New Beginnings

It's hard to believe that a week from today, I will be in Hong Kong. The movers come tomorrow to pack up our worldly belongings.  Some will go into storage for the time being, the rest going into the miniscule apartment which A & I will call home for now.

I am excited about this new phase in my life.  This will be one of those crazy travel-filled summers, with the family split into three different countries for part of the time.  W prepares to go to college, Z will start on his junior year in engineering school, A & I will adapt to being empty nesters.

I am not sure how I will feel three months from now, when I have to say farewell to W when I leave him in the US to start school, while I head "home" to HK.

Impressions from China - 再见; a finale

Well, it's "zai jian" again soon, in less than 3 weeks.  It's hard to believe that it's been almost five and a half years since this entry, when we said goodbye to Singapore and embarked on our Chinese adventure.

And what an adventure it has been!  Living in China has made me feel more Chinese and feel less Chinese at the same time, if that even makes sense at all.  I've seen first hand the land of my ancestors, and by a quirk of fate, if not for an adventurous forefather, I could very well be still living in the hinterlands of Fujian!  Being here has also made me feel more alien than ever.  Despite being ethnically Chinese, culturally, I have realized that I am a mixture of South-east Asian cum American cum Chinese as far as beliefs and morals are concerned.  Definitely not PRC.

Thank you Beijing for all the friends you have helped me make and the wonderful memories which I will carry with me for the rest of my life.  I will come back and visit one day.

Goodbye China....hello Hong Kong!

The Avengers Movie

It's been a long time since I've been excited over a movie.  Yesterday I watched one that I had been looking forward to for months: "The Avengers".  I must admit that the first thing which drew me to this movie was the "Hunk" factor!  Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Chris Evans as Capt America, Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man...what more could a girl want (although Hugh Jackman as Wolverine would have been the icing on the cake!)

It was action-packed almost from beginning till end.  Joss Whedon, who also directed the Buffy series (one of my all time favorites) directed the movie, and a great job he did too.

A new addition (kind of new, I guess) to the Marvel movie world was Mark Ruffalo who played Dr Banner/The Hulk and he was the one who was surprisingly engaging.  His Dr Banner has a wry sense of humor that Edward Norton's didn't have, and his angst of being burdened with this monster within himself was very convincingly portrayed.  In one scene, and I don't know how he did it, there was even an apparent involuntary  facial tic that one sees occasionally in someone going through extreme emotional upheaval.

Chris Evan's Captain America was rather underwhelming here, compared to the Captain America movie.  I somehow did not get the vibe that he was the leader of the group, and he rather paled in comparison to RDJ's Tony Stark personality or even Thor.

One of my favorite scenes in the movie was a very Buffy-like Girl vs Bad Guys fight with the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) managing to defeat 3 (or was it 4?) villains while still tied to a chair in the middle of an interrogation!  Joss Whedon's touch could definitely be seen here...

I want to watch the movie again, because with so much happening on screen, I am sure there are bits & pieces here & there which I missed while trying to absorb everything at once.

I hope a sequel is in the making!

intermission

....a combination of sheer busy-ness, laziness & melancholia has prevented me from updating this blog as often as I would have liked/wanted to. Regular broadcasting will resume as soon as possible. Over & out for now...