Monday, April 20, 2009

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Our Story

中文

Recently I have been teaching myself to use Adobe Premiere Pro in order to create a wedding slideshow for my sister-in-law. I now realized how time consuming and how much effort it takes to create animation effects in a slideshow.

We have wanted to put the following video on this blog since the beginning. Now that I have started working on a slideshow myself, it seems like a good time to do so. Anyway here we would like to present you the story of Gwen and Ian.

For those who have watched this in our wedding, you can now watch it again.
For those who weren’t able to join us in our wedding, this is what I was talking about before.

video

I would like to Thank our friends Steven John for the animations, Andrew Smith for providing the sound effects and sound track and Ian himself for doing all illustrations of us and the backgrounds.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

A day in Hong Kong

中文
Ian was away on business trip, Gwen was on holiday. Since they were in close proximity, the two of them decided to meet up in Hong Kong. Their friend Al from Chengdu also joined them, along with Gwen's sister. The four spent a weekend together.

If you are visiting Hong Kong for only a day or two, don't bother with the Octopus.
What is the Octopus? The Octopus card is a transportation pass that is widely used in Hong Kong. It gives you convenient access to the MTR system(the underground Mass Transit Railway), trams on Hong Kong Island, plus buses and mini vans throughout Hong Kong. You can even use the Octopus card to make purchases at the 24-hour Seven-Eleven stores which are always just around the corner. Of course you have to pay for it, the Octopus is just a prepaid system. You don't get discounts from it, but in a hectic place like Hong Kong, convenience is king.

Dim Sum was the first stop we hit as neither Chengdu nor Vermont have any Dim Sum. We went to this restaurant called The Grace Garden at Causeway Bay. They have some of my favorite dishes. The food was okay but the portions cannot satisfy two hungry beasts at all (I meant Ian and Al).

After Dim Sum, we walked around Causeway Bay, one of the most crowded places in Hong Kong. The crowd was an unstoppable tide. It took four snaps to finally be able to get a group picture in the middle of it. Four Asians standing in the middle of the street is a real bother, admitted.

We then visited a Herbal Tea place which are quite common. Ian had the Tortoise Jelly while the rest of us took a sweet herbal tea - the Five Flower tea.









From the picture, you may find it unappetizing. And if you are vegetarian, cover your eyes at this point. The Tortoise Jelly is made of ground turtle shells mixed with other herbal substances, there are several formulas posted online, but the main ingredient is always the turtle shell. They serve it either cold or warm, and the taste is bitter, so people usually consume it with syrup, sugar, or honey to compensate for the bitterness. What is Tortoise Jelly good for? Traditional texts state that it can benefit kidneys and bones, strengthen heart and male fertility, heal headaches and dizziness, calm nerves, fight insomnia and memory loss, remedy loss of menstrual blood, and cleanse pores. In a nutshell, it's better to ask what it doesn't do.