Manchester, maybe it's the time?
After a long wait for 6 years, I am going back to England for my second time visit in the country. The UK was the first ever foreign country I visited back, outside China and Hong Kong. As much as I enjoy the English Premier League soccer, I did also recall so many good memories in the trip, including the fabulous bus tour in Scotland with our hilarious driver/tour guide.
In less than 2 weeks, I will be going to Britain from another direction; and I guess from a new perspective - after spending much much more time traveling internationally, and now being adapted more to the western life. And this time, I am considering if my time to visit my theatre of dream has come. It is a place so far but so familiar, where I grew up with from 1994 when I picked up the most favorite sport I have. Yes, it is Manchester United, arguably the best team in the English league, and in the probably best league in Europe, and the world.
Pre-New Year Adventure
My Second Chinese Lunar New Year in the city, a very different new year...
This time I have my girlfriend, my own rental apartment and we made our own dumplings to celebrate the Spring Festival. The auspicious year of pig has arrived - to quite some people back home, a year to raise a "golden pig" (babies)!! There are apparently tens of thousand more people lining up for Beijing alone; even Hong Kong requires the visiting mainland expectant mothers (the recently hot topic) to provide proof of hospital reservation before granting access to them at the border - to avoid non-residents flooding the local maternal care resources.
Something very excited I did to "prepare" the new year was a road trip to Florida from New York - a 17-hour driving journey with my co-worker. Our flight scheduled to Orlando was canceled due to the snowing condition in the Northeast and we decided we want to look up in MapQuest and headed down to our client meeting, with a rental car. I missed a couple of times to do these kinds of roadtrip with my American roommate before, and who knows now the opportunity just showed up to me instantly. Cruising through DC and 10 states including New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Washington DC, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, was an amazing experience even though it was tiring and the overnight driving was a little harsh.
Ching-lish in Beijing
The Beijing City government looks determined to remove some of the funniest (well, could be humiliating to Chinese) signs in the ancient capital:
http://chinese.wsj.com/big5/20070205/chw170242.asp?source=email
Ching-lish in Beijing
The Beijing City government looks determined to remove some of the funniest (well, could be humiliating to Chinese) signs in the ancient capital:
http://chinese.wsj.com/big5/20070205/chw170242.asp?source=email
Life below zero...
After the blessed warm December, New Yorkers are now struggling with subzero degree weather. Take today as an example, it is high at -4 degree Celcius while lowest recorded at -10C, and reached -20C with windchill in the day time.
There is one thing came in handy which we brought from China - long underwears, or "qiu yi, qiu ku" as they are called in Chinese. However, there was also something bad happened today. Not sure if it related to the cold weather, the subway got so frquently delayed. Both my journey to and from work were taking 50% more time for my usual commute. (read: that did make me missing the MTR, underground system in Hong Kong, which is always clean, fast and reliable)
I am hoping we can get some snows indeed - I think we deserve some snowflakes, to raise a little moral for people living in the Big Apple.
