Nan Lian Garden, Starbucks vouchers

A couple of cool things:

NAN LIAN GARDEN (The site's only in English, but here's the link to the LCSD info page in English.)
I visited the gardens yesterday evening with some family friends. We were led around the beautiful T'ang Dynasty style gardens by SC who has been volunteering with them, helping out with the website and various marketing and PR efforts. The gardens opened to the public just last month. I had already heard a lot of praise for the gardens from friends who have been. Normally, gardens aren't really my sort of thing, but I was really impressed with Nan Lian. First of all, it's so easy to get there! From the Diamond Hill MTR station, there are clear sign postings for the gardens that you can't help but find it! It's less than a 5-minute walk from the MTR. Once inside, I was really impressed with the quality of its design and construction (haven't seen such high quality of construction in HK in a long while!). I wish I had gone during the day so I could have taken more pictures, but suffice it to say, it is evident everywhere that a lot of heart and soul went into the creation of these gardens (the vision of the head nun at Chi Lin Nunnery. SC told me it was her dream to create a sort of T'ang Dynasty-land, an urban oasis of calm). The biggest surprise was the vegetarian dinner we had. It was delicious! So if you can get a group of 10-12 people together to tour the gardens, definitely worth booking a table at the second floor restaurant (set menu). If you're just a small group, you can also dine at the ground floor restaurant. There's also a tea appreciation pavillion (a pot of tea here costs HK$120, there's a limited menu of dim sum snacks). The garden is open to the public free of charge from 7am-9pm. There are limits on the number of visitors allowed to visit (1,000 people at any one time), so try to avoid weekends.

I love this detail here. This is on the corner of one of the pavillions to allow the water collected from the roof to flow down. They were so civilized back then! In present-day Hong Kong, we still have to contend with the nuisence of drops of condensation from air conditioners dripping on passers-by below.

STARBUCKS CHRISTMAS VOUCHERS
I just discovered a really cool thing about Starbucks' Christmas vouchers, which I stupidly had not realized in previous years. They're HK$250 for 10 vouchers, each good for a tall beverage customized any way you like it. Every morning, I order a double, tall, light toffee nut, non-fat, no-whip latte, which costs HK$33. With the Christmas vouchers, I save HK$8/day! Needless to say, I bought a whole bunch that should last me until they come out with Chinese New Year vouchers. Funnily enough, that same morning, I came across this Business Week article on how Starbucks is doing very well from sales of their loyalty cards. Don't think the cards would fly here, since we can pay using Octopus cards (HK's cashless payment card that's one of the great things about living here), but I love the fact that pre-paying for 10 coffees (which I would run through in less than 10 days), gives me a 24% discount!