Anotherblog » holidays

Gung Hei Fat Choy!

admin — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 06:18:43 +0000

It was Chinese New Year on Monday, in addition to being Australia Day, so of course it was an extra special day for Hong Kong Australians. Von and I spent much of the day with Von’s family eating excellent chinese food and watching Cantonese soap operas. I also saw “The Sound of Music” for the first time all the way through, on their ancient laserdisc player. A good day, but I made it a little stressful for myself by trying to memorise a couple of new year greetings. It’s traditional to exchange good wishes for each other, so I memorised:

Sun1 Tai2 Geen3 Hong1 – Good health
Maan6 See6 Sing3 Yee3 – Luck
Tshing1 Chun1 Suong6 Jiu3 – Beauty
Sum1 Suong5 See3 Sing6 – Ten thousand things as you desire

The numbers represent tone (which I think I have roughly correct): 1 is high level, 2 is mid rising to high, 3 is mid level, 4 is mid falling to low, 5 is low rising to mid, and 6 is low.

Anyway, I had a lot of trouble going from one phrase to the next, so it took me a couple of seconds of run-up to give my good wishes in Cantonese, which was quite frustrating, as the others stood around wondering why I was chewing on my lip and staring into space (specifically, the space to the upper left of my vision) muttering to myself.

Still, we were all happy that I managed to say the phrases (eventually), and hopefully next year I’ll start practicing a bit earlier, so they’ll be more second nature. The Cantonese soaps will hopefully have helped with that too – they’re great practice for picking out phrases that I’ve learned.

EDIT: Fixed some of the tones in the phrases.

Holidays

admin — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 00:21:24 +0000

Back to work after some excellent holidays with Veronica in Brisbane. It would be tedious and hunger-inducing (it’s nearly lunchtime) to list the quantities of food consumed, but somehow we got through the christmas festivities without putting on much weight, and a quick jog last night seemed to sort things out. Hooray!

My favorite bit of loot scored for christmas: CB bought me a solar charger, which is really cool. I’ve already used it to charge up my mobile phone, and it can charge my iPod as well, after being left out in the sun for a few hours (I’m still not sure exactly how long it takes to do so, but it doesn’t seem to be more than an hour or two). Thanks CB! Also scored much other cool loot from Mum & Dad & Jen & Marco & Von & Von’s family – books, CDs and music, which I will review upon consuming.

Hong Kong

admin — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 01:21:03 +0000

…was terrific. We ate much good food and did a lot of shopping – Hong Kong action movies were purchased – and visited tourist spots and had an all round excellent time. I’ll put up some photos when I figure out what’s wrong with the photo uploading bit on wordpress!

In Hong Kong with Veronica

admin — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 04:16:08 +0000

I’m on holidays in Hong Kong with Veronica. It’s excellent fun. We’ve seen touristy sights; we’ve gone shopping (me for Hong Kong DVDs, both of us for clothes), and we’ve been eating mightly quantities of Chinese food. Superb!