Some of My Favorite Shows

That's Pingu, the coolest penguin you possibly can meet. He lives in an igloo in the icy South Pole with sister Pinga, mom and dad. He has a great friend named Robby the Seal. He loves skiing and bowling (yes, on snow!). Pingu and his friends speak an unintelligible penguin dialect. But watching him having fun is enough to know that he is a H A P P Y, H A P P Y penguin! Pingu and His Adventures are a TV series made by BBC. Go here to see more pictures of Pingu.

This is Yo-Yo Ma the cellist. I watched him play the cello in Yo-Yo Ma in Tanglewood for the first time when I was one-and-a-half years old. I just sat in my baby chair and stared at him playing. I was so addicted to it that I sometimes watched the same video three or four times a day. Before long, the videocassette was kaput. Dad has bought a laserdisk since, but we don't have a LD player yet. Dad said I'm such a diehard Yo-Yo-Maholic that only a laserdisk can offer any hope of a cure. No need to get a LD player though. That's true - I knew the video was broken, I kept bugging Dad to get a new one, but I have not bugged him again since we got the LD. Yo-Yo Ma in Tanglewood is an LD from Sony.

You must see the Totoros. They are the Spirits of the Woods which only we kids can see. They love acorns from the forest. Here they are devouring them like crazy.

In the anime film My Neighbor Totoro (Tonari no Totoro), King Totoro, the biggest of the three, stood in the rain oblivious to the fact that he's getting soaked. (Wow, speak of being C O O L! ) It's so funny when he borrowed the small umbrella from the little girl Satsuki (age 8) and tried in vain to shelter himself from the rain. Satsuki has a lovely younger sister Mei (age 4) who's the first to stumble upon the Totoros.

Totoro is the brilliant creation of the Japanese anime artist Hayao Miyazaki. His characters span the ages, from the ancient past to the present to the distant future. His themes dwell on nature, ecology, history, mytholology, but also on human passion, love, conflicts and warfare.

I always enjoy the simple storylines and the beautiful characters, and Dad and Mom said they enjoy the often very contemporary implications and subtleties all the more.

A Stephen Spielberg movie I like very much is E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Dad said he saw E.T. when he was no longer a kid - in graduate school already - but loved every moment of it. We recorded the movie when it was shown on ATV (local TV station in Hong Kong). E.T. was not among the most enchanting character for kids, but I like him anyway. I would particularly miss him when he boards the spaceship to go home...

I saw E.T. for the first time when I was one year eight months old. I remember emulating E.T.'s sound during one of the commercial breaks, to the great surprise of my parents. I barely spoke then, but I must have understood words and sounds very well. My parents and grandparents always asked me how E.T. sounds. And I would always make the low, coarse E.T. sound (a contrast indeed to my normally sweet voice).

Here's a very homesick E.T., in the company of Eliot, his little friend on earth, staring at the night sky, yearning, "E.T. phone home!"

What are my Disney favorites? Go to my Disney page. I'll be adding more and more items on the list and I might as well start a special page for them.

Other favorites of mine are The Adventures of Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends (narrated by Ringo Starr - yes, one of the ex-Beatles), The Very Hungry Caterpillar (based on Eric Carle's children stories), Garfield the Mischievous Cat (everybody knows him), and Ding Dong the Good Fortune Cat. My cousin Ming Ka sings the theme song from Ding Dong very nicely. (Ding Dong is the Cantonese name. His Japanese name is Doraemon. Dora means "bell". Do you see Ding Dong carries a yellow bell around his neck?)

Here's Garfield trying his hands at magic, raising Ding Dong's head slowly from the ground up. And Ding dong is obviously having fun.

Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends actualy came to my birthday party on 2 July 1995, when I turned a BIG 3-year-old.

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