Dance Your Weekend Away

I had a super fun weekend this weekend. But this post will be about last weekend because I was a lazy bum and didn’t post until now.

Last weekend was fun too.

One where I didn’t need to go to the gym afterwards for days.

It all started on a cool Thursday night where my cousins and I jumped and grooved to Lady Gaga live in concert.

The concert was amazebaaaaaalls. Lady Gaga is pretty weird sometimes but one thing’s for sure — she is a talented and hardworking artist who genuinely seems to love her fans.

The best part of the concert would have to be cousin (and sister) time because that’s just priceless. I’ve missed watching my talented cousins dance! (Sorry the photo doesn’t show us dancing)

Then on Saturday, I attended one_eighty, which is my church’s youth ministry and danced again! For the glory of God. We danced with our fellow African refugees and I had the most amazing time seeing everyone’s joy in performing for the Lord.

On Saturday, I did this thing called clubbing (“po” in Cantonese) and I danced again! Except this time it was at Play, this super crowded popular club in Hong Kong and… I actually didn’t get to dance much at all. Ah well…I think the other two days made up for it.

Did you get to let loose and jive over the weekend?

 

Funniest Advice My Mom Gave Me

I contributed to Audrey Magazine‘s compilation of “Funny Advice from Moms” in anticipation for Mother’s Day. Hear my tale below (and check out the rest here!)

Throughout the years, I’ve amassed quite a collection of wisdoms from my mother. I would share them all with you here, but a big piece of advice from my mom is:

“Don’t share with the Internet advice that I tell you.”

Like many Asian mothers, she wants to give the illusion that I just spontaneously, randomly, magically became the charming, alluring, poised, well-behaved, well-kempt, and witty lady that I am today with no help whatsoever.

Hate to break it to you – but I did get a lot of helpful advice from my mother.

Helpful advice that I sometimes didn’t want and didn’t always appreciate. Helpful advice that I sometimes laughed at. Helpful advice that I sometimes took for granted. But helpful advice that I now notice nearly always rings true. Whether it’s packing a light scarf in my purse whenever I go out, taking my Vitamin C’s, being careful about who I choose to give my heart to, or standing with a straight posture — my mom’s advice makes sense.

The most outlandish advice my mom often dishes out is this upheld belief she has that anything can happen in this world. No seriously. “Anything can happen in this world, Janice” my mother would say, “you never know.”

She truly believes that a young ingénue could walk down the street and get discovered by a hot-shot director who will propel her to stardom. She believes that a big ladies’ man could take one look at the bookish girl-next-door, fall in love, and change his wild ways forever. She believes that the lottery could be won. She believes that papaya can make boobs bigger. She believes.

I used to laugh at all of this. “Really, ma?” I’d ask. “Do you live in your own world? Have you ever faced reality? Have you calculated the odds?”

But the older I got, the more I came to realize that what she was saying was right. After all, reality is partially based on your perception of the world. And if you’re endlessly optimistic like my mother, who’s to say that anything can’t happen? As the years pass, I’ve encountered more and more crazy situations and surpassed countless expectations and odds that have led me to relate more to my mother’s wise words.

My mother’s belief that anything can happen in this world is true. I would just add, “if you believe” to the end of that phrase. After all, she did turn me, a girl who used to scoff at her advice, into a believer.

So seriously, anything can happen. (If you just believe.) Hey, who knows? Maybe you’ll even think of this entry as inspiring instead of cheesy? After all, anything can ha…you get the point.

Happy Mother’s Day, mom! I love love love you.

 

HK Home | Sneek Peak!

The past few weeks has been surprisingly a lot of fun spent decorating and cleaning our new apartment! With the help of some lovely family and friends, we got the place looking really cozy and great to stay. I wanted to share some pictures of our home.
These are not pictures of our home. This was the inspiration board I put together to get some creative juices flowing on how we wanted our place to look.

It ended up looking not much like anything in the pictures above at all! But that’s okay because this is a place we can truly call our own.

Left: A chalkboard clock kills two birds with one stone! Right: I love our white Ikea table — so good for reading the bible, writing, going online, eating, and drinking!

My hole-in-the-wall bedroom. The whole smaller space, more happiness thingis totally working!

My favorite detail in my room is my window, which I got to add some favorite personal touches to. I’ve always wanted some warmer colors to my rooms back at home but due to financial/parental restraints, never was able to. Now I finally get to! Yippy-Yai-Ay!

This picture of my mom, sister, and I made me laugh so hard I snorted milk out of my nose when I first saw it. Obviously frame-worthy.

Flowers are such an awesome touch to the house (these lovely buds thanks to Joel).  Other personal touches I love — quirky household items like a trashcan who winks and a sunlamp jar.

And the best part of the house? My sister as my roommate. It’s been too long since I’ve lived with this girl. So grateful every day I get this chance to right now. I LOVE YOU SISTERRRRRR!!!

 

Home + Heart

Say hello to my sister’s new apartment.

{ She says Hello back }

Clean, well-lit, and smack-dab in the middle of Hong Kong, this is a great new abode for a young adult.

Though my sis really REALLY wanted to call all the shots and make the place her own, my parents are…well, my parents so it was a family affair heading to Ikea to pick out furnishings for the place.

Ikea, no matter where in the world, Hong Kong or Los Angeles, Sweden or Sydney, is such an awesome place to be. It’s like Disneyland, except it’s free (unless you buy stuff), and it has no rides (unless you ride the escalators), and no life-size Mickey is walking around (unless if you do have one. Then…where are you?)

But seriously, fun for the whole family!

My favorite Ikea furniture of all time has to be the Expedit shelves (bottom left of the picture above). I just love its functionality, how much stuff it can store and, if organized properly, how presentable it looks to guests.

If I had it my way, my room would lay near the darker end of the color spectrum (picture above, woman not for sale). I feel like it looks cozier (not to mention cooler during the hot HK summers) but once again, it was a family decision. And plus, it’s not like I’m pulling much weight in the financial arena so I don’t really have that much of a say (though I must say, I do have excellent taste. I’m a secret interior-decorator-blog nut).

This is going to be an exciting new step in Jessica’s life and while I’m in town, I’m looking forward to helping her out setting up house.

I can’t say this hasn’t affected my mood a bit the past few days. While I’m absolutely over the moon over the steps my sis is climbing in her personal and professional life, I can’t help but compare it to my own which is in a bit of a shambles right now. Nothing solid, nothing steady. But no, I can’t say that because my health is, my mentality is, my faith is. Gotta just keep remembering, God has a plan and timing for everything!

Also, can’t wait to be roommates with my sis for the time being! Yayayayyayyy!!!

Ikea Causeway Bay, Hong Kong
Park Lane Hotel Basement,
310 Gloucester Road
3125 0888

 

How The Janns Do Christmas

The thought of cooking food sometimes gives me the hives.

The thought of the hours spent selecting the menu, the thought of the trips to the grocery store to get every ingredient just right, the thought of the cutting, the thought of the boiling, the thought of the dishes getting cleaned up…

*shudder

But nonetheless, I offered to prepare some dishes for our family’s Christmas Eve dinner (which, next to Thanksgiving and Chinese New Year, is only the most important family meal of the year). How hard could it be? A salad, a potato side dish, a dessert. Easy as pie.

Well, when you’re me, it can be pretty hard. For some reason, I thought it was a good idea to set a more fancier menu for those dishes. Meaning I wasn’t just gonna toss some iceberg lettuce in with some carrots and call it a day. I wasn’t just gonna buy the boxed mashed potato flakes.

I decided to spice up the plain ol’ mashed potatoes dish by making a variation of this recipe of mashed potatoes with spinach, ricotta, and bacon.

These here are all the brave soldiers that served for duty that night.

First, I diced the potatoes while the water was boiling. Saving time baby!

Then, while the potatoes were boiling, I diced up some onions and mixed them in a pan with spinach and ricotta cheese.

Turkey bacon also got sizzled and diced. I used turkey because it’s healthier. This is the reason why I will never be able to become a vegetarian.

My grandma started helping me mix it all together. You gotta have a grandma mixing to make this recipe filled with love.

Voila! What do ya think? Looks pretty scrumptious, no? It tasted even better the day after.

So unfortunately for me, I took too long making the potatoes that I ran out of time when I got to my fancy salad recipe (which was going to feature fancy stuff like kale. And couscous. And quinoa which is so fancy the man at Trader Joe’s had to correct me and say, “it’s not pronounced ‘kinoa,’ it’s pronoounced ‘keenua,’ you blundering ball of idiot” (ok, so he didn’t add the last part but he sure was thinkin’ it).

I did whip up a freakin’ tasty pumpkin bread but it was so yummy I forgot to take pictures of it. Here are the rest of the dishes served at the dinner…

‘Twas so nice getting my sister and cousins back for the holidays. As you can see, us Janns are more than a little enamored with the Lius.

Sisters!

Hope y’alls had a great Christmas!

 

Stage Daughter

I feel like a proud parent!

My aunt, mom, and dad are the cutest!

–

*EDIT: A few days after posting this…

Me: Ma, I posted your video on Facebook and all my friends say you are so cute!

Ma: (In a really cute voice) I’m not cute!

Me: No, you’re so cute! Like a litto itto witto kiddy cute.

Ma: I’m not cute! I’m so cool!

 

“How Was Your Winter Break?”

I took an actual break this winter.

Like, an actual one — not a fake one where I still answered emails on my phone under the covers at night or took some business meetings and interviews (okay, so I did do that one day of the break but c’mon, you know what they say — “you can take the tiger out of the jungle, but you can’t take the jungle out of the tiger!”

I’ve had a fairly rough December (nothing compared to last year’s but still). One that consisted of guns and holdups, traffic tickets, oil spills, and cars crashing within inches of me (I knowww!!)

So it was nice to receive this fortune cookie.

Good things did happen for much of break. For one thing, an unparalleled  amount of joy.

Look at that smile on my grandma’s face! JOY!

Good things happen when you’re not looking. Can you spot that in the picture above? I do like surprises and I’m hoping this year, I take steps closer to making my dreams come true!

 

Christmas Thoughts

Merry Christmas!

Christmas is such a fabulous time for me. It’s wonderful because as a Christian, I can celebrate and revel in the peace of knowing that Christ had been born to save us. It’s wonderful because as a workaholic, I can take a little time to relax. It’s wonderful because as a human, I use the holidays as an reason to spend time with my family and loved ones.

I really do love spending good quality time with my family. It makes me remember how kind God was to create other people in our lives so that we won’t have to spend our time on earth alone.

“The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.’”
~ Genesis 2:18

Perhaps this is a naive way of thinking but I’m curious — when did life start to develop this whole “me against them” way of thinking? When did everyone start to feel the need to protect their assets, protect their gains as though there are not enough to go around in the world? When did the privileged just want to keep what they have just to themselves and not share? When did pushing others down to make your way to the top become an envied trait? When did caring about other people become not cool? When did sharing get lost, people? We learned this in kindergarten so I know some people somewhere still felt it was important but somehow on the road to growing up, we lost some of it. When did material goods become replacements for quality relationships? When did quantity replace quality?

I don’t really care to know when any of these happen but I do wish to know why it happened. I may be lost on a lot of other things but I am not lost on this and it’s that we were made on this earth to love. Christ showed us that during his time here. When we love, miracles happens. I know this because when I heard of Christ’s love, when I felt His love around my arms, my world turned upside down but suddenly made sense. This here is a man who loved those who betrayed Him, who loved us before we loved Him. By all this world’s standards, he’s a fool. But to me, it’s someone finally worthy enough to worship.

This article on how some of our country’s richest think about the Occupy movement really irritated me when I first read it. And these details of the Sandusky case literally made me sick to my stomach. I just couldn’t believe the nerves of some people, how they can be so trapped in their own world and produce this really twisted view of life. And then I realized I am no better if I just put them off that way because the truth is, I have never been in their world so I have no idea what it’s really like. I can just guess and say things like, “oh, if I were in there position, I would NEVER think this way, I would never act that way.”

But would I really?

It just comes down to me living my life and the things I’ve seen and the things I know and the people and actions that have touched my heart. With all those things I have come to know that:

• *Happiness does not equal joy.
• *Money does not equal happiness.
• *There are so many things I can’t change in my life already so with the things I’m granted free will to change, I need to make wise decisions on.
• *I can’t change other people so I can only change myself.
• *I may only be one person and I may not be able to make all the difference in the world but I can make a difference and that in it of itself makes all the difference in the world.
• *Each person does not have the same path set for them.
• *All things are possible through Christ.

 

My Short Arboretum Trip

One of the best parts of the holidays (and there are so many, aren’t there) is the time I get to spend with my family.

On a regular basis, I generally already spend a fair amount of time with my folks but it’s usually hanging around the house or trips to the mall or getting groceries or something. It’s not…quality time, I should say. But it is something I’m working on.

I was determined to get my parents and grandma out of that lovely round kitchen table they usually sit at for most of the day and into the sunlight to soak up some Vitamin D so I made plans to take them to the arboretum.

My family, in our usual fashion, lagged and hemmed and hawed and stalled and reconsidered but I was adamant to get them out of the house this particular afternoon.

I daresay our trip to the Fullerton arboretum was a success and that they even enjoyed themselves (a little sunlight can do that to ya). But why don’t you decide for yourself in the video below? Check it:

 

Bringing Christmas Back Pt. 2

Once you start, you just can’t stop.

So since I decided to do my little part in reviving some of the Christmas spirit in our household, I suddenly was on a roll to do all I can to bring more Christmas cheer back.

I went to the 99cents Only store and bought a couple of boxes of lights to hang all over our house. My stupidity did not warn me that the number “20″ on the box means just that– 20 lightbulbs. That meant I had a whole bunch of really short strings of lights and couldn’t really do much with it except to toss around the fireplace and hang on the stairs.

Our family threw away our beloved fake Christmas tree the last time we moved (along with all the ornaments) so instead of going out to buy a new one, I decided to just decorate a regular ol’ fake tree that’s been standing in our living room. Bought a couple of fake snowflakes from Target and viola! Not a bad impostor, eh?

Oh yea, and I also baked snicker-doodles for the first time. The soggy dough threw me off for a bit but they came out of the oven nice enough.

And also for the first time ever, I ended up buying everyone in my family gifts that I actually think they will really like! No more last-minute JCPenney tie for dad or that lame plate set that I picked up from a white elephant exchange that I decide to regift to my cousin. Is this what growing up means? If so, I dig it.