Blessings at Man Mo Temple

Man Mo Temple in Tai Po Market,

Pictures don't do it justice, but this centennial, heritage listed building houses an altar for worshipping two deities. 

Namely, the God of Literature, Man Tai and the God of War, Mo Tai, ..... hence the origin of the name of the temple.

The building itself is quite small and located on a bustling market street, so one might be forgiven for not noticing it at all whilst buying daily groceries.

What attracted us, were not the countless statues of the revered deities in question, but the sight of huge joss coils (for a lack of better word) that were suspended from the ceiling and all lit up,  thus the thick smoke emanating from the temple was quite a bit of an attack on our lungs. 

It beats us how the temple caretakers are able to operate in such a 'smog', day in, day out.......I bet the Gods provide them with some 'protection', otherwise the temple has already gone into liquidation by now in these times and ages of lawsuits involving health matters :p

Apparently scholars in the old ages worshipped these 2 Gods asking for support and hoping for good results.

So makes us think, why not send our Dragon Girl there and hope for the better.....regarding her school education......one might never know :p

Scrub away - DIY



 

Do-It-Yourself pampering,

Ladies and beauty products, inseparable........

Somehow ladies of all ages alike always find a reason of 'beautifying' themselves, not that I am complaining though.

Instead of shelling out hard-earned cash at the beautician, a multitude of stores offer a multitude of beauty products, ranging from facial masks, skin rejuvenators, peelers and etcetera......Jessica, who has conveniently access to these products at whole sale prices, brought a tube of hand scrubber back home.

What it does, in a nutshell, is peel off the dead skin on the hands, rejuvenating the cells and ending up with 'younger looking' hands as the end result.

So scrub away!!!  Granddaughter and grandma with helping instructions from mummy poured  the product on their hands and rubbed their hands vigorously 'till unsurprisingly their respective hands looked indeed much 'younger'....:)

Whilst the three ladies of the house were busily attending to their scrubbing needs.....our maid, was nowhere to be seen........

Where could she have been 'hiding'??, .... finally caught her in the back of the kitchen and as the below pictures show, she was busily applying some 'mask' to herself....

Ladies,.....they are all the same.....:p

Japanese Noodles on the fly

Noodles on the fly,

"YATA", an upper-scale Japanese department store has opened a branch next to our humble casa in Hong Kong, and they spared no expenses to make it a grand affair.

Even to the extent that they flew over a master chef in noodles preparation to do/show the following below :

1. the virtuoso of the chef in question of how to prepare "Noodles a la Japanese style"
2. to teach the crowd how to properly cook noodles at home
3. to entice the shoppers to buy their particular brand of 'flyable' noodles

Ofcourse, someone in the accounts and marketing section of YATA, was shrewd enough to come up with a plan to recoup their investment of flying this particular 'chef' over.....

Serve the "flying noodles" to the public at a charge of HKD20-HKD30 per bowl (2-3 euro's)........

So what did we do then?  Did we really buy the noodles in question and try to 'fly' it ourselves?,......were we brave enough to taste it on the spot?.....

Alas the answer is NO to both.....noodles in all kinds of forms, we are cool with that............but 'flying' noodles? No way !!!

Have to admit though that the Chef knows his business of how to let the noodles fly :p



FanLing, worshipping the ancestors every 10 years

FanLing, and more specifically FanLing Wai 粉嶺, (FanLing's ancient walled village)

What used to be a quaint little village in the New Territories of Hong Kong, founded by the Pang clan, has blossomed into a bustling, thriving city near the border of China.  Profiting from cross-border traffic and commerce.  But the ancient part of FanLing Wai is still very much a collection of old and new brick houses, seemingly randomnly built next to eachother surrounding a big pond.......and surprisingly the village has preserved a sense of tranquility when compared with the newer, expanded FanLing town.

Ages ago, the extended Pang family, decided to hold a once every 10 years, a festival to commemorate their ancestors......and thus anno end of 2010, the sleepy little town of FanLing once again has been transformed into a bustling mega fair.

Apart from the many temporary praying halls, what dominated the grounds was the Chinese Opera building totally constructed out  of bamboo sticks...........

The plays in the opera depicted tales and stories relating to the Pang Clan, but also popular plays found in HK in general......it's common folklore that the performances are not only for the living amongst us, but also for the Pang ancestors............

And to make the celebration package complete, performances by a troupe of lion dancers who dazzled the crowd with their acrobatic stunts, entertained the festive crowd....

For us, bystanders, it's a marvellous experience, savouring old customs still in vogue, going back to its roots,............

Just wondering whether our own little dragon lady and her possible offspring will entertain Jessica and me in that way when we are in heaven..........

I won't say "keep on dreaming", but rather "keep on hoping" :p

Double digits

Wooooooooow,..................more than 4 months?!?

Fully aware that we neglected our blog for a long time, but not to that extent, .........grrrrrrrrrrr

Time to make amends then.

Double digits !!!

Yups, our not-so-little-one has become a teenager....

Reflecting back on the past decade, it has happened all so fast,

From the very first moment she left the cosiness of my dear wife's womb, slowly opened her eyes and set gaze upon this world,

the loooong days and nights that she kept everyone awake with her loud crying, vying for attention, for nourishment........

and then slowly but surely growing up into the little dragon princess, taking her very first steps, carefully, one by one..........tightly gripping the staircase railings when coming down, ...never ever getting her fingers stuck in any drawers , .....she was bleeping careful of not getting herself hurt....

her very reluctance of getting rid of her 'best' friend(s), her pacifier and a piece of white cloth, which were a must-items for her in order for her to sleep

her anxiety when she was put in kindergarten for the very first time, enough crocodile tears to fill a pond, and her subsequent futile excuses in order not to return to the kindergarten......

the time she spent in the child's ward of the hospital, getting treated for a mild form of asthma......yelling at her paediatrician "I don't like you...you are stupid, you are stupid"!!!!

having her first tooth removed at the dentist...........clutching her tightly on the chair with 3 people before the dentist stepped in and removed the bad tooth in question.....and even then she did manage to take a sharp bite at the dentist's finger.........the dentist was NOT that amused, I tell you that.....

skipping her school homework duties, and in trying to avoid the teacher's menace, blaming it on the mice who ate up her homework..........

threatening and punching classmates into oblivion in the toilets, whenever anyone tried to tell us, Jessica and me, that she was a 'bad' student at school and didn't do her homework......up to the extent that nobody whatsoever from then onwards informed us about our daughter's behaviour at school....

her aversion for any physical activities at all, even in kindergarten opting out of "Physical Exercise" classes, staying in the shade 'cos it was too hot in the sun according to her....

a lust for reading, devouring any books she is able to get her hands onto........

and a passionate love for music, both singing and playing the piano..........

This and countless more anecdotes have been part of our lives for the last decade, and we can't wait to see what the forthcoming decade will bring forth.......

Some might say that the teenage era is the most difficult to handle with, but we are quite sure she'll turn out fine, with a bit of coaching and coaxing here and there

Congratulations little dragon lady, you have brightened up our lives for 10 years and hope many more to come indeed