Happy Ox Year

This year, we can only fly back to Malaysia on the 1st day of Chinese New Year. It's kind of late, but never too late as long as the family members can get together at last.

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Having nothing much to do before the departure, we went to the New Year Fair at Victoria Park. As usual, those New Year flowers are so so pretty. The more we look at it, the more we like it. End up, we bought home 1 pot of flower although there will be no maid to look after it when we'll be gone for 2 weeks this year.

This year flower is Japanese Hoi-Tong. The shopper told us it can survive with very little water for 2 weeks. Well, I hope he is right. We'll see when we get back from Malaysia 2 weeks later.

We hope we can get to see all of the flowers blossom some time later. Please wait for us to come home, ok.

GONG XI FAT CHAI !

May this year be filled with joy, peace and health to everyone of you.

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School Outing

Every year this time, William's school would organize an outing for the kids and parents.

We have joined the school outing 2 years ago, and roughly know what kind of trip it would be since then. Imagine, a huge group of 400 plus children and parents that go together, it's hard to achieve certain kind of quality that most people want, for example, RELAXING...

We have tried to ignore the invitation when the teacher slipped the notice in William's bag. But William wanted to go so much this year, probably because his class teacher had done a marvelous job in the promotion job. For the sake of William will be graduating soon and this would be the last school outing for him, we didn't say "NO" when he said "YES".

That Saturday morning was very cold. We woke up early and gathered in school before the whole gang could finally departed at around 9.40 pm. It was 40 min behind the scheduled time. There start our compact trip for the day.

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The first destination is Tai Po Insert House. We have been to this place for more than 10 times. Those are the passengers in Bus I (bus no. 9).

William's classmate.

Inside the insert house, there is nothing too fascinated about it. We just walked through it without much lingering. Should give way to the people who seldom come to this place, right.

One of the specimen. Besides moths or butterflies, there are lots of beatles specimen too. Actually, most of the beatles are very pretty if looking them in detail.




Floras around the insert house...



The flowers all look very pretty and healthy too, must be a very good place for them to growth.

While waiting for the other people to come out, we simply let the boys to run around and to play whatever they like, as long as the act is not damaging.

Our lunch was settled in the Chinese University's canteen, it's buffet style. We quickly gobbled the foods, line up to go to the toilet, then headed north to our 2nd destination at around 1 pm.

Lavender garden in HK, well, never heard of it before.

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The tour guide told us that the owner of this lavender farm came back from England after migrating there for some time. Couldn't find any job to do, he found a partner who offered him this piece of land to work on until now. Besides lavender, they also plant some herbs that are widely used in cooking too.




Some of the lavenders that is planted here...Must lavender blue in color?



Apparently, there are blue lavenders too...




They are just interested in playing with the soil, not the lavender...

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Ok, time's up. Got to go to the 3rd destination...




Frankly speaking, I was only looking forward to go to the strawberry farm the whole day. The farm is bigger than I've expected.



Young and old, we all were thrilled to see those fresh strawberries...




Since we got to pay for whatever we cut here (HKD40/lb), we got to educate the boys to choose for the right one, right. The rules is simple : Only cut the biggest, and bloody red one.

When I saw those strawberries, I really have the urge to put them into mouth. But somebody kept nagging us by using a loud speaker, that we shouldn't do it. OK OK, I've got it.

The boys were so happy to find the strawberries to cut.




And we were happy that they cut the right one for most of the time.

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The strawberries here are organic planted, and their size are bigger than I've expected too. Now I know the locally planted strawberries are no any interior than the imported one.

End up, we had cut a full basket of strawberries, weighted slightly more than 2 lb. And that was done in just 30 min time. If we could have stayed here any longer, I'm sure we would cut a hell lot than that amount. Sigh, hard to tell is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Ok, that's the final destination for the day, a cow farm.




The entrance looks like a flea market instead. We were given a small cup of fresh milk as a complimentary drink, I didn't take it. Vincent did, he said it tastes good.



The baby cow, age only 1 year plus, but they weight more than 100kg already. Boy, what an incredible growth rate.

Cow feeding is the only thing that we can do here. Too bad there is no milking activities open to the public.

Walking up the hill, there live the mother cows. The guide told us only female cows are available here, for the sake of their milk. They used genetic method to breed for baby cow. Err...how to say that?

Those cows are from New Zealand. But same type of cow, very different fate.

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In NZ, I bet their peers have a large greenery field to walk around, and have unlimited lush grasses to eat on. Here, the cows can only walk within this "jail" area, and be fed.

Saw this cow at the other side of the "jail". It got a fresh wound on its right horn area. Wonder what had happen to it? It seems very lonely. I felt so sorry for it, but there is nothing we could do but feed him some grass. I hope it will get well soon.




Ms Lau is not just William's teacher, but Vincent's too, when he was in kindegarten. Personally, I respect her a lot for she does more than what a teacher suppose to do. In school, she is also like a nanny to them.

We got home around 5 pm that day. The first thing to do was of course, to wash some strawberries and put them into mouth. To my surprise, they aren't just look good, but taste very sweet too. We are so pleased with the good quality of those strawberries...



Look how pretty they are. We had decided to go to that farm again some time in the future. Must jot down here that Nov-Feb is the best season to go...


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YuYin Shan Fang

On the third day of Christmas, we went to visit a 'show house'.

It has a very artistic name, people called it YuYin Shan Fang. This place is located in Nancun town, Panyu, GuangZhou City. It was built in 1871 of Tongzhi Emperor in Qing Dynasty. It shares the reputation of 4 most famous garden.

My dad told me our ancestors were from Panyu. My grandfather moved to Malaya when he was young, and there born my dad & his siblings and me & my siblings. I guess my grandfather will never expect that I went back to China region one day, and gave birth to my offspring over there. Wonder what would he think about it after all the bloods and sweats he'd paid to try to set up a root in Malaysia? Anyway, I've never seen my grandfather before. I hope he would be proud of me if he knows I've sort of migrating to his origin many many years later.

The house is very big, very old. When I stepped into its front door, I felt like I have been taking a time machine and travel back to the ancient time.

It's fun to use your imagination when you visit a old house like this...I did. I want to make-believe this is the house I've just inherited from my great grandfather lately, ok.

This 2 little boys are the young master in the house. They like to play the whole day and non-productive one, we called them yi-sai-jou.

In the front yard, I will open a small cafe to sell tou-fu-hua or ginger-mix with-milk. I sell it 5 bucks per bowl. Cheap, isn't it? Well, as long as everyone is happy, profit is not a matter. (hell, it's not)

And this man will be the manager cum waiter cum cleaner for the cafe.

In front of the cafe, there are some star fruit trees. Look how big and juicy they are. You buy 1 and get 1 free, fair? If you want to ask the manager to squeeze it into juice to quench your thirst, also no problem. The value-added service is FOC.

Normally, I just leave the cafe business to my manager. And I like day-dreaming in my 2 private gardens in the center of the house. I'll show you...

This is my favourite garden, Wenchang Yuen. I've just got it refurnished in year 2006. So, it really looks cool and trendy. Anyway, I don't like to stay in the gloomy house all day. Most of the time, I will be day dreaming or drawing or reading or fishing or sleeping in the garden.





We are slowly walking towards the ponds. Look at those trees, I like that very much. It makes me feel very peaceful and sleepy.

Let's walk nearer to the pond and take a closer look. It's very quiet and peaceful, isn't it? If that 2 yi-sai-jou dare to play Avril Lavigne's song "Hey Hey You You..." over my territory, I'll throw them into this pond.

Didn't see this young master for almost 2 weeks by now because the walkies talkie we used to communicate with one another still haven't been fixed yet. I felt very happy to bump into him somewhere here. But he was in a kind of hurry, so I need to use force a bit to keep him longer here.






From time to time, my manager will come here to look for me. I think he likes to see me a lot.





Since my manager was here, I asked him to take the young master for a hike to the hill. The hill top is my another secret place.

We called it Gua-bang-Mountain. This is an ideal place for reading and studying. One can climb the mountain by stairs, or pass the mountain through the cave beneath it. The top of the cave is in fornix shape, to present a splendid view.





The views look even better from the top of the hill.




My 5-star bedroom. In summer time, it's cool inside. In winter time, it's warm inside.






Ok, the time is 12.30pm, time to go for lunch now. That's my dining place. When lunch is served, my helper will set the table properly at this spacious balcony area.




My great grandfather gave this place a nice name, isn't it?






Sometimes, I will invite friends to come over for lunch or dinner. That's the VIP dining room, with live bands and dancers entertain us when we are enjoying good foods.

This time, I've invited both of the yi-sai-jou to join me for a lunch. We had great lunch together on that day.

I asked my manager to keep eyes on the young master. This is because I haven't bought an insurance for him, and sometimes, I worried if he will fell down to the pond there.

After lunch time, sometimes I will go to this Wenchang pavilion to listen to music or for meditation. My architec told me that the pavilion is in the shape of octagonal with a height of 15.4 meters. The special space design makes it look four floors while in fact, three inside. On the wall and the roof, fine pictures of people, flowers, birds, mountains and rivers are painted around. Ah whatever...

My art gallery as backdrop.

Oh yes, sometimes I will do some artworks in my workshop too. Those are some of the Chinese dolls that I've learnt to make. If anyone like it, I will give one to him or her as free gift.

That's one of their favourite activities they spent a great deal of time doing it...

At first, I've just bought 10 fishes inside it. Some months later, the number of fishes have outgrowth to don't know how many times. I don't recall I have ever bought the gold color and the white color fish, maybe they are mutated fishes?

Everywhere around the pond is the feeding zone. So you can imagine how much time they have spent in feeding everyday.

Some said : "I want I want". Some said : "More, please". Some said : "Go to hell..."

I really don't know why they like feeding gold fish so much? It's their nature?




When the young masters are feeding the fishes, my manager has to sit aside to watch them. Part of this job.

Besides Wenchang Yuen, this old house has another garden too, an older one. This is the classic entrance.




I asked my gardener to make some Christmas decorations on the plants, and look what he'd done. I guess he probably doesn't know what Christmas tree is all about?




Everytime I see this chess board, I just feel very defeated. This is because I never ever win my manager though I bang my head till soggy to carefully plan for the steps. Bugger.

The center of this garden is an exquisite waterside pavilion-sitting room, also well-known as Octagonal Pavilion. This is the place for the master to enjoy poems and wines. The pavilion is octagonal shape surrounded by water, with of course, fishes down there. Frankly speaking, the place is so boring, that I normally throw foods to the water down there when I had to sit in there.

Frankly speaking, I've get bored of the gold fish too. I'm thinking to put more varieties of fish down there some time in the future. The young master suggest to feed a shark there. Emm...that would be interesting.

My manager said we should have painted this bridge another color, cause he think this garden looks so boring.

My rest room. It's too huge for me.

Wo-piao-lu Room, is a rest room I'd prepared for friends. Like it?

My manager kept nagging, he said this place is so boring. I think if it isn't because of somebody, he probably had left this boring place a long time ago. Aahem..

Looking at them,I know what's the thing this place is lacking of, a play ground.

Sometimes, my manager will set up a table and we will have our tea break here.

"So, can I go now?"

"Not until you make a good pose, ok?"

"Okdokey"

"Hey, not that kind of sissy pose..."