Ma Oh Shan

We have an old family friend that lives in Mah Oh Shan in Kowloon, who had urged us repeatedly to live in his neighbhourhood. The air is fresh, there's more parks, mountain scenery and easy access to Sai Kung (sea and seafood), it would have been good to stay there. Except my office is more than an hour away, entailing three changes in trainlines. I probably won't see Siyuan at all on weekdays living here.
We visited during CNY, and it was a rare sunny day. the kids had great fun running around. Siyuan particularly enjoyed climbing up a teeny slope, and then walking down. Its almost like running for him. He would repeat such actions elsewhere later in the month - on ramps, stairs etc. Anywhere where he can climb up and down.
The Age of Climbing has arrived!

dragon gate

Siyuan and his ninchuku skills, except those are the furry monsters that used to hang round his pram in melbourne.

new year

we were at harbour city in HK for a bit of shopping after attending the wedding ceremony of a former colleague. with us is a colleague of mine.

birthday present

more old pics - one is a toy we bought for siyuan's 1st birthday.
the other shows him chewing on a chicken drum stick. Yup, in the past two months he's quite adept at eating and holding his own food, though the instinct is still to play with him, unless he's really hungry. HK is the land of chicken wings as well :)

eating an apple

We're now in HK, and this was filmed in our service apartment. He's started eating things on his own, and this is him chewing on a slice of apple.

on the plane

just a pic of siyuan on the plane, where he insisted on eating our food, rather than the baby food that was avialable for him.

more pics before leaving melbourne

this is siyuan at the cafe just below our apt block, where they loved him and gave him fries. and he loved those fat fries :)

last few pics in melbourne

a last few pics in melbourne before we packed. the first one, siyuan playing with his little dog, and then hiding in the closet in our hotel in our last week before flying off.

Hey I'm back

Yes, I'm back after a hiatus. The last few months were hectic. We packed and moved to HK, and then scrambled to find a place to stay in. After a week of searching, we found a place on HK island. The whole are used to be a former harbour and was rebuilt into a housing estate in the late 70s and early 80s. It has a Marine Parade feel about it, with wide open areas and we can see the sea where we are. Shoppping mall that's like a bigger Parkmall. A lot of Japanese and Korean expats live here, and so the mart here has a lot of Jap and Korean stuff - which means we can at least buy some products and not worry about whether they were safe or not. My wife started shoppping by trailing after japanese couples, and seeing what meat they bought. She had bought pork previously at a local mart while we were staying in a service apt in our first month, and had to throw it away once. The other time, we tried eating it and it tasted really strange.

Siyuan fell sick after the hectic period, coming down with some kind of stomach virus. He had diareeha many times a day, till he had severe nappy rash and cried every time we tried to change his nappies. At first, everytime he farted, shit would come out. Or rather shitty water. It wasn't fun. There wasn't much the doctor could do. It took about 2 weeks to clear.

In the past month, he has started toddling. First a few steps at a time, and thenone nite took 8 steps. After that, he kept walking, and now can comfortably toddle back and forth within the apartment without falling.

Its been a colder winter than most people anticipated. A cold week has become a month. As a result, we haven't been able to take him out to the park. Instead we've taken him to the mall to toddle after an early breakfast on weekends. Its become the highlight the past two weekends :)


Some pictures of our time moving to follow after