Packing...

I'm heading back to the States on Wednesday and will be staying in the West Virginia / Virginia area for a month. Katherine still has some teaching to do, and a conference to attend in San Francisco, but she'll join me just in time for Thanksgiving. It isn't likely that I'll do any blogging while I'm there (Katherine will have the camera), but you never know. :>

An intimate moment with Fui Fui...

Here's a little video of Fui Fui having is favorite treat: hairball prevention paste! Seriously, he loves it and will beg for it each time we approach the refrigerator...

Quiet drumming...

Now that we have a bit of space, I've been wanting to return to my percussive roots, so this week I picked up a Roland electronic drumkit...

It's very light, compact, versatile (over 1000 percussion sounds), and perhaps most importantly, quiet (I can plug in headphones so that the rest of the hall doesn't have to listen to me). It also makes a nice conversation piece - and might let some of the residents (including Katherine!) get the drumming experience they've always wanted. ;>

Haunting of the 10th Floor!

The 10th floor of our residence hall was haunted last night and its occupants gave tours, two people at a time, to all who dared enter....

We were shown out of the elevator into seemingly endless dark corridors...

...before my camera mysteriously went haywire, refusing to capture any of the horrors that lurked within. Fortunately, though, everyone made it out alive, and my camera returned to normal.

Halloween isn't something that has been historically celebrated in Hong Kong, but in recent years it has become more popular with certain parts of the community. Decorations, costume parties, and a haunted version of Ocean Park (Hong Kong's most popular theme park) are highlights, but trick-or-treating is very rare. It is pretty difficult, since almost everyone lives in an apartment with a locked security gate on the ground floor. So, if there's going to be any trick-or-treating, it would be confined to the complex you live in.

As such, Katherine and I stocked up our candy and hung a "trick or treat" sign just in case anyone wanted to give it a shot...

(Our colors are Halloeen-themed, but we're not really dressed up as anything...except head-wounded versions of ourselves. ;>)

In the end, though, we had to go outside and push candy on whomever we could find, no one came a-knockin'. Perhaps though our years here we will train them better. ;>

Happy Halloween!