This weekend was very busy! On Friday, Matt and I went out with some friends to a very cool Nepali restaurant in Jordan. It is pretty unique because all of the clients are actually Nepali. We have been there twice, and have only seen two Chinese people eating there, and definitely no Western looking people. It is pretty rare in Hong Kong to find a place where there aren't a lot of Chinese people. Anyway, this place has the BEST chana masala that I have had in Hong Kong, nightly shows of a woman doing Nepali dances, and best of all it is really cheap. It was less than 100 US dollars for 7 of us to eat, and that included 3 pitchers of beer.

We had an early night because on Saturday we were going on a junk boat trip. I had faith that the weather would be warm, but it stayed cold the entire time. We were on a huge, beautiful boat...the nicest junk boat I have ever been on! It was a good thing, cause we stayed on the boat the entire time. I didn't even go swimming! I got totally sea sick cause the water was so choppy and we were the only ones that brought food onto the boat. Usually there is so much food on those trips, so we just got a few thing: chips and salsa, fruit, a salad. That is more than enough if everyone brings stuff to share, but no one brought a single thing. We only knew the guy rented the boat, and the rest were his friends. They were a bunch of guys who had been out really late the night before. They systematically devoured each piece of food we brought out. One guy even ate a leftover chunk of tomato that I had half eaten! I guess everyone was hungry...

After the junk boat, we had our friend's birthday party, which was pretty fun except that we were knocked out from the boat trip. We left early without even saying good bye. I will never, ever do that again! The whole taxi ride home, I kept thinking about how rude it was to leave without saying goodbye. It would be such a process though, and it seems like you can never just leave...people always act shocked and try to convince you that you should stay and that you are really lame for leaving.

Through out the weekend, people were trying to convince me that I shouldn't move back to the US, that I have it made living in Hong Kong and not working, and that I could certainly find a job here. Well, maybe I could find a job...I did find jobs when I first moved here, but they don't want to go through the effort of getting a lawyer and getting a work visa unless you have some specialized skill, like in finance or if you are a lawyer. I am not, nor do I want to be, in either of those fields. Also, people that tell me I have it made not working...they just don't know. They all have great careers. I want to feel productive and make money. I am just too young to not be working. It would be great if I was older, had already been working for 10 years, and I wanted to settle down and have kids. It was nice traveling for two years, but I am ready to feel productive again! When I was applying to grad school, I rewrote my personal statement, and I was remembering how much I like working. Also, I found two things that I had written while working on the task force, which are published on the task force website. (One is the Compendium of Traffic Safety programs and the other is the Pedestrian safety fact sheet. They are the fourth and fifth links under "Our Publications".) They aren't a big deal or anything, but it just brought to my mind how I liked working. Also, it made me remember how grief stricken I was when Dad died. My boss had emailed me to tell me she had published my papers on the web, but I completely didn't register that fact because I was so overwhelmed with grief. When I was going through my old emails, I saw the link she sent, and it was completely new to me! Grief is so amazingly powerful...I was literally out of my mind with grief, but I had no idea at the time.