Author: F C

Observation: when your family becomes a composite of every TVB Hong Kong soap opera, what can you do? Cops, check. Lawyers, check. Financial people, check. Cooks, check. Medical professionals, check.

YouTube is gathering a lot of depth in its collection of videos, even stuff I thought were not around anymore. My favorite TVB soap opera – The Greed of Man I watched it during my 1991 trip to HK. One of the most well known songs from the show was Red River Valley , a Cantonese version of the American folk song. P and I were looking for the DVD version of the series in Hong Kong, but apparently it was sold out because of the recent Vivian Chow concert.

I also found a video for one of my favorite Vivian songs, “Because of You”. I’m going to pitch that for the Cantonese wedding song. Big shout out to YC for that one, if he remembers it. P’s pitching Nora Jones’ “Come Away” as the English wedding choice. What do you think?

Much to celebrate – went to 2 graduations yesterday – P’s brother and my cousin graduated from the NYC Police Academy and my mom decided to go back for her GED and had a “certification” ceremony yesterday. The former was at Madison Square Garden, and was large, very formal and regimented; the latter was at City Tech and was small, unregimeted but joyous and full of song.

Koreatown buffet place Minato becomes a part of the Todai buffet empire. After the takeover, the food is actually a level better than before – it seemed there was a bit of a decline towards the end of Minato. This would now add to the visits to Honolulu and Hong Kong, and Las Vegas branches. Now I guess we’re going to have to try to hit all of the others.

On Friday night, saw Disney’s “Cars” at the world’s largest drive in movie theater. The experience was pretty unique, but I don’t think it is better than your modern movieplex experience. First of all, the sound quality over a radio is not as good as THX booming sound. Second, car seats do not provide the same comfort as theater seats. Third, the jockeying for position in the lot is fierce, and hard to do without headlights ( I ran over a few pylons in the dark). Then again, traditionally the movie is not the main entertainment of the night… Anyway, took some long exposures of the screen – check it out on the Flickr bar.

Saturday’s drive back involved a stop at Sawgrass, a really huge outlet mall. Bought father’s day stuff, a pair of sandals, and got a 20 minute massage. Then, the drive down to Miami was generally uneventful other than the last minute finding of a gas pump before the car return.

On the flight back, got an upgrade on American and sat next to a New York based captain. Food wasn’t too bad, but the direct to video movie Last Holiday kept us hungry. Queen Latifah and LL Cool J managed to con a movie studio to fund an extravagant vacation. As the FAs were wheeling chicken breast and bbq sauce, Latifah was being wheeled whole turkey. Anyway, the captain was very nice about pointing out different landmarks. We were also talking about noise cancelling headphones.

Waiting for the baggage to come out of the carosel, this guy that was sitting in front of us was complaining about how long the wait was. The taxi home was uneventful other than that he had no idea where downtown Brooklyn was, so I had to direct him. I made it by 11 pm.

Sunday, we took P’s dad out for dim sum, and I formally asked him for permission to marry P, which he gave his blessing. So now we’re loading up on watching the WE channel, which is having a 21 day wedding show marathon. We’re shooting for 2008, because we want and need to take our time, and the Wall Street Journal says that 2007 is a bad year for weddings (2006 is one of the best years), because it is lacking a lunar spring.