I’m at the Vancouver International Airport countless times a year and up till now, I haven’t noticed the totem poles that are just outside the automatic doors.

I came across a small patch of nature in the midst of a concrete jungle in Hong Kong while on the way to meet a new client.

I thought this was a queue for the bus, taxi, or some sort of public transit… as it was during rush hour by the buses. As it turned out, this was actually a queue for free community newspaper (the bus stop is located at the island). I was told by passerbys this occurs everyday.

Got some more business cards (personal information censored)! 150 cards altogether, 26 designs.

I went to my parents’s place for dinner and found this walking around in the kitchen’s sink.

The meal was a testing menu so it was served as multiple small plates. It began with dripping wet wine glasses on the table. When we ask for them to be changed, the server simply wiped them dry with a napkin right in front of us!

One of its appetizers consisted of a liquefied paste of century egg (a preserved duck egg that is  green-ish black-brown in colour and rubbery in texture) and pickled ginger with a piece of dry ice served in a martini glass. It was hardly appetite inducing.

Its signature dish ‘Molecular Xiao Long Bao’ — a little jellified ball that gives you all the flavours of the classic soup dumpling without having to chew or bite anything — looked like a raw egg yolk that has been left sitting on a ceramic spoon for too long. It pop on this own like a ripe pimple inside my mouth.

Another highlight of the meal was watching the server toss a few lumps of ginger tea into a white vapour-filled bowl of chemicals. Putting the icy pale-beige lump into the mouth was like licking a frozen telephone pole, except it was totally inverted and instead of my tongue, it was my entire mouth.

I start counting down the course because it became quite unpleasant — and very quick. I can appreciate the creativity behind the food but the entire dining experience felt like a lab experiment rather than a luxury dining experience that would have cost HK $1,880 (approx. $242 USD) per person, wine not included.

When I was a little kid, I used to mix all the leftovers and extra condiments from the table for fun — a little soy sauce, chicken bones, onion, fish eye balls, and a dab of wasabi – but, I never made anyone eat it. Let alone charge people for the pleasure.

Some weather-related names listed:

All names are real, unchanged, and followed by a Chinese given name.

• Snow
• Summer
• Sunny
• Rain

How about a name inspired by nature:

• Bamboo
• Spark
• Shadow

No? Perhaps you’re a foodie?  How about:

• Egg
• Apple
• Mango
• Lemon
• Banana
• Creamy
• Crunchy (“Mmm… CRUNCHY!”)

Love animals? Why not name yourself:

• Eagle
• Bear-Bear
• Dolphin
• Frog
• Lion (“I’m Lion.” “About what?”)

Proud of yourself? Then these are for you:

• Handsome (“Hello, I am Handsome!”)
• One (“Hey there”… “I am…the ONE” *winks*)
• Money
• Smacker

The choices are literally endless!

The plan is that all my ramblings will go on here and my all beauty-relatd posts will go on (stay at) my main site. I can be a lot more “informal” over here and ramble to my little heart’s content as I don’t have to worry about HTMLs, codings, formatting CSS, etc. I’m not going to be talking about the latest sunscreen on here but I will undoubtedly rant about something beauty-related every now and then!

This is my not-so-secret diary — I do hope you enjoy reading it. Updates will be sporadic so you might want to subscribe through Google Reader or similar so that you don’t need to constantly check.

Anyway, welcome to my inner thoughts!