Happy Chinese New Year!

Kung Hay Fat Choi! The first day of the year of the Dragon is finally here!! Kung hay kung hay!!!

Kung hay is roughly translated to congratulations or congrats. Regardless of what the event is, congratulating someone implies the event must be positive to the affected person. Therefore Kung Hay can be used on multiple occasions including birthdays, wedding, child birth, etc… Fat Choi means getting rich, kung hay fat choi is congratulating someone on getting rich. it is usually used in a blessing mode, where the person kung haying someone is implying the person will get rich.

So Kung hay Fat Choi!

Tags: Choi, congratulating, Fat, Fat Choi, Happy, Kung, Kung Hay, New, person

Preparing for the Dragon, day of gathering

It is finally the last day of the year of the Rabbit and all preparations to welcome the year of the Dragon are now complete. According to Chinese New Year tradition, today is the day the entire family come together and have a nice dinner. Dishes on the menu must include cured sausage, cured meat, a whole fish and a whole Chicken. These food are usually accompanied by other expensive food the family can afford to enjoy. Some families would have these cooked at home but head out for a fancy dinner at restaurants too.

On this day, there are several traditions that must be practiced for the sake of good fortune. The most important portion is the gathering of all family members. It is an awfully sad thing to not have the family together even for one meal during this period. The Chinese is a very family oriented culture and everything surrounds the family. There are similar cultures in the west, some classic examples are the Greeks and the Italians. Since China is a big country, some people would leave their homes behind for a job. These children would head home each year and normally arrive before this day to visit their elders and to spend time with them.
Of all the food, the cured meat products, the fish and the chicken cannot fully consumed. To be precise, only half of it is put on the table of this night while the other half is allocated for Jak Nin, 砸年. Jak Nin basically means to keep the food for next year, this has multiple symbolic meanings especially when all three of the food have at least one symbolic meaning to each on top of just being food on a table. Take fish for example, one possible homophone of fish in Chinese is the character for excess. It is lucky to have excess of food and money in the Chinese culture, therefore fish is used to link the two years together in representations of excess. This is an extra layer of symbolic meaning on top of the fact that the family can afford a fish, remember that China was primarily an inland farm based economy.
For the young ones who are in their prime, this is the night they must stay awake to ensure the year passes peacefully. According to Chinese mythology, the year is represented by a creature called Nin. This creature comes out at the end of each year to look for food and would usually target humans. However it is possible scare the Nin away by keeping the house lit or the burning of fire crackers. These two tradition are reserved for the younger ones of each household to practice. Some sons or daughters of the modern Chinese household would stay away pass midnight to symbolize this practice, in the past all younger family members would stay awake the whole night. The goal of staying awake is to ensure the Nin would not come near or take their elders away. It is a very respectful practice and I believe it should be maintained.

Another practice is the Art Sui Chin, 壓歲錢, a specialized version of the red pocket money given from the elders to the young ones to protect them. It is originally a blessing from the owners of businesses in China, where their workers have somehow lost their personal fortune during the year and cannot afford to head home. On this day the business owners would sneak a red pocket of extra money under the worker’s pillow, allowing them some money to start the new year. This has since expanded to a custom practiced in families as well.
These customs are some but not all of the practiced customs on this day, Chinese New Year is no doubt a gigantic occasion for the Chinese. Within a culture’s tradition you can easily see how that society have grown and developed.

Tags: Chinese, Chinese New Year tradition, excess, family, family members, fish, food, home, Jak Nin

Preparing for the Dragon, day of cleaning

That was a lot of cleaning! Today is the twenty-eighth day of the last month in the Chinese calendar, it is commonly known as the day of cleaning! In Hong Kong and the province of Canton, this date is marked as a day of cleaning in preparation for the new year.

In Cantonese there is a saying, 年廿八，洗邋遢 (Nin yar bai, sai lek tek). It is a common phase to all Cantonese speaking people and is roughly translated to state that on the twenty eighth day of the last month, remember to clean all your dirty things!

Therefore most Chinese would take this day to clean their belongings. For me it meant an eight hour marathon of house chores. I am so exhausted right now!

Tags: Cantonese, date, Hong Kong, preparation, Preparing, saying, the Chinese calendar

Test driving the old iPad Dock

Ever since I started blogging again, I’ve chosen to blog most of the time on my iPodTouch instead of actually sitting in front of a computer. This makes my ability to blog much more flexible and allows me to blog literally anywhere and anytime.

The problem with blogging on the iPodTouch all the time is that the soft keyboard is relatively small, even when it is on landscape mode. So I started a quest to find a keyboard that I can use with the iPodTouch whenever I feel like.

The first one I am test driving right now is the old Apple designed iPad Dock. Apparently with iOS 5, even the iPodTouch can now connect to the list of iPad accessories. Allowing me to open my doors to a great selection of devices available, including bluetooth keyboards and the more traditional plug in keyboards.

This no longer in production iPad Dock keyboard have the look and feel of a typical Mac keyboard. With Command and Option buttons located in the exact same location as the modern Mac keyboards. Since I have been a Macbook owner for approximately three years now, adapting to this keyboard is literally a matter of nano-seconds.

The biggest difference between this keyboard and the Mac’s keyboard are the row of function keys at the top of the keyboard. The keys on the iPad Dock are specially printed for the iOS. With several buttons that only make sense to iOS devices.

The Home button, functions exactly like the device’s home button when the device is plugged in.

The Screen Lock button.

What is more interesting are the two buttons in the above picture. The one with the flower in it is for Picture Slide show, used to start a slideshow with all the pictures on your iOS device. The key next the flower button is the soft keyboard button. This button would toggle the soft keyboard on and off in any text entering mode. I find this ability extra useful when I want to use multiple languages. With English on the physical keyboard and the secondary language on the soft keyboard. It is ideal for me as I do not know how to input Chinese characters using a keyboard, but writing it out with my finger is a very good option and this have been supported natively since iPhoneOS 3.

The keyboard is actually pretty good and I’ve typed this entire article on it instead of using the soft keyboard.
However good it maybe, there are several obstacle in my path before I am willing to consider buying one of this. The most important one is the design of the dock. The iOS devices must be in a vertical position to use this device and not in Landscape mode. This actually limits the real estate available while using an external keyboard. A second one is the lack of audio volume control. There are buttons for the volume, but it only responds if there is nothing plugged into the line out of the dock. Considering that I want to listen to some music while I type, I must either get a pair of speakers or use the internal speakers of the iOS device. A third problem is the weight of keyboard itself, it is approximately three quarters the weight of my Macbook. Just Imagine carrying this weight around with the iPodTouch, I might as well carry my MacBook with me instead. A forth problem is that auto spell check is not functional once the iOS device is plugged into the physical keyboard, included in this list is the auto capitalization at the end of each sentence. With a few more flaws that do not trouble me much, I honestly understand why this dock is no longer in production. It is not a very good design, especially when it is something designed by Apple.

Tags: iPad, Mac keyboard, MacBook, soft keyboard

Kitty goes to the vet

Approximately two weeks ago, as I was playing with my Cat, Alex Tiger Junior, and I noticed that one of his claw seems to have grown so long that it wrapped around and was sticking into his front leg! I immediately researched the issue on the internet and have learn some terms about a cat anatomy that I never knew before. The claw that I noticed is called a dew claw, it is different from the other claws as the dew claw is not used for walking. The term for the claw growing so long that it starts to stick into the cat’s flesh is called an ingrown claw and must be removed by snipping the claw. Once the claw is removed, the animal technicians would normally pour hydrogen peroxide on the wound to kill any bacteria around the cut. In a case where the claw is in too deep, a vet would prescribe antibiotics to the animal. After finding out all of that information, I went to my local vet to schedule an appointment.
I took Tiger in a pet taxi, a mobile cage for pets, to the vet. On the examination table both the vet and myself attempted to get Tiger out of the pet taxi for examination. He put up a glorious battle with our hands and resulted in the vet taking him along with his pet taxi to the back for detail claw examination.

Since they were in the back, I started to look around the examination room and at the equipment the vet uses. There were bottles of chemicals and devices that resembles their counterparts in clinics for humans. Of all the equipment, two glass jars of pet treats with the term Medi-treats caught my attention. From the symbol, it looks like one jar is designed for dogs and the other for cats. It must be treats the vet used to lure the animal’s attention away during an examination.

After a short while the vet came back with Tiger in his Pet taxi, sloped to the rear as Tiger mostly kept as far a distance as possible between himself and the gate of the Pet taxi. As the vet placed Tiger and his carrier on the examination table, she explained to me that two claws were ingrown instead of one. She said that as cats grow older, they lose their ability to shed their claws and would end up with ingrown claws. Her suggestion is for me to either get a claw clipper to help trim Tiger’s claws regularly or bring him back to the clinic for a trim. She wrapped his paw with bandages to help stop the bleeding but would not expect it to stay on for long as cats tends to lick it off within several hours.
After she have finished educating me on how to trim a cat’s claw, I took Tiger back to the waiting room to wait for the payment call from the reception desk. During this period I took a look a Tiger, he was absolutely pissed off at me. He was so angry that he refused to even look at me.
When I took him home, he started avoiding me. As soon as I enter a room, he would leave it. This behavior lasted for a few hours until he noticed that his paw is no longer hurting him. At which point he started asking for kitty treats.

Now that he knows visiting the vet does not equal to torturing him, several times he tried to climb into the Pet taxi right in front of me. This behavior is almost as if he is asking when will we go back to the vet, stupid cat!

As for the paw bandage that the vet said would stay on for several hours, it came off within thirty minutes after we got home.

Tags: Alex Tiger Junior, back, cat, dew, dew claw, examination, taxi, vet