Red, red everywhere!

First it was the Mid-Autumn Festival bunnies, then it was the Christmas Santas/Reindeer, and now it’s the Lunar New Year tigers…



Of course, since Lunar New Year is the biggest holiday in China, cities are going all-out for decoration, and Macau is no exception. Some “tableaus” in various public places:

Tap Seac Square

Old Taipa Village

Around the edge of Sintra Square

Border Gate

Main Post Office

As usual, the most elegant decorations are in Leal Senado, the former government building, and some of the most elaborate are in Senado Square right across the street. You can see some photos of the construction in-progress in an earlier post, but here are shots of the completed projects:




Below is a short video I took while walking around the Senado fountain...the moving tableaux kinda remind me of the figures from the Disney World ride "It's a Small World After All" for some reason =P

Inside Leal Senado

Leal Senado inner courtyard

Looking up from the courtyard

Pretty lanterns/orchids on the steps

Another big event is the fair in Tap Seac Square, where there are lots of festive objects and flowers. To be honest, I found the items rather bizarre, ranging from inflatable hammers to animal-themed headgear and giant models of chocolates.

There's also a giant gold wire lotus(?) in the middle

None of these seem particularly LNY-related...

Now if these were only real chocolate =P

Real LNY-related goods: kumquat/orange trees and flowers

Some kids showing off their new toys

Every grocery shop and stationary store also has umpteen varieties of decorations for sale: traditional Chinese knotting pieces, packs of red envelopes, calligraphy scrolls, and some more…fashionable items?


Of course, the downside of Lunar New Year is that almost everything shuts down for 3-4 days, starting today with Lunar New Year Eve. According to the UM students, most of the restaurants also close, and those that are open charge much higher prices than usual because they have to pay their workers triple for holiday overtime. Thus, I made sure to stock up on groceries today so I have enough to last me until Tues, when I leave for a five-day trip through Shanghai, Suzhou, and Hangzhou =D

In conclusion, 新 年 快 樂!

You know you're back in Macau when...

…you go to Senado Square and see all sorts of crazy decorations being put up for the next holiday (in this case, Lunar New Year).

Other decorations are going up all around Macau: plastic plum-blossom trees, real kumquat bushes (those must have cost quite a bit, since they’re all loaded with fruit), and of course the ubiquitous animal figures, these being tigers in varying poses (some with clothes/props, some without). Almost every lamppost has some sort of decoration, and there are also red plywood walls going up mysteriously in many places.

Fake plum-blossom trees near St. Paul's ruins

Kumquat bushes and more fake plum blossoms in Taipa

Tiger fabric statues in Taipa, still under wraps

I’m planning to stay in Macau for the Lunar New Year itself (Feb 14-16), so it’ll be interesting to watch the celebrations around the city – I’m sure there will be fireworks, lion dances, and all the usual craziness. Those three days are also the only time that civil servants (including UM teachers!) are allowed to go gambling, so perhaps I’ll go casino-hopping not to gamble myself, but to see how many other teachers I can spot =P

In other news, I experimented with cooking Italian food last night, which turned out decently given what I had to work with, but still wasn’t the best I could I have done.
1) Chop onions, bell peppers, and garlic.
2) Cook the fusilli; drain and set aside.
3) Fry the onions, garlic, and bell pepper together to cook the onions.
4) Add 1 packet tomato sauce and another can of tomato paste to thicken the sauce. Stir to prevent from burning (the pan was really hot even with the lowest heat setting, so despite my stirring, it burned slightly anyway.)
5) Cut some chunks of (really expensive!) mozzarella cheese.
6) In a bowl, layer pasta + sauce + mozzarella. Repeat.

Finished product
(with garlic stir-fried sweet pea pods on the side)

The tomato sauce was sweeter than I would have liked (another reason why it burned), so if possible, I would have added more basil/oregano and maybe a bit of pepper to give it more savory/spicy flavor. I also probably should have used green pepper instead of yellow, but you just have to make do with what’s available.

Spring semester starts tomorrow – we’re only teaching one class each this semester, but consequently we’re adding a lot more extracurricular activities, at least one every other week, plus English table and admin table. What took up most of my time last semester was lesson-planning, not grading, so having just one class isn’t that much less work. I’m also hoping to kick-start my Chinese improvement with a tutor/language partner, get more exercise (Yogaworld heh), and maybe shadow some more at the Hope Clinic, so it’ll clearly be a busy semester regardless!

P.S. Now that I’ve finished editing all my Malaysia photos, blogs will be retroactively posted in the near future. In the meantime, you can check out my photos albums on Facebook, but you have to be a friend of mine to see them.

Yalie mini-reunion #1

Carrie Nguyen ES'09 stopped by Macau on her way from Vietnam back to the States, so Emily and I took her out to yum cha and walked around quite a lot of Macau: Grand Lisboa, Senado, etc. Even though I've been to those places before, we always find something new to gawk/laugh at.

The first time I was in the Grand Lisboa, it was at night, and I was looking for another place altogether, so I didn’t really take a good look around. When we come home at night and see it from the bus window, the sparkling lights look absolutely garish, but I still have to admire the coordination of all the bulbs, even with changing colors. I got a similar feeling inside the lobby – it was so over-the-top, but you can’t help marveling at the ostentatious displays of wealth.

A massive, glittery chandelier

A multi-ton jade sculpture

A similarly elaborate gold sculpture

Even the bathrooms were draped with crystal strings

Senado felt much more like authentic Macau, especially with the weekend Lion Dance performance at the steps of St. Paul’s Ruins. It was pretty warm out that afternoon, so it must have been boiling for the performers inside the costumes. However, they still managed to seem as if they were having fun too, going around the audience to let all the kids (and many of the adults) pet the lion heads and take photos.

Lion dancing

So soft and fuzzy!

Hi kid.

Of course, no trip to Senado is complete without stopping by Lemoncello for gelato…I tried some new flavors (grapefruit peach and kiwi), both of which were quite yummy. Outside, though, we (literally) ran into some clowns…turns out they were advertising a new snack shop or something.

No, the police were not coming to arrest them.

After that, Emily took Carrie to see Zaia at the Venetian while I ran a few errands, then we met back up for dinner at a Portuguese restaurant near MPI. Amy and Holly came along too, so we had a lot of fun critiquing the Miss Macau pageant (the restaurant was broadcasting it) over some very yummy fried rice, mussels, and other dishes. I went home while the rest of the girls went for post-dinner foot massages, but then we reunited for some walking around the casino area, namely MGM and the Wynn.

Possibly the craziest part of the night: midnight fountain show at the Wynn! I’ve watched the show at other times before, but they’re all different, with varying songs and therefore varying water patterns. This one was especially elaborate, perhaps because it’s the last one for the night:



After that, we went to one of the bars in ZAPE intending just to get a drink and hang out. Emily and Tom left earlier because they had to get up for debate in the morning, but Sam, Carrie and I stayed there talking until almost 3 AM! We briefly stopped by Cubic, but the club was charging $100 MOP cover, so we didn't feel it was worthwhile. All in all, though, it was a fun night =)

National Day: Happy 60th birthday to the PRC!

Thursday morning started off with a bang, literally - people were setting off firecrackers in the street, which woke me up waaay too early considering we had stayed up late chatting with Azita and Joseph the night before. Amy had deviously invited Azita to see their apartment, planning to have an early surprise birthday celebration.

Azita making a wish on her chocolate “peanut” cake (made by Holly)

Anyway, I stayed in for the morning to avoid all the craziness outside, but around 1 PM, I hopped over to the ferry terminal to pick up Jessica L and Jessica M, two of the Hong Kong ETAs who had come to visit for National Day. We met up with Brian and Mari as well, then headed out to explore what Macau had to offer on National Day.

The first stop was Tap Seac Square, where there were plenty of Mid-Autumn Festival decorations, but there was also a huge open-air concert/carnival going on, with things like mini-car driving and an inflatable obstacle course for the kids (oh, Richfest memories!) I was especially amused by this moonbounce that is supposed to resemble the Guia lighthouse and fortress:

Ta-da!

Between Tap Seac and Senado, we also found this charming side street with cobblestones, Portuguese-style buildings on both sides, and these mildly freaky pinata-style bunny lanterns.

Look into their eyes, I dare you...

They're even creepier up close

At Senado there wasn't much for National Day, besides the big gate that's been there for a while, but we also went up to St. Paul's and saw some more Mid-Autumn Festival decorations there, like this massive lantern:

The top part spins!

Of course, by now I've been to Senado many times, but I still manage to find something new and/or amusing on every visit. This trip's highlight was the sign advertising one of the street shack eateries across from Lemoncello gelato...possibly the least appealing translation EVER:

Eww.

For dinner, we opted to try some Portguese food in Taipa Village, where there are lots of supposedly good restaurants. Our first choice was unfortunately super-crowded, so we ended up at Pinocchio, which opened up their second floor because there were so many diners. The restaurant had a cute menu and nice facility, but pretty mediocre food and absolutely awful service. We asked four times why we didn't get a basket of bread (as everyone around us was), with four different responses:

1) Let me check with the manager.
2) You have to order soup to get bread.
3) We ran out of bread!
4) It's coming, it's coming!

When we finally got our food (we were one of the first tables seated and one of the last to be served), it was pretty disappointing. I had ordered the pork chop rice, thinking it would have a savory sauce soaking through the rice similar to what we had at Fat Siu Lai a couple weeks ago, but instead it was a bowl of rice, with a pan-fried pork chop on top (that was at least 1/3 bone), slathered in ketchup (of all things). Ick. After scraping off most of the ketchup and cutting out the bones, I ate it because I was hungry, but it was still barely palatable.

They need someone to be their conscience

To make up for the bad dinner, we tried to go to the Altira hotel to watch the last night of the international fireworks festival, but the view wasn't that good (too much reflection from the glass) and Austria just failed. As Jessica M. said, "I was expecting the Alps [in fireworks], or at least the von Trapp family!" What we got instead was a rather bad show with awkwardly long pauses (so long that we thought the display had ended twice before the actual finale). It was so clearly the worst of all the entries we had seen, we figured that either Austria had been paired with China on purpose, or they had been paid off or something.

As might be expected, China went all out for their National Day fireworks display, with massive bursts that went even taller than the Macau Tower! All in all, quite an impressive National Day celebration =D

Friday recap: Shanghai food + Senado

Last night we all gathered around Senado Square for dinner at a Shanghai-nese restaurant: all the ETAs except Emily (she wasn't feeling well), Henry, Joseph, and several of the UM exchange students from Finland and Sweden. While we waited for a table to clear for our (massive) party of 12, we could see through the front window into a (sort of) display kitchen:

We have no idea what he was cutting.

Dinner itself was quite delicious - I had been getting tired of Cantonese-style Chinese, so this was a welcome change. We ended up getting a set menu plus soupy dumplings (小 龍 湯 包), so there was plenty for everyone. Dishes ranged from fried rice (kind of sub-par) and noodles with seafood (too salty) to "pork ankle" (fatty but well-flavored) and boiled chicken with ginger and scallions (very yummy). Total price: about $11 USD for each of us.

Austin especially had fun with the chicken.

Afterwards, we needed to get moving, so we walked around Senado, which was all decked out in preparation for the 60th anniversary of the PRC and the Mid-Autumn Festival. By this time, it was around 9:30 PM so most of the shops were closed, but I liked being there with fewer people - there was actually room to breathe! The yellow-light lamposts, in combination with the tiled designs on the ground and the Portuguese architecture, gave the whole place a sort of Old Europe feel, which was an interesting juxtaposition with the brightly colored lanterns and the big red/yellow ceremonial gate.

Lanterns representing all sorts of fruits/flowers

The anniversary gate

We ended up just hanging out and chatting at a rooftop bar near St. Paul's Cathedral, which had a better ambiance than drinks. The decor was...interesting. I don't have photos of the blue psuedo-David statue or the screen with digital fish swimming through, but I couldn't resist snapping this big sculpture:

Big chopsticks o_O

As we left the bar and headed home, we had a great view of St. Paul's Cathedral, which looked even more surreal (movie set-ish) like this:
Today's agenda: pay the CTM internet bill, grocery shopping, and some more exploring around Horta e Costa =)