As usual, I count down in front of the computer and post here at midnight. I don’t know why I bother. When I go back to Sydney and change the site back to UTC + 11 it won’t make any sense anyway. I’m still glad that the internet connection is working well enough for me to do this though. It’s been down for the past few days.

I wonder how many people can say that… they are actually busier during the holidays. I can. Seriously, no matter what some people think, I do NOT have too much time on my hands. On the other hand, may be this is a sign that I had too much time on my hands BEFORE the holidays.

I wonder how many people can say that… they actually lost weight during the holiday season. I can. Yes, I actually lost weight after I came to Hong Kong.

I wonder how many people can say that… they had to try and say “Happy New Year” at midnight at four different times. I can. There are the friends in Sydney that I couldn’t call, the friends in Hong Kong, and then friends in different states in the USA who are more than half a day behind…

I wonder how many people can say that… ehh, I don’t actually have any more items for the list. Happy New Year!

I’m glad that it’s finally Christmas. Hopefully, tomorrow there won’t be any more of the horrible Christmas songs when I go to the shops. Not that I don’t like Christmas songs, but most of the shops that I visit play Christmas songs sung by people with really awful voices.

I watched the movie “Happy Feet” today. It’s really good. I like the way it makes fun of superstition and xenophobia. The Chinese subtitles were really badly translated though. There was somewhere where it said the Arctic Ocean in the subtitles when the penguins were supposed to be in Antarctica. There was also a funny place where Mumble said something like “you’re very… (and then interrupted) fish!”, so in Chinese it becomes “你好魚” (“魚”, the word for fish is a homophone of the word “瘀”, or “embarrassed”).

Well, I’m glad that here in Hong Kong I get to celebrate both Christmas and Winter Solstice. It’s another chance for a big meal! The family gathering is of course the most important aspect of the holiday, as the traditions behind the holidays don’t really mean anything to me (or anyone in my family as far as I know, for that matter). How often does my family get to get together?

I bet Sydney was totally a ghost town today. Christmas Eve is generally time to stay home. Even though I’m in Hong Kong, my family is staying home for Christmas Eve.

As usual, I hope you’re not hungry. Look at all the food!

The Christmas CD that we had wasn’t very good, but I can play a Christmas song on my recorder too! It’s a relatively recent song, “Noël, que du bonheur” (Christmas, what happiness) by Ilona Mitrecey, from the 2005 CD “Un Monde Parfait” (A Perfect World). I even sang some of it afterwards, even though most people in my family didn’t understand French.

It is indeed post overload time. This one will have a wall of images too.

This time, it’s the World Carnival at Admiralty.

These rides were fun! As usual, I kept trying to take photos when I was on the rides. “A view from the ride”, literally.

Even though it’s Winter Solstice and we’re having a big dinner, I won’t show it here because it’s not really that colourful.

Yes, I’m back to Hong Kong! Now that I have a 24-inch screen in my Sydney home, this 17-inch screen is just tiny in comparison. However, the 3-Mbits/s broadband here is just so much better than the 512k over there! There’s no pool or gym at my home here either, but I don’t have to travel too far for that.

One major downside about being in Hong Kong is that the time difference between Hong Kong and California is only 16 hours (as compared to 19 hours between Sydney and California at this time of the year). I don’t get as much time to go on #ennui.

#ennui. I haven’t been there for a while. I haven’t talked to Leighann for a while either. Leighann and anyone on #ennui, if you’re reading this, don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about you.

Right, what have I been doing lately? Somehow, I seem to be busier after the exams finished. Well, there were the 40 or so hours that went into making my formal dress, but what else? I actually spend less time online even if I (theoretically) have a lot more time on my hands. Hmm, it might be the Sims 2, or may be it’s the books and the beading. I do have a “book overload” at the moment, with about 20 books that I haven’t read yet. I need to make Christmas cards and presents too.

Well, I should probably get on with reading that whole pile of books that I brought along with me. (I took them onto the plane with me – that bag was probably heavier than my checked-in suitcase. xD)

It’s this time of the year again, and once again I’ve got into a timing dilemma. This time it’s driving test vs. speech night rehearsal. If anything made me feel bad about failing the driving test last time, this is it. Well, I failed again, and I hurried to the city for the rehearsal. After I got off the train, a teacher saw me on the way, and surprisingly he recognised me even though I don’t think he even knew my name, and I wasn’t in school uniform either. (That said, just about everyone at the school somehow seemed to know me.) Even though it was 10:20 by then, he said the rehearsal only just started and I’ll be fine. Sure enough, when I got there a few minutes later, it was just starting. I saw the maths scientist too, and of course I asked him about whether he has decoded the email. It was no surprise that he hasn’t even tried for quite a while.

I guess overall it’s good timing after all for me (except for failing the test), just like last year. After the rehearsal, I went to the park with Anne, Annie, and Reni. (Wow, all with very similar sounding names.) It just has to be the one time when I don’t have my sketchbook with me. Then again, may be it’s better that I didn’t, because we sat there for two hours just talking. After that, it was finally a chance for Annie to come to my home. (Yay!)

As much of a cliché it is, time flies when you’re having fun. We didn’t have a chance to get to everything that we planned, but it was time to go to our final speech night. Just before it started, I managed to get a photo with the maths scientist, but I’m not putting it here because I don’t want it here. Somehow, I don’t normally notice it too much, but he looks scary in the photo. (Then again, I always seem to get scary-looking photos of teachers, even ones that I know to be nice.)

Somehow, I didn’t even find the speeches boring. I think Alexia’s poem was the best. It was really funny, full of inside jokes about the school, one or two of them I didn’t actually get.

At the end, I saw the teacher who lived relatively close to me, and he said he’ll be catching the train, but he had to say goodbye to other people so we went our separate ways and I didn’t see him on the train. I wonder if he somehow managed to catch an earlier train or if he was still there saying goodbye when I got on the train. (Those trains were like, 20 minutes apart.)

Anyway, this is really it. The last MLC school event that I had to attend. Like they say, you can take the girl out of MLC, but you can’t take MLC out of the girl.

Now that’s a good excuse to play with needles and all that… as if I need one. I spent close to 40 hours tangled with bits of thread and masking tape to make my dress. (Before anyone tries to tell me that I have too much time on my hands, I don’t. In fact, I have so much to do that I never have enough time for everything.)

I only finished it almost at the last minute. The straps were a little bit too long, and the dress itself was so long that I had to tie the end to the strap when I danced, but I’m so proud of it. This was worth every second I spent on it. I remember someone from last year who always made fun of the fact that I can’t sew. Well, she can eat her words now. Of course, I will never be cruel enough to actually tell her that. Not that I’m expecting to see this person again anyway.

A big gathering like this is obviously a “camera overload” time where everyone wants the photos to be taken on their camera even if it’s easy to share them afterwards. Of course, it also means that it’s time for a huge wall of images here:

Finally, the action shots:

Special thanks to Anne for taking the limbo series: