Gong Xi Fa Cai

All together, the last few days have been mostly time killing although there have been some rewards.

I had New Years Day lunch with the family of one of the hostel managers. A very simple affair, strange mostly for it's familiarity. Food was from KFC. In the background, they were playing a VCD of a recent Hollywood spoof of Kung Fu movies. But the decorations were traditional as was the giving of Ang Pows, small red envelopes containing small amounts of money. Actually, the KFC isn't as far off as one my think. Chicken is a traditional holiday meal.

Not many places were open New Years Day but I did find an Internet cafe adequate to reload the keyboard driver on the Palm *again*.

The morning after New Years, Feb 2, I saw a passable lion dance and browsed around at the Sunday market. It was a bit distressing to see several shoplets selling pieces of coral. There was supposed to be another lion dance in the evening at a nearby bar/restaurant cluster. After two hours of waiting, the DJ announced that the dance had been canceled.

And today? Today is the Monday after. It was the day I was supposed to get my camera fixed. But the repair shop is still closed. For how much longer? No one seems to know. My attempts to reach a island beach did not go well. Between a late start and going to the jetty on all the maps and info pamplets rather than the correct one, I didn't find a boat. Well, I might have been able to find a group and boat eventually. But it was already 2:00pm and the last boat returns at 4:00pm. It seemed hardly worth it.

In amongst the lack of excitemet, I've been catching up on various job hunt, internet, and server tasks. You may have noticed that we had another outage last week. The server has been moved to a new, temporary location, pending more permanent arrangements.