I love garlic, and I was curious when I saw a video on BBC News online about prices of garlic may increase as the price of garlic in China has tripled in eight months! A knock-on effect will ripple its way over here... *sigh, damn it, now it's a luxury item.

According to The Indo, a third of Irish employers wants students to learn Mandarin.

UPDATE: Just read in The Irish Times on the strong emphasis of new languages to be taught in second level, especially Mandarin.

LUMINA is a thriller web series written, directed, produced and starring Asian Americans and Asian Canadians, and the first season is up on our website: www.luminaseries.com and on KoldCast TV: http://www.koldcast.tv/#/show:lumina. If you would consider posting about us, or maybe doing an interview with myself (writer/director) or our cast that would be really fantastic! LUMINA is a new indie thriller web series directed by first time Asian American director Jennifer Thym. The nine part series features an exciting international cast, including JuJu Chan (TVB People's Choice Award for Miss Chinatown USA 2009), Michael Chan (star of the YouTube viral hit, Wall Street Fighter IV) and Vince Matthew Chung (winner of the Amazing Race Asia 3.) LUMINA is the story of a beautiful young Hong Kong girl who falls in love with a mysterious man she can only see in mirrors, only to be caught up in a whirlwind of lies and treachery.

Check out trailer:

According to the article from The Irish Times, Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology is partnered with Nanchang University in China, and offer these joint programmes:

accountancy, hospitality and tourism, nursing, business and computing

(Source: Irish Times)

1. The weather, definitely not Irish weather anymore, it's the mid-20s and sunny, so I am wearing tees everyday.
2. You know you are in HK because of the cheap and yummy food.
3. I hear Cantonese (and some English) everywhere instead of Mandarin and English.
4. For some reason, Starbucks has sprung up everywhere, not much fun hunting for them anymore.
5. The prices of video games are half the price of the cheapest retailers at home.
6. It's still super-clean everywhere in HK. Handles, lift buttons, etc. are cleaned every couple of hours.
7. Lighting joss sticks at my ancensters table at home.
8. Old people doing Tai Chi early in the morning.
9. The haziness when you look out of the window, and even more noticeable when you look across the harbour at Tsim Sha Tsui. (It's worse in Beijing, we cannot even see across the street!)
10. Getting bitten by mozzies in November, now that's just wrong.

Following on from my last post, coincidently enough, I saw tail end of this programme called Take away my Takeaway on Channel4. It's about literally taking people away to different countries from where their particular takeaway food originated from. The one of most interest for me was the Hong Kong one. The girls maybe a bit annoying, but interesting to see HK again (since I was only back from HK in the last couple of days), and see that they are learning something about the food in HK. Check it out, it's funny that they picked everything from the market for their ingredients, although my tummy was rumbling thinking about the scrumptious food in HK.

Ads from Wanchai Ferry are appearing more and more on television, billboards, etc. I wonder if they are as good as they say they are? I wonder if many Chinese people tried if out yet?

Why am I not surprised that they are on twitter also, and let's not forgetting Facebook.

Here are videos of the ads found online. It's definitely cheesy.

Better than the Uncle Ben ads and I agree with BBCB. ( >-<; )

Yikes, only just got back from HK on Saturday, and saw this news just now. Here's some footage from Beeb online. Not that I take the bus whilst I was there, more KCR and MTR, but still scary all the same.

Sara Wilson kindly asked me to mention the Fresh Air Fund, tis all for a good cause.

This past summer OneSight reached out to us and helped over 3000 Fresh Air children by making sure that every child who needed the gift of sight was screened. The Fresh Air Fund is so happy OneSight and their traveling optical clinic are able to help at Fresh Air camps.