Season's Greeting

Irene and Dominic in Antarctica, Jan/Feb 2008

Dear Family and Friends,

We hope all is well with you and your family. It has been over 3 months since our last greeting, we trust you had good Chinese New Year and Easter break. We had been travelling a bit, exploring Antarctica by boat in Jan/Feb was indeed very eye-opening, seeing plenty of penguins and other wildlife and unpolluted natural environment with some of the most spectacular landscape on earth. All these remind us how very important that we must protect and preserve the global environment that we live in and very much depend upon.

This trip had also completed our unplanned goal of travelling together to all 7 continents. While feeling a sense of a small achievement, we felt very blessed to have such opportunity. Please see below for the trip summary and photos. We are planning to hold a seminar to share our experience. Hope to see you then.

We also stopped over South America and Paris en route to Hong Kong from Antarctica. Upon our return, we experienced the coldest and longest winter in Hong Kong in 40 years, we fear such abnormal weather is becoming the norm. Again the tragic consequence of human activities destroying our own planet.

As always please drop us a note when you are free, we would love to hear how you are getting on.

Best wishes,
Irene and Dominic - April 2008

What are Irene and Dominic up to?
In addition to Dominic's consulting work, he had been organizing and participating in numerous events related to visitors from Cambridge University - Prof. Alison Richard, the Vice Chancellor, Dame Patricia Hodgson, the Principal of Newnham College and the officers from Girton College's development office. He is also working with a team of young alumni in planning the mentorship seminar series and the annual dinner of the Friends of Cambridge University in Hong Kong.

Irene is currently planning for the fiscal year of 2008 ? 09, so that she could find a way to work more without reducing her time to study and travel. One of the goals is to keep her body healthy and full of energy by more regular exercise. She is working on an online platform for virtual arts with a few friends while continuing with her existing work. She enjoys having visitors from Athens and Geneva lately. After the amazing Antarctica trip, her eyes are now on the Arctic region. Besides she is collecting more knowledge about Russia, Japan, Singapore, Mongolia, Egypt, Jordan and Syria.

We were at 2 hikes (photos 1 & 2), a book club gathering, a visit to the Chanel Mobile Art and an excellent lecture on ?Behind-the-Scene Stories of the National Treasures Exhibition? 國寶展覽背後的故事: 清明上河圖 by Mr Marco Szeto, Curator, Xubiazhai, Hong Kong Museum of Art and more... We also took a short break to the beautiful Yunnan over Easter holiday which was relaxing, then we spent a weekend at Disney Hotel, Hong Kong.

Travel recommendation: Antarctica

It doesn't seem that long ago that we were all excited in planning (August 2007) for our long trip to Antarctica, South America and Paris during January and February 2008. We have since returned to Hong Kong but the excitement stays. We felt a sense of achievement to have visited all 7 continents together and at the same time we felt deeply blessed. The Antarctica cruise was about wildlife, nature and history (explorers who came before us). To call it eye-opening maybe an understatement...more thoughts and photos on Antarctica

For other travel photos (South America, Paris) please click here.

Restaurant recommendation: Amber - French

Western in Central
Landmark Mandarin Oriental, 15 Queen's Road Central, The Landmark, Central, Hong Kong | T: +852 2132 0188

Very good service and good food just as you would expect from Mandarin Oriental! There is a private room that can host about 24 people. Their menu changes every 4 months or so.
Read more

Book recommendation: The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

The God Delusion (buy from Amazon) by Richard Dawkins

A very deep and comprehensive book that talks about why there is no God, not an easy book to read. "God delusion" covers a very wide angle, "Respects that religion doesn't deserve", "God Hypothesis", Why human is receptive to the idea of religion and how religion arised as a result, the inconsistency in scriptures people simply choose to ignore, the alternatives to God that can still explain the world, the human moral standard with or without God, Science Vs Religion. Dawkins is a firm believer in Evolution/Darwinian world.

I have enjoyed reading this book very much, it will help you to decide one way or the other.

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).

Dear Family and Friends,

Happy Chinese New Year - Kung Hei Fat Choi! Wish you and your family many good fortune in the year of the pig.

Irene and Dominic
Feb 2007

Nepal trip
Since our last sharing in Dec, we went to Nepal for a 12-day trip during Christmas and it was eye-opening. We had a great time visiting Kathmandu, Bhaktapur, Pokhara, Chitwan and Nargarkot. Seeing the mountains, temples, people as well as many wild animals. Click for our Nepal photo albums

When we reflect on the trip, we realised once again how city people like us are so wasteful, people in poorer countries treasure the limited resource available to them. In our next issue, we want to talk about what we can do to "Consume less, waste less, recycle more"

We hosted a Travel talk on "Beyond Lhasa, a journey from Tibet to Nepal" ...more

We had a family trip to Taipei, visited Taipei 101 - The tallest building in the world, incidentally I also visited the Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur - the 2nd tallest building.

What is Irene up to?
Since coming back from Nepal, Irene has been organizing two art exhibitions

• Wutz Reality by Yolanda Yeung 楊宇靈 more
• A Sentimental Journey: Art works by John Li Kam Wah 李錦華 more

What is Dominic up to?
Working on several projects and organizing hiking and fun activities as always!

• Business trip in London and Oxford in Jan. Met up with many old friends in UK
• Another business trip Kuala Lumpur in Feb
• Jointly organized a wine tasting event with the French Alumni Association ... more
• Hiking: Lady Clementi's Ride, nice short hike with 18 leglessbird friends more

Click photos to view the album

Into thin air by Jon Krakauer
While we were travelling in Nepal and admiring the magnificent mountains, it reminds me of this book that I read years ago. It recounts the 1996 tragic events on the mount Everest...Read more

Le Papillon (The butterfly)
Director: Philippe Muyl (French 2002)
My rating: 4

Story:
Julien is a retired old man whose hobby is butterfly (Le Papillon) with his own butterfly room and plenty of samples. Elsa is a 9 year old girl with her single mother who has to work all the time and cannot spend much time with her daughter. They just moved to the same building where Julien lives. When Elsa overheard about Jilien's trip to search for the beautiful and rare butterfly called "Isabella", she secretly hides in his car and wants to follow him..Read more

Prompt Le Meridien (Western in Cyberport): We had the sea food buffet (on the weekend) and had plenty of french snails, oysters, lobsters, crabs, shrimps, mussels, fish, sushi etc. Yum Yum!!!! Read more

復活節遊盡英國 驚喜處處

2星期課程連機票、食宿只需HK$12,900起，保證成行

Dear Friends and relatives,

Another year is coming to an end, we hope you & your family have been well & healthy and 2006 has been a fruitful year.

2006 has been the most interesting year (yet) for us. At the beginning of the year, we packed practically all our belongings into a warehouse and took on a 3-month French language trip, staying 6 weeks in Antibes (South of France) and 6 weeks in Paris (online diary, and tour info is shown below). It has been a wonderful experience to become full time students again and the fact that it is our first and only time as students together. Learning a new language has widen our horizon and enable us to become part of some new, friendly and interesting culture communities. Most importantly, through this journey we have learned and reinforced some of the ideas on life that we believe in and very much treasure. And we want to share them with you below.

To keep up with the adventurous spirit, we are going to Nepal for Christmas and hopefully, we will bring lots of pictures back to show you in Januray.

We wish you a very happy and prosperous 2007!

Best wishes,

Irene and Dominic - December 2006

• Freedom and flexibility: While we were packing for our trip, we come to realise we owned so much stuff that we don't need. Our freedom and flexibility are being eroded by the ever more things that we possess. During our 3-month stay in France, we survived on the very basic and we didn't miss anything that we have left in the warehouse. Moreover, happiness isn't measured on things that you own, it depends on your attitude towards life
• Never stop learning: I believe people feel happy when they learn something new. When we were kids exploring the world around us, every small thing that we learned is a giant joyful step. we felt like kids again through learning a new language, we spoke like a child when we tried to converse with other people utilizing a very limited set of volcabulary
• Never lose your child-like curiosity and fascination towards life, people and the world

Independent Consulting
We returned to Hong Kong in April, and made another important decision this year - we have become independent consultant and taking on our own contract work, I work on business consulting projects while Irene works on marketing related work. We have been doing some very interesting and enjoyable projects and also appreciate the flexibile lifestyle

Leglessbird reborn
This year also marks the new Leglessbird platform, since the original site was launched in June 2002, we have gone through two major upgrades. The new platform comes with a membership system, better formating and section control. We will continue to provide information on Travel, Restaurant, Hiking, Movies, Reading etc, we are adding more events and charity functions. With all the added functions and features on a more robust platform, we plan to expand and promote the "Leglessbird" concept to everyone, if you agree with the Leglessbird principles and want to participate in our events, feel free to sign up as members, simply visit the website and click "Register" on the right hand column! Leglessbird

One of the best restaurants we have tried this year is Le Marron
Cuisine: French in Causeway Bay, 12/F, Ying Kong Mansion, 2-6 Yee Wo Street
+852 28816662. For more information

Before SunriseBefore Sunsetare not new movies, but we have only watched them this year and they are highly recommended
Romantic, USA 1995, 2004
My rating: 5 stars
Director: Richard Linklater
Key actors/actresses: Ethan Hawke - Jesse; Julie Delpy - Celine

Jesse is an American student who lives in Texas, he is on a vacation in Europe and Celine is a French girl on her way back to Paris. They met by chance on a train and started a conversation, they felt there was an intense connection, a connection that most people don't even find during their entire life. Jesse is catching a plane to USA from Vienna the following morning and crazy as it might sound, he asks Celine to get off the train at Vienna and spend one day with him and they will part at sunrise. The brief encounter turns out to be much more than they have expected, what future holds for 2 people who have lived separate lives on two far apart countries until today...

TravelAs far as travel goes, we have been seeing a lot of places thanks to our French language trip and Irene's master graduation in July. You can visit our travel section for more photos of France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Poland, Slovakia, Jersey, Beijing, Taipei, Tokyo.
New travel siteOld travel site
For enquiry of tickets and hotels, please contact our travel agent Guidance Travel +852 3598 4873 email

The best way to learn a language is to study in the country that speaks that language. If you are interested in our tour in France, click for
more information.

For the greeting of 1998-2005, please visit http://www.leglessbird.com/xmas