First order of business today, drive out to the mall at Hyannis so Car can get a replacement camera. Of course while at Best Buy I see the canon s90, which came out yesterday. so tempting, but I’m gonna wait. I can fix my coolpix with a rubber band, so may be it has a few months left in it.

The main plan today was to systematically visit the cemeteries in this area. There are many old cemeteries here, and they are all full of character and history. So, one by one:

   
Cove Burying Ground: site of the original congregational church and has markers for 3 Mayflower passengers. All in all a nice, peaceful, small cemetery.

Eastham Congregational and Soldier: the major attraction there, surprisingly, is the moss on all the gravestones.

South Wellfleet: a little unkempt, but that’s its charm. Gravestones facing every direction, some markers hidden in grass, other parts more groomed.

Duck Creek: undulating landscape, some markers were broken and lobsided, interesting. Lots of mushrooms.



On the way back, we stopped at Truro Vineyard. Just in time for a wine tasting. $7 for 5 tastes. I had a chardonnay, a vignoles, a cab, their triumph blend and a sweet cranberry wine. The cranberry, and their sweet white, came in distinctive lighthouse bottles. I bought a couple, for decoration.



Dinner was at the lobster pot, where I briefly contemplated having the crab. But i got told off by Car, so I changed my order back to lobster — I’d been whining about lobster for a while, so i had to get it. It was really fresh, having presumably come straight out of the ocean today. Total $30, including clam chowder, salad and a side of mussels. I had a local amber ale too, nice and dark, the way I like it. We walked home, completely full and having had an enjoyable and relaxing day.

Even though it wasn’t exactly under my authority, I let the C&B team out this afternoon. There doesn’t seem to be any official rules (that i know of), but in practice people can leave when the market closed. So some of them left at 2.30pm, some left around 3pm. I had a conference call at 1pm, then I had to work on a document as a result of that call. But I was able to leave around 3pm too.

It’s the start of the long weekend. Yippee.

It has been 5 years, it was a long wait, but it was well worth it.

We took over 1,500 pictures which I’ve trimmed down to 873 and 8 videos in 3 flickr sets: part 1 | part 2 | part 3

There’s a thread in one of the flickr groups called the 5-shots-a-trip game where you’re supposed to show a trip using only 5 pictures. My choices were based on what they brought to me:

• something new — marimo
• something breathtaking — sunset at bibaushi
• something delicate — millenium forest
• something indulgent — the joy of hot springs
• something fulfilling — all that seafood

The whole trip has been written up:

day 1 | day 2 | day 3 | day 4 | day 5 | day 6 | day 7 | day 8 | day 9

Not including flights, hotel and car rental we spent ¥307,823, or approx $2,800 so double that for the whole trip. I’ve broken down the cash spending into categories.

Should really take out mm’s Burberry shopping. Heehee.

We want to go back already. Even with 2 trips there are so many places in Hokkaido we hadn’t explored. The far south Hakodate, the ice boats at Abashiri, the tiny islands off the NW side, Jozenkei Onsen, skiing at Niseko and many more.

An old New York Times article so aptly described why visitors to this magnificent island return to it again and again.

[T]he primary difference between Hokkaido and the rest of this heavily industrialized, crowded country is that it is still raw and largely unsettled. Hokkaido is Japan’s frontier and looks the part. In a country where little goes to waste, the Japanese have set aside large expanses of this countryside.

We’ll try not to let 5 years lapse before our next visit.

1. Full of food

My stomach is full to its limit. We spent 9 straight days eating anything and everything we wanted. Thankfully since it’s Japanese food mostly it’s low on red meat and high on seafood and vegetables. Still, I can’t help feeling bloated after quite a few of those meals. By the time it got to Saturday and Sunday I was subconsciously staying away from snacks, and I found that the trousers I had on at the beginning of our trip felt just that little bit tighter. Sigh.

1. Full of images

We took both my cameras. I had the 350D and mm had the S550. I went through 2 CF cards (total ~3GB) and mm through almost the entire 4GB SDHC card. We ended up with over 1,500 pictures.

Whenever we stopped for a shot potentially there’d be half a dozen pictures all at slightly different angles. mm tends to take 3 identical ones, probably cos of her conservative / safe nature. It’s a lot of work to sort through these and rename them. I can understand for occasion shots to get duplicates, but every.single.one? Sigh.

1. Full of clothes

I’ve done 3 loads of laundry already. I took too many clothes, thinking it’d be cooler than it was, and forgot that Japanese hotels generally provide yukatas.

I can’t seem to accept the idea of wearing a shirt multiple days running. I need new shirts every day, this adds to the laundry load.

home

Flight was at 4.40pm so we had the whole morning for shopping. Breakfast was ramen at the JR station. First time we had ramen this trip and it was a good one.

mm went crazy and bought a handbag and a couple of purses from Burberry Blue Label. Blue Label is exclusively licensed to Japan and seem to have a more contemporary design. We even got the tax refund immediately in the store, very convenient.

I didn’t buy anything, unless ice cream and gumi sweets count.

We were very late returning the car, mm was cornered by someone on a customer satisfaction survey. We were spared the pain of check-in cos of my gold card but everyone was treated equal at security. For the 3 flights leaving around that time there was one security checkpoint so imagine the queue.

The lounge was tiny, more like the waiting room at a train station albeit with better seats and free drinks. The flight was fine, we had 3 seats to ourselves.

Otaru

I didn’t think we’d make it back to Otaru. In my mind it’s got shopping and more shopping and how many pretty glass ornaments can we buy?

I’m glad mm insisted to return. After all, it’s only 30 mins drive from Sapporo. We had a great day. Tired from all the walking, but still good. Parking was difficult, at least for the free variety so we parked for the whole day. ¥100 for 30mins, max ¥1,200, we were prepared to pay the maximum price.

No visit to Otaru can be complete without a stop at the canal. I’ve never really gotten why it’s considered to absolutely stunningly beautiful. It’s pretty, but…I dunno.

Early lunch of uni rice at a food stall. We thought the place would get packed later but the crowds never appeared. They must have stuck to the restaurants on the main strip. And what a main strip. Took us the whole day to walk from one end to the other and back. Mostly glassware, music boxes and ornaments. There were repeats which suggested similar sources. Still, the handiwork was impressive.

I didn’t buy much. mm bought sake sets from the outlet, an award winning bottle of sake, music boxes and other souvenirs. We learned something new today at the Otaru Music Box Museum. Normally music boxes are 18-note, so are limited in the range of music they can play. High end music boxes have 36-, 50- and even 72-notes. One of the curators at the museum showed us the difference, and it was remarkable. The 72-note box played Ave Maria with both treble and bass, just like on the piano (same number of keys). Naturally the price increase is exponential.

Food-wise we had a heavenly day. The seafood stall offering grilled scallops on the shell for ¥100 was too good to pass up. We had one each, then returned to have 2-3 each. At Kitakaro where we got a tea set of coffee, ice cream and puff for ¥500 was equally value for money.

Dinner back at the wholesale fish market in Sapporo. By then it was dark and the stalls had closed, but not the restaurants. For this last dinner we totally gorged ourselves, I had the crab set meal and mm had sushi and tempura. The new room at the Keio Plaza was way better, so much so that I was impressed (or relieved) enough to take pictures.

Bibaushi—>Sapporo

We found ourselves lingering, not wanting to leave, because Bibaushi is so stunning. We traced our route from the station to Takushinkan, this time by car. I’ve tried over the years to try to find more works by Shinzo Maeda and realise his son Akira has taken up his mantle. We bought a big stack of postcards, wanting to buy the whole lot.

A side note is that Takushinkan charged for parking, but only a minute away was a service area with free parking. We wondered why they even charge when every single car parked at the service area. Just as well because we had the sweetest sweetcorn and juiciest cherry tomatoes at the small shop there. The hospitality of the shopkeeper was amazing, she even gave us small doughy rolls to taste. May be our poor student persona was showing again.

The GPS directed us back to Sapporo via Asahikawa, weird. It was lunchtime and we stopped at a huge shopping mall. Had more buta-don and quickly looked around the giant Jusco supermarket. Food was amazing.

We took the fast, and expensive, highway to Sapporo. Instead of wasting time checking into the hotel we headed straight for Sapporo Factory for a little shopping. Not far away was the Sapporo Bier Garten. The beer museum was closed by the time we got there, but dinner had just begun.

Wow. Talk about vast and organised. The speciality is jingisukan, the romanji spelling for Genghis Khan. No surprise that it’s barbequed lamb. There are several different restaurants in the complex and the choices are - full buffet, 100 minute all-you-can-eat, à la carte and a grill. We opted for the AYCE, which for ¥3,570 included beer and soft drinks. I had 3 glasses (500ml each I think) of draft and a half-half mix of draft and black beer. Followed with a glass of oolong tea.

Another shopping mall next to the beer garden and the main attraction was the Uniqlo store. We both managed to buy something, woot!

When we checked into the Keio Plaza we were told that we had a standard (smoking) room for one night and had to move rooms for the second night. We were really, really annoyed. I mean, if a customer requests an additional night before their original booking, wouldn’t it make sense to have one room for both nights instead of treating it as two separate bookings? Not sure if it was the problem with our travel agent or the bureaucratic hotel.

Furano—>Biei

Today was all about reliving old experiences and sampling new ones. Furano, Biei and Bibaushi invoke images of rolling hills, vivid flowers and lone trees like no other place in my mind.

The cheese factory was a new experience. It was a little out of town and we didn’t have a car last time to reach there. There were free samples, including a black cheese made with cuttlefish ink, as well as hands-on cheese making sessions.

Next to the factory was an ice cream factory. We didn’t try it cos it was too early in the morning. A short walk to the back led us to a photographer’s gallery where the owner sold me one of his books.

Then it was off to Farm Tomita, arguably the biggest tourist attraction in Furano. The lavender had wilted by now, but there was still plenty of other flowers. Lavender inside the greenhouse if photographed a certain way gave the impression that it was outside.

The famous slope was bare, compared with full bloom last time.

Between Furano and Biei was the Trick Art Museum [English translation of Japanese site] where 2D paintings gave the illusion of 3D. Fun stuff.

Yet again we missed the narrow lunch window and most places in Biei were closed. We ended up eating instant ramen from 7-Eleven in our car. Sometimes we splurge out on expensive meals and yet sometimes we go back to poor student mode.

The starting point of the Biei circuit is Pension Ken & Mary with its distinctive tree. They charge ¥300 entrance to the café, or we can buy something to drink and sit on the terrace. No brainer, duh.

The sun was almost setting when we reached the Shikisai Hill otherwise known as four seasons hill farm. The hay figure was a memory from last time, as was their pumpkin ice cream.

We had dinner at an izakaya - drinking places that are part pub and part tapas bar. We ordered sushi, yakitori, fried camembert, and beef on hotplate. I had a beer and mm a sake. Such a pleasant way of spending an evening.

The softball gold medal match was on. I saw the first few innings at the bar and caught the final few after getting back to the b&b. To see the elation on the faces of the winning Japanese team was gorgeous. When the last US hitter got run out, one of the commentators cried and squealed, even not knowing Japanese I could tell her excitement.

Tokachigawa Onsen—>Obihiro—>Furano

Time to pack up and leave the Kangetsuen, sniff sniff. What a lovely place. Before heading out of the area totally, we explored the town around the hotel. Behind the visitors centre we enjoyed a foot bath and a few minutes’ drive away was the huge flower clock at Tokachigaoka Park.

Then it was time to head out in the direction of Obihiro and the Tokachi Millennium Forest, a nature reserve that is an eclectic combination of wilderness, agriculture, ecology, education, art and technology. The owners expect the site to be sustainable for 1,000 years and aim:

to nurture and maintain the natural woods where various animals and plants live. By planting conventional species of trees, we are restoring the original Tokachi forest. We welcome our visitors to come and discover the abundant nature of the forest, and to ultimately enhance their knowledge of agriculture.

The park was designed by Dan Pearson who was also responsible for Roppongi Hills and Millenium Dome. There were distinct zones - forest, grassy plain, agriculture garden and even a cheese factory. Located randomly in the park are works by various artists, the most famous being Yoko Ono.

We spent a bit of our money at the cheese factory on goat’s cheese. Got to sample fresh milk from this morning too.

We would have stayed at the forest for the whole day if not for needing to move on…and find lunch. We headed back to Obihiro, parked, and found out that most shops and restaurants were closed. It was only just after 2pm. Sigh. By sheer luck we came across Kita no Yatai which was a narrow alleyway of small stalls that looked interesting. These open at night for drinking and chatting so we wouldn’t get to experience them, what a shame.

One of the restaurants that were open nearby served buta-don, which is associated with the area. The options depended on the number of slices of pork on rice. We chose the smaller 4-slice portion and supplemented with a vegetable tempura.

Next stop after Obihiro was Furano. Funny thing about GPS, not all roads are registered on satellite. When we got to one of the toll booths the attendant tried very hard, with lots of words and drawing on a map, to explain to us that a new highway just opened. It was only driving on it, and freaking out the GPS (driving through a blank screen was hilarious), that we figured out what was happening.

We checked into the b&b and drove to town for dinner at Kumagera. Its speciality was raw beef don, tofu cheese and beef hot pot. mm had the beef don and I opted to try the bear set meal. Yes, bear meat. They warned that since it’s difficult to hunt bear, it may not be available all the time but they had it tonight. It tasted gamey but not as strong as venison, a little chewy like jerky but in general quite nice.

The restaurant also had a large selection of sake, so it became impossible for us not to try a glass.

The pension had a small onsen bath and we enjoyed that for a while. The best thing actually was the open shower area and we could talk and share the bathing experience. No wonder the Japanese talk about the social aspect of going to the onsen. There is no embarrassment about being naked with other bathers, unlike what might occur in other countries. No staring, no judging, no lewdness. Stripping away clothing is like leaving social barriers and other stresses of real life behind. Once in the baths, the flow, the heat and the sound of the water has a cleansing and peaceful effect.

Kushiro

Long drive today to Kushiro not helped by the poor weather. It rained and was cloudy all day. We missed the wetlands train by a few minutes, but we were only half-heartedly rushing for it anyway.

We made the tour of the wetlands by car instead. The Hosooka Viewpoint gave an expansive view of the meandering Kushiro river below us. This panorama was stitched from 6 photos, click for larger image.

Lunch was at Washo market, a non-descript building housing a wet market of about 80 stalls selling fruits, vegetables, seafood and other produce. The reason for the visit wasn’t because it is one of the three largest seafood markets in Hokkaido, it was to sample the katte-don, or “make-your-own” chirashi. It was simple. Buy your rice from one of the many stalls, picking the appropriate size. It’s sold by weight so no issue about scrimping. Next, go to one (or several) of the many seafood stalls and select the various items you want on your rice. That’s it. As was our focus on this trip, ebi, salmon roe and uni formed the main selection. Two chirashi plus a plate of uni came to ¥5,050.

The next stop was the Tancho Reserve that is home to a flock of red-capped cranes, Japan’s national bird. From pictures we thought it was an open nature reserve and were a little surprised to be confronted with high wired cages each housing a crane family. Strange. It could be that most of the cranes had migrated elsewhere, since they were only supposed to be on site during the winter. The theory that the ones remaining were in captivity was quickly debunked when a couple of them flew out of the cages and starting hanging out on the footpath. Clearly if they wanted to fly away they could, and these few chose to stay. It would still have been nice to see them in their natural habitat but it was also reassuring to know that they weren’t prisoners. They were tame though, we walked past them very close and they weren’t bothered.

We had coffee and ice cream at the small (rather deserted) souvenir shop off to one side of the carpark. The service we received was as usual impeccable.

There was just enough time to pay a short visit to the Kushiro City Marsh Observatory, another lookout to the wetlands.

Guess what? Our third beautiful dinner and more relaxing soaking in the onsen followed by Olympics. That’s the life.

Akan—>Mashu—>Sulphur Mountain

Breakfast was in the large dining room and self-service. All the traditional items were available - rice, fish, noodles, pickles. There was a local item that was like semolina with croutons that was interesting. Yogurt was more sticky than what we were used to, and had a mild taste. The tea from a teabag was awful so I stuck to oolong and green teas.

The drive to Akan was under 2 hours. We had our first petrol station experience on the way. It had been years since we’d been to a fully serviced place. They even cleaned our windows, and directed traffic to guide us back out to the road. Talk about great courtesy and service.

Lake Akan is one of three lakes in the Akan National Park. We just missed the hourly sightseeing boat so we took the speedboat option.

The main attraction of Lake Akan was to see marimo, slow-growing algae balls that populate the bottom of the lake. Marimo was declared a national treasure and there is a concerted effort to preserve them. The Marimo Observation Centre is located on an island at the top end of the lake. The round shape of the marimo is formed through gentle rotation of waves, and one of the exhibits replicated this action. It’s just like a relaxed version of lava lamps. [hurray for flickr video]

Back on shore, we walked the length of the village of Akankohan. The main industry being tourism, there was an abundance of souvenir shops. But hidden between buildings were hand or foot baths. Temperatures ranged from cool to too-hot-to-put-your-foot-for-more-than-5-seconds. Very enjoyable and relaxing.

The far end of the village behind the Ainu tribal museum was a 30-minute nature walk that led back to the lake. The end of the walk was the Singing Marimo monument, from what we could gather it had song lyrics carved into a rock.

Lunch was rice bowls at a local family place. Pork for mm and ebi for me. As with many Japanese we came across on this trip, we communicated through a combination of hand gestures, pointing and lots of nodding. The Japanese has a cute tendency to continue talking in fast Japanese even though they fully understand that we understand 0% of what they are talking about. It’s as if by talking even more, some of it will get through.

We hurried to Lake Mashu. The drive took longer cos of slow moving vehicles. We ended up at Observatory No 1, and a nice view. Apparently the lake is often covered by mist from the Kushiro wetlands but today it was open though overcast. Apparently also the view from Observatory No 3 is better (there isn’t any No 2) but we didn’t have time.

The next stop was Io-zan, or sulphur mountain. Similar to the hellmouth at Noboribetsu but on a smaller scale, there was a short path that led up a little into the mountain where we could see, feel and smell the sulphur seeping out from the rockface.

Another fully loaded, beautifully cooked dinner course and hot spring evening followed. Heh, we even did laundry.

I didn’t realise until mm told me that we were going too fast, even worse than a tour group. Sorry, mm. Let’s slow down and take our time.

Sapporo—>Furano—>Tokachigawa Onsen

We got up early to visit the tourist information office. We’d decided to revisit a favourite and spend 2 nights at Furano. Yes, it’s another tourist mecca but it really is very pretty. Disappointly the tourist information office couldn’t help us book accommodation; and neither could the travel agency we were directed to. We decided to stop off on our way to Tokachigawa to make the reservation ourselves. With the sheer number of hotels and b&bs in Furano we weren’t worried.

That settled, we headed off for brunch at the seafood market. The more popular one is Nijo Market near Odori Park but we went to the Central Wholesale Market which was just 10 mins’ drive away. The advantage was the less crowded location and easy parking. We’d also seen a leaflet for Kaisen-ichiba Kitano Gourmet which reassured us that a) there’d be some English and b) it had a phone number for GPS direction. We weren’t disappointed, the prawn looked like it was gonna jump off the bowl, the seafood was so fresh. Two chirashi plus a grilled conch came to ¥6,750. No need for drinks, a jug of cold tea was on every table. Watched the finish of the woman’s marathon, so impressive when the runners enter the bird’s nest stadium.

Dessert was yubari melon from a street stall, Japan’s version of luxurious cantaloupe melons. To give a perspective on just how luxurious, the best pair in this year’s first auction fetched ¥2.5 million in May. Ours were more modest, at ¥100 a slice.

The drive to Furano was just under 2 hours. Would have been faster if we hadn’t gotten stuck behind some truly sloooooooow drivers on the single-lane A-roads. The speed limit was 50km/hr, so okay, we were above the limit. Then again, so were 98% of the other drivers. Not sure of the purpose of setting such a low speed limit only for it to be broken by almost everyone.

It was straightforward booking the hotel, even with the language difficulty. We went for a pension near the ski lift that mentioned an in-house onsen. Stopped off for an ice cream and then we continued on our way to our destination for the next 3 nights, Kangetsuen at Tokachigawa Onsen.

This was the highlight of the trip. The Japanese-styled room was simply furnished but roomy. The sizes of the rooms are measured by the jo. Ours was 8-jo which converts to 12.24m². The futons were put away in the closet during the day, and the hotel staff set them out on the tatami during dinner. Originally we wanted to book the rooms with en suite spa, but our agent couldn’t secure them.

Our stay included breakfast and dinner. The dinners were traditional Kaiseki style, consisting of a multitude of delicate courses carefully cooked and presented. The attention to detail was amazing, from the small glass of pre-dinner drink to the orientation of the plates.

After dinner was another highlight, the onsen. After thoroughly showering, it was time to try out the different baths. There was a main mineral bath with whirlpool section, a separate whirlpool, waterfall, stone walking pool, sauna and an outdoor bath. My favourite was the outdoor bath, overlooking what looked like the fields outside the hotel and further, a nearby bridge (hard to see without glasses, hee). Rocks form the boundary of the bath and there were submerged areas to sit on when the water got too hot.

The Olympics were on tv. We watched volleyball, basketball, gymnastics and other games. Commentary in Japanese was interestingly incomprehensible. Naturally they focused on the Japan team, and it looked like they were doing very well.

Sapporo

We visited Hokkaido in 2002 and were awed by the beautiful scenery. We’ve talked so many times in the intervening years about going back, and it’s taken 6 years. Even though we are missing the peak tourist season, July, when lavenders flower, we figured there will be so many other things to see and experience.

The flight arrived early but the long queue at immigration ate away the time advantage. We wheeled our bags to the Toyota Car Rental counter only to discover that, hee, it’s affliated with Hertz. No wonder when we reserved online that it was so efficiently English. In a procedure that reminded us of Heathrow, we registered at the counter and then were taken by van about 5 mins’ drive offsite to the main rental location.

Our car was a Ractis, class P2 (similar to group B or C). For 8 days it was ¥75,600 including insurance. Automatic and came with GPS. I’d emailed them previously to ask for an English-speaking GPS and that was what we got. The people who got the car next to us at the parking bay obviously didn’t make that specification and had to change their car.

First thing I noticed when I got into the car, I didn’t know where the handbrake was. How embarrassing. Turned out it’s a foot pedal located where the clutch would have been if it were a manual car. :blush

Second thing about the GPS. It spoke English but the dashboard was still in Japanese. There were English instructions but we managed with the kanji anyway. Programming a location was dead easy - just key in the phone number!

The last time we’d rented a car on a long holiday was New Zealand, although I’d driven in the US in the last couple of years. But driving was easy, it helped that Japan is on the right side of the road and the roads are in good condition.

This first night we stayed at the Keio Plaza. Location was perfect, a few minutes’ walk from the JR station. We hadn’t booked all our nights for this trip, and were hoping that the tourist information office could help. We took bundles of brochures off to dinner to talk about options.

By the time we remembered that we had a car, we were at the ticket machines in the subway station. Hee. It was only 2 stops to Susukino the nightlife district. We had conveyer belt sushi and our first indulgence was to order a bunch of uni nigiri. Yummy. Dinner came to ¥3,276.

On our way back to the hotel, we stopped off at Robinson’s (a decidedly un-Japanese name for a department store) and ogled at the displays of greenhouse fruits. Amazing. Artificial, but still amazing.

First impressions. Seemed to me that there are more tourists than we remembered, especially from other Asian countries. Hokkaido has always been the Japanese people’s best kept secret but now more and more people are learning about this. Sapporo probably isn’t the best example cos it’s the largest city and the starting point for visitors.

[Note: USD vs JPY is currently 109.597, but for quick rule of thumb use 100]

The more I check out how Easter sunday is determined, the more confused I get. So I’m not even going to try. All I care is that I get 4 days off, and I left work at 4.30pm today.

It’s also a little bit colder than the last few days. Easter is always the last cool weather, then it starts getting hot and humid and awful. I hate summer.

Long weekend, did I mention that? Heehee.

Today is the last of the six days vacation over Easter. Most people go back to work today, but we thought we’d take an extra day because mm was out of town for most of Easter / our birthdays and we wanted a day to celebrate.

Unfortunately she had to deal with something urgent so I spent most of today, yes like the previous 5 days, cooped up at home needing to find my own amusement. I read a little, wrote a tiny bit, backed up my backup hard disk, caught up with TAR, did long overdue ironing and a couple of loads of laundry. mm did come over in the afternoon and we watched a dvd and I made dinner. If we were in the habit of saying “if only” I wouldn’t have taken today off, but it was circumstances beyond our control. C’est la vie, n’est-ce que pas? It was a kind of a waste of six consecutive days of vacation, but again what could I have done? Sigh.

I had a nice Christmas, but have been either too lazy or with lousy internet access to update.

Friday 22nd was an early day, headed home at 4pm. Met mm to do some last minute shopping for her, then went back to her place. Made rack of lamb — seasoned a 8-piece rack and put it in her small oven. Also made a (rather overcooked :( ) courgette and tomato mix. That lamb was good.

Saturday 23rd she had church and family events, so I went home. Didn’t do much, apart from internet, reading and watching TV. It was a good day, to have some peace and quiet.

Sunday 24th morning I chatted with my international friends. Then mid afternoon went over to my sis’ and helped out with the evening meal. A family friend (couple and their baby) also joined. Sis and Mum ordered 2 turkeys and 1 leg of ham, which was way too much for 6 people, but we enjoyed it all. I took lots of leftovers home.

I asked for money to contribute towards my new lens this year, so that’s what I got, yay!

After dinner, I went over to one of mm’s churches for midnight mass. The main church was crowded so she told me to go to the hall where there was a live video feed. She was on duty in the hall so that was good. Sang lots of carols, and the mass went on till 1.30am. Helped the legion people tidy stuff away, which I think surprised them. Like, who is this person stacking chairs and taking hymn books back to the church? We called a taxi home, and it cost about the same as the journey from her place to mine, not bad.

Monday 25th. Christmas Day!! She had church in the morning, and went to visit her parents afterwards. We’d ordered takeaway party food before, so she came home with chicken wings, ribs, shrimp balls and calamari. We watched The Devil wears Prada which was a nice holiday film. Shifted locations at night — went to her place. We didn’t have any dinner since we were both full.

Tuedsay 26th first thing we went to see her sis. Her Mom had bought poinsiettas but was detained with her Dad, so we bought a nice bouquet at a nearby flower shop. Met her younger brother up there. Then met up with the rest of her family for dimsum lunch. In the afternoon we went to foot massage.

Wednesday 27th we both took as a day off. We went to the expo and bought lots of stuff.

It was a good 5 days.

For once I woke up later than mm. It was almost 11am when I turned over and found an empty side of bed, then gradually the sounds of the tv in the living room filtered through. We had taro cake for lunch, and dismissed the idea to go see the film, we’ll do that this weekend.

She decided to assemble the home entertainment system that has been sitting in its box the the longest time. There were wires everywhere! It took a while, cos we had to dismantle the vcr and dvd first, then connect everything. It’s complicated. And stopping all the time to test and make sure we have the connections right. Finally after 2 hrs we did it. Yay! Now mm has surround sound.

She went downstairs to the market to buy dinner — crabs and mini-whelks. A small portion of sashimi for the salad. We shared half a bottle of sake too. It was great.

I’m home finally. After 4 days away. It was really great to be at mm’s, though I did miss being home a little, I have to admit. I had left the dell on so I could keep grouper and bt going, but it’s gone a bit kablooey so I had to reboot. Stupid PCs. I’ve decided to buy the macbook for my birthday anyway.

Lunar New Year today. Went to my parents’ for lunch — we had a mix of all sorts of our favourite foods, though nothing “cohesive” that would be considered a proper menu. I mean, we mixed steak with abalone and vegetable stew and carrot cake and the yu sheng salad from Singapore. Who cares, it’s only the three of us.

I spent most of the time before and after lunch fixing Mum’s PC. Sigh. Stupid PC. She had a ton of spyware that was crippling her IE. Hee, I half considered not fixing it so she could use firefox instead, but she plays some games off msn. I showed her how much faster and safer firefox is. Tidied up her start menu, got rid of redundant icons, general cleanup, downloaded a bunch of security software, that sort of stuff.

By the time I got back to mm’s it was almost 5pm. I stopped by the market and bought 4 giant tiger prawns — “big head prawns.” I made surf & turf for dinner - sirloin steak, prawns, potato cubes, mange tout beans and mini corn. A big plate each. Hee.

Early lunch for us, almost brunch. Then again, steak and beans is a large brunch.

Went to the flower market, which was very crowded, even though we went fairly early. Bought some flowers, but not so many. I got quite hungry, so we stopped for pork chop roll. Afterwards I picked up the duvet covers and bedsheets I had on order.

Bus back to her place to take a rest and dump the stuff we bought. She had dinner with her folks and I had dinner with a couple of friends — we had hotpot at a posh hotel restaurant. Quite expensive actually. Originally wanted to go to dessert at this chocolate place but it was full. Instead we ended up with a bar/deli place where they had an evening special of cake and glass of wine or liqueur coffee. I had a banoffe pie and house red — heavy but yummy.

It was past midnight when I met mm at the park to go to the fair. I hate crowds and it was late, but she wanted to go, so it was fine by me. man, that crowd! We weren’t moving by our own accord, it was like a sardine tin and people behind us would push us forward. The stuff on sale were the usual tacky worthless toys — balloons, inflatable toys, cheap decoration. Why people want to go get jostled by people and wet from the rain I have no idea.

terra sent me this a couple of weeks ago, but I couldn’t get it to play properly on PB1 (old Quicktime) or the dell (now this is strange … probably graphics card). So I did a view page source (sorry, t) and stole, um, saved the file. No wonder, wmv, grrr. Converted to quicktime, it should be easier to play now. 3.02 minutes.

This is confirmed, it’s not a series of photos stitched together. The display was the 2004 Christmas version from the home of Carson Williams of Mason, Ohio, consisting of 16,000 lights that were controlled via a software called Light-o-Rama.

The music is called Wizard in Winter, from The Lost Christmas Eve by Trans-Siberian Orchestra. It is transmitted via FM and people are advised to tune into a particular frequency on their car radios when they visit the display.

Apparently making spectacular Christmas lights is a hobby shared by a few other people.

The latest news is that Mr Williams had to shut down his 2005 display as it was causing traffic congestion. I guess his neighbors were relieved, but it was impressive while it lasted.

Technical note: I wrote up how to embed a quicktime movie in the technical section. Tested on Safari, Firefox (Mac & PC), IE5 (Mac), IE6 (PC). Needs the more recent versions of quicktime and modern browsers. If you don’t have the latest browsers, you should think about getting firefox. Seriously. Also, I find I have to disable adblock in firefox.