Season's Greeting

Grand Hyatt Seoul Aug 2007 First visited in 1999

Dear Family and Friends,

Greetings!

Another year is coming to an end and it passes rather quickly, it is again time to count and be thankful to all the blessings and at the same time learn and reflect from the mishaps if any. Below is a brief account of our year 2007. On the balance, we always feel that we are very much blessed every year (this year included), but sadly, the year ended with the passing away of a very dear family member.

Do drop us a note if you have a moment, we would love to hear how you are getting on. We wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and a happy new year.

Best regards,
Irene and Dominic
December 2007

Year 2007
We started off the year returning from the beautiful country of Nepal, a place that isn?t very well known in Hong Kong and often mis-understood. We were fascinated by the beauty of its impressive mountain range, the friendliness of its people, the rich and interesting culture. The country is rather poor and lack of resources, people treasure whatever they have and try not to waste too much things, kids in mountain were asking us for things as simple as pen and not money, paper cups are washed and reused in the house and not thrown away. This has put us in great shame, as people living in a modern city like Hong Kong, we waste and throw away so much useful stuff daily while people in some other countries are suffering.

We joined the club membership at the Le Meridien Cyberport in January because it is close to our home, the facilities are of good standard, also with the discount for eating at the hotel restaurants, we are visiting the gym 2-3 times a week, up from 1-2 visits a week at the California club. Also Dominic has started boxing for fun though infrequently, but is having a lot of fun with it.

Entering the 2nd Year as independent professionals, we have been fortunate to be working on many projects during the year, often in parallel. These projects had brought Dominic on many business trips to places such as London, Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, and many cities in China. Irene also enjoyed the fact that she could tag along on a number of occasions and enjoyed the cities during the weekends. Irene is happy to learn new things from her projects. On top of Dominic?s conventional consulting practice, he has discovered a new form of management consulting that enables him to work from home.

To improve our French, we continued to take private classes, took out a 2-week intensive course in Lyon, a city that is famous for its cuisine, language practice with some French visitors in Hong Kong and participate in the French Alumni Association?s functions. We also started to learn Japanese in Q3, another language that we have always wanted to learn, and we are hoping to do a month long intensive course somewhere in Japan in the not so-distant future.

Leglessbird Book Club Cambridge X'mas party FAA X'mas party

On the Leglessbird front, we have migrated the website to a new blog-like platform for easier management. In terms of activities, in addition to hiking event, we have added travel talk and book club. Dominic has continued to be very active on the Cambridge alumni side (http://www.cambridge.org.hk) organizing events and forming a team to carry out more initiatives such as mentorship seminar. Irene is also involved in the Warwick alumni committee. As if that?s not enough, we are also committees of the French Alumni Associations (http://www.faa-hk.com).

As for our favourite passion, travelling that is (click here for more photos and description), we did a number of trips to Asian (Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, Taipei and various cities in China) and European (France, UK and Italy) destinations this year. We are going to spend Christmas in Laos and in January we will be going to Antarctica on a 20-day cruise boarding from Ushuaia (Argentina). We have confirmed the trip since August 2007, we are very excited as we would have been to all 7 continents together after this.

We enrolled on Facebook this year and have been actively using it to keep in touch with friends. It is a great tool to locate long lost friends, share photos and organize events, but it is rather addictive!

Favourite book read in 2007: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (buy from Amazon) by John Perkins
A must read for people who want to understand how USA's foreign policy really works when it comes to protecting self-interests.

Favourite place visited in 2007: Annecy, France
Click photo to view album
Annecy is a very beautiful city by the lake and there is a river that runs through it which gives a feel of Venice. There are many nice restaurants. There was a marathon while we were there. We enjoyed walking along the art market that is open every Sunday morning. We also took a very pleasant boat ride around the lake. It was very sunny weekend. This is part of our 2-week French language trip in Lyon.

Favourite restaurant visited in 2007: Sosam Tea House (click for details)

Cuisine: Fusion in Kowloon
My rating: 4 Food: 4 Service: 5 Atmosphere: 2 Price per person: HKD 350

Address and tel.no
Shop 10, G/F Mega Building, 1 Maidstone Road, Tokwawan, Kowloon +852 27143299

D and I's Review:
Introduced by friends of ours who really know where to find excellent food. Not a well known restaurant nor is it at a popular spot (in fact, it is rather hard to find). The fusion food is really delicious, creative and cooked with heart. The husband and wife team are very keen chef who are also photographer and journalist. The normal menu is good deal (dishes below $100), but you can create your own menu by pre-ordering.

Favourite movie watched in 2007: Nada Sou Sou - Tears for You (click for details)

Romance, Drama, Japan, 2006
Director: Nobuhiro Doi
Story:
In Okinawa, when Yotaro was a little boy, he promised his dying mother to take care of his young step-sister Kaoru, Karou's father was a singer in a band, he married Yotaro's mother and soon left them and Kaoru behind. (click here for details)

Also our favourite TV series is "Touch" (click for details).