since my pops arrived, my dumpling intake has pretty much tripled and it's only going uphill in a downhill/loosen-the-belt way. we take hours to indulge in the wild hotel breakfast that has stations for like every breakfast food imaginable (and non-imaginable), including breakfast noodles and breakfast blue cheese and breakfast bao... and our favorite, breakfast 粽子.

last night we had a molecularly gastronomized xiao long bao. (don't even. i'll discuss later.)

yesterday we had our first rehearsal with the phil and it went well. it was fun to play with my dad and aziz! aziz has surrounded himself with like a thousand bass drums and if i didn't know him i'd be scared.

after rehearsal i dragged those two to the street with all of the kitchen supplies stores and it was the most jaw-droppingly amazing out-of-body cake mold experience. hey molly, did you buy any cool things in hong kong? 7,000 beautiful cupcake cups for the price of about two normal vending machine trips.

other enjoyable moments from these past few days: running into some friends from juilliard who were stopping over en route to bali, eating the most fabulous black sesame ice cream with the hugest black sesame seeds and not giving a damn about them getting stuck in my teeth, meeting a giant inflatable duck, and finding soup dumplings at the 7-11.

ok, i am off to play more gong!

-yeh!