MASH

Yes, I'm still here. I've spent many hours in front of the computer in the last couple of weeks but obviously not on the blog. I've been trying to put together a trip for August and it has finally materialized.

I looked into several options including Lombok (an Indonesian island), Singapore and a nearby island, more than one area of China, Okinawa... I don't know how many places. But things kept falling through at some point either because of airfare prices, lack of availability of flights or chosen hotels, and mostly due to rainy season in this part of the world. Several people say, "So what! It's not that bad." But I am that person who seeks optimum weather conditions where possible, so Thailand or Vietnam would not be the places to go right now.

Curious yet? We chose another random place that had not even been on our must see list. One day I saw an online article listing the 28 finalists in the contest for the seven new natural wonders of the world. I looked through the list of 28 destinations and one seemed relevant to my search. Jeju, an island to the south of South Korea.

Research, research, research... and we're going to South Korea. It was supposed to be a long weekend sort of trip, but since we're passing through Seoul, how could we not stop there? We head to Jeju first for two days and then back to Seoul for the next two days. We leave next week. I hear Seoul is an interesting place, hardly any English spoken. And of course, no one I know has heard of Jeju because we always have to traipse ourselves just off the simple, obvious path, don't we? Looking forward to it.

The other thing I had been doing was studying for my advanced wine course exam. I originally took it back in March, the day after we returned from our two week stay in NY, where I told myself I would have plenty of time to study. I knew about two days into our stay that I could give up hope of having time to study and resigned myself to taking the test as practice. Not surprisingly, I didn't pass (though I did pass the tasting part in which you have to describe and identify a wine) and I signed up to retake the theory part on July 25.

So I spent the last four months studying every day for three hours. And if you're reading this, then you're someone who knows me well enough that you have a suspicious, puzzled expression on your face right now. Of course I didn't! I meant to... but I gave myself about two weeks. I crammed a lot in, but you have no idea how much information there is about the production of wine. And then - I got the same exact test as the last time. If you think that would help me, it didn't. There are so many possible facts they could pull out of the material, I only vaguely remembered what was asked the last time and I didn't think that they would give the same test as a whole, maybe just some questions. Another problem is that the way they ask questions, I come home after the exam, search the book, and still can't find a definitive answer to some of them. That's frustrating.

So I didn't even really want to say that I took the test again because I probably only did marginally better than the last time and it will be embarrassing if I fail it twice, but I had to come up with something to report over the last few weeks! Wine studying, trip planning. Sorry, folks.

We did go back to Macau a couple of weeks ago. We planned on it because the forecast predicted a sunny Saturday for the first time in weeks. The forecast lied, so we looked at the pretty pool through the raindrops on the hotel room window, took advantage of the spa at the Mandarin Oriental, and had a pretty good Portuguese dinner nearby before throwing some money away at The Sands. It was beautiful and sunny the next day while we checked out.

We also visited a winery here in Honk Kong recently. That's right, a Hong Kong winery. They import the grapes from other grape growing regions of the world and they make the wine here so it is actually produced locally. It's a small outfit and a small staff of three, but they were friendly and it was a fun evening with a group of fellow wine tasters.

Saturday in Macau

Sunday in Macau

8th Estate Winery