Bake something scrumptious.
Gather some people you love.
Kick your shoes off!
Take a drive on the wild side!
And bite into a cupcake!
We rang in the New Year with David and Tina and Baby Sophia.
It was pretty near perfect.
I am not letting her grow up any more.
Can you believe her?
Can’t wait to see your best picture from January 2011.
Dazzle me.
Always when judging
Who people are,
Remember to footnote
The words "So far."
Robert Brault
I called to make an appointment. I apologized to the appointment maker for missing his 10 year appointment. She didn’t seem to care. PHEW! I was off the hook!
We went to the appointment and I apologized to the Check In girl. Again, she didn’t seem to care that I had missed last year’s appointment! Thank you LORD! : )
But then the nurse came in. The same nurse Kaish has had since he was an itty bitty baby. She told me she hadn’t seen us in a LONG time. She seemed a little ticked. She was loving towards Kaish but definitely giving me the evil eye.
I decided to spring into remorseful mode. 
She looked at me with disdain and said , “Well, that explains the 10 year old check up. What about his 8 and 9 year old check up?”
I know! Did you just scream? I am the WORST mother in America. I didn’t just miss 1 year. I missed 3 years worth of checkups….
Poor little Kaish had to get 4 shots. He wasn’t happy!
"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. 
Do you know her? She is a blogging mega star.
The one and only, BuckarooMama!
She uses a point and shoot camera and she captures wonderful moments in life.
Many wonderful moments.
Did you get serious about taking pictures as soon as your son was born, or did you get more into it when Zoe came along?
I’ve always enjoyed taking photos and would take rolls and rolls of film whenever I traveled (yes, my earlier travels were pre-digital age!). I kinda dreamed of having my pictures turn out like the ones I’d see in travel magazines. I mostly took photos to document the places I’d been to, the people I’ve met, etc. But I’d never taken as many photos as when Josh was born. Suddenly I was sending out at least one online album of Josh every week to family and friends –regardless of whether or not they asked for it! 
Do the kids like when you take their picture?
Oh, both Josh and Zoë have gotten used to it now. Ha, ha! They even “find” places and things for me to shoot. Sometimes they would run and pose in front of something and call out to me, “Mommy, take a picture!” 
Tell me about Hong Kong. Did you grow up there? 
There are places where you either love it or you hate it –no middle ground. I think Hong Kong is such place. Words that come to mind when I think about Hong Kong: Fast-paced, great-tasting food, shopping, compact, efficient, hub, melting pot. I love how small Hong Kong is. We’re right in the city, yet we’re only 20 minutes away from the beach and we have mountains and a hiking trail right next door. 
I love the transportation system here. It has to be one of the best (if not the best!) transport system in the world. You get trains, buses, minibuses, trams, ferries, sampans… There are times we take the kids out and try to get on as many modes of transportation as we can!
No, I didn’t grow up here. I actually grew up in the Philippines My (great-)grandparents were Chinese immigrants. When I was small, we would visit Hong Kong very often (because it’s only a 2-hour plane ride from Manila and because we have relatives here). I’ve always loved the fast-paced life here, the food (oh, the food!), and the shopping. 
So when I was on one such visit after having quit a most boring job back home, I’d sent out my CV to a headhunter, not really expecting anything. When I was contacted separately by both the Hong Kong and the Guangzhou (China) offices of the same company, both wanting to hire me, I took that to be a sign. 
So 15 years ago, I came to Hong Kong with just one Samsonite bag. Today, I have a husband, two kids, a flat (that’s what they call condo units here), and lots of wonderful memories and junk accumulated through the years.
What is it like living in a high rise? Are you friends with your neighbors?
No need to do yard work. Security personnel calling and announcing your visitors when they come –so you don’t get caught in your pj’s when your visitors arrive. Elevators. Waiting for elevators – sometimes it takes a while, considering the 4 elevators service all 60 floors!
Yes, we are friends with some of our neighbors. I say “some,” because others? We’ve never even met or don’t get to see at all. The doors to ALL the units are closed all the time. It’s not like you get to see neighbors over the fence as they leave for work while you’re pruning your rose bushes. 
The ones we know, we say hello to, we chit-chat a bit when we run into each other, but it’s not like we do coffee at each other’s places. 
Tell me about the camera you have right now, and also what you are looking into getting?
I’m shooting with a Sony DSC-N1, a point-and-shoot. It’s on its last legs, really. Sometimes the zoom gets stuck and won’t work; there are squiggly lines across some areas of the screen; the lens protector sometimes would not shut all the way. 
BUT, this camera has served me really well and for as long as it’s still functional, I’ll keep it. 
I do have my eye on a proper DSLR. After much consideration and consultation with a couple of people who know photography way more than I do, I want a Nikon D90. Zoe, my 3-year old is already laying claim to my Sony point-and-shoot “when Daddy gets [me] a new camera.” 
What place do you love to shoot the most?
I don’t really have a favourite place. I love to shoot street scenes –the many wonderful possibilities just make me giddy! I love to shoot at the beach –ooh, the textures! 
Have you read any good photography books? 
Hah! I haven’t read any photography book, period. I should, though. It’s just that I’m more of a hands-on person and I learn better that way. 
That said, I do read online tutorials on a few of my favourite photography-related sites. I find the online tutorials “just right” for my attention span. What’s more, they are mostly written by bloggers/photographers whose work I greatly admire. So there’s that much more incentive to read and go through the tutorials, as opposed to me just reading some dry technical directions from a book.
What blog link up do you love participating in the most each week? You are the queen of blog link ups!
Hmm, I do do blog link ups a lot, don’t I? Partly it’s because I’m lazy; blog link ups provide me ready topics to blog about. But mostly I do it because it’s fun –and especially on the photography-related ones, I learn so much and I get inspired by the many wonderful photographers out there. 
Some of my favourite blog link-ups: Communal Global (Woo hoo!), I Heart Faces (I got all excited about photography again because of I Heart Faces), and Macro Friday.These are just SOME of my favorites, mind you. There are plenty more!
How did you pick the kids names? 
When I was pregnant with Josh, I’d drawn up a list of names that I like and presented the list to my husband. He then picked out a name from that list. Easy, eh? With Zoe, well, I’d always known even way back when I was in high school that if I were to have a daughter someday, she’d be a Zoë. 
The fact that both Joshua and Zoe are characters in “The West Wing” –a show that we both love, --has nothing to do with how we chose the names. Pure coincidence. Really. 
Does your husband like to be in pictures?
He doesn’t mind. Well, he doesn’t really have much choice, as I hog the camera and I take pictures of whomever and whatever I want! Seriously though, Chris is such a laid back person, so easygoing. Perfect foil to my Type-A-ness! 
How often do your parents come to visit? Is it hard living so far from them?
Not as often as we’d like. They’d visit maybe 4-5 times a year, a week at a time, usually. It’s hard with them not being here in the sense that I’d love for Josh and Zoe to grow up with their grandparents present, the way I did. 
My memories of my time with my grandparents are very special and I’d love for our kids to have the sane, 
Do they know how to get online and read your blog so they can stay up to date? 
Oh yes, they do! They are my most loyal followers. The posts where I write about Josh and Zoe and the photos that I post of them on my blog? Are mainly for them. There were times before (when I first started the blog) when I would get an email or a call from my parents, asking why there hadn’t been posts and photos of the kids and when I would get to it!
Do you have any other advice or special words you would like to share? 
I thoroughly love taking pictures and just seeing what I could capture and freeze in time, playing around with different ways of capturing a subject. Of course I dream of having a great, decent big-girl DSLR, but even without one, I think if you just go out and just shoot away and if you take time out to check out and study other photographers’ works (and there are loads of amazing photographers in Bloggy Land!), take time to try your hand at fixing a photo, join some photo challenges, you will learn SO much.
I have found so much inspiration in many of the wonderful bloggers/photographers that I’ve “met” through the various photo challenges and memes in which I’ve participated.
Buckaroo Mama @ Mamahood, Among Other Things
