Chinese New Year Celebrations (Year of the Dog 2018) | #WeeklyWednesday2018

*posted March 23

Blog Post for Feb 15th - 21st.

Happy Year of the Dog! :D

Lots of photos, not much text (surprise surprise), so I'm just gonna bring you all through it!

Hope your celebrations (for my Asian friends) and surroundings (for my non-Asian friends with Asian friends) were festive and exciting and brought you lots of joy and happiness!

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Celebration at Home

Obviously, we took the opportunity to deck out the house in red and gold. 

Here are the various decorations that we've amassed over the years.

over the door thing, red packets hanging from some fake flowers, and a wall hanging thing

don't you just LOVE how eloquent I am right now? lol

here's a view of our "living room", blue draping thing is the "door" to my parents' room

also Chinese New Year CDs from like...the late 90s and early 00's. 

We also had hot pot. Again. haha XD

What can I say? This is new year food for us, which given that we're Chinese, means that there's a huge possibility of having it twice a year lol 

glass noodles and various veggies

NOT a huge fan of the first one, forget what it's called though...

abalone (YUM YUM YUM I LOVE THIS STUFF), starting from top left > fish tofu > fish / squid balls > mushrooms > (in the middle) fish dumplings, ground pork wrapped in tofu skins

These were my FAVORITE things on the table. No beef to compete, so I pretty much devoured this list... I was nice about it though. I at least asked before I took more. lol 

pork slices, delicious broth made by Mum (she boils bones overnight in our vacuum pot, Cantonese (Dad's heritage, actually) way of making high quality, healthy soups)

Tom Yum paste (my must-have in my hot pot soup), which is amazing because I actually can't handle spicy super well, but I love this flavor in my broth

Mum putting stuff in.

stuff is boiling

Mum is waiting for it to cook

my first bowl...and when it was almost finished

my second bowl, Tom Yum edition

I also spied a lovely thing being made here...hmm...what could it be? ;)

For a home celebration...it was NOT TOO SHABBY. <3

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Celebration at CCF

I'll update this eventually with videos of the "talent show" section of the celebrations...

We had 1) worship, 2) "talent show" with three performance items (1: dance, 2: piano performance, 3: "girls' band thing"). 

Dad popped a CNY decoration under the cross so that the worship team's "backdrop" would look a little more festive. 

What do we think? :)

decor around the church kitchen doorframe, dessert table (also, recognize the pink + yellow + green dessert?)

the colorful dessert is a childhood favorite of mine that Mum calls "Chinese delight" (after Turkish delight from the Chronicles of Narnia). Not its actual name, but whatever. lol 

More dessert table details

oranges (Chinese New Year staple), more dessert table photos

friends with the decor :)

Mum going through the dinner dishes (listing them off for the benefit of our non-Chinese friends in attendance)

everyone in line for food! starting with Pastor Bruce :)

dinner table as a whole, pork dish by Mr. John :)

Mum made a ground pork + shrimp stuffed cucumber

others in CCF made stir-fried veggies with mu-er (wood ear) and Korean rice cakes

my dinner and dessert plates :)

Mum, Kim, and myself :)

Mum's so adorable and tiny in the second photo lol XD

And that's all the pictures! PHEW!

Until next time!! 

~ Belated Happy New Year!

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Allergy Testing and Office Potluck | #WeeklyWednesday2018

*posted March 19

Blog Post for Feb 8th - 14th.

Anyway, it's been an interesting week, guys. I got an allergy test done Thursday (Feb 8) and had an office potluck (Feb 12). We chalked it up to it being a Valentine's Day related celebration, but nothing was Valentine's Day themed, so I'm pretty sure we just wanted food. Enjoy the updates. 

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Allergy Testing

So if you don't already know, I'm not much of an outdoors person. Surprise.

Don't get me wrong, I LIKE seeing God's creation, but when you're as miserable outdoors as I am without the help of allergy medicines, you can understand why it's generally unpleasant for me to be outside. Autumn and Winter are literally the only times I can be outside and not be dying. Spring, as gorgeous as the flowers are, and Summer, as affiliated with "outdoors" as it is, are like a season of death for my respiratory functions. :( 

I also have a worse reaction to just about any kind of bug bite compared to your average person, so...yeah. It's like, why make life worse for myself? I'm fine indoors and if I can watch my outdoorsy friends enjoy life outside and see their photos they bring back, I'm totally okay with that. :)

SO! In light of the fact that I'm still on my parents' health insurance for a few more months, I figured I might as well find out WHAT I'm actually allergic to. So that I could be better prepared in what to expect out of life, if nothing else.

I've met a few other friends who have allergies, but they were mostly food allergies. That said, I honestly had no idea what to expect. Also, I figured it'd be more interesting for me (reaction wise) if I didn't know what they'd do beforehand, so I didn't read up on anything prior to going. 

Learned MANY things, guys. Lots of things. Let's go through this together, shall we?

The first of which is that I'm dermatographic. This means that you can literally WRITE on my skin. It's also evidently the reason why 1) I react to bug bites so badly, 2) I get eczema when I get too stressed out, and 3) why I bruise so easily.
The picture on the left here is from a giant X the allergist drew on my back with a plastic object with a rounded point. He pushed rather hard, grant you, but it was more of a "you're pushing pretty hard" instead of "ok, that hurts" kind of feeling. This is the result. Think of how scratches from cats have a tendency to swelling in a solid line and you get an idea of what this looked like on my back. Picture's intentionally blurred to spare you from the torture of my back pores in iPhone camera glory lol
It's also evidently a type of "chronic hives", which evidently means that I'm able to take up to 4 Zyrtec (or generic, whatever) for whatever reaction I get. This means that I can take 2 Zyrtec in the spring to counteract allergies if necessary, guys. This is a giant comfort for me and my miserable existence in the spring.

Then came the main allergy test. They pull a thing of 20 mini needle-ish items that are dipped in concentrated liquid versions of things that people are allergic to, including cats, dogs, mold, 4 different classes of tree pollen, etc. And then they essentially prick you in the arm with all of them.

They also have a "worst case scenario" one called Histamine (allergy meds are anti-histamines, so that makes sense) and a "control" one that I can't remember the name of. Basically, H (on my right arm, closest to my elbow) should have the worst reaction of anything on my arm and S (on my left arm, near the elbow) will swell enough for them to consider everything else on my arm that reaches that size as a "I'm not allergic" reaction.

Now that we're all on the same page and things make sense (sorta), here are photos lol

literally how I had to sit for 15 min, interesting and slightly uncomfortable to say the least.

5 minutes in, you can see that the histamine on my right arm is already freaking out

10 min in, we've got quite a few things happening, everything's definitely RED, but the right arm seems to have more stuff that's "growing" bigger

15 min in, my right arm looks like I just got bit by the mother of mosquitoes. Good Lord.

So, allergies are classified on a scale of 4, 1 being barely allergic (to the point that you really won't have much of a reaction unless you're practically eating, breathing, and sleeping it) and 4 being super allergic (think allergy shots every month, allergy meds every day, etc). 

In conclusion...I'm allergic to: Ragweed (2), 2 classes of trees (3), corn pollen (2), and dust mites (3). It's been an interesting week and a half thus far, trying to remain mindful to keep my arms covered during the week so that I don't have people 1) asking me what happened to my arms or 2) assuming I did something...not good. lol

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Office Potluck

I could try to narrate something eloquent to discuss a potluck, but honestly? 

Nah. without further ado, here's the food.

Mongolian dumplings called Huushuur and Spicy Taco Chicken

Nigerian Rice and Macaroni and Cheese

Scallop Potatoes and Buffalo Chicken Dip

Meatballs

my eventual plate of stuff :)

Office is lots of fun. :) I'm quite enjoying it.

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Thanks again for being patient with me during the hiatus!
Backlogged blog Post 1 / 3...DONE! :D

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