Of Foreign Lands and People - Feb 14

Happy Valentine's Day to all you lovers. The street market in China had beautiful flowers for sale though I haven't yet taken advantage of it by buying any for my dear partner. Today was a very quiet and a mostly restful day for me and especially for Judy.

She woke up in the morning stating that her knee felt better, called Millie the secretary at Canossa Hospital in HK and scheduled an MRI for Monday with the possibility of cancelling it if her knee had improved. Since in any case she wouldn't have surgery in HK, it may not be of benefit to have the MRI now. She is standing and walking better but it is difficult for her to not over do it. We are now thinking that a decision on Thailand will happen after Monday, MRI or not.

So, we went to the center of Yuen Long, the local town we are in and walked around the street market. We had some breakfast by street grunting (so called): some sort of fish ball, a pork filled steamed bun, peking ravioli and a sweet sesame bun filled with red bean paste. Judy had great fun speaking Mandarin to the shopkeepers. The produce in the market was very nice and we bought some fruit to have in the house. We walked through the fish market which was indoors with many small stalls selling all variety of fish, some alive in water, some thrashing around on ice and mostly still alive. The dead fish were larger and cut up into pieces. The shopper handled the fish to decide which ones they wanted to buy. There was all variety of sea food, scallops, live crabs, oysters and clams. The Chinese, much more than Americans, see where their food comes from. There were many herb and traditional Chinese medicine shops displaying ginseng from a variety of countries and countless herbal medicines we couldn't identify.

We returned to the house and rested in the afternoon. Judy iced and elevated her leg and Richard started Darwin's "Voyage of the Beagle" in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth. Someone in the apartment complex was practicing piano playing a piece that I have played in the past and recognized. Ironically it is titled "Of Foreign Lands and People" by Robert Schumann. It is a wonderful short piece which I then googled and listened to several versions of including this one by Vladimir Horowitz (it is the first 1 1/2 minutes) and can heard at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUa1JA1oZQI

We made arrangements to meet Simon, a Cantonese engineer, living in HK, who Judy knew in college and hadn't seen since then. He had found her on the internet and telephoned her about a month before after having no communication for over 30 years. He came to our apartment and we went out to dinner together to an outdoor restaurant around the corner which he said he knew. He ordered for us and the meal included: bak choi (chinese cabbage) with pig lung soup, fish heads (with the eye which i believe is a delicacy), a chicken and brocolli dish, a summer squash stir fry of some sort and pork spare ribs cut in small pieces (that were not very meaty). He suggested an Indonesian restaurant in town as an alternative to this one which wasn't as good as he remember it. However, he did eat with gusto. After several hours of eating and talking we said good night and returned to the apartment.

It is now 5:20 am and time to finish my night's sleep. No photos from me today. The pace of this blog will slow down a lot when we go on the road. I am hopeful that we will be travelling soon. Love to all.