Hannah's 8th Birthday

Hannahs last weekend in Hong Kong before her holiday in Japan was a 'birthday weekend'.

We let her open her presents a little early and she choose to have a quiet weekend at home playing with the new toys.   The main present from us was a large Lego Friends set of a stables, which she quickly made up.

On Saturday night, she chose to go to NichiGyu a Japanese style hotpot restaurant with an all-you-can eat desert buffet.

On Sunday we had a quiet birthday dinner at home, and a birthday cake.

Daddy cooked a Moroccan lamb tagine with almonds and prunes, white beans cooked in yougurt and mint (recipes from Claudia Roden's Middle Eastern Food), and cous cous.  

Rika also made a bean salad (perhaps to ensure there was something she could eat)

Tai Chi Exhibition

The annual tai chi charity exhibition at Queen Elizabeth Hall was held on Sunday 12th July.

Hannah and I went down to watch and show support for my classmates.    The event ran from about 9:30-2pm with 79 different demonstrations from many different schools.

Mainly tai chi hand forms of various styles,  but also internal martial arts like BaGua and XingYi,  and some weapons forms including a Japanese sword school.

My tai chi school had three demonstrations.   We arrived in time for the second,  a combined demonstration by the kung-fu kids group and the XingYi class (which Id attended briefly last year)

Last year Id participated in 2 demonstrations.  This year none of my classes were directly involved, although I new many of the participants from various classes.

The final demonstration from we saw was a combination of Yang? sword form and Combined-style 42-form with some XingYi or perhaps BaGua tai chi at the end

Video:

Hannah sat with me and watched patiently for two hours or so, although she wasn't particularly interested.  After an hour I honored my  promise to take her to the nearby playground.  But it was so hot she soon wanted to come back to the cool of the stadium.