meetings with officials but officials said their actions were too little and too late.

(2nd last protestor pulled out from the construction site of star ferry,courtesy BBC's website)

Police vehicles were trying to jump ahead my taxi trying to get to the protest scene before I did, I was urging the driver to drive quicker in a hopelessly crammped up traffic in central.
when I got there, i was stunned by the scene. There were people standing on the rooftop chanting slogans and different protestors scattered around interviewing by the press.
I knew I was kinda late, I quickly did a run around the scene for some snap polls with the protestors and the lawmakers.
Not long after that at about 4pm, real actions happened.
An activist was arrested for criminal damage and was locked in a police vehicle. It was when the police trying to drive the vehicle away then 20 protestors formed a human chain by sitting in front of the vehicle attempting to block its way.
Several policemen told them to move away,and of course no on was listening.protestors were therefore forcefully removed by the cops.Some struggled and refused to leave. someone got injured in the process. emotions of protestors, boiled up by fatique and police's violence, were pushed to the top.
I was running along with the crowd and trying to witness all the action. In another word, I was running with heels in the rain following the police and protestors, at the same time, dodging tv cameras and photographers.
unfortunately, I was still hit by tv cameras for about three times at the back of my head. it wasn't pretty. those monsterous machines plus rude camermen in actions are something one should definite avoid.
but all that, didn't bother me at the slightest way.
all I could think about was to give my best reporting by witness the all actions with my own eyes.
My body was pumped with adrenaline for three hours non-stopped until all protestors were evacuated,when i was on my way back to work in a taxi with another singtao reporter, i then started to feel the pain at the back of my head and how my muscels were tearing apart.
it's one of my most exciting reporting experience so far and i'm looking for so much more to come in the future.

December in Hong Kong

This December have never felt so bitter.
It was always my favoruite time of the year.
My brithday, christmas and the anticipation for New Year was supposed to be blened all in this month.
And people are supposed to be happy.

Not quite I guess, if there is no one you can celebrate with and when a friend single-sidedly ending a friendship without hearing your view.

Just when you thought you are done with some of the most challenging tasks on earth, sorrow would always find its way to hit you back twice as hard.

There is nothing you can do, stay bright and make use of your
situation hoping you can see a brighter side out of it.
Or,simply,blame it on the beautiful christmas tree outside Central's Legislative Council building.
Since when christmas is about love,huh?

Sex and the City part 2

Sex and the City-a legendary all time favorite worshipped by many ladies around the world- is the only show I have never managed to miss a single epirosde. The fashion, the drama, the jokes, the critique and characters have been so perfectly interwoven producing waves after waves of chemistry stimulating its audience.

The show depicted four successful, beautiful, mature and slightly upper class single New Yorker with different personalities, professions and taste in men living in one of the world's most aspiring city searching for their one love in life. They are picky but that's only because they are smart, sexy and confident. And if you are so damn fabulous, why should you settle for anything less?

However, in many people's eyes, a woman's sexiness is shallowly defined within her appearance and age. This has been widely debated before and we all understand that a woman's fineness is not limited to her appearance; it has more to do with the substance one withheld inside. Different men love their women differently. Youth and beauty can get you far but not everywhere. Real partnership draws importance in quality of companionship. Sexiness is a complete package involving many factors and subjected to variations in different men's eyes. Why would Prince Charles cheat on Princess Diana for Camilla? Age is not a necessary determining factor when it comes to sexiness.

Back to Sex and the City, super hot Smith Jerry and hotel businessman Richard worshipped Samantha.
In Chinese culture, a woman like Samantha is what most people would refer as sluts. However, dare I challenge your moral boundaries and ask you to look at Samantha in another angle.
What's wrong with an independent single woman enjoying sex as much as men? Since when it is ok for men to fuck around and women should just shut up about their particular sexual needs or simply just orgasms, if there is any? So there are degrading terms like sluts, whores, tramps to describe women who sleep around. For men, we called them playboys...oh, so when a man is fucking around, he's just playing. But when it comes to a woman, she's a whore and should go to hell? I couldn't handle one more second of such hypocrisy.

Remember Carrie Bradshaw once said in a Paris hotel room that "I'm looking for love. Real love. Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can't-live-without-each-other love. And I don't think that love is here in this expensive suite in this lovely hotel in Paris.'' For a beautiful woman and a talented writer like Carrie, why should she settle for anything less?
Just because some men dumped by her weren't her true love doesn't mean she should settle with anyone with a hot look and adores her silly? She shouldn't give up the search for true love especially when had already knew who it was before meeting Aidan. So even the slightest annoying habits Aidan did became so unbearable to her. She wasn't being picky; she was only looking for an excuse to get out of the situation when she was truely waiting for Mr. Big,that's all.

It's true that one has to be practical and not everyone can afford to dump quality guys like Carrie but that doesn't mean you should waste your time when you already know whom you want to wine up with.

My friend was critizing the characters in the show, saying that women will end up old and alone if they follow Carrie's apparoach. Sex and the City is not telling you what to do and whom to follow. But it reminds one's importance not to hang in situation when you realized the one you are with doesn't give you the butterflies, doesn't make your heart pounds when you are waiting for him/her...doesn't make you feel like you are something they couldn't live without....

more examples to prove these characters are not building castle in the air, they dumped their men for good reaons:
For Charlotte, Dr. McDougal was not what she needed. He’s one annoying mammy's boy. He gets frustrated easily and with a fragile manhood delicate like jelly beans was a total turn off,so what he's a famous doctor?
for miranda, steve was the one because he adores her crazy from day 1.yeah,i do know how cute was that black doctor in the show....but what can you do,ay? She wouldn't realize it earlier. All these compulsive disorders forcing her to alienate herself to be a strong and independent woman and finally when a guy like Steve comes along loving her for the woman he sees her and offering her the chance to be the woman on top...and at the same time to be so damn good in bed, Steve didn't seem to be a bad choice at all soon as linked their fatal opposition together,it's kinda cute.
For Samantha, how do u expect a woman enjoying sex to the edge to give up the joy of her life because this Mr. tiny Willy happens to treat her the way she deserves emotionally? Luckily she didn't hang on to this bloke or Richard. And then Smith Jerry comes along, a super hot model loves her to bits, good in bed and look beyond her age and just loves her for the woman she is. that might sound impossible but I have read a few stories as much in reality and it's totally melting my heart.
None of these four men the four girls winded up with are perfectly perfect. They have their flaws but the flaws are no longer flaws if the men bearing these flaws happened to be their true love.

THe Show content can be a bit exaggerated but that's because the writer of the show used the four women to illustrate some of the most common urban dating dilemmas across the board. One can learn a lot from the sex and the city lessons. "Baby, he’s just not that into you" is a classic example, need I say more?

Other accessories of the show like the trendy and upbeat lifestyle of New York is just simply fascinating. oh the glamorous life style, the power bear by the successful woman, the fashion, the shoes, the cafe, the humor and smart script writing...I'm sorry but the show is just so adorable that I found yet find another replacement for any other girls-night-in entertainment.

*please forgive the sloppy writing and incorrect grammars. it's a counter commentary on sex and the city after Glo had posted hers online. To view her outstanding critque, please click here*