sim-family.net

Wei is visiting this week! (He saw Yong, Yvonne, Heng and Emma in London a couple of weeks ago.) All three of us – Wei, Liza, and I – love ice skating, so we planned a little skating vacation. Since the Northeast US and Canada are so cold in the winter, the surface of small lakes and canals freeze over so that you can skate on them – it’s an incredible experience to skate freely on such a huge surface after going around and around on a small artificial rink all the time. The ice has to be at least 30 cm thick to be safe for skating. The authorities test the thickness regularly to ensure that the thickness is sufficient.

We skated in 2 places: (1) Lake Morey, in the US state of Vermont (about 3 hours south of the Canadian border and 3 hours north of Boston), which is about 6 km circumference, and (2) Rideau Canal, an incredible 8 km long canal running through the middle of Ottawa (the capital of Canada – about 9 hours’ drive from Boston). Both freeze over naturally, but the authorities do sweep / slighly flood the surface to make it smoother for skating.

When we were at Rideau last weekend, only about 3km out of 8km were open for skating due to a few days of warm weather in January, but it was still fantastic. IT was also COLD – as cold as -20 C at night, and windchill made it feel close to -30 C, which is why we dressed like Michelin men ninjas while skating.

Here are some random videos from my camera:

And I’ve added a few photos on Facebook. Wei has also added a few videos and photos on Facebook – let us know if you can’t see it.

Wei and I also skied for a day at Killington (also in Vermont), one of the largest ski resorts in the Northeast US. However, I’m sure it’s nothing compared to skiing in the Alps or Whistler, which at least Heng has done (probably Yong and Yvonne too?)

In other news, Liza’s brother Pete and sister-in-law Becca had a baby boy in early December, Alexander. I’ve put a few photos of Liza, Alex and I in the gallery, but I can’t insert them into the post because I see a “broken link” image in the ZP insert photo popup dialog box. Yong – any ideas?

Let’s keep up the posts! It seems like the younger generation has been far more active than the older generation in recent months. Let’s see the oldies post a few things about taxi driving, or Emma’s visit to Australia!

Hi guys. Okay, a quick one. Just thought I would just post up a quick one about Project 365. Yong has had a Project 365 blog for a while now, and has been doing quite well with it.

So well, in fact, that I am going to start my own…. I find that we have kinda stopped blogging for a while, but I think I may write one up every so often when I go travelling (I guess europe IS kinda exciting, especially with all the travelling). Plus my own blog will mean that Mum and Dad will stop bugging me for not keeping them updated

So, for shorter, daily blogs, I will be having hengsim.wordpress.com (starting later today). Until next time!

OK, that’s talking myself up, but I’m living like a bachelor this month with Yvonne and Emma in Oz.

It’s been a whirlwind since Emma was born 4.5 months ago (actually it was hectic before then) and I’ve just been able to have a breather this month to get a few things happening.

Like Liang and Liza, we recently moved to a new place. Where we are now is closer to work which means we get to spend more time with Emma; It takes me less than 15min walking door to door. Only downside is that it is further from the city which makes weekend outings a little more of a hassle. For more read here.

I’ve also just started a 365 project where I take a photo a day for a year. This has been something I’ve been meaning to do for a while now (due to pressures from a friend), and have taken the opportunity to start one while I’m by myself. I should’ve really started this for Emma, but got a little sidetracked and didn’t end up doing it.  I’ll make sure I start doing this when I see her next as the progress with Emma will be more interesting then mine!

My theme for this time round is based around myself, however, looking at various sites online though, I think I might change my approach if I decide to pursue the project for a second year.

Last but not least, I hope this sparks another lot of updates on the sim-family site now that it’s back up.

Hmm, I think Liza and I are becoming domesticated (merely a month after moving in together!) It’s Saturday night and here we are, enjoying a quiet night at home. She’s studying a little and I am blogging.

So tonight we attempted to make Chinese steamed fish. To begin, I bought went to the fish shop across the road from our apartment this afternoon. I asked the fishmonger what would be a nice fish to steam Chinese style, and she asked whether I wanted one with a “heavy” or “light” taste. I chose the latter, and she recommended an ocean perch (aka “redfish”). They scaled it and gutted it on the spot for me.

Then I called Dad to check the ingredients of the sauce: finely chopped garlic, shallots and ginger, mixed with a bit of vegetable oil and nuked for 2-3 minutes. Meanwhile I steamed the fish for 8 minutes. When that was done, I drained the excess water from the fish, poured the sauce on top, added soy sauce to the sauce mixing bowl to collect the remaining oil, and poured that mixture over the fish too, as per Dad’s careful instructions.

The result:

Mmm, pretty good, and so FRESH. The sauce was particularly tasty. I might try other types of fish next time, since this one didn’t have that much flavour.

In other news, I bought myself a road bike (this time with gears) – a Specialized Allez Sport 2009. I was proud of myself for getting this one for a ~30% discount. I also got clipless pedals and shoes (so that you can put power in the pedals pulling up as well as pushing down), and some spandex cycling shorts and shirt.

Liza already has a nice road bike (as well as her fixie… we each have two bikes now), and we are trying to ride as much as possible before winter arrives. It’s amazing how far and fast you can go effortlessly with a nice bike (and spandex, of course). Two weekends ago we did a 100km ride with a couple of other friends, stopping in the middle for lunch. Last weekend and this weekend we’ve done ~65km afternoon rides out of the city to check out the beautiful autumn leaves. Here are some photos of this sexy machine.

Of course, kudos go to Wei for training for the Oxfam Trailwalker – a 100km fundraising walk in November! Wei, are you going to blog about your training?

(By the way, I’ve stopped skydiving because I don’t feel like spending the money on it any more, and because I felt guilty about its carbon footprint.)

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Some random Sunday photos of the apartment. Liza studying in the bedroom (she sometimes prefers the low stool over her desk in the right photo) and reading the Sunday paper in the living room (we started a weekend subscription to the New York Times). Then two photos from our study / bike room. We are careful about our hot bikes to the point where we lock them together even indoors.

View from the bedroom window.

We are at the corner of Lambert and Cambridge St. You can see a few of the shops we have conveniently located around us – the pub (Pug’s), the fishmonger where we bought the perch above, and a liquor store – woohoo! We also have a huge supermarket conveniently located 3 minutes’ walk away (down Lambert St) and an ice rink (5 minutes’ walk). Across the road from the fish market (not in photo) is a butcher named Fresh Killed Poultry.

The right photo is the first photo I’ve tried to stitch together using Canon’s Photostitch  software (came free with my camera) and it seems to work very well.

It’s been a hectic few weeks! A very quick update, and I’ll just link to photos I uploaded to Facebook.

First, Liza and I went to Australia and had a blast (see here and here)

Then we just moved in together, and barely three days later, Wei came to visit!

That’s why I have hardly been blogging. Basically it has been a wonderful but hectic time; work got busy as soon as I got back. Enjoy the photos!

I’ll probably get blasted by Wei for writing this post (“it should be a comment!”) but anyway, we’re super excited!!

I remember learning a word at orientation day in uni, whose definition was “a life/society changing invention/realisation” or something along those lines… examples given were cars and velcro… anyone remember what that word might be?

Anyways, not exactly the same, but there was a semi-life changing realisation for me which Yeeman showed me the other day. Not only was it mind blowing it totally changed the way I think about elevators (think epiphany!). I remember back a few years ago, Jun was telling me at work, that he’d heard whispers of a secret technique to pressing button on elevators such that it could override all the other floors pressed and take you straight to the floor of your choice for emergency situations and what have you. Ofcourse we googled this to no avail, and concluded that if this technique was probably an urban myth and that if it really existed that everyone would be using it and no one would get anywhere… and that was the end of that.

Now, the other day when I went to Yeeman’s place for her T9 BBQ, we were going shopping, and I wasn’t sure which the ground floor was cos she had floors like LB, MP, LP (or something along those lines) etc etc, so I just pressed ALL the buttons below the level she lived on (she lives on G). Unfortunately the floor that we wanted to get off on was actually the most bottom floor. After she got into the lift and saw what I had done, she briefly chided me… then she DID IT!

SHE DID THE SUPER MOVE OF ELEVATORS!!!! She cancelled ALL the floors in between and we went STRAIGHT DOWN to the lobby. IT BLEW MY MIND!!!

The humble elevator which thru all my years in Australia, and all my 2-3 years in HK (where I take an elevator AT LEAST six times a day just to get to work and home – usually +10 times cos I go out at lunch time) which I thought I had TOTALLY mastered showed me what an AMATUER I was and how I had SO MUCH more to learn about it! I don’t know if the technique works on all elevators, but I just tried it on my elevator at work in One IFC, and it works there too! I’ll try it tonight when I go home (I forgot to last yesterday…and the day before).

Anyway, for those interested in how to execute the move (for those of you who already knew this don’t laugh), all you need to do is tap the button which you have accidentally pressed a few times until the button unlights, and the elevator will no longer go to that floor! Jun – after reading this I suggest you take a ride in the lift downstairs for an afternoon coffee!

Just wanted to say that I’ve finally put up the photos I took in Vietnam. I’ll try to write more on this post a bit later, but the photos are here.

OK, in order to collate all Emma’s photos somewhere I have created a blog/photo site that is pretty much what we have setup for sim-family.net

So for future reference please visit emma.simlee.com

And for those that are curious as to who Zelda is… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Zelda.

Just a quick post really because I intend to write a better one later. Yvonne gave birth to our beautiful baby girl at 11:46am yesterday weighing in at 2.3kg and 49cm. She arrived 3 weeks too early!! Must know the British summer is short and want to make the most of it.

Here are some pictures to start… We’ve got a few things to do and once things are more settled I’ll post again.